CHAPTER XIV
I WAS ABOUT AS FAR FROM MY BED AS IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ONE THING to be from another in Moscow. As I headed back across town, the air was heavy with the stench of smoke. Buildings were ablaze everywhere – perhaps half of the city was burnt or burning. Even south of the river in Zamoskvorechye, houses were on fire.
The flames had not reached the stable where I had been staying, but I felt no inclination to be caught asleep in a wooden building if the fire did reach it during the day. I was desperately tired, having been up all night, and I suspected that the night that was to come would require similar exertions of me. Across the street was a small church, abandoned by its priest and his entourage before the French arrived and, crucially, made of stone. I gathered up what few possessions I had left in the stable and made my way over. It was a matter of little trouble to break into the crypt and I slipped inside.
It was cold and dark. Outside, even though it was now midmorning, the city basked in an eerie twilight caused by the thick smoke that hung over it. Somewhere through it, I could just make out the disc of the sun, shining brightly, but lessened in its power by the smog that the fires all around constantly replenished. Within the crypt, it was darker still. It was an ideal place for anyone who wanted to sleep undisturbed during the day.
I paused, remembering that there were still seven others in the city who needed a dark, secluded place to sleep through the hours of daylight. What if, by some unlucky chance, one or more of the Oprichniki had chosen this very place to secrete their coffins? Would I awake to find that I had slept alongside the very creatures that I hoped to destroy?
On the other hand, there were many, many churches with crypts in Moscow, and many other similarly safe places that weren't crypts at all. It would have surprised me if the Oprichniki could even go near a holy place such as a church, although I immediately remembered that Foma and Ioann had met me outside one less than two days before. But I was very, very tired. For all I knew, the smoke outside was so thick that the Oprichniki might be able to wander around in the open without need to fear the sun. I lay down, using a stone step as a pillow, but despite my exhaustion, I could not sleep.
Since I had last closed my eyes, my whole conception of the world around me had been ripped apart. So many things that had seemed mysterious about the Oprichniki could now be explained: their enormous strength, their avoidance of daylight, the tales of death that had followed them on their journey up the Don. Most of all, I now understood their motivation. They did not fight for their country or for my country, but for the most primitive instinct of all; they fought for food. But even that did not quite fit. They killed more than they needed, surely, for food. At the farmhouse in Goryachkino, three of them had killed thirty men. Did they need ten each for their cravings to be satisfied?
'Satisfied.' It was the word Pierre had used when he was describing their attack on his camp. They had continued to kill even though they were satisfied – even though they had eaten all they could. So perhaps they killed for other reasons beyond food – for pleasure, much as rich, idle men (and I must include myself at times amongst them) hunt animals that they could never eat. Or perhaps they killed so many for much the same reason as the Russian army did – because they were enemies on our soil. Perhaps they were merely doing what we had gladly asked them to do – helping to kill our enemies. Could I really blame them for doing what I had asked and for getting some enjoyment out of it? I had chosen to join the army, so many years before, because I wanted to travel. I had killed, I would guess, one man for every twenty versts of Europe I had crossed. Was not their justification – that they needed to eat – better than mine, which was, to reduce it to its most basic, that I was curious?
I cast such thoughts from my mind. I knew in my gut that these creatures were evil. There was much in the knowledge of past generations that an enlightened man of the nineteenth century could regard as primitive – in science, warfare, literature and music – but that did not mean it should all be dismissed. I'd been arrogant enough to laugh at my grandmother's stories – laughing to hide my fear – but now she'd been irrefutably proved to be right. I still had to discover some of the details, but she had been right about the existence of vampires, and I was not going to dispute their vile nature. I would not disagree with centuries of accumulated wisdom on what is good and what is evil; on what is right and what is wrong. Every atom of my experience and of the wisdom handed down to me from my forebears told me how I should regard these creatures, and there was no amount of logical, rational consideration of their behaviour that could change that. They were abominations against God and they had to die. I had begun the task the previous night and I would continue the next night – and the next and the next until the job was complete.
I tried to sleep once again and this time found that drowsiness quickly overcame me. I thought of the seven other figures lying elsewhere in the city in similar dark places also seeking the reinvigoration of slumber. As I dozed off, it occurred to me to wonder how they had managed to sleep out in the countryside as we had headed out west to meet the advancing Russians, with no permanence as to where we would be from one day to the next. The question did not occupy my mind enough to keep me awake.
Nor did the implications of what Maks had done, or of what had befallen him. I had realized almost as soon as I had discovered that the Oprichniki were vampires that Maks might well have had Simon, Iakov Alfeyinich and Faddei killed not because of his loyalty to France, but out of his loyalty to humanity. 'Humanity.' It was the very word Maks had used the last time we spoke, moments before I abandoned him to those creatures. It seemed almost certain that he had known what they were. Beyond doubt was the fact that his death had been the most gruesome imaginable. And yet I managed to sleep.
When I awoke it was into total darkness. I leapt to my feet, afraid that I had slept all day, but as consciousness returned to me, I realized it was dark simply because I was still in the crypt. A heavy, throbbing ache gnawed at the right side of my chest. The events of the previous night came back to me in an engulfing wave of remembrance. The pain in my chest was where the stake that had penetrated Varfolomei's body had merely bruised mine. I went over to the door and looked outside to find that it was still daylight – the middle of the afternoon. The smell of a burning city hung in the air.
There was little that I could do until that evening's meeting. I would arrive early and hope that Vadim and Dmitry were there early too – before any of the Oprichniki arrived. Three of us against seven would be better odds. It was something of a blessing that my mind was occupied by the night ahead, else I might have broken down at the state to which the city had been reduced. Whole blocks of once grand buildings lay in smouldering piles of charred remains. The leaves of trees, some already turning brown with the onset of autumn, had become grey from the thin layer of ash that coated them. Was any of that ash, I wondered, in fact flecks of the dust into which Matfei and Varfolomei's bodies had corroded, swept up by the wind into the air and mixed with the smoke from the fires? How long would it take for their remains to be spread thinly across the whole city; the whole country; the whole planet? How much of the dust that fills our homes, that is beaten out of our carpets, that we inadvertently inhale every day, comes from other such creatures, killed long ago by righteous men, their residue spread to the four corners of the earth?