Thirteen Years Later (45 page)

‘Did he explain his absence?’ asked Aleksei.

‘He just said he’d gone exploring and complained that Colonel Salomka had panicked.’

‘I suppose he wasn’t down there for very long.’

‘You met Cain?’ asked the doctor.

Aleksei nodded.

‘What happened?’

‘Some of his experiments got a little out of hand.’

‘You mean . . . ?’ gasped Wylie.

The priest had taken them to a long flight of steps that led up to the chapel itself. He had begun to ascend. Aleksandr was just behind him, followed by Tarasov and Salomka. Aleksei and Wylie were next.

‘I don’t think Richard Cain will be making any more presentations to the Royal Society. Even so, I’d very much like for us all to be off these damned mountains before nightfall.’

‘Of course,’ said Wylie. ‘Did His Majesty witness any of this?’

‘No, I sent him away almost . . .’

In front of them, Tarasov and Salomka suddenly rushed forward. The priest turned back to see what the commotion was. Aleksandr had collapsed. Tarasov loosened his collar and Wylie dashed forward with a bottle of sal volatile, which he waved under the tsar’s nose. Aleksei felt his own approach was a little more practical. From his pocket he fetched a small flask of brandy,
from which the tsar took a grateful sip. The whole incident was over in moments, and the tsar was back on his feet before any but those in the closest proximity to him could even notice what had happened.

‘I really must apologize, gentlemen,’ he said, continuing his climb of the stairs, but stopping almost immediately to catch his breath. ‘I have overstretched myself a little.’

Wylie glanced at Aleksei. ‘A delayed shock, you think?’

‘It’s only to be expected.’ Aleksei thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps it will do us a favour – persuade the tsar to return sooner.’

‘Let’s hope,’ said the Scotsman.

But as the others moved on, Aleksei paused for a moment, standing on the steps at the point where Aleksandr had fainted. Just ahead of him, at the top of the stairway, was a small gatehouse, and to the left of the gate he saw what Aleksandr must also have seen. It was a ubiquitous sight in Moscow, but it was not uncommon elsewhere in Russia either. Only recently, Aleksei had been considering its echoes in a statue in Petersburg. But this was the first time he had suspected that the image might mean to Tsar Aleksandr something akin to what it meant to Aleksei himself.

It was an icon; an icon of a saint on horseback driving a spear into the mouth of a monster. An icon of Saint George and the dragon.

After his collapse, the tsar most certainly did appear to take a more cursory interest in the sights before him. After the monastery they directly began their journey back to Bakhchisaray, with only a few farewell waves to the local people hindering them in any way.

Once they were back down in the river valley that would lead them to the town, Aleksei and Wylie rode side by side in discussion. Aleksei briefly described what had happened. He did not mention his previous meeting with Cain, under a different name. Wylie shared Aleksei’s ambivalence as to how the problem had been resolved. In the end he concurred with Aleksei’s decision
– or at least said he did. For him, hatred of the
voordalak
was not as entrenched as it was in Aleksei, but neither had he seen for himself the piteous specimens in those caves. So though he might have weighed the two sides of the argument differently, in the end he came to the same conclusion. What was most important, they both agreed, was that it was Cain who had been the main threat to the tsar and that he was a threat no longer. Aleksei felt more relaxed than he had riding out along the same road that morning.

As might be expected from a man of science, Wylie showed a keen interest in what Iuda had been trying to discover, if not in his methods. When Aleksei mentioned Raisa Styepanovna and her absent reflection, Wylie began to describe one of the experiments from the notebook.

‘As you said,’ he explained to Aleksei, ‘it seems very selective in terms of what can be seen and what cannot. Why can’t you see their clothes, for example? And in the end you’re right, an intelligent selection is being made – the interesting question is, by whom?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, Cain’s thought is – was – that it’s the mind of the viewer that blocks out the image of the vampire. So you
do
actually see the creature, in terms of the light falling into your eyes, but your brain blots it out. For what reason, he couldn’t tell. The point is, the viewer’s brain isn’t going to be so stupid as to just remove the vampire and leave its clothes standing there empty, or indeed the chain stretching out in the case you described. The brain is trying to protect the viewer in some way, so it presents a coherent picture of the scene – sans vampire.’

‘But how could he test that?’ asked Aleksei.

‘Well, first he thought he’d do it by having people who didn’t know that the creature they were seeing was a vampire look at one in a mirror. If they didn’t know it was a vampire, then why should the brain block it out?’

‘And the result?’

‘Didn’t make any odds. If the viewer was a human or a vampire, informed or uninformed, they still saw nothing.’

‘Concept disproved then,’ said Aleksei.

‘Well, Cain was a bit more meticulous than that. It could be that the information that they’re looking at a vampire is communicated to them by some means other than their prior knowledge.’

‘Smell perhaps?’

‘A possibility, though Cain didn’t get that far. What he did do was sheer, unadulterated genius.’ To Aleksei’s distaste, Wylie didn’t even attempt to hide the admiration in his voice. ‘He got hold of a children’s toy, a
diable-en-boîte
– a jack-in-the-box we call it in English. You know the sort of thing – you wind it up and then, after a random period of time, a little man pops out and scares the children. The point is though, it’s random. Even if you know it’s going to pop out, you can’t predict when.’

‘I know what you mean,’ confirmed Aleksei.

‘So,’ continued Wylie, ‘he puts the box on a shelf and then lets the viewer – himself in the early experiments, but others later – look at the scene through a mirror. Then the vampire, your lady Raisa Styepanovna, I suppose, walks in and stands in front of the
diable-en-boîte
. The viewer then describes what they see – of course they don’t see the vampire, they just see the shelf behind with the box on it. Finally Raisa walks away to reveal whether the devil has popped out of the box.’

‘So?’

‘Well, if the viewer had no idea that box was a
diable-en-boîte
, then universally they never saw it pop open. They looked in the mirror and just saw a box on a shelf. When the vampire walked away, they were surprised when the box suddenly appeared open – most believed it had popped open at that instant. On the other hand, those who did know the box might potentially pop open did sometimes see it do so. But they were wrong just about 50 per cent of the time. Some saw it open when it didn’t, some didn’t when it did. Some got it right. And it doesn’t matter if the viewer is a human or another vampire.’

‘I still don’t see what that proves,’ said Aleksei.

‘It proves Cain’s theory. The viewer couldn’t see the box at all, because the vampire was in the way. So their mind had to re-create the scene behind the vampire from what it remembered before she came in. Thus, if they didn’t know the box could pop open, it just stayed closed the whole time. If they did know, then they subconsciously made a guess as to when it opened, and persuaded themselves that that was what they had seen. And of course, half the time, the guess was wrong.’

Aleksei tried to get his head round the idea. Occasionally he thought he had grasped it, but then it eluded him. ‘I’ll have to think about that a little,’ he confessed. For now, despite that three-word Latin motto, he would take Dr Wylie’s word for it. He had seen Raisa Styepanovna, and her beautiful dress, and the iron ring around her throat and the chain stretching back from it in the mirror, but he had convinced himself he hadn’t.

‘The book!’ he exclaimed, suddenly remembering. Wylie turned and looked at him. ‘When I went back,’ Aleksei continued, ‘when I looked in the mirror, her book was on the table. But when I looked at her, she was reading it.’

‘So your mind,’ explained Wylie, ‘didn’t make the book invisible, or leave it dangling in mid-air, but put it in the sensible place – on the table.’

‘Cain was a very clever man.’ Aleksei had to catch himself – he’d almost said ‘Iuda’.

‘He was about to move on to experiments with silver salts, but then the book ends.’

‘Silver?’

‘
Lapis lunaris
, that sort of thing,’ said Wylie, as if Aleksei would understand such things beyond recognizing the name. ‘They react to light. I’m not sure what he was planning. The big question in my view is how does the viewer know they’re looking at a vampire even if they haven’t been told? Your idea of smell is an interesting one. And why does it only happen in mirrors? Why aren’t vampires just invisible all the time?’

‘You’re not thinking of picking up where Cain left off, are you?’ asked Aleksei grimly.

‘It might be tempting,’ mused Wylie, ‘but I suspect I might have you to answer to if I did. And I wouldn’t want to end up like
him
.’ He nodded back the way they had come as he spoke.

Aleksei glanced over his shoulder, and then ahead of them to where the sun, though not yet setting, was low in the west. It would no longer be shining through that hole in the rocks and giving Iuda his cosy shell of protection. And without that protection, there would be nothing to stop the entire horde of
voordalaki
from having their first decent meal in years. He wished he could have been there to see it.

* * *

‘“Princess, I know the fault not thine
That Giray loves thee, oh! then hear
A suppliant wretch, nor spurn her prayer!
Throughout the harem none but thou
Could rival beauties such as mine
Nor make him violate his vow;
Yet, Princess! in thy bosom cold
The heart to mine left thus forlorn,
The love I feel cannot be told,
For passion, Princess, was I born.
Yield me, Giray then; with these tresses
Oft have his wandering fingers played,
My lips still glow with his caresses,
Snatched as he sighed, and swore, and prayed,
Oaths broken now so often plighted!
Hearts mingled once now disunited!”’

Aleksei recognized the words as soon as he heard them. It was Pushkin –
The Fountain at Bakhchisaray
, published just the previous year. It was apt in more ways than one. The first was the most obvious; that even as he heard the words, Aleksei was
sitting in a courtyard, enjoying the fading warmth of the autumn twilight, sipping at a local vodka of which he planned to take home with him at least a bottle and listening to the trickle of the very Fountain of Tears that had inspired Pushkin when he had visited the town.

But more than that, the subject of the poem itself could not help but suggest comparisons to Aleksei’s own life. Zarema, the former favourite of the Khan Giray, had crept into the bedchamber of his new love, the captured Polish princess Maria. Zarema was begging Maria to reject Giray, in the hope that once his love for this new beauty had proved to be a passing fancy, he would return once again to Zarema.

Would Marfa, if she knew, creep into Domnikiia’s room and beg her to abandon Aleksei, in the hope that he would return to her? Was Marfa Zarema, Domnikiia Maria and Aleksei himself Giray? The comparison broke down on many points. Marfa knew nothing of Domnikiia, nor had she lost Aleksei’s love. And where would Marfa’s new love, Vasya, fit into the analogy? But the biggest difference was that, though Maria did not love Giray, Domnikiia did love Aleksei. For her to abandon him would not be some casual act of indifference, but a dagger to her heart.

At least, so Aleksei hoped. Again today Iuda had taunted Aleksei, offering to tell the truth about Domnikiia. Aleksei had been tempted to listen, but would still have believed what he wanted to believe. And now Iuda was dead – truly dead, and more aptly than by having been drowned in a freezing river. He had died at the hands – at the tearing claws and ripping teeth – of creatures that in 1812 he had tried to emulate and in 1825 had tried to subjugate. But now he was no more. The tsar was safe, and Aleksei felt at peace.

But it was not only the words of Pushkin’s poem that Aleksei had recognized. The voice that spoke them, from somewhere out of the shadows to his left, was also unmistakably familiar.

Kyesha stepped into view.

‘You’re alive,’ he said, ‘so I presume Cain is dead.’

‘Maybe not yet,’ said Aleksei. ‘It depends on just how merciful your friends are feeling.’

‘You left him to them?’

Aleksei nodded.

‘Then I doubt they’ll have finished with him just yet – though they will be hungry. He may have inadvertently saved himself a little suffering when he starved us.’

‘Can you tell me the full story now?’ asked Aleksei.

‘I’m not sure that’s wise. Now Cain is dead, surely we are enemies again.’

Aleksei thought about it. His plan in Moscow had been to kill Kyesha, simply for the reason that he was a
voordalak
. Kyesha had led him to Iuda, but that didn’t change what Kyesha was. But Aleksei was in no mood for killing.