Heart of Iron

Chapter 6

I spent more time with Jack, since every conversation I attempted to have with Olga ended up with her asking about him anyway. Jack was a pleasant companion in his own right, even if one were to ignore the fact I attempted to use our new closeness to find answers to the questions that plagued me. He, however, was very good at avoiding sly hints and the subtle verbal traps I set for him. When the break came to an end, I knew no more about his purpose, Dame Nightingale, or the burglary at the Crane Club than I did when it started.

The last Sunday before the classes were set to resume, Jack and I went for a walk along the Nevsky Prospect. It was late October, and the snowfall and the cutting winter winds were not far away. I was eager to enjoy the last of the tolerable weather, even if it meant contending with light rain and occasional wind gusts forceful enough to almost rip the hat off my head despite many pins specifically embedded to keep it in place.

Jack too had to keep vigilant hold of his hat. He did not look particularly pleased about the walk, but I described the horses at the Anichkov Bridge and the impression they made on me last year, and he agreed to pay them a visit. As we both stood transfixed — I was caught up anew in the violent yet still life of the sculpture — my thoughts churned. It was as if the horses gave me the presence of mind and courage to enunciate the question to which I so desired — and perhaps dreaded — an answer.

“Mr. Bartram,” I said then, “Do you know what happened with the Crane Club? Did you have anything to do with it?”

He kept looking at the horses, his head tilted back, one gloved hand holding the brim of his hat. His eyes, squinting against the wind, did not change their expression and the Adam’s apple on his long pale throat did not bob. Yet, like the sculpture he was studying, his still frame filled with silent tension, and just like that, without him uttering a word or making a gesture, I knew.

“No,” he said after a very long pause. “Why would you think that?”

“That night, you were at the club.”

“I was just passing by.”

“And at the Northern Star… that awful lady told you to remember your loyalties. The Crane Club was vandalized, soon after.”

He finally looked away from the bridge, his eyes meeting mine. His coat flapped, and something twinged in the depths of my memory. “And why would one thing have anything to do with another?”

“Your country was at war with China.”

He smiled, as if I were a child he had decided to indulge a bit longer. “We have signed a peace treaty. But even if we had not… do you think ransacking a Chinese club is the same as declaring military hostilities? It was more likely some drunks or thieves who were hoping to find alcohol in that place — it was all but abandoned recently. So they took some trinkets to sell. Really, Sasha, you’re too smart for your own good — you’re making things so complicated.”

I did feel very young and very foolish then. “We can go,” I whispered.

He offered me his elbow and I hooked my hand over the crook of his arm. “Don’t feel bad,” he said. “I know you are upset about your friends. Only I wish you wouldn’t cast me as an enemy.”

Those words made me blush. “I remember that you saved us,” I said. “You saved me twice, and I told you I was grateful. But there are things happening now that I do not understand, all I know is that I do not trust Prince Nicholas and his secret police, and I do not trust your Dame Nightingale.”

He seemed amused by my words, as we turned toward the Palace Square. “She may be a bit brash,” he said.

“And a bit rude,” I added. “I really don’t appreciate being insulted, but this is not why I do not trust her. I think she may be a spy.”

His face retained the same smiling expression but mirth left it momentarily, only to return with an exaggerated chuckle. “Nonsense,” he said.

I thought he was an awful liar but did not challenge him, content to see my guess hit near its target. “And you are here to help Nicholas,” I said. “The gendarmes listened to you. What do you want with the Chinese? Is this why Nightingale and Herbert are here?”

He shrugged, uncomfortable. “I cannot tell you much, but be assured that it has little to do with your friends. However, I can say Prince Nicholas once sought an alliance with Britain to help protect Russia from the Chinese threat.”

I snorted. “This is nonsense. There is no threat.”

Jack only shrugged. “If you say so. If there’s no threat then the Chinese have nothing to fear.”

“This is not true and you know it,” I said. “There has been enough damage done already, and I still don’t know what happened to Wong Jun.”

“I cannot help you.”

“I do not need you to.” I freed my arm from his. “I wrote to my aunt about this injustice, although in vague terms and naming no names.” I had learned from my encounter with the police. “I expect she will set things straight when she arrives in December.”

A gust of wind grabbed my shawl and flapped it in my face while simultaneously tearing off Jack’s hat — he had foolishly forgotten to maintain a grip. He lunged after it, just as the wind picked up force and hurled the hat down the street with the speed of a locomotive.

“You can always get another,” I said, but discovered Jack was no longer in my immediate proximity — somehow, he was a few hundred feet ahead, picking up his hat from the pavement and shaking it free of puddle water. I was still rubbing my eyes when he returned to my side. “How—” I started to ask.

“I was a sprint runner when I was younger,” he said with an apologetic smile.

But that was no sprint. That night at the Crane Club I had been willing to let myself believe panic and darkness had deceived my eyes, but now, in somewhat weak but sufficient light of the afternoon, I had no excuse. He had not run, he had hurled himself… flew… jumped… he moved faster than was possible, faster than my eyes could follow him. I realized he had, indeed, fallen out of the sky that night.

I looked around. Nevsky was not crowded, thanks to rain and chill in the air, but there were a few passersby and couples walking arm in arm, some clerks hurrying along on business, their long gray overcoats heavy with rain. No one seemed to have noticed Jack’s unusual behavior. There was no one I could appeal to for confirmation.

“I see,” I said slowly. “Do you expect me to believe that?”

He smiled wider, but humor was gone from his eyes. “You should,” he said, “if you know what is good for you.”

I glared. “Are you threatening me now, Mr. Bartram?”

He shook his head, rueful now. “Not at all. A warning, perhaps. A worry.” His gloved hand took mine and squeezed it, almost desperately. “Please believe me, Sasha. I would never do anything to let any misfortune befall you, but sometimes you really must look away.”

He walked me to my dormitory in silence, and I spent a sleepless night, angry and elated and generally uncertain how to feel.

Considering my restless night, it came as no surprise to find myself dozing through most of my classes the next morning, revived only by Dasha’s sharp jab to my side at the end of each lesson. I was ready to take my confidences to Dasha instead of Olga, in hopes she was slightly less obsessed with matrimony, but the fates interfered: when I came back to the dormitory that night, I found Anastasia in a nearly hysterical state, precipitated, as I discovered, by my aunt who was currently sitting in the living room, drinking tea, and scolding Anastasia for dust under the lampshade.

“Aunt Genia!” I exclaimed and ran across the room to embrace her. “What a pleasant surprise!”

She let me kiss her dry, papery cheek. “Good to see you too, Sasha. What is it you’re telling me — Nikolashka went and lost what little mind God blessed him with?”

It was shocking to hear my aunt to refer to the prince by his nickname, like a gossiping peasant. Refreshing, too. Before I even took my hat and gloves off, I told her about Wong Jun, my own almost-arrest, and Jack’s interference. Oh, it was such a relief to pour my heart out to a sympathetic soul. She listened, not moving, until her tea went cold and Anastasia recovered enough of her wits to bring in supper and to inquire whether Eugenia was planning to stay with us or to go back to her St. Petersburg apartment.

“I’ll stay there,” Eugenia said. “No need for me to crowd you here.”

“It’s no trouble,” I said quickly. “There is a spare bedroom, it is not much, but it is tidy and I’m sure it will suffice until your apartment is ready.”

“Thank you, niece,” Eugenia said. “I won’t be in the city for long — just a few days, to have some business taken care of. I’ll make sure to look into your friend’s whereabouts.” She wrote down Wong Jun’s name in her notepad with her small, exacting letters.

Over supper, we talked about things at home. Eugenia complained the horses were getting expensive to feed since oats had grown poorly this year and prices were now sky-high. She spoke about buying some mechanical plows, since coal and peat seemed in less demand than oats. “And the machines are certainly better tempered. The horses are such fiends — give them one finger, they’ll take your whole arm. I kept them for your riding, but now that you’re gone… ”

“I’ll be back,” I said quickly.

“You don’t say.” Eugenia waited for Anastasia to clean the table and then excuse herself and go gossip with Natalia Sergeevna before asking more. “You think you’ll come back to Trubetskoye, with your Englishman and all?”

“It’s not like that.” And before I had a chance to worry that Eugenia would think me insane and talk myself out of telling her, I told her how Jack dropped out of the sky and then chased his hat by leaping a hundred yards in one step. “There’s something about him, only I don’t know what and how it is even possible.”

“Stranger things have been known to happen,” Eugenia said. “We better turn in — you have classes tomorrow, and I will be going to the ministry offices first thing. They always make you wait forever, so I need my rest.”

When I was in my bed, drifting to sleep, there was a creak of the floorboards and weight on the edge of my bed. My aunt’s hand rested on my brow, just as when I was small and ill. A sense of deep calm and belief that everything would turn all right filled me. “You came because of my letter, didn’t you?” I murmured, comforted like a child.

“Of course,” she answered. “Not that I don’t have business of my own, but know one thing, Sasha: all you have to do is ask, and I will be there.”

I sighed, happy, and fell asleep before her dry cool hand left my forehead. I had not slept that well since arriving in St. Petersburg.

I woke up more hopeful than I had felt in weeks. Eugenia’s mere presence seemed enough to instill a sense of rightness in the world, as if nothing bad was possible when she was nearby. She ate breakfast with me and then departed toward the Palace Bridge the same time as Olga and I left for our classes. I almost skipped on my way; I had not realized how heavily the latest events weighed on my mind until the burden had lifted. Even Professor Ipatiev could not affect me with his explanation of the female reproductive system and rather excessive insistence that ovaries were nothing more than defective and listless testes. I caught Dasha’s attention, and we rolled our eyes at each other as our only recourse. I did hope, however, I would not have to draw the reproductive system at the next exam.

In philosophy, I took my usual seat. To my surprise, Jack came in earlier than was his habit, and took a seat next to me, the one usually occupied by Dasha. When Dasha came in, she smiled and moved down the aisle, leaving me in unasked-for tête-à-tête with Jack Bartram.

“Listen,” he said. “I’ve been thinking.”

“So have I,” I whispered back. “Shh, class is starting.”

“Promise you’ll stay after class and talk to me.”

“Very well.”

He didn’t move away when the lecture started, and I found I had trouble concentrating on chained men in the cave and the shadows that they somehow mistook for real people when Jack was sitting next to me.

The lecture was finally over, and I could’ve cursed my friends — Dasha and Olga, and Elena and Larisa all ran ahead, leaving me facing Jack with no excuse to escape the situation. Even our classmates who could be counted on to follow us around and make rude jokes when they were least welcome left the auditorium. I sighed and faced Jack, even though it was the last thing I was interested in doing at the time. He smiled and motioned that we should step outside.

“I know I was harsh the last time we spoke,” he said, and matched his long stride to mine. “I just… I wish I knew the right thing to do.”

“Sometimes it is hard to decide,” I said. “But you can start by not lying to me.”

“I’m fond of you,” he said. “Really, quite so.” His voice was steady, and his hat concealed his expression as well as ever. “I don’t want to lie to you, but I see no choice sometimes.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” I said, blushing rather hopelessly. “But if you want me to return your interest, your sincerity would be most effective.”

As much as I resented such manipulation, I had to sternly remind myself that it seemed to be the only way to find out what was going on. I had tried straightforward sincerity before, so I felt I was morally in the clear.

Jack nodded a few times, thoughtful. “You were right about me,” he said. “I am here on orders of my government, and I am gathering information of… sensitive nature.”

I held my breath not quite believing he was finally supplying some answers. “And the Crane Club?”

He hung his head. “I cannot talk about that. Please believe me, if it were not for necessity… I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” I responded. “You could’ve refused.”

“I face severe punishment should I disobey my orders,” he said. “More severe than most others.”

“What have you got against the Chinese?”

“Nothing,” he said. “There was some interest in the models they were building, but it is secondary, and served mostly as a diversion. That is why I, a criminal, was trusted with it — it is not important in itself, but only as a symbolic gesture.”

Although I did not wish to, I had to lean on his hand. My head spun. I had assumed Chiang Tse and the rest were victims of continuing British hostility. The emperor’s preference for all things and causes English coupled with his brother’s fear of foreigners had made matters worse. I assumed they were arrested and pursued to please the British, and that Jack and his compatriots were here to direct and to supervise. It had not occurred to me that all this was a deliberate setup, a distraction engineered by the English. The unavoidable conclusion stared me in the face, and it had the mean pinprick gaze of Dame Nightingale.

“You’re telling me,” I whispered with numb lips, “that you are not here to spy on the Chinese.”

He shook his head. “No. But please, please, be careful. Don’t tell anyone. I can protect you if need arises, but no more than that.”

I was overcome with the onslaught of information and Jack solicitously led me to a bench by the path. It was still a bit wet from the recent rain, and he laid down his cloak so I could sit comfortably. I stared for a while at the yellow leaves covering the paths and the lawns, at the students walking and laughing, their voices carrying far in the still air. I realized there was knowledge in the universe that had the ability to decisively separate one from the rest of the world — some things you could not know and continue to live like everyone else. Blood roared in my ears, and I helplessly shook my head at Jack and his moving lips — I could not hear a word he was saying. I could only acutely experience the bitter smell of fallen leaves and distant peat smoke.

“If you’re a spy,” I finally managed, my tongue slow and woolen, “and if you’re found out, you’ll be in more trouble than you can imagine.”

He smiled then. “If I ever do anything to jeopardize my task or to expose those who give me my orders, I’ll be in more trouble than you can imagine.”

“Can’t you quit? Promise to keep what you know a secret and just stop?”

He laughed, a slow mirthless sound. “As I said, it is not my choice.”

“Because you’re a criminal.” The last word was difficult for me to get out — it was something I did not want to believe.

There was one more thing I needed to know, but I could barely bring myself to ask. It seemed too much for one day, too much disappointment and heartbreak. Still, I thought it would be better to confront it all at once. “What are your crimes?”

He stood facing me, took his hat off and tapped it against his knee, absent-minded, and yet aware enough to answer my question with his face unobscured, his eyes on mine. “Armed robbery,” he said. “Theft. I never killed anyone though, if it makes it any better.”

Strangely enough, it did allow me to feel a measure of relief. I feared that the man I had spent so much time with, a man I had started to trust and liked enough to consider a friend was a murderer. I didn’t know what I would’ve done if that had been the case; as it was, I managed a smile. “This is not so bad.”

His face flushed pale pink. “I’m glad you think so,” he said. “However, you now see my predicament. My attempt to shake off the thrall I find myself under will surely lead to me being taken back and imprisoned.”

I nodded and stood. “I understand why you would want to avoid that. Still, I would imagine there are other possibilities. Hiding, for example.”

He smiled and shook his head. “It is not so easy, Sasha. Dame Nightingale… they say, you couldn’t hide from her on the bottom of the sea if she wants you, and she certainly wants me.”

“Why?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. If he was a thief, he was good at spying — he could take things without others noticing, and moreover do so without the moral reservations most people would have in his place. But even a thief might have a sense of duty and patriotism — or at least, so I imagined.

“Because of the things I can do,” he said.

Falling out of the sky, leaping a hundred feet in a single bound. I felt slightly dizzy again, my step faltered, but his arm remained a steady support and I quickly recovered. It seemed that once he had found the strength to talk to me, confession became easier.

“The display cases — they were too heavy for a single man, and how would you drag them out of a building? Surely several men carrying glass cases would be noticed.”

He laughed. “It took only me… and my gifts. We carried those cases to the roof, and leapt.”

He spoke without hesitation now, his voice full of passion, as if he had to empty his overburdened heart, before it burst or gave out.

The visions of his superhuman and terrifying abilities were almost too much for me. I imagined him as a wild, possessed thing, leaping like a demon from roof to roof, glass and metal cases rattling on his shoulders — like a vurdalak, a terrifying grave-robber from the old peasant tales, with two coffins on his shoulders.

“Why the Chinese?” I finally mustered. “If you said they were not important, then why wreck their club?”

“Opium,” he said simply. “The East India Trading Company will not stop selling it, and the Chinese government won’t cease trying to stop its importation. There was one war, there will be others. And they know that as well. Chinese airships are second to none, and those display cases contained some of the best examples of their ingenuity: traditional Oriental engineering combined with the modern discoveries of the West. Such equipment and devices would be invaluable in any war. Even if they are just models, our engineers may gain ideas.” He gave me a meaningful look, just as we stopped in front of my dormitory. “Remember that, Sasha. China is subdued for now, but there are other wars the empire could be fighting.”

I wanted to ask him more questions, even though my knees wobbled and threatened to yield at any moment. But he swung around and walked away, never looking back, leaning into the wind with the desperate determination of a man with no secrets left, his chest flayed open and heart torn out for all to see. For a moment, I feared I would never see him again, but a new thought made me rush through the door, in wild hope that Eugenia would be there. A sudden realization descended like a piercing and merciless beam of light which cast the unpleasant reality in stark relief: the English played Prince Nicholas’ hatred not just to gather his help against the Chinese, but also to distract him — everyone — from the fact that English spies were looking for weaknesses in Russia. They watched the submarines, they had access to the engineering students at the university and to the offices of the Ministries.

I rushed into my apartment, to see Anastasia setting the table for supper and Aunt Eugenia reading the newspaper by the table.

“Aunt Genia,” I exhaled. “Aunt Genia! There’s going to be a war soon.”

I am firmly convinced that if my aunt could be persuaded to take on the problems of the world, we would be living in utopia. However, she preferred to concentrate on the domestic, and instead busied herself with making me raspberry tea and a slew of other old-fashioned remedies meant to lift my spirits and strengthen my obviously shaken constitution. Anastasia was sent out for valerian tincture and chamomile, and Eugenia made sure to loosen the laces of my corset to let me breathe better.

“I am all right,” I assured her. “I swear.”

“Just drink your tea,” she said. Her presence made my small living room more inviting somehow, more like home — she had adjusted the wick of the lamp so light fell only on the table and chairs around it; the rest of the room remained swathed in pleasant velvety shadows. She wrapped a plaid throw around me and made me comfortable in the best chair, situated on the border of light and dark. She brought my tea and pulled up a straight-backed chair to sit next to me. “Oh, Sasha. I forget how strenuous it is for you — you’ve never even been away from home before, and now you’re on your own, and your studies are difficult.”

“It’s not that,” I protested weakly, even though I did enjoy her attention. “The British are worried, their spies are everywhere. They are using the Chinese as a diversion.”

Eugenia stopped mopping at my brow with a cold towel and gave me a long, critical look. “I would think that you speak nonsense, Sasha,” she answered after a while, “but today I’m not willing to dismiss anything as nonsense. Something very strange is afoot, and I am a bit dismayed the emperor has decided to abandon those who have been loyal to him.”

I sat up straighter. “I told you they dragged me to Gorokhovaya as if I were a common criminal. I needed an Englishman to intervene.”

Eugenia nodded. “I spent all day sitting in waiting rooms, and no one would receive me. The entire government is either away or in meetings, the emperor has stopped giving audiences, and all the clerks are snooty upstarts who act as if they have never heard of our family.”

“That might be my fault,” I said, timidly. “I’m sorry.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong. If you didn’t stand up for your friends, I would have been disappointed. And if Constantine wishes to forget who his friends are… well then!” She huffed and rose to pace across the living room in her habitually large, unfeminine steps — two steps forward, two back. “I’m afraid you are right though — things are about to get much worse.”

“What can we do to make them better?” I asked.

Eugenia shrugged. “What can anyone do? I would tell the emperor he is not looking at the real danger, but will he listen?”

“To you, maybe,” I said. “I also think China would be a good ally against the British.”

Eugenia paused. “Perhaps. Only how would that be achieved?”

“Perhaps I can help,” I said. “The man who is, I think, in prison — Wong Jun — is of the ruling dynasty. And the others… they are from families of wealth and influence or they would not have been studying here.”

“You’ll have to speak to your imprisoned friend,” Eugenia said. “And as God is my witness, I won’t leave this city until I help you with that. Then we will see what we can do to convince the emperor that China is his friend, not the British Empire.”

It would be a lie to say I didn’t feel intimidated by the enormousness of these events. Two women, sitting in a tiny apartment disentangling a complicated standoff between three empires — four, if you counted the Ottomans, and Eugenia assured me that if Russia were to show any weakness, the Turks would surely make a grab for Crimea and the Russian shores of the Black Sea. They may already have made an alliance with the British, making it even more urgent that Russia and China stand shoulder to shoulder — no one would dare to defy such a show of power.

I tried to force my mind to think on such a scale and it recoiled. My thoughts were like lumbering boulders, impossible to shift by mere human will, and I felt defeated by the very act of contemplation.

I would have gone mad if not for Eugenia’s presence. She spoke of politics until Anastasia, who had returned from the shops, walked smack into the middle of our plotting. She fell asleep at the kitchen table, a cheek resting on round freckled arms still folded around the bag of fragrant roots and potions she’d fetched.

Eugenia filled in more of my lacking understanding of foreign politics and made more tea, raspberry and chamomile. She made me drink the valerian root seeped in hot water. It made me warm and drowsy.

It was almost morning when I had been calmed enough — with Eugenia’s talk and no small amount of valerian tea — to go to bed. My aunt did the same.

I did not ask for this, I whispered to myself as I fell asleep. I did not need this, not on top of my classes and the constantly smirking Professor Ipatiev, not with friends in jail or missing, or a suitor who robbed people and leapt from one building to the next. It all seemed excessive for one person, and I would never have dreamed of taking on additional burdens if my aunt had not been with me. But since she was, efficient and severe as always in her black dress, sleeping in the bedroom next to mine, it didn’t seem all that impossible.

Really, it was mostly because of my aunt that I rose in the morning, determined and ready. As Anastasia snored peacefully in her little room and I made tea, I made the decision that was to alter the course of my life forever: I had decided that if there was a war brewing, it was my job to stop it. My first step was to convince Jack Bartram to come to my side.