CHAPTER XVI

IT TOOK US THREE DAYS TO GET TO YURYEV-POLSKY. I WAS SURPRISED how soon out of Moscow the country began to return to normal. We saw serfs working in the fields and wagons taking goods to local markets. Some were even travelling in the opposite direction to us, back towards Moscow, where they knew they could get the best price for what they had to sell. Nowhere was there a French uniform in sight.

I slept more comfortably than I had for many days, and not just thanks to my receding fear. For inns along the road it was business as usual, so we were well fed and well looked after. Prices were back to normal – a joy after the exploitation of occupied Moscow – and because Dmitry was seen by all as an heroic wounded soldier, we always got a little more of everything than we might otherwise.

Dmitry and I spoke much on our journey and our friendship became cemented once again. We didn't discuss any weighty matters, such as the war, and we certainly never got on to the Oprichniki, but through normal conversation we remembered who we were and managed to forget – or at least suppress – the events that had forced us apart over the past weeks.

Yuryev-Polsky was packed with refugees and with wounded soldiers. Finding care for Dmitry was no problem. He was given a bed in a makeshift hospital – formerly a convent – and medical opinion was that he would recover. The scars would always show, but even the use of his right hand should return to him eventually.

I left him and went to look for Domnikiia. It turned out to be easier to find Pyetr Pyetrovich, whom everyone in the town seemed to know. If you needed something, anything, Pyetr Pyetrovich could furnish you with it – for a price. Food, alcohol, ammunition – he was the man to get it for you. I found him in a tavern. He was unmistakable as one of the courageous few who still opted for elegant French fashions; though that appeared to be no obstruction to his businesslike discussion with a colonel in the artillery. When he had finished, I approached.

'Pyetr Pyetrovich?' I said, offering my hand.

'Yes,' he replied, taking my hand and trying to remember where he had seen me before.

'I'm Captain Danilov,' I told him. 'I was hoping you could help me, I'm looking for Domnikiia Semyonovna.' He looked at me blankly. 'For Dominique.'

'Ah!' he exclaimed, recognizing me at last. 'For Dominique.' He lowered his voice. 'I'm afraid, captain, that for the time being, that side of my business is closed – not that I have had any problems with it, I assure you. It's just that at the moment there are far better ways to earn a living. But once you boys can clear Bonaparte out of Moscow, then it will be business as usual, don't you worry.' He winked.

'I simply want to see her,' I explained with some restraint. 'She is a friend.'

'Really? A friend?' The concept appeared new to him. 'Well then, you'll find her in the hospital next to the church of Saint Nikolia. She's a nurse there.'

'A nurse?'

'They all are. There's a lot of sick soldiers in town.'

I headed for the hospital. It wasn't large, consisting of just two long rooms running at right angles to each other, with about twenty beds in each. I looked into the first and instantly recognized Domnikiia, bending over the bed at the furthest end of the room. I waited, my hand resting on the door post as I attempted to look relaxed. In fact, I was gripping it for support.

She stood up from the bed and began walking to the next one. She looked towards me. She was too distant to make eye contact, but as her eyes fell on me, her footsteps faltered slightly, as though she had turned an ankle. She recovered instantly and continued walking only as far as the next bed. She bent over the patient, spoke to him and fluffed his pillows. Then she moved on to the next patient, and the next and the next. As she approached she never looked directly at me. Though she moved so agonizingly slowly, still the force of her approach felt to me as if I were being charged down by a galloping stallion. A feeling of dreadful anticipation built up in me the closer she got. I could not step away and yet the prospect of her finally reaching me filled me with a sense of some great impending impact.

At last, having done her duty by each of the twenty men in the ward, she arrived at the door. She looked up at me with her beautiful slanting eyes and smiled her professional smile – as useful to her in her current profession as in her former.

'Good afternoon, Aleksei Ivanovich,' she said, giving away no hint of emotion. I merely smiled in reply. 'Step outside with me for a moment,' she continued.

She led the way out to a quiet courtyard. I felt my heart beating in my chest, begging to be set free. She turned and put her hands to my head, pulling me down on to her lips. We kissed so ardently, but also so briefly, before she pulled away and put her lips first to my forehead, then to my eyebrows, then to my eyes, then my cheeks, then my ears, then my chin, my neck, my hands, my palms and my fingers. I was for the moment a passive, compliant body as her lips marked out every piece of me as her territory. Finally, she raised my left hand to her lips and kissed the tiny webbing of skin between my middle finger and what remained of my ring finger. Then she leaned into my chest, her arms not embracing me but held up in front of her, crushed between us. Now she was offering passivity, and I held her tight to me with all my strength.

'I feared you were dead, Lyosha.'

'Why would you think that?'

'I didn't think it, I just feared it.'

'I watched you leave Moscow,' I told her. 'Early that morning.'

'Good,' she smiled up at me. 'I didn't see you.'

'I'm a professional,' I replied.

We began to walk, hand in hand; finger woven with finger.

'Why have you left Moscow so soon?' she asked.

'Dmitry was badly burnt in the fires. I brought him here.'

'You should have let him burn.' She changed her mind, almost without pausing. 'I'm sorry, he's your friend – important enough for you to bring here.'

'He wasn't for a little while, but I think we're over that now.'

'Why weren't you? Because of Maks?'

'And you.'

'So why did you come here to Yuryev-Polsky?'

'Dmitry suggested it. I wasn't too keen,' I said with a smirk. She made a tight little fist and jabbed me in the ribs.

'And your other friend, Vadim; is he here too?'

'No. As far as we know, he's still in Moscow. I'm hoping he'll join us.' It sounded hollow, even to me.

 

For the next couple of weeks, our relationship was the least physical it had ever been. I had found accommodation in a barracks near to where Dmitry was recovering, and Domnikiia was living in nurses' quarters. In the time that we had together we were forced to behave much like any other courting soldier and nurse thrown together by the forces of war. We spent our time talking and holding hands and walking round the town, and though it would be nice to say that through these conversations we learned to understand one another better than we ever had before, it simply wouldn't be true. Our conversations were no more and no less intimate or stimulating than those we had had naked and entwined in her bed in Moscow. For me, at least they had the benefit of being cheaper.

I told her much of what had happened since we had parted in Moscow; of the state of the city under French occupation and of the destruction brought by the fires. I told her of Boris and Natalia and how they had cared for us before we left, but I told her nothing of the Oprichniki and what I had discovered about them. I knew that I would have to tell her, but whenever an opportunity arose, I shied from it. My silence assisted the cosy delusion of safety which I had deliberately built for myself, but underneath, the terror was never far from my mind.

'You never ask about me,' she said one day from nowhere as we walked through a late summer's evening.

'I ask you every day what you've been up to,' I replied, mildly offended.

'I mean about who I am – about my life before you knew me.'

'Oh, that,' I said, and after a moment's pause, 'So tell me.'

'What would you like to know?'

'Everything' would have been the true answer, but specifics would be easier. I started with, 'Where were you born?'

'Moscow,' she replied. 'I've always lived in Moscow.'

'Never been outside?'

'I don't think I'd ever been three versts from where I was born, until I came here.'

'You must find Yuryev-Polsky very exotic,' I said.

'It's small and boring,' she said. It was an accurate summary.

'So where are your family?'

'I don't know,' she replied. 'My father owned a shop – a milliner's. We lived above it – him and my mother and my brother and me. We weren't rich, but he had ambition. He believed the best route to success was to make friends of his customers, if they were rich enough or important enough. But the rich get rich by not paying their bills until they have to, and he didn't feel he could ask people so much above him for something so grubby as payment of a bill.'

'So you've learned from his mistakes?' I said lightly.

'Too right. But my customers tend to pay pretty quickly anyway. No one wants his wife to come across an unpaid bill from me at the end of the month.'

'So what went wrong?'

'Who says anything went wrong?' she said, surprised. 'I'm here, now, with you, aren't I?'

'You could have got here by an easier route.'

'Could I? The only other route into your trousers would be to become some stuck-up society girl in Petersburg, and that was never an option.'

I stiffened. It wasn't an accurate description of Marfa in any way, but from the deliberate little I had told Domnikiia about her, it was to be expected.

'I'm sorry,' continued Domnikiia. 'That wasn't fair.'

'That's all right. So what did happen?'

'I was swept off my feet by a customer. One of my father's customers, I mean – at least at first. He used to come into the shop and buy his wife the most lovely hats. Then he bought me a lovely hat. And then he got what he'd expected in return. Soon he would just give me money. But then his wife found out, and she told her friends, and suddenly husbands weren't allowed to come to us for their wives' hats.

'My father knew what had caused it. We had an argument and he hit me, so I left. I rented a room and got by the only way I knew how. Only now the men I saw weren't the sort who tended to buy hats for their wives, even if they could have afforded them. Before long, one of them hit me, so I went back home.'

'I see,' I said.

'Except that there was no home. The shop had closed down and my family had gone. I guess I'd spoiled his reputation. And so I went back to work, and more men hit me, but most men paid, so I survived. Then I met Pyetr Pyetrovich. And he knew how to get the men to pay more, even though I was paid less. But I have a roof and a bed and a . . . home.'

'Didn't you ever look for your family?' I asked.

'I will do,' she replied, 'but not just yet. It's not been long enough yet.'

The way she told the story made it sound as if it had all happened a long, long time ago, but she was still too young for anything to have happened to her so very long ago.

'How long has it been?' I asked.

'Three years – since I left home.'

'You've been lucky, I suppose.'

'Luckier than most,' she said. 'I'm pretty. Men like that.'

'And you're smart. Men like that too.'

'No, Lyosha,' she said condescendingly, 'that's just you.' We walked in silence for a little. 'So, are you going to tell me all the secrets of your past?' she asked eventually.

'Best not, I think. Besides, it shouldn't make any difference.'

'How do you mean?'

'It's the same as the reason I never asked you about yours; I know you,' I said. 'You don't need explaining.' I might once have said the same thing about Maks.

'Life must be very dull for you, Aleksei Ivanovich,' she replied haughtily, 'knowing so much. Perhaps one day I shall surprise you.'

She never stopped.

 

Towards the end of September, Dmitry was sufficiently recovered to be moved from the hospital to a regular barracks. The risk of his burns becoming diseased was past, the doctors said, and it was now simply a question of waiting until his skin grew back fully.

'Does this mean you'll be going back to Moscow?' asked Domnikiia when I told her. It wasn't until I had been sitting on that wagon with Dmitry laid on the back, riding away from the city, that I had realized how truly terrified I had been in Moscow.

The discovery that the Oprichniki were vampires had been one that I had first reacted to with immediate action. But as the need for action had abated, my fears had found room to float to the surface. I had seen how the Oprichniki killed – seen their strength and seen their savagery. I knew that I did not want to die like that, and that knowledge made me realize that I did not want to die at all. I wanted to live and enjoy life. I wanted my wife and my son and my mistress and to have more children and, damn it, more mistresses. I wanted to read books and drink wine and play cards and die when I was very, very old.

'Not yet,' I replied. 'The word is that Bonaparte will have to leave soon, whatever happens. He's wasted too much time. He could have gone for a final victory in Petersburg, but he went on thinking that Moscow was the key – that it would break Russia's heart to see her captured. Most of us thought the same, but we all turned out to be wrong. The tsar has made no peace, and the French will have to winter in a safer city than Moscow. The longer they leave it, the more they risk getting cut off when winter comes.'

'So we didn't need you to save Moscow after all?' I had no answer. 'Oh, Lyosha, I'm sure you helped a little.' Her tone was supremely patronizing. 'Is your friend Iuda still in Moscow, sorting out the French?'

'No, he's dead.'

'You don't seem too sorry. What happened to him?'

Again, I should have spoken; again, I didn't.

'The same fire that Dmitry got injured in – Iuda wasn't so lucky.'

Dmitry leaving the hospital meant that I too could look for better accommodation. I was lucky enough to find myself a fair-sized room at a reasonable price and so, once again, I had the privacy I desired.

Domnikiia the mistress was a very different lover from Dominique the prostitute. Which I preferred is hard to say, because the difference between the two came in the absence of deceit. To be told as a willing listener by a convincing actress that one is the world's greatest lover is a very pleasurable experience. But once the actress's mask has been dropped it can never be credibly raised again. Knowing the truth, that one's lovemaking could be improved upon, is not as pleasant as the delusion of perfection, but it is more pleasant than the exploded delusion. And there is always the pleasure of knowing that regular practice leads to improvement.

As I realized that there would soon be no avoiding my return to Moscow, I realized too that one day I would probably have to face the five remaining Oprichniki: Pyetr, Andrei, Iakov Zevedayinich, Filipp and Foma. I knew that they could be killed by fire. At least, I believed it; I had no solid evidence that Iuda and Ioann were dead. I knew for certain that they could be killed by a wooden stake through the heart, and that was the method that I could better control. I began to whittle for myself a stout wooden dagger – almost a small sword – that I could wield with the same skill as I did a sabre and thus, with a swift lunge, despatch a vampire in much the same way as I could a man.

One afternoon, while I was sitting on my bed, working on my new weapon, Domnikiia came into my room.

After we had greeted each other, she asked about the sword. 'Is that for your son?' It was very like a wooden sword that I had made for Dmitry Alekseevich a couple of years before, the one I had seen at his side in my dream, but this had a much more deadly purpose. I knew then, as I had always known, that it was my duty to tell Domnikiia what I had discovered. Her connection with me might bring her into danger and she at least deserved to be aware of the nature of that danger.

'No, it's not,' I replied. I put the sword to one side and lay back on the bed. She lay beside me with her head upon my chest. I stared up at the small window above us as I told her, trying to hide the terror in my heart as I spoke.

'You remember the Oprichniki?'

'Of course,' she said. 'I met Iuda, remember.'

I nodded, pausing to give myself time to think how I could best convey what I knew. Directness was the only course I could take. 'You know what a voordalak is?' I asked.

She looked at me. Her expression showed mild surprise at the turn the conversation had taken. Then she looked at the wooden sword, and back to me. Her face transformed. She understood – but she didn't believe.

'You shouldn't joke about that,' she said.

'Don't you believe in vampires?'

She stood up. 'Oh, I believe in vampires, Lyosha,' she said, a hint of anger in her voice, 'but you don't, I'm pretty sure. It's not fun to be teased for not being as smart as . . .'

I interrupted her. 'Didn't,' I said.

'What?'

'I didn't believe in them. I do now.'

She smiled a little. 'Well, that's one small victory for the peasant mind.' Then she shook her head. 'But they can't be. Why do you think they are?'

'You see,' I said. 'You have doubts.'

'I suppose. I don't know. Just because you believe in something doesn't mean you think you'll ever see it. How do you know?'

'I've seen them kill,' I said. 'I've seen them die.'

'My God,' Domnikiia murmured.

Suddenly, she got down on to her knees and started to frantically undo my shirt. Then, just as suddenly, she stopped.

'Thank God!' she exclaimed.

'What?'

'You're still wearing it.' She was staring at the icon that lay on my chest – the one that Marfa had sent me and that only now I remembered Domnikiia had insisted I wear.

'Will that help?' I asked.

'That's what they say. It has done so far, hasn't it?' She pulled from the neck of her dress a small silver crucifix on a chain. I had noticed it many times. 'I always wear this.' She kissed it and put it back. 'So it's not true that they live for ever?'

'No,' I replied. 'Seven of them are already dead.'

'Did you kill them?'

'Some of them. They're harder to kill, but they're mortal, like the rest of us.'

'I was always told they never age,' she said, her eyes gazing blankly at memories of childhood. 'They can't die, they can only be killed. Sunlight does it. Or a wooden stake, piercing their once-human heart.' It was astonishing how quickly we could both be taken to a world where such things were commonplace.

'What about fire?' I asked, still aware that I had no certainty in believing that Iuda and Ioann were dead.

She thought for a moment, then nodded. 'Yes, I think I heard that works too.' Then the reality of what we were discussing seemed to dawn on her. 'Is that how you did it?'

'Two of them,' I said. 'Maks killed three.'

She lay her head back down on my chest. 'Good old Maks,' she said quietly. I hoped that she would raise the question of how Maks had died, knowing that I never could, but she remained silent. I watched a tear creep across her cheek and become absorbed into her skin. When she spoke, it was not to discuss Maks.

'It would be lovely to never age,' she said. 'To always be young and have the vitality of youth.'

'And to watch all of your friends age and die around you,' I added.

'It wouldn't have to be like that. What if we were both vampires?' Her mood was almost deliberately light-hearted. 'We could live for ever together. If we did no one any harm, they'd leave us alone. Don't you think you could love me for ever?'

'They have no life and they have no love,' I said with all the gravity I could muster. 'They have hunger. They have to eat and they enjoy causing pain as they do it.'

'But that's probably just what they were like in life. We'd be like us. Do you think any man would refuse to have his blood drunk by a vampire as pretty as me – and then be made immortal by it too?'

This was too much. I leapt to my feet, causing her to fall to the hard wooden floor. I grabbed the dagger I had been carving and held it out to her, simply to show to her, not to threaten, but I don't think she saw it like that.

'Do you know what this is for?' I shouted. 'This is to kill them – to stab them in the heart, because that's the way to destroy them. They can't be killed like men because, as men, they died a long time ago.' Without getting up off the floor, she backed up against the wall with a look of fear in her eyes which, I'm sorry to say, I enjoyed seeing. 'If you were a vampire, people would hunt you down and kill you in just the same way. And they'd be right to do it, because these things are monsters – animals – worse than animals, because they once had souls enough to know right from wrong.'

I flung the dagger back across the room and threw myself on my bed. She sat huddled in against the wall, right next to the bed, silent and thoughtful, but showing no sign of moving from the uncomfortable position. It was an hour before either of us spoke.

'I didn't mean it,' she said moodily. 'It would be a fantasy to have you to myself for a year, let alone for ever.'

I should have replied, but I didn't. Five minutes later she stood up and left the room.

 

Domnikiia never visited me again in Yuryev-Polsky. While he had been in hospital, and after, she had taken to calling on Dmitry. She did this, I think, largely for my sake, since she had no reason to like him, and also out of some sense of duty as a nurse. Even after we argued, she continued to visit him, and so our paths still crossed occasionally; she was always polite, but always devastatingly formal. No more 'Lyosha's emanated from her lips.

I occasionally came across Margarita too. Like Domnikiia, she was working as a nurse, although the rumours from some of the soldiers under her care were that she was still keeping her hand in at her former trade. I begged her to talk to Domnikiia for me, or to tell me what I should say to her myself.

'Can't you even work that out?' she said with an uncalled-for hostility that I felt came to her from Domnikiia.

'If I knew what to say, I'd have said it.'

'But you didn't.'

'So what should I say?'

'What would you say to your wife?' replied Margarita acidly.

'I can't help being married,' I explained, but evidently I had missed the point. With a sharp 'tut', she turned and left.

 

The day after my argument with Domnikiia, it had snowed for the first time. It was early – October had only just begun – and the snow was very light, not even trying to settle. Many versts away in Moscow, that same snow must have placed a chill in Bonaparte's soul. He had not planned to spend the winter in Russia.

Just over a week later, news came that the Grande Armée had at last quit Moscow and was heading out of the city to the southwest. Bonaparte had stayed for five weeks – just as the wave stays for a few moments at the top of the beach – before understanding that he had won a worthless trophy. Now his starving army had to flee for safety, with a reinvigorated Russian army in full pursuit.

I went to see Dmitry. His hands and arms were, though scarred, almost fully usable. His beard was not growing back. He did not shave it off completely, but left the smooth, ruddy bald patch so that all could see the long straight scar from a French sabre that the flames had been unable to erase. We discussed the news from Moscow.

'So what do you plan to do?' he asked.

'Get back as soon as possible. Half the town will be setting off there in the next few days.'

'Wouldn't it be better to join up with the regular army? Moscow's no longer the battlefield. We should be chasing the French.'

'We have to try and make contact with Vadim. And let the Oprichniki know what's happening.' The first half of what I said had been honest.

Dmitry thought for a moment. 'We can't be sure that he or they are still in Moscow. I'm planning to go south and join up with the main body of the army. If Vadim's there, I'll get word to you. You go to Moscow.'

I decided to test the water. There had been a thousand opportunities in the weeks since our departure from Moscow, but, as with Domnikiia, I had always put it off. Now was my last chance, at least for a while, and I knew that if there was any hint in Dmitry of the loathing of the Oprichniki that dwelt in me, then there was a chance that he could once again be turned into a formidable ally.

'Do you trust them?' I asked.

'Trust them?' He tried to pretend he didn't understand, but we knew each other too well for him to bother for long. 'It's different for you, Aleksei.'

'Different?'

'They deceived you – we deceived you. We didn't tell you what they were from the start. That wasn't fair.'

Wise though, I thought.

'That's no basis for trust,' he continued, 'especially given your – everyone's – natural fear of them. But I always knew, right from the very start.'

'What happened?' I asked. 'Right at the start?'

'It's a long story, Aleksei, from a long time ago.'

'What happened?' At first I had asked idly, but now I was insistent. Whatever he had to tell me could be of incalculable help in fighting the Oprichniki, and might even help me to understand how Dmitry could be so accepting of them.

Dmitry looked at me and understood that I wasn't going to let him run away from this one. He took a deep breath.