Twelve (45 page)

The other soldier had raised his musket, but had been hesitant to fire while he might hit his comrade. Now he fired, but it was too late. Iuda was on the move again, keeping low and changing direction again and again. I set off in pursuit. The remaining guard did likewise, some paces behind me. The rest of the camp, consumed by their preparations for departure, did not at first notice what was happening, but soon our shouts alerted them to the fugitive. Those who threw themselves in Iuda's way offered little impediment to him. He was far more brutal and effective with his knife than any vampire could have been with its teeth. Some men tackled him with swords and bayonets, but he showed no fear, and though some of the blades hit their mark, he seemed to show little discomfort either. None of the wounds was deep enough to cause serious injury, and while posing as a vampire he had clearly learned to control his pain – along with so many other feelings – lest his humanity should be discovered.

We were now beyond the edge of the camp, almost at woodland in which Iuda could easily hide himself. The guard who had been pursuing a little way behind, younger and fitter than I was, had now caught up and overtaken me. Having discharged his musket, he had found no time to reload, and so now had only his bayonet as a weapon. He was within striking distance of Iuda when Iuda stopped and turned. The soldier had no time to stop himself. He had not been aiming his bayonet and so it glided harmlessly past Iuda's side. As he turned, Iuda brought forward his hand and the soldier ran straight on to Iuda's knife. It penetrated just below his breastbone, embedding itself deep behind his ribcage. With the force of the blow, the soldier was lifted off his feet, his back arched in agony and his limbs splayed out limply as life began to retreat from them. With a jerk of his arm, Iuda threw the man off his knife and I heard the tearing, rasping sound of its teeth making the wound even greater on exit than it had been on entry.

Iuda turned and continued to run, but I was already upon him. I launched myself towards him and grabbed him around the waist. We both fell to the ground and my face was filled with snow, blinding me. I knelt up and wiped the snow from my eyes, just in time to see Iuda's hand scything towards me, the toothed blades presented, not to stab but to slash. I flung myself backwards, flicking my head away from him. As I fell, I felt a searing pain in my left cheek where the blades connected. I fell to my back, breathing deeply, and noticed as I breathed that air was coming in through my wounded cheek as well as through my mouth.

I pushed myself up in preparation to avoid Iuda's next blow, but it did not come. A shot rang out from behind me, hitting Iuda in the arm. He turned and fled into the woods, leaving me to live with the misery that he had created for me.

T
HE WOUND TO MY CHEEK WAS NOT AS SERIOUS AS I HAD FIRST
thought. The cold weather became a brief friend as it numbed my face while the surgeon closed it up with a suture. I went back to Lieutenant-Colonel Chernyshev to tell him what had happened.

'Escaped?' he thundered.

'I'm afraid so, sir,' I replied.

'I'll have those guards flogged.'

'It's too late for that, sir.'

He glanced up at my face and understood. 'I see,' he said. 'Well, it's only one man, I suppose. All a bit of a waste of time, though.'

'Bonaparte's move south is a ruse, sir. The prisoner told me. The real crossing is to the north, at Studienka.'

'That's something at least. So you'll soon be joining us in action there then?'

'No, sir. I'd like to pursue the prisoner.'

'Is he worth it – just one man?'

'I believe so,' I said.

'Well, I suppose you people know your job. I can't lend you any men.'

'I don't ask for any, sir. Just a French uniform, if you have one.'

'We have dozens. Lieutenant Mironov, see that he gets what he needs.'

Mironov provided a dragoon uniform and a horse and some provisions, and I was soon heading out of what remained of the breaking camp. At first, I had to make my way alongside the advancing Russian troops (fortunately, I had not yet changed into my new uniform), but soon I headed off to the north of their path and the sound of marching faded behind me.

The only trail that Iuda had left was that he had planned to cross the Berezina with Bonaparte at Studienka. It was quite possible that this had been a lie, or that he would now change his mind, but my only option was still to try to intercept him there. I had not had time to properly consider what Iuda had said to me, but now as I rode through the quiet, frozen woods, I began to think.

The less painful matter to deal with was that Iuda was not a vampire. I had already concluded that this made little difference to my opinion of him. If a man chooses to become a vampire so that he may behave like a monster or if he finds himself quite able to behave like a monster anyway, he is still a monster and still happy so to be. Iuda remained a danger to all those he came into contact with. One question that had to be asked was whether any of the other Oprichniki was also not a vampire. Iuda had implied that they all were, but was Iuda to be trusted? The evidence of my own eyes convinced me of most of them – after their deaths I had witnessed their immediate bodily decay. I had not seen what became of Ioann or Filipp once they had perished. The deaths of Simon, Iakov Alfeyinich and Faddei had, if Maks was to be believed, been caused by sunlight. I felt confident that all eleven had indeed been vampires. If not, what was I to care? Just as it did not fundamentally matter with Iuda, neither did it with any of the others.

But what of Domnikiia? The idea of being tricked – of being betrayed – by her of all people was the true nightmare from which I saw no prospect of awakening. When she teased me it revealed her wit and her spirit, but to play games with me like this over such issues showed in her what almost amounted to insanity. 'I'm not surprised Iuda found it so easy to fool you.' Those had been her words. She and Iuda both delighted in playing me for the fool, and I had so far been gullibly eager to oblige them. But I also remembered what Maksim had once said, about the best place to hide a tree being in a forest, the best place to hide a lie being amongst the truth. Why had Iuda allowed himself to be captured?

To speak to me. What was it that he wanted to tell me? Not about Bonaparte's plans. Not about his views on chess. Not even to tell me he wasn't a vampire. It was to put the thought into my head that Domnikiia had chosen to become a vampire. Amongst that forest of truth, that was the single fact that he had wanted to convey. It was not even a fact – it was a piece of information that might be true and might not be. The truth could never be known and so the doubt would haunt me for ever.

Iuda's game, either through planning or through extemporization, had unfolded layer by layer in front of me, like a journey up a mountain when every false peak, once conquered, reveals another higher peak behind it. First I believed he had turned Domnikiia into a vampire. Then I discovered that, even so, I could not kill her. Then I discovered that she was not a vampire and that, had I killed her, it would have been as a mortal woman. This morning he had convinced me that she had all along wanted to be a vampire, even though he could not make her one. He could not go on forever pushing on one side of the scales and then the other and switching my view from one side to the next, but now he did not need to. He had found a perfect balance point. I could never know the truth and so, whatever I chose to do, I would spend half my life regretting. If I abandoned Domnikiia, then I would worry that I had done her wrong, that I had believed Iuda's final lie about her when she had behaved throughout in perfect innocence. If I stayed with her, I would be forever looking at her, wondering what happened between them that night in Moscow.

My perception was so battered by my constantly changing view of the truth – not just over Domnikiia, but over Maksim, over Dmitry, over the Oprichniki and over Iuda himself – that I was no longer able to find certainty in anything. Vadim's advice, I knew, would have been to go back to Petersburg, to go back to Marfa. She was someone in whom I had never had any doubt, nor had I any reason to. With her I would find a safe, content retreat. But then even Vadim's advice became ambiguous. How he would have despised any concept of retreat.

I was nearing the village of Studienka. I dismounted, tied up my horse and, despite the freezing cold, changed from the outer layers of my clothing into my French uniform. Skirting around the village, hidden by the woods, I made my way to a small hillock that overlooked the river itself. There I lay, concealed almost instantly beneath the falling snow, and observed the tattered remains of the Grande Armée.

Tattered and yet magnificent. There must have been fifty thousand before me; half of them soldiers, half non-combatants, all desperate to get across that river, to get out of Russia and to get home. Bonaparte's great campaign lay in ruins, the conquering ambition of every man transformed into self-preserving terror. None could have dreamed that the largest army ever assembled in the world would be reduced, in scarcely six months, to such a shambles. And yet it had happened, and I was thrilled to witness it.

But for an army slashed to less than a tenth of its former size, beset by the hellish cold of a foreign winter and caught between three Russian armies, each on its own the size of theirs, they had performed a remarkable feat. Two bridges had been built across the river. Even now I could see sappers and pontoniers up to their armpits in the icy water, strengthening and repairing the bridges as thousand upon thousands of men broke step to march across. Every building in the village had been torn down to provide timber. On the high ground on the far side of the river, the advance guard had already set up a defensive position. They were being engaged from the south. Tchitchagov, realizing his error, had travelled back north to the real crossing point. The French deployments already across the river were holding him off and allowing the remainder of the army to slip away to the west unmolested once they had crossed.

On the eastern bank, an innumerable multitude waited to cross along the two narrow, manmade isthmuses – not just soldiers, though of those there were many, but the entire entourage that any army requires to survive, particularly one so far from home. Men and women waited to cross the river, and those whose duties, however vital they might be, did not require them to carry a sword or a musket found themselves reckoned least in the pecking order. Cooks, washerwomen, smiths and armourers were among those who waited to cross and, even amongst them, an order of merit would be established. Would an army in hopeless, frozen retreat favour those who maintained its weapons or those who filled its belly?

My intention of spotting one man amongst the tens of thousands was not as futile as it could have been. Though it would be impossible to scan the crowds of weary-faced troops that milled and bustled on the riverbank, the bridges themselves were narrow and all had to cross by one or the other. Indeed, most crossed by the smaller bridge, the larger being used for guns, wagons and cavalry. When I had last seen him, Iuda had no horse. Whether he had acquired one by now, I could only guess.

Although, with the help of my spyglass, I could inspect the face of each man as he approached the bridge, I was so far away that Iuda would be across the river by the time I could get down to the bank. My only prospect was to get down there amongst the French.

However determined the French were in getting as many men across the river as possible, it was at the expense of every other feature of military discipline. I was not challenged for any password or credentials as I picked my way first through the crowds of casualties and camp followers who would be the last to cross the bridge, if at all, and secondly through the teeming infantry who waited impatiently for their turn to cross. I looked out of place; any idea of uniform had been abandoned by the majority of the Grande Armée, in favour of more practical clothes – any clothes – that might keep out the cold. Even so, nobody paid me any attention.

As I got close to the bridges themselves, I received a few angry shoves from those who thought I was trying to jump my turn, but it was easy to assure them that I was not planning to cross the bridge, but to guard it. I joined the exclusive band of truculent sentries who stood at the entrance to the smaller footbridge.

'What did you do to get posted here?' asked one.

Evidently, this thankless duty was assigned as a punishment, not an honour. 'I misheard an order,' I said.

'Lots of soldiers have been hard of hearing today,' he laughed. We said little more to one another. There was nothing to do but watch the lines of men as they jostled to get on to the bridge, giving them the occasional shove when they got too much out of shape. I inspected every face that went past, as well as trying to keep an eye on the mounted men that crossed by the other bridge, but there was no sign of Iuda. What I would do if I saw him, I was not sure. To kill him there and then – one French soldier killing another, apparently unprovoked – would mean almost certain and instant execution for me. Despite the fact that I had voluntarily walked into the midst of a desperate enemy, I was in no mood for suicide. Iuda's death was now a secondary issue to me. What I needed from him was certainty. If I was lucky, I would have the opportunity to see him die afterwards, but now I had to know, one way or the other, what had happened between him and Domnikiia.

I could think of no other way to determine it. I could ask Domnikiia herself, but I would not believe her answer; at least not if she denied it. I would believe her only if the answer she gave was the one I did not want to hear. I could find the man she claimed she had been with that night, but he would, for the sake of his reputation, instantly deny ever having heard of her. Iuda was the only other person who knew for sure. He had already told me that it had been Domnikiia, but he had previously allowed me to believe that it hadn't. I would go through hell – and this frozen exodus seemed to me a pretty close thing – to get a definitive answer from him.

That afternoon, I was bestowed with an unexpected privilege, if that is the correct word for it. For the first and only time in my life, I saw Bonaparte himself in the flesh. Accompanied by the once mighty Imperial Guard, he made his way across the larger bridge to the west bank of the river. He was not the man I had imagined him to be. My image of him was formed from engravings and paintings and stoked by his reputation. It was no surprise if today he was not at his best. He was both older and fatter than any picture I had seen of him. His nose was not hooked, as is often portrayed, but of normal size and with a slight, hardly noticeable bend. His hair was not black, but of a dark reddish-blond. I wondered if the images I had seen of his empress, Marie-Louise, were as inaccurate and whether Domnikiia in fact looked anything like her. Though he tried to ride upright and erect, he had a tendency to slouch in his saddle. His mouth held the grimace of a man in pain. Despite all this, his blue eyes still burnt with a fury. Was this the look of the intense desire for conquest that had brought the whole of Europe under his heel? Or was it the glazed shield of defiance of a man despairing at his humiliation?

For those tired remnants of the Grande Armée, it was still the former. A cheer – with which I instinctively joined in – went up as he passed by, even from those men still in the water, working to ensure that the bridges would hold up long enough to get not only their emperor, but every one of his subjects across to safety. For at least an hour after his crossing, there remained a stir in the atmosphere, an increase in conversation and a general feeling that all would survive and make it back home. Looking out across the mass of those still waiting to cross, however, I could see that the enthusiasm was not felt universally. But around me, the feelings were genuine. Only when he was long gone did some sense of reality return to the men with whom I stood.

'I'm surprised they're still bothering, now
he's
across,' said one, his eyes flicking back and forth between the men who continued unendingly to file past.

'He'll get us out,' said another.

'Why so sure?'

'Because it's another two hundred leagues to Warsaw. He needs us till then.'

'But do we need him?'

'Could you have got the bridges built?'

That night, to my astonishment, the horde that had been filing in unbroken procession across the bridges petered away to nothing. Tens of thousands still remained to cross, but they sat around huge campfires, roasting the flesh of fallen horses and waiting to recommence the crossing in the morning. With hindsight of the number that failed to make it across before the full Russian forces fell upon us, this was a ridiculous waste of time, but no one gave the order, and so no one crossed.