‘What is it?’
‘How,’ I asked him, ‘are we ever going to find her, in the middle of all that?’
‘You asked me the very same thing in Calais,’ was his patient reminder, ‘and we found her there.’
‘Yes, well,’ I said, ‘in Calais, we could stand by the gate, there was no other way she could come in by land. But here …’ I shook my head. ‘Did you see all those houses, Rob? Even back then. We’ll be walking around all weekend. It’s impossible.’
‘Challenging,’ was his correction. ‘But hardly impossible.’ Looking downstream once again, to the spot where the galley had been and where now there was only a bridge with the cruise ship behind it, he let his keen gaze wander back up along the Embankment. ‘That big compound there, with the spire in behind like the one on the church in the Peter and Paul fortress – what is that place?’
‘That’s the Admiralty.’ It, too, had been built in the very first years of St Petersburg. ‘Peter,’ I told him, ‘was all about boats. Like Rat in The Wind in the Willows. They were his great passion. Besides, if he wanted to stand up to Sweden and England, he needed a navy, and so he created one here – he brought in the best men he could find to build ships, and the best foreign captains to sail them, experienced men who could train his own sailors.’
‘Like Captain Gordon,’ Rob said.
‘Exactly like Captain Gordon. He had experience in both the Scots and Royal navies, didn’t he?’
‘Aye.’ Rob was thinking. ‘And considering his long career in Russia, and how high he rose, I’m guessing he’d have done a lot of business at the Admiralty.’
I saw where he was going with his logic. ‘So, you think that if we look for Captain Gordon, he might lead us back to Anna?’
‘That’s the plan. OK with you?’
I thought it rather brilliant, but if truth be told, I wasn’t in a hurry to go anywhere. I found I liked the pleasure of just standing here – within the shelter of Rob’s arm, his chest a solid windbreak, in my very favourite spot in all St Petersburg. I didn’t want to leave to follow anyone, not even Captain Gordon.
But I knew from how the shadows of the trees were falling round us that we only had a few more hours of daylight left, and time was never patient, so I gave a nod and said, ‘OK with me.’
He walked behind me as we crossed the lovely bridge that joined Vasilievsky Island to the south bank. There was traffic here as well, a steady stream of it, and people passing by us on the pavement, and a few less hurried tourists who had paused against the intricately wrought green-painted iron railings of the bridge to take their photos of the grand embankment as the afternoon slipped on into the golden glow of evening.
The Admiralty looked like a palace itself, with its deep yellow walls and its row of white pillars. Behind it, a garden of tall trees and quiet green shade made an island of sorts in the midst of the cars whizzing round it. This was the Alexander Garden, and if one believed the history books, through all the siege of Leningrad there hadn’t been a single tree from here chopped down for firewood, no matter how the people froze and suffered. It was typical, I thought, that even in a time of ugliness and deprivation, people here had done their best to shield a thing of beauty.
I found a bench and sat beneath the trees, while Rob walked back and forth along the wide red gravel pathway, with his head up and his eyes alert, as though in search of someone. Which he was.
When half an hour had passed, I purposely stopped looking at the time and watched the trees instead, the dancing play of light between the leaves. And when the leaves began to blur I let my eyes drift closed because they wanted to, and after all I hadn’t had much sleep last night …
‘Nick.’
Rob was standing next to me, his hand outstretched.
I surfaced with an effort and a smile. ‘You found him?’
‘Not exactly.’ With my hand in his, he told me, ‘Come on. We’ll be walking.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Her laugh turned the head of the sentinel standing on guard at the house of Lord Admiral Apraxin, across from the Admiralty, and from the long look he gave both herself and the man walking with her, she guessed he had no love of foreigners. Many still didn’t, although there were certainly many more foreigners living here now than there had been when she’d first arrived, and the young Duke of Holstein, now pressing his suit for the hand of the Tsar’s daughter, had brought a whole host of new faces with him, his courtiers and cavaliers, testing the patience of men like this sentinel.
As she herself did, no doubt. But she couldn’t have held in the laughter.
‘You’re only inventing this,’ she told the man at her side.
He denied it. ‘You give me too much credit if you think I could invent a speech like that one.’
Anna stepped aside to let a sledge go past, the horses’ breath a fog around their frosted muzzles as the sledge’s runners sliced the hard-packed snow. ‘And so what did Sir Harry say then, in reply?’
‘Sir Harry has wit of his own, as you know, and he told Mr Elmsall that should he desire such another display, he’d be happy to lighten the barrels beforehand.’
She laughed again. ‘Do you merchants do no work at all, at the Factory?’
‘’Tis winter,’ he said, ‘and the trade has been slow.’
Someone called to her, ‘Anna!’, and turning she saw a tall soldier approaching across the great open space teeming with people and horses. Charles always walked like that, she thought – in a straight line, with full confidence everyone else would get out of his way. Which they usually did. She lifted her cheek for the cold but affectionate brush of his kiss, and said, ‘Charles, do you know Mr Taylor?’