“Good God!” Simon laughed into his hand. “We are in a muddle — but I must say marriage seems to suit you!”
“I must go now,” said Richard, quickly. “See you tomorrow.”
Marie Lou was in her bedroom. She had agreed with Richard that it was too dangerous to sit in the lounge. Every precaution must be taken to prevent Valeria Petrovna seeing them.
Richard joined her there and told her of his interview with Simon. They would not be able to see Zakar Shubin until he came off duty again in the evening, so Richard suggested that they had better go out as they were supposed to be ordinary tourists, and the hotel people might be suspicious if they stayed indoors all day. They collected the official guide who had been attached to them, and made their way through the beautiful old square of Saint Sophia, which joins the hotels to the cathedral.
“Mind how you go,” said Richard, taking Marie Lou’s arm as they entered the gloom of the great building with its five long naves. The frescoes on the walls were quite wonderful; they were not religious subjects, but scenes of hunting and sport, dating back to the eleventh century. The guide told them that at one time a portion of the cathedral had been an ancient palace. Afterwards he took them to the Kievo-Pecher-Lavra. Before the Revolution it had been the greatest monastery in the Ukraine, now, a large part of it had been converted into a museum.
Richard was puzzled, it was here, somewhere in this vast labyrinth of buildings, that Rex and the Duke were held prisoners. He looked about eagerly for signs of warders or guards, while the guide reeled off facts and figures. Even in its decline the monastery had owned fifty thousand serfs. The monks had had a monopoly in trading in salt, and, until the Government took it over, in vodka. They had been bankers and merchants. The Metropolitan had had an income of eighty-seven thousand roubles a year. Thousands of pilgrims used to come annually from all over Russia to the Lower Lavra, or caves — great catacombs constructed in the dark ages, where the dead monks were buried; some property in the soil mummified the bodies — the guide laughed.
“The situation was such, that the ignorant people believed the papas who told them that it was their great holiness that prevented decay!”
Perhaps the prisoners were kept in the caves with the long-dead monks, thought Richard. How horrible, but he was disabused on this point as they were walking under the great flying buttresses, in the courtyard of the printery. The guide jerked his thumb towards a forty foot wall in which the lower ends of the buttresses were set.
“Cells of the popes, then,” he said. “Now it is prison — forbidden to go in — but, no matter, nothing to see.”
They left the Lavra and the guide pointed to another vast building. “See — arsenal,” he explained. “Stronghold for revolution in ’seventeen, also again in nineteen-eighteen — much fightings — see bullet marks on wall.” After which he led them back to the hotel.