Twelve (25 page)

At most places it was easy to chalk or to scratch a message in a position where it would be found but not so obvious that it might be accidentally destroyed. In doing this, I had the opportunity to check for any message that Vadim might have himself left, but I found none. At the burnt-down tavern in Tverskaya, there was nowhere that I could leave anything for Vadim. If he had been there and left some scrawled note for me, then it had already been lost to the flames.

The final meeting place to which I went was the one for that evening itself. It was the site of the Petrovka Theatre, one of the few locations in Moscow guaranteed to be safe from the fires that had destroyed two-thirds of the city, having been burnt to the ground in another fire some seven years earlier. We were to meet at the north-west corner of the ruined site. I chalked my message on a low wall and then waited, watching from a distance, hoping that Vadim would arrive – praying that the Oprichniki would not.

I waited two hours before I felt certain that Vadim would not show. Almost throughout, I had the sensation of being watched. I looked around repeatedly and saw no one of note – certainly no vampires. I still had no reason to suppose they had any suspicion of me, but it was a risk turning up at a meeting place that they knew about, whence they could follow me and discover where Dmitry and I slept, along with the innocent cobbler and his daughter. It was, however, a risk I had to take. It was betrayal enough to abandon Vadim in the city, despite the fact that that was precisely what he had said we might have to do. I had at least to make some effort to contact him, even though the attempt had failed.

I headed back the short distance to the shantytown by a circuitous route. I don't think I was followed. As I approached the tiny space, I heard Dmitry and Natalia talking. Dmitry was lying on the area of ground designated to be the bed, lit by the guttering flame of a candle. Natalia sat beside him. Boris was asleep in the corner.

'There you are, at last,' said Dmitry as I entered. 'Where have you been?'

'I was waiting for Vadim,' I explained, 'but he wasn't there.'

'Do you want to give it another day?'

I didn't feel inclined to give it another minute. 'No, it's too late. I've arranged transport for tomorrow. We'll have to leave here before dawn.'

'Where will you go to?' asked Natalia.

'Yuryev-Polsky,' I replied.

'Why there?' asked Dmitry, although I suspect he knew quite well.

'Why not?'

We sat in silence for a while, accompanied only by Boris's shallow breathing.

'Will you come with us, Natasha? You and your father?' It was a surprising request to come from Dmitry's lips, as surprising as his use of the familiar 'Natasha' instead of the more formal 'Natalia'. She had nursed him for two days – only one of which he'd been conscious for – but clearly it had had an effect on him.

I never recalled Dmitry being dependent on anyone before. Now he had his first taste of it, it seemed he liked it.

The girl laughed. 'Leave?'

'We can take you to safety,' Dmitry went on.

'We're safe here. We could have left a week ago when the French came if we'd wanted to.' Then she turned to me. 'I thought you were going to kill all the French and drive them from the city,' she said admonishingly.

'Dmitry needs to be taken somewhere safe. I'll come back,' I said, but I knew that I didn't mean it.

I awoke early and gently shook Dmitry. Natalia and her father lay together, sleeping soundly. From the food I had bought the previous day I left them some tea, two bottles of vodka, two of wine, some bread and some honey.

It was about two versts across the city to where the wagon was, I hoped, waiting for us. Although Dmitry was weak, he could just about walk with my support and, although the journey would be slow, I felt we would make it. My only concern was that we might arrive well after dawn and, if we were too late, our contact might not wait.

We had not gone far when I heard footsteps running behind us. For a terrible moment, I felt sure it was an Oprichnik preparing to pounce on us at the very moment of our escape. It didn't take long for me to realize that the footsteps were too light for that, and approached us too directly.

It was Natalia. She put herself under Dmitry's other arm and the three of us made swift progress through the silent streets, in much the same manner as when we had first met her, two days before.

'I said I wouldn't come with you,' Natalia explained, 'but I'll come as far as the edge of the city.'

We walked in silence for a while. I saw sweat breaking out on Dmitry's brow. Even with our support, the effort was exhausting for his weakened body. The sweat must have stung horribly as it ran down his burnt cheek, but he did not complain.

'Do you have a wife, Captain Danilov?' asked Natalia, breaking the silence.

'That's very formal. You were calling me Aleksei yesterday.'

'Which do you prefer? I like "Captain".'

'It's a shame you didn't meet Vadim. He's a major.'

'That's better, isn't it?'

'It's more senior,' I told her, knowing that Vadim himself was all too well aware of the distinction.

'So are you married?'

'Yes I am. And we have a son, called Dmitry.'

'Just like Captain Petrenko.'

'He was named after Captain Petrenko.'

'Why? No, I remember. He saved your life at Austerlitz.'

'That's right.'

'And now you've saved his life, so you're even.'

'I don't think it works quite like that.'

The conversation lulled and we carried on walking. Again it was Natalia who broke the silence.

'So is that why you're going to Yuryev-Polsky; because your wife's there?'

Despite his discomfort, Dmitry managed to emit a short cynical laugh.

'No,' I replied, 'we just have friends there.'

'Is Captain Petrenko married?'

'What Captain Petrenko really likes to be called is Mitka,' I said, taking petty revenge on Dmitry's cynicism.

'Really?' I nodded. 'So, is Mitka married?'

'No, he's not.'

'Why is that?' she asked.

'I think that's one you'd better ask him.' Dmitry was, I'm sure, relieved just then to be unable to speak.

We arrived at the edge of the city about ten minutes after dawn. The man with whom I had spoken the day before was there, with an open wagon to which was harnessed a mule, rather than a horse, but it would suffice. There were no signs that he had brought anyone with him or that he planned to ambush us and take the money. There was no haggling over the agreed price. It was all done with the simple trust of one man in his fellow countryman that can only emerge at a time of war.

He headed back to the city on foot, and Natalia and I loaded Dmitry up on to the wagon, along with our few possessions.

'Goodbye, Captain Danilov,' said Natalia, taking my hand. Then she went over to Dmitry and leaned forward, kissing him on his uninjured cheek. 'Goodbye, Capt . . . Mitka,' she said with a giggle.

She began to walk away, then she turned. 'And thank you for the food – from me and from my father.'

I went over to her and pressed a few of the gold coins I had left into her hand.

'What's this for?' she asked.

'To repay your kindness,' I said.

'Kindness doesn't need any repayment.' She was not insulted at all, only uncomprehending. 'It doesn't work like that.' She tried to hand it back.

'It's a gift,' said Dmitry as loudly as he could manage.

'Why should I get a gift?' she asked, with a voice that clearly expected an answer, as if the right answer were more important than the gift.

'What's the date today, Aleksei?' Dmitry asked me. I had to think for a moment.

'The eighth – the eighth of September.'

'And why is that important?' asked Dmitry. Natalia grinned a childish grin that told me she knew full well what Dmitry was getting at. Still though,
he
had to say it. For my part, I was completely lost.

'You tell me,' she replied playfully.

'It's the feast of Saint Natalia – your name day. That's why you get a gift,' Dmitry told her.

'Thank you,' said Natalia, giving a beaming smile and clutching the coins to her chest as though they were the most valuable things she had ever owned (which, in fact, they probably were). She turned and ran gaily back towards Moscow.

I mounted the front of the wagon and we set off in the direction of the rising sun.

'So have you memorized all the name days, Dmitry?'

'Yes.' There was no reason to doubt him, but it seemed astonishingly out of character.

'Why?' I asked.

His reply was simple. 'You saw her smile.'

I
T TOOK US THREE DAYS TO GET TO YURYEV-POLSKY. I WAS SURPRISED
how soon out of Moscow the country began to return to normal. We saw serfs working in the fields and wagons taking goods to local markets. Some were even travelling in the opposite direction to us, back towards Moscow, where they knew they could get the best price for what they had to sell. Nowhere was there a French uniform in sight.

I slept more comfortably than I had for many days, and not just thanks to my receding fear. For inns along the road it was business as usual, so we were well fed and well looked after. Prices were back to normal – a joy after the exploitation of occupied Moscow – and because Dmitry was seen by all as an heroic wounded soldier, we always got a little more of everything than we might otherwise.

Dmitry and I spoke much on our journey and our friendship became cemented once again. We didn't discuss any weighty matters, such as the war, and we certainly never got on to the Oprichniki, but through normal conversation we remembered who we were and managed to forget – or at least suppress – the events that had forced us apart over the past weeks.

Yuryev-Polsky was packed with refugees and with wounded soldiers. Finding care for Dmitry was no problem. He was given a bed in a makeshift hospital – formerly a convent – and medical opinion was that he would recover. The scars would always show, but even the use of his right hand should return to him eventually.

I left him and went to look for Domnikiia. It turned out to be easier to find Pyetr Pyetrovich, whom everyone in the town seemed to know. If you needed something, anything, Pyetr Pyetrovich could furnish you with it – for a price. Food, alcohol, ammunition – he was the man to get it for you. I found him in a tavern. He was unmistakable as one of the courageous few who still opted for elegant French fashions; though that appeared to be no obstruction to his businesslike discussion with a colonel in the artillery. When he had finished, I approached.

'Pyetr Pyetrovich?' I said, offering my hand.

'Yes,' he replied, taking my hand and trying to remember where he had seen me before.

'I'm Captain Danilov,' I told him. 'I was hoping you could help me, I'm looking for Domnikiia Semyonovna.' He looked at me blankly. 'For Dominique.'

'Ah!' he exclaimed, recognizing me at last. 'For Dominique.' He lowered his voice. 'I'm afraid, captain, that for the time being, that side of my business is closed – not that I have had any problems with it, I assure you. It's just that at the moment there are far better ways to earn a living. But once you boys can clear Bonaparte out of Moscow, then it will be business as usual, don't you worry.' He winked.

'I simply want to see her,' I explained with some restraint. 'She is a friend.'

'Really? A friend?' The concept appeared new to him. 'Well then, you'll find her in the hospital next to the church of Saint Nikolia. She's a nurse there.'

'A nurse?'

'They all are. There's a lot of sick soldiers in town.'

I headed for the hospital. It wasn't large, consisting of just two long rooms running at right angles to each other, with about twenty beds in each. I looked into the first and instantly recognized Domnikiia, bending over the bed at the furthest end of the room. I waited, my hand resting on the door post as I attempted to look relaxed. In fact, I was gripping it for support.

She stood up from the bed and began walking to the next one. She looked towards me. She was too distant to make eye contact, but as her eyes fell on me, her footsteps faltered slightly, as though she had turned an ankle. She recovered instantly and continued walking only as far as the next bed. She bent over the patient, spoke to him and fluffed his pillows. Then she moved on to the next patient, and the next and the next. As she approached she never looked directly at me. Though she moved so agonizingly slowly, still the force of her approach felt to me as if I were being charged down by a galloping stallion. A feeling of dreadful anticipation built up in me the closer she got. I could not step away and yet the prospect of her finally reaching me filled me with a sense of some great impending impact.

At last, having done her duty by each of the twenty men in the ward, she arrived at the door. She looked up at me with her beautiful slanting eyes and smiled her professional smile – as useful to her in her current profession as in her former.

'Good afternoon, Aleksei Ivanovich,' she said, giving away no hint of emotion. I merely smiled in reply. 'Step outside with me for a moment,' she continued.

She led the way out to a quiet courtyard. I felt my heart beating in my chest, begging to be set free. She turned and put her hands to my head, pulling me down on to her lips. We kissed so ardently, but also so briefly, before she pulled away and put her lips first to my forehead, then to my eyebrows, then to my eyes, then my cheeks, then my ears, then my chin, my neck, my hands, my palms and my fingers. I was for the moment a passive, compliant body as her lips marked out every piece of me as her territory. Finally, she raised my left hand to her lips and kissed the tiny webbing of skin between my middle finger and what remained of my ring finger. Then she leaned into my chest, her arms not embracing me but held up in front of her, crushed between us. Now she was offering passivity, and I held her tight to me with all my strength.

'I feared you were dead, Lyosha.'

'Why would you think that?'

'I didn't think it, I just feared it.'

'I watched you leave Moscow,' I told her. 'Early that morning.'

'Good,' she smiled up at me. 'I didn't see you.'

'I'm a professional,' I replied.

We began to walk, hand in hand; finger woven with finger.

'Why have you left Moscow so soon?' she asked.

'Dmitry was badly burnt in the fires. I brought him here.'

'You should have let him burn.' She changed her mind, almost without pausing. 'I'm sorry, he's your friend – important enough for you to bring here.'

'He wasn't for a little while, but I think we're over that now.'

'Why weren't you? Because of Maks?'

'And you.'

'So why did you come here to Yuryev-Polsky?'

'Dmitry suggested it. I wasn't too keen,' I said with a smirk. She made a tight little fist and jabbed me in the ribs.

'And your other friend, Vadim; is he here too?'

'No. As far as we know, he's still in Moscow. I'm hoping he'll join us.' It sounded hollow, even to me.

For the next couple of weeks, our relationship was the least physical it had ever been. I had found accommodation in a barracks near to where Dmitry was recovering, and Domnikiia was living in nurses' quarters. In the time that we had together we were forced to behave much like any other courting soldier and nurse thrown together by the forces of war. We spent our time talking and holding hands and walking round the town, and though it would be nice to say that through these conversations we learned to understand one another better than we ever had before, it simply wouldn't be true. Our conversations were no more and no less intimate or stimulating than those we had had naked and entwined in her bed in Moscow. For me, at least they had the benefit of being cheaper.

I told her much of what had happened since we had parted in Moscow; of the state of the city under French occupation and of the destruction brought by the fires. I told her of Boris and Natalia and how they had cared for us before we left, but I told her nothing of the Oprichniki and what I had discovered about them. I knew that I would have to tell her, but whenever an opportunity arose, I shied from it. My silence assisted the cosy delusion of safety which I had deliberately built for myself, but underneath, the terror was never far from my mind.

'You never ask about me,' she said one day from nowhere as we walked through a late summer's evening.

'I ask you every day what you've been up to,' I replied, mildly offended.

'I mean about who I am – about my life before you knew me.'

'Oh, that,' I said, and after a moment's pause, 'So tell me.'

'What would you like to know?'

'Everything' would have been the true answer, but specifics would be easier. I started with, 'Where were you born?'

'Moscow,' she replied. 'I've always lived in Moscow.'

'Never been outside?'

'I don't think I'd ever been three versts from where I was born, until I came here.'

'You must find Yuryev-Polsky very exotic,' I said.

'It's small and boring,' she said. It was an accurate summary.

'So where are your family?'

'I don't know,' she replied. 'My father owned a shop – a milliner's. We lived above it – him and my mother and my brother and me. We weren't rich, but he had ambition. He believed the best route to success was to make friends of his customers, if they were rich enough or important enough. But the rich get rich by not paying their bills until they have to, and he didn't feel he could ask people so much above him for something so grubby as payment of a bill.'

'So you've learned from his mistakes?' I said lightly.

'Too right. But my customers tend to pay pretty quickly anyway. No one wants his wife to come across an unpaid bill from
me
at the end of the month.'

'So what went wrong?'

'Who says anything went wrong?' she said, surprised. 'I'm here, now, with you, aren't I?'

'You could have got here by an easier route.'

'Could I? The only other route into your trousers would be to become some stuck-up society girl in Petersburg, and that was never an option.'

I stiffened. It wasn't an accurate description of Marfa in any way, but from the deliberate little I had told Domnikiia about her, it was to be expected.

'I'm sorry,' continued Domnikiia. 'That wasn't fair.'

'That's all right. So what did happen?'

'I was swept off my feet by a customer. One of my father's customers, I mean – at least at first. He used to come into the shop and buy his wife the most lovely hats. Then he bought me a lovely hat. And then he got what he'd expected in return. Soon he would just give me money. But then his wife found out, and she told her friends, and suddenly husbands weren't allowed to come to us for their wives' hats.

'My father knew what had caused it. We had an argument and he hit me, so I left. I rented a room and got by the only way I knew how. Only now the men I saw weren't the sort who tended to buy hats for their wives, even if they could have afforded them. Before long, one of them hit me, so I went back home.'

'I see,' I said.

'Except that there was no home. The shop had closed down and my family had gone. I guess I'd spoiled his reputation. And so I went back to work, and more men hit me, but most men paid, so I survived. Then I met Pyetr Pyetrovich. And he knew how to get the men to pay more, even though
I
was paid less. But I have a roof and a bed and a . . . home.'

'Didn't you ever look for your family?' I asked.

'I will do,' she replied, 'but not just yet. It's not been long enough yet.'

The way she told the story made it sound as if it had all happened a long, long time ago, but she was still too young for anything to have happened to her so very long ago.

'How long has it been?' I asked.

'Three years – since I left home.'

'You've been lucky, I suppose.'

'Luckier than most,' she said. 'I'm pretty. Men like that.'

'And you're smart. Men like that too.'

'No, Lyosha,' she said condescendingly, 'that's just you.' We walked in silence for a little. 'So, are you going to tell me all the secrets of
your
past?' she asked eventually.

'Best not, I think. Besides, it shouldn't make any difference.'

'How do you mean?'

'It's the same as the reason I never asked you about yours; I know you,' I said. 'You don't need explaining.' I might once have said the same thing about Maks.

'Life must be very dull for you, Aleksei Ivanovich,' she replied haughtily, 'knowing so much. Perhaps one day I shall surprise you.'

She never stopped.

Towards the end of September, Dmitry was sufficiently recovered to be moved from the hospital to a regular barracks. The risk of his burns becoming diseased was past, the doctors said, and it was now simply a question of waiting until his skin grew back fully.

'Does this mean you'll be going back to Moscow?' asked Domnikiia when I told her. It wasn't until I had been sitting on that wagon with Dmitry laid on the back, riding away from the city, that I had realized how truly terrified I had been in Moscow.

The discovery that the Oprichniki were vampires had been one that I had first reacted to with immediate action. But as the need for action had abated, my fears had found room to float to the surface. I had seen how the Oprichniki killed – seen their strength and seen their savagery. I knew that I did not want to die like that, and that knowledge made me realize that I did not want to die at all. I wanted to live and enjoy life. I wanted my wife and my son and my mistress and to have more children and, damn it, more mistresses. I wanted to read books and drink wine and play cards and die when I was very, very old.

'Not yet,' I replied. 'The word is that Bonaparte will have to leave soon, whatever happens. He's wasted too much time. He could have gone for a final victory in Petersburg, but he went on thinking that Moscow was the key – that it would break Russia's heart to see her captured. Most of us thought the same, but we all turned out to be wrong. The tsar has made no peace, and the French will have to winter in a safer city than Moscow. The longer they leave it, the more they risk getting cut off when winter comes.'

'So we didn't need you to save Moscow after all?' I had no answer. 'Oh, Lyosha, I'm sure you helped a little.' Her tone was supremely patronizing. 'Is your friend Iuda still in Moscow, sorting out the French?'

'No, he's dead.'

'You don't seem too sorry. What happened to him?'

Again, I should have spoken; again, I didn't.

'The same fire that Dmitry got injured in – Iuda wasn't so lucky.'

Dmitry leaving the hospital meant that I too could look for better accommodation. I was lucky enough to find myself a fair-sized room at a reasonable price and so, once again, I had the privacy I desired.