Read Online The Jewel of St Petersburg by Kate Furnivall - Free Book Online

looked at it. Probably riddled with lice.
    “Spasibo.” She wrapped it around her sister’s shoulders and tucked it around her limp legs, aware of the woman’s watchful scrutiny as she did so, and for the first time in her life it occurred to her to wonder how much the wheelchair was worth. As much as this woman’s family earned in a month? In a year? She had no idea. This wretched, damp place was smaller than Valentina’s bedroom at home. Part of the ceiling was hanging down and black mold was crawling up one wall. “Thank you for helping us,” she said, genuinely grateful. “There was an attack by strikers on the restaurant we were in, and my sister and I escaped, but without our coats.”
    The woman nodded her head at Katya. “Is she sick?”
    “She was in an accident.”
    The baby on the bed started to whimper and the woman said, “Pick her up.”
    Valentina looked at the squirming bundle.
    “Pick her up.” The woman’s voice was sharper this time.
    “What?”
    “You want my help. In exchange I want yours. A moment’s peace from the child.” She smiled, and there was a flash of youth in it. “Don’t worry, I won’t steal your sister’s chair.”
    A flush burned its way up Valentina’s cheeks as she picked up the baby. It had almost no hair and little twigs for legs.
    “Valentina.” It was Katya’s faint voice. “Let me hold her.”
    Valentina brought the child close to the wheelchair but didn’t hand it over. “It is dirty,” she muttered. “You don’t want...” But she saw the needy look in Katya’s eyes. She deposited the child on her sister’s lap and was appalled when she leaned down and kissed the bony little head. A smile spread across Katya’s face. Wherever she had been, she was coming back.

    T HE AROMA OF HOT PIROZHKI CHANGED EVERYTHING. THE three children seemed to swell out into their skin before they’d even been given one of the meat pies from the greaseproof paper package. They sat on the floor, in front of the blazing logs in the stove, and watched the fire with the kind of fascination that Valentina would give to a performance of the ballet.
    “Shouldn’t they wash their hands?” Valentina suggested as she placed a pie on each palm. The dirt on their fingers was blacker than the floor.
    “The water pump is frozen.” The woman shrugged and took a large bite out of a slice of bread spread with black currant conserve. As she chewed on it, Valentina watched the features of her face melt with pleasure and grow astonishingly younger.
    “What’s your name?” she asked.
    “Varenka Sidorova.”
    “I’m Valentina. My sister’s name is Katya.”
    Katya was sipping hot tea and honey from a tin mug, and there was color in her cheeks now. The infant lay like a kitten on her lap.
    “Varenka, what does your husband do?”
    The woman’s eyes grew cautious. “He works in a factory.”
    “Is he a Bolshevik?”
    She saw the tightening of the skin under the woman’s eyes. “What do you know of Bolsheviks?”
    “Was he in the march today?”
    Varenka started to laugh. The children looked around at her, astonished, as though unused to the sound, but the laughter didn’t stop. It went on and on, rolling from her open mouth. Veins in her neck stood out and tears slid down her cheeks, but still the laughter filled the air. She dropped to her knees, and then the laughter stopped as abruptly as it had begun. She yanked off the headscarf, releasing a crop of chestnut curls. Valentina stared. Katya gave a small smothered gasp. One side of the woman’s head was hairless, and a wide white scar, glistening as though wet, ran from her temple right across her skull to the back of her head. She regarded the sisters with a mixture of pity and hatred.
    “Five years ago in front of the Winter Palace gates,” she said in a hard voice, “your soldiers came at me with their sabers when we marched to speak to the tsar. We intended no harm but they mowed us down. Yet I survived. And