CHAPTER XV

I THREW MYSELF BACK DOWN THE STAIRS AND LIFTED THE BAR FROM the doors. Immediately they swung open and Dmitry's semiconscious body spilled out on to the floor. At the same time, I was hit by a wall of smoke and heat which combined to make breathing an impossibility.

The cellar beyond was in flames. Fire licked across the wooden ceiling and the supporting beams were almost charcoal. Within moments the roof would collapse. One of the coffins was completely ablaze, the other, in which I could just make out Ioann's still-dormant body, was already beginning to blacken in the flames. It had been dragged from its original position towards the door, so that Dmitry's feet almost rested against it.

I bent down over Dmitry. He was breathing shallowly. The backs of his hands and his forearms were burnt. On the right side of his face, his beard had withered away to reveal his scar, surviving intact as the rest of his cheek had blistered under the intense heat. I would have slapped his face to try to bring him round, but given his injuries, I chose to shake him by the shoulders.

He soon began to cough and open his eyes.

'Can you walk?' I asked.

'Yes, yes!' he insisted, pushing himself up to a sitting position.

'We have to get out, and fast.' I went back to the doorway. The stairway down which I had descended was beginning to smoulder. In places its ceiling was already alight. It was still passable and, anyway, it was the only exit we had.

'Come on,' I said, turning back to Dmitry.

'Give me a hand!' Dmitry was further into the cellar than where I had left him. His hands were clasped around a handle on Ioann's coffin and he was straining every sinew to pull it to the door. In his weakness, Dmitry was unable to move it even an inch. 'We have to get them out of here.'

Even if I had wanted to save the Oprichniki – rather than leave them there to be reduced to nothingness by the all-consuming flames – it would have been impossible. Ioann showed no sign of regaining consciousness and there was little hope for even the two of us to manhandle his coffin up the blazing stairway.

'Leave him, Dmitry! You've got to come now!' Dmitry ignored me and continued to haul pathetically at the coffin. I dashed back over to him and pulled him away. He could offer little resistance.

I pushed him towards the door, and he seemed then either to bow to my stronger will or realize that his rescue attempt was hopeless. I herded him in front of me up the stairs. When he was almost at the top, and I was about halfway up, the step beneath my foot gave way. The fire below the wooden stairs was intense – enough to eat away at them without actually sending them up in flames. As my leg fell through the gap, up to my thigh, I felt immediately the heat of the cavity below. My leg began to roast with a pain such as I had never before experienced.

My body twisted and I found myself looking back down the stairs into the cellar. Through the smoke and flame I saw Ioann, awake now and fighting his way towards us. His eyes fell upon me and, with a leap that was unmistakably similar to the movement with which Varfolomei had launched himself on me the previous night, he attacked. He seemed not so much concerned with saving his life as with avenging his and Iuda's deaths, or at least with having one final meal.

As he leapt, the ceiling above him gave way. Burning beams crashed to the ground and took Ioann with them. They would have fallen on me too, pinning me to the steps and trapping me in this inferno, had I not felt Dmitry's strong arms at that moment lift me from where I lay and out into the hallway above. Even there, we were not safe. The whole house was ablaze and on the verge of collapse. We made a dash for the door, one of us supporting the other, though which was which I could not say, and made it outside to the cool, life-giving Moscow air.

The fire had now attracted some attention. A French captain was attempting to organize a human chain of both French soldiers and Russian civilians to get water to the fire. The task was hopeless, but they were intent on it and paid little attention to the two figures that had just bolted out of the house and lay gasping for breath in the street outside.

At length I heard a voice ask, in genuine Muscovite Russian, 'What were you doing in there?'

I raised my head. It was a girl of about fifteen, scruffy, with a dirty face and tightly curled black hair. She was leaning over Dmitry to see if he was unconscious or dead, but speaking to me.

'We were sleeping in there. Our house has already been burnt down. This time it almost got us.' I rolled on to my side towards Dmitry. 'Is he all right?' I asked.

'He's badly burned, but he may live,' she replied, and then went over to the captain who, I presumed, had sent her to find out what we were about. She spoke to him briefly and then returned to us.

'Come with me,' she said, trying to lift Dmitry. I put my shoulder beneath Dmitry's arm and together we managed to raise him to his feet. With whatever slight consciousness he had about him, he managed to take some of his own weight on his legs and so we slowly made progress away from the burning buildings. My own leg continued to feel as though it was roasting within my breeches, but the pain remained constant whether or not I put any weight on it, so it was little hindrance to our progress.

'What's your name?' I asked the girl as we walked.

'Natalia,' she replied.

'I'm Aleksei. This is Dmitry.'

'Why have you stayed in Moscow?' she said.

'Our household packed up and left us behind. He's a chef.' I nodded towards Dmitry. 'I'm a butler.'

'No you're not,' she laughed. I don't know what gave it away, but it was evidently easier to fool dozens of French officers than a single Russian child. 'I reckon you're soldiers.' I made no reply.

'Are you going to kill all the French for us and make the city ours again?'

I smiled to myself. 'That's the plan.'

'Did you start the fires?'

'No,' I replied. 'The fires don't do Moscow any good.'

'They don't do the French any good – that's what matters.'

'You were talking happily enough to that captain.'

'I'd have pushed him into the flames if I could. Not too far in.

I'd rather he burned slowly. I'd hold him down and let my own hand burn if I needed to.'

'So for you it's any price to defeat Bonaparte?'

'They killed my brother. He was a soldier, just like you. Well, not like you. He was just a ryadovoy, not an officer.' How she knew we were officers, I could not tell.

'Where did he die?' I asked.

'At Smolensk.'

'What was his name?'

'Fedya. He said the tsar would never let them take Moscow.'

She paused for a moment before adding, 'He was wrong about that.'

'No, I think you just misheard. The tsar will never let them keep Moscow. That's why he sent me and Dmitry here.'

'Just you?' she asked derisively.

'And others.'

'I hear they've let loose a plague that only affects Frenchmen.

Is that true?'

'Would you be happy if it was?'

'I'd be happy to pay any price to get rid of them. I was happy to lose Fedya.' She became suddenly silent. I sensed a tear rising inside her as she comprehended what she had said about her brother. 'Not happy,' she managed to force out with a choked voice, desperate for me to understand what I found so obvious.

'I know what you mean,' I said.

'So remember me when you kill them. And Fedya too. Think of us and don't show any mercy.'

I had no time to reply. We had arrived at her 'home'. It was a shantytown, founded in a churchyard a few blocks to the north of where Natalia had found us. Rough tents and awnings had been set up to accommodate perhaps fifty or sixty people. Around the periphery, a sort of market had formed, selling basic foodstuffs and clothing along with more prestigious items that had no doubt been pilfered from nearby houses. While I could not begrudge them the sale of the valuables left behind by evacuees who had no further use for them, I had seen in Natalia and saw now in the others an emaciation which told me they should not be storing up gold in exchange for food, but quite the reverse. Clothing too, though now it seemed like a source of income, would be sadly missed in the winter months in a town two-thirds consumed by fire, even if the French did leave.

She led us through the marketplace to a central area divided up into small cells by rough curtains of thin linen. She took us into one of them, where a man, aged around fifty, sat cross-legged on the muddy floor, tapping nails into a pair of boots. Around him were scattered a few rudimentary possessions, and on the other side of the cubicle a sheepskin marked the position of their bed; a roughly tied bundle of cloth serving as a pillow. On this, we laid Dmitry.

'This is my father,' said Natalia. 'He's a cobbler,' she added unnecessarily.

I held out my hand. 'Aleksei Ivanovich.'

He held out his in return. 'Boris,' he said. 'Boris Mihailovich.'

'Aleksei is an officer,' said Natalia proudly.

'Then I'm sure he would prefer it if you did not announce the fact too loudly, my dear,' replied Boris Mihailovich. He held out the boots to her. 'Now take these back to Lieutenant . . . whoever it was, and make sure you get from him what he promised.'

Natalia took the boots and scurried off. Throughout my life I had, I hoped, served my country and served my superior officers, but I had never had to work in the way that a valet serves his master or a cobbler serves his customer. The contrast between Natalia's desire for the death of every Frenchman in Moscow and her willingness to take money off them was one that I had not experienced; at least not from that side of the deal. Did Domnikiia, I wondered, harbour the same ambiguous feelings towards her clients? I hoped that, with one exception, she did and I believed truly in that one exception and in its being me, but I would have given much to be with her then and to hear her reassurance that it was so. I would have given much to be with her, whatever she chose to say.

'How's your friend?' asked Boris, inclining his head towards Dmitry. His face was filled with warm curiosity. The whites of his eyes were a jaded yellow and he had to squint to focus on me, but I have rarely looked into a face in which I felt such an immediate trust. The question was not conversational, but asked out of genuine concern for a man to whom he had never spoken. He had picked up a new pair of boots to work on and sat hunched over them, his eyes close to his work with the short-sightedness that is the mark of expertise in a true craftsman. When he spoke to me, he glanced upwards, the wrinkles gathering across his forehead like waves in the sea, stopping at an abrupt line to leave the bald dome of his head smooth and unperturbed.

'He's badly burnt, but I think he'll be all right.' I leaned over to Dmitry. He was breathing more normally now. The burns to his face, hands and forearms were painful, but not deep enough to kill. 'We will leave you before nightfall.'

'No, no, no. Leave us when you will, but there is no rush. I love my Natalia as much as I did her mother, but a daughter can never be a son. My son, Fyodor Borisovich, was a soldier too. He died at Smolensk. He was eighteen.' He paused, lost in the memories of his son, then he reached over to a pile of rags beside him, slipping his hand underneath.

'Here,' he said, pulling out his hand and bringing with it a bottle of vodka, half full. 'I cannot drink with Natalia like I could with Fedya.' He opened the bottle and put it to his lips, drinking no more than a gulp. He wiped the top. 'I'm sorry I have no glasses,' he said as he handed the bottle to me.

I sat down on the ground, stretching my burnt leg out in front of me in hope of easing the continuous, dull pain. I deliberately drank as much from the bottle as he had; no more and no less. I offered the bottle back to him with a smile and an utterly heartfelt 'thank you'.

'No, you drink as much as you please,' he told me. 'I'm sure my daughter has been too polite to tell you, but you look appalling; worse than your friend over there.' I recalled how Dmitry had been shocked at my appearance the previous evening. The night's activities could have done me no favours. But at his mention of Dmitry I remembered that my friend was in greater need of a drink than either myself or the old cobbler. I held the bottle to his lips and he swallowed the few drops that fell into his mouth. He coughed a little and muttered something under his breath. I tried to force some more of the spirit between his lips, but he held them shut and turned his head away.

Once more, I offered the bottle back to Boris Mihailovich. He took another small swig, before handing it back to me. 'You drink it, Aleksei. Fedya can drink no more, so you should have it.'

I took a gulp, taking more pleasure in it than I had the first, feeling the fire trickle down my throat and through my chest before spreading like a fountain around the walls of my stomach. I took a second gulp and felt the same feeling of refreshment. I knew that the man was giving me the last of his supply, that I should be grateful and abstemious, but I could not. I took gulp after delicious gulp until the bottle was dry.

If he was upset to see the last of his vodka drunk, he did not show it. He merely smiled the smile of an old man who enjoys seeing in others the enjoyment of pleasures that he can no longer appreciate for himself.

'Were you at Smolensk?' he asked. I nodded. 'Tell me about it.'

And so began a long day of me recounting every war story that I knew. I told him of distant campaigns, like Austerlitz, and of the more recent battles at Smolensk and Borodino. I always spoke as if I had been just a regular soldier. He needed no stories of espionage and the Oprichniki, simply good honest tales of soldiery of the sort that he knew his son had been involved in.

As I spoke, he continued to mend boots, able to listen and to work without one activity in any way interfering with the other. Sadly, he had only three pairs in his pile and, once they were mended, there was no more work for him to do. During our conversation Natalia returned. She had the money she had received for the one pair of boots that he had given her, plus two more for him to deal with. He made quick work of them, listening throughout to my stories, and as I spoke, Natalia also sat beside us on the floor, enraptured by my words, basking in the illusion that her brother was once again with them.

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.

At most places it was easy to chalk or to scratch a message in a position where it would be found but not so obvious that it might be accidentally destroyed. In doing this, I had the opportunity to check for any message that Vadim might have himself left, but I found none. At the burnt-down tavern in Tverskaya, there was nowhere that I could leave anything for Vadim. If he had been there and left some scrawled note for me, then it had already been lost to the flames.

The final meeting place to which I went was the one for that evening itself. It was the site of the Petrovka Theatre, one of the few locations in Moscow guaranteed to be safe from the fires that had destroyed two-thirds of the city, having been burnt to the ground in another fire some seven years earlier. We were to meet at the north-west corner of the ruined site. I chalked my message on a low wall and then waited, watching from a distance, hoping that Vadim would arrive – praying that the Oprichniki would not.

I waited two hours before I felt certain that Vadim would not show. Almost throughout, I had the sensation of being watched. I looked around repeatedly and saw no one of note – certainly no vampires. I still had no reason to suppose they had any suspicion of me, but it was a risk turning up at a meeting place that they knew about, whence they could follow me and discover where Dmitry and I slept, along with the innocent cobbler and his daughter. It was, however, a risk I had to take. It was betrayal enough to abandon Vadim in the city, despite the fact that that was precisely what he had said we might have to do. I had at least to make some effort to contact him, even though the attempt had failed.

I headed back the short distance to the shantytown by a circuitous route. I don't think I was followed. As I approached the tiny space, I heard Dmitry and Natalia talking. Dmitry was lying on the area of ground designated to be the bed, lit by the guttering flame of a candle. Natalia sat beside him. Boris was asleep in the corner.

'There you are, at last,' said Dmitry as I entered. 'Where have you been?'

'I was waiting for Vadim,' I explained, 'but he wasn't there.'

'Do you want to give it another day?'

I didn't feel inclined to give it another minute. 'No, it's too late. I've arranged transport for tomorrow. We'll have to leave here before dawn.'

'Where will you go to?' asked Natalia.

'Yuryev-Polsky,' I replied.

'Why there?' asked Dmitry, although I suspect he knew quite well.

'Why not?'

We sat in silence for a while, accompanied only by Boris's shallow breathing.

'Will you come with us, Natasha? You and your father?' It was a surprising request to come from Dmitry's lips, as surprising as his use of the familiar 'Natasha' instead of the more formal 'Natalia'. She had nursed him for two days – only one of which he'd been conscious for – but clearly it had had an effect on him.

I never recalled Dmitry being dependent on anyone before. Now he had his first taste of it, it seemed he liked it.

The girl laughed. 'Leave?'

'We can take you to safety,' Dmitry went on.

'We're safe here. We could have left a week ago when the French came if we'd wanted to.' Then she turned to me. 'I thought you were going to kill all the French and drive them from the city,' she said admonishingly.

'Dmitry needs to be taken somewhere safe. I'll come back,' I said, but I knew that I didn't mean it.

 

I awoke early and gently shook Dmitry. Natalia and her father lay together, sleeping soundly. From the food I had bought the previous day I left them some tea, two bottles of vodka, two of wine, some bread and some honey.

It was about two versts across the city to where the wagon was, I hoped, waiting for us. Although Dmitry was weak, he could just about walk with my support and, although the journey would be slow, I felt we would make it. My only concern was that we might arrive well after dawn and, if we were too late, our contact might not wait.

We had not gone far when I heard footsteps running behind us. For a terrible moment, I felt sure it was an Oprichnik preparing to pounce on us at the very moment of our escape. It didn't take long for me to realize that the footsteps were too light for that, and approached us too directly.

It was Natalia. She put herself under Dmitry's other arm and the three of us made swift progress through the silent streets, in much the same manner as when we had first met her, two days before.

'I said I wouldn't come with you,' Natalia explained, 'but I'll come as far as the edge of the city.'

We walked in silence for a while. I saw sweat breaking out on Dmitry's brow. Even with our support, the effort was exhausting for his weakened body. The sweat must have stung horribly as it ran down his burnt cheek, but he did not complain.

'Do you have a wife, Captain Danilov?' asked Natalia, breaking the silence.

'That's very formal. You were calling me Aleksei yesterday.'

'Which do you prefer? I like "Captain".'

'It's a shame you didn't meet Vadim. He's a major.'

'That's better, isn't it?'

'It's more senior,' I told her, knowing that Vadim himself was all too well aware of the distinction.

'So are you married?'

'Yes I am. And we have a son, called Dmitry.'

'Just like Captain Petrenko.'

'He was named after Captain Petrenko.'

'Why? No, I remember. He saved your life at Austerlitz.'

'That's right.'

'And now you've saved his life, so you're even.'

'I don't think it works quite like that.'

The conversation lulled and we carried on walking. Again it was Natalia who broke the silence.

'So is that why you're going to Yuryev-Polsky; because your wife's there?'

Despite his discomfort, Dmitry managed to emit a short cynical laugh.

'No,' I replied, 'we just have friends there.'

'Is Captain Petrenko married?'

'What Captain Petrenko really likes to be called is Mitka,' I said, taking petty revenge on Dmitry's cynicism.

'Really?' I nodded. 'So, is Mitka married?'

'No, he's not.'

'Why is that?' she asked.

'I think that's one you'd better ask him.' Dmitry was, I'm sure, relieved just then to be unable to speak.

We arrived at the edge of the city about ten minutes after dawn. The man with whom I had spoken the day before was there, with an open wagon to which was harnessed a mule, rather than a horse, but it would suffice. There were no signs that he had brought anyone with him or that he planned to ambush us and take the money. There was no haggling over the agreed price. It was all done with the simple trust of one man in his fellow countryman that can only emerge at a time of war.

He headed back to the city on foot, and Natalia and I loaded Dmitry up on to the wagon, along with our few possessions.

'Goodbye, Captain Danilov,' said Natalia, taking my hand. Then she went over to Dmitry and leaned forward, kissing him on his uninjured cheek. 'Goodbye, Capt . . . Mitka,' she said with a giggle.

She began to walk away, then she turned. 'And thank you for the food – from me and from my father.'

I went over to her and pressed a few of the gold coins I had left into her hand.

'What's this for?' she asked.

'To repay your kindness,' I said.

'Kindness doesn't need any repayment.' She was not insulted at all, only uncomprehending. 'It doesn't work like that.' She tried to hand it back.

'It's a gift,' said Dmitry as loudly as he could manage.

'Why should I get a gift?' she asked, with a voice that clearly expected an answer, as if the right answer were more important than the gift.

'What's the date today, Aleksei?' Dmitry asked me. I had to think for a moment.

'The eighth – the eighth of September.'

'And why is that important?' asked Dmitry. Natalia grinned a childish grin that told me she knew full well what Dmitry was getting at. Still though, he had to say it. For my part, I was completely lost.

'You tell me,' she replied playfully.

'It's the feast of Saint Natalia – your name day. That's why you get a gift,' Dmitry told her.

'Thank you,' said Natalia, giving a beaming smile and clutching the coins to her chest as though they were the most valuable things she had ever owned (which, in fact, they probably were). She turned and ran gaily back towards Moscow.

I mounted the front of the wagon and we set off in the direction of the rising sun.

'So have you memorized all the name days, Dmitry?'

'Yes.' There was no reason to doubt him, but it seemed astonishingly out of character.

'Why?' I asked.

His reply was simple. 'You saw her smile.'