Twelve

'I'm not sure they'd have been in the best of moods if you had met them.' I felt the urge to laugh, but resisted. I didn't want to have to explain my fears to Dmitry.

'I think we should leave Moscow,' I announced. It was pure cowardice, but I knew that Moscow now contained too many threats for me to have any desire to stay there. And, of course, Dmitry needed time to recover. Dmitry did not answer. 'You're in no state to do anything,' I explained, to my conscience as much as to him. 'The Oprichniki can handle things fine by themselves. And if they're not happy with our spying on them, then this isn't a safe city for us to be in.'

'They wouldn't harm us, Aleksei. They might be angry but, well – you were angry with me, and I only got a few bruises for it.'

I said nothing. Dmitry was probably right, assuming that they knew only as much of what I had been up to as he knew – and until they had no more use for us.

'What about Vadim?' asked Dmitry.

'I'll try to find him tonight. If not I'll leave a message.' Dmitry looked doubtful. 'He can look after himself,' I assured him.

'How are we going to get out?'

I'd thought about this. 'Do you have any left of the gold that Vadim gave us?' I asked.

Dmitry put his hand inside his coat and then withdrew it, remembering that his burns made him unable to manipulate anything. 'Could you?' he asked. 'It's in a money belt.'

I pulled up his shirt and undid the belt. It felt heavy. 'I didn't have cause to spend much,' he explained, then the obvious question occurred to him. 'Anyway, where's yours?'

'I stashed mine,' I said. 'I'm off to get it now.'

I made my way past the dozens of similar compartments that made up the settlement. At the perimeter, I found Boris and Natalia waiting, quietly. Although it would have been quite easy for them to hang around and eavesdrop on our conversation, they had not, as I had trusted they wouldn't.

'I'll be back this evening,' I told them. 'Look after Dmitry for me.'

My first port of call was the crypt where I had been sleeping earlier in the week. There I had left my few possessions and my share of the gold. None of it had been disturbed. It was risky to carry my sword with me through the occupied city, but even more so to travel outside the city without it. I ripped off a strip of cloth from my shirt and made a sling which I could use to hang it from my shoulder under my coat. It would not fool any French guards who chose to search me, but it would at least pass a visual inspection.

My next task, which I thought would be my hardest, was to find transport out of Moscow. The sight of even a few pieces of gold seemed to bring forth resources that I would never have dreamed existed in the city. I picked up food, tea and vodka and, eventually, having been passed from one entrepreneur to the next, found a man who said he could provide a wagon and horse for me. The price was high, but the down payment was relatively small, so I had some confidence that he would fulfil his side of the deal. We arranged to meet just east of the city, on the Vladimir road at dawn the following day.

Now I travelled round the city to all seven of our daily meeting points. At each I left the same message:

И9 was Yuryev-Polsky. It was an overly precise message to say that Dmitry and I would be there at midday in three days' time, but it was all that could be expressed within the confines of our code. It should at least, I hoped, give Vadim the idea that we had left Moscow. Yuryev-Polsky was far enough away that we would not just be nipping over there for a twelve o'clock meeting.

At most places it was easy to chalk or to scratch a message in a position where it would be found but not so obvious that it might be accidentally destroyed. In doing this, I had the opportunity to check for any message that Vadim might have himself left, but I found none. At the burnt-down tavern in Tverskaya, there was nowhere that I could leave anything for Vadim. If he had been there and left some scrawled note for me, then it had already been lost to the flames.

The final meeting place to which I went was the one for that evening itself. It was the site of the Petrovka Theatre, one of the few locations in Moscow guaranteed to be safe from the fires that had destroyed two-thirds of the city, having been burnt to the ground in another fire some seven years earlier. We were to meet at the north-west corner of the ruined site. I chalked my message on a low wall and then waited, watching from a distance, hoping that Vadim would arrive – praying that the Oprichniki would not.

I waited two hours before I felt certain that Vadim would not show. Almost throughout, I had the sensation of being watched. I looked around repeatedly and saw no one of note – certainly no vampires. I still had no reason to suppose they had any suspicion of me, but it was a risk turning up at a meeting place that they knew about, whence they could follow me and discover where Dmitry and I slept, along with the innocent cobbler and his daughter. It was, however, a risk I had to take. It was betrayal enough to abandon Vadim in the city, despite the fact that that was precisely what he had said we might have to do. I had at least to make some effort to contact him, even though the attempt had failed.

I headed back the short distance to the shantytown by a circuitous route. I don't think I was followed. As I approached the tiny space, I heard Dmitry and Natalia talking. Dmitry was lying on the area of ground designated to be the bed, lit by the guttering flame of a candle. Natalia sat beside him. Boris was asleep in the corner.

'There you are, at last,' said Dmitry as I entered. 'Where have you been?'

'I was waiting for Vadim,' I explained, 'but he wasn't there.'

'Do you want to give it another day?'

I didn't feel inclined to give it another minute. 'No, it's too late. I've arranged transport for tomorrow. We'll have to leave here before dawn.'

'Where will you go to?' asked Natalia.

'Yuryev-Polsky,' I replied.

'Why there?' asked Dmitry, although I suspect he knew quite well.

'Why not?'

We sat in silence for a while, accompanied only by Boris's shallow breathing.

'Will you come with us, Natasha? You and your father?' It was a surprising request to come from Dmitry's lips, as surprising as his use of the familiar 'Natasha' instead of the more formal 'Natalia'. She had nursed him for two days – only one of which he'd been conscious for – but clearly it had had an effect on him.

I never recalled Dmitry being dependent on anyone before. Now he had his first taste of it, it seemed he liked it.

The girl laughed. 'Leave?'

'We can take you to safety,' Dmitry went on.

'We're safe here. We could have left a week ago when the French came if we'd wanted to.' Then she turned to me. 'I thought you were going to kill all the French and drive them from the city,' she said admonishingly.

'Dmitry needs to be taken somewhere safe. I'll come back,' I said, but I knew that I didn't mean it.

I awoke early and gently shook Dmitry. Natalia and her father lay together, sleeping soundly. From the food I had bought the previous day I left them some tea, two bottles of vodka, two of wine, some bread and some honey.

It was about two versts across the city to where the wagon was, I hoped, waiting for us. Although Dmitry was weak, he could just about walk with my support and, although the journey would be slow, I felt we would make it. My only concern was that we might arrive well after dawn and, if we were too late, our contact might not wait.

We had not gone far when I heard footsteps running behind us. For a terrible moment, I felt sure it was an Oprichnik preparing to pounce on us at the very moment of our escape. It didn't take long for me to realize that the footsteps were too light for that, and approached us too directly.

It was Natalia. She put herself under Dmitry's other arm and the three of us made swift progress through the silent streets, in much the same manner as when we had first met her, two days before.