It was three in the morning when they began to be led out of the dingy cells – still damp from the floods of two years before. Whereas at the time of the uprising there had only been six hours of daylight, now there were only the same of darkness. It was a bright morning twilight that Aleksei and the others emerged into, though the full moon still hung in the air. At least he would have the satisfaction that Iuda could not be there to witness his undoing.
Aleksei stood stiffly to attention as the insignia were ripped from his uniform. There were so many prisoners they had to queue, but none was allowed to see what was happening to the man in front of him. Aleksei had been proud to be made a colonel, and many people now long dead – his father, his mother, Vadim Fyodorovich – would have been proud of him too. But if they were now in a position to know he had become a colonel, and to know that he had been stripped of that rank, then they must also know the reasons behind it; he felt no shame.
He was moved on and next instructed to remove what was left of his uniform and change into a simple peasant robe, but then, strangely, he was issued with a sword. It was not his own, but he could guess the symbolism that led to its being issued to him. He was brought out into the early sunlight. It had been raining overnight, but it was clear now, though the ground was still damp. In front of Aleksei stood five gallows, empty for the time being, and beside them a raging fire.
The sword he had just been given was taken from him. The officer who had taken it raised it above Aleksei’s head, holding its handle and its tip, and began to bend it. This was the symbolic degradation that was applied to a traitor. Aleksei himself had once before been on the other end of the ceremony, when he had held Maksim Sergeivich’s sword above his head and snapped it in two. Then he had believed Maks to be a traitor and Maks had known that, ultimately, his treason was justified. Aleksei could not feel sorry for himself. There were people alive who knew what Aleksei had done – not many, but enough. He would die in the knowledge that somewhere out there, those that he cared for most still loved him. Maks had only regained that love after he had died, and for him that was too late. He remembered Maks’ tearful eyes as the sword shattered, and the surrounding circle of voordalaki, with Iuda gloating as he looked on.
The sound of the sword breaking – that same metallic scream, which he had not heard for thirteen years – awoke him from his thoughts. The two halves of the blade were thrown on to the fire to melt, and Aleksei was led to a group of his fellow traitors who stood and waited before the gallows. That was the worst affront of all. Russia did not sanction capital punishment, not for the last three quarters of a century. It seemed that Nikolai, like his brother before him, had plans to modify the constitution. Once all the officers – now officers no more – had gone through the process of degradation, the hangings began.
The names of the five ringleaders were read out and they were led up to the gallows; Pestel, Muriev-Apostol, Ryleev, Bestuzhev-Riumin and the murderous Kakhovsky. Each man climbed the ladder and had a noose placed around his neck and tightened. The hangman struggled with the ropes, wet from the overnight rain, but eventually all five men were ready. They were kicked away from the ladders.
A groan was uttered in unison from the watching crowd and heads were turned away. Three of the men slipped from the ropes and landed on the ground below; Muriev-Apostol, Ryleev and Kakhovsky. While the other two men kicked at the air with ever decreasing vigour, the process began again for the ‘lucky’ three. This time there was no mistake. In Aleksei’s mind, only Kakhovsky deserved it.
Another list of names was read out – around thirty in all – Aleksei’s amongst them. Then the sentence was declared. It was not to be hanging. Aleksei could not tell whether he was relieved. To die would have made a quick end of it, but life meant hope, and Aleksei was in need of hope.
A few hours later he was led, in amongst a small group, out of the Neva gate of the fortress and along the short, stone pier to a waiting barge. He looked across the broad, flowing river at Saint Petersburg. He could see the Winter Palace, and a little of the Admiralty, but Senate Square and the statue of Pyotr were out of sight. He stepped down into the boat and within minutes it pushed off, taking him, and his fellow rebels, to a new life, from which there would be no return: a life of exile.
He looked once again at the city’s skyline. As they moved upstream, he just caught a glimpse of the monument to Pyotr’s proud victory, where once, like Saint George, he had defeated a serpent. If only, like George, he had managed to kill it. The statue disappeared from view. It would be the last he saw of Petersburg, or of any real civilization, but he would get used to it.
Even so, he wished his final glimpse of a city could have been of Moscow. He’d always preferred Moscow.
EPILOGUE
SIBERIA. ON THE BANK OF A WIDE, REMOTE RIVER STOOD THE town of Irkutsk, fifty versts from Lake Baikal, five thousand from Moscow. It had been almost twenty-nine years since the day of the Decembrist Uprising.
Domnikiia toyed with the iron bracelet that encircled her wrist. She had worn it since 1828. Most of her friends – a small and exclusive circle – wore one. 1828 had marked one of the first, slight relaxations that the Decembrist exiles had been allowed – the removal of their leg-irons. It had been Pauline Anenkov who had come up with the idea of having the fetters reforged as a symbol of… who knew what? Some of the women had also had wedding rings made from the metal, but Domnikiia had not. As far as they knew, Marfa Mihailovna was still alive.
Many wives, and a few lovers, had come out to Siberia to support their exiled men. Originally, they had been a lot further east than this, and conditions had been indescribable. Aleksei and those others allocated to the second rank of conspirators – those who avoided the death penalty – had been sentenced to various periods of hard labour, followed by permanent exile. Aleksei was ordered to dig in the mines for twelve years; it was neither the longest nor the shortest sentence.
After that, life had become more tolerable, certainly for those men who had female companionship. There had never been any question of Marfa coming to join him, Aleksei had assured Domnikiia of that even before he left Petersburg. She had written, intermittently, for a few years, but after a while, there had been nothing. The same was true of Dmitry Alekseevich. Aleksei told Domnikiia all about Iuda – in his alter ego Vasiliy Denisovich – soon after she had come out east to join him.
Prince Volkonsky – Pyetr Mihailovich – had made everything possible. He seemed to show more concern for Aleksei than he did for his own brother-in-law, Sergei Grigorovich, though he knew Aleksei not to have truly been a supporter of the cause. Pyetr Mihailovich had ensured that money came to them out in Siberia, and – apparently – to Marfa and Dmitry, and, most importantly, to the Lavrovs.
It had been the most appalling decision that Domnikiia or Aleksei had ever had to make, tearing their hearts in two, but for Tamara’s own sake, they had abandoned her. It would have been misery for her to live in the conditions they at first suffered – though children had been born out here to the wives of exiles – and to live and grow in Moscow, stigmatized as the child of a Decembrist, without any hope of ever seeing her parents again would have been a pointless cruelty. Fortunately, the seeds of deception had already been sown.
Toma would grow up as Tamara Valentinovna Lavrova, daughter of Valentin Valentinovich and Yelena Vadimovna. Aleksei had smiled at the thought she would be Vadim’s granddaughter, but it was little compensation. Yelena had been saddened but supportive when the idea was put to her. Valentin had been surprisingly accommodating. He was not a cruel man and he loved Tamara as he loved any child. In his mind, she would be far happier as his own than as the daughter of Aleksei and Domnikiia. The regular payments from Volkonsky had been persuasive too.