Russka (89 page)

Yet during his studies, Alexander was also conscious of something else – an inner, organizing force at work in the Brotherhood which for some reason was hidden from him. Two years passed, however, before one day in the autumn of 1786 the professor said to him: ‘I think it is time for you to take another step.’ And he gave him a certain little book and said: ‘Take it and read it through. Then, if you wish to become one of our number, make your application to me.’ And thus Alexander finally discovered the inner circle. ‘We call ourselves the followers of the Rosy Cross,’ the professor said.

The Rosicrucians: the secret elect. There were only about sixty of them in all Russia, and it was a tribute to his talents that they had chosen Alexander to be of their number. Though this secret circle controlled most of their activities, ordinary Masons did not know they even existed. ‘They know us, but not our true identity,’ the professor explained, ‘in order that we may protect our mission from ignorant eyes.’ Indeed, their secrecy was such that, while every Freemason had a secret name, the Rosicrucians amongst themselves had yet another set of coded identities. And so when the professor, that cold December night in 1786, had summoned Alexander to his first Rosicrucian meeting at the pink house beyond the Fontanka Canal, he had signed his message not with his Knights Templar name –
eq. ab ancora
– that was used in the ordinary Masonic lodges, but by his secret Rosicrucian name: Colovion.

For Alexander, that first meeting of the inner circle had been a powerful revelation. It was a small group – the prince and the professor from Moscow, himself and one other from St Petersburg. And for the first time, the professor began to show him the real purpose of the Brotherhood. ‘We seek no less than to create a new and moral order in society,’ he declared. ‘We shall lead it forward.’

‘You mean all Russia?’ He knew that there were Masons in high places in the government.

‘Not only Russia, my young friend. In time, the whole world,’ the older man said seriously. And though he did not elaborate, Alexander had a sense that the Rosicrucian network extended far indeed. Even so, he was awestruck by what the prince then added.
‘I can also tell you that an approach is being made to the Grand Duke Paul, to ask him to be our secret patron.’ He smiled. ‘And I am hopeful that he will accept.’

The heir to the throne! He might not particularly like that strange man, but Alexander could see at once the huge possibilities if Paul were their patron.

We Rosicrucians could finish up ruling Russia, Alexander thought excitedly. How strange that, on the very day when he had reluctantly committed himself to Tatiana, and given up hope of entering Catherine’s inner circle, this new possibility should have opened up before him. He smiled to himself. Perhaps Bobrov the gambler was being saved by fate for even greater purposes.

There was just one problem. The professor was not satisfied with him.

‘I find in you a coldness, a lack of fervour,’ he had sometimes complained when Bobrov studied with him. He had been delighted when Alexander told him he was to marry. ‘Ah, that is good, my friend. It will open your heart.’ But less than a year later he wrote:

I cannot forbear to mention, dear brother,
certain news that has reached me. It is widely
known in St Petersburg, I am told, that despite
your recent marriage, you neglect your wife and
continue your affair with a certain lady.

I must inform you that your membership of our
order places burdens upon you; and this conduct
is not acceptable. Look into your heart, I beg
you, and decide what you must do.

Though Alexander dutifully burned this letter, as was the rule with all Rosicrucian correspondence, he still seemed to see it before him every day. He knew the professor was right. His conscience troubled him. Yet he could not give her up.

A message came from a visiting Mason from Moscow. ‘The professor told me to tell you he is praying for you.’ It did no good. His next letter was noticeably cool. And when Alexander met him in Moscow later that year, his mentor was very angry.

‘The members of our inner order must be men of good
conscience, Brother Alexander. We expect you to follow the example of Grand Duke Paul, who is devoted to his wife, not that,’ and now his pale eyes suddenly blazed, ‘of the profligate and wicked court of his mother the empress!’ Then more gently he added: ‘Marriage is not always easy, Alexander, but all of us count on you to mend your ways.’

And Alexander, rather shaken by the professor’s vehemence, told him he would try to reform. At the time, he even meant it. Little as Tatiana knows it, the professor is her greatest friend, he thought.

There was, however, another cause of friction between Alexander and Tatiana, which the professor could certainly do nothing about. This was the issue of money.

It had come up so gradually that he could hardly say when it began. At first it had been an occasional enquiry about the estates, or the household expenses, which he took to be childish curiosity. Yet after a little while, he began to notice that there was a certain quiet persistency in her questions.

‘Do you know how many servants we have, Alexander?’ she had asked after they had been married three months. He had no idea, and no interest in finding out. Sixty? Eighty? ‘And how much do they cost?’ she had gone on.

‘Nothing,’ he replied shortly.

In a way, this was true. For though merchants and foreigners hired their servants at great expense, Russian noblemen just brought in serfs from their estates. A hundred was nothing. The women worked in the kitchens or elsewhere out of sight; the men dressed in livery like lackeys. One might see a footman who had just pulled his livery coat on over his peasant’s smock and failed to do up the buttons; none of them was really presentable; but things were the same in most of the houses he knew. Alexander did not even know where they all lived. In the basements he supposed.

‘But they eat food,’ Tatiana reminded him. ‘What does that cost?’

How the devil did he know? Food came. It was eaten. The Russka estate brought some cash payments and the rest in kind. Cartloads of provisions would arrive at the St Petersburg house – and immediately disappear. The peasants on the Riazan estate paid him in
barschchina
labour: his steward sold the grain and sent him the proceeds. He knew he spent it all, but had no idea how.

Sometimes these questions amused him. But after a time they began to annoy him. How much did the mountains of wood for the stoves cost? Why did they have so many carriages they never used? Shouldn’t they go and inspect their estates?

‘Your father gave us plenty of money. We’ve no need to worry,’ he would assure her.

Indeed, Tatiana’s father had discovered Alexander’s financial position soon after the marriage, and although Tatiana’s dowry had been ample to pay all his debts and leave them an estate to spare, the Baltic nobleman had not been best pleased, and the relationship between him and Alexander was cool thereafter.

So Alexander could not help suspecting that her father’s influence was at work when, one day just before she discovered she was pregnant, she had astounded him by remarking: ‘Don’t you think, Alexander, that you should give me some accounting of how you have spent my dowry?’

It was a calculated insult! She was his wife, and barely seventeen years old to boot. What impertinence! Furiously he had burst out: ‘You damned foreigners! You Germans – the Dutch and English are just the same – you count every
kopek
. Why,’ he searched for an insult, ‘you’re like so many Jews!’ But he could see that, despite the fact that she submissively bowed her head, she was not satisfied.

Besides, there was something he could not tell her.

The costs of the Masonic Press were considerable. The publishing programme was ambitious. And, it had to be admitted, the professor was sometimes a little vague about keeping accurate accounts. Already, at the time of his marriage and in addition to the contributions to the Brotherhood, Alexander had been asked to help support the Press. How could he refuse, when men like the prince were contributing handsomely? Indeed, he had been amazed to discover that some students of higher Masonry were prepared to consecrate almost their entire fortunes to the cause. He certainly did not want to lose face before his new friends. So it had been with some satisfaction that, soon after his marriage, he had announced: ‘I shall be able to make a contribution.’

Tatiana would have been surprised indeed to know, when Alexander left for Moscow just after she became pregnant, that he was going to see the professor at his estate; that he was hoping for a reconciliation with his mentor; and that with him he was taking a
further contribution, which amounted to nearly a fifth of her dowry. Had she known it, she might indeed have concluded that, if the professor was her friend, he was also her enemy.

It was on a raw, dull day in March in that year so fateful in the history of the world, when the ice on the Neva was still solid, that Alexander Bobrov the gambler struck a last bargain with God. It was not the deal he had wanted; but it seemed to be the best he could get at the time.

The morning was grey: a faint wind, on its way westwards from the icy waters of Siberia, hissed through the huge open squares of St Petersburg. In the big salon of their house, Alexander was facing his wife. He had not returned home until dawn that morning, but they were not speaking of that. He was sitting, and Tatiana was standing, to ease her back: for she was eight months pregnant with their second child. And he was glowering at her.

Damn her! Didn’t she trust him? How dare she defy him?

She trembled for a moment, but did not reply. Damn her! Damn her a thousand times. Or was she taunting him deliberately, because of Adelaide?

Tatiana stood quite still, holding on to the back of a chair for support. If she did not speak for a moment, it was because she was having to prepare herself, and she was nervous. Why did all these things have to come to a head when she was so pregnant?

Did he love her? It was not only the Frenchwoman: there were those unexplained disappearances to Moscow and these mysterious evenings out in St Petersburg. What was she to make of it?

Strangely, she did not hate Adelaide de Ronville. Sometimes she would meet her rival at Countess Turova’s. The Frenchwoman was always polite and never made the faintest reference to her relationship with Alexander. Tatiana supposed she should be grateful for that and even admired the other woman’s poise. Madame de Ronville did not even try to patronize her. She will be old soon, Tatiana had told herself at first. It will pass. Indeed, she even thought she could guess how the other woman felt. We’re both his mistresses, after all, she realized, but I am young and have his children. It must be hard for her.

She could not help loving Alexander: perhaps it was his combination of strength and weakness that made her do so. Even his vanity, strangely, pleased her. For she understood him better than he realized. Large though his talents were, she saw that his ambition was always a step ahead of them, leaving him never satisfied, never secure. He loves her, but he will need me, even if he only exploits me now, she told herself.

But on one subject she could not give way.

Alexander was short of money again. It was not a crisis, he was not ruined; but he had started to incur debts and was short of cash. Naturally, therefore, he had asked Tatiana to apply to her father. She was the heiress, after all. Where had the money gone? On their usual, lavish lifestyle, he supposed. And also, of course, to the Rosicrucians.

His admiration for the professor had, if anything, increased – despite his mentor’s vigorous opposition to his own way of life. The older man overcame every adversity. The Masons had encountered some opposition recently. Their enemies had even complained that their works were sacrilegious. But the professor had got his friends in the Church to issue an almost complete vindication. The debts had mounted; but he had quietly continued printing away, on presses down on his estate. Alexander could not help feeling a sense of affection and admiration for him.

It was getting damnably expensive though. Hardly a month went by without some fresh appeal for help from the Brethren; and had it been any lesser cause Alexander might have been tempted to hold back. But still the prospect ahead thrilled him. Any guilt he might have felt about spending his wife’s money was tempered by the one thought: The Rosicrucians may yet rule everything.

So when, that morning, he had asked his wife to apply to her father for extra funds, it had come as a shock to him when she refused. How could she? It was her duty to do so. But she had maintained an obstinate silence. And now, despite her condition – and perhaps because, in his heart, he felt somewhat guilty – he shouted at her: ‘Tatiana, I command you to do this.’

It was with astonishment, therefore, that he watched her turn and look down at him with an expression he had never seen before. It was angry and, yes, contemptuous. As for her words, it was a moment before he could even take them in.

‘I’m sorry, Alexander, but I see no reason why my father or I should trust you with any more of my fortune when you have still failed to account for the dowry money which, I must remind you, is mine. And if you do not know where it is, then perhaps I, and not you, should control our affairs.’

He stared at her. He felt his face go white with anger. Trembling with rage he roared at her, in a voice he scarcely recognized himself: ‘Jewess!’

Then he leaped up, and struck her in the face so hard that she crashed to the floor.

An hour later, Alexander was still in his study. He had not yet been able to bring himself to go out. How could he have done such a thing? He knew very well why: because he was guilty.

Am I going to ruin my wife and family? Even for the Rosicrucians and my own, endless ambition? he asked himself.

Before him lay several letters. One cancelled the purchase of a splendid English horse, another that of a magnificent new carriage, of which he had no real need. But more significant by far was the much longer letter he had just completed. It was to the professor and it ended: