Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [342]
‘Being sorry is useless,’ Alexis said with a cold rage. ‘I came to see you as I happened to be here on business. While I’ve been waiting I have heard a good deal about you. You drew cartoons of the minister and you’re under threat of expulsion. I suppose you know that?’
‘Yes.’
‘I persuaded them not to expel you. You ought to be whipped. I offered to do it myself – for the family honour.’ He paused, waiting it seemed, for this last statement to have its full effect.
What was it, at that moment, that prompted Sergei to say something that he didn’t even mean? Was it irritation with Alexis’s lecturing tone, the shock of being caught, the fear of his punishment or, perhaps, a sudden impulse to strike out because the brother he loved and worshipped was seemingly turning against him? Whatever the cause, he suddenly blurted out: ‘To hell with the family honour!’
Alexis gasped. He had not gone to a school like this: he had gone, and as soon as he could, into his regiment. Service to the Tsar, family honour – these were his gods. He had no idea how it was possible for this boy to be so disloyal. Yet what was it that now made Alexis do the unforgivable? Was it a row he had had with a superior officer the day before and his fear for his own career? Was it a mistress who had dismissed him contemptuously the week before? Was it a streak of cruelty in his nature that secretly had been awaiting an excuse to inflict pain ever since, six months before, he had heard for the first time a certain piece of information in Moscow? Whichever of these, in a voice that was both icy and venomous he hissed: ‘That may be. But to me, to the rest of us, it matters a great deal. And kindly remember that, though you are not one of us, you still carry our name and we expect you to behave accordingly. Do you understand?’
‘What do you mean, not one of us?’
‘I mean, you brown-eyed little interloper, that you are not – to our parents’ shame – a Bobrov. But, because we do care about honour, we treat you as if you were.’ And then, as if it were a head cold that she had caught one day and lost: ‘At a time when she was lonely, our mother committed an indiscretion in Moscow. Long ago. It was over at once. Nobody knows. You don’t belong but we pretend you do. And since we have lent you our name, you will honour it.’ He paused. ‘If you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, I will kill you.’
Then, having wantonly destroyed his brother, he left.
Later that night, finishing his letters home which, through cold tears, he found difficulty in seeing, Sergei wrote:
I am very happy here at school, my dear
parents. Today I saw Alexis, who is also well,
and this, too, made me happy. Give my love to
Arina and her little niece.
He had always supposed his mother was perfect and that his parents loved him. Perhaps, if he was not a Bobrov, if he was unwanted, it scarcely mattered what he did with his life.
1822, January
Tatiana gazed round the little market place. For the first time after a month of dull days the morning sky was clear and all around Russka the snow was shining. Savva the serf was about to get into his sled. He was returning to Moscow. How smart he looked in his new coat. He turned and made her a low bow, and she smiled.
For they shared a secret.
Though Russka was quiet that morning, there were many indications that nowadays it was a busier place than before. True, the walls frowning from the high river bank were still as stout as in the time of Ivan the Terrible; the tall, forbidding watchtower with its steep tent roof still rose into the sky; but within the walls there were two wide streets of wooden houses on each side of the market, intersected by three more. Behind the church, there was now a broad avenue with rows of trees down the centre and on one side three neat stone merchants’ houses, with classical features. At the end of this avenue was a small park, and past that the old fortification wall had been lowered and a small esplanade laid out with a pleasant view over the river and the surrounding countryside. Outside the walls, on the