Twelve (24 page)

Towards mid-afternoon, Boris sent his daughter away to fetch some food. She returned with a loaf of bread and, miraculously, some butter. Dmitry was in no condition to eat, but they shared the food with me as though I was a part of their family. Once again, my heart told me to restrain myself, but my hunger was victorious.

My leg, it turned out after I had gingerly rolled up my trouser leg to inspect it, was not too badly burnt. Dmitry had snatched me out from the burning stairway after only seconds, so the heat had not penetrated too deeply. All the hairs on my shin and calf had shrivelled to nothing. The skin was red, but still intact. It would easily heal. I was certainly in a far better state than Dmitry.

By evening, I had shown my missing fingers and told them a much sanitized version of how I lost them. I had turned Dmitry's head to show them the scar on his cheek and tell them the story behind that. I would have loved to tell them of the brave heroics of a young
ryadovoy
I had met at Smolensk named Fyodor Borisovich, but I could not. Even if I had met him, I doubt I would have remembered him, and I could not bring myself to lie to these people – even to flatter them – on a matter so close to their hearts as that.

As night fell, I realized that I had work to do. I took my leave of them, but told them I would return.

There was a freshness in the air of Moscow that night which seemed familiar and yet which I had so quickly forgotten. The last of the fires were dying away and there was nothing new to burn and so the air once again smelled normal. Better than normal. In purging the city of so many buildings, the fires had left behind them a cleaner city; a city with less waste and less sewage. Perhaps the shortage in the city of every item that might support life also meant that there simply
was
less waste. No one would throw out the driest of bones or the most rotten of vegetables at a time when they did not know where their next meal would come from. The rats must have been having a hard time.

Personally, I preferred the traditional stenches of the city. Some slight alleviation would be pleasant, but not to this extent. The smells were the smells of life. The cleanliness was the cleanliness of an empty desert.

That night's rendezvous was in Tverskaya, at a tavern not far from the inn where we had stayed in Moscow in happier times. It wasn't clear to me whether we were meant to meet inside or outside. Inside is clearly the obvious place when meeting at an inn, but the risk was that it would be swarming with French soldiers looking for any place where they might relax. When I arrived I saw that the issue was beyond debate. There was no inside and no outside, because there was no tavern. It, along with every other building in the block, had burnt to the ground.

I stood and waited on the other side of the street, which was less damaged, leaning against the wall and scanning the wreckage of buildings opposite. I was suddenly hit by how tired I was. It had been before nightfall the previous day that I had last slept, deep in the crypt of that church in Zamoskvorechye. My eyelids began to droop. I tried holding them half open, then closing just one, then the other, then I decided to allow myself a few seconds' rest by closing them both.

I awoke with a jerk. I didn't know how long I had been asleep, but I was still on my feet, so I doubted it could have been more than a few seconds. Something was moving in the dark, charred shadows opposite me. As I looked, the movement stopped.

'Vadim,' I hissed, more in hope than in expectation. There was no reply. It was only Vadim that I was hoping to see, but I was well aware that my appointment was with the Oprichniki as well. It was a risk that I had to take, but I suddenly realized how foolish I was being. I had killed four of them now. How was I to know that none of the others had been silently watching as I acted? Even if they didn't have the evidence of their own eyes, they could easily become suspicious. And I knew all too well how they had taken their revenge on Maks for his offences against them.

There was movement amongst the rubble again, this time to the right; I only caught it with the corner of my eye. I pressed myself back against the wall, but I knew I could still be clearly seen. I had been a fool to come. There were still five vampires abroad in the city with good reason to pick upon me as their prey. Even if I hid away in the deepest crypt they would eventually find me, but I had made it easy for them and kept our appointment. Perhaps I had hoped that they would give enough credit to my guile that they would assume I wouldn't show up. But had I been in their shoes, I would have gone even for a long shot like that.

I saw a glint of light, a reflection from an Oprichnik's eye, and then heard a movement from further down the street. My hand reached to my chest and I felt the comforting hardness of the icon of the Saviour. I offered Him a silent prayer. It would have surprised Him; He had not heard from me for many years, but I had been brought up to believe that He wasn't one to hold a petty grudge. I edged down the wall towards the end of the street, hoping that they hadn't posted a guard there, but knowing that even if I ran, they would quickly catch up with me. They might toy with me. Let me flee tonight only to strike some other evening. Nowhere would be safe in a city that was now theirs to plunder – a city I had brought them to.

Suddenly, there was a squeal, and the sound of falling rubble. I looked and saw a cat bounding from the ruined tavern and into the street. It turned and stood its ground as another cat leapt at it in pursuit. Both were scrawny, but the first had some morsel of food in its mouth. The second wanted it.

I fled. I had gone fifty paces before it became clear to me that those cats were all that I had seen and heard amongst the charcoal, but I didn't stop running. Just because the Oprichniki weren't there now, they might be there later. If Vadim showed up, then that was his look-out. He was smart enough not to, anyway – smarter than me. I ran back to the shantytown where I had left Dmitry with Natalia and her father. I was calmer than I had been, but terror still pervaded my body; a terror that should have struck me when I first saw Matfei's teeth at that soldier's throat, but which now took hold of me with a vengeance. Dmitry still occupied what served as the only bed. Natalia and Boris lay sleeping on the muddy floor, wrapped in each other's arms for warmth and comfort. There was an empty strip of earth between them and Dmitry. I lay there, but sleep did not come to me quickly. When it did, it was a welcome oblivion.

I awoke late the following morning, and by then I had decided on the course that Dmitry and I must take.

I smelled tea. I sat up and immediately found Natalia's hand offering me a cup. I took it and drank gratefully. Her father still sat in his usual place, quietly sipping his.

'Good morning, Aleksei Ivanovich.' It was Dmitry speaking. He was sat up on his makeshift bed, also drinking tea and with a half-eaten apple in his hand.

'How do you feel?' I asked. He looked at his blistered hands and arms. I noticed that while the palm of his left hand, in which he held the tea, was normal, his right was red raw, burnt as badly as the rest of his arm. He could hold the apple only by the extreme tips of his fingers and I could see it would be many weeks before he would be able to hold a sword again. He put down his tea and held his left hand to the right side of his face. Without even touching, he could sense in the heat from his hand that he was burnt there too. He looked at his blistered hand again.

'Does my face look the same?' he asked.

'It's not quite as bad,' I told him. 'Once your beard grows back, it will hardly show.' That was, of course, if his beard could grow back.

'What happened?'

'We were in the cellar. We were caught in the fire.'

'The cellar where . . .'

'The cellar where we were sleeping,' I interrupted firmly, not wanting Natalia or her father to know any more than they had to. Dmitry nodded, understanding.

Boris seemed to understand too. 'I think we have things to do,' he said to his daughter. She looked at him in surprise, then realized what he meant. They both rose and went out of the cubicle.

'I remember being trapped in the cellar,' said Dmitry. 'You dragged me out. Iuda and Ioann were in there. Did they . . . ?'

I shook my head. 'They didn't wake up,' I lied. 'The coffins were too heavy to move. We barely made it out.'

Dmitry nodded contemplatively. If he had worked out that it was I who had locked him in the cellar in the first place, he showed no signs of mentioning it, but then again, there was plenty he had been keeping from me recently. 'How long ago was that?' he asked.

'Only a day ago.'

'Did you try to meet with them last night?'

I nodded, remembering my terror. 'None of them showed. Nor did Vadim.'

'I'm not sure they'd have been in the best of moods if you had met them.' I felt the urge to laugh, but resisted. I didn't want to have to explain my fears to Dmitry.

'I think we should leave Moscow,' I announced. It was pure cowardice, but I knew that Moscow now contained too many threats for me to have any desire to stay there. And, of course, Dmitry needed time to recover. Dmitry did not answer. 'You're in no state to do anything,' I explained, to my conscience as much as to him. 'The Oprichniki can handle things fine by themselves. And if they're not happy with our spying on them, then this isn't a safe city for us to be in.'

'They wouldn't harm us, Aleksei. They might be angry but, well – you were angry with me, and I only got a few bruises for it.'

I said nothing. Dmitry was probably right, assuming that they knew only as much of what I had been up to as he knew – and until they had no more use for us.

'What about Vadim?' asked Dmitry.

'I'll try to find him tonight. If not I'll leave a message.' Dmitry looked doubtful. 'He can look after himself,' I assured him.

'How are we going to get out?'

I'd thought about this. 'Do you have any left of the gold that Vadim gave us?' I asked.

Dmitry put his hand inside his coat and then withdrew it, remembering that his burns made him unable to manipulate anything. 'Could you?' he asked. 'It's in a money belt.'

I pulled up his shirt and undid the belt. It felt heavy. 'I didn't have cause to spend much,' he explained, then the obvious question occurred to him. 'Anyway, where's yours?'

'I stashed mine,' I said. 'I'm off to get it now.'

I made my way past the dozens of similar compartments that made up the settlement. At the perimeter, I found Boris and Natalia waiting, quietly. Although it would have been quite easy for them to hang around and eavesdrop on our conversation, they had not, as I had trusted they wouldn't.

'I'll be back this evening,' I told them. 'Look after Dmitry for me.'

My first port of call was the crypt where I had been sleeping earlier in the week. There I had left my few possessions and my share of the gold. None of it had been disturbed. It was risky to carry my sword with me through the occupied city, but even more so to travel outside the city without it. I ripped off a strip of cloth from my shirt and made a sling which I could use to hang it from my shoulder under my coat. It would not fool any French guards who chose to search me, but it would at least pass a visual inspection.

My next task, which I thought would be my hardest, was to find transport out of Moscow. The sight of even a few pieces of gold seemed to bring forth resources that I would never have dreamed existed in the city. I picked up food, tea and vodka and, eventually, having been passed from one entrepreneur to the next, found a man who said he could provide a wagon and horse for me. The price was high, but the down payment was relatively small, so I had some confidence that he would fulfil his side of the deal. We arranged to meet just east of the city, on the Vladimir road at dawn the following day.

Now I travelled round the city to all seven of our daily meeting points. At each I left the same message:

9 was Yuryev-Polsky. It was an overly precise message to say that Dmitry and I would be there at midday in three days' time, but it was all that could be expressed within the confines of our code. It should at least, I hoped, give Vadim the idea that we had left Moscow. Yuryev-Polsky was far enough away that we would not just be nipping over there for a twelve o'clock meeting.