Thirteen Years Later (72 page)

He pulled the trigger.

The pistol recoiled in Aleksei’s hand and Iuda’s body jerked with the impact of the pellet. Blood spurted from the centre of his chest, but Aleksei knew he had missed the heart. Iuda had to be alive to be able to listen.

Now for the play-acting – just in case somebody chose to bear witness to this event, to report it back to Marfa or Dmitry.

‘Oh my God! Vasiliy!’ shouted Aleksei. He ran over to the prostrate figure and knelt beside it. Looking back towards the square, he saw government troops begin to arrive at the riverbank. Behind them rode Pyotr in triumphant bronze, silhouetted against the moonlight. Aleksei grabbed Iuda under the arms and dragged him out further towards the middle of the river, as if to protect him from those terrible men who had shot him, but he still made sure that they were in a place where Pyotr’s bronze eyes could look down upon them.

‘You surprise me, Lyosha,’ said Iuda. His voice was croaky and punctuated by coughing. Blood showed on his lips, flowing out down his chin each time he spoke. ‘But I suppose you have won. A checkmate is a checkmate, however dull.’ His fingers scrabbled at his coat buttons. Aleksei helped to undo them, knowing that he had to breathe in order to hear what Aleksei had to say.

‘Oh, this is no simple checkmate, Iuda,’ said Aleksei. ‘You’ve been fooled – played for a
prostak
– and now I’m going to tell you all about it.’

Iuda’s hand slipped inside his coat. His fingers worked at the buttons of his shirt and finally found their way inside. For a moment Aleksei was fearful that he had his own gun, but he doubted he would have the strength to use it.

‘Do go on, Lyosha,’ said Iuda. Any pretence he made at encouragement was lost in the gargling of blood in his chest. He really didn’t seem interested in what Aleksei had to say. Aleksei thought he had been pretty smart – finding a way of solving all his problems and of puncturing Iuda’s ridiculous ego at the moment of his death. But when the moment came, Iuda was refusing to play the game. His hand reached inside his shirt and finally caught a grip on whatever was within. He sighed and closed his eyes, breathing more easily. In any other man, Aleksei would have suspected that he had taken hold of a crucifix.

Iuda opened his eyes again. ‘Go on, Lyosha,’ he said.

At last, Aleksei understood the difference between them. It was not that Iuda was better at devising a deception than he was. He probably was, but that was not the point. The real difference was that Iuda did not so eagerly play the victim as Aleksei had always done. He managed to keep up the veneer of being in control even as he lost everything – his life included. It did not matter. Iuda would die and Aleksei would have the pleasure of telling him that Aleksandr was alive. Iuda might pretend not to care, but Aleksei would know, and that would be enough.

‘Iuda,’ he said, patting him consolingly on the chest, ‘I have beaten you.’

Iuda’s body was ripped by convulsive coughing. Aleksei realized he would have to hurry things along, but Iuda seemed to appreciate that too. He pulled his hand from inside his shirt. Two strands of a leather cord emerged from it, by which whatever he was holding had been hung around his neck. He opened his hand and in it Aleksei saw nestling a small glass vial, containing a dark
liquid. With a jerk, Iuda tugged at it. The stopper, attached to the leather band, came loose, and in a moment Iuda had the vial to his lips. He drank very little and then his arm fell to one side. He breathed more slowly now, as a contented smile spread across his face.

‘Carry on, Lyosha,’ he said. ‘Tell me what it was you were going to say.’

Aleksei didn’t speak. He looked down at Iuda’s hand. The glass vial had rolled out of it on to the ice, spilling the remainder of its contents. A small, dark stain spread out across the ice – black in the moonlight, but Aleksei knew well enough not to trust that fickle illumination. He picked up the vial and sniffed it. The scent was unmistakeable – blood.

‘Please, Lyosha, grant a dying man his wish.’

Aleksei said nothing. Iuda’s words from earlier that day echoed in his mind.

‘
Pyotr was the true genius. To have his blood drunk by a vampire and to live through it into old age – that’s a feat that would be almost impossible to surpass.
’

But Iuda had surpassed it. He had had a vampire drink his blood – the scars Aleksei had seen on his neck proved that – and had kept in that bottle which he hung around his neck blood from that same vampire; an insurance policy – a lifesaving elixir he could consume whenever his life was at risk. Perhaps Kyesha had been the
voordalak
from whom he had taken that blood, perhaps another. It did not matter.

‘Please, tell me. How did you fool me?’

Aleksei smiled. ‘I didn’t, Iuda. I was pretending, but I won’t lie to you. I could never devise a trick clever enough to fool you.’

‘I thought perhaps you’d finally discovered it was Dominique you saw me with at that window in Moscow.’ His lips curled into a grin. ‘Or equally, that it was Margarita.’

‘No, Iuda,’ said Aleksei. ‘You’ve still got me there.’

Iuda coughed again. His stomach contracted and his upper body rose up towards Aleksei. His eyes stared out at him, and
tried to smile, but it only meant that more of his own blood spewed from his mouth. His eyes lost their focus and his body went limp, falling back on to the ice. On last, great, bloody cough issued from him, but Aleksei knew it was only the wind escaping from his body.

Iuda was dead, but not dead. He was undead. How long it would take for the full transformation – the induction, as Iuda had termed it – to be complete, he did not know. But it would happen. Iuda had preferred to live as a man for as long as he could, but in the end had chosen to live as a
voordalak
rather than not live at all.

Unless Aleksei could do something about it.

He had not brought his wooden sword with him – he had not thought to encounter any
voordalaki
in Petersburg. But he had his sabre, and although he knew he could not use it to stab Iuda’s lifeless body through the heart, he could still make use of it to sever Iuda’s head.

He rolled the corpse over on to its front and then stood up. He drew his sword, raising it up above his head and squeezing the handle tight. He felt pain in his left hand, where his newest wound had scarcely begun to heal, but he ignored it, focusing all his hatred upon the back of Iuda’s inert neck.

‘Halt!’ came a shout from the riverbank. ‘You there! What the hell are you doing?’

Aleksei ignored the soldiers and brought down the blade. A shot hit him in the arm, but it did not hamper him as he swung the steel inexorably towards Iuda’s undefended neck. Then the ice shook beneath his feet. A cannonball landed in front of him, just beyond Iuda’s body. Aleksei was thrown back. He felt his sword briefly connect with Iuda’s flesh, but it would have been no more than a scratch. He landed on his back, but was soon sitting up again.

It was too late. Even as he watched, Iuda’s inanimate body slipped into the hole in the ice the round shot had created. There was barely the sound of a splash as it vanished. Aleksei was
reminded again of Satschan and even more of the Berezina. It was ever the same in Russia – snow and ice and freezing cold. This time, though, things were different. There was more certainty. This time he knew for sure that Iuda was dead. But though, like his namesake, Iuda would be entombed in ice, and though he had chosen a fate that ensured he would encounter Satan himself, neither would be permanent. This time Aleksei was confident that, when the ice melted, Iuda would live again.

Aleksei turned over on to his front and raised himself to his feet. He began to run across the ice, towards Vasilevskiy Island and – perhaps – freedom.

Nikolai’s loyal troops ran after him in close pursuit.

Aleksei remained imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress for seven months. He’d made it across the river, but there were troops already waiting on the other side, rounding up the fleeing rebels. Aleksei opted for arrest rather than a bullet.

Prince Volkonsky – Pyotr Mihailovich – had been his most frequent visitor and greatest supporter, but there was nothing he could do to get Aleksei off the hook. He’d been a favourite more of Aleksandr than of Nikolai, and any sway he might have had was reduced by the involvement of the other Prince Volkonsky – his brother-in-law, Sergei Grigorovich – in the plot itself, which had taken on the appellation of the ‘Decembrist Uprising’. Even if none of that had been the case, there was little hope for Aleksei; he had infiltrated the movement too well. His name – in his own hand – was on the list in Nikolai’s possession, many of the rebels could identify him personally, and he had fled arrest from the tsar himself at the Winter Palace. Any defence would risk the true story of what had happened in Taganrog coming out, and exposing Dmitry as one of the plotters. Neither was worth Aleksei’s freedom. They tortured him, but they were amateurs compared with what Aleksei had experienced. Other prisoners did not stand it so well; Colonel Bulatov, so the grapevine had it, had committed suicide – by cracking his skull open against the wall of his cell.

The greater help that Volkonsky could offer was the promise that he would ensure the financial security of Aleksei’s family – both his families – and the spiritual security of the Romanovs. Aleksei did not know whether his trial would lead to death, prison or exile, but there was a strong likelihood he would not be in a position to do anything useful when Aleksandr Nikolayevich came of age. He told Volkonsky that Cain was now a vampire, and told him all his aliases – all those he knew.

The thaw came as usual in spring and the ice on the Neva melted. Hundreds of corpses began to be washed up on the riverbanks, of both rebels and bystanders, but there was no sign of Iuda. Volkonsky argued that the corpse could well have floated out into the sea and sunk to the bottom, or could have been misidentified – easy in the case of a man with so many names – but Aleksei knew that, like Christ, like Caesar’s dynasty, Iuda had required his own death in order to rise again and become the thing that in his heart he had always been: a vampire.

Letters from Dmitry and Marfa made no mention of Vasiliy Denisovich, either in terms of his disappearance or his continued presence, but to discuss him would be to kick Aleksei while he was down.

On 13 July 1826, the sentences were carried out. There were 289 convicted. Suspiciously, 290 of those who had gone on trial were acquitted. It seemed that Nikolai was being mathematically precise in his demonstration of erring on the side of leniency. Many of the men had taken part in a revolt in the south, some weeks after the events in Senate Square. It had been better organized and better supported, but so far away from the seat of power it had meant nothing, and the strength of Nikolai’s loyal armies had proved the greater.

It was three in the morning when they began to be led out of the dingy cells – still damp from the floods of two years before. Whereas at the time of the uprising there had only been six hours of daylight, now there were only the same of darkness. It was a bright morning twilight that Aleksei and the others emerged
into, though the full moon still hung in the air. At least he would have the satisfaction that Iuda could not be there to witness his undoing.

Aleksei stood stiffly to attention as the insignia were ripped from his uniform. There were so many prisoners they had to queue, but none was allowed to see what was happening to the man in front of him. Aleksei had been proud to be made a colonel, and many people now long dead – his father, his mother, Vadim Fyodorovich – would have been proud of him too. But if they were now in a position to know he had become a colonel, and to know that he had been stripped of that rank, then they must also know the reasons behind it; he felt no shame.

He was moved on and next instructed to remove what was left of his uniform and change into a simple peasant robe, but then, strangely, he was issued with a sword. It was not his own, but he could guess the symbolism that led to its being issued to him. He was brought out into the early sunlight. It had been raining overnight, but it was clear now, though the ground was still damp. In front of Aleksei stood five gallows, empty for the time being, and beside them a raging fire.

The sword he had just been given was taken from him. The officer who had taken it raised it above Aleksei’s head, holding its handle and its tip, and began to bend it. This was the symbolic degradation that was applied to a traitor. Aleksei himself had once before been on the other end of the ceremony, when he had held Maksim Sergeivich’s sword above his head and snapped it in two. Then he had believed Maks to be a traitor and Maks had known that, ultimately, his treason was justified. Aleksei could not feel sorry for himself. There were people alive who knew what Aleksei had done – not many, but enough. He would die in the knowledge that somewhere out there, those that he cared for most still loved him. Maks had only regained that love after he had died, and for him that was too late. He remembered Maks’ tearful eyes as the sword shattered, and the surrounding circle of
voordalaki
, with Iuda gloating as he looked on.

The sound of the sword breaking – that same metallic scream, which he had not heard for thirteen years – awoke him from his thoughts. The two halves of the blade were thrown on to the fire to melt, and Aleksei was led to a group of his fellow traitors who stood and waited before the gallows. That was the worst affront of all. Russia did not sanction capital punishment, not for the last three quarters of a century. It seemed that Nikolai, like his brother before him, had plans to modify the constitution. Once all the officers – now officers no more – had gone through the process of degradation, the hangings began.