‘It looks like the impact knocked down all the luggage too,’ he said, looking around at the mess inside. Danilov merely glanced at the chaos into which his own luggage had been hurled. He seemed more concerned with a minute inspection of the carriage’s doorframe.
Then the tsar spoke. ‘Let’s be on our way.’ Then he turned to the driver of Maskov’s coach, ‘And for God’s sake, man, drive more carefully.’ The coachman bowed his head in acknowledgement, happy to accept the unwarranted rebuke rather than face greater punishment.
Wylie made his way back to his own carriage and was about to remount when he felt a hand on his arm. It was Danilov.
‘I’m going back,’ he said.
‘Back?’ asked Wylie.
‘To Chufut Kalye.’
Wylie felt his own cheeks whiten at the implication. ‘But why?’
‘That was no accident.’
‘You can’t be certain.’
‘I saw a man,’ said Danilov sternly. ‘Running from the other side of the carriage. You were all distracted by Maskov.’
‘A bandit,’ asserted Wylie. ‘That’s no reason to go back.’
‘He was searching my bags – searching for the book. Do you still have it?’
Wylie reached into the carriage and picked up the notebook, still wrapped in paper, from where he had left it on the seat. ‘It’s here,’ he said. ‘It’s safe.’
Danilov took it from him, somewhat brusquely, and put it into his knapsack. ‘I’ll be back as quickly as I can,’ he said, and then turned, heading down the road, to where his horse was waiting.
‘It’s a wild goose chase!’ shouted Wylie after him, but he knew in his heart that Colonel Danilov was not a man to pursue shadows. A whip cracked, and he saw that Maskov’s coach was about to start moving. He held his hand out to stop it for a moment and went to the door. Inside, Tarasov was leaning over Maskov’s unconscious body, listening to his shallow breathing. He turned to Wylie and shook his head grimly.
But that was not the information Dr Wylie was here to obtain. Instead, he looked at the frame of the door, at the same spot which Danilov had found so fascinating – fascinating enough to send him all the way back to the citadel of Chufut Kalye.
It wasn’t much, but it was certainly new and clean enough that it could be connected with what had happened to Maskov. The wood had been cut away by a jagged knife. There were two notches, side by side, about the width of two fingers apart. The only thing of note about them was their alignment. They were perfectly parallel.
It would be their last night before getting back to Taganrog. Aleksandr could not tell if he felt better or worse. He had now consumed all the quinine that he had taken from Tarasov. It tasted foul. He had exaggerated it at lunch the other day, but it was still not pleasant. How could he know if his current frailty wasn’t due to the cure itself, rather than to the affliction he hoped it was addressing?
Orekhov was not a large town, but they had all been able to find accommodation. Beds were usually made available for the tsar and the whole of his retinue. If need be, lesser guests would be turfed out, awake or asleep, to make room. They would be happy to make such a sacrifice for their sovereign. And if they weren’t happy – well, then they hardly merited the comfort of a soft bed.
Tonight the man most in need of comfort was Maskov. Seeing him lying there on the muddy road, Aleksandr had felt a deep sympathy for him, of a kind that had not touched his heart for many years. Even so, he was no fool; he could see there was little hope for the major. But Tarasov would do his best, even if his prognosis was rose-tinted.
There was one thing the tsar himself could do for the man – not save his life, but at least give some slight purpose to it. He picked up the wad of dispatches. Regardless of Maskov, they would take Aleksandr’s mind off other matters. He sat down in front of the warming fire, wrapped in a robe. There was nothing of enormous interest in them. Despite what had happened at Chufut Kalye, his concern was the issue of potential revolution. Maskov had brought reports from many of the tsar’s sources in Petersburg, but none of them was as close to events as Colonel Danilov. Rationally, he would feel safer if Danilov were back in the capital, where he could feel at first hand the mood in the barracks. In his heart, it felt comfortable to have the colonel in his presence.
There was a knock at the door. Aleksandr glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece above the fire. It was just after midnight. It could only be bad news. He called out, and Dr Tarasov entered. Aleksandr could see Baron Diebich hovering in the background. He rose to his feet, perhaps faster than he had intended. He felt a moment of dizziness, but asked the question that seemed suddenly more urgent than any.
‘How is Maskov?’
Tarasov hesitated for a moment, but the tsar was not a man who needed to be shielded from bad news. ‘Dead, Your Majesty. His skull was split. I think he was probably dead when we got here.’
‘What a tragedy,’ replied the tsar. ‘I so pity the poor man.’ Aleksandr hoped it did not sound like a platitude. So much that he said was taken to be such, perhaps rightly. Aleksandr turned away from the doctor, afraid to show his face. He heard the door close as Tarasov left.
Aleksandr returned to his chair, dropping the dispatches to the floor beside him. There were so many other things he had wanted to say about Maskov, but none of them would sound sincere. What he really wanted to know was what in Heaven the Lord could have intended for Maskov. Why kill him in such an inconsequential manner? Could he not have died at home, bathed in the love of his family? There was nothing in the dispatches that was worth sacrificing a life to deliver – nor had Maskov died in attempting to deliver them; it had come later. It made God seem cruel, but Aleksandr knew enough to understand that, if he believed that, it was a fault in his own nature, not in the Lord’s. It was a fault that would take time to rectify – time and seclusion.
He felt a sudden pain in his stomach, a burning that spread out to his arms and legs. This was worse than anything he had experienced before, though each time the pattern was the same. Sometimes it began in his stomach, sometimes – he suspected – in his heart. He stood painfully and turned out the lamp on the table.
It was dark now, but he knew the way to the bed. He lay down, and the agony began to recede. His breathing slowed and he felt the sweat on his skin cool. The pain was not gone, but it was tolerable once again. Aleksandr knew it would return. Deep in that cave beneath Chufut Kalye, Cain had told him so.
Aleksandr opened his eyes. His body ached, but he could tell that the shaking he now felt was not caused by the convulsions of his own body, but by the coach itself. They were travelling more slowly now, partly out of consideration for the tsar’s delicate condition, but also with regard to the awful accident that had killed Major Maskov. They had buried him quietly in a cemetery in Orekhov, not very far from where he had fallen. The heavy local clay had been hard for the men to dig through. Aleksandr had begun a letter to his family, but had not been able to finish it before the fever had overcome him.
Aleksandr still felt cold, although he was sweating. They had piled blankets and furs over him, but it did little to help. His greatest fillip was that soon the journey would be over and they would be back in Taganrog, though he would hate for Yelizaveta to see him like this. He forced himself to sit up and look out of the window.
The view outside was very familiar. They were closer to home than he had imagined, though it was easy to lose sense of time as he slipped between consciousness and an unconsciousness that was sometimes sleep and sometimes a thing far deeper and more disturbing. They were already in the outskirts of Taganrog. He recognized some of the buildings, especially the churches. It would be less than a quarter of an hour now before they were home.