An Innocent in Russia Read online

  She had almost reached the salon where she had left the Princess when a door opened just ahead of her and a man came out.

  She was running so quickly that it was difficult to prevent herself from running right into him.

  Then, as she came to a standstill, she realised that it was Lord Charnock.

  He was staring at her curiously and, as she stood in front of him, panting from the speed that she had run at with her cheeks flushed and her hair a little dishevelled.

  He then asked her coldly,

  “What are you doing? Where are you running to?”

  “It – it is – the Prince!” she cried gasping. “I am – afraid – desperately afraid of him!”

  Lord Charnock looked along the corridor, saw that there was nobody in sight and, taking Zelina by the arm, drew her into the room that he had just left.

  She saw that it was a room with a number of bookcases and the table in the centre of it was piled with newspapers. There were Russian, Swedish, Polish and Danish newspapers and several English and French ones, although those were somewhat out of date.

  For the moment Zelina was not concerned as to why Lord Charnock should be in the room. She knew only that he was there and the fear that had made her run away in terror from the Prince was now subsiding.

  “What has the Prince said to upset you?” Lord Charnock enquired and she thought that he sounded angry.

  “He will not – leave me – alone,” Zelina complained. “I have – t-told him that I – will not – listen to him because he is – a married man.”

  Lord Charnock did not speak and she went on,

  “It is – wrong – very wrong for him to try to make – love to me – when he has a wife – but because he is so persistent – I f-find it difficult to – escape from him.”

  Lord Charnock was frowning.

  “That is what I thought would happen,” he said. “But why were you alone with him after what I said to you?”

  “He – asked the Princess if he could take me to – see the aviary,” Zelina replied, “and, when she agreed, I did not – know how I could – refuse.”

  Lord Charnock thought irritably that it would be almost impossible to explain to a girl of Zelina’s age that a more experienced woman would have found somebody to accompany her or made some plausible excuse.

  He had thought when Zelina retired to bed early the night before that she had reasons for doing so which might be connected with the Prince.

  Now he was wondering what he could say and what advice he could give her so that she could protect herself from his overtures.

  Zelina was looking at him pleadingly.

  “Please tell me – what I can do,” she asked him. “He seems to – menace me and yet I know it is – foolish to – feel like that.”

  “I can only tell you what I have told you before,” Lord Charnock answered, “that you must not be alone with him. Go back to the Princess now and stay beside her or with one of the other ladies of the party. Some of them are near your own age. You can make some new friends.”

  Zelina drew in her breath.

  “I will – try. I see that it was – foolish of me, even though the Princess gave the Prince – permission to take me to the aviary,”

  “It was certainly unwise,” Lord Charnock agreed.

  He glanced at the clock.

  “I must leave you now because His Imperial Majesty is waiting to show me the carnation houses. In fact I came back to collect some designs for an extension of them that had been left behind.”

  He held up the scroll of paper he carried in his hand, and Zelina said in a voice which had a little sob in it,

  “I must not – keep you, my Lord. I realise how – tiresome it must be for me to keep – bothering you with my troubles.”

  “They are no bother,” Lord Charnock said, “but just do as I have told you and realise that everyone is aware that the Prince is outrageous in his behaviour and few people ever take him seriously.”

  Zelina did not speak, but he felt that she wanted to say that whatever other people might think, she was frightened of him,

  “I must go,” he said quickly. “It would be a great mistake for anybody to realise that you and I have been here alone. Hurry back to the salon where you left the Princess and I will watch and see that nobody molests you until you get there.”

  Zelina thought that he was laughing at her and she answered,

  “Thank you once – again for being so – kind. I will try to be more – sensible another – time.”

  She did not wait for his reply, but hurried down the passage. Lord Charnock watched until he saw her go into the salon where he knew that the other guests would be congregated.

  Then he walked to the door that led onto the terrace where the Czar was waiting for him.

  His Imperial Majesty, however, was not really interested in carnations or in the design that Lord Charnock held in his hands.

  He was concentrating on a very different problem and trying to discover what was the English attitude to Russian involvement in Turkey and Persia and whether Lord Palmerston had any inkling of the moves that they might be planning to undertake in the East.

  Lord Charnock was perceptively aware of this and, as he walked towards the Czar, he suddenly decided that, as far as he was concerned, it was a waste of time to stay much longer in Russia.

  He was quite certain that, however hard he tried, he would not be able to find answers to the problems set him by Lord Palmerston and that the Earl of Durham was managing very well to cope with any other questions that could be dealt with through Diplomatic channels.

  Lord Charnock had always been aware that the difficulty with the Russians was that they thought one thing and did another and one would have to be clairvoyant to know in advance what their actions were likely to be at any one time.

  ‘If I stayed here for the next twenty years,’ he told himself, ‘I would get no further.’

  On the other hand some chance remark made indiscreetly might well reveal a whole new chain of circumstances that would be exactly what Lord Palmerston wished to know.

  ‘It is too difficult,’ he told himself, ‘and I really have something better to do with my life than dance attendance on Monarchs, however powerful and omnipotent they may be.’

  He had decided since he had arrived in Russia that he positively disliked the Czar and there were plenty of people ready to tell him of the more alarming features of His Majesty’s character.

  These included his tendency to declare people insane if they did not agree with him and his Department, known more usually as the ‘Third Section of the Secret Police’, whose whole function under his friend, Count Benckendorff, was to act as the nation’s moral physician in every town and village in Russia.

  What angered Lord Charnock much more than anything else in Russia was the prevalent poverty, sickness and privation amongst the ordinary people.

  While a thousand guests were entertained royally at supper in the Winter Palace, women and children were dying of starvation and the Czar was designing more extravagant and more expensive ‘peacock’ uniforms for his troops.

  ‘The whole thing is a crazy farce!’ Lord Charnock said to himself. ‘And the sooner I return to the sanity of England the better!’

  Accordingly, while he handed over the designs that he had fetched for the Czar, he asked him almost abruptly questions that no Diplomat would have dared to put into words.

  For some strange reason the Czar, instead of crushing him, as he was quite capable of doing, answered Lord Charnock frankly, openly revealing his interest in Persia but declaring that he had no wish to do anything that the British would dispute.

  When it was time for luncheon, the Czar and Lord Charnock were in such close accord that they walked back to The Palace with His Imperial Majesty’s arm through that of the Englishman.

  Vaguely, even though all his thoughts were fully occupied with his Diplomatic success, Lord Charnock noticed that Zelina seemed quite ha
ppy and was talking animatedly to the gentleman sitting next to her at the table.

  When the luncheon was over, the Czar once again demanded Lord Charnock’s company and they talked together for the rest of the afternoon until it was time to dress for dinner.

  When the meal was over, the Czarina announced that there was a special entertainment to amuse the guests and they went from the dining room to a large salon where there was a terrace overlooking one of the many ornamental gardens.

  A number of chairs had been arranged on the terrace and the guests occupying them were sheltered from any night winds by screens and banks of flowers.

  However it was a still warm night, but even so the servants brought rugs of ermine and sable for the ladies and there were also wraps of the same beautiful furs should they feel in the least cold.

  Then, under the stars that were just beginning to come out in the sky, the gypsy dancers appeared and their heart-stirring music filled the air.

  It was very different from the dancing that Zelina had watched aboard the Ischora.

  The gypsy women in their brilliantly colourful skirts and gold jewellery were as exotic and as attractive as she had expected them to be.

  They twirled and leapt in the air and spun round with a wild uncontrolled exuberance that, like the music, roused the senses and made Zelina’s heart beat with the rhythm of their movements and their voices.

  It was all so fascinating and exhilarating that she felt as if the gypsies swept her out of herself and into a primitive world of wonder and delight where her spirit was free from any constrictions and constraint.

  She wanted to sing, to dance, to fly into the sky and then touch the stars.

  Then, as she felt herself throbbing with the excitement of it, she realised with a little stab of fear that the Prince was watching her.

  She wished that she could have hidden her feelings from him for she felt almost as if he intruded on something that was very private.

  The gypsies performance lasted for two hours and when it was over it seemed as if they had raised everybody’s spirits, for they laughed, talked and drank and it was quite late before the Czar and Czarina retired and everybody else was able to go to bed themselves.

  “I am sure that you have enjoyed yourself, Zelina,” the Princess said as they went up the stairs together.

  “It has been wonderful,” Zelina answered. “I always thought that the gypsies would be like that.”

  “I am glad that you are not disappointed,” the Princess said with a smile. “Our Russian gypsies are very talented. In fact some of our greatest ballerinas have gypsy blood in them.”

  “I do hope I shall see them again.”

  “You will, I promise you,” the Princess replied.

  They reached the door of Zelina s room, which was some way from the Princess’s suite, which was almost at the end of the long corridor.

  Princess Olga bent to kiss Zelina’s cheek.

  “Goodnight, my dear,” she said. “You have been very much admired tonight, especially by Prince Alexis. He is enraptured by your beauty!”

  Zelina was about to answer that it was the last thing she wanted, but the Princess had already moved away and there was nothing she could do but go into her own room.

  She opened the door and, as she was still throbbing with the wonder of the dancing, she went to the window to open it and look up at the sky.

  Russia was so strange and unpredictable, she thought, and yet it was very interesting as well.

  It would have been impossible not to be impressed with the magnificence of the Palaces, the amazing treasures that she had seen in every room and, of course, the Czar and Czarina themselves.

  Then, as Zelina gazed at the stars twinkling overhead she felt that in a way she could understand that the gypsies aroused feelings in people that were part of love.

  Perhaps love was overwhelming, irresistible and omnipotent.

  Yet she was sure when she thought about it that the love that Prince Alexis talked about was very different from the love that she dreamed about.

  The love she would give the man of her heart was like a shining star in her mind and it was not only wild and exciting but also tender, kind and compassionate.

  ‘I want love that will make me feel safe and secure,’ Zelina told herself.

  Then, like a blinding light coming from the stars that she was gazing at, she knew the answer.

  The love she yearned for, the love that she could feel beating within her breast, was what she felt for Lord Charnock.

  She had been very foolish not to recognise it before when to talk to him had been so electrifying and had made her feel as if she belonged to him.

  When he was there she was no longer frightened, but was content in a way that she could not explain.

  Her love seemed now to sweep over her with a joy and a rapture that made her want to cling to him and never leave him.

  “I love him!” she said aloud finally and heard the surprise in her own voice.

  She stood for a long time looking up at the Heavens.

  Then she told herself that she must undress and go to bed, when almost like a vision of the serpent entering the Garden of Eden she remembered Prince Alexis.

  Quickly, because she was instantly terrified, she went to the door.

  She would lock herself in and however hard he tried he would not be able to reach her.

  She put out her hand to turn the key.

  Then she was still, as if she had been turned to stone, and shocked to find that the key in the lock was missing.

  Chapter six

  Zelina felt panic sweeping over her like a flood tide.

  She wanted to scream out loud, she wanted to escape from The Palace, from Russia and from everything that was menacing her like some giant ogre.

  Then she remembered that if she made a scene, it was she who would be considered reprehensible and not the Prince.

  He had said that his bedroom was near to hers and she thought frantically that if she knew where Lord Charnock was sleeping she would go to him, but she had no idea where he might be in the vast Palace.

  ‘What shall I do? Oh, God, what shall I do?’ she asked hopelessly.

  Then she recalled something very strange that had happened when her maid had been unpacking for her.

  The room where she was sleeping had panelled walls like many of the other rooms in The Palace. They were painted in white and picked out in gold that matched the elaborate cornice and the ornamental ceiling.

  However there was no wardrobe in the room and the Russian maid obviously thought that the panelling concealed a cupboard.

  She walked from the trunk carrying one of Zelina’s gowns over her arm and touched one of the elaborately carved panels.

  Zelina saw it fly open and was surprised to see how narrow it was and that the aperture it revealed was very small.

  She was just about to say that she would not be able to fit many of her gowns in there when she saw an expression of terror on the maid’s face.

  She muttered something in Russian and then crossed herself.

  It was then that Zelina understood that what the maid had found inadvertently was a secret hiding place.

  The maid would have closed the panelling, but Zelina moved forward and prevented her.

  She had heard about secret hiding places in Russian Palaces and thought that they must be something like the Priest Holes that were to be found in many of the Elizabethan houses in England.

  “Let me look,” she asked. “I want to see how the mechanism works.”

  “Non, non, mademoiselle!” the maid protested in broken French. “Very dangerous, look. Much trouble for me!”

  “I promise I will tell nobody,” Zelina answered.

  As if she was too frightened to even look at what she had revealed, the maid rushed to the other side of the room and opened some other panelling, which swung back to show what she had expected to find in the first place, a cupboard.

  There was pl
enty of room in it not only for Zelina’s gowns but also for her trunk, but she was sure that if she hid there the Prince would find her.

  Instead she ran across the room to search for the place in the carving where the pressure of her fingers would open the secret hiding place.

  For a moment she thought desperately that it would not work.

  Then the panel swung back and she slipped into the dark aperture and she was just about to close the panel behind her when she had another idea.

  By the light from the candles on her dressing table and from the candelabra on the chest of drawers she could see that there was an entrance from the hiding place not only into her bedroom but also into the bedroom next door.

  Zelina was almost sure that this room was empty, but she opened the panel slowly and very carefully just in case she was mistaken.

  By the light from the stars through the uncurtained window she saw that the bedroom was indeed empty and the bed had not been turned down.

  Quickly she closed the opening into her own bedroom and then the one behind her.

  ‘I am safe!’ she thought with a little sigh of relief.

  Then, because her fear of the Prince was still uppermost in her mind, she wondered if he knew about the secrets of The Palace and would then perhaps guess how she was able to elude him.

  ‘I will not stay here,’ she thought. ‘I will go still farther on.’

  She guessed that whoever had designed the secret entrances would perhaps have made them the same in quite a number of the other bedrooms.

  It took her a little time to find one in the room where she now was, but her fingers found the correct place in a carved flower and, as the panel opened slowly and silently, she thought with a leap of her heart that she had been very clever.

  She stepped into the darkness of the hiding place and as she did so she heard someone speak.

  The room beyond was occupied!

  “May I come in, Count?” a man’s voice asked in French. “I have a message from His Imperial Majesty.”

  “Yes, of course, Philippe,” was the reply. “I rather hoped that there would be such news after the Czar had spent so much time with Lord Charnock. Please sit down and tell me what has happened.”