‘Precisely. Give me a leg-up.’

  Dmitry did not follow exactly what was meant, but his father mimed the action, and Dmitry copied, bracing the fingers of his two hands together to form a stirrup. Aleksei stepped into it, his head now almost touching the low wooden ceiling. Dmitry was quite able to take the weight, but resented his father nonetheless, not for this, but for his arrogant dismissal of Dmitry’s line of reasoning moments before. He was not to know that Π meant ‘peesmo’, but his father was happier to show himself as right rather than complimenting Dmitry on having a good idea. It had always been so.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Aleksei, jumping to the ground and clutching a small envelope he had plucked from between one of the rafters and the sloping planks of the roof.

  ‘How did you know it would be just there?’

  ‘Because that is where Maks placed his letter. So the more important question is . . .’

  ‘Is, how did whoever it is know where Maks put it?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Aleksei. ‘Only Maks and I knew that.’

  ‘And Uncle Dmitry.’

  ‘True. But he’s dead too. So, logically, only I could have placed this envelope there.’ He grinned, and tore open the thin paper. Inside was a single stiff piece of card. Dmitry could not see what was written on it, but it took his father only moments to read. His eyes flicked up and met Dmitry’s.

  ‘Another appointment,’ he said.

  ‘The same code as before?’

  ‘No, somewhat different. Hardly a code at all.’ He handed the slip of card over for Dmitry to read.

  The Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow

  presents

  Cendrillon

  by

  Fernando Sor

  26 September 1825. Row 5. Seat 15.

  ‘You said you wanted to go,’ observed Dmitry.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll have my full attention on the ballet.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’

  Aleksei thought for a moment before replying. ‘Probably best not. I don’t think he means me any harm – here would have been a much better place for that. And there’ll be plenty of people about.’

  ‘He may still come here,’ said Dmitry. ‘It’s not two yet.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  Aleksei went outside. Dmitry followed. They spent the next few minutes searching for wood and making a cross, embedding it in the ground at the head of where Aleksei had marked out the grave and piling stones around its base. Aleksei said that it was a much better effort than the first one. Even so, Dmitry suspected it would vanish just as quickly. He said nothing.

  ‘I think we can be sure no one’s coming,’ Aleksei finally stated, looking at his watch. ‘It’s past four.’

  ‘We should head back.’

  ‘You go. I want to stay here for a while.’ Aleksei glanced down at the grave as he spoke.

  ‘Do you think it’s safe?’

  Aleksei shrugged. Dmitry recalled how it was fear for his safety that had made Aleksei leave Maks alone here before. He clearly wasn’t going to let history repeat itself. Anyway, Dmitry doubted there was any danger – otherwise why arrange to meet at the theatre? And if there was trouble, his father was quite capable of dealing with it.

  He shook his father’s hand, then walked over to his horse and untied it. He mounted and began to ride slowly north. He looked over his shoulder to see his father standing, watching him go.

  He had scarcely turned his head back in the direction he was travelling when he heard his father’s shout: ‘Dmitry!’ He turned back again. His father still stood there, and after a moment he raised his arm in a broad wave. Dmitry returned the gesture, but he suspected the call had not been meant for him.

  After a minute or so he turned and looked again, by now probably out of earshot. He could just make out his father, sitting cross-legged in front of the hut, staring down at the patch of ground he had marked out.

  CHAPTER V

  ‘BUT THAT’S THE POINT, ALEKSEI. I THOUGHT YOU UNDERSTOOD. They’re not—’

  The back of Pyetr’s hand dashed against Maks’ jaw, knocking his head sideways and silencing the word ‘human’ that had been on his lips, replacing it with a brief yelp as Maks’ breath rushed across his vocal cords.

  ‘Aleksei’s gone, Maksim.’ It was Iuda who spoke. ‘Left you all alone with us. And even if he were here, do you think he would care about that?’ Maks looked up at him. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth. ‘Did Dmitry?’

  ‘Aleksei isn’t like Dmitry.’

  ‘They’re neither of them like you. They both love their country.’

  ‘Love is a relative concept. They love their fellow man more.’

  ‘Do they?’ Iuda raised an eyebrow as he spoke the question.

  ‘Aleksei does.’ Around the hut, the other five Oprichniki had stripped to the waist. Varfolomei was coiling a length of rope. ‘When he finds out what you are, he’ll destroy you. He’ll hunt you down across the face of the earth.’

  Iuda gave a brief nod to Pyetr, who hit Maks again, on the other side of his face. Pyetr looked at his hand. There was blood on it – his own blood. He licked it clean, and the wound healed in seconds. Looking at Maks, the cause of the injury was obvious. His glasses were broken. They hung off one ear, one lens intact, the other shattered.

  Iuda leaned forward and gently took them off Maks’ face. ‘I think we’d better put these somewhere safe, hadn’t we?’ Maks’ head jerked up. He looked around, his eyes unseeing. He was virtually blind without his spectacles, as Aleksei well knew. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Iuda, as though speaking to a child, ‘you can have them back afterwards.’ He popped them into his inside pocket and patted the breast of his coat reassuringly.

  Varfolomei walked over and tied the rope around Maks’ wrists, binding them together. Then he flung the other end into the air. From his vantage point, Aleksei could not see the roof of the hut, but there was evidently something there to hook the rope over. Varfolomei and Andrei pulled in unison, and their combined weight hoisted Maks out of the wooden chair on which he had been sitting. Pyetr kicked it with the inside of his foot, and it hurtled towards Aleksei. He flinched, pulling back from the side of the hut, but immediately realized that the chair had not been aimed at him. He knelt back down and pressed his eye once more against the thin gap between the panels, observing what went on inside.

  Pyetr knelt down behind Maks and rolled up the leg of his breeches until it was above the knee. Then he opened his mouth, pulling back his lips to reveal his fangs. His mouth seemed too large to fit into his skull, as though it should protrude like a dog’s snout. His jaws snapped shut and his teeth sank into Maks’ calf. Maks’ head whipped back, and his mouth opened in an agonized scream, though Aleksei heard no sound. Andrei stepped forward, and pulled up Maks’ shirt. His teeth, even larger and more gruesome than Pyetr’s, sank into the side of Maks’ abdomen. Blood gushed out, staining Maks’ skin and flowing into Andrei’s mouth. Soon it was full and the blood overflowed, dribbling over his chin and on to his own clothes.

  Iuda walked over towards where Aleksei watched. He knew Iuda could not see him; he was simply coming to retrieve the chair. But as he bent down to pick it up and his face came level with the tiny slit through which Aleksei watched, he narrowed his eyes and gave what looked to all the world like a wink. An expression of cheerful cunning fleeted across his face, but then he disappeared from view. The next Aleksei saw of him was his back as he strolled away towards Maks, dragging the chair behind him.

  Maks’ feet swung only inches from the ground on to which now dripped the blood from the wounds to his leg and stomach. Effectively, this made him taller than Iuda, and that was why Iuda needed the chair. He placed it on the ground and stepped on to it. Now his head was, as it would normally be, above the height of Maks’. He bent forward and placed his lips on Maks’ throat. Aleksei noticed, concealed in Iuda’s hand, the double-bladed knife that was his preferred weapon. He was wise to hide it, lest the other Oprichniki should see and realize that Iuda was not one of them – that he was not a vampire. Even as the thought crossed Aleksei’s mind, he wondered how it had come to him. How did he know that Iuda was not a voordalak? How, indeed, did he know that the others were? He would not discover that for weeks.

  Iuda lifted his head from Maks’ neck and placed his lips beside his ear. He whispered something and Maks’ response was to grin ecstatically and nod his head with vigorous approval. Iuda smiled and stepped down from the chair. He walked behind Maks. With a swift stroke of his knife, he cut Maks’ shirt in two. With a couple more strokes under Maks’ arms, which cared little whether they cut linen or flesh, he had removed the garment from Maks’ body, except for the sleeves, which still clung to his up-reaching arms.

  Iuda stepped back and eyed his victim’s body. He glanced back in Aleksei’s direction, and Aleksei could have sworn that he winked again. Then Iuda issued an instruction to the others, which Aleksei did not understand, and the vampires gathered around Maks, pressing against him, their exposed flesh rubbing against his as their teeth penetrated his body. Aleksei looked up at Maks’ face, but the expression on it was one of laughter, not pain. He looked back at the creatures that swarmed around him. There seemed to be more of them now. They were hard to distinguish, even if their faces could be seen, but the hair on two of them was distinctive. One had long, dark brown hair, almost to its waist. This one had gone further than its comrades, and had stripped completely naked; the tips of its long tresses danced over the top of its buttocks. The figure next to it was much smaller, with hair distinctive not for its length but for its colour – a rich, deep red.

  Iuda issued another command, and these two figures turned, revealing their faces to Aleksei. One was Domnikiia, the other Tamara. He looked up again at Maks’ face, a face that was still laughing – but it was no longer Maks. In front of them all, Iuda crouched down and stared directly at Aleksei. He winked again, but did not reopen his eye, staring ahead of him with just the other, on a level with Aleksei’s as he half walked, half crawled towards him.

  Aleksei glanced up once more. The laughing figure hanging from the roof had not changed back. It was still himself – Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov, laughing in ecstasy as his lover and his child devoured his flesh. Iuda’s single eye came ever closer until it filled Aleksei’s vision. Aleksei tried to join in with his own laughter as Iuda’s eye pressed up against the wall from the other side, gazing into Aleksei’s own, but as he opened his mouth it was not laughter that spewed forth, but a long, deep, terrible scream.

  Aleksei’s scream filled the dark wilderness. He sat up. The fire he had made had gone out, but as he reached his hand towards it he felt the warmth of its embers. The high half-moon made it easy to see, but cast eerie shadows through the trees. He had not had that dream for many years. It was a dream he might have avoided if he had actually stayed to witness Maks’ death. Knowledge of the reality of what had happened inside that hut, however terrible, would at least be a certainty into which no macabre speculation could creep. But Aleksei had not stayed; he had ridden away, just as Iuda had told him to. Could he not then dismiss the whole thing as the fantasies of his guilty imagination? How he wished it were that simple, but though he had not witnessed Maks’ death, he had seen enough elsewhere to know that the images in the dream were based on truth.

  A few months after he had left Maks to die, in a town south of here, he had witnessed a very similar scene. The victim had been no one he knew, just a serf, whose wife had already met the same fate. Aleksei’s eye, pressed up to a crack at the edge of a barn door, had seen the Oprichniki do to that peasant much what they had done to Maks in the dream.

  But what of the end of the nightmare? It had been over five years since Aleksei had last dreamt it, but even then it would end with Domnikiia. Did he still doubt her? Such was the power of the games Iuda had played with him that even now – thirteen years after his death – Aleksei could still be asking himself that question. Iuda had presented Aleksei with a scene: two bodies entwining; a woman exchanging blood with a monster; Domnikiia choosing to abandon all that was good and to become a vampire; Domnikiia choosing to abandon Aleksei.

  But the scene had not been what it seemed. Domnikiia had not become a vampire. The woman had not been Domnikiia but her friend Margarita. Iuda was not a vampire, but a mortal man. As each page of the story turned, Iuda had ensured that Aleksei’s view changed, until Aleksei was so familiar with change he could no longer cling to any certainty. He knew he had been wrong, but he could not know precisely how, nor could he ever fully determine the truth of that one, vital concept: that the woman had not been Domnikiia. Whether it was true or untrue, either possibility fitted the facts with equanimity. That was the eternity of doubt that, even in death, Iuda had planned for Aleksei.

  Aleksei’s solution had been simple, and one that men have turned to throughout history – faith. Where he could not be sure he would choose to believe what he wanted to believe. And what he wanted to believe was that Domnikiia had never desired to be a vampire, had not been the figure Aleksei saw in the window that evening, had never tasted Iuda’s blood on her lips. It was easy to believe, and over the years it had become easier with every hour he spent with her. But faith was still different from certainty, and his dream was a reminder from somewhere deep in his unconscious mind that there was another possibility.

  There was still no way of knowing. Domnikiia might have been the woman at the window and later been distraught to discover she was not a vampire, and again to hear of Iuda’s death, but she would never reveal the truth to Aleksei, if that truth was what he did not want to hear. And he did not. He imagined, sometimes, a deathbed confession from her, telling him what had happened, telling him that she had regretted her mortal life ever since. But were there any prospect of that, he would avoid her deathbed. It would have been one thing to learn the truth soon after the events had taken place, but to learn it later would reveal the hollowness not only of Domnikiia, but of the whole edifice of faith he had created over the years. What devout Christian would want a priest to whisper in his ear at the moment of death, ‘It’s all a lie’? Who knew? Perhaps that’s what priests did.

  And so the truth for him, in his heart at least, was that Domnikiia had always been faithful. And over the years the doubts – and the dreams of doubts – had become fainter and less frequent. It was only the fact of being here, of seeing once again the place where Maks had died and of sleeping virtually alongside where his body lay, that had brought the nightmare back to him.

  And yet, there was something new in that nightmare – Tamara. In the five years since he had last dreamed it, he and Domnikiia had had their daughter. She was being raised by her mother. If Domnikiia could not be trusted, how might she form her daughter’s character? What lies that had passed from Iuda to Domnikiia during their brief moments together might be passed on to the next generation in Tamara?

  Such were Aleksei’s deepest fears, as expressed to him in his dream, but they were not his beliefs. These thoughts were but temptations to test his faith. He had kept his faith for thirteen years. Had he not, there would have been no Tamara. Such goodness came out of faith, not truth.

  But the truth always sat there at the back of his mind, impenetrably disguised, watching him, taunting him, waiting. He did not know how he could remove that disguise and discover what had really happened. If he did know how, he doubted he would do it. But still the truth was there, waiting to be revealed.

  He lay back down on the ground, closing his eyes, though he knew he would not sleep, and awaited the light of dawn.

  It was pitch dark when the ship finally sailed from Ragusa. The crew was small and trustworthy – none of them locals. The Dalmatians knew enough to fear their passenger, but that fear might be so great as to tempt them, in the safety of the midday sun, to slip both him and his cargo overboard, turn round and head for home. Instead, he had chosen a crew from amongst his own people, further inland to the north-east. They were less skilled as sailors, but the journey would be short and the waters were calm.

  The ship was not noteworthy, scarcely more than a large yacht. She went by the name of Rzbunarea, but that could easily be changed if anonymity were required, as could the flag she flew. At the moment, she was French, but there were a dozen other nationalities stored below deck.

  Though small, Rzbunarea was swift. There were only two items of cargo. On her return she would be a little lower in the water, but few would notice. She sped down the Adriatic, towards the Strait of Otranto, though that was not her final destination; that was many days away.

  Her sole passenger stood and stared at the night sky and inhaled the sea air. He had no fear of the water, as some thought he should. Even so, he would not spend much of the journey on deck. When he arrived, he would have work to do, and that work would require concentration, and concentration required rest.

  * * *

  Aleksei mounted his horse soon after dawn. He took one final look at Maks’ grave, and hoped he would never return. He had no need of a memorial to remember his friend, and he had never felt the urge to return here in all the years since his death. He had only come now because he had been led here. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the theatre ticket. He had three days until the performance. He enjoyed ballet, and though he knew the story of Cinderella well, he had not seen this version. Perhaps this whole journey had been an elaborate way of giving him a present, though his birthday was long past. Perhaps it was just a ploy by Domnikiia to bring him to Moscow.

  He laughed at the thought. She needed no such ploys, and whatever the reason he had been invited to the theatre, it was not for entertainment.

  He spurred his horse and headed back to Moscow. He did not look behind him again.

  Aleksandr could see the small cortège from quite a distance. It had surprised him how much he had missed the company of the tsaritsa. It had been his grandmother Yekaterina who had arranged their marriage, more than thirty years before, as she had arranged everything in his life. She had brusquely decided that neither Aleksandr’s mother nor his father – her own son, the future Tsar Pavel – was fit to raise their child. Yekaterina had controlled every aspect of Aleksandr’s upbringing, from his education to his marriage to Yelizaveta at the age of just fifteen. He had quickly learned to hate his wife, but had grown to despise his grandmother more. He had learned from her too, though. Her reign had been founded on the untimely death of her husband; Aleksandr’s similarly, on the death of his father. Both had successfully kept their hands clean; the garde perdue was not a new idea.