Thirteen Years Later (6 page)

He had tried playing it at the keyboard; he had tried writing it down on paper. He had even attempted to sing it out loud so that another could transcribe it. But the music could not be contained. It fled on at its own pace, oblivious of the fact that in so doing it destroyed its own chances of immortality. Of course, he could pick out a note here and there, but what did that help? There were only twelve notes to choose from in total; the beauty did not lie within them but in their combination and permutation.

He pressed down on the keyboard and the chord sounded. It was a pleasant sound – melancholy, as a minor chord should be, but still harmonious. But it was not a new creation. It had no context, no before and no after to make it more than itself; a tableau that failed to tell the story of the play.

Dmitry lifted his fingers from the keyboard and the sound stopped. The music inside him had stopped too, not as he released the keys, but as he had first pressed them, banished as a ghost by its living cousin. It was always that way. But it must have gone somewhere. If only that place could be his fingers. He moved his right hand down the keyboard, still forming a C minor, but in a different inversion. All he needed to do was forget himself, to stop trying to listen to the music, to intercept it and capture it, instead simply to let it flow from him. He had attempted it so many times before, but he knew it would work one day – had to work. It didn’t matter if it was never written down, just to make the air vibrate for a few brief minutes to the sound of his music would be enough. And if that barrier could be broken, perhaps the rest would come easily.

He closed his eyes again and played. C minor. Then the same chord again. His hands moved up the keyboard – he had not asked
them to – and played a G. Then C minor again, a diminished C and another G. His fingers moved as if they knew where they were going, through no direction of his; a diminished A
now. The music began to smother him – control him. It was as if the harpsichord were dragging his creation from him, as though his blood were being drained from his veins, as though he were experiencing a slow, drawn-out orgasm that would leave him empty, as if the production of that music would kill him – and yet he did not want to stop. And the sound that he produced was wonderful. More than wonderful, it was sublime. It was brilliant. It was beautiful.

It was Beethoven. His hands moved of their own volition not out of inspiration but through repetition. He had played it so often during his life that now his hands knew it better than he did. Sonata in C minor, number 8 – the
Pathétique
. Of course it was wonderful, and brilliant, and beautiful. But it was not Dmitry’s. The one concept followed inescapably from the other.

He let his hands play on, drowning out the possibility of any of his own music entering his mind. His right hand scurried over the high notes while his left thumped out the low, rhythmic chords. It was not really a suitable piece for a harpsichord. His left hand frequently stabbed for a low note that didn’t exist on the short keyboard, but beyond that, the tone of the instrument was quite unsuitable for this stormy piece. He moved on to the
allegro
and played it far too fast, deliberately pushing himself to the limits of his technique. His left hand flickered over the bass tremolo like a trapped butterfly, while his right appeared merely to slap the keyboard repeatedly, but each time his fingers found the correct notes.

As he played he cursed his father, cursed him for being too mean to replace this ancient instrument with a pianoforte, cursed him for forcing him into the army, and above all for not believing precisely what Dmitry himself did not believe – that he could make a career as a musician.

His fingers moved ever faster, ignoring the faults in the
instrument beneath them and the cramp that was developing in his forearms. At least, while they played, the sound of his own music could not return to taunt him.

Aleksei lay back in his chair and listened to the muffled sound of the harpsichord from across the hallway. Dmitry was showing off, he could tell, playing at that sort of speed. And what was wrong with that? He had plenty to show off with – enormous accuracy and dexterity. It wasn’t enough to make Dmitry into a great musician, but Aleksei hoped it was enough to make him happy. The very sound of it made Aleksei happy, made him for a moment forget those things that caused distress in his life.

He looked across the room at Marfa and smiled. She had been reading, but noticed his movement and looked up at him. She seemed embarrassed at his stare, and he was reminded of how she was more than twenty years ago, before they were married, when his glance at her across a crowded room would have caused her heart to pound and her face to flush behind the powder, little though he had been aware of it. Memories of his feelings for her back then began to push themselves into his mind, passionate feelings that had long since been replaced by mere affection – still more than many couples had left between them.

She returned his smile, and he wondered whether it was now in response to Vasiliy’s glance that her heart beat faster and her cheek reddened. When he was younger, when he had been in love with her, the thought of Vasiliy – of anyone with her – would have enraged him. He would have challenged Vasiliy to a duel and – had he survived, which he little doubted – he would then have cast Marfa aside, unable to forgive her. Did that show how much or how little he loved her? Would he have gone further? Had he loved her enough to kill her? Aleksei had faced that dilemma once, not with Marfa, but with another woman. He had not killed, but not for want of love.

Today, he had no urge to face a duel with Vasiliy, no desire to cast Marfa out of his home. Was he too forgiving, or was it mere
indifference? He knew he should confront Marfa, if only to discover which of those two it was, if only to show her that he cared enough to object. But with Dmitry’s music filling the house, he felt too relaxed to be concerned with it now.

Even his concerns for the tsar’s safety seemed far from urgent. It had been almost two weeks since he had spoken to Aleksandr in the Nevsky Monastery. He smiled to himself. The last time he had gone there, it had been for a very different reason. He’d heard the story of an old monk who lived there – a monk who slept each night in a coffin. The implication was obvious, but Aleksei had been wise enough to test the theory before acting. A glimpse of the old man kneeling in prayer outside one of the chapels in the full glare of the sun had been ample evidence.

It wasn’t the first time since 1812 that he had gone in search of a
voordalak
. In the intervening years he had investigated every rumour he had come across that might just hint at the presence of a vampire. All had proved to be false alarms. He had not gone out of his way in search of them, had not travelled deep into the Carpathians – where he knew he would find them – to hunt them down. If they did not come to him, he would not go to them. Most people were lucky enough never to encounter a
voordalak
in their whole lives. It would be unkind of fate if he were to meet such creatures twice.

As for the tsar, he would be almost at his destination by now. He should be safe for the winter. And there was more that Aleksei could do to make his safety permanent.

Five menacing chords in sequence ended the first movement of the sonata. It was not suited to the harpsichord, thought Aleksei. He would do something about that. In the meantime, he relaxed as Dmitry began the
adagio cantabile
.

The small black calèche had come to feel like home. It had been a speedy journey – just thirteen days to travel from the top of his country to its bottom. To have traversed Russia in the other direction – from west to east – would have taken months. He had
been joined soon after leaving Petersburg by a small entourage, amongst them his chief of staff, Baron Diebich, two doctors – Tarasov and the Scotsman Wylie – along with his valet, Anisimov, and other personal staff.

A larger court would arrive with the tsaritsa. She had departed the capital only a few days after Aleksandr, but would travel at a gentler pace. Her health had, for Aleksandr, been only an excuse to come to Taganrog, but it was an issue nonetheless. It had been easy enough to persuade Wylie to suggest the town as a suitable location for a winter convalescence. She certainly could not stay in the capital. The flooding of the Neva the previous winter had been the worst that any could remember, and much of the city had not recovered. It was not the place for a woman in his wife’s frail condition. Nor would she be able to face a recurrence of the deluge this year, which was a strong possibility.

The whole way from Petersburg, at each post house they called at, Aleksandr had checked that the accommodation would be suitable for the tsaritsa and sent a note back to her describing the best route to take. Moreover, he had left her in the care of Prince Volkonsky, despite the degree to which he would have appreciated the companionship and counsel of Pyotr Mihailovich himself. They would both be with him in a week or so.

It had been seven years since he had visited the town of Taganrog, and then only briefly. It had not changed much. Aleksandr looked out over the Sea of Azov. It was calm today, but he had heard it could grow stormy. To the east, though he could not see it, the river Don emptied into the sea, having risen in the heart of the country. To the south, the narrow Strait of Kerch opened into the Black Sea, and beyond that lay the whole world.

The accommodation was humble for a tsar and his consort, but he was satisfied with it. In his youth he might have raised hell, demanding that some more appropriate residence be found – or built – but not today. Whatever he thought of it, it was a palace, by simple virtue of the fact that he inhabited it. It was just one storey high, with fewer than twenty rooms, though the basement
had additional ones for the staff. Aleksandr wandered through the building, selecting half a dozen or more rooms that could be allocated to the tsaritsa. He then looked for the room that he would make his study. There was a possibility on the north side of the house, but as soon as Aleksandr glimpsed the view he dismissed it. The skyline of Taganrog was dreary. He could count only six spires and a couple of domes which broke the monotony. How unlike either of his two capitals.

The room on the south side was smaller, but it would suit him. He could see the garden and, beyond that, the sea. He sat down and gazed across the water once again, with but one question on his mind. Why had he come here?

News travelled rapidly, even on the borders of the empire. It was less than a day before reports of the arrival reached the Crimean peninsula – the eastern shore of the Sea of Azov. This letter was just as brief as the last, written in the same hand, to the same address in Ragusa.

He is here. Come at once.

Aleksei had heard nothing for over half an hour, though in truth he had no way of determining how much time had passed. The cupboard was windowless, and although a dim light had for a while seeped under the door, once that had been extinguished, it was impossible for him to see his watch, or even his own hand in front of his face.

He had been glad to leave the meeting early. The same arguments had been churned over once again, with no new conclusions being reached. Pestel was by far the smartest amongst them. Aleksei had read his manifesto, ‘
Russkaya Pravda
’ – ‘Russian Justice’. There was plenty of it that Aleksei did not agree with, such as the expulsion of the Jews to Asia Minor and the forced Russification of every nationality in the empire, but at the very least it did show the vision of someone genuinely planning to create a new form
of government for the country. There were real plans for how to abolish serfdom – without leaving millions of former serfs to simply starve – for freedom of expression and for the equality of all before the law. Ryleev and Muraviev and the others had no such clear plans. They were just romantics who wanted to imitate Byron. They risked meeting the same fate, and would probably revel in it.

Fortunately for the tsar, for anyone who would prefer to let Russia remain in its current state, Pestel was leader of the Southern Society, not the Northern, and while that might put him within striking distance of Aleksandr, the real struggle for political power would take place in Petersburg. It was lucky for Aleksei too; Pestel was one of the few who might be smart enough to see through him. In the north, there was no one, except perhaps the newcomer, Kakhovsky. He was not smart, but he had a certain animal cunning.

Kakhovsky had been the last to leave, from what Aleksei could hear. Having given his excuses, Aleksei had made his own way out of Prince Obolensky’s house. It was usual practice not to be seen out by servants, whose tongues might in gossip give away their names. Thus, it had been a simple matter to slip into the small cupboard, full of winter clothes that would not be needed for a month or two. The meeting had gone on for another hour or so, the members occasionally raising their voices loud enough that Aleksei could make out individual words, but mostly just producing a quiet hubbub that revealed they were still there. Then they had begun to leave. Finally, Aleksei had heard Kakhovsky talking alone to Obolensky, just on the other side of the door. He caught only one sentence.