The People's Will

Chapter VIII



THE ICY WATER embraced him, infiltrating every crevice of his body. For a vampire such as Dmitry, it was not a discomfort but it was still a piercing sensation. The cold could not kill him, but it could slow him and weaken him. If it became cold enough for his body’s fluids to freeze, then he would become dormant, but at some point before that ice crystals would begin to form in his blood, and his limbs – and his mind – would stiffen.

It had taken only moments for them to deduce where Iuda had gone. The wire rope that had bound him by the neck was discarded on the floor. In the middle of the cellar the ice on the frozen pool, which before had displayed merely the single crack that Dmitry had caused, was now smashed to a thousand floating, bobbing lumps. The glassy mosaic reminded Dmitry of the mirror into which they had just gazed, but he knew it would require something more than mere ice to make him see his own reflection.

Dmitry dived in in pursuit, while Zmyeevich headed back to the surface via the cathedral. The pool was an illusion; appearing simply to be standing on the cellar floor, it in fact went beneath it. From there the pipe turned to the horizontal and narrowed. It was too tight for Dmitry to make much use of his arms, but he kicked hard and propelled himself through. He could hold his breath for a long time, but if the pipe didn’t come to an end eventually, then the lack of air would subdue him in just the same way that the cold might. But Iuda would face exactly the same problems – and Iuda had come this way in full knowledge of what lay ahead.

Dmitry’s pursuit of Iuda had a new passion to it – a hatred that he had not been able to feel towards anyone since becoming a vampire. But in that time, there had always been one regret – that Raisa, the woman who had turned Dmitry into a vampire, was dead. His feelings for her were not the romantic love or corporeal lust that had attracted him to her in life. It was more of a pack instinct; the sense of loyalty that a dog has to its own kind. There was a practical side to it too – the fact that he could learn so much about his new state from her – but her loss had affected him more viscerally than could be dismissed with so rational an explanation. It still did.

Because she had made him, part of her mind had been in him, guiding and teaching him. With her death, that had gone, all except one tiny splinter which stuck in him like a bee’s sting after the insect itself has fallen away: a desire for vengeance. For Raisa’s death to be avenged would do her no good, but still that bit of her which remained inside Dmitry sought it on her behalf. It would act as a warning to others; even from beyond the grave, they would be punished.

But until today, until he had gazed into that mirror, he’d had no idea what had befallen Raisa. In the hours before her death her mind had become confused, unhinged, incapable of his understanding. And today, for a few moments, he had felt the same. The jumbled images of her last hours had suddenly coalesced. He still did not know just how she had died, but he knew that she, like him, had gazed into a mirror that had the power to let her see her own true appearance. Whatever effect that might have had on Dmitry or Zmyeevich, the impact on Raisa – a woman who loved her own beauty – had been devastating. Perhaps it hadn’t caused her death directly, but it had prevented her from defending herself when she most needed to.

It had all come from looking in a mirror. The mirror that Dmitry had seen today had been created by Iuda and Iuda had tricked them into looking at it. The mirror that had destroyed Raisa’s mind had been created by Iuda, and he had tricked her, or enticed her, or cajoled her into looking at it. Iuda had brought about her death, and now Dmitry would kill Iuda – whatever Zmyeevich might say about needing to keep him alive.

Dmitry kicked his legs more vigorously. Ahead he could see the dimmest circle of light, like the moon forcing its way through thick cloud. A second later he became suddenly colder still. He no longer found his arms constrained by the sides of the pipe, nor his kicking to have any effect whatsoever on his motion. He was swept sideways, far faster than he could propel himself by swimming.

He was out in the Neva. It was as he had suspected – the only way that Iuda’s escape route could make any sense was if it led to that vast waterway. Dmitry had no idea how many millions of barrels of water flowed each day from Lake Ladoga out into the Gulf of Finland, but he was now a part of it, and it was indifferent to him.

He exercised what little control he had over his body, and swam upwards. Within seconds he hit the ceiling of the underwater world, and fully understood just how quickly he was travelling, as his fingertips scraped across the underside of the ice sheet. As a voordalak he had discovered the ability to find texture in even the smoothest wall in order to climb it, but here he could find no purchase. Even if he’d managed to hold on, he doubted it would have helped him much. This was no thin covering like that over the pool into which he’d dived. However he might kick and beat his fists against it, he would achieve nothing. All he could do was let the current take him until, somewhere out in the gulf beyond, the ice began to part. Iuda would be long gone, but with luck Dmitry would still be conscious, though he would have no chance to breathe before then. He must make the best use of the air he had. He tried to relax.

He came to a halt with a painful thud which propelled the air from his lungs and into his mouth. He tried to keep hold of it, but saw bubbles rising up in front of his eyes. He had hit the pier of a bridge – it could only be the Nikolaievsky. Now he had some slight hope. He scrambled up the stonework, still feeling the Neva pressing against his back and trying to carry him away. Soon he reached the ice again, but here it was nothing like the solid barrier he had encountered before. Where the river met the pier, the ice was broken and fragmented. He thrust himself upwards through it and felt the night air against his face. The river still grabbed at his legs, and blocks of ice barged into him, threatening to crack his skull.

He swam forward through the barrage of miniature icebergs and found the lip of the ice shelf. He pulled himself up out of the water and prepared to fall forward, to allow himself a few moments to catch his breath and to dispel the coldness that was beginning to affect even his vampire body. He felt light-headed – a combination of the cold and the breathlessness, and perhaps the lingering influence of Iuda’s mirror. It had been enough to drive Raisa to insanity – it was possible that there might be some effect on him.

But before he could compose himself he saw in front of him a figure running across the ice. It could only be Iuda. He must have followed the exact same path through the water that Dmitry had, just seconds ahead of him.

Dmitry hauled himself to his feet and resumed his pursuit. Iuda was heading back upriver, in the direction they had come, but veering towards the northern bank. He reached it at the Menshikov Palace, almost directly across from Senate Square. Dmitry didn’t bother to see whether Zmyeevich had yet emerged to join the chase. He ran with long strides, wary of the slippery surface, but knowing that the real problem would be to stop or make a sharp turn. Iuda chose not to attempt to climb the stone embankment, but instead ran alongside it, looking for the next point at which steps came down to the water’s edge. Dmitry was able to see the location and head straight for it, gaining ground on his quarry.

But as Iuda reached the steps he hesitated. Dmitry heard shouts and saw that on the embankment a small band of soldiers had spotted Iuda, who did not seem inclined to deal with them. He changed his plan of getting up on to land and continued along the frozen river. His feet slipped as he tried to accelerate and it took him seconds to get up to speed. Again, it was all a chance for Dmitry to get closer. The soldiers – six of them in total – split into two groups. Some came down on to the ice and the others ran along the bank, paralleling Iuda’s movements below them. Dmitry could only guess that they had seen his uniform and realized that he must have good reason to be chasing a fugitive at this time of night. He had discarded his greatcoat back in the cellar, but his tunic was enough for them to recognize his seniority.

Iuda swung away from the bank, out towards the centre of the river, making good speed again. Ahead of him stood the pontoon bridge, spanning the river from the Winter Palace to the Stock Exchange. In the summer it offered a convenient but somewhat undulating route out to Vasilievskiy Island, but now it was held firm by the ice. Dmitry remembered it stretching out from Senate Square on the day of the Decembrist Uprising, but it had long since been moved upstream. Iuda disappeared beneath it, under one of the central spans.

Dmitry was close to him now, and the three soldiers who had come down on to the river were not far behind, but the men who had remained on land had made far quicker progress, running over snow rather than ice. Soon though they would have run out of land as they came to the fork at which the Great and Lesser Nevas split. Instead, they turned on to the pontoon bridge itself, running across it at almost the moment Iuda darted beneath.

Seconds later, Dmitry was under it too, and he saw Iuda ahead of him, heading out to the middle of the widest part of the river, trying to leave as late as possible the choice of which branch to take. But out there, the ice was at its weakest and he might easily fall through. Perhaps that was his plan, to return once again to the water, where his capture would be impossible.

From the bridge above him Dmitry heard shouting. Shots rang out and Iuda fell. Dmitry looked and saw the three soldiers on the bridge, their rifles still aimed. The bullets would do little permanent damage to Iuda, but they had knocked him down and left him scrabbling on the slippery surface, trying to regain his footing. Within seconds Dmitry was upon him.

The two voordalaki slid further out across the ice, carried by Dmitry’s momentum. He looked into Iuda’s face – a face which he had in his time regarded with both love and indifference. Now he felt only hatred. It was almost a separate part of his mind, that fragment of Raisa that remained in him. It was she who wanted revenge, and Dmitry was happy to comply.

It was a rare thing for one voordalak to kill another. Dmitry had never seen it done, but he had heard talk of it. He and Zmyeevich had discussed it, aware of the fate that eventually must befall Iuda. There were many ways, but in present circumstances one seemed obvious.

Iuda was lying on his back, his head towards Dmitry. Dmitry pressed his knees against Iuda’s shoulders and then took his head firmly in his hands, one under his chin, one at the back of his skull. Decapitation would kill a vampire, but it did not have to be the neat, clinical severance of a sharpened blade. Iuda writhed and struggled, but Dmitry knew he had the strength; together he and Raisa had the strength.

But then he stopped. He could not say why. It was as though some third presence in his mind had said ‘No’ – and that third voice held sway. Dmitry tried to ignore it, but already it was too late. A semicircle of three soldiers had formed beside them. The other three had climbed down off the pontoon bridge, and were already approaching.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ barked one of them, a captain, before adding ‘sir’ as an afterthought.

Dmitry rose to his feet, gazing down at Iuda with loathing but trying to appear calm and dignified. His heart beat fast from the chase and the cold and the lack of air, and his head still reeled, pulled in different directions.

‘This man is in my custody,’ he said, aware of how heavily he had to breathe. ‘My commendation for your help in his recapture, but I’ll take it from here.’

It was a sign of the times that a captain would dare question a colonel, even in these strange circumstances. It would not have happened in Dmitry’s day.

‘Sir, are you really sure?’ he said. ‘You’re wet through and frozen. God knows you could be wounded and you wouldn’t feel it.’

‘I’m perfectly fine, thank you, Captain.’ Dmitry emphasized the man’s rank.

‘Sir, look,’ the captain persisted, pointing across the ice. ‘The fortress is just there. What better place for him, if only overnight?’

Dmitry looked. The captain was quite right. There stood the Peter and Paul Fortress, the stronghold at the heart of Pyotr’s city, and also its prison. There was no need for him to comply. He could easily deal with these six and do with Iuda as he chose. But that would mean six corpses, and he knew that his and Zmyeevich’s presence in the city would be better kept secret. And still his mind was in turmoil.

‘Very well,’ he growled.

One of the soldiers hauled Iuda to his feet. Iuda’s eyes darted around, looking for a chance to escape. Once he was away from Dmitry, he might not find it so difficult. Dmitry reached into his pocket and drew out the manacles that he had taken from Iuda back in the cathedral, scarcely half an hour before.

‘Use these,’ he said.

The captain complied.

‘And be careful with him. You don’t know how dangerous he can be. Put him in the deepest cell they’ve got. Don’t take the cuffs off him. Don’t let him even see a window.’ Dmitry hoped he sounded casual.

‘Absolutely, sir.’ The captain knew his place better now that he had got his way.

‘Don’t let him out for exercise and don’t let anyone question him without my authority, you understand? Colonel Otrepyev.’

‘Sir. Do you require an escort, sir?’

‘No. I’ll be fine. Carry on.’

The captain saluted and turned. He and his five men led Iuda away to the Neva Gate, the gate from which Dmitry’s father had departed on his journey into exile, half a century before. It would take them only a couple of minutes to cross the ice to the fortress. When they thought they were out of earshot, one of the men said something that raised a laugh. The captain snapped at them and order was re-established. With discipline like that they might just survive the short journey. If they did, then perhaps it would all prove to be for the good. Keeping Iuda captive was a burden to Zmyeevich and Dmitry – if His Majesty was happy to take on the responsibility, then who were they to complain? If they could get him as far as the cell, then even Iuda would not be able to escape.

All the same, Dmitry did not relish having to relate what had happened to Zmyeevich. He turned and headed back. On the quay, just beside the Winter Palace, the dark figure stood silhouetted, waiting for him.

It hadn’t taken Mihail long to work out where he was. His mother had told him of the place – she used to work here. This was Fontanka 16; the building beside the chain bridge; the headquarters of the secret police. In her day it had been the Third Section; now it was the Ohrana, but it all meant much the same.

He’d tried to rest, lying on the thin mattress and letting the hours pass. The food they’d brought him had been unrecognizable as such, but he’d forced it down, not knowing when he might get more. The army had been good training for that. He wondered what would become of him. He tried to think of the best outcome – tried to believe in it, not because believing would make it true, but because expecting the worst would drive him to despair. Tamara had told him how they worked here – the first task was to break a man’s will.

He’d not had a weapon; that was in his favour. He’d had a sword at his side, but so did any officer in uniform. And he was a hero of Geok Tepe – he still had the wound to show it. His hand was almost healed now, but it was still bandaged, and beneath the linen the scar looked worse than it felt. He’d still need a story to tell them. He could say that he’d been so overcome with joy at being close to the grand duke that he’d felt the urge to rush to him and thank him for his family’s support of the army. Perhaps that was taking it too far; he would be more convincing if he was petitioning for better rations for the men. Neither made absolute sense – Konstantin’s power lay in the navy, not the army – but it was the best he had. He spent the day inventing further details for his story, but no one came to question him.

He still had the note, and the sapphire. He could do nothing with the gemstone, but he wondered whether he should try to get rid of the letter from his mother. It undermined his story, but if they found it, they might take it to the grand duke and Mihail’s ends would be achieved after all. But more than that, he couldn’t bring himself to destroy the last communication from his mother to his father, however brief it might be.

He heard the rattle of keys in the door, and then it opened. A sentry looked in, then withdrew. He heard a voice outside.

‘I’ll be perfectly safe. It’s imperative that I speak to him alone.’

Mihail turned his chair away and stared at the wall, not wanting to appear too eager to begin his interrogation. The door slammed and there was a moment’s silence, followed by a slight cough. Mihail turned.

It was Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich – his father. Mihail leapt to his feet, turning as he did, knocking the chair to the floor. He tried to speak, but was tongue-tied. He could not tell whether it was down to coming face to face with his father for the first time, or to being in the presence of so high-ranking a Romanov. He reached into his pocket for the note.

‘You … you must read this,’ he stammered.

Konstantin shook his head. ‘No, I have no need to read anything. Do you think I cannot see your mother in your eyes? Do you think I cannot see myself in … in everything about you? I know you are my son.’

He opened his arms in preparation to embrace Mihail, but the gesture was not a comfortable one. Mihail hung back. However unconventional his upbringing might have been, he was still a Russian, and a Russian did not embrace a grand duke, even if he was his bastard son. In an instant Mihail understood how little he really cared for his absent father; he was interested in him, he might grow to like him, but there was no aching gap in his heart that would now be filled. He suspected Konstantin felt the same.

His father chuckled and offered Mihail his hand. Mihail grasped it firmly and shook.

‘It seems we’re very much alike already,’ said Konstantin. ‘But tell me. Tell me everything. I don’t even know your name.’

Mihail picked up the chair and offered it to Konstantin, who sat down. Mihail himself sat on the mattress, leaning against the wall. Too late he realized that he should not sit without permission, but his father didn’t complain. He looked up at the man, now in his early fifties, and managed to see a little of himself, but still he felt a greater sense of excitement than affection. He took a deep breath – there was much to tell.

‘My name,’ he began, ‘is Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin.’

‘Mihail.’ Konstantin thought about it for a moment. ‘After the archangel.’

‘Actually, no.’ Tamara had always been quite clear about it. ‘After Mihail Maleinos.’

Konstantin chuckled again. ‘The protector of the Romanovs? That was good of her. And Lukin, where does that come from? Has she married again?’

The name Lukin meant so much: the name of the family that had cared for Tamara and Mihail when they had arrived in Saratov; the name of Aleksei’s closest friend. But there was no need for Konstantin to hear of it.

‘Lukin’s not my real name. And no, she never remarried.’

Konstantin guessed the implication of those last words. ‘You mean …?’

Mihail spoke quickly, avoiding his father’s eyes. ‘She died. The end of last year.’

Konstantin stood and paced the room. ‘I see. I wish you’d come to me sooner.’

‘It’s not easy.’

‘I know. I know. And why have you come now? You want something? Money?’

Mihail shook his head. ‘Nothing like that. I still have this, look.’ He slipped off his boot and from inside took the pink sapphire. He handed it to Konstantin, who lifted his spectacles from his nose to peer deeply at the stone.

‘I remember,’ he said softly. ‘Did she have to break the necklace up?’

‘When would she have worn it?’

Konstantin nodded wistfully. ‘That’s just what she said.’ He handed the sapphire back and returned to the present. ‘You can have money. She could have had. Anna Vasilyevna and the children have a dacha to themselves in Pavlovsk.’

Mihail had heard rumours enough to know who Anna Vasilyevna was. He knew that Tamara had not been his father’s only lover.

‘Really, no,’ he insisted. ‘I still have money – and a career, in the army.’

Konstantin nodded. ‘A lieutenant, I see,’ he said, gesturing at Mihail’s uniform, ‘in the grenadiers.’

‘Grand Duke Pyetr Nikolayevich Battalion. I was at Geok Tepe.’

‘A great victory. General Skobyelev has made a name for himself.’ Konstantin’s voice hinted that this was not a good thing for the general to have done. There was a pause. It was surprising how quickly father and son had run out of things to say. Mihail broke the silence.

‘What I wanted from you – other than to meet you, of course – was some information.’

‘You only have to ask.’

‘I was wondering if you knew the whereabouts of my half-brother.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be a little more specific than that, you know. You have more than one half-brother. Two of them are grand dukes.’

Mihail knew that he was being teased, but he noted the small number of grand dukes. It was common knowledge that Konstantin had sired four legitimate sons – along with God knew how many other bastards – but the youngest of them had died a few years before, aged just sixteen. The eldest, Nikolai Konstantinovich, was still alive, but had been banished to some distant corner of the empire after a scandal. Technically he was still a grand duke, but in his father’s mind he had evidently been stripped of the title, if not of existence itself.

‘I meant on my mother’s side,’ replied Mihail. ‘He’s called Luka; Luka Miroslavich Novikov.’

‘I know. I know,’ said Konstantin soothingly, sensing his attempt to play the fool had been misplaced. ‘Your mother told me of him. I hoped to keep a watchful eye over him, but I’m afraid I failed.’

‘He’s dead?’ It would be a surprise, given what Iuda and Dmitry had said.

‘No. No.’ Konstantin reached into his pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. ‘As soon as I saw you yesterday, I thought you’d ask. Here’s his address.’

Mihail looked at the paper. He did not know Petersburg well enough for it to mean anything to him, but he would easily find it.

‘I don’t suppose you even know what he looks like,’ said Konstantin.

Mihail shook his head. Konstantin reached into his pocket again and handed over a photograph. Mihail could not see much of himself in Luka, but recognized a little of Tamara. The man was in his thirties, his hair longer than was popular at the time, but well kempt. He had a moustache, but no beard. He was handsome. The real oddity was that Konstantin should have a photograph of him – but the style and pose of the picture gave away its origin. It was taken from the files of the Ohrana.

‘He’s a criminal?’ asked Mihail.

‘A suspect – nothing has ever been proved.’

‘Suspected of what?’

‘Have you heard of the People’s Will?’

Mihail nodded.

‘It was they who tried to blow up my brother’s train; they who exploded a bomb at the Winter Palace.’ Konstantin’s voice rose with suppressed anger. ‘A dozen guardsmen died; ordinary men – the very people they’re supposed to be fighting for.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Mihail quietly.

‘They want us to react, but we won’t. We’ll give them liberty – we have done already – but we won’t let them take it.’

‘And Luka’s one of them?’

‘He knows people who are – the police aren’t sure about him.’

‘I’m guessing you don’t want me to see him.’

‘He’s your brother,’ said Konstantin. ‘I wouldn’t stop you. But be circumspect. They have as many spies as we do – even in here.’ He glanced around with an air that hinted of paranoia.

‘Here?’

Konstantin nodded gravely. ‘Just yesterday they arrested one – a clerk named Kletochnikov. No wonder we’d made so few arrests; he’d been warning them, just in time.’

‘There are others?’

‘Who knows? Perhaps your brother can tell you.’ He paused for a moment, then changed the subject. ‘Why did she go so suddenly?’

It was obvious he meant Tamara. ‘It was nothing to do with you,’ Mihail explained. ‘Family stuff.’

‘Did she ever find her parents?’ Konstantin asked. ‘She told me she was looking.’

‘She did.’ Mihail felt warm just to speak of it, to be reminded of his mother’s happiness, however short-lived it had been, however tragic the circumstances. ‘Though she didn’t know them for long.’

‘And that’s why she went away?’

Mihail nodded. It was time to test the water regarding another matter on which Konstantin might have information. ‘I mentioned earlier my name isn’t really Lukin,’ he said. ‘I get my true name from my grandfather. It’s Danilov. He was Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov.’ Konstantin looked blank. ‘He was a colonel under Aleksandr Pavlovich.’

‘Against Bonaparte?’

‘And later. But then he was exiled – after 14 December.’

‘Ah! And then he came back after my brother’s pardon. That would explain it.’

‘You’ve not heard of him?’

Konstantin shook his head. ‘I’m sorry.’

Mihail felt anger welling inside him. After everything his grandfather had done to protect the Romanovs, with all the secrets he could have revealed to save himself from exile, still he’d remained loyal. At the time it had been necessary, but now, so many years on, he was forgotten, regarded as no different from any of the others who had genuinely stood against Nikolai. It was a disgrace, but Mihail was in no position to say anything.

Konstantin stood. ‘I must go. But we’ll talk again later.’

‘You’re leaving me here?’

Konstantin looked shocked. ‘Goodness, no. You’ll be released in a few hours. You understand …? There has to be a gap.’

Mihail nodded.

‘Where are you staying?’ asked Konstantin.

Mihail gave the address of his hotel.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ said his father. He walked over to the door and was about to rouse the guard, but then he turned. ‘What was it you wanted me to read – when I came in?’

Mihail reached into his pocket for the note. ‘It’s what I was trying to give you on the coach,’ he explained, offering it to his father.

Konstantin read it – presumably several times, given how long he took. Then he looked up at Mihail. ‘You think that’s a fair summary – of her feelings? “Many affectionate memories”?’

Mihail nodded. ‘Did you really feel any different?’ he asked.

Konstantin cocked his head to one side, thinking. ‘And did she love you, as a son?’ he asked.

Mihail believed she did, but all the time he had known her, her capacity to love had never been as great as her capacity to hate. But that was not down to Konstantin, and he did not need to be concerned with it.

‘I know she did.’

Konstantin gave half a smile. ‘That’s all an absent father can really ask.’

He turned and left.

It was a step in the right direction; a step away from Zmyeevich. Three weeks before Iuda had been in a gaol built to hold a voordalak. Now his cell was constructed merely to hold a man. Getting out should not prove too much of a problem.

His escape from Dmitry and Zmyeevich had progressed just as he had envisaged. There was nothing much of real value in that cellar beneath Senate Square – he’d moved everything to a far more fitting residence, still within the capital. He’d put the mirror there to do precisely what it had done. It didn’t really matter whether he opened the cupboard, or some other vampire did. If it had been him he could simply have closed his eyes and waited until Zmyeevich and Dmitry came over to look. He doubted it would produce in either of them the devastating breakdown it had in Raisa, but it had caused a moment’s disorientation – and that was enough.

It had taken him a long time to understand why a vampire showed no reflection in a mirror – to realize that in fact a mirror reflected the monster’s true, monstrous image and that the mind of human and vampire alike was forced to block it out, preferring to see nothing. It had taken him longer still to work out how a mirror might be constructed to trick such a mind into perceiving the reality that it so feared. And even then it had been time-consuming and expensive to import and assemble so much of the necessary crystal: Iceland Spar. None of the final stages of the work could be done by him, for fear that he might catch even the briefest glimpse of his own reflection. But after he had watched Raisa’s reaction to seeing her own true face, he had known it would be worth the effort. And so it had proved.

He still had no idea what Zmyeevich and Dmitry had seen in the looking glass. He had never dared look upon his own reflection. Perhaps one day.

It was in the fast waters of the Neva that things had gone awry. Iuda had known that his quickest route out of the water was to run into the bridge, and had tried to steer himself to that end. Dmitry should have been dragged on between the piers. That the current should carry him along exactly the route that Iuda had taken was pure bad luck. It was bad luck too for that patrol to be at just that place at just that time. In the end though, perhaps they had saved his life. He hadn’t expected Dmitry’s attack; why had Dmitry tried to kill him, then, after so much effort to keep him alive?

His last chance for freedom might have been under that escort to the fortress, but the guards were wary, and the cold had weakened him. Just as Dmitry had commanded, they had given him a deep, dark cell. High up on the wall, near the ceiling, was a tiny window, the size of just one brick, but it was no danger. The sun was low and the light that shone through stayed high above Iuda as it worked its way across the cell, its journey lasting just a few hours each day.

The cell was old – part of the oldest building in the whole of Petersburg – but it was solidly built. The door was newer, and Iuda doubted he would be able to break it down. It did not concern him; he had only to wait for an incautious guard to enter and he would be free. A pair of water pipes ran along one wall of the cell, just inches from the ground, emerging from the stonework at one end and disappearing into it at the other. Periodically these erupted with the sound of tapping, but currently all was silent; there was a pattern to it – the prisoners were clearly communicating in some form of code. Most of them in here would be political – they’d probably been taught the code as part of their indoctrination, in preparation for their inevitable arrest. The Peter and Paul Fortress had always been a place for that kind of prisoner, since the beginning. The walls of the cell were testament to it – a thousand messages scratched into the stonework, some long, others just names or initials. They dated back all the way to the time of Pyotr. The authorities could have sanded them away, or painted over them, but they didn’t. Perhaps they felt a sense of history; perhaps they knew it would demoralize the prisoners more to see how many had come before them, and to know that they had failed; the Romanovs still reigned.

Iuda examined the various graffiti; it passed the time and provided some amusement – particularly when he saw the same name or initials repeated with different dates, months or sometimes years apart. He paused at one and smiled broadly.

А.И.Д. – 16.xii.1825

It was beyond coincidence: A.I.D. – two days after the Decembrist Revolt. It could only be Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov – Lyosha. There was no question he would have been sent here, to the Peter and Paul Fortress. Why shouldn’t it be the same cell that Iuda now occupied, fifty-six years on? Their paths had crossed so often, but no more. Lyosha was long dead now.

The tapping on the pipes began again, interrupting Iuda’s thoughts. He sat down on the lumpy straw mattress that was the cell’s only furnishing and listened, trying to identify patterns, trying to make sense of them. It should be easy, as long as he applied the proper scientific method. It was just as his father had always told him, had sometimes beaten into him, but it had served Iuda well – it would serve him now.

Iuda’s father, the Reverend Thomas Owen Cain, was the parish priest of Esher, in the county of Surrey, in England. Iuda himself – Richard Llywelyn Cain – had been born in the rectory of Saint George’s Church on 28 June 1778, killing his mother, quite accidentally, in the process. By the time Richard was old enough to discern such things, he noted that his father seemed none too perturbed by the loss of his mother, and Richard chose to adopt a similar attitude. Thomas Cain’s chief interest, aside from his flock, was in science – particularly its application to maritime navigation, a matter of increasing importance with the rapid expansion of His Majesty’s vast empire.

Thomas seemed almost to regret that the problem of longitude had been solved, not because he did not admire the solution, but because he had spent so many of his earlier years trying to deal with it by a quite different approach. But he was not disheartened. Even now that the issue of accurately knowing the time was resolved, there were still vast and complex measurements and calculations that needed to be made in order to combine that time with the observed positions of the sun or the stars and thus calculate a ship’s location, allowing it to sail safely across the oceans. The loss of the thirteen colonies, when Richard was just five, was a shock to the whole nation, but Thomas became convinced that they could be won back if only a fleet could be sent that had sufficient navigational agility to outmanoeuvre the rebel forces.

The solution was his ‘Navigational Engine’, a device, in its ultimate form, the size of a small table, with concentric wheels on its surface which allowed the positions of stars to be marked off, the time set and – so Thomas insisted – a course to be plotted. Richard had little interest in it, but that was not a concept that his father could even consider. Each year – sometimes with greater frequency – Thomas would come up with a new generation of his device, with additional features and refinements that would guarantee its effectiveness, and then he and it and young Richard would board a carriage and head out for the Royal Observatory at Greenwich.

On some occasions the trip would take the whole day – a third of it for the journey there, another third for the journey back and the remaining third sitting, waiting for the committee to find a moment to allow Thomas admittance to their presence. On others they would set out the day before the appointed meeting and spend the night with Thomas’s brother, Edmund, across the Thames in Purfleet. There, as his father snored beside the fire, Uncle Edmund taught Richard to play chess. After the age of ten, Richard never lost a game to him.

Whether their travels took one day or two, the actual examination and discussion of the Navigational Engine took only minutes, and the result was always the same. Travelling out there, Thomas would be full of optimism. He and Richard would look out of the carriage window and he would answer Richard’s questions about the flora and fauna they could see. But the return journeys were more sombre. Thomas would emerge from his discussions with ostensible cheer, speaking of the points which the committee had liked and the recommendations they had made for further improvement, but as the journey home progressed he would fall into a morose silence, his face flushed and scowling. On occasions he would grab the white powdered wig from his head and hurl it on to the floor of the carriage, revealing the sparse ginger hair that naturally topped his scalp; hair which Richard was thankful not to have inherited. On those dark days Richard knew not to ask about or even to look at the world that sped past.

Richard’s fascination had always taken him more in the direction of living things than of astronomy and mathematics. At first his father had discouraged him, telling him that nothing would ever come from the study of plants and animals, but later he had relented, reasoning, Richard supposed, that it was better for his son to show an interest in something, however unimportant it might be to the fate of the empire, than to be interested in nothing.

Even so, Thomas Cain was not prepared to allow his little boy merely to take pleasure in the beauty of the world that God had created; he must experiment and he must discover. Richard’s approach, like his father’s, should be scientific and methodical. It was not enough to marvel at the beauty of a butterfly; the creature must be caught and pinned in a case to be studied and documented. It was not enough to ponder the mathematical symmetry of a spider’s web; the web must be broken, and the steps taken by the spider to mend it recorded; a fly must be placed on the web, and the speed at which the spider scampered over to devour it measured. It was not enough to watch a rat devise and execute a plan to steal grain from a sack that the farmer had thought beyond reach; the creature must be trapped and dissected in order to gain a better understanding of how its organs operated, and compare it with the same organs in other animals and then – perhaps one day at university – with those of a human being.

Richard had not enjoyed it at first – it was tiresome, mundane work, with little reward, but it was incentive enough to keep his father happy and to keep the cane (Thomas never tired of the pun: ‘Master Cain, the cane awaits!’) in its place on the mantelpiece. Later, though, he began to get a sense of satisfaction when his pages of notes and measurements revealed some general principle of which he had not previously been aware: that the spacing between threads on a spider’s web was proportional to the size of its body; that a rat could not vomit.

By the age of eleven, Richard had already filled a dozen volumes with his observations. Such subjects were not studied at school, but even there he did well, with Latin a particular favourite. But he had no interest in divinity – his father had bored him with the subject before he began school, and the more he learned of the detailed mechanisms of nature, the more he doubted that the Lord could have created them in the space of just a few days. More than that, even if the Bible were true, he despised it for the cursory disregard with which it so fleetingly skipped over the magnificence of what God was supposed to have achieved. Six verses to deal with every animal of the sea, the air or the land. Where was the respect? Where was the wonder? Richard could have spent six chapters simply describing the wing of a butterfly.

Richard’s disregard for religion inescapably led to a disregard for his father, for whom, as God’s representative on earth, religion played an important role. But it was more than that; it was Thomas Cain’s failure as a scientist that inspired the most loathing in his son. As the expectant journeys out to Greenwich – and the disappointed trudges back – came and went, Richard began to understand more and more the gap between his father’s ambition and his ability. Others around them saw it too – parishioners, the bishop – but in them it inspired sympathy, an admiration for the heroic failure. But he was not their father and they didn’t have to grow up worrying that one day they might end up like him. There was little Richard could think of that might solve the problem of his father, but at least he could make sure that he did not become him.

But it was when Richard was just eleven, in 1789, that the revolution in France changed everything. This was far more terrifying than the loss of the colonies; this was on England’s very doorstep. Richard’s world changed in a hundred ways as his country came to terms with what had happened to a fellow monarchy of equal age, pedigree and grandeur. But for Richard there was one great practical benefit.

Within a few years of the Revolution, thousands of French émigrés had left their homeland and come to England, many to live in Surrey. And it was among these émigrés that Richard was first to make the acquaintance of a vampire.