Danilov nodded. ‘It’s too late for reform now. It won’t assuage them.’

  The man was no politician. Aleksandr had learned long ago that reform only encouraged revolutionaries and he’d learned also that reform was not what his people wanted. Above all, they – the Russians, the whole of Europe – craved peace. Aleksandr had given them that, for a decade now. For all but a few of his subjects, it was reason to love him.

  ‘Who will do it?’ he asked, leaning forward slightly and tilting his head to listen; since childhood his left ear had perceived almost nothing.

  ‘They talk of a garde perdue – a separate group to do the job, without those in charge taking the blame.’

  It was sensible – that was how Aleksandr would have done it. Somewhere inside him a voice commented that that was how he had done it, but he dismissed the idea. He had never dreamed it would be necessary for his father to be killed.

  ‘How long do I have?’

  ‘At least until next summer.’

  ‘They won’t attempt anything while I’m in Taganrog?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ replied Danilov. ‘The Southern Society is based mostly around Tulchin and Kiev, and that’s still a long way away.’

  ‘Can we be sure they trust you? They could be feeding you a line.’

  ‘If they are, you’ll know soon enough.’ Aleksandr found Danilov’s grim sense of humour distasteful at the best of times, but he understood it had been forged out of experience. From what he had heard, Danilov had been part of a squad of sixteen when the French invaded – four officers and twelve men. By the time Napoleon had departed, he was the only survivor.

  They fell into silence. Aleksandr pondered the implications of what he had been told. He’d allowed these societies to grow – both in the north and in the south – when he could have crushed them at any time. But to destroy them too soon would have been fruitless. They would have scattered and re-formed. Now, though, the time was approaching when he would deal with them all – before they could move against him.

  ‘I will act when I return from Taganrog,’ he said. ‘I’ll need names by then.’ He didn’t reveal to Danilov just how many names he knew already. What would be the benefit?

  ‘Unless I can diffuse the situation.’

  It was understandable that Danilov saw hope of redemption in these men – he had fought alongside many of them. For Aleksandr a quiet resolution seemed neither probable nor desirable. But if that hope was the price of Danilov’s loyalty, it was unwise to disabuse him of it.

  ‘I think you’ll find that impossible, Colonel,’ said Aleksandr, ‘but my prayers will be with you if you can.’

  Danilov saluted and the tsar returned the gesture, then he turned and disappeared into the darkness of the passageway. The sound of approaching footsteps came from another direction. Aleksandr turned to see that the metropolitan had come looking for him. He straightened his jacket and marched briskly along the corridor to the front of the monastery.

  Outside, his calèche was waiting for him, its three horses shaking their manes as if impatient. It was a humble carriage, but best suited for the journey. His wife, the Tsaritsa Yelizaveta, would follow later in grander style. A small crowd of monks had gathered, and was now joined by the metropolitan.

  Aleksandr leapt nonchalantly on to the calèche and hid the pain it caused in his legs and back. He rarely forgot his forty-seven years, but on those occasions when he attempted to, his body soon reminded him. He raised a hand and waved at the assembled holy men.

  ‘Pray for me,’ he said. ‘And for my wife.’

  With that, he heard the sound of the driver’s whip and the carriage began to move. Amongst the crowd, he noticed the shadowy figure of Colonel Danilov observing the departure. There was a man he hoped would do more than pray for his safety.

  The tsar remained standing as the calèche drove away. His escort was small and did not block his view. Behind him, the Nevsky Prospekt led straight to the centre of Petersburg, just five versts away. Ahead of him, almost fifteen hundred versts hence, lay Taganrog, and what else, he knew not.

  He remained upright, with one foot inside the carriage and one on the running board, looking back the way they had come. Only when the towers of the monastery, lit solely by the stars and the candles that shone dimly from its windows, had vanished from view did he sit down.

  The writing was in French. The destination was Ragusa, on the Dalmatian coast. The message was brief:

  I have heard from Saint Petersburg. He is on his way.

  CHAPTER II

  DMITRY FELT THE KEYS BENEATH HIS HANDS. ONLY HIS TWO ring fingers did not make contact. The chord was C minor: C-E-G-C in the left hand, the same in the right. He had not chosen it for any particular reason, but his hands came to rest there naturally. He closed his eyes and waited.

  He sat still at the harpsichord for over five minutes, in complete silence, his fingers touching the keys but not striking them. Music danced through his mind, as clearly audible as if it were being performed in the very room in which he sat. Orchestras poured out their melody, along with pianofortes, church organs, even human voices. Tunes never before played leapt from instrument to instrument, sometimes imitating familiar styles, sometimes in forms that would scarcely be thought of as music.

  It was no special gift; he knew many other musicians who spoke of the same sensation, something they could call to themselves almost at will. Lying in bed at night, it always came, but even in daylight, as Dmitry walked down the street, or in the middle of a conversation that did not interest him, he could summon it. The summons was his, but after that, the music was not his to master. He knew that it was a creation of his own mind, but he made no conscious decision as to its path or pattern. The composition was instinctive, as instinctive as hunger or lust or anger. He could neither prevent it nor control it.

  But whenever the music came, it came only to tease him. In his life, Dmitry must have heard hundreds of hours – thousands – played inside his head, never repeating, never disappointing. But not a single note had ever made it out to be heard by any human ear. It was not influenced by consciousness and so, just as he could not direct it, neither could he analyse it, remember it, or even slow it down to a manageable tempo.

  He had tried playing it at the keyboard; he had tried writing it down on paper. He had even attempted to sing it out loud so that another could transcribe it. But the music could not be contained. It fled on at its own pace, oblivious of the fact that in so doing it destroyed its own chances of immortality. Of course, he could pick out a note here and there, but what did that help? There were only twelve notes to choose from in total; the beauty did not lie within them but in their combination and permutation.

  He pressed down on the keyboard and the chord sounded. It was a pleasant sound – melancholy, as a minor chord should be, but still harmonious. But it was not a new creation. It had no context, no before and no after to make it more than itself; a tableau that failed to tell the story of the play.

  Dmitry lifted his fingers from the keyboard and the sound stopped. The music inside him had stopped too, not as he released the keys, but as he had first pressed them, banished as a ghost by its living cousin. It was always that way. But it must have gone somewhere. If only that place could be his fingers. He moved his right hand down the keyboard, still forming a C minor, but in a different inversion. All he needed to do was forget himself, to stop trying to listen to the music, to intercept it and capture it, instead simply to let it flow from him. He had attempted it so many times before, but he knew it would work one day – had to work. It didn’t matter if it was never written down, just to make the air vibrate for a few brief minutes to the sound of his music would be enough. And if that barrier could be broken, perhaps the rest would come easily.

  He closed his eyes again and played. C minor. Then the same chord again. His hands moved up the keyboard – he had not asked them to – and played a G. Then C minor again, a diminished C and another G. His fingers moved as if they knew where they were going, through no direction of his; a diminished A now. The music began to smother him – control him. It was as if the harpsichord were dragging his creation from him, as though his blood were being drained from his veins, as though he were experiencing a slow, drawn-out orgasm that would leave him empty, as if the production of that music would kill him – and yet he did not want to stop. And the sound that he produced was wonderful. More than wonderful, it was sublime. It was brilliant. It was beautiful.

  It was Beethoven. His hands moved of their own volition not out of inspiration but through repetition. He had played it so often during his life that now his hands knew it better than he did. Sonata in C minor, number 8 – the Pathétique. Of course it was wonderful, and brilliant, and beautiful. But it was not Dmitry’s. The one concept followed inescapably from the other.

  He let his hands play on, drowning out the possibility of any of his own music entering his mind. His right hand scurried over the high notes while his left thumped out the low, rhythmic chords. It was not really a suitable piece for a harpsichord. His left hand frequently stabbed for a low note that didn’t exist on the short keyboard, but beyond that, the tone of the instrument was quite unsuitable for this stormy piece. He moved on to the allegro and played it far too fast, deliberately pushing himself to the limits of his technique. His left hand flickered over the bass tremolo like a trapped butterfly, while his right appeared merely to slap the keyboard repeatedly, but each time his fingers found the correct notes.

  As he played he cursed his father, cursed him for being too mean to replace this ancient instrument with a pianoforte, cursed him for forcing him into the army, and above all for not believing precisely what Dmitry himself did not believe – that he could make a career as a musician.

  His fingers moved ever faster, ignoring the faults in the instrument beneath them and the cramp that was developing in his forearms. At least, while they played, the sound of his own music could not return to taunt him.

  Aleksei lay back in his chair and listened to the muffled sound of the harpsichord from across the hallway. Dmitry was showing off, he could tell, playing at that sort of speed. And what was wrong with that? He had plenty to show off with – enormous accuracy and dexterity. It wasn’t enough to make Dmitry into a great musician, but Aleksei hoped it was enough to make him happy. The very sound of it made Aleksei happy, made him for a moment forget those things that caused distress in his life.

  He looked across the room at Marfa and smiled. She had been reading, but noticed his movement and looked up at him. She seemed embarrassed at his stare, and he was reminded of how she was more than twenty years ago, before they were married, when his glance at her across a crowded room would have caused her heart to pound and her face to flush behind the powder, little though he had been aware of it. Memories of his feelings for her back then began to push themselves into his mind, passionate feelings that had long since been replaced by mere affection – still more than many couples had left between them.

  She returned his smile, and he wondered whether it was now in response to Vasiliy’s glance that her heart beat faster and her cheek reddened. When he was younger, when he had been in love with her, the thought of Vasiliy – of anyone with her – would have enraged him. He would have challenged Vasiliy to a duel and – had he survived, which he little doubted – he would then have cast Marfa aside, unable to forgive her. Did that show how much or how little he loved her? Would he have gone further? Had he loved her enough to kill her? Aleksei had faced that dilemma once, not with Marfa, but with another woman. He had not killed, but not for want of love.

  Today, he had no urge to face a duel with Vasiliy, no desire to cast Marfa out of his home. Was he too forgiving, or was it mere indifference? He knew he should confront Marfa, if only to discover which of those two it was, if only to show her that he cared enough to object. But with Dmitry’s music filling the house, he felt too relaxed to be concerned with it now.

  Even his concerns for the tsar’s safety seemed far from urgent. It had been almost two weeks since he had spoken to Aleksandr in the Nevsky Monastery. He smiled to himself. The last time he had gone there, it had been for a very different reason. He’d heard the story of an old monk who lived there – a monk who slept each night in a coffin. The implication was obvious, but Aleksei had been wise enough to test the theory before acting. A glimpse of the old man kneeling in prayer outside one of the chapels in the full glare of the sun had been ample evidence.

  It wasn’t the first time since 1812 that he had gone in search of a voordalak. In the intervening years he had investigated every rumour he had come across that might just hint at the presence of a vampire. All had proved to be false alarms. He had not gone out of his way in search of them, had not travelled deep into the Carpathians – where he knew he would find them – to hunt them down. If they did not come to him, he would not go to them. Most people were lucky enough never to encounter a voordalak in their whole lives. It would be unkind of fate if he were to meet such creatures twice.

  As for the tsar, he would be almost at his destination by now. He should be safe for the winter. And there was more that Aleksei could do to make his safety permanent.

  Five menacing chords in sequence ended the first movement of the sonata. It was not suited to the harpsichord, thought Aleksei. He would do something about that. In the meantime, he relaxed as Dmitry began the adagio cantabile.

  The small black calèche had come to feel like home. It had been a speedy journey – just thirteen days to travel from the top of his country to its bottom. To have traversed Russia in the other direction – from west to east – would have taken months. He had been joined soon after leaving Petersburg by a small entourage, amongst them his chief of staff, Baron Diebich, two doctors – Tarasov and the Scotsman Wylie – along with his valet, Anisimov, and other personal staff.

  A larger court would arrive with the tsaritsa. She had departed the capital only a few days after Aleksandr, but would travel at a gentler pace. Her health had, for Aleksandr, been only an excuse to come to Taganrog, but it was an issue nonetheless. It had been easy enough to persuade Wylie to suggest the town as a suitable location for a winter convalescence. She certainly could not stay in the capital. The flooding of the Neva the previous winter had been the worst that any could remember, and much of the city had not recovered. It was not the place for a woman in his wife’s frail condition. Nor would she be able to face a recurrence of the deluge this year, which was a strong possibility.

  The whole way from Petersburg, at each post house they called at, Aleksandr had checked that the accommodation would be suitable for the tsaritsa and sent a note back to her describing the best route to take. Moreover, he had left her in the care of Prince Volkonsky, despite the degree to which he would have appreciated the companionship and counsel of Pyotr Mihailovich himself. They would both be with him in a week or so.

  It had been seven years since he had visited the town of Taganrog, and then only briefly. It had not changed much. Aleksandr looked out over the Sea of Azov. It was calm today, but he had heard it could grow stormy. To the east, though he could not see it, the river Don emptied into the sea, having risen in the heart of the country. To the south, the narrow Strait of Kerch opened into the Black Sea, and beyond that lay the whole world.

  The accommodation was humble for a tsar and his consort, but he was satisfied with it. In his youth he might have raised hell, demanding that some more appropriate residence be found – or built – but not today. Whatever he thought of it, it was a palace, by simple virtue of the fact that he inhabited it. It was just one storey high, with fewer than twenty rooms, though the basement had additional ones for the staff. Aleksandr wandered through the building, selecting half a dozen or more rooms that could be allocated to the tsaritsa. He then looked for the room that he would make his study. There was a possibility on the north side of the house, but as soon as Aleksandr glimpsed the view he dismissed it. The skyline of Taganrog was dreary. He could count only six spires and a couple of domes which broke the monotony. How unlike either of his two capitals.

  The room on the south side was smaller, but it would suit him. He could see the garden and, beyond that, the sea. He sat down and gazed across the water once again, with but one question on his mind. Why had he come here?

  News travelled rapidly, even on the borders of the empire. It was less than a day before reports of the arrival reached the Crimean peninsula – the eastern shore of the Sea of Azov. This letter was just as brief as the last, written in the same hand, to the same address in Ragusa.

  He is here. Come at once.

  Aleksei had heard nothing for over half an hour, though in truth he had no way of determining how much time had passed. The cupboard was windowless, and although a dim light had for a while seeped under the door, once that had been extinguished, it was impossible for him to see his watch, or even his own hand in front of his face.

  He had been glad to leave the meeting early. The same arguments had been churned over once again, with no new conclusions being reached. Pestel was by far the smartest amongst them. Aleksei had read his manifesto, ‘Russkaya Pravda’ – ‘Russian Justice’. There was plenty of it that Aleksei did not agree with, such as the expulsion of the Jews to Asia Minor and the forced Russification of every nationality in the empire, but at the very least it did show the vision of someone genuinely planning to create a new form of government for the country. There were real plans for how to abolish serfdom – without leaving millions of former serfs to simply starve – for freedom of expression and for the equality of all before the law. Ryleev and Muraviev and the others had no such clear plans. They were just romantics who wanted to imitate Byron. They risked meeting the same fate, and would probably revel in it.

  Fortunately for the tsar, for anyone who would prefer to let Russia remain in its current state, Pestel was leader of the Southern Society, not the Northern, and while that might put him within striking distance of Aleksandr, the real struggle for political power would take place in Petersburg. It was lucky for Aleksei too; Pestel was one of the few who might be smart enough to see through him. In the north, there was no one, except perhaps the newcomer, Kakhovsky. He was not smart, but he had a certain animal cunning.