CHAPTER XVIII

IT WAS A SUNDAY WHEN I ARRIVED BACK IN MOSCOW. I WAS GLAD to have seen the city at its worst, for now, although it was still in a sorry state, I could at least see that there was some improvement. For those like Domnikiia and most of the populace, who had left before the French had even arrived, the contrast with now must have been heartbreaking. They had last seen a city still at the height of its physical splendour, still with the lifeblood of its people flowing through its streets, even though at that time they were flowing out of the city. When I had last seen Moscow, two-thirds of it had been razed by fire, a fraction of the population remained and the streets were filled only with occupying French soldiers.

Today, two-thirds of the city was still destroyed by fire. No surprise for me, but a horror to many others who returned, particularly if they returned to find it was their home that had been destroyed. Today, there were no French in the city, neutral for those who had never seen the French, but an improvement for me, who had. Today, the population was still small, but larger than at its worst and increasing all the time. For those who had seen it full, the city was still empty. For me, it was not yet full, but at least it was filling.

Thus I must have cut an eccentric figure that day. While most of the returning Muscovites wore faces of haggard shock and shuffled around contemplating the enormity of the task of rebuilding – both personally and civically – that lay before them, I strode about with the evident pleasure of a voyager revisiting a beautiful town that he has not seen for many years.

Even so, my face must have become indistinguishable from those around it when I first laid eyes on the horror that had befallen the Kremlin. It had been spared the fires of the first days of Bonaparte's occupation, thanks largely to the efforts of the French themselves to protect it as the richest jewel in the crown that they had captured. But on his departure, Bonaparte had instructed that the citadel should be mined and destroyed so that we could not reclaim that which he could not keep. There could be no military justification for it, as there might possibly have been for the fires that dogged the French when they first took the city; it was mere petulance.

Luck, however, having chosen that autumn of 1812 to desert Bonaparte, had deserted him completely. The Kremlin was not destroyed. Perhaps his subordinates had been half-hearted in executing so churlish an order. Perhaps the rain had dampened the fuses. Whatever the cause, few of the charges had ignited. But whatever relief Muscovites might have felt that the Kremlin was saved, it was still a misery to see the damage that had been done. Facing Red Square, everything between the Arsenal and the Saint Nicholas Tower was gone, along with several other towers stretching down towards the river. Venturing within, I saw that the Palace of the Facets had collapsed. Worst of all, the great golden cross that had once topped the Ivan the Great Bell Tower was gone. It had not been destroyed in any explosion, but dragged to the ground and carted off as part of Bonaparte's plunder.

Sad though it was to witness the mutilation caused by the departure of the French, I counted myself as fortunate to have missed the brief trough of anarchy into which the remaining population of Moscow had descended in the twenty-four hours after the French had left. What I heard of it was disheartening enough. A crowd had marched on the Foundlings' Home, where there were no longer to be found orphans, but hundreds of French wounded who were too weak to be moved. Few survived the wrath of the mob, though their deaths were quicker than those of many of their comrades who had been able to walk out into the slow, freezing mortality of the Russian winter. Had the mob's only actions been those of vengeance, then they might have been attributed to some misplaced sense of patriotism, but, so I was told, looting had become more rife than ever. Those supplies that should have been eked out between all Muscovites were grabbed by the strongest and most selfish. Fortunately, there were Russian troops under Prince Khonvansky near to the city, waiting for the French to leave, and so the period when no law – neither French nor Russian – reigned was mercifully brief. By the time I returned, civilization – if not civility – had long been restored.

The inn in Tverskaya where I usually stayed (when I wasn't frequenting stables and crypts) had at least in part survived the fires. Flames had consumed much of the block, and as many as half of the rooms had been destroyed, but its proprietors had already returned and were attempting to resurrect their business using those few rooms that remained habitable. I chatted to the innkeeper as he led me up to a dispiritingly humble room. (The set which I used to occupy was no more – the stairs that had once led up to it now led only to a precipice overlooking a wasteland of detritus and rubble.) He asked after Vadim, Dmitry and Maks. I told him they were all well, finding it easier simply to lie about Maks, but I gathered that he had not seen Vadim any more recently than I had.

There was little I could do to track down Vadim. When the French arrived he, like me, had gone underground. His skills at hiding himself from view might not have been the greatest in the world, but in a city the size of Moscow, there was nowhere I could even begin to search for him. All I could do was attend the same daily meeting points that we had arranged weeks before. It was a dim hope, but that was the last plan of action we had. However slim the chance, it was the best I had of finding him. On top of that, there was also the possibility that one or more of the Oprichniki might show up – a prospect that I viewed with some ambivalence.

Sunday's meeting place was the Church of Fyodor Stratilit, beside Menshikov's Tower, east of the Kremlin. I took a slight detour to revisit the place where I had spent my last night in the city, in Boris and Natalia's tiny dwelling within the shantytown. When I got there, nothing remained of it – a few possessions of little value were strewn about, and I could see the remains of the homemade tents that the people had built. I even managed to find the precise spot where, I estimated, Boris and Natalia's particular compartment had been. They had left nothing of value. A broken bottle stuck half out of the mud. Whether it had been the one I had drunk from, or one of those I had given them, or some other stray, discarded bottle, I could not tell.

Asking around, I heard that the encampment had been broken up by the French only a few days after we left. There had been no bloodshed – the people there had simply dispersed to other locations in the city. There was little hope that anyone would know where a specific cobbler and his daughter had gone. I carried on to the meeting which I hoped Vadim would attend.

He was not there when I arrived, a little before nine. It took me but a moment to find the message I had left for him, scratched against the soft stone on a low part of the wall. My heart beat faster in the anticipation that he might have followed it up with a subsequent message in response, but there was none. I waited for an hour, but Vadim did not come. I headed back to my bed.

The following morning, I made a tour of the six remaining meeting points, much as I had done on my last day before leaving Moscow. My purpose was, as it had in part been at the church the previous night, to check whether Vadim had left any responses to my messages. Most of my messages remained intact. One of the chalk ones had vanished completely, presumably washed away by rain, and another had been half rubbed off, but was still essentially legible. However, at none of them did I find any corresponding reply from Vadim. I even checked the burnt-out tavern, where I had not left anything at all, in case Vadim had written a message there, but there was nothing.

If he had read any of the messages, he would surely have replied. Even if he had decided instantly on joining us in Yuryev-Polsky, he would have at least indicated that he had been at the rendezvous. It was, of course, possible that he had been at the place but not seen the message but, on the other hand, I had put them in conventional places – places where Vadim, with his years of experience, would certainly have looked. I could only conclude that he had not attended any meeting since we had last seen him, under the archway at Saint Vasily's. Like us, he must have left the city soon after. But even then, wouldn't he have left messages for us as I did? The other possibility was that he had never left the city and never would.

It seemed increasingly likely. If Iuda had realized that Vadim was following him, he would have had no qualms about ridding himself of his pursuer and indulging in a good meal at a single stroke. Vadim would have put up a good fight, but his scepticism was obvious even at the mention of the word 'voordalak', and so he might not have been as wary as he should. Moreover, it was Iuda, not Vadim, that I had seen more recently. And who was to know that they hadn't run into one of the other Oprichniki, and then Vadim would have been beyond hope. It was an irony and a very small comfort that, if this was the case, Iuda himself had perished only hours later in the inferno of the cellar.

But though I feared, I did not know. It was just as likely that Vadim had fled Moscow. If that was the case then, with the city coming back to life, now was the time when he would be most likely to return, just as I had. All I could do was turn up at the appropriate place at nine o'clock each evening and hope.

That afternoon, I paid a visit to Degtyarny Lane. I hadn't completely abandoned hope on Domnikiia, but if she was lost to me, then I at least wanted it to end on an amicable footing. I also wanted to throw myself at her feet and tell her I loved her, but she was well aware of that – saying it wouldn't change anything.

I was not entirely surprised to find that the brothel had not only survived the fires, but was already open for business – although business did not yet seem to be booming. That the building had survived the flames could only be put down to good luck, but Pyetr Pyetrovich was a man who knew how to be lucky.

Domnikiia was not in the salon. The other girls sat around languidly, tired already of waiting for clients who did not arrive. None of them came up to me; they knew my face well enough to know whom I had come to see. On the stairs, I met Margarita.

'Oh, it's you,' she said inhospitably.

'I've come to see Domnikiia.'

'I can't stop you,' she replied, and continued down the stairs.

'Sorry the nursing job didn't work out,' I muttered, just loud enough for her to hear.

I knocked on Domnikiia's door and entered on her reply.

'Oh, it's you,' she said, in a tone with far less passion – of any kind – than that with which Margarita had just uttered the same words.

'Yes,' I said. 'I wanted to see you.'

'Well, you know me, Aleksei. A job's a job and I won't refuse a man with money.'

'That wasn't what I came to do.'

'So what did you come to do?'

I thought about it for a moment, and found that I didn't know. I knew full well what I wanted to achieve, but I had no real plans for how to achieve it. I realized there was one thing that needed to be said whichever way I was to leave her – be it as her lover or as her former lover.

'I came to say I'm sorry,' I said.

'Sorry for what? For shouting at me when I said I wanted to be a vampire?' She spoke dismissively, as if such an apology could have little importance.

'No,' I replied, knowing that only complete honesty would suffice. 'I was right to do that. I'm sorry for not accepting your apology afterwards.'

'Why didn't you?' Her voice was suddenly full of humility. I could boast about my sensitive appreciation of the subtleties of the female heart, but in reality it had been only by luck that I had stumbled upon saying what she wanted to hear.

'I didn't think it needed saying. It was obvious.'

'Was it?' She spoke almost in a whisper now. 'Why?'

'Because . . .' But I didn't have an answer. It was obvious because I knew exactly how my mind worked and how I felt about her. She did not.

She took a step towards me. 'Is there anything else obvious that you haven't said to me?' she enquired tantalizingly, standing so close that she had to crane her neck upwards to look at me. I leaned forward to kiss her. She held her fingers to my lips to stop me. 'Uh-uh,' she said, shaking her head. 'You have to say it.'

'Isn't it obvious yet?'

'Say it, Lyosha!' she murmured, more mouthing than speaking.

I bent down to her ear and whispered it to her. Straightening up, I saw in her face a smile even more radiant than that I had seen on Natalia's when Dmitry had remembered her name day. I bent forward to kiss her and this time she offered no objections. I pushed her towards the bed, but now she did stop me.

'Not here,' she said. 'Not if we don't have to. Where are you staying?'

'At the inn, where I used to.'

'It will have to be late; maybe after midnight.'

'That's all right.'

'If I can come at all.'

'It would be easier for me to see you here,' I told her.

'No, I don't want that. I want it to be like it was in Yuryev-Polsky – like when I was a nurse.'

'OK,' I said and kissed her again. Then I left.

I waited again for Vadim that evening. It was Monday and so the venue was Red Square. I paced about for an hour or so. Autumn had given way to winter and I had to keep walking just to keep warm, my hands buried deep in my pockets. The square was far from bustling and those who were there walked across it briskly and purposefully, not wanting to spend any more time than necessary in the cold night air. Vadim was not among them.

I returned to the inn. I had told the innkeeper that a lady might be visiting me, and so a raised eyebrow to him as I entered was question enough for him. A brief shake of the head was his reply. But it was still early.

I had fallen asleep by the time she entered my bedroom. It wasn't until I felt her cool, naked body press against my back and wrap itself around mine that I knew she was there. I rolled over to face her.

'Do I need to say anything now, Domnikiia?' I asked her softly.

'No,' she whispered, with a smile I could not see. 'It's obvious.'

The following morning, I walked her back to Degtyarny Lane. It was almost midday. We had lain in bed for a long time – neither of us having occupations in which early rising was a requirement – talking about very little.

Then I was free until my appointment – and how I wished that I could really use a word that gave it such certainty – with Vadim. I found myself some lunch and then wandered around the streets, judging the degree to which Moscow was recuperating from its occupation.

It would, I believed, recover. Petersburg had become our capital only a hundred years ago. Nine years before that, it had been a swamp. It had taken the determination of a great man, the greatest in our history, Tsar Pyetr the First, to build the earliest structures on that swamp and then to make it his capital within so short a space of time. Today, there was no man alive that was his equal, not just in Russia but in the whole world. Bonaparte had aspired to inherit those laurels, but long ago he had proved himself unworthy of them. His retreat from Moscow was the final evidence of his failure to attain such status.

So today, we had no Pyetr to rebuild our city for us, but we had thousands – hundreds of thousands – of Petrushkas; little Pyetrs, who by themselves could no more raise Moscow from the ashes than I could raise the dead from their graves, but who together could restore it to its former greatness, so recently lost. And they did not even have to build it from nothing. They had their memories and, despite what had been lost to the fires, they still had the essential shape of the city. You can burn buildings, but it is harder to burn streets. Thus the plan of a city may survive.

And, of course, a third of the city had survived intact. I was walking down one of these undamaged streets when I noticed three cobbler's shops, huddled next to each other as one often sees with rivals in the same trade, sharing each other's warmth, but envying each other's custom. I peered through the window of each one. Not seeing what I was looking for, I went into the third and spoke to the shopkeeper.

'Have you ever come across a shoemaker by the name of Boris Mihailovich?'

'Boris?' replied the man. 'Yes, I know him.'

'Is his shop around here?'

'No. No, it's not.'

'Do you know where it is?' I asked.

'It's not anywhere. It was burnt down on the first night of the fires.'

'But he survived, I know that. Have you seen him recently, or his daughter?'

'Ah, so it's Natalia you're interested in, is it? Well, I saw them both about a week ago – after the French had gone – but not since.'

'Maybe they've disappeared,' suggested his assistant, who had been sweeping up around us, 'like the rest of them.' He emphasized the word 'disappeared' as though it were new to him, or had taken on a new, more specific meaning.

'"Disappeared"?' I asked.

'People have been coming into the city, but not staying,' explained the shopkeeper without much concern. 'I think they've just decided that there's no business to be had here and have gone off somewhere else. Oleg Stepanovich, the baker from up the street, is the only one I've known personally. Came back to Moscow, opened up his shop, closed it in the evening and didn't open it the next day. I reckon he's gone chasing after the army because they'll pay more for his bread, but he didn't tell his wife, so it may be more than just the army he's chasing.'

'I reckon Bonaparte's left some of his men here, hidden, to pick us off one by one as we come back,' suggested the assistant, leaning on his broom.

'Well, if they pick you off, Vitya,' said the cobbler, 'it'll be a long time before anyone notices much difference round here.' The sweeping was quickly resumed.

I thanked the men and went on my way, knowing from what they had said that the Oprichniki were still in town. What had been said was vague, but it was also chillingly similar to the stories that had emanated from wherever the Oprichniki happened to be. It was, of course, an assumption to suggest that that was what had happened to Boris and his daughter, but I knew then that, for them and for anyone else, the city was not safe.

That evening's rendezvous was at the Church of Saint Clement. As I waited outside, I recalled the last time I had been there, exactly six weeks before, and my encounter with Ioann and Foma. Ioann was now dead, I knew – deader even than he had been when we had met – but I still felt the dread that Foma might return that night to take his revenge. By now they must have been aware that four of their fellows had died within the space of a few nights. It would take little genius – and they didn't have much, particularly now there was no Iuda to do their thinking – for them to deduce that I might in some way be responsible. But whatever they had deduced, none of them showed up. Neither did Vadim.

To make matters worse, Domnikiia did not visit me that night. It is remarkable how quickly one can become accustomed to not sleeping alone.

In one way, Domnikiia staying away had been a good thing. The next morning I received a letter from Marfa. It was dated over three weeks earlier, but in the confusion of the French occupation and retreat, it was a miracle that it had made it through to me at all.

While in Yuryev-Polsky, I had sent her several letters, but they had evidently crossed with this one. Her concern for my safety showed between every line she wrote. She told of the news that they were hearing in Petersburg and of the fear there that Bonaparte would soon be marching towards them. Marfa felt reassured that as long as the tsar stayed in Petersburg, they would be safe. Ostensibly, the implication was that Aleksandr would protect them, but her real meaning was that, as soon as he scarpered, then they'd know they were in trouble. Her understanding of politics was, as ever, remarkably clear-sighted, certainly for a woman.

Dmitry Alekseevich had been a little unwell, but was better now. He had been asking when I would be coming home. I resented being told that. I felt that Marfa was using our son to voice her own desires. Not that it was untrue that Dmitry wanted me home, nor was it unreasonable that Marfa did as well. I just resented the way that she impinged on my desire to have it all. Strange that I resented only Marfa, not Dmitry, but then I did not have a rival son here in Moscow.

She did not write very much on the matter of Maksim's death, but the little that she did put managed in its own way to express much the same feelings as I had. Marfa's approach was simply to ignore the reasons that had led to Maks' execution. She could describe her sorrow without ever facing the unpleasant fact that Maks had been a traitor. She would have written the same words if he had died by a French sword at Borodino. It was of unspeakable comfort to read her words about Maks, as if he had died a decent soldier's death. She was spared, in her mind, the embarrassing subtext of his treason, and I was momentarily spared my own condemnation for my abandonment of him.

The final piece of news was that Vadim's daughter, Yelena, had given birth to a baby boy on 6 September. He had been born a little earlier than expected, but was completely healthy, and was named Rodion Valentinovich. Marfa anticipated that I knew all this already, since I would have heard it directly from Vadim, but I could tell she was hoping that that would not be the case and that not only would she have the pleasure of being the first to tell me, but I in turn would have the pleasure of being the first to tell Vadim.

It would have been a delight to be the two hundredth to tell Vadim, just to have had the pleasure of seeing him at all.

I wrote a quick response to Marfa, saying very little except that I was safe and back in Moscow. I said nothing of Dmitry or Vadim, since to say only that Dmitry was safe would imply that Vadim was not, and I saw no sense in raising undue alarm. For all I knew, he could have headed straight back to Petersburg and be doting over his beloved grandson, cradling him in his arms at that very moment.

I went to Degtyarny Lane to find out what had happened to Domnikiia the night before. When I arrived, I was told she was occupied. I knew she was still working, but the reality of it remained nonetheless unpleasant. That, I suppose, is why she had said we should not meet there. I went back outside and truculently began to throw pebbles up at her window. Soon, her head popped out. I immediately felt concerned that I was intruding on her territory, that she would brusquely send me away, much as I would have done if she were to interrupt me on the battlefield – a bizarre image.

Her face, however, was a portrait of delight at seeing me.

'Are you all right?' I asked.

'I'm wonderful, Lyosha. How are you?'

'What happened to you last night?'

'Things just got busy. I'm sorry.' She pulled a sorry face as she said the word.

'I wasn't complaining. I was just concerned.'

She smirked. 'You're scared of me, aren't you?'

'Scared of losing you. I wish you didn't seem so happy.'

'Charming! Shouldn't I be happy to see you?'

'So you were miserable until you opened the window?'

'Wretched,' she grinned.

'Good. Now I'm happy.'

I heard the call of a man's voice from within her room. 'I have to go,' she said.

'I'll see you tonight?' I asked.

'I'll try.' With that she was gone.

That evening, I went to the Stone Bridge, still clinging on to the receding hope of seeing Vadim. Even over the three days that I had been back in Moscow, it was already just perceptible that more people were returning to the city. Like the complexion of a man drained of almost all his blood, but not quite to the point of death, the colour was beginning to return to Moscow's cheeks. Although the hour was late, the bridge was still busy, busier even than in happier times as the amount of work that people found themselves faced with increased the hours that they put into it.

As I stood there on the bridge, it began to snow. This was the first real snowfall of the winter; heavier than we had seen in Yuryev-Polsky and still scarcely settling, but a portent of what was to come. It was another sign that winter was to be early that year, but Muscovites – and all Russians – are well prepared and would take the winter in their stride whenever it came. In retreat, out to the west, the same could not be said of the French.

I waited for over an hour, inspecting every face that passed me, but Vadim's was not among them. I headed north, back to my bed and, I hoped, to Domnikiia. I was just gazing up at the towers of the Kremlin when I heard the voice of someone very close behind me whisper in my ear.

'Murderer!'

I turned, but saw no one near. A few steps away from me, I saw the back of a tall, shabby man who was marching directly away. It could only have been he who had spoken. I followed him. Although he never had to run, his long legs carried him with enormous pace, forcing me to break into a trot. As we headed on to the Stone Bridge, I found my pursuit of him hindered by the crowd, bumping into them in my rush to keep up. For him, the crowd offered no such obstacle, seeming to open before him like the sea before the bow of a ship as he strode purposefully across the bridge.

We were across the river and the Vodootvodny Canal before I caught up with him. I put my hand on his shoulder and he offered no resistance in turning to face me. He was tall and pale, with many small scars on his face. His shoulder-length hair was loose and unkempt. His dark, black eyes looked towards me, but seemed to see nothing. There was no specific reason for it, but I knew in my heart that I was standing face to face with a vampire – moreover, a vampire that was not one of the Oprichniki. I had thought that my task had been reduced to having just five more of these creatures to face, but now – as my grandmother had told me they could, and as I had hoped she had made up – the vampires had bred. And if they had produced this one offspring, then how many more might there be? They would become unstoppable.

The creature looked fixedly into my eyes for a few seconds and then turned away and continued his journey. I stood in shocked immobility for a moment, considering the prospect of the number of vampires that I might have to face; considering that I had helped to introduce them into a city where they might now stay for ever, neither noticing nor caring that the language spoken by their food supply had changed from French to Russian. The monster that I had been following might be just one of dozens of innocent Muscovites, picked at random, who had not only been denied life, but subsequently denied a true death as the hideous plague spread.

And yet somewhere at the back of my mind, I recognized the face into which I had just been staring. It was certainly not one of the Oprichniki, nor anyone that I knew very well. It was someone that I had previously seen in Moscow. Then it hit me; a corpse that did not decay. Weeks before, when the dead and wounded of Borodino had been arriving in the city, I had looked briefly into those same dark eyes to verify that the grenadier was indeed dead. The priest had declared it to be a miracle that the body did not putrefy, but I knew now it was no such thing. The corpse did not decay because the body had survived the death of the soul. Presumably one of the Oprichniki, during our first foray out to the west, had transformed him into one of their own. The process must take some time. When I had seen him, he was somewhere between the two states of existence – dead as a human but not yet alive as a vampire. But now he was fully a voordalak.

I continued my pursuit of him, but now more stealthily, reenacting how I had pursued Foma, Matfei and then Ioann. This vampire displayed little of their discretion, walking openly down the streets without any show of fear. Indeed, what was there to fear? The city was free again. He had no need to worry about being stopped by French patrols and he could walk about without obstruction, as free as any other Russian. I, too, was in a better position for the French having left. I could once again wear my sword which, though it gave me some comfort, I knew was not the best weapon at my disposal. Tucked inside my coat was the wooden dagger that I trusted would be of far greater use. I reached in and grasped it firmly, reassured and emboldened by the texture of the chiselled wood.

His indirect meanderings about the city might have been put down to his unfamiliarity with its geography, but it seemed to me more that he was merely trying to pass the time. It wasn't until the early hours of the morning that he finally reached his destination and went up to the doorway of a particularly grand house, certainly owned by one of the wealthier families in the city. It was not far from the cellar where I had left Iuda and Ioann to burn so many weeks before. This residence appeared strangely unravaged in comparison with those around it. The area had not been molested by the fires, but no street in Moscow had been left unmolested by looters, be they native or invader. All along the street, windows were smashed and doors kicked in. Rejected booty – and times were harsh enough that only the most impractical of items (books, paintings and so forth) were counted so valueless as to be rejected – lay strewn outside. But this house had its windows intact, its door still a barrier. Even the street outside, though not clean, was at least clear of the debris that lay outside its neighbours. It was as though some faithful servant had remained behind in the house and had – out of habit and oblivious to the tumult around him – kept the building in the tidiness that befitted it. And yet in the chaos that had befallen Moscow, no amount of diligence alone could have maintained such order. A terrifying strength would have been required. The absence of refuse around the house was reminiscent of the absence of insects around the dark corner of a room in which a spider lurks.

The soldier unlocked the door and went inside without fear of encountering the true owner of the residence. Although the rich and the powerful had not yet begun to return to Moscow in any great numbers, many had at least sent servants ahead to reoccupy their property. Perhaps the owners of this place had done so too. Any servant arriving to open up the house would be little expecting to find it infested with vampires and would be quickly dealt with.

Despite the sanitary atmosphere that hung around the building – for which the explanation was all too easy to imagine – I could not in all certainty be sure that this was where the creature planned to sleep. It was still some time until dawn and so I waited a while to see if he re-emerged. After about an hour, no one had come out of the house and no one else had entered. Despite knowing what I might encounter within, there was little debate in my mind that I had to go inside.

I went up to the door and tried the handle. He had not locked it behind him. Inside, the hallway was dark, but on a table I found an oil lamp, which I lit and carried with me. It was a large house of many rooms – the vampire could be hidden in any one of them. I drew out my wooden dagger and grasped it firmly, knowing that at any moment I might be called upon to use it.

I went first into the cellar, having learned from experience that that was where a voordalak would make its nest, but I found nothing untoward. The only thing of note was that the cellar wall had been roughly knocked down, so that it connected to the cellar of the next building. I glanced briefly in there, but saw nothing. A faint smell of sewage greeted my nostrils. I realized that the street outside must be close to the Neglinnaya, the tributary of the Moskva into which many of the city's sewers flowed. In Moscow's good times – when people were plentiful enough and nourished enough to make the sewers full to overflowing – the stench would have been far stronger, but still somewhere beyond the broken-down wall was an underground path to that public drain.

The rooms on the ground floor too were empty, though they were surprisingly well furnished; surprising in contrast with other houses I had seen in the city. Those houses that had not been cleared out by their departing owners had been cleaned out by the invading French, but this place remained disquietingly habitable; almost homely. It all fitted in with the image that the building was somehow 'blessed' – protected from any who would dare to despoil it. Indeed some of the rooms seemed to have too much furniture, as if it had been shifted here to make space in other rooms elsewhere in the house. The only sign of serious upheaval – somewhat incongruous – was that in a number of rooms the floorboards had been removed, adding a challenge for me to pick my way between the joists.

I was suddenly reminded again of my grandmother's house. These rooms, like many of hers, were unlived in, but no serious attempt had been made to close them up or to either protect or remove their contents. For my grandmother, it would have been an admission of her decline to formally abandon the unused rooms of her home. For the occupants of this house, it was probably more a case of laziness than pride. Here, I guessed, as in my grandmother's house, there would be one or two rooms at the heart of the building where its residents dwelt. But unlike another visitor to another grandmother's house – from a story which my own grandmother had told me – it would not be a wolf that I would find living there, but something far worse.

I began to climb the stairs. The shadows cast by my lamp through the balustrade made strange shapes on the walls of the upper hallway as I ascended. Suddenly I heard a rustling noise and something scuttled across the hall into a corner. I held up the lamp and peered in the direction it had gone. It was a rat, frozen in the corner, looking almost pitifully scared, its beadlike eyes reflecting the lamp's flame. Glancing around, I could see by similar reflections that there were dozens of rats up here, each marked out by the same two tiny points of light. This struck me as odd. I had seen no rats on the ground floor, or even in the cellar. Why should they all have chosen to congregate here on the first floor? What, I wondered, had those staring, shining eyes struck upon up here that they could not find down below?

It was then, as I continued to climb the stairs and my head rose above the level of the floor, that I noticed the smell. It was the smell of a charnelhouse. I thought instantly of the stench of Zmyeevich's breath, which I now knew to be the stink of the raw, decaying human flesh and blood that rose from his stomach. Holding back the rising need to vomit, I followed the smell into a room to the left of the stairs. I heard the scampering of the rats as they fled out of my way. As I stepped into the room, the stench was stronger and its source was immediately revealed to me. On the floor were laid out ten corpses – all in assorted French uniforms, or those of their allies. They were in various stages of decay. On some, no human features remained recognizable. On others, the telltale throat wounds that betrayed both the manner and the motivation of their deaths were still clear. In between, the wounds had begun to vanish into a formless sponge of decomposing flesh.

I didn't inspect any of the bodies very closely. The light of the lamp was faint, and bending down close was not a pleasant experience. I looked around the rest of the room. In addition to the door through which I had entered, there was another that led to an adjacent room. Before I went through, I glanced back and noticed how, in contrast to the careless way in which the bodies had been desecrated by the vampire's fangs, their actual positioning was rather orderly. The ten bodies were neatly placed across the room in two rows, as though they were in a hospital ward. It was no different from a dining table in a grand house such as the one in which I stood. The crockery and wine glasses and cutlery are laid out with punctilious consideration, but little attention is given by the diner to the messy carcass of the chicken left on his plate once he has eaten.

Here I could see why some of the downstairs rooms had been over-furnished. Space had to be made up here to store these mementos, much as a man might overcrowd one room with paintings to leave room in another for the stuffed heads of wolves and bears that he has hunted, oblivious to the protestations of his wife about having such ugly things in the house. Those stuffed beasts would always be placed in poses so much more terrifying and aggressive than the true state of the creature when it was killed. The same could not be said of the bodies laid out here in so orderly a fashion. If anything, it was their defencelessness, not their majesty, that was emphasized in the display. The Oprichniki saw no nobility in their prey, nor did they have wives to moderate their sense of décor.

The orderliness of the layout revealed something else to me. There were only ten corpses in the room because it had reached its capacity. The doorway to the next room beckoned. As I stepped through I heard behind me a rustling sound as the rats returned to the activity from which I had disturbed them.

The next room was larger and had a few vestiges of furniture left in it. In one corner was a high-backed armchair and near it a folding screen of oriental appearance. Elsewhere a table, chairs and a stool all made this room appear a little more 'lived' in, though the very word brought a grimace to my lips. A second door led back out on to the landing. The windows, like the windows in all the rooms I had been in, were hidden behind thick, heavy curtains. Again there were bodies in here, but the room was not yet full. Only two of them were in French uniforms and both were less decayed than any in the other room. The bodies next to these were very different. They were shabbily dressed in ordinary clothes. By this and simply by their faces, I could tell that these were Russian. Like an archaeologist, I had found a division between strata which I could use to mark a precise date; the date when the French had left and the Oprichniki had chosen not to follow them, but to remain and enjoy an alternative, plentiful food supply.

There were seven Russian bodies in the room. The soldiers had naturally all been men, but once the Oprichniki had switched to civilians, they demonstrated no discrimination over sex. One of the bodies was small, scarcely bigger than a child. Its head, covered in tight curls of black hair, lay on one side, facing away from me, causing the foul lacerations in the throat to gape open even more. For an agonizing moment, I believed it to be Natalia. I bounded across the room and turned her head to look at her face, the wounds on one side of her neck closing up as I did so. It was not her. It wasn't even a girl, but a boy of about Natalia's age. I stood up, relieved that the suffering of grief was not, in this case, to be felt by me but could be transferred to others elsewhere in the city who knew and loved this boy.

I went over to the oriental screen and pulled it to one side. Behind it, a figure stood upright, its awful, contorted face staring directly into mine. I smelled the reeking stench of decay stronger than ever and I threw myself back, knocking the screen to the ground.

I had been mistaken. The figure was not standing; it was hanging – hanging like a coat casually thrown on to a peg. A long nail had been hammered into the wall behind and the body had been thrust upon it so that the head of the nail could just be seen sticking out of the neck under the chin. It was in a position that would not have much hindered the Oprichniki as they ate. The body was old and almost as decayed as some of those in the other room, but it wore no French uniform, just regular clothes. The wounds in the neck had long ago begun to putrefy, to such an extent that it was surprising it still had the integrity to support the weight of the body from that single nail. Most of the flesh of the face had begun to decay, but the full beard still remained, as did the eyes.

And so, despite the darkness and the hideous putrefaction of his face, the body was not unrecognizable. His clothes and his beard and his eyes – especially his eyes – all gave him away.

It was Vadim.

So it became clear that Rodion Valentinovich would never be held in his grandfather's arms; that their lives had overlapped by only a few hours or days, if at all. Vadim could never even have known of his grandchild's existence, and neither I nor anyone else would have the pleasure of telling him. I could not weep. I had known for a long time that Vadim was dead; known since I had seen Iuda arrive at that house in Kitay Gorod without Vadim in tow. Every time I had tried and failed to meet up with Vadim since, I had felt a little fear and a little sadness and suspected that his failure to appear hinted at his utter inability so to do. And so seeing his body now was more of a confirmation than a revelation. Still I wished, as I had done and still did with Maks, for the chance then to say a proper goodbye and the opportunity now to mourn.

I turned away and my foot knocked against something hollow and wooden. Vadim's corpse had not been the only thing hidden by the screen. I had also found what I had come into the house to look for. It was a coffin, but again, like those of Matfei and Varfolomei, not purpose-built; merely a crate of the conveniently correct size and shape.

I pulled it away from the wall, towards the middle of the room, and prised open the lid. Inside was the soldier whom I had so long ago seen dead but not decaying, whom that night I had followed to the house where he now slept. His eyes were closed and his hands lay across his belly. I raised my hand, firmly grasping my wooden dagger high above my head, ready to bring it down on the sleeping monster's heart with all my strength.

His eyes flicked open. He engaged me in the same dead stare that I had seen in him before and once again hissed the only word I had ever heard him utter.

'Murderer!'