21 August 1881

Recent events have left me with frightening, disorienting flashes of memory. Am I going insane?

I am not even certain of the date, since the Russians use the old Julian calendar that is some twelve days behind our European calculations of time. If it wasn’t for Mr. Tatum, I would no longer be keeping this diary for fear the secret police will discover its contents and send us all to prison or worse.

Days after the belladonna episode and my futile attempt to save Old Igor, I went with Dr. Bell to his rounds and lectures. It was at one of these lectures that Vera invited me to attend a student meeting. She asked if I could explain the theories of Darwin to the workers in order to wean them from the Church. Even with my scientific education, I was uncertain, but Tatum made it clear that I should mingle with the students. There might also be an opportunity to be alone with Vera, and I had the wild thought that Penelope might be there.

I hailed a droshky, a two-wheeled cab. The grubby driver understood my poor attempt at Russian when I asked him to take me to the Imperial Library. He beat his tired nag and we went across the Nikolaevsky Bridge, then along the embankment to Nevsky Prospekt. I handed the driver five kopecks, but he wanted more. Money was in short supply, so I gave him another coin.

Vera was waiting by the cab stand in front of the library. I scarcely recognized her. She had cut her lovely, blonde hair until it was scarcely longer than a boy’s. She wore a plain, white blouse with a simple, black skirt and clumsy workmen’s boots.

“Were you followed?”

“Why would I be followed?”

“They are suspicious of students.”

“I’m no longer a student. I am a doctor.”

“Feh. That makes no difference.”

I was taken aback by the severity of her appearance and behavior. She grabbed my hand, and we took off through winding narrow streets, past babushkas huddled under black shawls against the cool breeze blowing off the Gulf of Finland.

The buildings were old, decrepit, and filthy. There were signs of poverty - dirty children playing in the rubbish, disheveled drunks passed out on the streets, and young girls soliciting soldiers.

It was nearly eleven o’clock when we reached a dingy store on a small backstreet overlooking the Fontanka Canal. Vera murmured a password to a sentry and we went through the store, which was stacked, helter-skelter with dusty books, icons, and pieces of jewelry. In the back room, oil lamps illuminated long tables littered with pamphlets and books.

“This is a reading room for workers and peasants,” she explained.

I recognized a few medical students and the leader, Golovinsky, whom I had met at Dostoevsky’s flat. This was a far more radical group than the students who met in the café. The men had long hair and wore red shirts, baggy, black pants, and worker’s boots. The women, like Vera, wore plain, white blouses, black skirts and rough boots. It was as if they were wearing a uniform. In the dim light, Vera appeared to no longer be a soft, sensuous woman but a hard-line revolutionary.

“Who are all these people? What do they call themselves?” I whispered to her.

“‘Narodnaya Volia’ or, in English, ‘The People’s Will.’”

Ivanov attempted, over the din, to introduce me.

Golovinsky shouted him down. “Bah, have you not read your Marx? The peasants need their religious opium.”

“Yes, but if we can teach them about the latest scientific discoveries in England, we can...”

“Nyet! All that is worthless. We can wait no longer. It is time to kill the noble class and do away with another tsar.”

He spoke passionately and loudly and quickly had the students and workers in the palm of his hand. All eyes were on him. The room went silent. He shook his fist as he spoke. “Comrades. The secret police are treating the death of Count Ignatov as murder and are rounding up Jews, students, and writers. Everyone in this room is a suspect.”

The room erupted into furious shouts. “Kill the tsar! Down with tyranny of the so-called nobility! Wipe them out!” Vera translated for me. Even though I didn’t understand the Russian words, I felt the passion of his speech.

“Please, silence! Listen to me!” Golovinsky shouted.

The hubbub died out, but there was a muffled scream from outside and the distinctive pop of a pistol shot.

For a moment, there was absolute silence, and then, officers in sky blue uniforms stormed through the bookshop and burst through the door to the reading room. Golovinsky drew a pistol and fired three times.

Blood spurted from the chest of an officer, but more police rushed into the room. I stared straight into the face of a furious officer who slashed at my head with a huge cavalry saber.

Vera grabbed my shirt and dragged me to the floor just as the huge curved blade swished through the air above me and sank into the neck of a surprised, red-shirted worker standing behind me. The saber cleanly severed his head with its little goat’s beard. The decapitated head flew through mid-air as the poor fellow’s body remained upright for a moment. Blood spurted from his carotid arteries, spraying the room and splattering on my face. For an instant, I wondered if the brain in the severed head understood what had happened.

The saber-wielding policemen drew his sword back for another slash. The next killing blow would have severed my head. That is, until Golovinsky hurled an oil lamp that broke on the door casing. Flames enveloped the secret police officers while two students overturned a table blocking the room against another assault.

The fire spread from the officers to the walls and books, and the room filled with oily, black smoke. I was stunned, but Vera dragged me out the back door in the midst of escaping students.

We fled through darkened streets to a clump of bushes by the canal. There were flashes of gunfire, and red-coated Cossacks raced from the Admiralty down Voznesensky Prospekt towards the flaming building. We were lucky we escaped alive.

“Hold me,” Vera said. “Please.”

I enveloped her in a crushing embrace. She opened her mouth and we lashed one another with wet tongues. The intensity and aliveness of our momentary lust helped dissolve some of the fear and anxiety. She pulled away and we crept along dim paths, avoiding the streets lit with gas lamps. We headed north until we came to the massive columns of St. Isaac’s Cathedral and huddled in the black darkness while the tumult in the streets continued.

“We aren’t safe here. Shall we go to your room?” I asked.

She shook her head, wrenched free, and hurried away in the darkness. “Vera, wait. I didn’t mean to...”

She didn’t look back. I trembled and broke into a cold sweat. My heart thumped wildly. The streets were alive with armed soldiers and mounted police. I huddled in the shadows, too frightened to leave the comforting dark confines of the cathedral.

When, at last, the shouts and gunfire died away, I made for the Nikolaevsky Bridge and, keeping to darkened pathways, reached Professor Sechenov’s home. In the grey light of a false dawn, I quietly went up the back stairs and, after a pause, knocked gently on Mr. Tatum’s door. I had to confide in a trusted friend. Dr. Bell, for the past several days, was either lost in his own cocaine-induced dreams or was extraordinarily active.

I was still shivering when Mr. Tatum opened the door.

“It is rather early for a social call,” he said.

I fell, rather than sat, on a stuffed leather chair, trembling with nervous exhaustion. I uttered a low groan mixed with a sigh. “It appears a bit of restorative is in order,” Tatum said.

And aye, he was right. I felt much better after a tot of whiskey.

“So... What happened? What’s wrong?” Tatum asked.

“I am in danger and must leave the country,” I said.

“Tell me everything.”

I related my adventure with the students and the police raid. “The policeman who tried to kill me had a long nose, thin lips, and sandy-colored hair swept back from a high forehead. He will remember me just as clearly. It is not safe for me to walk the streets of St. Petersburg.”

“Mr. Doyle, please just listen. They will not harm you.”

“No, I must go home immediately.”

“Actually, Mr. Doyle, you must stay and help us. Great things are afoot since I delivered the message intended for Lord Asquith to the British ambassador.”

“You delivered the message? What about Penelope? I thought she would go to the ambassador.”

Tatum ignored my question. “The Government and our Queen are determined to protect the tsar at all costs. In the future, Russia must be a counterweight to the growing power of Germany. There are elements, within and without Russia, who want nothing less than the death of Alexander III. You could be instrumental in keeping him alive.”

“That is a matter for the Secret Service and military,” I replied. “Not for me.”

“It is your duty as a citizen of our realm to continue meeting with the student groups and report everything you learn about the anarchists to me. We particularly must learn the whereabouts of Captain David Campbell, the officer who was tortured in Afghanistan.”

“With my Uncle Declan?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know the first place to look. Have you contacted Penelope? Where is she? She would certainly know more about Captain Campbell than I.”

Mr. Tatum looked away.

“You must know her whereabouts.”

“Well, let us just say that Miss Walshingham is a capable young lady and I trust that she needs no help.”

“Was she kidnapped?”

Mr. Tatum stroked his chin, and the expression on his face hardened into a scowl. “She went away of her own free will. Now, mind you, Mr. Doyle, the ambassador insists that you keep a detailed record of your activities with the students and Dr. Bell requests your company on student rounds this morning.”

“Yes, I keep a diary to record everything.”

“Good.”

I tried to argue with Tatum, but he would not listen. I gave up, made my way to my room, and slept fitfully for about an hour, haunted by visions of the bloody saber.