The People's Will (49 page)

Richard was in no way ashamed of his performance. At the time he had nothing to compare it against, but looking back as a wiser and older man he decided that he had done well. He could not be accused of misremembering. After he had left the church and returned to his room, he had written down all that had happened in his usual detached manner. Susanna had certainly seemed to enjoy the experience. He remembered looking up at her grinning, glowing face and hearing her offhand but complimentary words.

‘We must do that again some time.’

They never did, for the simple reason that in one other aspect of sexual congress Richard had performed very well indeed. Two months later Susanna told him she was pregnant.

If he had been only a few years older Richard would not have cared enough even to attempt to keep the event secret. He would simply have moved on, leaving mother and child to their fate, or told them to go hang and see what society would make of their story. But then he was young, and lacked confidence, and understood what the English gentry would take him for. He was still dependent on his father for everything that allowed him to live. He would not risk it. It was not that Susanna made any demands of him. She promised she would not reveal who the father was. In fact she didn’t even promise it; she merely said it, and assumed Richard would take her at her word.

Whether he did or did not mattered little. The people of Esher were not imbeciles; they would put two and two together. He half formed a plan of getting his father blamed for it, but he was not sure Susanna would be able to lie convincingly. Moreover, if
Thomas Cain should lose his position and reputation, what good would that do his son Richard?

There was never any real doubt as to how he would solve his dilemma. Honoré had been a captive beneath the church for almost a year – perhaps he had even overheard the exertions above him as Richard and Susanna conceived their child. Richard could not sacrifice too many of his schoolfriends without suspicions being aroused. He put the offer to Honoré directly, supposing that the vampire would have a greater interest in the blood of a beautiful young female, if only for the sake of variety, but Honoré claimed that it did not matter a sou what the age, sex or appearance was, as long as they were healthy enough to produce rich, wholesome blood. Richard noted it down, but was to discover that the same indifference did not hold for all vampires. For some reason, he could not bring himself to tell Honoré of the child that grew within Susanna.

‘I have something to show you,’ Richard said on that final Sunday of Susanna’s life. It was night. Evensong was done, and he’d arranged to meet her in the churchyard.

‘Something I’ll like?’ she asked.

‘Something that will fascinate you.’

‘Like what you showed me in the deadhouse.’

‘A bit.’

He felt her hand slip into his and squeeze. He squeezed back and led her to the church door, drawing out a stolen key to unlock it.

‘Just the two of us, in the church again,’ she said, leaning forward to kiss him. ‘We still can, you know,’ she added.

‘Sh!’ he said, putting a finger to his lips.

He led her across the nave and to the three-tiered pulpit.

She giggled. ‘That doesn’t look too comfy.’

He descended the steps and opened the low wooden door to the crypt.

‘What
is
this?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never shown me this before.’

‘It’s the old crypt. No one else knows about it.’

‘Do you bring all the girls down here?’

‘Just you.’

They had come to the iron gate. As usual Richard held up
his lamp to check that Honoré was not lurking close, ready to pounce, but the place was quiet. He unlocked the barrier and swung it open.

‘You first,’ he said.

She looked at him with an intrigued curl to her lips, then stepped through. Richard hung back by the gate, unwilling to close it but knowing that he must. She looked back at him.

‘Are you coming?’

‘I want you to see it on your own,’ he said.

She smiled at him and then walked further into the darkness until he could just make out the white blur of her dress, ghostlike against the black. He pulled the gate quietly to, but did not lock it in case she heard. He knew that at some point she would discover he had betrayed her, but he did not want to see her face when she did.

She called back to him, out of the darkness. ‘There’s someone here!’ Then quieter, ‘Who are you?’

Richard heard Honoré’s voice.

‘
Je suis Honoré Philippe Louis d’Évreux, Vicomte de Nemours
. Welcome to my home.’

There was a yelp and a thud. Richard locked the door and hurried away. That night he cried for the last time in his life.

Since then he had on occasion known a handful of women who would offer him that same unblinking trust that Susanna had shown. Raisa was one – though with time she had grown to realize that Iuda’s interests would always lie with himself. Perhaps Susanna would have understood the same, had she lived. Perhaps she did understand it in those last seconds of her life.

And now there was Dusya. She had come looking for Iuda. She knew of his hideout beneath Saint Isaac’s and of all the tunnels and sewers around there. She had searched every inch of them until she had found the sad remnant of what had once been his body. Some women might have fled in revulsion at the sight of him, but she was made of sterner stuff. She had nursed him, fed him, fetched others for him to feed on. As he had been growing back to his full strength he had felt grateful towards her, but that had passed. She needed no thanks, no reward. All that she had done confirmed it. She’d even meekly accepted that, in
his delirium, he had called her Susanna, though she had no idea what the name meant, except as a codeword he sometimes used to identify himself to the Executive Committee.

They had met through Luka. Within days of his first falling for Dusya, Luka had been eager to introduce her to his old friend and mentor Vasiliy Grigoryevich Chernetskiy. Iuda instantly saw the potential in her, just as he had done in Raisa when he took on the role of her tutor in Kiev. But there must be more to it than that. Why did he never see that same potential in a girl who lacked the blonde ringlets that reminded him of Susanna?

Dusya had immediately warmed to Iuda, simply by virtue of Luka’s gushing recommendation. Iuda had wondered if he would need to seduce her to fully win her loyalty, but it had proved unnecessary. What fascinated her about him was his fanatical dedication to the cause of the Russian people and the overthrow of dictatorship, which he expressed, he thought, with great authenticity. Then he had revealed the truth about himself – a sad tale of a good man afflicted by a horrible disease – the disease of vampirism. She had wept for him, but understood that it did not change him as a man. He still loved Russia and loved the working people. He still, he told her, loved
her
. When it came to it and she had to choose between him and Luka – when he had sent his message of denunciation from prison – he had been in no doubt as to whose side she would be on.

Now all that work was repaid. She had saved him. They sat facing each other, her hand clasped in his, in the sewer beneath Saint Isaac’s. He felt he was ready to leave now. His body was complete; he even had clothes – the foul garb of a Swedish sailor, but it would do him until the chance came to change. But he still needed to know what had been happening in the world above.

‘You were lucky to find me,’ he said.

‘When you weren’t at the Hôtel d’Europe, I worried. This was the only other place I could think of. When I saw you I thought …’ Her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears. He squeezed her hand.

‘Don’t think of me like that. Think of me now – as you’ve restored me. Think of your blood, in me, giving me life.’

She nodded. ‘I’d gladly give you more,’ she said.

‘But why were you at the hotel?’

‘Mihail asked me to watch it.’

‘Mihail?’

‘Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin – the one you said broke into your room there.’

‘To watch for me?’ asked Iuda.

‘For you and a couple of others – one old, the other middle-aged. He described them to me.’ She gave the description and Iuda nodded. She could only mean Zmyeevich – both by day and by night. Lukin had seen Zmyeevich’s astonishing ability and had seen Iuda’s own fate – or thought he had. Lukin was clearly far more than a lieutenant who had stumbled upon Dmitry and Iuda’s encounter at Geok Tepe.

‘What else has he been up to?’

‘He’s trusted by the Executive Committee. He’s helping Kibalchich with the digging and the explosives, but it’s almost done. Zhelyabov and Sofia are desperate we should act soon. Sofia thinks the organization has been infiltrated; they might arrest us all within days.’

‘Who does she think is the traitor?’

‘Shklovskiy.’

Iuda nodded. Dusya had already described Shklovskiy to him, and he had no doubt it was Dmitry under another name – that coupled with his peculiar interest in the tunnelling. ‘And what about the cellars under the cheese shop?’

‘They didn’t do much with them; too deep for the explosives. Shklovskiy searched them and then said they led nowhere.’

That was a shame. It meant that Dmitry and Zmyeevich were a step closer; but only a step – there were many more they would have to take.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Go now. Find out what else is happening.’

‘Do you want me to bring you … are you hungry?’

He raised his hand to touch her cheek. ‘I can fend for myself now, thanks to you.’

‘You’ll be here though?’ she asked.

‘Some nights, but it’s safer to move around. I will find you.’

They kissed briefly and then she was gone. He sat for a moment, considering what he should do now. A thought danced at the
back of his mind, irritating but important: despite losing his fight with Zmyeevich, there was something he had gained, something precious. He held his hands open in front of him and looked into their palms, then realized that it must be the left that mattered – the right was only days old. But whatever he had grasped so urgently in that hand was no longer there. He glanced around the floor until something glinted in the dim light. He picked it up. It was a ring; the figure of a dragon, with a body of gold, emerald eyes and red, forked tongue. Zmyeevich’s ring. Iuda had managed to rip it from his finger as they fought inside the cathedral. There was no magical power to it, at least as far as Iuda was aware. It was not Ascalon, but it was a small emblem of victory in the midst of Iuda’s defeat. Somehow he would find a use for it. He slipped it into the pocket of his grubby sailor’s jacket.

He stood up, flexing the limbs of his new body. They did not feel new – they felt old and stiff and as he stood a wave of dizziness hit him. He would have to move carefully, but more importantly he would have to feed.

‘They’ve arrested Zhelyabov.’ Sofia Lvovna blurted out the words quickly, as though it might make them less true.

Mihail eyed the room, judging the reaction of each person in there. Kibalchich, as ever, seemed distant. He would be thinking about the implications of the news, but would not show it on his face. Frolenko threw his hands up to the sides of his head and turned away, as if covering his ears to prevent Sofia’s words from penetrating. Rysakov opened and closed his lips rapidly but silently. A few others emitted groans. Not everyone was there. Some were at the cheese shop, others had not been able to make the meeting. He was not surprised by Dusya’s absence. Last time he had seen her she had looked pale and cold, a scarf wrapped around her neck even indoors. She would have been wise to stay in bed. There had been no urgent reason for any of them to be here. This was no emergency response to events, simply a regular status report. But events had overtaken it.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Rysakov.

Sofia’s eyes flared at him. ‘Of course I’m all right,’ she spat.

‘Where’s Shklovskiy?’ asked Frolenko.

‘I wish I knew,’ said Sofia.

‘So what happened?’ It was Kibalchich who asked this most obvious of questions.

Sofia shrugged. ‘We left our apartment together and took a droshky. We got off at the Imperial Library. He noticed another cab pull up and three men got out. It was obvious they were
ohraniki
. We weren’t too worried, once we knew they were there. We’d been planning to split up anyway, so he kissed me goodbye and I went on my way. One of them stuck with me and I presume the other two tailed him. I was meant to be going to the shop, but I changed my route completely; headed out towards the Haymarket and then doubled back along the canal. By the time I got to Nevsky Prospekt I’d lost him. I’ve no doubt Andrei managed to lose his two as well.’

‘They wouldn’t have stood a chance,’ interjected Frolenko.

Sofia nodded and gave the tiniest of smiles. Whatever she might claim, the arrest of her lover had affected her deeply. She managed to continue. ‘From what I heard later, that must be how it was; I knew he was planning to visit Trigoni and he would never have gone there with an
ohranik
on his heels.’

‘Trigoni?’ exclaimed Kibalchich. ‘He’s supposed to be in Odessa.’

‘He was,’ said Sofia, ‘but we’ve been calling everyone back to the capital. We need every pair of hands we can find. Trigoni’s been here for a few weeks. I knew Andrei was going to see him, so when he didn’t come back I went down to Trigoni’s apartment. It was obvious from the buzz that there’d been arrests even before I got there. I asked a few of the neighbours I knew. It wasn’t Andrei’s fault; it was Trigoni’s. The place was under surveillance –
ohraniki
disguised as workmen. Seeing the two of them together was too good an opportunity for the bastards to miss. They took them both.’

‘Will he talk?’ asked Mihailov.

‘Not quickly,’ replied Sofia. She looked up, sensing the scepticism in the room. ‘I truly believe that,’ she said.

‘Me too,’ said Kibalchich. ‘He’s a strong man.’

‘What about Trigoni?’ asked Mihail.

‘He doesn’t know much,’ explained Sofia. ‘Certainly not about the shop.’

‘But they’ll put two and two together,’ Kibalchich continued. ‘They’ve seen Zhelyabov with you and you with me and the rest of it. They’ll soon link one of us to the cheese shop.’