‘What do you know of the Romanov Betrayal?’ he asked.

  ‘Only a little more than I care.’

  ‘Don’t piss me around,’ said Aleksei.

  ‘I’ve heard Cain use the phrase occasionally. I never understood it.’

  ‘Is Cain his real name?’

  In the darkness, Aleksei saw Kyesha shrug in a disturbingly human manner.

  ‘Is he even English?’

  ‘He could be. I don’t have an ear for the accent. His French and Russian are both near perfect.’

  ‘I’ve seen a letter from him,’ said Aleksei. He would make no mention of the letter’s recipient. He doubted if Kyesha would be interested. Aleksei’s concern might be the safety of the tsar, but Kyesha’s only interest was in vengeance against Cain.

  ‘And?’

  ‘What do you know about Bakhchisaray?’

  ‘He mentions it in the letter?’ asked Kyesha.

  Aleksei nodded.

  ‘And you’re going there?’

  ‘That’s the plan.’

  ‘From there, he’ll take you to Chufut Kalye,’ said Kyesha.

  ‘“Take” us?’

  ‘He’ll find a way.’

  ‘And what is Chufut Kalye?’

  Kyesha said nothing. He was looking over Aleksei’s shoulder. A man was walking past on the other side of the road – a serf by the looks of him. As he turned back, Aleksei felt sure he glimpsed Kyesha licking his lips.

  He grabbed Kyesha by the arm. ‘We can’t talk here,’ he said, leading the voordalak down the street. When the serf was out of sight, Aleksei repeated his question. ‘What’s Chufut Kalye?’

  ‘Did you ever hear of a sect of Jews known as the Karaites?’ Kyesha asked.

  Aleksei had heard the name, but little more. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Some of them claim they’re one of the lost tribes of Israel, others that they’re descended from Khazars, but it’s all really just to shake off the blame for murdering Christ.’

  ‘I’m not really interested in the theology,’ said Aleksei, though it surprised him that Kyesha should be.

  ‘Well, they used to be all over the Crimea. There are fewer now. Chufut Kalye was their citadel. It’s an old fortress – partly built, partly burrowed. There’s a handful of them still live there.’

  ‘How far is it from Bakhchisaray?’

  ‘A few versts. It’s a bit of a climb.’

  ‘And what will happen when we get there?’ asked Aleksei.

  ‘I’m not a fortune teller.’

  ‘You must have some idea.’

  Kyesha stopped walking and turned to Aleksei. ‘Do you really want me to tell you what I think’s going to happen?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s very simple,’ Kyesha informed him. ‘You will kill Richard Cain.’

  Aleksandr heard the coachman call to his horses, and the carriage began to rattle along the road. He leaned out of the coach window and looked back. Volkonsky stood there, watching his departure. Aleksandr was sorry to leave him behind, but he was concerned for the tsaritsa, and though she had her doctors with her, she needed a man of sterner temperament to make sure she did nothing to risk her health. The tsaritsa herself had not felt well enough to come out and say farewell, but she had watched from a window.

  Though he might miss Volkonsky, Aleksandr still had with him sufficient aides. Baron Diebich sat opposite him in his carriage. Somewhere else in the train, a few coaches behind, was Colonel Salomka. And, of course, he had his own doctors with him; Wylie and Tarasov were back there somewhere too.

  The excursion was planned to last just seventeen days. The original idea had been for longer, but Yelizaveta had insisted he should not be away for so many weeks. It was certainly important for them to get back to Taganrog before the weather really turned on its path towards winter.

  In the end, what did it matter if he planned to be away for seventeen days or seventeen years? On the tenth day they would arrive at Bakhchisaray. He did not know if he would ever leave.

  He looked further down the short line of carriages and wagons that accompanied him. Behind them, a few of the party rode on horseback. It was difficult to pick out individual figures, but one was clear.

  Aleksandr sat back down inside the carriage. He knew that he must face what was ahead of him, but he also knew that, in Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, he had an ally.

  Rzbunarea weighed anchor. Its course was back, west, along the northern coast of the Sea of Azov, but keeping well away from the shore. It was not even certain that there was any need to track Aleksandr Pavlovich; what had to be done might just as well be achieved at a distance. But on the other hand, proximity would lead to flexibility. There was still much that could go wrong, despite the assurances he had been given.

  They would sail to Sevastopol, or thereabouts. The royal party was travelling by land, and so their paths would diverge even before Rzbunarea left the Sea of Azov. It was a pity that Bakhchisaray wasn’t closer to the coast, but otherwise it was a well-chosen location. The cargo could not, of course, be carried through so populous a city as Sevastopol, but a slight diversion to an appropriate, secluded cove would make it easy to take on board.

  There had been rumours – rumours which had crossed Europe, though no human would have noticed – about what else was going on in Bakhchisaray, but they were of little concern to the passenger of Rzbunarea. When this was all over, perhaps he would take revenge on behalf of his entire race, but for now he had more pressing needs.

  And even before the ship took on its cargo, there was one essential task that its passenger had to perform. It would take concentration and fortitude, and for that he would require rest, even though there were still days to prepare. Rest now would make him ready.

  He lay back and listened to the creaking of the ship around him. It was pleasant to be surrounded by wood, but the wooden hull was not so comforting as the tighter wooden walls that now entombed him as he rested. He reached out and pulled the lid over him, sensing it above him, inches from his face. Now all was dark. He slept.

  CHAPTER XVII

  ‘LORD JESUS CHRIST, HAVE MERCY UPON ME, A SINNER.’

  Their two voices spoke in unison, but the starets kept his low, allowing the kneeling tsaritsa to dominate as they spoke the Prayer of the Heart.

  ‘Why have you come here?’ he asked.

  The tsaritsa looked up, and the starets could see fear in her eyes.

  ‘It’s my husband,’ she said.

  ‘Has he been unfaithful?’

  ‘No.’ The starets raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes,’ the tsaritsa acknowledged, ‘but not recently, and that’s not what I’m concerned about.’

  ‘Then what is your concern?’

  ‘Father,’ she moaned, ‘I’m afraid for his soul!’

  ‘We should all fear for our souls,’ he said softly, ‘but prayer will be our salvation.’

  ‘There are some acts that are beyond salvation.’

  The starets paused, wondering what the tsaritsa could know of her husband. ‘Acts?’ he asked.

  ‘Acts which cannot be repented.’

  He spoke the word that she seemed afraid to utter. ‘Suicide?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’ Her response was scarcely voiced, but in the stone-walled cell of the monastery, it filled the air.

  ‘Why do you think he contemplates that?’ The starets deliberately avoided repetition of the term she had been so keen to leave unuttered.

  ‘He talks as though he anticipates his own death.’

  ‘That does not mean death will come by his own hand.’

  ‘But if not, how can he know?’

  ‘His anticipation may not be correct.’ He wondered whether such words would be comforting. It was not reason that drove the woman’s grief. But she seemed to understand.

  ‘He believes it to be. And he accepts it.’

  ‘We must all accept death eventually,’ said the starets.

  ‘And embrace it?’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not seeing things in him that are not really there?’

  ‘How can I know?’ Her voice was despairing.

  ‘We must pray for you.’

  ‘And for him.’

  ‘For both of you.’ The starets placed his hands on the tsaritsa’s head and muttered a prayer in Old Slavonic that she was unlikely to understand. Then she stood.

  ‘May I come to you again?’ she asked.

  ‘Perhaps it is better if I come to you.’

  She nodded meekly. ‘When?’

  The starets searched for the most reassuring answer. ‘When the Lord’s work needs doing,’ he said. It seemed to satisfy her.

  Aleksei had not appreciated how tiresome a royal tour could be. Much of the landscape they passed through had been of enormous beauty, and the towns and cities so different from what anyone from the north of the country was used to, that he would truly have enjoyed the journey if he had been able to travel at his own pace. But the place of a tsar, it seemed, was not with his land but with his people. Everywhere they stopped he would spend time in conversation with local dignitaries or merchants, as if his authority as tsar somehow rested on their approval. Perhaps he was more sympathetic to the democratic ideas of the Northern Society than he claimed. He had certainly held some truck with them in his youth. Aleksei could have wandered off on his own, and was tempted to, secure in the knowledge that there would be no danger until Bakhchisaray. But that was an obvious ploy; an invitation to a location could easily be a trap that would be sprung en route there. Kyesha had thought that the ultimate destination was in fact beyond Bakhchisaray, but there was no benefit to be drawn in relying on that. Aleksei was never close beside the tsar, but was never beyond his summoning.

  They had stopped before they had ever really got going at Mariupol, a little way down the coast from Taganrog, and Aleksandr had talked to a group of Mennonites – Germanic, protestant pacifists; hardly representatives of the Russian outlook on life. After that they had visited Berdyansk, and the tsar was once again welcomed by the local populace.

  At last they passed along the narrow isthmus at Perekop and entered the Crimean Peninsula itself. From a military perspective, it was a frightening terrain. The isthmus was perhaps only eight versts across at its narrowest, and the land beyond was flat and without cover. It felt like they were riding into a trap. But Aleksei knew the trap would not be sprung here. A narrow strip of land such as Perekop would be ideal to contain an army, but a single man, be he a peasant or a tsar, would need closer attention.

  From there they went on to Simferopol, where the first signs of a magnificent landscape began to appear. Many Russians, certainly those from Moscow or Petersburg, could pass their whole life without ever seeing a mountain. To the east, the Urals were too far from civilization to attract much interest. Aleksei had heard that the Caucasus mountains were impressive, but he had never seen them. He was luckier than most of his countrymen to have travelled west on the march towards Paris and to have seen the Alps, though only looking up from their foothills, and before that the Carpathians, when fighting on the Danube. But it had all been many years ago, and Aleksei had become used to the vast, flat steppe of his homeland. Much of the Crimea was the same, but suddenly now the mountains rose out of it, and as the tsar’s party carried on further south, they rose even higher.

  As the roads became steeper, Aleksandr chose to travel on horseback rather than by carriage. In view of the terrain, it was a sensible move, but it did nothing to assist his personal safety. And when the tsar travelled by horse, so must the rest of his entourage. Their guides led them through a broad pass in a range of peaks that stretched out unendingly to the east and west, and at last the Black Sea lay before them. Plunging down towards it, the mountains were at their steepest, at some places descending as cliffs directly into the water, at others leaving a narrow strip of level ground between themselves and the waves. At each such point, human habitation was in evidence.

  One of these locations was their next stop, Gurzuf, not far from Yalta, where Aleksei suspected from the cleanliness of the town and the self-satisfaction of the local governor, Count Vorontsov, that the latter had recently made a supreme effort to achieve the former, or had instructed others to.

  There they also met a man who had at once aroused Aleksei’s suspicion: Count Vorontsov’s personal physician – an Englishman by the name of Robert Lee. It was unfair to suspect every Englishman on the peninsula, but it would be foolish to ignore the link. Dr Lee was first introduced to the tsar by way of the demonstration of a miraculous new cure for swamp fever – which was prevalent in the area – administered to a local tatar chief. The results were effective and almost instantaneous, and Lee was invited to dine with the royal party.

  Dr Lee revealed that the principal ingredient of his tonic was a substance he called ‘sulphate of quinine’, which was extracted from a South American tree known as the cinchona. Both Wylie and Tarasov were fascinated to learn more of this; it appeared that their isolation in Russia had prevented them from keeping up to speed with medical progress in the West. Aleksei was also intrigued. ‘Quinine’ had been a term that occurred more than once in Cain’s notes, though through lack of familiarity with the word, he had not been able to translate those sections. He glanced over at Wylie, but the doctor showed no reaction.

  The conversation then moved on to the subject of homeopathy – not a word that Aleksei recalled seeing in Cain’s book. Much of the detail was lost on Aleksei, but it appeared that Wylie was a proponent of the concept, while Lee was not. However, it was Count Vorontsov, rather than his physician, who seemed to pursue the issue with the greater passion.

  ‘Like cures like,’ insisted Wylie. This apparently had been the claim of homeopathy’s inventor, a German called Hahnemann.

  ‘So if I were to stab you through the heart,’ asked the count, ‘bringing about your death, would a second stab wound restore you to life?’

  Before Wylie could respond, Colonel Salomka had interjected. ‘There is a peasant myth in these parts concerning a creature called an oopir.’ He had chortled as he spoke, but Aleksei had instantly paid attention. He glanced again at Wylie, but still saw no response. There was no reason the Scot should be familiar with the local term. ‘As with many of these creatures,’ continued Salomka, ‘the oopir must be killed by stabbing through the heart with a stake of hawthorn. But here’s the thing’ – he sniggered again – ‘you mustn’t stab it a second time, or it will come back to life. Maybe that’s where Herr Hahnemann got his ideas from.’

  Most around the table laughed. The tsar did not, perhaps out of respect for the views of Wylie. Nor did Wylie himself. That might have been out of pique at being mocked, but Aleksei noticed that this time it was Wylie’s eyes that were on him, looking for a reaction.

  A moment later, Wylie resumed the defence of his pet subject. ‘That’s why Dr Hahnemann promulgates the use of only the most dilute quantities of his medicines,’ he said.

  ‘So more of a scratch than a stab?’ suggested Salomka.

  ‘As an analogy, yes,’ said Wylie, choosing simply to ignore the attempts at humour from around the table.

  ‘But what about the diseases we get around here?’ asked Vorontsov. ‘Inflammation of the brain? Or the bowel? Or fever? Would one thousandth of a grain of that sulphate of quinine Dr Lee showed us working today have done the trick, eh? What do you think, Lee?’

  ‘In my experience, a large dose will always arrest the fevers almost instantaneously,’ replied the doctor calmly. ‘I have tried with smaller doses, as have others, and the results are ineffectual.’

  Aleksei said little. His instinctive view on homeopathy was to note that doctors charged their patients by the hour, but paid for their medicines by the grain. But he was prepared to listen to the two experts. As an individual, he trusted Wylie more, but Lee appeared to be the more rigorous scientist. Again, that had echoes of Cain. Could they be one and the same man?

  At one point, Dr Tarasov posed a somewhat less controversial question. ‘Doesn’t the term “homeopathic” originally relate to a form of black magic?’

  ‘It still does,’ muttered Lee, but before Wylie could rise to his bait, Vorontsov answered the question more fully.

  ‘It does indeed. Traditionally there are three types of magic: homeopathic, sympathetic and contagious.’ He glanced at the surprised expressions around the table and chose to explain himself. ‘All nonsense, of course, but some of the Tatars still believe it, so it’s worth understanding.’

  ‘And what’s the distinction?’ asked Tarasov.

  ‘Homeopathic is imitation. The tribe want to catch a deer, so they put on a sort of play in which they catch a deer – the creature itself is played by one of their own. The next day, if the magic works, life imitates art and all eat heartily. Sympathetic is similar, but the object of the magic is represented by some kind of doll or effigy. You stab the doll, and the person it represents falls ill.’

  ‘And contagious?’ It was the tsar who asked.

  ‘Contagious magic is where you take something from the victim’s body – hair or nail clippings often – and through them, the witch can control the person from which they came.’

  ‘So watch out next time you go to the barber,’ said Lee.

  ‘Often a severed body-part may be used,’ continued Vorontsov, ‘a finger or a toe.’

  Aleksei’s thumb ran over the stumps on his left hand. There had been no magic, but Kyesha had used the remains of his severed fingers to control him, to bring him down here as an agent of revenge. Lost in his own thoughts, he scarcely listened to the rest of the count’s explanation, his ears only pricking when he heard the final word.

  ‘Or it can be a bodily fluid, such as semen – or, very often, blood.’

  After the cigars had been handed out, Aleksei managed to isolate Lee and sound him out.

  ‘You argue your points well,’ he said as an opener. ‘I can imagine you speaking in front of the Royal Society.’ It was taking a chance to speak so glibly about an organization of which he knew little.