Twelve (34 page)

'Faddei was not keen to join the raiding party. He felt he should get back to Vadim and the other Oprichniki under his command. I persuaded him that the French camp was a sitting duck, and that he would be a fool not to go. The description I gave of all those young, innocent, healthy soldiers must, I think, have whetted his appetite. They departed and I lay back and waited until dawn.

'Soon after the sun rose, I returned to the French camp into which I had sent the four Oprichniki. My instructions that they should be tied up and left in the open air had been a test of them and a test of my own credulity – something akin to the trials of witches in the Middle Ages. Despite my blinkered education, I had gathered some slight knowledge of the legends of the
voordalaki
. It seemed preposterous to me that mere sunlight could have such a devastating effect on their physical being, but no more preposterous than what I had already discovered to be irrefutably true. If the legends proved correct, then I would enter the camp to find four dead vampires, otherwise I would find four live ones, tied up and ready for death by firing squad. Either way, the twelve Oprichniki would be reduced to eight. A third of the battle would be won.

'Already, before my arrival, there was much commotion in the camp. A lieutenant, who recognized me from my visit the night before, dashed over to me and took me to the remains of the Oprichniki – three scorched patches of grass. They had been sitting, I was told, on wooden stools, of which only a few charred lumps remained. Some scraps of shoe leather and fragments of material were all else that was left to see. I asked what had happened to the fourth. He had escaped, I was told. They had been expecting only three and so the fourth had been able to get away almost before anyone saw him. As someone who has been lying throughout my adult life, Aleksei, I have long become used to disguising the fear of discovery, but there was little I could do to suppress the fear I felt then that one of the Oprichniki was out there, somewhere, aware of the trap into which I had sent them. I managed outwardly to retain my composure, but inside me every voice shouted that I should flee. I have been fleeing almost ever since.

'The lieutenant told me that they had followed my orders. They had done better than tie the three spies up, they had put them in irons, from which there would be no escape. As dawn had approached, the three had become more and more agitated, had pleaded to be released and had even tried to run – to any extent that they could – for freedom. At around dawn there had been three terrific explosions, so close together that they sounded as one. Two of the sentries guarding the prisoners had been slightly burnt, and all that remained of the three was the ash that I now saw.

'All the soldiers who had witnessed the events were keen to discover what had caused the explosions. A Russian in the same circumstances might, I suspect, have made some connection between the violent and unusual deaths of these men and their first contact with the sun's rays. The French are, however, not as superstitious as we foolish Russians. The most popular theory was that the men had come into the camp with gunpowder hidden in their clothes, hoping to get close to Napoleon himself and ignite the powder, but it had accidentally gone off too early. Some doubted that this could be so, that no Christian – not even a Russian – could commit the sin of suicide, however much he believed in his cause. I glibly assured them that, while the Catholic Church was strong on the point, the Orthodox had no such qualms about sending young men to their deaths. And so this was the version of events that became accepted.

'I departed as quickly as possible and set out eastwards, back to Moscow. I was in unprecedented fear for my life and so I stayed away from the main roads; thus my progress was slower than it would have been if I had taken the direct route. That night I made camp in a clearing in the woods. I had slept for a few hours when I was awakened by the sound of voices. I opened my eyes to see in front of me one Oprichnik and one man – Andrei and Dmitry.

'It was Andrei, clearly, who had escaped the raid on the French. He had obviously worked out that I had betrayed them. I could make no attempt to deny it. Instead, I told Dmitry what I had seen, what the Oprichniki had done, that they were vampires, but his only reaction was that he was well aware of it. I asked him how he could live with that knowledge, and he said that he would use any means he could find to defeat the French. Andrei was after my blood, but Dmitry – to his credit – held him back. He asked me to swear that I would take no more action against the Oprichniki. He seemed to think that now I understood what they were, I would let them get on with their work in the way that they did it best. I refused to go along with him.

'I believe at that stage, Dmitry only thought I had betrayed the Oprichniki because they were vampires; he had not perceived that I was working for the French. Perhaps, even if Andrei had told him, he hadn't believed it. But it was sometime during our conversation there that the realization came to him that I could not have set up the trap without being able to walk freely across the French lines. It was pointless for me to deny it. He took it like a physical wound – a shock to him far greater than had been the shock to me that the Oprichniki were vampires. He muttered that he did not relish the prospect of telling you and Vadim, and then he left me with Andrei.

'I tried to talk with Andrei, but he was as uncommunicative as the rest of the Oprichniki. His only intent was my death. Both he and Dmitry had an enormous faith in his abilities, since they had made no effort even to disarm me of my sword. When attacking by stealth, the Oprichniki were successful assailants, but Andrei's chances were less good here in an evenly matched contest. I drew my sword and he showed no fear of it. It did not seem right to use it on an unarmed man, so I told him to keep back, but he kept advancing. When he was just over the sword's length away from me he leapt towards me. I had no option but to bring the blade between us, and I felt the pressure on my hand as my sword met and overcame the resistance of his body. His face was up close to mine and I could smell his foul breath, but although the wound from my blade did not seem to hurt him, the physical impediment of the guard of my sword itself prevented him from getting close to me. After persisting for a little while, he stepped back and I heard and felt my sword slide smoothly out from under his ribs. There was a slight stain of blood on his coat, but little other damage seemed to have been done.

'I suspect that at that point, most of Andrei's victims give up in the face of his invincibility, for he laughed and suggested that I surrender to the inevitable. He did not realize that there is more than one way in which a man is trained to use a sabre. On his next advance I chose not to stab but to cut. With every step he took, I slashed the blade across his torso. On a normal man, each blow would have broken several ribs. Whether they did on him, I do not know. He showed little sign of weakening, but the very force of the blows did begin to push him back, away from me. The energy I was expending in every blow would not have allowed me to continue for long, but as he stepped back, he stumbled over something and found himself prone and helpless on the ground. I lifted my sword to give what I hoped would be a debilitating blow to his head, and he raised his arm to defend himself. The blade made contact with his arm and drew blood. I brought my sword down again and again, knowing that my attack now was only on his arm. I made no attempt to inflict a fatal blow, for I knew that such an attack would be unsuccessful. I cannot tell you, Aleksei, and if I could I would be ashamed to, the feeling of elation I felt with every blow as it cut further and further into the bone. Eventually, even the supernatural matter of which Andrei was made up could not resist me and his arm became detached from his body, leaving a bloody stub just below the elbow.

'The wound was clearly not fatal, but at least seemed to have incapacitated Andrei enough that he was no longer an immediate threat. I had never paid enough attention to even the little I had heard of the legends to know the various ways in which a creature like this might be destroyed, and I did not want to remain there trying to find out, for fear that Dmitry or some of the other Oprichniki might return. It is my hope that I disabled him enough so that he was unable to find shelter and so perished in the first light of dawn.

'For my part, I once again took flight. I stopped briefly at Shalikovo, hoping I might meet with you there, but I was afraid to wait long, so I chalked a message for you and continued to Moscow. I felt certain that I was being followed, either by Andrei or by the other Oprichniki, but the days are still longer than the nights, so the advantage was with me. Once in Moscow, I could think of only one way to contact you and to be sure of Dmitry not finding out. I went to see Dominique at the brothel. I told both her and Margarita the briefest of details of where I would be, and that you and only you should meet me. In that you are reading this, I must assume that you have spoken to Dominique. She was very concerned for your safety, Aleksei, and interrogated me for information about you – anything and everything about you – much as she has done in the past.

'I headed straight out for Desna and arrived here today. I travelled through daylight, so I don't think that the Oprichniki could have followed me here, but still I fear that they will find me. I do not want to die, but if I must, I would prefer it to be with the relative honour of a Russian firing squad than at their hands. Perhaps it is for the better that I never listened to the stories I was told about vampires as a child, otherwise I might fear even more what is to become of me now.

'If you are reading this, Aleksei, then it must be that I could not wait long enough for you and have moved on. Perhaps I am already in France by now. My hope is to settle in Paris, although I have learned that fate has little inclination to consider what my hopes may be. Should you one day come to Paris, either at the head of a conquering army, or as a visitor in more pacific times, then perhaps you will try to come and find me.

'To anyone else who finds this letter (or to whom you, Aleksei, choose to show it) I must make a plea that no suspicion of treachery should fall upon any of Vadim Fyodorovich, Dmitry Fetyukovich or Aleksei Ivanovich. Just because I am a French spy, it in no way follows that they are. I am reminded of a discussion we once had, Aleksei, about the Bible. Just because some things in it are true does not make the whole of it true. And (you will see that I stick to my guns to the last) just because there are vampires doesn't mean there is a god. I may soon know for sure.

'Please convey my apologies and regards to Vadim and Dmitry, and also my warmest affection to Marfa Mihailovna and young Dmitry Alekseevich.

'I remain, I hope, your friend,

'Maksim Sergeivich Lukin.'

Though some were more explicit than others, Maks' letter contained many condemnations. Most obvious was Maks' condemnation of himself in his confession of treachery against his tsar and his country. What it told of Dmitry and of the Oprichniki was once shocking, but by now it was nothing new. To that, though, there was one exception – Andrei's arm. I was not surprised that the flesh and blood of a vampire was close enough to that of a human that it was possible to sever one of their limbs. I had myself already seen that I could sever Andrei's head. And that was just the point. When I had destroyed Andrei, both his arms had been intact. Somehow since his meeting with Maks, Andrei had . . . recovered.

But that was a minor distraction. The worst thing in Maksim's letter was its condemnation of me. When I had spoken to Maks in this very building, all those weeks before, I had given him no chance to explain what he had now told me so clearly in his letter. I had been so blinded by my rage at his betrayal of our country that I had never even paused to consider that there might be some issue of greater importance which he had to tell me. I could blame Maks himself for not forcing me to listen to him and I could blame the Oprichniki for arriving to cut short our conversation, but I was the true culprit. With the Oprichniki there I might not have been able to save him, but at least he could have died knowing what he wanted to know above all – that I was still his friend.

I
LOOKED OVER TO DMITRY. HE HAD RISEN TO HIS FEET AND WAS
eyeing me suspiciously, calculating whether there was anything I had read in the letter that might tip the balance of my trust away from him. With self-defensive instinct, his hand reached for his sword.

'Don't worry, Dmitry. There's nothing much in there about you that I didn't know already.' I spoke with the intention of being more dismissive than comforting. There were a few details of Dmitry's involvement that had not been clear to me earlier, a few he had twisted to avoid revealing the nature of the Oprichniki, but nothing that substantially changed the nature of his attitude towards them or to anything else.

'He was an enemy of Russia. I knew that. That's what he died for,' Dmitry pleaded.

'You're a patriot, Dmitry,' I told him – a patriot and nothing more.

We found a few old tools behind the hut and between us we dug a grave for our fallen comrade. Two shards of wood formed a simple cross to mark his final resting place. For reasons that I am unable to explain – certainly not to Maks' level of satisfaction – I took off his spectacles before we placed him in the ground and slipped them into my pocket. One of the lenses was shattered, no doubt from a blow to Maks' head, but the other remained intact. Apart, perhaps, from the metal buttons on his jacket and his ancient, unidentifiable bones, they were all that would remain of Maksim, long after the rest of him was consumed by the earth in which we had buried him. I preferred that they would survive in the possession of someone who remembered the man who had once worn them.

It was dark by now, and so we decided to spend the night in the hut. It was cold. Once the sun had gone down, the temperature began to plummet. At the coldest during the nights at that time there were several degrees of frost, and it was usual to discover a covering of snow on the ground each morning that could be stirred up into a blizzard when the wind was high. We lit a fire in the stove, which would keep us in some comfort through the night.

'The difference this time is that it's
my
country,' said Dmitry. It broke a silence which had descended upon us after we had turned away from the grave of our friend.

'Your country?' I asked, failing to comprehend what he was saying.

'Our country, obviously, but I meant as opposed to theirs – the Oprichniki's – where I first met them.'

'So they were better behaved when they were at home – smart enough not to piss on their own doorstep?'

'No, not that,' said Dmitry resignedly. 'I just meant that my perception of it was different. They were just the same.'

Dmitry paused, but it was evident that he had more to tell. 'The same?' I prompted.

'When I told you before, about Wallachia, about meeting Zmyeevich, there was something I missed out.'

He stopped again. 'So tell me now,' I said.

'You remember I said that Pyetr, Andrei, Ioann and Varfolomei were the only ones still left from when I first met them.'

I nodded.

'Well, that wasn't quite true. After that first night, when Zmyeevich and the others had saved us from the Turks, we began to work together. We'd search the mountains by day, finding out where the Turks were and then telling Zmyeevich so he and the others could deal with them at night – just like we did in Moscow.

'But then after a few days, one of the Wallachians went missing; two days later, another. In less than a fortnight, there were only two left, from almost a dozen originally. I never saw the vampires take them, but somehow I knew – things they said; things Zmyeevich said. I couldn't really be sure, until this year back in Moscow when I first met Foma. I knew I recognized him, but I knew that he hadn't been one of the vampires who rode alongside Zmyeevich back then. Then I realized. He'd been one of the Wallachians who'd ridden alongside
me
; the one that went up to the castle door and called out to Zmyeevich. He'd been turned into one of them. I don't think any of the others were lucky enough to join the predators – they were just prey.'

'I'm not sure you should call either fate "lucky",' I said bitterly.

'No. No, you're right, of course. But as I said, it didn't seem so bad then. Who was I to argue if Wallachian vampires chose to kill Wallachian peasants? Mind you . . . When I left Zmyeevich and rejoined the army, the last thing I remember as I walked away was the look of fear and betrayal in those last two Wallachians' eyes.'

I was horrified. Until then, I had thought that Dmitry had been deceived, that despite what
I
knew,
he
had never had reason to suspect what they were doing behind our backs. Now I knew that he had been deceiving himself.

'Why didn't they leave too?' I asked. It was a mundane question.

'I don't know. They respected Zmyeevich as well as fearing him. Who knows, maybe they're alive and well even today.'

I let out a short laugh.

'Maybe not,' he muttered.

Dmitry was up before me and I was woken by the sound of him harnessing his horse.

'You're in a rush to get going,' I said to him.

'I'm not coming with you.'

'I see,' I said.

'I'm scared, Aleksei.' His voice quavered as he expressed the terror inside him. 'They'll not show any mercy to me – or to you. Come with me, Aleksei, back to Moscow. You don't have to face them. We can't bring back Vadim or Maks. All we can do is die like they did. They wouldn't ask us to.'

His diffidence was quite reasonable. Maks would not have seen the logic in taking revenge – in threatening it, yes, but not in taking it. Vadim would have understood the instinct, but would have counselled restraint. But I was motivated not by reason, but by hatred. I could no more rationalize the passion which drove me to pursue and erase the surviving Oprichniki than I could that which drove me to make love to Domnikiia when I had a loving wife at home. Hatred is a most powerful emotion. Leaders use it to stir up aggression in their armies and men use it to force themselves into actions that they would not contemplate without it. Hatred was the inseparable companion of the very thing that Iuda had said made me weak. While scruple could make me spare a man when every rational voice screamed to kill him, so hatred could make me kill when the arguments and reasons for doing so had long been forgotten. To divide them was impossible. Iuda might despise me for having one, but he would learn to regret my possessing the other.

'Do as you wish, Dmitry,' I said. 'I'm going to face them.'

'If they were French, or Turks, you know I'd be with you,' he tried to explain.

'We owe each other nothing, Dmitry. You know it doesn't work like that.'

'I want to help you, Aleksei, but I know them better than you do. I've seen what they do.'

'So have I. Remember?'

'You've seen nothing. What they did in Moscow? A fragment of what I saw them do to the Turks. Even side by side, the two of us could never beat them.' There was an edge of panic in his voice as he tried to convince both me and himself that what he intended to do – to desert – was in some way less than totally dishonourable.

'If it helps, Dmitry, I'm not convinced that I'd want you by my side.' It was more hurtful than I had intended it to be. Dmitry fell into an immediate silence. There was truth in what I had said on two counts. One was that, even after his apparent change of heart, he was still too close to the Oprichniki for me to trust, and the other that in his state of panic he would be of little use to anyone in a tight situation. But I had said it to try to help his decision; to make it me that decided he should not stay, rather than him.

'Thank you for that, Aleksei,' he said at length, without bitterness. 'I'm not much of a soldier any more, I know. Better to hear it from you, I suppose.' He was like a spurned lover, holding back his tears and clinging pathetically to the last vestiges of his pride. I took a step towards him, to embrace him before he left, but he raised his arms to fend me off. 'I'll just go,' he said with attempted nobility. 'You have things to do.'

He mounted his horse and began back towards Moscow at a gentle trot. Standing in the place where I had last seen Maksim alive and watching Dmitry depart, I was filled with the premonition that this would also be the last time I saw Dmitry. I recalled the miscommunication of my last words with Maks and the casualness of my farewell to Vadim. I knew that I could not let Dmitry leave quite like this.

I climbed on to my own horse and caught up with him. Perhaps if I had pleaded with him then, I would have been able to persuade him to stay with me. His joy at knowing I wanted him would have overcome his fear. But the truth was, I didn't want him with me. I just wanted him to leave on better terms.

'Take this,' I said, taking the icon from around my neck and handing it to him.

'It's no protection from them,' he said. 'You know that.'

'Do you think I'd be giving it away if it were?' I laughed, and was pleased to see something of a smile in him. 'It's a symbol, not a talisman.'

'A symbol of what?'

I did not have an answer. He put the chain around his neck and tucked the pendant into his shirt. 'When you're in Moscow, go to Ordynsky Lane,' I told him.

He looked puzzled. 'And why's that?'

'That's where Boris and Natalia are.'

He raised an eyebrow and then smiled at me. 'Thank you, Aleksei. I hope to see you soon.'

'You will,' I replied. We shook hands, and then he departed with the same steady trot of a few minutes before, but with his head held inestimably higher.

I rode back to the hut and packed my few possessions; then I turned and headed south towards Kurilovo.

It was around noon the following day, the twenty-eighth of October, when I finally reached the village. The blizzards of the past few days were beginning to abate, leaving the whole landscape as a desert of white. The crossroads where I was due to meet with Iuda that evening was a little to the south of the village. The sun was already low on the horizon by the time I inspected it. Already I could see a narrow crescent moon in the sky and even that would be following its brighter cousin round to the other side of the world before long.

As I had remembered, the crossroads was at the top of a slight hill. To the north, the buildings of the village were small and distant. To the east and west, I could see down the roads even further. The fields between the roads were smooth, blank and white. Anyone attempting to approach the crossroads by them would not only be hampered by the deep snow, but would also be seen long before they got anywhere near. The closest cover was to the south – a small coppice of trees which spanned the road almost a verst away – still far enough so that any approach from there would be seen long in advance of its arrival.

The crossroads itself was undistinguished, but for one thing – from a makeshift gibbet hung the gently swaying body of a hanged man. It was stiff from the cold and caked with snow, but I only needed to brush a little of the snow aside to discover beneath the dark-blue uniform of a French infantry captain.

I went back to the village and sat in the sole hostelry, drinking vodka until the appointed hour.

'I judge from your sword that you're a military man,' said a voice from a nearby table. I turned. It was just a couple of peasants, bored with each other's conversation and looking for an alternative. The one who had spoken was in his forties, with straggly, long red hair and bloodshot green eyes. His friend – possibly his father – was well past sixty. He had few hairs left on his head and even fewer teeth left in it.

'That's right,' I replied brusquely. My thoughts had been happily settled upon the image of Domnikiia, and I was irritated to be distracted from them.

'A bit of a forgetful one though,' said the older man.

'How do you mean?' I asked.

'Forgot your uniform and turned up two weeks late for the battle,' he laughed.

'You know – the battle. At Maloyaroslavets,' the first man explained, eager to start a conversation. Maloyaroslavets was the site of the first battle between the Russian and French armies after the latter had quitted Moscow. Like Borodino, it had been an encounter in which Bonaparte's tactical victory was to assist his strategic defeat. Though they were the victors, the French were turned back north, to retreat west along the road down which they had advanced – a road which they had already sucked dry of supplies. The town of Maloyaroslavets was almost forty versts away from Kurilovo, but it would be the closest to actual conflict that they had ever come, so it was not unnatural that it should become to the locals 'the battle'.

'I'm afraid I didn't fight there,' I said. 'I haven't been in a battle since Borodino.'

'Well, Bonaparte's probably back beyond Borodino by now,' laughed the second man. 'Maybe you should get back over there and relive your glory days.' These were the men for whom I had spent my adult life fighting. They had probably never left this village, certainly never gone outside the oblast, and yet they could criticize me for what they saw as my cowardice. That is the cross that must be borne by every spy, I heard Vadim's voice silently tell me. He is never given laurels – he must wear his medals inside his tunic. And what choice do they have? They're serfs, Maks now joined in. If they have fought, it was at their master's command. If they stayed home, it was that their masters preferred farmers to fighters, not that
they
preferred life to death.

There was no madness in my listening to the voices of my departed friends, only pleasure. Even when they were alive, I could at any time have conjured up their voices and their opinions. I had encountered few problems that could not be alleviated by a simple question along the lines of 'What would Maks think?' or, just as often, 'What would Marfa think?' Now, with Maks and Vadim at least, it was the only chance I got to hear them. Even if it was madness, it was a madness I would gladly choose.

I slammed my bottle of vodka down on their table with my left hand, making clear for them to see the wounds that I had earned on the Danube. 'Have a drink on me, why don't you?' I suggested. Whether it was my generosity or my manifest war wounds I do not know, but their mood towards me warmed a little.