"A vicious killing," Fet repeated. "One committed in a ruthless fashion. The Ksiaze Radom has declared that it was the work of a mad-man."
"I would not disagree with my wife's brother, but if the killer were a mad-man, he would have to be a very subtle one, who planned Saari's death down to the minute." Saint-Germain thought for a few seconds, then said, "Consider how little time the killer had to act: the Grofok and I had entered the care-house and dispatched Saari with the sleigh. Whoever attacked him had to do it in those ten minutes between the time the Grofok and I alighted, and the time the sleigh
went into the stable. All without being seen by anyone but Saari. The killer must have been known to Saari, because there was no sign of a struggle, nor did Saari attempt to escape his murderer."
"You have given this much thought," said Fet, a look of concentration coming over his countenance.
"Certainly; Saari was in my employ and he was killed while looking after my property. I am obliged to try to bring his killer to justice." This was an explanation the Russian would want to comprehend. "At the least I need to acquaint myself with the details of the crime."
"Why would you do such a thing, Hercegek? You won't be here if we apprehend the man who killed him." Fet waved his hand over the papers on his table as if to cause them to vanish. "You won't have to deal with his murderer, and you've already paid for Saari to be buried after the thaw. All the rest is to be left to us."
Once again Saint-Germain took a little time to respond. "What else do you need to know from me, then, Captain Fet?"
"Your coachman, Gronigen? The man who found him? Might he not also have killed him, and then reported that he discovered the dead man?" He proposed this theory with the assertion of one convinced of its correctness.
"Gronigen had one patch of blood on his cloak; had he been the killer, he would have been awash in it. All you have to do is look at the interior of the sleigh to see that the killer must have been soaked in it." He contemplated Fet. "There was no blood on Gronigen's face, either."
"But is this proof that he is innocent?" Fet asked. "Ksiaze Radom was most convincing when he proposed Gronigen as the killer."
"No doubt," said Saint-Germain drily. "If he can explain how one man may cut another man's throat in an enclosed vehicle and have only one patch of blood on him, I would like to hear it."
Fet nodded slowly. "Well, it bears investigation." He pressed his lips together, clearly pondering what Saint-Germain had said. "Were Ksiaze Radom and the coachman Gronigen Russians, they would be tortured to discover the truth, but as they are not--"
"Tortured? Accused and accuser?" Niklos asked, knowing the answer.
"Yes, of course. How else can you determine if the accusation is a valid one?" He rose. "I will not keep you, Hercegek, or the Grofok. May you have a safe, swift journey."
Niklos joined Saint-Germain in front of Fet's writing-table. "Thank you, Captain Fet."
"Go away. Leave by eight o'clock tomorrow." He nodded a little bow. "Good-bye."
Saint-Germain returned the bow and left the room, Niklos on his heels. No one stopped them when they donned their cloaks, and no one kept them from leaving the Guard Station. They walked as quickly as the deep snow would allow, saying nothing, bound for the care-house.
Not far from their goal, Saint-Germain stopped, turned, and looked back at Sankt Piterburkh; with the mist masking the snow, the buildings and walls appeared to float on a layer of clouds, a vision or a dream. "It looks unreal, does it not?" he said to Niklos.
"A fantasy, at the least," said Niklos. "Like that Russian story Kyril was telling two nights ago--the one about the invisible city that can only be seen on certain nights when it rises out of a lake."
"Kitezh," said Saint-Germain. "Yes, you are right--it is like Kitezh." Then he turned around and resumed his walk back to the care-house, and his last night with Ludmilla.
Text of a letter from Piotyr Alexeievich Romanov, written in Dutch and sent by Royal Courier through Klaus Demetrius Krems to the man calling himself Arpad Arco-Tolvay, Hercegek Gyor, and delivered three months after it was written.
To the man known as Arpad Arco-Tolvay, Hercegek Gyor, the greetings of Piotyr Alexeievich Romanov, Czar of all the Russias.
Min Heer Hercegek, whoever you may be,
I am sorry I did not have the pleasure of seeing you before you departed Sankt Piterburkh, but circumstances have kept me away from my wonderful new city, and they continue to engage my time and efforts. I would have liked the opportunity to thank you for what you have done to benefit all those living in Sankt Piterburkh, for I
have received most praiseworthy accounts of you from my man at the care-house, Kyril Yureivich Bolkov, who has described all you have done to assist Heer van Hoek in his work, and to ease the burdens taken on by Ludmilla Borisevna Svarinskaya.
As
much as it would give me pleasure to honor you more publicly, this must be the sum of the expression of my gratitude.
I wish I had learned who you are, but that, too, will be denied me. I know you are not Arpad Arco-Tolvay, for in my tour of Europe, I happened to meet him once, in a brothel in Saxony. The man was then suffering from a degenerative condition of the genitals, and the owner of the brothel would not allow him to take his pleasure with any of the women in the house, which displeased him greatly. He was a tall man, though not nearly as tall as I am, of a mercurial temperament and a sickly disposition. When I was first informed that he would accompany his wife to my city, I was shocked that Augustus would do such an ill-considered thing.
As
soon as I met you, I realized that Augustus had arranged for a substitute for Hercegek Gyor, and aside from the general impropriety of his act, I applauded his decision to find a way to engage the Ksiezna's many skills without having to create a potential disgrace through her reprobate husband. Still, it would please me to know your identity.
There is something I must ask you in regard to your mission here: do not ever speak of it. If you can, forget it happened, and that you were ever here. Do not reveal your knowledge of this place, or any of its inhabitants, particularly those of the Foreign Quarter. If your impersonation is to be truly successful, it must continue unchallenged and undoubted, which means there must never be the slightest whisper that you are not who you claimed to be. You have done much to ease the Ksiezna's duties; in fact, your support of her was greater and more successful than the efforts of her brother, who is determined to show that his capacity for diplomacy is greater than hers, and at every step reveals that he is the one who is incapable of true diplomacy. By remaining in her shadow, and by not interfering in her negotiations, you were far more useful to her than the Ksiaze has proven to be.
I will assume that I will not see you again, and so this will serve as
a farewell between us. May you have many rewards for all you have done for Poland, since it is obvious that you are not Polish yourself. I am willing to believe you are Hungarian, one of the older blood-lines, but Hungary will not thank you for aiding Poland in Russia, and Stanislas may not wish to honor the works of Augustus. May my thanks content you.
In deepest appreciation,
Piotyr Alexeievich Romanov
shipwright and Czar
March 24th, 1705
E
PILOGUE
T
ext of a letter from Niklos Aulirios near Orleans, France, to Francesco Saint-Germain Ragoczy at Lecco on Lake Como, written in first-century Greek and carried by private messenger.
From Niklos Aulirios to Saint-Germain, greetings, on this, the 19th day of October, 1711.
My dear Conte,
A most unusual encounter occurred two weeks ago while I was in Paris, and after weighing the matter for six days, I have decided to tell you about it: I had gone to Paris to settle the last of my inheritance claims, and while I was there, I encountered Colonel Broughton, who has been back from Russia for six months or so, and is about to be posted to Boston in North America come April. He is thicker of body, his skin is more florid, and his hair is going gray, but he is otherwise the same man as you introduced to me in Sankt Piterburkh; he told me that he came to Paris to have a little of the pleasures of civilization before he was once again condemned to the wilderness; he will be in Paris for a month, then he will return to England to begin his preparation for Boston. He accepted my explanation of traveling incognito, and we spent an interesting evening at the Hotel de Ville, where he lost a large amount of money and drank a prodigious quantity of Champagne.
Among the many things he imparted in his rambling discourse, he informed me that the Ksiezna ordered Gronigen back to Germany in April after you and I left, and he set sail on the first boat with Prussian ports of call.
A
good number of the residents of the Foreign Quarter had come to believe that he was Saari's killer, possibly the murderer of Lajos Ragoczi, as well, who remains missing, and she wanted to spare him the Russian version of justice. No one else other than you,
Rogerian, and I has ever been questioned in regard to the crime. Ksiaze Radom has been at pains to say it is his conviction that Gronigen is guilty, and because of his assertions, Captain Fet has endorsed his position.
Ksiaze Radom has also taken over most of his sister's duties for Poland; the rumor is that he has taken to whoring out his sister to those diplomats who have no women to satisfy their fleshly needs; he has charged her with choosing only the most powerful and well-established lovers, who are in a position to do Poland a great deal of good; at the time when Broughton left, he had arranged for his sister to entertain Alexander Menshikov, since his family has not yet moved to Sankt Piterburkh. The Ksiezna has complied with her brother's orders, but it is rumored that she has become somewhat more volatile than she was when you and she arrived in Sankt Piterburkh. I was shocked but not surprised to learn of what he has required of her, being that he is the kind of man who tends to value women according to what lies between their legs.
When I asked him about the care-house, he said it was now situated in quite a large building. There are more than ninety beds in it, a surgery-room, a pharmatical preparations room, its own steam-bath, and a staff of ten. Broughton told me that two years ago, when the Czar had dissolved Ludmilla Borisevna Svarinskaya's marriage and Heer van Hoek received notification that his wife had died, that the two married, and pledged to continue caring for the sick and injured of the city. The Czar is still promising a school of anatomy to van Hoek, and has ordered a number of major civic buildings to be constructed, including two large schools, one of which is supposed to be the anatomy school promised to Heer van Hoek and his Russian wife.
From what he described to me, you and I would not recognize Sankt Piterburkh today, had we permission to go there. Broughton tells me that there are over five hundred Europeans in the Foreign Quarter, that the harbor has been dredged and protected, permanent docks are built. The Russian part of the city now boasts six hundred houses and nineteen barracks. Work-gangs have tents in summer and
barracks in winter, and there are more than eighty thousand of them. The embankments, which were lined with wood, are now being lined with stone; the streets are paved, at least the main ones. Draining of the marshes has progressed to beyond a ninth levee, and gravel and soil have been brought to fill in the drained parts. There are more than twenty stone buildings in the city--in fact, the Czar has forbidden building with stone anywhere else in Russia until his city is finished.
Mungo Laurie has been able to bring his wife to the city and has been promoted, along with Harald Nyland, Graf Horens, to the position of harbor-master. There is a new Prussian Resident, one Helmut Kowenwald, Herzog von Luftensee, a very efficient man. The Dutch have more men in the city, and there is even a troupe of Italian musicians to entertain at celebrations, and a family of Italian architects is expected in the spring. Thomas Bethune has been sent back to England to care for his ailing wife. Those are all the names I remember, yet they seem sufficient.
Ever since his victory at Poltava, the Czar has redoubled his efforts to complete his city. Now that Sweden is all but defeated, Piotyr is concentrating on making Sankt Piterburkh as fine a city as any in Europe. He, himself, continues to occupy his four-room wooden house, but he entertains in Menshikov's new stone house, and occasionally spends his evenings at the Four Frigates, which is now two stories tall and has twelve rooms. He enjoys the company of seafaring men, and prefers easy company to formal Court occasions. Marfa Skavronskaya has more of a taste for grand entertainment, and has been known to join with the Prussians to hold a grand fete. Broughton says that winter supplies remain a problem, but the Czar now has three resupply-trains sent in November, January, and March, and has hired a clan of hunters to remain in the distant woods to hunt game and bring it to the city.