The House of Special Purpose (6 page)

Little news of the war ever came to Kashin, but from time to time a trader might pass through our village with information about the military’s successes or failures. Sometimes a pamphlet might arrive at the home of one of our neighbours, sent by a well-intentioned relative, and we would each be allowed to read it in turn, following the advance of the armies in our imaginations. Some of the young men of the village had already left for the army: some had been killed, some were missing, while others still remained in service. It was expected that boys like Kolek and I, when we reached seventeen, would be called upon to bring glory to our village and join one of the military units.

The great responsibilities of Nicholas Nicolaievich were well known to all, however.

The Grand Duke had been appointed Supreme Commander of the Russian forces by the Tsar, fighting a war on three fronts, against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, against the German Kaiser, and against the Turks. By all accounts he had not been tremendously successful in any of these campaigns so far, but still he commanded the admiration and absolute loyalty of the soldiers under his command, and this in turn was filtered down through the peasant villages of Russia. We considered him to be among the very finest of men, appointed to his position by a benevolent God who sent such leaders to watch over us in our simplicity and ignorance.

The cheers grew even louder as the soldiers passed us by, and then, approaching like a glorious deity, I could make out a great white charging horse at the centre of the throng and seated atop the steed, a giant of a man in military uniform, his mustachios waxed, groomed and teased to a fine point on either side of his upper lip. He was staring rigidly ahead, but lifting his left hand from time to time to offer a regal wave to the gathered crowd.

As the horses passed before me I caught sight of our revolutionary neighbour, Borys Alexandrovich, standing among the crowd on the opposite side of the street and was surprised to see him there, for if there was one man who I thought would refuse to come out and pay tribute to the great general, it would have been him.

‘Look,’ I said to Asya, nudging her shoulder and pointing in his direction. ‘Over there. Borys Alexandrovich. Where are his fine principles now? He is as enamoured of the Grand Duke as any of us.’

‘But aren’t the soldiers handsome!’ she replied, ignoring me and playing with the curls of her hair instead as she studied each man that passed us. ‘How can they fight in battle and yet keep their uniforms so pristine, do you think?’

‘And there’s Kolek,’ I added, noticing my friend pushing his way to the fore of the crowd now, his face a mixture of excitement and
anxiety. ‘Kolek!’ I cried, waving across at him, but he could neither see me nor hear me through the noise made by the marching horses and the cheering of the villagers. At any other time, I would not have thought anything of this unremarkable fact and would have turned to look back at the parade instead, but there was an expression on his face which confused me, a look of utter disquiet that I had never observed on the countenance of this thoughtful boy before. He stepped forward a little and looked around until he had reassured himself that his father, the man whose approval meant more to him than anything else in the world, was among the watching crowd, and when he was certain of Borys Alexandrovich’s presence he turned back to stare at the Grand Duke as the white charger marched towards him.

Nicholas Nicolaievich was perhaps twenty feet away, no more, when I saw Kolek’s left hand reach inside his tunic and remain there for a moment, trembling slightly.

Fifteen feet away, when I saw the wooden handle of the gun emerge slowly from its hiding place, my friend’s fist wrapped tightly around the grip, his finger hovering over the trigger.

Ten feet away, when he drew the gun, unobserved by any but I, and released the safety catch.

The Grand Duke was only five feet away when I shouted my friend’s name – ‘Kolek!
No!
’ – and tore through a gap in the passing riders, running across the street as the heads of the soldiers, aware of something untoward taking place, turned in my direction to see what was happening. My friend saw me now too and swallowed nervously before lifting the gun in the air and aiming it in the direction of Nicholas Nicolaievich, who was before him now and had finally deigned to turn his head to look at the young man to his left. He must have seen the flash of steel in the air but there was no time for him to draw his own gun, nor to turn his horse and make a quick escape, because the pistol went off almost immediately with a loud thunderclap, sending its
murderous gunpowder in the direction of the Tsar’s cousin and closest confidant at the very moment when I, failing to consider the consequences of such an action, leapt in front of it.

There was a sudden flash of fire, a piercing pain, a scream from the crowd, and I fell to the ground, expecting to feel the shod-hooves of the horses crush my skull beneath their enormous weight at any moment, even as a pain unlike any that I had ever felt before seared through my shoulder, a feeling that someone had taken an iron rod, smelted it in a furnace for an hour and driven it through my innocent flesh. I landed hard on the ground, experiencing a sudden sensation of peace and tranquillity in my mind before the afternoon went dark before my eyes, the noises became hushed, the crowds appeared to vanish into a misty haze, and there was only a small voice left whispering to me in my head, telling me to sleep –
sleep, Pasha!
– and I obeyed it.

I closed my eyes and was left alone inside an empty, soporific darkness.

The first face I saw when I awoke was that of my mother, Yulia Vladimirovna, who was pressing a wet rag across my forehead and staring down at me with a mixture of irritation and alarm. Her hand was trembling slightly and she seemed as nervous to be offering maternal consolation as I was to receive it. Asya and Liska were whispering in a corner while the child, Talya, was watching me with a cold and disinterested expression. I did not feel a part of this unusual tableau at all and simply stared back at them, confused as to what had taken place to inspire such a display of emotion, until a sudden explosion of pain in my left shoulder caused me to grimace and I let out an anguished cry as my hand reached across to ease the pressure on the injured area.

‘Be careful there,’ said a loud, deep voice from behind my mother, and the moment it spoke, she jumped noticeably and her expression transformed into one of frightened anxiety. I had never seen her so intimidated by anyone before and thought at first that
it was my father, Daniil, who was ordering her to make way, but the voice did not belong to him. My vision was slightly blurred and I blinked several times in quick succession until the haze began to dissipate and I could see clearly again.

I realized then that it was not my father who was standing over me; he was positioned towards the back of the hut, observing me with a half-smile on his face, a look that betrayed his confused emotions of pride and hostility. No, the voice which had addressed me was that of the supreme commander of the Russian military forces, the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich.

‘Don’t try to move,’ he said, leaning over me and examining my shoulder, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized the wound. ‘You’ve been injured, but you were lucky. The bullet went straight through the soft tissue of your shoulder but missed the arteries and the vein. It just shot directly out the other side, which was fortunate. A little more to the right and your arm might have been paralysed or you might have bled to death. The pain will continue for a few days, I imagine, but there won’t be any lasting damage. A small scar, perhaps.’

I swallowed – my mouth was so dry that my tongue stuck uncomfortably to my palate – and I asked my mother for something to drink. She didn’t move, just stood there with her mouth open as if the scene playing out before her was one in which she was too terrified to take a part, and it was left to the Grand Duke to take the hip flask from around his waist and fill it from a barrel that stood near by before handing it across to me. I was almost too intimidated by the finery of the leather to drink from it, particularly when I noticed the Imperial seal of the Romanovs that was stitched in golden thread across its casing, but my thirst was so extraordinary that my hesitation did not last long and I gulped it down quickly. The sensation of the ice-cold water entering my body and making its way along my gut helped to alleviate the pain of my shoulder for a few moments.

‘You know who I am?’ asked the Grand Duke, raising himself to
his full height now, filling the room with his imposing figure. At least six feet and the same number of inches in height. A large, muscular body. Handsome and imposing. And that extraordinary moustache which served to make him look even more dignified and majestic. I swallowed and nodded my head quickly.

‘Yes,’ I replied weakly.

‘You know who I am?’ he repeated, louder now, so I thought that I was in trouble of some sort.

‘Yes,’ I said again, finding my full voice now. ‘You are the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, commander of the army and cousin to His Imperial Majesty, Tsar Nicholas II.’

He smiled a little and his body jolted slightly as he offered me a small laugh. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, dismissing the grandeur of my response. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your memory then, boy, is there? If you remember so well, can you recall what happened to you?’

I sat up a little, ignoring the shooting pains that were exploding along my left side from the top of my shoulder to the crook of my elbow, and looked down at my body. I was lying on the small hammock that functioned as my bed, wearing trousers but no shoes, and I was embarrassed to see the layer of filth from the floor of our hut that clung to my bare feet. My clean tunic, the one that I had worn especially for the Grand Duke’s parade, was lying in a bundle on the floor beside me, and it was no longer white, but a malevolent mixture of black and dark red. I wore no shirt and my chest was streaked with blood from the wound on my arm, which was wrapped tightly in bandages. The first thought I had was to wonder where these dressings had been found, but then I remembered the soldiers who had been trooping through our village and assumed that one of them had attended to my wound with their own army supplies.

Which in turn led to a sudden recollection of the events of the afternoon.

The parade. The white charger. The Grand Duke seated astride it.

And our neighbour, Borys Alexandrovich. His son, my best friend, Kolek Boryavich.

The pistol.

‘A gun,’ I cried suddenly, leaping up, as if the events were taking place once again, directly before my eyes. ‘He has a gun!’

‘It’s all right, boy,’ said the Grand Duke, patting me on my uninjured shoulder. ‘There is no gun now. You committed a great act, if you can recall it.’

‘I … I’m not sure,’ I replied, struggling to remember what I might have done to earn such a compliment.

‘My son has always been very brave, sir,’ said Daniil, stepping forward now from the rear of the hut. ‘He would have given his life for yours without question.’

‘There was an assassination attempt,’ continued Nicholas Nicolaievich, looking directly at me and ignoring my father. ‘A young radical. He aimed his pistol at my head. I swear that I saw the bullet preparing to quit its chamber and plant itself in my skull, but you rushed before me, brave lad that you are, and took the bullet in your shoulder.’ He hesitated before continuing. ‘You saved my life, young Georgy Daniilovich.’

‘I did?’ I asked, for I could not imagine what might have inspired me to do such a thing. But the fog in my mind was beginning to lift and I could remember rushing towards Kolek in order to press him back into the body of the gathered crowd, so that he would not commit an act that would cost him his life.

‘Yes, you did,’ replied the Grand Duke. ‘And I am grateful to you. The Tsar himself will be grateful to you. All of Russia will be.’

I didn’t know what to say to such a remark – he certainly had a high regard for his importance in the world – and lay back, feeling a little dizzy and desperate for more water.

‘He doesn’t really have to go, does he, Father?’ asked Asya suddenly, stemming her tears for a moment as she asked the
question. I looked in her direction and was touched that she was so upset by what had happened to me.

‘Quiet, girl,’ replied my father, pushing her back against the wall. ‘He will do as he is told. We all will.’

‘Go?’ I whispered, wondering what she could have meant by that. ‘Go where?’

‘You’re a brave lad,’ said the Grand Duke, putting his gloves back on now and taking a small purse from his pocket, which he handed to my father; it immediately disappeared inside the mysterious caverns of his tunic, out of sight of any of us.
I have been sold
, I thought immediately.
I have been traded to the army for a few hundred roubles
. ‘A boy like you is wasted in a place like this. You were planning on joining the army this year, of course?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied hesitantly, for I knew that day was approaching quickly but I had hoped to delay it for a few months yet. ‘It was my intention, only—’

‘Well, I can’t send you into battle, where you will only face more bullets. Not after what you have done today. No, you may stay here and recover for a few days and then follow me. I will leave two men to escort you to your new home.’

‘My new home?’ I asked, thoroughly confused now and attempting to sit up again as he stepped towards the door of our hut. ‘But where is that, sir?’

‘Why, St Petersburg, of course,’ he said, turning around to smile at me. ‘You have already proved that you would be willing to step in front of a bullet for a man such as I. Just imagine how much loyalty you would show to one even greater than a mere duke.’

I shook my head and swallowed nervously. ‘Even greater than you?’ I asked.

He hesitated for a moment, as if he was unsure whether to let me know what he had in mind, in case the shock of the revelation caused me to faint away entirely. But when he finally spoke again, he behaved as if this most extraordinary idea was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘The Tsarevich Alexei,’ he said. ‘You
will be one of those assigned to protect him. My cousin, the Tsar, mentioned in his most recent communication how he was looking for just such a young man and asked whether I knew anyone who might make an appropriate companion. Someone closer to his own age, that is. The Tsarevich has many guards, of course. But he needs more than that. He needs a companion who can also tend to his safety. I believe that I have found what he is looking for. I intend to make a gift of you to him, Georgy Daniilovich. Assuming that he approves of you, that is. But stay here for now. Recover. Get well. And I will see you in St Petersburg at the end of the week.’