Floating Madhouse Read online

  ‘Oh, she will – I promise you!’ Laughing dark eyes. ‘She will, my dear!’ There was Georgian blood there in the background, Michael’s mother had said. She was fond of Anna, and they’d had friends and acquaintances in common, despite the eighteen or twenty years’ difference in their ages; and as for himself, it was Anna Feodorovna he’d been keen on then, he remembered – remembered now with slight embarrassment. She’d have been about thirty-five, dazzlingly attractive – and a mile beyond his reach, of course. While Tasha was only her somewhat wayward child – great fun, great character, but very much a child. He remembered his mother’s description of her – Mama after his father’s death having moved into the Wiltshire estate’s dower house, where he, Michael, lived with her when he came home on leave – weekend leave, whatever, from Portsmouth; she’d likened Tasha to ‘a beautiful kitten with wickedly sharp claws’. Smiling at that recollection, fitting a back-stud into a shirt to hold the starched collar in place, while Narumov’s pen scratched on and on, he queried in his memory how it had happened that Anna and Tasha had come to England on their own – without Prince Igor – in ’95… To his surprise the solution came instantly: Tsar Alexander III had died at the end of ’94, and Igor had had to call the trip off – sine die, since there’d been not only the State funeral to attend – indeed, probably to help arrange, at least the military side of it – but also the fact that Tsarevich Nikolai, who’d been in utter panic at the prospect of becoming Tsar, had needed support and guidance from all concerned and wouldn’t have got much from his uncles the Grand Dukes – enormous men who’d terrified him right up to his coronation in May of ’96; which of course was why no Volodnyakovs had been free to attend brother George’s wedding in London to the Honourable Jane Pownall, in that particularly lovely spring.

  Instead, they’d have attended the coronation in Moscow and taken part in the days and nights of banquets and balls after it: celebrations shockingly marred by a lemming-like stampede of people on Khodyinka Field, an army training ground outside Moscow where half a million of them had gathered to enjoy free beer and sausage, but when they didn’t get enough of either went on a rampage that left nearly fifteen hundred of them dead, mostly by falling into open military trenches where they were crushed and suffocated by others piling in on top of them. The Tsar had shown his steel (or according to some, his bone-headedness) by continuing with the celebrations, that same night dancing at a ball given by the French ambassador. He was a good dancer, but the people were outraged and there were revolutionary rumblings all over Russia.

  Still were. And more than just rumblings. Peasant riots in recent years had reached crisis proportions. And only three months ago Viacheslav Plehve, Minister of the Interior, had been assassinated. Anna Feodorovna saw only the bleakest of futures for her country. It was part of her reasoning in wanting Tasha out of it.

  Engineer-Constructor Narumov had coughed, artificially, and his pen had stopped scratching. Michael, now in shirt and trousers and tightening his black tie, glanced at him across the cabin.

  ‘I’ll leave you in peace in a minute, don’t worry.’

  ‘I was wondering whether you might like to hear some words I have just written to my wife.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t presume—’

  ‘On the subject of yourself. Listen.’ He looked down at the sheet of plain white paper which he’d been covering with an even, slanting script. ‘“I am about to surprise you, now, my dear. I have in my cabin with me at this moment an officer of the British Navy. Believe it or not – knowing as you do of my deep affection for the English! But you can believe it because I tell you so. Admittedly of partly Russian parentage, he is a guest temporarily accommodated in this vessel and making use of the spare berth in my cabin, but destined for another ship, a cruiser, at the invitation of some nobleman on the General Staff, and – I’m told – of that ship’s commander. So here I have an ally of our enemies, if you please, dressing himself up in his British uniform and from time to time looking down his nose at me as I pen these words to you! Well, let me describe him to you. He’s about six feet tall or perhaps an inch or so more than that, strongly built, has brown hair and blue eyes and a pleasant-enough smile. A pleasantly mannered individual, too; you, I’m sure, would take to him immediately. But what I was about to say – I referred in an earlier paragraph to the threat of Japanese covert action against us in the Narrows, but this Englishman – their ally – assures me that there cannot be any such Japanese presence in those waters, or in the ‘North Sea’ either – the ‘North Sea’ being what the English call the German Ocean. So join me please in hoping that he is right, and may such hopes relieve the anxieties that must be racking you on this score.”’

  Finished. Eyebrows raised queryingly as he held that page up close to a scuttle for the breeze to dry it. ‘Do you think it may reassure her?’

  ‘Easier not to alarm her in the first place, I’d have thought.’

  ‘Everyone in Russia knows an attack is to be expected!’

  ‘How long will your letter take to reach her?’

  ‘Perhaps three, four days. She’s in Petersburg – where I wish to heaven I was still!’

  ‘In three or four days we’ll be well past the Skaw. At least—’

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’

  ‘You don’t accept my assurance, then.’

  ‘That’s not it at all. What I’m saying is that some of the old vessels we have with us – frankly, they’re barely seaworthy. And the crews no more than half trained – at least, most of them. This applies even in these modern and most powerful ships, the very core of our fighting force. I must ask you not to mention to anyone that I’ve told you this – it’s only that I’m in the habit of speaking frankly.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve noticed. But I promise you. Not a word.’

  A shake of the head. ‘The crews will become trained along the way – that’s what our optimists will tell you. But listen again – something else I’ll read to you…’ He’d raised the lid of the desk, was rummaging inside it. ‘Here we are.’ A board, with a wad of signal-forms clipped to it; he riffled through them, then stopped. ‘This one will do. Admiral Rojhestvensky’s order number 69, which he put out during our sojourn at Reval. I quote: “Today at 0200 I ordered the officer of the watch to sound the alarm against torpedo attack. Eight minutes afterwards nothing whatsoever had been done. Everyone was sound asleep except the officers and men of the watch, and even they were by no means alert. The men detailed for countering attack were not at their posts, and no steps had been taken to illuminate the deck, although it is impossible to work guns in total darkness.”’

  Narumov tossed the log back into his desk. ‘That describes how it was – most likely still is – on his own flagship, this Suvarov. God knows how much worse it may be on others. I tell you, I’m no seaman, but I’ve got eyes and ears.’

  * * *

  ‘So you had a royal send-off from Reval?’

  Talking to Nikolai Sollogub now, on the after-signal platform. Mid-afternoon, and men at work all over the ship – on the face of it at work, but looking more carefully one could see that a lot of them were just milling around. Sollogub nodding to Michael’s question about Reval and Tsar Nikolai’s visit to his Second Pacific Squadron. ‘We did indeed have a dreadful day of it. His Majesty was accompanied by a whole team of admirals – including his ancient and elephantine uncle Grand Admiral Alexis – and your Volodnyakovs of course – the old one, the general, I suppose in the role of A.D.C. to his Majesty – but the younger, Admiral Prince Ivan, also well to the fore. He’s General Prince Igor’s nephew, isn’t he? I’d forgotten, thought he was his son, but—’

  ‘Nephew.’

  ‘Wasn’t he – Prince Ivan – with Tsar Nikolai when, as Tsarevich, there was an attempt to assassinate him during a tour of Japan?’

  ‘Yes, he was. A tour of Japan, Indo-China and – oh, Egypt. Prince Ivan was a captain first rank at that time – aged only about thirty, mark you – senior n
aval aide in the royal entourage. I’ve heard him speak of it more than once. The date was 1890, and the place where some lunatic tried to kill him – not Tokyo—’

  ‘Otsu?’

  ‘You’re right.’ Michael offered the count a cigarette. ‘Smoke?’

  ‘Thank you. French, I see.’

  ‘I passed through Paris recently. But – Otsu, yes. That was when he began to call them monkeys. Also, since that royal tour he’s honoured Prince Ivan with his – well, “friendship” might be too strong a word for it—’

  ‘Patronage.’

  ‘Nearer the mark. At this rate, however it goes with your English, my spoken Russian will be improving fast. But as I imagine you’re aware, Uncle Igor was a crony of Alexander III – which must have accounted for his nephew being given the world tour job in the first place – and then virtually instant elevation to Flag rank… Did you say that’s the Oryol astern of us?’

  ‘It is indeed. My God, has she had problems!’

  She was a battleship of the same class as this. There were four of them: this Knyaz Suvarov – Rnyaz meaning prince – the Oryol, the Alexander III and the Borodino. Michael said, ‘Those further back on the quarter are the old brigade, obviously. The Oslyabya, the big one?’

  ‘Twelve and a half thousand tons. Main armament ten-inch. That’s Admiral Felkerzam’s flag she’s flying. He’s Rojhestvensky’s second-in-command. And in that crowd astern of her – hard to make out individually from this angle – the Sissoy Veliki, the Navarin – battleships – and the Admiral Nakhimov, armoured cruiser, eight thousand tons and twenty years old, main armament only six-inch and – well, antiquated. As are the Navaririn’ s. The ships themselves –- not just their guns. Between you and me, and not to mince words, they’re liabilities more than assets.

  ‘But Oryol – as I was saying, she’s had more than her share of problems. Almost capsized when they were launching her, then there was sabotage of her engines – steel scrap in one of the low-pressure cylinders, apparently – and at Kronstadt recently, when we were leaving port, heading for Reval, she ran solidly aground. They tried all the usual things, couldn’t budge her, finally had three dredgers working for more than twenty-four hours before tugs could drag her off. But – forgive me, Mikhail Ivan’ich, changing the subject back again – the Volodnyakovs – I can’t claim to have known any of them, but my family did, and I was a page – aged about twelve, you know – at Prince Igor’s wedding to the ravishingly beautiful Countess Anna Feodorovna. Whose first husband – -‘he’d slapped his forehead, stirring memory – ‘Boris Pavluchenkov – right? Wasn’t he killed in a skirmish with rebels in Azherbaijan, or Chechnya, one of those places?’

  ‘Yes. Although she herself doesn’t talk about it. Hadn’t been married long when it happened; she was very young and very much in love with him. In fact she was still too stricken with grief to think straight and take to her heels when that old goat Prince Igor began pestering her with his attentions.’

  ‘I did hear – grown-up talk, you know, perhaps I should say did overhear – that Pavluchenkov left her with nothing but debts. You know her now, though, do you – I mean, you’ve seen her recently?’

  ‘One could hardly know the Volodnyakovs without—’

  ‘Is she still the eye-catcher she was?’

  ‘Older than you’d remember her, of course – and married for some years now to Prince Igor – but yes…’

  ‘He must be a lot older than her.’

  ‘He’s close on seventy, and she’s – early forties. I tell you one thing, though, the daughter she had by him – Natasha – is certainly the most beautiful girl in Russia – probably in the world.’

  ‘Really?’

  Michael nodded. More or less poker-faced, he hoped. Having to mention her, although aware it might have been better if he hadn’t. Sollogub asked him after a pause, ‘What sort of age now?’

  ‘Oh.’ Frowning with the effort of working that out. ‘Near enough eighteen, I suppose.’

  ‘How is it that one has never seen her, I wonder?’

  ‘Well, Natasha was at school in Petersburg, but Anna Feodorovna moved her a year or eighteen months ago to a lycée in Paris. She’s finished there now. And although Prince Igor has a house in St Petersburg – which he doesn’t need, still spends all his Petersburg time out at Tsarskoye Syelo, at His Majesty’s beck and call – well, Natasha and her mother are hardly ever there either. Anna has a house at Yalta, which they both adore, and there’s the family estate at Injhavino, of course.’

  ‘Ah, Injhavino. Have there been riots around there? That awful time the year before last, for instance?’

  ‘No. They seem to have been lucky in that respect. But – what I was telling you – there’s also a house in Paris which belongs to Prince Ivan’s mother, the widow of Prince Sergei, who died about ten years ago. She was the Countess Tatiana Zurin – name ring a bell?’

  ‘Why, yes – looking back, childhood memories again… Sergei was Igor’s brother – right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And the Zurins were very rich?’

  ‘Right again. Tatiana inherited the Paris house from a Zurin uncle and she’s managed to hang on to it. She’s getting on now – well into her sixties – but she and Anna Feodorovna are firm friends. So one way and another – this is still answering your question – they do move around a bit.’

  ‘No lack of money, by the sound of it!’

  ‘You might think not, but Prince Igor considers himself hard up. Prince Ivan too, I’m sure. Injhavino does swallow money by the bucketful, of course, and a lot of the great estates have been sold, you know – well, of course you know. In the case of Injhavino they’re trying hard to make a go of it – Ivan’s sons Stepan and Pyotr doing all the hard work, living really like peasants.’

  ‘And may I put a more personal question – your own connection with them? I’ve been racking what pass for brains, ever since Narumov introduced us, but I’m damned if I remember…’

  ‘Prince Igor’s first wife was my aunt Varvara – Varvara Sevasyeyeva.’

  ‘The Sevasyeyevs. Yes… And Igor Volodnyakov’s first wife – the Princess Varvara – she was your—’

  ‘My father met the younger sister at Varvara’s wedding to Prince Igor, and married her – Elizavyeta, my mother – a couple of years later. By the way – your leadsman’s in the chains again…’

  ‘The chains’ being a platform projecting from the ship’s side just below the forebridge; the platform had chains around it against which the man could lean while he heaved his ‘lead’ – a leg-of-mutton-shaped weight on the end of a line marked in fathoms. When the ship was under way he’d heave it in a soaring arc to drop into the sea ahead and with skilful management to be ‘up and down’ with the line taut as it passed below him. Lying stopped now, of course, he had only to lower it until it touched bottom and the weight came off the line. Michael heard his bawled report: ‘By the mark five!’

  ‘Thirty feet.’ Sollogub nodded. ‘We should be clear. When the Oryol got herself stuck at Kronstadt she was drawing twenty-eight and a half – there again, overloaded, should draw twenty-six.’

  A bugle sounded and moments later was being echoed from other ships. Sollogub pushed himself off the rail. ‘That’s “Men to their stations for leaving harbour”. I’d better get for’ard.’ He patted Michael’s arm. ‘Great fun, reviving old memories. I hope we don’t rendezvous with your Ryazan too soon.’

  * * *

  From this after bridge, which was still comparatively unpopulated, he could hear the cable clanking in, the regular metallic thumps as each link was dragged up through the hawse and crashed over its lip. Wind still in the west, but stronger, and grey cloud thickening. Sailors swarming like bluebottles all over the big ships’ foc’sls: and a grey-painted steam pinnace coming up from astern – from the far side of the Oryol – slewing in to stop a few feet clear of the Suvarov’s side amidships. Collecting mail, sacks of it being lobbed down to be caught an
d dumped on the heap already almost filling the boat’s stern. On his own account, while in England and Paris Michael had made what he thought should be effective arrangements for his mail: he’d be sending all his letters to Jane in Wiltshire, and so would Tasha. Jane would forward his to Tasha at the Yalta address, and enclose her missives to him in envelopes which she’d address to him in care of a ship’s agent in Odessa by name of Gunsburg – an agency of which, oddly enough, Prince Ivan had told him. Gunsburg would be forwarding supplies of all kinds to the squadron as it made its way around the world, and would be as well informed as anyone of its whereabouts from week to week. Prince Ivan had provided this useful tip in ignorance of the fact that the only letters Michael cared a hoot about would be those between himself and Tasha. Touch wood, no mail addressed in her handwriting or even seeming to have originated in Russia would be coming to him in the Ryazan, nor would his missives to her be posted on board with her name on them.

  Vibrations through the deck under his feet and a swirl of mud-coloured water astern told him that the Knyaz Suvarov was now under way. Oryol too – her starboard bower anchor hanging a-cockbill while a hose gushed down at it, dislodging mud. Profiles of other black-painted, yellow-funnelled ships beyond alternately opening or closing as angles of sight changed; Suvarov slowly gathering way, and the rest of them manoeuvring to follow her out: a herd of mastodons lumbering ponderously out of their stone pen, filing slowly and clumsily into the dredged channel leading westward.