Twelve

With the fire so close upon me, I decided it was time to leave. As I began climbing the stairs, the beating on the doors returned to the rapid pounding that cried attention. Now, between coughs, it was accompanied by an excruciated scream.

'Help! Help!'

I could not resist smiling at the thought of Iuda or Ioann, whichever it was, dying in such pain after what they had inflicted on others. At a conscious level, it never even occurred to me that the cry was in Russian. Soon the voice lost the strength even to scream. I heard the sound of a body slumping to the ground and the voice relaxed from a scream to a prayer.

'My God, have mercy upon me.'

It was only then that I recognized the voice as Dmitry's.

CHAPTER XV

I THREW MYSELF BACK DOWN THE STAIRS AND LIFTED THE BAR FROM the doors. Immediately they swung open and Dmitry's semiconscious body spilled out on to the floor. At the same time, I was hit by a wall of smoke and heat which combined to make breathing an impossibility.

The cellar beyond was in flames. Fire licked across the wooden ceiling and the supporting beams were almost charcoal. Within moments the roof would collapse. One of the coffins was completely ablaze, the other, in which I could just make out Ioann's still-dormant body, was already beginning to blacken in the flames. It had been dragged from its original position towards the door, so that Dmitry's feet almost rested against it.

I bent down over Dmitry. He was breathing shallowly. The backs of his hands and his forearms were burnt. On the right side of his face, his beard had withered away to reveal his scar, surviving intact as the rest of his cheek had blistered under the intense heat. I would have slapped his face to try to bring him round, but given his injuries, I chose to shake him by the shoulders.

He soon began to cough and open his eyes.

'Can you walk?' I asked.

'Yes, yes!' he insisted, pushing himself up to a sitting position.

'We have to get out, and fast.' I went back to the doorway. The stairway down which I had descended was beginning to smoulder. In places its ceiling was already alight. It was still passable and, anyway, it was the only exit we had.

'Come on,' I said, turning back to Dmitry.

'Give me a hand!' Dmitry was further into the cellar than where I had left him. His hands were clasped around a handle on Ioann's coffin and he was straining every sinew to pull it to the door. In his weakness, Dmitry was unable to move it even an inch. 'We have to get them out of here.'

Even if I had wanted to save the Oprichniki – rather than leave them there to be reduced to nothingness by the all-consuming flames – it would have been impossible. Ioann showed no sign of regaining consciousness and there was little hope for even the two of us to manhandle his coffin up the blazing stairway.

'Leave him, Dmitry! You've got to come now!' Dmitry ignored me and continued to haul pathetically at the coffin. I dashed back over to him and pulled him away. He could offer little resistance.

I pushed him towards the door, and he seemed then either to bow to my stronger will or realize that his rescue attempt was hopeless. I herded him in front of me up the stairs. When he was almost at the top, and I was about halfway up, the step beneath my foot gave way. The fire below the wooden stairs was intense – enough to eat away at them without actually sending them up in flames. As my leg fell through the gap, up to my thigh, I felt immediately the heat of the cavity below. My leg began to roast with a pain such as I had never before experienced.

My body twisted and I found myself looking back down the stairs into the cellar. Through the smoke and flame I saw Ioann, awake now and fighting his way towards us. His eyes fell upon me and, with a leap that was unmistakably similar to the movement with which Varfolomei had launched himself on me the previous night, he attacked. He seemed not so much concerned with saving his life as with avenging his and Iuda's deaths, or at least with having one final meal.

As he leapt, the ceiling above him gave way. Burning beams crashed to the ground and took Ioann with them. They would have fallen on me too, pinning me to the steps and trapping me in this inferno, had I not felt Dmitry's strong arms at that moment lift me from where I lay and out into the hallway above. Even there, we were not safe. The whole house was ablaze and on the verge of collapse. We made a dash for the door, one of us supporting the other, though which was which I could not say, and made it outside to the cool, life-giving Moscow air.

The fire had now attracted some attention. A French captain was attempting to organize a human chain of both French soldiers and Russian civilians to get water to the fire. The task was hopeless, but they were intent on it and paid little attention to the two figures that had just bolted out of the house and lay gasping for breath in the street outside.

At length I heard a voice ask, in genuine Muscovite Russian, 'What were you doing in there?'

I raised my head. It was a girl of about fifteen, scruffy, with a dirty face and tightly curled black hair. She was leaning over Dmitry to see if he was unconscious or dead, but speaking to me.

'We were sleeping in there. Our house has already been burnt down. This time it almost got us.' I rolled on to my side towards Dmitry. 'Is he all right?' I asked.

'He's badly burned, but he may live,' she replied, and then went over to the captain who, I presumed, had sent her to find out what we were about. She spoke to him briefly and then returned to us.

'Come with me,' she said, trying to lift Dmitry. I put my shoulder beneath Dmitry's arm and together we managed to raise him to his feet. With whatever slight consciousness he had about him, he managed to take some of his own weight on his legs and so we slowly made progress away from the burning buildings. My own leg continued to feel as though it was roasting within my breeches, but the pain remained constant whether or not I put any weight on it, so it was little hindrance to our progress.

'What's your name?' I asked the girl as we walked.

'Natalia,' she replied.

'I'm Aleksei. This is Dmitry.'

'Why have you stayed in Moscow?' she said.

'Our household packed up and left us behind. He's a chef.' I nodded towards Dmitry. 'I'm a butler.'

'No you're not,' she laughed. I don't know what gave it away, but it was evidently easier to fool dozens of French officers than a single Russian child. 'I reckon you're soldiers.' I made no reply.

'Are you going to kill all the French for us and make the city ours again?'

I smiled to myself. 'That's the plan.'

'Did you start the fires?'

'No,' I replied. 'The fires don't do Moscow any good.'

'They don't do the French any good – that's what matters.'

'You were talking happily enough to that captain.'

'I'd have pushed him into the flames if I could. Not too far in.

I'd rather he burned slowly. I'd hold him down and let my own hand burn if I needed to.'

'So for you it's any price to defeat Bonaparte?'

'They killed my brother. He was a soldier, just like you. Well, not like you. He was just a ryadovoy, not an officer.' How she knew we were officers, I could not tell.

'Where did he die?' I asked.

'At Smolensk.'

'What was his name?'

'Fedya. He said the tsar would never let them take Moscow.'

She paused for a moment before adding, 'He was wrong about that.'

'No, I think you just misheard. The tsar will never let them keep Moscow. That's why he sent me and Dmitry here.'

'Just you?' she asked derisively.

'And others.'

'I hear they've let loose a plague that only affects Frenchmen.

Is that true?'

'Would you be happy if it was?'

'I'd be happy to pay any price to get rid of them. I was happy to lose Fedya.' She became suddenly silent. I sensed a tear rising inside her as she comprehended what she had said about her brother. 'Not happy,' she managed to force out with a choked voice, desperate for me to understand what I found so obvious.