The Coronation (6 page)

A crow on a branch cawed raucously and I looked up. But I didn’t see the bird, only a patch of grey sky between the dark leaves.

I think that I would give anything at all to halt time at that precise moment, because it was destined to divide my existence into two halves: all thatwas rational, predictable and orderlywas left behind in the old life, and the new consisted of nothing but madness, nightmares and chaos.

I heard the sound of footsteps approaching rapidly from behind and looked round in surprise. At that very instant a blow of prodigious force came crashing down on my head. I caught a glimpse of the face, distorted in incredible fury, of the bearded man I had seen not long before as I slumped to the ground and lost consciousness for a second. I say ‘for a second’ becausewhen I raised my head, which felt as as if it were filled with lead, off the ground, the bearded man was only a few steps away. He threw Mikhail Georgievich aside, grabbed Her Highness by the arm and started dragging her back past me. Mademoiselle froze on the spot in bewilderment and I felt as if I had turned to stone. I raised one hand to my forehead, wiped away something wet and looked at it – it was blood. I didn’t know what he had hit me with, brass knuckles or a lead cudgel, but the trees and bushes all around were swaying like ocean waves in a storm.

The bearded man gave a brigandish whistle and a black carriage harnessed to a pair of black horses emerged from round the corner that we had just turned. The driver, wearing a broad oilskin cloak, pulled back on the reins with a cry of ‘Whoah!’ and two other men, also dressed in black, jumped out of the carriage as it was still moving and came running towards us.

‘This is a kidnapping, that’swhat it is,’ a very calm, quiet voice stated somewhere inside me, and the trees suddenly stopped swaying. I got up on my hands and knees and shouted to Mademoiselle: ‘
Emportez le grand-duc
!’
⁶
and grabbed hold of the bearded man round the knees, just as he drew level with me.

He did not let go of Her Highness’s hand, and all three of us tumbled to the ground together. I am naturally quite strong – everyone in our family is robust – and in my youth I served as a court outrunner, which is also excellent for strengthening the musculature, and so I had no difficulty in opening the hand with which the villain was clutching the hem of Her Highness’s skirt, but that did not help very much. He struck me on the chin with the hand that had just been freed and before Her Highness could even get to her feet men in black were there already beside her. They took hold of the grand princess under the arms, lifted her up and set off towards the carriage at a run. At least Mademoiselle had managed to save Mikhail Georgievich – out of the corner of my eyes I had seen her pick the boy up in her arms and dive into the bushes.

My opponent proved to be adroit and strong. He struck me again, and when I tried to grab him by the throat, he put his hand in under his coat and brought out a Finnish knife with notches on the blade. I saw those notches as clearly as if he had held them up in front of my eyes.

The terrible man hissed something that was not Russian, but sounded like ‘I’ll kill you like a dog!’ and his bloodshot eyes gaped wide as he swung the knife back.

I tried to remember the words of a prayer, but somehow I could not, although when, you might ask, should one pray, if not at a moment like that?

The knife was raised high, almost up into the sky, but it did not descend. In some magical fashion the wrist of the hand holding the knife was suddenly encircled by fingers in a grey glove.

The bearded man’s face, already contorted, twisted even further out of shape. I heard the soft squelch of a blow, my would-be killer slumped gently to one side and there standing over me in his place was the elegant gentleman in the top hat, but instead of a cane he was holding a short sword, stained with red.

‘Are you alive?’ my rescuer asked in Russian, then immediately turned away and shouted something in a language unfamiliar to me.

I sat up and saw the Chinese pedlar dashing along the path, stamping his feet furiously, with his head down like a bull charging. He was no longer holding his tray; instead his hand was whirling a small metal sphere above his head on a piece of rope.

‘
Iiyai
!’ the Oriental grunted in an appalling voice and the sphere went hurtling forward, whistling by only a few
vershoks
above me.

I jerked round to see where its great speed was carrying it. It flew straight to its target, which proved to be the back of one of the kidnappers’ heads. There was a repulsive crunch and the victim collapsed face down. The other man let go of the princess, swung round adroitly and snatched a revolver out of his pocket. Now I had a chance to take a better look at him, but I still did not see his face, because it was hidden behind a mask of black fabric.

The driver, who was sitting on the coach box, threw off his oilskin to reveal the same kind of black apparel as the two others were wearing, only without a mask. He jumped down onto the ground and ran towards us, also taking something out of his pocket on the way.

I turned to glance at my rescuer. (I am ashamed to admit that during those dramatic moments I lost my bearings completely and did nothing but turn my head this way and that, struggling to keep up with events.) The elegant gentleman took a short swing and flung his sword, but I did not see if he hit his target or not, because an even more improbable sight was presented to my astonished gaze: Mademoiselle Declique came dashing out of the bushes, clutching a hefty branch in one hand and holding up her skirt with the other to reveal a glimpse of well-turned ankle! As she ran towards us her hat flew off, her hair fluttered loose at her temples, but I had never seen her look more attractive.

‘
J’arrive
!’ she shouted. ‘
J’arrive
!’
⁷

It was only then that I realised the shamefulness of my own conduct. I got to my feet and dashed to the assistance of the unfamiliar gentleman and the Chinese.

Alas, my assistance was no longer required.

The thrown sword had found its mark – the man in the mask was lying on his back, feebly stirring his legs, with a strip of steel protruding from his chest. It ended in a silver knob, and now I realised where the handsome gentleman had got his sword – it had been concealed in his cane.

And as for the coachman, the agile Chinese had dealt with him in excellent fashion. Before the bandit could even take his weapon out of his pocket, the Oriental leaped high into the air and struck his opponent a flying blow to the chin with his foot. The shattering impact jerked the coachman’s head back with a crack so sharp that not even the very strongest of cervical vertebrae could possibly have withstood it. He threw up his arms and collapsed onto his back.

By the time Mademoiselle Declique joined us with her menacing branch, it was all over.

The first thing I didwas to help Her Highness up – thank God, she was quite unhurt, simply feeling stunned.

Then I turned to the stranger.

‘Who are you, sir?’ I asked, although of course I ought first to have thanked him for saving us, whoever he might be.

Xenia Georgievna rectified my blunder.

‘Thank you,’ she said, looking intently at the man with the black hair and white temples. ‘You saved us all. I am Grand Princess Xenia Georgievna. The boy who was with me is Mika, the Grand Duke Mikhail Georgievich. And these are my friends, Mademoiselle Declique and Mr Ziukin.’

The stranger bowed respectfully to Her Highness, doffed the top hat that had miraculously remained on his head throughout the commotion and introduced himself, stumbling over his words slightly, probably because he was quite understandably embarrassed to find himself facing a member of the royal family: ‘Erast P-Petrovich Fandorin.’

He did not add anything else, from which it was possible to conclude that Mr Fandorin did not hold any position in the state service and was a private individual.

‘And this is my valet, or perhaps b-butler, I’m not sure which is more correct. His name is Masa, he is Japanese,’ said Fandorin, indicating the pugnacious pedlar, who in turn bowed low from the waist and remained bent over.

So it turned out that the elegant gentleman was not embarrassed at all but simply had a slight stammer, that the Chinese was not Chinese at all, and finally that the Oriental and I were in a certain sense professional colleagues.

‘And who are these people, Erast Petrovich?’ Her Highness asked, pointing timidly to the hapless kidnappers lying completely motionless. ‘Are they unconscious?’

Before replying, the dark-haired man went to each of the four men lying on the ground in turn, felt the arteries in their necks and shook his head four times. The last one he examined was the dreadful man with the beard. Fandorin turned him over onto his back and even to me, a man totally ignorant in such matters, it was perfectly clear that he was dead – the gleam of his motionless eyes was so completely lifeless. But Fandorin leaned down lower over the body, took hold of the beard between his finger and thumb and gave it a sudden jerk.

Her Highness cried out in surprise, and such crude familiarity with death seemed indecent even to me. However, the black beard parted easily from the face andwas left in Fandorin’s hand.

I saw that the dead man’s crimson features were pitted with pockmarks and he had a forked white scar on his cheek.

‘This is the famous Warsaw bandit Lech Penderetski, also kn-known as Blizna, which means Marked One or Scar,’ Fandorin stated calmly, as if he were introducing someone he knew well, and then added, almost to himself: ‘So that’s what’s going on . . .’

‘Are all these men really dead?’ I asked, realising with a sudden shudderwhat a terrible situation the royal family could find itself in as a result of this incident. If some stroller were to peep round the corner now, the scandal that broke out would echo round the world. Just think of it . . . an attempt to kidnap a cousin of the Russian tsar! Four men killed! And some Warsaw bandit or other! The sacred solemnity of the coronation ceremony would be completely shattered!

‘We have to get them into the carriage immediately!’ I exclaimed with a fervour untypical of me in normal circumstances. ‘Will your butler consent to assist me?’

While the Japanese and I piled the bodies into the carriage, I felt terribly anxious that someone might catch us engaged in this rather disreputable activity. Everything about the business was far from customary for me. Not only was there blood flowing down my face from my bruised forehead and broken lip, I had also stained my new promenading tunic with blood that was not my own.

And so I did not hear what Her Highness and Fandorin were talking about. But to judge from her flushed cheeks, she must have been thanking the mysterious gentleman again for saving her.

‘Where is His Highness?’ I asked Mademoiselle as soon as I recovered my breath.

‘I left him in ze . . .’ She clicked her fingers, trying to remember the word, but could not. ‘Ze quayside? Ze dock for ships?’

‘The arbour,’ I prompted her. ‘Let’s go together. His Highness must be feeling very frightened.’

Beyond the bushes there was a rather extensive lawn, with a lacy white wooden arbour standing at its centre.

When we did not find Mikhail Georgievich in it, we started calling for him, thinking that the grand duke must have decided to play hide and seek with us.

Our shouts brought Fandorin. He looked around on all sides and suddenly squatted down on his haunches, examining something in the grass.

Itwas the pink Chinese sugar lollipop, which had been crushed by some heavy object, probably a heel.

‘Damn, damn, damn!’ Fandorin exclaimed, striking himself on the thigh with his fist. ‘I ought to have foreseen this!’

¹
Little Red Riding Hood.

²
And she went through the forest to see her grandmother.

³
Don’t point!

⁴
What do you want that rubbish for?

⁵
I just want it that’s all.

⁶
Get the grand duke away!

⁷
I‘m coming! I’m coming!

7 May

I shall not describe the events of the evening and the night that followed His Highness’s disappearance, because in effect there were no events as such. The primary concern of those who were aware of what had happened was to keep the matter secret, and so from the outside everything appeared as if nothing had happened at all, except for the constant ringing of the telephones and the over-reckless pace at which horsemen raced round the triangle formed by the Hermitage, the Petrovsky Palace and the governor general’s residence.

All of this carefully concealed but extremely frenetic (not to say chaotic) activity produced absolutely no result, since the most important thing remained unclear: who could havewanted to kidnap His Majesty’s little cousin and why? And the mystery was not cleared up until the morning, when a letter without any stamp arrived at the Hermitage together with the ordinary municipal post – the postman himself was unable to say how it could have got into his bag in that condition.

As a result of this letter the sovereign himself, having received his grateful Asian subjects His Highness the Emir of Bukhara and His Grace the Khan of Khiva in the morning, postponed a parade at the Khodynsk Field at the last moment on the pretext of the cold and rainyweather and, accompanied only by the head of the court police, travelled in complete secret in an ordinary closed carriage with his personal valet, Seleznyov, on the coach box to join us at the Hermitage. That was when this palace in the park demonstrated the two great advantages forwhich it had received its name – its remoteness and privacy.