Death on the Nevskii Prospekt

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Any minute now, she knew, the proper contractions would start. It was not, after all, the first time she had given birth. Even this evening, when her family knew what was happening, she could hear the excited sounds of her four daughters as they gossiped outside in the corridors. This time it would be different. This time she would give birth to a son. Had not Philippe, her mystic Frenchman from Lyons, promised her this while he hypnotized her soul and stroked her face with those long slender fingers of his? This time, the gunners at the Fortress of Peter and Paul, over fifteen miles away on the other side of St Petersburg, would have to sound out a three-hundred-round salute for a boy rather than one hundred rounds for a girl. This time the people of St Petersburg would have to clap and cheer rather than mock and sneer as they had done so often in the past. The woman looked into her tiny private chapel with its single icon of the Virgin Mary. Mary would be with her on this journey too. Philippe had promised.

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