There was no cheer of support, but his speech was met with a thoughtful silence. Aleksei’s heart leapt at the prospect of a peaceful outcome, though the tension in the square remained a physical presence. Obolensky stepped forward to speak. Beside him was that odious figure, the volunteer for the garde perdue, Pyotr Grigoryevich Kakhovsky.

  ‘You have no friends here, Mihail Andreevich,’ Obolensky said. ‘You may support this despot, but these men love their country. I suggest you leave. If you remain, you may find yourself in danger.’

  Miloradovich glanced from man to man of those who had gathered round, avoiding the gaze of Obolensky.

  ‘Miloradovich is right, Mitka,’ Aleksei murmured to his son. ‘You must leave. Now.’

  ‘Never!’ whispered Dmitry in response.

  The governor general spoke again. ‘I’ll leave you all to consider matters,’ he said. ‘There may not be much time to end this peacefully.’

  He turned his horse and rode back through the crowd, which parted to let him pass. There was a movement behind him. Aleksei saw the raised pistol. He threw himself towards Kakhovsky with a shout, but it was too late. The pistol fired with an explosion of smoke. The hole in Miloradovich’s back was small, but he fell forward in an instant. There were shouts all around, some of approval, others of anger. Cavalrymen galloped to rescue the governor general, but Aleksei did not see what happened to his body as the crowd surged forward.

  Somebody began a chant of ‘Konstantin ee Konstitutsiya!’, which was soon picked up by the rest. Whatever contemplation Miloradovich might have inspired was quickly forgotten. Now there was no hope of a peaceful ending to the day. There were ten thousand soldiers out there with rifles, horses and cannon. It would be carnage.

  Aleksei felt hands lifting him up from the ground. It was Dmitry. Holding his father’s arm, he seemed to notice for the first time the bandage which covered Aleksei’s left hand.

  ‘That was needlessly cruel,’ said the boy. ‘And you’re no coward, Papa.’

  Aleksei had no time to ponder whether the last comment was inspired by his actions or by his latest wound. As he pulled himself up to his feet, the crowd around them thinned, and walking slowly towards them, looking calm and serene in civilian clothing, came Iuda.

  Shock and loathing welled up in Aleksei’s stomach at the sight. Of all places and times, this was not one at which he wanted to be concerned with Iuda. But Aleksei’s reaction to the sight was quite different from that of his son.

  Dmitry let go of his father and strode over to Iuda, his hand held out in greeting.

  ‘Vasiliy Denisovich,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘What an honour.’

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  ‘WHY HAVE YOU COME HERE?’ THE QUESTION THAT DMITRY spoke was identical to the one on Aleksei’s mind, but he uttered it with none of the bile which Aleksei would have injected.

  ‘I came to see you, Mitka,’ replied Iuda. ‘Your mother is very concerned.’ He turned his attention to Aleksei, who had now caught up and stood beside his son. ‘It’s good to see you, Lyosha,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘It’s been many years.’

  Aleksei’s mind raced to understand what on earth Iuda could mean. Clearly, his words were for Dmitry’s benefit.

  ‘Good Lord, yes,’ said Dmitry, with a hint of surprise. ‘I’d almost forgotten you two actually knew one another. It must be a long time.’

  ‘1812,’ said Iuda. ‘You were just a little boy. And a good boy, too – though it was hateful of me to ask you to deceive your father, and for so long.’

  ‘I think I’ve deceived him no more than he’s deceived me,’ said Dmitry. ‘I saw her, Vasiliy, in Moscow, just like you said.’

  ‘So it wasn’t only Marfa you introduced yourself to,’ said Aleksei. He couldn’t take his eyes from Iuda, much as he wanted to gauge his son’s reactions.

  ‘Mama’s told you already?’ asked Dmitry. ‘Vasiliy’s been a great friend to both of us – particularly when you’ve been away.’

  Aleksei perceived the slightest shake of Iuda’s head, as if to tell him, no, Dmitry did not know just how close a friend Iuda had been to his mother. That certainly fitted the boy’s tone. No son could speak so lightly of the man who had turned his mother into an adulteress. And what would be the benefit of revealing the truth, even if it were to be believed? Dmitry had clearly been robbed of much of his respect for his father. Would it be fair to take away his opinion of his mother too? But on the other hand, it might be worth it if it would also strip away any regard in which he held Iuda.

  ‘Almost like a father,’ Dmitry continued. There was no suggestion of any artifice in his voice, but that did not change the fact that he believed what he was saying. Now Iuda’s eyes smiled in victory. Aleksei felt weak.

  ‘I’m a soldier,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t always be at home.’

  ‘God no, Papa,’ said Dmitry, stumbling over his words as he realized what he had said. ‘I didn’t mean anything of that kind.’ But it was too late for him to take it back.

  Iuda was characteristically two-faced. ‘Nor did your father think it, Mitka. I couldn’t begin to take Lyosha’s place in your heart, any more than I could in your mother’s. I’m just someone who’s kept a benign eye on you when he’s been away. I’m sure you’ll have much less need of me now you’ve grown up and flown the nest.’

  Iuda had played it so simply – Dmitry was forced to disagree. ‘No, Vasiliy,’ he said, gripping Iuda’s shoulder, ‘you’ve been far more to us both than that. And always will be.’

  Iuda patted Dmitry’s hand and smiled kindly. ‘Thank you for that, Mitka,’ he said. ‘I will try to live up to your expectations. But we have chatted long enough. We must turn to the reason I am here.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Your mother has sent me. I’ve told her what you’ve been planning for today.’ Iuda raised a hand as he spoke, as though to stop any objection from Dmitry. ‘I’m sorry, but I hold you both in too much regard to keep it from her.’ With the clear implication that Aleksei did not. ‘She begs you to leave, before you are killed.’

  Dmitry did not even need to think about his answer. ‘As does the mother of every man here,’ he explained. ‘No freedom would ever be won if women ruled the world; they all love their sons too much.’

  Iuda nodded. ‘That is much what I told her you would say, but at least I have done what she asked of me.’ He paused, lifting Dmitry’s hand and holding it in both his own. ‘This appeal, however, comes from me. Leave the field. You can do nothing here. Nikolai is tsar; you cannot change that.’

  ‘I can die trying,’ insisted Dmitry.

  ‘You will die failing,’ said Iuda.

  Iuda held the pose for several seconds, looking up into Dmitry’s eyes. Neither spoke. It was Aleksei who broke the silence.

  ‘Listen to him, Mitka,’ he said. It revolted him to urge anyone to take Iuda’s advice, and to be deferring to him, rather than to take the lead in imploring Dmitry to go, but none of that mattered if it succeeded in saving the boy’s life. Aleksei loved Dmitry as a person more even than he loved him as a son. He was prepared to lose the relationship in order to save the man.

  Finally, Dmitry was resolved. ‘Very well,’ he nodded, ‘but you’ll both come too.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Aleksei. ‘But Vasiliy and I have an important matter to discuss first.’

  Iuda raised a questioning eyebrow at Aleksei. There was a hint of admiration in the smile that crossed his lips.

  ‘Here?’ exclaimed Dmitry. ‘Surely it can wait.’

  ‘No,’ said Iuda, ‘your father is quite right. Besides, if we all three leave together it’s more likely we’ll be stopped. We’ll see you soon. We both will. And don’t worry, I’ll be quite safe.’ He tapped his chest again in the same way Aleksei had noticed two days before. If Dmitry observed it, he made no comment.

  Instead he gave Aleksei a brief hug, then did the same with Iuda. He headed off to the east, pushing his way through crowds of rebellious soldiers who did nothing to stop him.

  ‘What is it that we have to discuss?’ Iuda’s voice spoke in Aleksei’s ear as they watched Dmitry depart.

  The truth was there was only one thing Aleksei wanted to talk to Iuda about, and that was to tell him that he had been taken for a fool and that Aleksandr was not dead. But he had already decided that he would do that only in the moments before Iuda’s death. Now he had the perfect opportunity to kill Iuda, or at least to see him die.

  Iuda – Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov – Richard L. Cain – all would die by a single bullet, fired from the gun of a soldier loyal to Tsar Nikolai I. There were plenty of them about, the square was almost surrounded by now, and if none of them managed to fire a fatal shot, then Aleksei had a loaded pistol in his pocket, and was as loyal to Nikolai as any. Neither Marfa nor Dmitry could lay any blame at Aleksei’s door for the death. There would be hundreds killed here today, it was inescapable. No one would be suspicious if one of them was Iuda. Dmitry had heard for himself that Iuda was prepared to stay a while longer. Perhaps there would even be witnesses who could attest to seeing Aleksei desperately attempting to save his old – and so recently reconciled – friend’s life. He felt sure he could stomach a little play-acting for that.

  ‘You play a long game, Iuda,’ he said.

  ‘You’re too generous, Lyosha. You see structure in the present and assume that my every action in the past was working towards it. In reality, the reverse is true. I do things that seem interesting at the time and then decide later what I can make of them.’

  Aleksei was only half listening. His eyes were scanning the square. Dmitry was not yet out of sight. To the south, he could see a definite, organized movement of the troops.

  ‘Do you really think,’ Iuda continued, ‘that in 1812 I ingratiated myself with your wife and son with the intention of revealing the fact to you in 1825?’

  ‘You planned to reveal it some time.’

  ‘How could I even know how they would react to me? I couldn’t have guessed that your wife would be so eagerly accommodating; nor how much your son would search for someone to fill the gap left by his absent father.’

  Aleksei glanced at him. It wasn’t so surprising that barbs concerning Dmitry stung more than those about Marfa, and it wasn’t just that one was a fresher wound. ‘I don’t think Dmitry would be too fond of you if he knew what you and his mother had been doing.’

  ‘Her thoughts exactly,’ said Iuda. ‘To him I’m just an old family friend – a sort of uncle, whom he has known longer than he can remember.’

  ‘You had to make sure he never mentioned you to me.’

  ‘Again, you see patterns after they have emerged and assume they are part of some grand design. Do you play chess, Lyosha?’

  Aleksei’s mind jumped back to a frozen army camp where – as now – he had believed he had Iuda at his mercy. ‘You know I do,’ he said. ‘Last time we spoke of it, you described how disappointed you got whenever I fell for one of your little traps, because it meant you wouldn’t get to spring the bigger trap you’d been planning all along.’

  ‘I did say that, didn’t I? Well, I lied – it’s a vile habit and I apologize for it. But the big trap is not the one that was designed to be big; it’s the one that grows that way. I never told Marfa or Mitka to avoid telling you about me. The boy was only five at the time – how could he have understood? And what would it have meant to you to hear of Vasiliy Denisovich? But then, when I learned later that you knew nothing of me, that’s when I decided to encourage the idea. I was already fucking your wife as often as she could take it, so she wasn’t going to tell. And Dmitry wasn’t too pleased with you at the time, thanks to your failure to take his piano playing seriously – it was I who first taught him to play, incidentally.’

  Aleksei let the words bounce off him. It was all true, but it did not matter. Whatever Iuda might have attempted, Dmitry had grown up to be a good man – a man who did not get on with his own father, but that could be remedied, once Iuda was out of the way.

  Iuda himself seemed to have detected Aleksei’s lack of interest, and had changed tack. ‘I’m glad we persuaded him to go though, Lyosha. That was teamwork, you’ll have to admit. Neither of us wants him to die here amongst these failures.’

  ‘Failures?’

  ‘Oh, come on. You know it as well as I do. The leaders are romantics and the men are dupes. Listen to them.’ He paused, cocking his ear to the air with his usual theatricality. Various shouts filled the square, but one phrase which had become the rallying cry of the rebels stood out.

  ‘“Konstantin ee Konstitutsiya!”’ he repeated. ‘I asked one of them what “Konstitutsiya” meant. You know what he said?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He said it was the name of Konstantin’s wife. These people don’t deserve liberty.’

  Aleksei was still eyeing the square. Dmitry was almost out of sight. He could hear shouted orders flying back and forth in the distance. Soon they would open fire. Iuda needed to be prepared for what Aleksei planned to tell him – it was time to do a little knife-turning of his own.

  ‘You think that’s Zmyeevich up there?’ He nodded towards the bronze statue. ‘Vanquished by Pyotr – crushed under his horse’s hooves?’

  Iuda looked up at the serpent. ‘It must have been around here, mustn’t it?’ He sounded as though it had genuinely only just occurred to him. ‘Yes, I suppose it is.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll do one of Aleksandr in a similar pose?’ asked Aleksei. ‘Of course, it won’t just be Zmyeevich they show him defeating. How would you like to be depicted? A cockroach must be very tricky to carve.’

  Iuda smiled tightly. ‘I don’t think Aleksandr’s victory was all that brilliant. To triumph by dying? Did he perhaps never get as far as the end of the Bible? Saw what the Son of God did and decided to emulate it, not realizing that he needed to manage resurrection as well as crucifixion? 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.’

  Aleksei had to hide his excitement. Soon Iuda would know the truth of what he was saying. It would be a joyous moment.

  Dmitry had forgotten to thank his father for the piano. It was a small thing, but it mattered. It was Vasiliy who deserved the real thanks, for the encouragement, the advice, the first inspiring lessons. All Aleksei had done was to spend some of his money; a lot of his money. But it was money well spent, and Dmitry felt it indicated a change in his father’s attitude. He would have time to thank them both later, he hoped.

  He stepped over the tiny low fence that marked the boundary of Senate Square. For the crowds on both sides, it was as good as a thick, solid brick wall. On the inside stood the rebelling soldiers. They had been told to assemble in Senate Square, and assemble there they did. One foot placed outside would have ruined the plans so carefully laid down by their diligent, absent leaders. On the outside, it was all civilians, by now quite a number of them. It was coming up to three in the afternoon – almost sunset – and news of what was happening had spread through the city. The citizens had gathered to watch. But just as the rebels knew their place, the onlookers, even without explicit instruction, knew that to step over those small slats of wood and into the square would transform them from observers into participants. It was as invisible and as impenetrable a barrier as that which separated a stage from an auditorium.

  From over by the cathedral, Dmitry heard a shout. He looked. It was Nikolai himself who had given the order. In a second, a dozen cannons roared and their mouths spat canister across the square. A wave of men at the front of the crowd collapsed. Dmitry whirled on his heel and looked back towards his father and Vasiliy. Around them, some men fled and others stayed rooted to the spot. The men he was looking for stared back in his direction.

  Aleksei was gesticulating with exaggerated arm movements, pointing at Dmitry and at himself and Vasiliy and in other directions too. The message was clear enough. Dmitry should carry on in the way he was heading; they two would try to escape across the other side of the square. Still Dmitry hesitated. He should go back and help them, though there would be nothing he could do but encourage them to run faster. They were both the type of men who knew how to survive. His father was, anyway. Vasiliy always had a slightly spiritual, unworldly air to him, a sense of benign impracticality, which Dmitry loved, but caused him worry as to the dangers it might bring upon its bearer.

  But Dmitry knew he need not be concerned. However little experience Vasiliy might have under fire, Aleksei was an old professional, and Dmitry knew that his father, whatever differences he and Vasiliy might have had in the past, would not leave the square without first ensuring his friend’s survival. It was Vasiliy himself who had taught Dmitry that much about his father – taught him more than he had ever had the chance to experience for himself.

  Dmitry took one last look towards the two of them, still in a state of indecision. Aleksei repeated his gestures once again, as if Dmitry had not understood them, but surprisingly it was Vasiliy who appeared the more calm. Standing just behind Aleksei, his only movement was a slow nod, but Dmitry understood entirely what Vasiliy meant. He always did.

  Dmitry Alekseevich turned and fled into the twilight.

  Aleksei turned back towards Iuda the moment he saw Dmitry at last depart. There was no one there. He heard a second volley of cannonfire. This time, panic spread through all assembled. Those who had stood their ground in the face of the first barrage now ran for their lives. Through the crowd, Aleksei caught sight of Iuda; he was past the statue of Pyotr and heading for the far corner of the square. Aleksei set off in pursuit. Most of the crowd was flowing in that direction, and Iuda soon became lost from sight again.

  Aleksei kept on running. Iuda was easy to spot as one of the few in civilian dress. He had reached the corner of the square and had stopped, deciding which way to go. Half of the crowd was pouring into the narrow gap between the buildings that was the entrance to Galernaya Street, hammering on doors which refused to open, whilst the other half – more than half – were heading for the river. Some were making for the Isaakievsky Bridge; others ran straight out on to the ice itself. Iuda chose the river. His indecision had allowed Aleksei to catch up with him a little, but he was still not close.