He took hold of her wrist and pulled her down on to him. They kissed again, then he tried to grab the book off her, but she held it away at arm’s length.
‘Anyway, why are you showing me this now?’ he asked.
She rolled off him and turned her attention back to the book. ‘Because of Maks,’ she said.
Aleksei was glad she had her back to him, so that she couldn’t see the smile on his face deflate. It was no secret that she had slept with Maks, but it had for years been unspoken. There was nothing wrong in it. It was her job, but the depth of Aleksei’s affection meant that it pained him even now; not his affection for Domnikiia, great though that was, but his affection for Maks.
‘Here we are,’ she said, showing him another page, but keeping her hand over the bottom half.
Robespierre.
Eyeglasses. Maksim. Maks. Lukin.
The nickname was apt. Domnikiia had shown an appreciation for Maks’ true nature that Aleksei had only learned much later. He scanned further down the pages.
Mother in Saratov. Yelizaveta Malinovna. Two sisters.
Only brother died in infancy. Don’t bring up. Innokyentii.
‘Innokyentii – that’s the name he’s using. Or, at least, Kyesha.’
‘So he’s not Maks’ brother, but he knows what he’s talking about,’ said Domnikiia. Aleksei had to agree, but his mind had already moved on from there. He’d never heard of Maks having a brother until Kyesha had mentioned it. Now he could see, almost at first hand, that the idea was based on fact. The question that now presented itself was, how had Kyesha got the information? He couldn’t help wondering whether the answer was staring him in the face.
‘Let me see the rest,’ he said. Domnikiia’s hand still covered the bottom of the page.
‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t really want to see what it was that turned Maks on, do you?’
‘Don’t be silly. What I want to see is if there are any other details I can use to check whether Kyesha has got his facts right.’
Domnikiia reluctantly removed her hand. The paper beneath it was blank.
‘There wasn’t really anything very special about him,’ she said, as though it were a confession. ‘But I didn’t have very long to get to know him before you scared him off.’
Aleksei could understand how she might want to protect Maks’ memory by hiding how small an impression he had made on her, but it did not matter. Maks’ greatness had lain elsewhere. The more significant discovery was that Kyesha had not got his information from this book. It was preposterous to think that he might have, but the seeds of doubt Iuda had sown could germinate at any time, however stony the ground might appear.
‘So is he a vampire, this Kyesha?’ asked Domnikiia.
‘I don’t know, but it’s a possibility.’
‘And will you kill him, if he is?’
Aleksei nodded. ‘Oh, yes.’ It was a conclusion he had come to within hours of first discovering that the voordalak was more than a phantom from his grandmother’s tales – that all such creatures must die. Nothing he had learned about them since had changed his mind. It had to be said, though, that beyond those he had encountered in 1812, he had not come across a single other example of the species. He had been on several wild goose chases since then – six, to be precise – but they had all ended in natural explanations, fortunately for the suspects in question. He would treat Kyesha with the same dispassion.
Domnikiia took the book and put it back in the drawer. Then she snuffed out the candle and crawled back into bed beside Aleksei. They lay in silence for several minutes, but her breathing did not slow down to the settled murmur of sleep.
‘Do you have to?’ she asked eventually.
‘He’s come after me. I have to do something.’
‘What does he want?’
‘I don’t know, yet.’
‘You were lucky before, you know that. And now you have Tamara to think of.’
‘I had Dmitry then,’ he said. She rolled over so that her back faced him and said nothing more, but he knew that she understood what he had to do, for both his children. He reached over and his hand found hers. Her five fingers squeezed his three.
Aleksei could not guess how long he had lain there. He had not slept, nor had he been wide awake, but as the day’s events tumbled through his mind he had realized that there was one problem, quite unrelated to Kyesha, that he had to deal with. He pulled his hand away from Domnikiia. In sleep, her fingers did not try to restrain him. He slipped on his robe and went into the next room.
He had few possessions which he kept here; most were at the hotel in Zamoskvorechye, which he tried to visit at least once a day, if only to collect his mail. In the corner of the room lay a battered leather saddlebag – acquired even before Austerlitz – where he kept those things from which he dared not be parted. He lit the lamp and hauled the bag on to the desk. He knew that what he was after was in the small, left-hand pouch. Five thin sheets of paper folded into three: the list of members of the Northern Society he had stolen in Petersburg. He unfolded it and peered at the text. The writing was even smaller than Domnikiia’s. He could make nothing of it.
He reached into the bag again, and his fingers felt what he needed. He brought out the spectacles. They had been Maks’. Aleksei had taken them from his body before burying it, all those years before. One lens had been broken, but Aleksei had had no practical use for them, not then. It had been soon after Tamara’s birth that he first noticed he had trouble reading. He had tried the spectacles, but even the single lens that was intact did nothing to help – in fact it made matters worse. Aleksei had struggled to remember a long-forgotten conversation with Maks about them. Maks could not see at a distance, but he could see close up. Old people – that had been Maks’ term, and Aleksei knew that it now applied to him – found it hard to see to read. A different-shaped lens was needed to fix each of the two problems.
‘And what will you do when you’re old?’ Aleksei had asked. ‘Two pairs of lenses?’
‘I’ll turn to Benjamin Franklin,’ Maks had replied, with a smile.
‘A long way to America. And isn’t he a little… dead?’
‘A man’s ideas live after his death,’ Maks had explained. ‘And you’re right: Franklin’s invention was two pairs of lenses, bound together in a single frame. One for when you’re looking out in front of you, one when you’re looking down at a book. I know a man in Petersburg who can grind them for me – when the time comes.’
But for Maks, the time had never come, nor had any other of those signs of ageing that Aleksei had feared in his youth but embraced in his middle age as reminders of the fact that he had survived to grow old. He could still see at a distance, but he had gone, when reading had become too difficult, to that same optician in Petersburg, and had him make some lenses to fit Maks’ old frames. He avoided wearing them in front of Domnikiia – that was why he had struggled on in the bedroom reading her book. But now he slipped them on and looked at the names on the list.
Fortunately, they were alphabetical. He found what he was after about two thirds of the way down page two.
Grigoriev, V. F.
Gusev, I. B.
Danilov, A. I.
Danilov, D. A.
Demidov, E. B.
Dmitriev, P. P.
So Dmitry was more than just the piano player; Aleksei had never really thought otherwise. Dmitry would never have got into the club if he had not been trusted, and the look Aleksei had seen in his son’s eye had told him the truth. This was mere confirmation. But it left many questions unanswered. Simply being a supporter of the Northern Society did not mean being a supporter of all its methods – most, in fact, did not know the detailed plans. Only the inner circle into which Aleksei had insinuated himself was aware of the scheme, vague though it still was, to assassinate the tsar. That was, in part, why he had revealed the information to Obukhov, and intended to reveal it to others; in the hope that the realization of what was being planned would shock the Society into collapse from the roots upward. But Obukhov had not been shocked. Would Dmitry be, when he discovered the truth?