by Jasper Kent
‘You’re just letting him go?’ asked Dmitry in astonishment.
‘What can we do?’ asked Zmyeevich.
Mihail smiled broadly. He felt like a hero. Better than that, he felt like his grandfather. What Aleksei had done to save Aleksandr I, Mihail had recreated in this new generation. He mounted the steps out of the tomb, his knapsack dangling from one hand, his arbalyet clasped in the other. About halfway up, when he was just at the border between light and shadow, he turned and looked back down on Zmyeevich and Dmitry, who stood in glum silence. His heart thumped in his chest. He was astounded to still be alive, but he knew he had pushed his luck far enough. He would deal with them another day.
‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said. Then he walked up and out into the sunlight.
CHAPTER XXII
AT LAST IUDA was whole again – both in body and in mind. He’d done experiments, years before in Chufut Kalye, to establish just how much of a vampire’s body could be consumed by sunlight before it would be unable to restore itself. He knew that his own wounds had taken him close to the point from which recovery was impossible. But he’d never thought to question the specimens upon which he had experimented as to their state of mind. It had been remiss of him, but it afforded him the pleasure of surprise as he experienced his own delirium and his eventual happy return to lucidity.
But he couldn’t shake off one simple conclusion: his survival was in only a small part down to his own wits. He had been lucky. True, much of the luck had been of his own making. He’d helped in the design of Saint Isaac’s and he’d known the location of every exit – concealed or otherwise – from its interior. But it was luck that he’d had time to drag himself, with his one remaining hand, across the floor to that tiny hatch that led down to the sewer; lucky that Zmyeevich had not noticed and stopped him; lucky that his body had been so shrivelled that it could fit through such a slight gap between the stones. Lucky that she had come looking for him – and had found him.
Why had he mistaken her for Susanna? There was some superficial similarity, of course, but then the same could be said of Raisa. He paused in his train of thought. Was his relationship with either woman just coincidence? He doubted it. Had he, throughout his entire life, been trying to make amends?
After that first kiss, outside the deadhouse beside the little church in Esher, Iuda – then just Richard Cain – had been suspicious of Susanna, or at least suspicious of himself in his feelings towards her. It had not been a cause of great concern and his capture of Honoré had given him something far more enthralling to occupy his time and his mind. He paid Susanna little attention.
It was his first, quite accidental lesson in how to handle women. The less of his attention she received, the more she was desirous of it. She would creep into his room at night and talk to him, distracting him from his books. To start with she kept the conversation very girlish, talking of fashion and dancing and of books quite unlike the kind that Richard was interested in. Then, realizing she was getting nowhere, she changed her tune. She clearly remembered the conversation they’d once had about sex. That had been over a year before, but now she returned to the subject often.
It irritated Richard both because it distracted him and because it interested him. Worse, Susanna could tell it interested him, however much he attempted to hide it. Why else would he blush so when they talked?
But still he liked to kiss her – and the kiss at the end of an evening together was always more enthralling than the one at the beginning. In his dreams, and sometimes when awake, he imagined her body, free of the layers of clothing that even one so humble as a housekeeper’s daughter was expected to wear in order to preserve her dignity. He had never seen a woman naked. He tried to extrapolate from the anatomy of animals, but his own body was so far removed from those of the animals he’d dissected that he imagined any guesses he took with regard to a woman’s form would be laughable.
Instead, he would ask Susanna questions. He did it subtly, so he thought, but in the end it was precisely what she expected of him – for which he hated her. The most pressing point of his inquisitiveness was on the most obvious difference between the sexes and, from what little he could gather, between woman and other female animals – the breast.
She giggled when he first raised the issue, but then tried to describe what she had hidden beneath her cotton bodice. Words were not her forte, but it was then that Richard discovered a hitherto unknown talent in her: she could draw. The following night she returned to him with a piece of paper. At first she would not show it to him, asking what he would give her to see it, but in the end he snatched it from her. It was a charcoal sketch; a reproduction of a single female breast. He became very silent and, he could tell, blushed profusely. She left him alone, but he gazed at the picture for hours before going to bed.
The next night she visited him again, but neither spoke of her drawing. He had learned now not to appear too keen. Eventually, she broached the subject.
‘Didn’t you like it?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘My picture.’
‘It was very informative.’
‘How do you rate me as an artist then?’
‘How can I tell?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, you could have drawn me the Acropolis or the Colosseum – I’ve never seen either. How would I know if it was any good?’
He looked back down at the paper, waiting for her to react.
‘You’re such a silly,’ she said. By the time he looked up, she had already begun to undo the dozens of hooks that held her clothing in place. Soon she was naked to the waist. ‘You could have just asked,’ she said in a whisper.
Richard held up the drawing, as if to compare, but his eyes were fixed on the reality, not the image.
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘Very accurate,’ he said, his mouth dry.
‘I did it in front of the mirror.’ He continued to stare.
‘They’re much better than a drawing,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Because you can touch them.’
‘I suppose so,’ he replied.
She tutted. ‘I said you can touch them.’
Richard blushed deeper still – partly at the prospect, partly at his own obtuseness – but he did as he was told.
It was around three weeks later that they finally had sex, for the first and only time. They had both known since that moment that it would inevitably happen. Richard wanted to perform the act within the church itself, at the foot of the altar, but it was a step too far even for Susanna. Instead they chose the privacy of the Chamber Pew, the secluded extension housing four enclosed benches, reserved for the Duke of Newcastle, his brother and their respective servants. Both were long dead now, but their families maintained the privilege of using it. That afternoon, though, Richard and Susanna put it to another purpose. They would be seen by no one, unless Thomas chose to climb to the highest pulpit to practise his sermon.
Richard was in no way ashamed of his performance. At the time he had nothing to compare it against, but looking back as a wiser and older man he decided that he had done well. He could not be accused of misremembering. After he had left the church and returned to his room, he had written down all that had happened in his usual detached manner. Susanna had certainly seemed to enjoy the experience. He remembered looking up at her grinning, glowing face and hearing her offhand but complimentary words.
‘We must do that again some time.’
They never did, for the simple reason that in one other aspect of sexual congress Richard had performed very well indeed. Two months later Susanna told him she was pregnant.
If he had been only a few years older Richard would not have cared enough even to attempt to keep the event secret. He would simply have moved on, leaving mother and child to their fate, or told them to go hang and see what society would make of their story. But then he was young, and lacked confidence, and understood what the
English gentry would take him for. He was still dependent on his father for everything that allowed him to live. He would not risk it. It was not that Susanna made any demands of him. She promised she would not reveal who the father was. In fact she didn’t even promise it; she merely said it, and assumed Richard would take her at her word.
Whether he did or did not mattered little. The people of Esher were not imbeciles; they would put two and two together. He half formed a plan of getting his father blamed for it, but he was not sure Susanna would be able to lie convincingly. Moreover, if Thomas Cain should lose his position and reputation, what good would that do his son Richard?
There was never any real doubt as to how he would solve his dilemma. Honoré had been a captive beneath the church for almost a year – perhaps he had even overheard the exertions above him as Richard and Susanna conceived their child. Richard could not sacrifice too many of his schoolfriends without suspicions being aroused. He put the offer to Honoré directly, supposing that the vampire would have a greater interest in the blood of a beautiful young female, if only for the sake of variety, but Honoré claimed that it did not matter a sou what the age, sex or appearance was, as long as they were healthy enough to produce rich, wholesome blood. Richard noted it down, but was to discover that the same indifference did not hold for all vampires. For some reason, he could not bring himself to tell Honoré of the child that grew within Susanna.
‘I have something to show you,’ Richard said on that final Sunday of Susanna’s life. It was night. Evensong was done, and he’d arranged to meet her in the churchyard.
‘Something I’ll like?’ she asked.
‘Something that will fascinate you.’
‘Like what you showed me in the deadhouse.’
‘A bit.’
He felt her hand slip into his and squeeze. He squeezed back and led her to the church door, drawing out a stolen key to unlock it.
‘Just the two of us, in the church again,’ she said, leaning forward to kiss him. ‘We still can, you know,’ she added.
‘Sh!’ he said, putting a finger to his lips.
He led her across the nave and to the three-tiered pulpit.
She giggled. ‘That doesn’t look too comfy.’
He descended the steps and opened the low wooden door to the crypt.
‘What is this?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never shown me this before.’
‘It’s the old crypt. No one else knows about it.’
‘Do you bring all the girls down here?’
‘Just you.’
They had come to the iron gate. As usual Richard held up his lamp to check that Honoré was not lurking close, ready to pounce, but the place was quiet. He unlocked the barrier and swung it open.
‘You first,’ he said.
She looked at him with an intrigued curl to her lips, then stepped through. Richard hung back by the gate, unwilling to close it but knowing that he must. She looked back at him.
‘Are you coming?’
‘I want you to see it on your own,’ he said.
She smiled at him and then walked further into the darkness until he could just make out the white blur of her dress, ghostlike against the black. He pulled the gate quietly to, but did not lock it in case she heard. He knew that at some point she would discover he had betrayed her, but he did not want to see her face when she did.
She called back to him, out of the darkness. ‘There’s someone here!’ Then quieter, ‘Who are you?’
Richard heard Honoré’s voice.
‘Je suis Honoré Philippe Louis d’Évreux, Vicomte de Nemours. Welcome to my home.’
There was a yelp and a thud. Richard locked the door and hurried away. That night he cried for the last time in his life.
Since then he had on occasion known a handful of women who would offer him that same unblinking trust that Susanna had shown. Raisa was one – though with time she had grown to realize that Iuda’s interests would always lie with himself. Perhaps Susanna would have understood the same, had she lived. Perhaps she did understand it in those last seconds of her life.
And now there was Dusya. She had come looking for Iuda. She knew of his hideout beneath Saint Isaac’s and of all the tunnels and sewers around there. She had searched every inch of them until she had found the sad remnant of what had once been his body. Some women might have fled in revulsion at the sight of him, but she was made of sterner stuff. She had nursed him, fed him, fetched others for him to feed on. As he had been growing back to his full strength he had felt grateful towards her, but that had passed. She needed no thanks, no reward. All that she had done confirmed it. She’d even meekly accepted that, in his delirium, he had called her Susanna, though she had no idea what the name meant, except as a codeword he sometimes used to identify himself to the Executive Committee.
They had met through Luka. Within days of his first falling for Dusya, Luka had been eager to introduce her to his old friend and mentor Vasiliy Grigoryevich Chernetskiy. Iuda instantly saw the potential in her, just as he had done in Raisa when he took on the role of her tutor in Kiev. But there must be more to it than that. Why did he never see that same potential in a girl who lacked the blonde ringlets that reminded him of Susanna?
Dusya had immediately warmed to Iuda, simply by virtue of Luka’s gushing recommendation. Iuda had wondered if he would need to seduce her to fully win her loyalty, but it had proved unnecessary. What fascinated her about him was his fanatical dedication to the cause of the Russian people and the overthrow of dictatorship, which he expressed, he thought, with great authenticity. Then he had revealed the truth about himself – a sad tale of a good man afflicted by a horrible disease – the disease of vampirism. She had wept for him, but understood that it did not change him as a man. He still loved Russia and loved the working people. He still, he told her, loved her. When it came to it and she had to choose between him and Luka – when he had sent his message of denunciation from prison – he had been in no doubt as to whose side she would be on.
Now all that work was repaid. She had saved him. They sat facing each other, her hand clasped in his, in the sewer beneath Saint Isaac’s. He felt he was ready to leave now. His body was complete; he even had clothes – the foul garb of a Swedish sailor, but it would do him until the chance came to change. But he still needed to know what had been happening in the world above.
‘You were lucky to find me,’ he said.
‘When you weren’t at the Hôtel d’Europe, I worried. This was the only other place I could think of. When I saw you I thought …’ Her voice cracked and her eyes filled with tears. He squeezed her hand.
‘Don’t think of me like that. Think of me now – as you’ve restored me. Think of your blood, in me, giving me life.’
She nodded. ‘I’d gladly give you more,’ she said.
‘But why were you at the hotel?’
‘Mihail asked me to watch it.’
‘Mihail?’
‘Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin – the one you said broke into your room there.’
‘To watch for me?’ asked Iuda.
‘For you and a couple of others – one old, the other middle-aged. He described them to me.’ She gave the description and Iuda nodded. She could only mean Zmyeevich – both by day and by night. Lukin had seen Zmyeevich’s astonishing ability and had seen Iuda’s own fate – or thought he had. Lukin was clearly far more than a lieutenant who had stumbled upon Dmitry and Iuda’s encounter at Geok Tepe.
‘What else has he been up to?’
‘He’s trusted by the Executive Committee. He’s helping Kibalchich with the digging and the explosives, but it’s almost done. Zhelyabov and Sofia are desperate we should act soon. Sofia thinks the organization has been infiltrated; they might arrest us all within days.’
‘Who does she think is the traitor?’
‘Shklovskiy.’
Iuda nodded. Dusya had already described Shklovskiy to him, and he had no doubt it was Dmitry under another name – that coup
led with his peculiar interest in the tunnelling. ‘And what about the cellars under the cheese shop?’
‘They didn’t do much with them; too deep for the explosives. Shklovskiy searched them and then said they led nowhere.’
That was a shame. It meant that Dmitry and Zmyeevich were a step closer; but only a step – there were many more they would have to take.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘Go now. Find out what else is happening.’
‘Do you want me to bring you … are you hungry?’
He raised his hand to touch her cheek. ‘I can fend for myself now, thanks to you.’
‘You’ll be here though?’ she asked.
‘Some nights, but it’s safer to move around. I will find you.’
They kissed briefly and then she was gone. He sat for a moment, considering what he should do now. A thought danced at the back of his mind, irritating but important: despite losing his fight with Zmyeevich, there was something he had gained, something precious. He held his hands open in front of him and looked into their palms, then realized that it must be the left that mattered – the right was only days old. But whatever he had grasped so urgently in that hand was no longer there. He glanced around the floor until something glinted in the dim light. He picked it up. It was a ring; the figure of a dragon, with a body of gold, emerald eyes and red, forked tongue. Zmyeevich’s ring. Iuda had managed to rip it from his finger as they fought inside the cathedral. There was no magical power to it, at least as far as Iuda was aware. It was not Ascalon, but it was a small emblem of victory in the midst of Iuda’s defeat. Somehow he would find a use for it. He slipped it into the pocket of his grubby sailor’s jacket.
He stood up, flexing the limbs of his new body. They did not feel new – they felt old and stiff and as he stood a wave of dizziness hit him. He would have to move carefully, but more importantly he would have to feed.