CHAPTER II

TWO HOURS LATER I HAD BEEN LYING ON HER BED, WATCHING her from behind as she sat at the dressing table, brushing her long dark hair. Her name was Dominique.

'So, why did you throw the snowball at me?'

'I didn't,' I replied with a self-assurance that I couldn't have expressed to her before. 'My friend did. I was trying to stop him. I wanted to apologize.'

'That was an odd way to apologize. You seemed to enjoy it. You must love confession.'

I went over to her and kissed her shoulder. 'It's good for the soul.'

She pushed me away with a polite, professional firmness. 'And why did you care if I got hit by a snowball?'

'I don't like winter.' It was a simple answer, but the truth went much deeper, back to the cracked ice of Lake Satschan and the winter of 1805.

'Can't be much fun living in Moscow then.'

'I don't live here; I'm from Petersburg. I'm just stationed here.'

'Soldier, eh? Where's your uniform?' she asked, not bothering to point out that Petersburg is even colder than Moscow.

I countered her question with another. 'Are you French?'

She laughed. 'Do I sound it?'

'Dominique is a very French name.'

'It's really Domnikiia. When I started out, everything French was so fashionable.' It could not have been many years since she 'started out'. She smiled thoughtfully. 'Less so now. And what's your name?' She saw my surprise. 'You don't have to tell.' But her look of childlike disappointment meant I did have to.

'Aleksei Ivanovich.'

'Lyosha.'

'Some people call me that.' No one called me that any more. It was a common enough nickname for an Aleksei, but it had never seemed to suit me since I'd joined the army.

I paid and left. I used to pretend that I really had gone because I felt the need to apologize. I'd certainly felt guilty afterwards, but not so guilty that I hadn't visited her again during that winter, perhaps three or four times before we were posted out west once more in March. On many other days I had felt the desire to visit her, but had resisted, instead wandering along nearby streets, teasing myself with how close I could get without going in.

Now, in August of 1812, I was doing the same thing again. All through the retreat, from Poland, through Lithuania and through Russia, I'd known that going back to Moscow meant going back to Domnikiia.

And here I was. I'd wandered the streets and I'd sat on the bench and now was my chance to leave.

I went in.

The lounge was as I remembered it. The front door had only just been unbolted and I was the first customer of the day. Half a dozen girls were scattered about, trying to look provocative. Domnikiia stood with her back to me, talking to a colleague whilst once again brushing her long, dark brown hair. I slipped my arms around her waist and whispered in her ear, 'Remember me?'

She turned round. It was not Domnikiia. Whoever she was, she tried to remember me from the dozens upon dozens of faces that must have passed before hers. She saw from my expression that I'd made a mistake and became torn between her feminine instinct to slap me and her professional instinct to offer encouragement.

'No, but I'm sure I will,' she replied, the professional side winning out as she put her arms around my neck.

I pulled away from her. I tried to say something about being terribly sorry, but under the circumstances, it was quite out of place. My eyes darted around the room for help. They fell upon the real Domnikiia, who was descending the stairs.

'Aleksei Ivanovich!' She greeted me with more convincing enthusiasm than I've heard from many a hostess at many a Petersburg party. But it was, I supposed, just a skill she had acquired, much like the ability to remember my name after so many months.

She came closer and whispered in my ear, 'Lyosha. Have I grown so old since last time, that you cast me aside for Margarita Kirillovna? I like my soldiers to have experience rather than youth; but most soldiers see it the other way round.'

'I'm sorry, Margarita Kirillovna,' I said to the girl whose back looked so like Domnikiia's. 'I mistook you.' I felt Domnikiia's hand leading me away and up the stairs and I gladly went with her.

Her room was little changed of itself – the same bed and the same dressing table – but summer made all the difference. The windows were open to let in the air and the shutters were closed to keep out the sun.

'You can have Margarita if you want,' said Domnikiia. 'She's new, but very popular.'

'I'm sure any custom she gets is only because people mistake her for you,' I told her.

'You don't have to flatter me, you know.'

 

Afterwards, she seemed less rushed than on previous occasions. She peeped out the door as I began to dress.

'No hurry,' she said. 'The salon's empty. The army's out of town and the civilians are too scared to do . . . much. Why are you in town anyway, my non-uniformed officer?'

I avoided the question. 'You have a very good memory.'

'What? Because I remember your name and your nickname and that you're a soldier and that you don't wear a uniform and that you think you know I'm really Domnikiia not Dominique? I just give you what you want.' She smirked. 'You guys don't want to be fucked, you want to be noticed.'

'Think I know? So you're not Domnikiia?'

'I might not be,' she replied with the same confidence. Then her tone relented as she put her arms round my neck. 'But I am.' After a pause, she continued. 'Trade for Dominique is picking up though.'

'How do you mean?'

'When I started out, everyone wanted anything that was French, so everyone wanted Dominique. But over the past year nobody likes the French, so nobody wants Dominique.'

I had to smile. 'These politicians just don't think about the effect they have on commerce, do they?'

'Exactly. Next time you see the tsar, you tell him. But nowadays everyone wants to screw the French, so everyone wants to screw Dominique.'

I laughed. 'And who did I just screw? Dominique or Domnikiia?'

She giggled. 'I still reckon you wanted it to be Margarita.'

She paused. 'I don't know. What about you? Was it Aleksei or Lyosha?' I gave no answer and she changed the subject. 'So what's the news from the front?'

I was astonished at her impudence. 'I can't tell you that.'

'Oh come on. No one would know anything if it wasn't for loose-tongued soldiers in brothels. It's tit for tat. You tell me and I'll tell you.'

'And what are you going to tell me? You said yourself there are no soldiers in town.'

'There are other people with tales to tell.'

I guessed she was bluffing, but it did no harm to reveal what she could find out elsewhere. I told her about the defeats at Vilna and Vitebsk and Smolensk, told her the official line that the French would be stopped before Moscow, not much more.

'So, what have you got to tell me?' I asked.

'Oh, nothing.'

'Tell me!' I said, rolling her on to her back.

'You going to interrogate me?'

Looking down at the tantalizing smile on her lips, it was a tempting suggestion, but the very idea brought back memories I fought to suppress. I tickled her. She giggled uncontrollably. Evidently she was very ticklish, but then, of course, that's what I would like her to be. She was, in her own way, a Potemkin village – a façade behind which I might only find disappointment if I ventured to look.

'All right! All right, Lyosha,' she exclaimed through her laughter, 'I'll tell you.' She took a moment to get her breath back. 'The only interesting things I've heard are from Tula.'

'So what's going on in Tula? Something at the munitions works?' I asked. Tula was of immeasurable importance to the war. Without that city, our supplies of ordnance and ammunition would quickly dry to almost nothing.

'Not in Tula,' replied Domnikiia. 'From Tula. There's stories of some sort of plague. Thirty dead in Rostov. Fifteen in Pavlovsk.'

Plagues were always exaggerated. When I was young, my grandmother used to tell me old folk stories about plagues, and I'd quickly chosen to be as sceptical of them as I was of the other, less earthly tales that she told. But as I'd grown older, I'd come to put more faith in my grandmother's word, on this issue at least. The last big plague to hit Moscow had been in 1771, not long before I'd been born, and a vivid memory for my grandparents and my parents, even from the safe vantage point of Petersburg. In total, a third of the people of the Moscow oblast had died. As far as I could tell, that figure was no exaggeration, though others that I had heard were. When I witnessed the plague for myself, whilst fighting south of the Danube, the mixture of rumour and fact was much the same. This new story of plague would have more than a seed of truth in it. Both towns mentioned by Domnikiia were on the river Don, one of the great arteries that run between central Russia and the Black Sea, and it wasn't unusual for disease to be carried up the river by boat. The numbers seemed unusually concentrated – but that was probably part of the process of news becoming rumour.

'I hope it doesn't come to Moscow. The plague, I mean,' said Domnikiia.

'Maybe it will reach us at about the same time as the French do. Save us the trouble of killing them.'

'Is that going to happen?' She huddled closer to me, her voice calling for a reassuring answer.

'No, Domnikiia,' I lied. 'Neither Bonaparte nor the plague will ever get as far as Moscow.' But I'd seen for myself how fast both the French and the plague could travel. And what eventually did arrive proved to be more terrible than either.

 

When I returned to my room, there was a parcel waiting for me. It was from my wife. Most of the news in the accompanying letter was long out of date, but with it in the parcel was a small oval icon of Christ, on a silver chain. In her letter, Marfa explained she had heard stories that Bonaparte was the antichrist, and she asked me to wear the icon to protect myself. I felt a shiver of guilt. So far I had needed no protection from French bullets, but I had not found myself protected from temptation. I kissed the image out of habit and then put the chain round my neck, perhaps with the hope of it leading me away from any further encounters with Domnikiia, perhaps with the intent of assuaging my guilt afterwards.

Most of the letter contained nothing of especial interest, just general news from Petersburg. Vadim's daughter, Yelena, was still healthily pregnant. Everyone we knew was well, but all were worried about the war and wanted my opinion on what would happen.

The part of the letter that I read again and again was about our son, Dmitry. It was nothing special, just a mother's detailed description of how he was behaving. He would be six in a few months' time and I'd probably spent less than a third of his life in his company. It was the same for so many children of soldiers. I was pleased to read that he was often asking when I would return; pleased that he even remembered I existed.

We'd named him Dmitry after Dmitry Fetyukovich. Seven years ago, Dmitry Fetyukovich had not been the tough cynic I knew today. Fighting the Turks had changed him somehow, but I had never learned precisely what had happened to him. He never learned precisely what happened to me either; no one did, not even Marfa.

I'd first met Dmitry in the June of 1805. He was passionate, radical and optimistic, as so many young, educated Russians were at the time, having heard of the freedoms that men enjoyed in the west. Despite the tsar's vocal support for the new coalition against Bonaparte, our troops were slow to move into action. Dmitry and I had both volunteered for reconnaissance work, and we spent many hours together watching and assessing enemy movements, but still our forces did not engage the French head on. England – thanks to Nelson – fought better at sea than on land and so, throughout that autumn, Austria was left alone to face the French advance, with little success. The farcical capture of tens of thousands of Austrian troops at Ulm was the pinnacle of their ineptitude. We Russians were to first see action that winter at Austerlitz; a battle of over 150,000 men.

But Austerlitz itself was not to be our first battle. The night before, Vadim called us together. It was our most dangerous mission to date. Vadim led us deep behind French lines, so that we could get last-minute reconnaissance of their positions. We were spotted and attacked – perhaps fifteen French against only us four.

It should have been a thrashing, but we were all strong fighters with the sword. The four of us had stood side by side, slashing and thrusting at our French attackers, who had become so pampered by the superiority of their rifles that they had forgotten how a sabre should be used. I had already despatched two when a blow from the butt of a third sword had knocked me to the ground. I saw a French sabre raised above me, poised to give a final, fatal strike when Dmitry threw himself in the way. The blade bounced off his raised arm and sliced open his right cheek. I felt his blood splatter on my face, but the wound did not hamper him. He slashed the French soldier across his belly and then struck a mortal blow to his neck. By then, I was back on my feet.

I know that at other times in other battles I have had my life saved by my comrades, and I'm sure that I have saved theirs; in the heat of battle, one does not have time to stop and notice. But on this occasion I did, and Dmitry's brave action forever held a special importance for me.

Faced with me, Vadim and Dmitry – still ferocious despite his wounds – the surviving French soon retreated. It was only then that we realized they had taken Maksim with them as their prisoner. We hoped he was a prisoner; there was certainly no body that we could see. Maksim's capture lay heavily on Vadim's conscience in particular. He had only been eighteen at the time and Vadim felt responsible for taking an inexperienced boy on such a mission, but we had little time to indulge in the luxury of regret.

The following day had come the Battle of Austerlitz itself – a humiliation for Austria and Russia, but perhaps Bonaparte's greatest triumph. The three of us – Dmitry, Vadim and I – were under the command, ultimately, of General Booksgevden. We were part of the force which was to take the village of Telnitz and from there, turn right to encircle Bonaparte's flank. The capture of the village was straightforward enough, but it soon became clear that we risked being encircled, not encircling. All we could do was stay there and await further orders. Elsewhere on the field, the battle had been going just as badly. The light frost and snow – which we Russians, if not our Austrian allies, should have been familiar with – was giving Bonaparte further advantage. Perhaps the frost was not heavy enough and the snow not deep enough for what Russians are used to.

It had been well into the afternoon before we at last received orders to retreat. The land behind us was a mass of bogs and lakes, but at least the cold had caused them to freeze over. I had long become separated from Vadim and Dmitry and had abandoned my horse and was, with hundreds of others, halfway across the frozen Lake Satschan when the first of the French 'hot shot' landed – cannonballs heated before they were fired so that they would melt the ice when they hit. All around me, men were falling off the ice into the freezing water. Beneath my feet, through the ice, I saw bodies floating past; even living men, their numb hands searching the glassy sheets above them for a way to the surface. I tried to pull those that I could back on to the broken ice sheets, but it was not easy. Eventually, I myself fell in and only just managed to grab hold of a chunk of the floating icepack and then haul myself back on to it. Then I had possessed all of my fingers. Today, I do not know whether I would be able to achieve a similar feat.

Fear took me. I gave up any attempt to help my fellow troops out of the water and concentrated on the sole task of getting myself to the other side of the lake. I sprang from one block of floating ice to another, the constant motion being somehow more steady than my earlier slow caution. If there were other men precariously balanced on those same ice blocks, I did not notice them; my one intent was to get myself across the lake and on to solid ground. I succeeded, but looked back to see the scene of horror from which I had so recently escaped: men tottering off the unsteady ice into the water, and then attempting to swim to shore, past the drowned, freezing corpses of their comrades. It was a winter scene that was to make me abhor winter ever after.

It was two days after the battle when I discovered that Vadim and Dmitry had both safely escaped Telnitz, just as I had. On the same day, the Austrians sued Bonaparte for peace. It was one and a half years later that Russia made her peace with France – albeit a temporary and entirely strategic peace. The two emperors met on a raft on the river Niemen at Tilsit, close to the Russian border, and Tsar Aleksandr managed to fool Bonaparte into thinking that Russia would lie down for good and let France rule the entire continent.

After the peace, the final rounds of formal prisoner exchanges took place and Maks returned with a smile on his face. He had been unlucky not to be released months earlier, but the French were within the bounds of custom to hold a few prisoners until a final peace was reached. Maks did not appear to hold it against them. The wound on Dmitry's cheek healed to a heavy scar, which he hid by growing a beard. Soon after Austerlitz, I had returned to Petersburg and married my sweetheart, Marfa.

I had known her almost as long as I could remember. Her father and mine were both chinovniks, government officials, at the Collegium of Manufacturing. Hers had attained the rank of Titular Counsellor, whilst mine was a Collegiate Secretary, one rung lower on the bureaucratic ladder. Both had passed the grade that endowed them with personal nobility and they happily styled one another 'Your Nobleness', as did anyone else who encountered them. But neither had achieved that greater honour of hereditary nobility, and so their children would have to attain their own nobility by dint of their own achievement; I through endeavour, Marfa through marriage.

And yet the idea that it would be Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov that she married did not seem to have occurred to anyone, least of all to me. It was very suddenly, only a few days before my mobilization to Austria, that it occurred to me how beautiful she was. This was not the commonly accepted view, but as we stood there, at a party in her parents' house, talking, I suddenly saw her in a different light. I couldn't say what the cause of it was, but I asked her to marry me there and then. Later she told me that she had loved me for years and that on that day, she and her mother had spent hours styling her hair and putting on her make-up, hoping to catch me. I never resented it – I was flattered – and never regretted it. When our only son was born less than ten months after we married, it was Marfa who suggested we name him Dmitry, after the man who had saved my life.

Over the next few years the four of us met up often, but we hadn't fought together for a long time. Dmitry and I both battled the Turk on the Danube (where it was warm), though not side by side. Vadim was in Finland (where it was cold). I was never sure exactly what Maks did.

By 1812, we had all been preparing to fight Bonaparte once again. I'd earned the hereditary right to be titled 'Your High Nobleness', but I much preferred the military address of 'Captain'. I'd been stationed in the west of Russia as part of the First Army, under General Barclay de Tolly, along the border of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. To my delight, both Dmitry and Maks were there too. Bonaparte chose to interpret our presence as a threat of attack, and so poured troops into the Duchy. Aleksandr had demanded that Bonaparte withdraw his troops to behind the Rhine. He had little expectation of French compliance and none materialized.

On 12 June Bonaparte crossed the Niemen. In his doing so, the Rubicon was crossed also – French troops were now on Russian soil and Aleksandr vowed not even to communicate with Bonaparte until they departed. But departure was not part of Bonaparte's strategy; not then, at least. Four days later he was in Vilna, and in the days and weeks that followed, town after town on the long road to Moscow fell under his power.

After he had taken Vilna, there was a general fear that he might prove unstoppable, and so all sorts of irregular plans were formed for ways to defeat him. Vadim volunteered himself and the rest of us, and so the old team was re-formed, though we didn't do much until after our defeat at Smolensk. Then Barclay de Tolly called us, and a number of similar small groups, to him. He knew that he was soon to be replaced as commander-in-chief by General Kutuzov and that Kutuzov would make a stand somewhere before the French reached Moscow. Barclay explained what his plan had been – very different from Kutuzov's, but one which time would demonstrate to have been appropriate. The men's physical appearance was as distinct as their tactics. Barclay was sixteen years younger than Kutuzov, but that alone could not justify the difference in their physical shape. His body was lean and his eyes and smile revealed his wisdom but hid his cunning. His bald head gave an impression of maturity. Normally, his manner of speech was clear and direct, but today, the way he described his plan seemed almost to mock Kutuzov's own euphuistic style.

'Have you ever seen children playing on a beach?' Barclay had asked us. His accent betrayed nothing of his Scottish ancestry, but hinted at his German-speaking upbringing. 'They can face the tallest wave without fear; even a wave ten times their height. How? They just walk up the beach. They retreat at the same rate that the wave advances. With every step they take, the wave follows them and becomes weaker. If they stand their ground they will find the wave is far too powerful for them and will drown them. But as they calmly walk up the beach the wave gets weaker and smaller until it can barely tickle their toes. France is a great wave, gentlemen, but Russia is a very big beach.

'The plan then has been that we do nothing. The French will find that they have enough troubles simply feeding themselves, without us sacrificing Russian lives in an attempt to see them off. But General Kutuzov tells me that if doing nothing is a good plan then doing something must be a better one. He intends to face Bonaparte head on, somewhere before Moscow – as yet, we don't know where. Your part is to ensure that whenever and wherever that encounter occurs, the French are already weakened. Get behind their lines. Disrupt their supplies. Force them to watch their backs. Make that beach seem even bigger than it really is.'

His words had made sense, and fitted perfectly with the sort of work that we knew was our speciality. Straight away, the four of us had ridden back to Moscow. It occurred to me that Dmitry must have sent for these friends of his even before that meeting with General Barclay. He seemed confident that they would arrive.

I folded Marfa's letter and put it into a drawer. I looked once more at the icon she had sent me. The Saviour's kind eyes showed no condemnation for the time I had spent with Domnikiia. Before leaving, I looked at myself in the mirror. My own eyes were not so kind.

 

Over that week, I spent much of my time chatting with Maks, as well as the others. Nowadays, Maks reminded me of Dmitry when I had first known him; full of ideas, full of humour. Dmitry still had humour, but it was mostly directed at other people's ideas. Dmitry was only a little older than me, but he gave the impression of having examined every idea that had ever been; and concluded that they were all rubbish.

For some reason, the subject of Bonaparte's baby son, the so-called 'King of Rome', had come up.

'I don't see why he needs a son. Politically, I mean,' Vadim was expounding. 'He had a wife that he loved, but he puts her aside for this Marie-Louise, whom they say he doesn't, just so he can have a son and heir.'

I couldn't help hearing in Vadim's words some parallel with my own life. I had a child whom I loved and a wife whom I should, and off I went with a whore who, as it happened, looked like Marie-Louise. I was sure that the idea was far from Vadim's mind but, as one does in such situations, I entered the conversation with gusto before anyone could discern my guilt.

'It's a two-edged sword,' I said. 'He may have established a dynasty, but what's good for the dynasty isn't the same as what's good for the dynast. France's future is now assured even if Bonaparte dies, so France has less need to protect Bonaparte. Look what happened to our own tsar's father.'

'But he was mad,' put in Vadim.

'When the English have a mad king,' said Maks, 'they appoint a regent. When we have a mad king, we throttle him in his own bedroom.'

'Maks!' cautioned Vadim with a growl. No one knew quite what had happened to Tsar Pavel, but it was still best not to repeat even the most widespread of rumours.

'It just shows how useless the king of England is,' said Dmitry.

'But that's their strength,' continued Maks. 'Who have been the great Englishmen that have stood against Napoleon? Pitt?

Nelson? Both dead. And yet England marches on. But if Napoleon died, would France march on? That's why Napoleon has to found a dynasty, until France is strong enough for the emperor to be as insignificant as an English king.'

'Or a Russian tsar?' I asked, before anyone else could. From Vadim it would have sounded like an accusation of treason; from Dmitry, an incitement to it.

'By the by, have you heard about these deaths in the south?' asked Maks, changing the subject abruptly. 'All along the Don, as far north as Voronezh. They thought it was plague, but now the stories are changing.'

There was little in Maks' account that I hadn't heard before, but I wondered where he might have picked up the rumours. It didn't take me long to find out.

 

Later that same day, I went to visit Domnikiia. As I was entering the establishment, I bumped into Maks, just leaving. He was embarrassed.

'Maksim Sergeivich!' I said. 'I am surprised. I thought this sort of thing didn't interest you.'

'It doesn't,' he replied discreetly, 'any more than eating or breathing interests me. But these things still have to be done.'

He smiled as we both realized that I, as a married man, should be more embarrassed than he. There wasn't any mockery in his expression, just an understanding of the irony. 'I can see why you like Dominique so much. Please don't tell Vadim and Dmitry.'

He walked away. If anyone else had said that about Dominique, their words would have been full of double meaning – of challenge and rivalry – but from Maks, they had only their face value. He said them just as he might have said, 'I can see why you like vodka so much.' There's enough vodka to go round, so who could be jealous about having to share? But for me, the words were devastating. My only consolation, and it was a desperate one, was that he called her Dominique, not Domnikiia.

I had to wait for Domnikiia, arriving as I did so soon after her previous client. I could have gone with one of the other girls, to show how little I cared. The problem was that I did care.

I must have been very cold. We lay side by side, not in the usual quiet embrace that followed our love-making.

'Are you all right, Lyosha?' she asked.

'Please don't sleep with Maks.'

It was a simple enough request, but her reaction was livid. She leapt out of bed and stormed across the room. Her anger was incomprehensible to me. 'Who the hell are you to ask me that, Aleksei? I'm not a serf. You don't own me – you rent me. You pay me for an hour, you get me for an hour. I'm yours. Whatever you want – I do it. You pay me for twenty-three hours, I do it for twenty-three – but that one hour a day is still mine and I'll sleep with Bonaparte himself, if he pays.'

She paused for a moment, lost in her anger. 'I don't say to you it's OK to kill Frenchmen, but please, Aleksei, don't kill this particular Frenchman or that particular Frenchman, or kill the French, but leave the Turks alone. It's a job. If you choose to do the job then you don't get to pick out the bits you like most.' She sat down and became a little calmer. 'You'd better go now; I've got clients to see.'

'Can I see you tomorrow?'

'It's my job; I can't stop you,' she said curtly. Then she smiled at the irony. 'Weren't you listening just now?'

I left the building elated. I'd made her angry. In every conversation we'd ever had, she had kept her composure – what she said could be genuine, or it could be merely what I wanted to hear.

We'd both known it, and that was part of the fun. But now, somehow, I'd got to her. She'd revealed some small, real part of herself, and what a powerful, eloquent self she had revealed.

Having said that, there was still one small matter to attend to.

 

'Please don't sleep with Dominique,' I asked that evening when Maks and I were walking alone. 'There are plenty of other girls there to choose from.'

Maks seemed briefly surprised, but didn't take issue with me. 'OK.' He thought for a moment, feeling that more needed to be said. 'She's very nice, but then I'm sure they all are.'

We walked a little further until Maks filled the silence with, 'We talk about you, you know.'

'We?'

'Dominique and I,' he replied.

He told me, I think, to be kind – to flatter me – but all it did was bring to my mind the most bizarre and unpleasant images, along with, by some unfathomable route, recollections of the story of Oedipus. 'Jesus, Maks, no! Just leave it. Just don't talk about it. You've said you won't see her. That's fine. There are some things that just don't need discussing.'

I marched off and went back to my room, sat down, and wrote a letter to Marfa. Almost everything I wrote was untrue, so I tore it up.

 

The next day, things seemed back to normal between me and Domnikiia; better than normal even. I presumed the whole thing was forgotten.

'Maks came in today, but he went with Margarita.'

'OK,' I replied cautiously, wondering where the conversation was going.

'He's a good friend to you. He respects you.'

'You're happy with that?'

'That your friend does you a favour when you ask him? Why shouldn't I be?'

'So does that mean you're not my friend?'

'Do you want me to be?' she asked, looking directly at me. I thought for a moment about my answer, but before I could speak, she continued. 'It's either/or.'

I gave an exaggerated frown, and then smiled. 'Fair enough.' Then I changed the subject. 'Maks said there were more stories of the plague along the Don.'

'There are. Only it's not a plague and it's not just on the Don.'

'How do you know it's not a plague?' I asked.

'The way they die. It's all rumour. Some people are saying their throats are cut, others that they've been strangled, others that they've been attacked by animals. One story is that the French have sent saboteurs to attack us from the south.'

It sounded unlikely, but then it also sounded somewhat like what Vadim, Dmitry, Maks and I had been commissioned to do against the French. 'How do you know all this?'

'Lots of traders come to Moscow from Tula, leaving their wives safely at home. Or not so safely, now there've been deaths in Tula itself.'

'In Tula?'

'Yes. I looked at the places on a map. They follow the river Don. Rostov, Pavlovsk, Voronezh.' She turned to me and smiled. 'I looked at Petersburg, too. Is it nice there?'

'Not as nice as here,' I said, somewhat dismissively, but I was too concerned by what she was saying. 'And you say it's reached Tula?'

'Today someone mentioned Serpukhov; I haven't looked that up yet.'

'Serpukhov?' I was shocked. 'That's only about eighty versts away.'

'Really? Are you worried?'

I tried to be reassuring. 'No, not really. They're just rumours. You know what these peasants are like. Someone catches cold and it's a new outbreak of plague.'

But as I left her, I still felt in need of some convincing myself. Any concerns were, however, soon pushed to the back of my mind. That evening, the Oprichniki arrived.