by Jasper Kent
I went through to the Convention Hall. The Duma wasn’t in formal session, but the hall was still full. To my mind, if not to others, it was a beautiful place. It was filled with row upon row of desks, neat semicircles of them, seating for each of the assembly’s 448 members, slightly raked, like a theatre auditorium. All around were galleries where members of the press or indeed the public at large could sit and witness the process of government. That was a new idea for Russia. In the past, however wise the decisions of our leaders might have been – and they were not all fools – they were still discussed in secret and announced to the people once a decision had been made.
And yet it was all pretence. The Duma had no power. It had no ministers, it could pass no law without Nikolai’s approval and it was subordinate to a second chamber, the State Council. That was a far older body, established by Aleksandr I before he turned away from the path of reform. Half of the State Council was appointed by the tsar, so it tended to do his will. And if it didn’t he could ignore it just as he ignored us.
But however little Nikolai allowed us to do, he did at least allow us to talk, and that was a new enough thing in Russia, and a dangerous one, particularly for the tsar.
We were talking now; everyone was. The whole chamber buzzed. Men stood in small groups, or sat at the rows of desks, half of them facing backwards so that they could speak to those behind. I pushed my way through to where I could see Nikolai Nekrasov, one of the vice-chairmen of the Duma and a fellow Kadet. He was talking with two other men, both of whom I recognized: Prince Georgy Lvov, another Kadet, and Aleksandr Kerensky, a Trudovik, on the political left.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ hissed Nekrasov, covering his concern with a veneer of anger.
‘I told you – I went to see what the mood was like on the streets.’
‘That was yesterday.’
‘What is it like out there?’ Lvov seemed calmer.
‘It’s quieter today, but that’s Sunday for you. Yesterday there were crowds everywhere. There were shootings, but not all the army has the stomach for it. The Cossacks are joining the people, defending them from the police. I saw it for myself in Znamenskaya Square.’
Nekrasov nodded. ‘We heard. The whole city is militarized, supposedly, but who knows which side half of them are on.’
‘Apparently the Pavlovsky Regiment has gone over to the people,’ added Kerensky. ‘Not just the rank and file; officers too.’
‘And those that haven’t are dead, killed by their own men.’ Lvov sounded bitter.
‘What’s Nikolai doing?’ I asked. ‘There must still be regiments he can trust.’
‘Perhaps there are,’ said Lvov, ‘but how can he know which? And it takes time to get men back from the Front.’
‘He had over a hundred revolutionary leaders arrested this morning,’ said Kerensky. ‘Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, SRs.’
‘Anyone from here?’ I asked.
Nekrasov looked around. ‘There are plenty of faces missing, but they might just be stuck out there, like you were.’
‘All the bridges are blocked,’ I said.
‘It hardly matters who they arrest,’ said Kerensky. ‘The real leaders – Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev – are all in exile. The ones doing the damage at the moment are nobodies. But there are too many for Nikolai to arrest them all.’
‘He might still prevail,’ said Nekrasov. ‘The army’s not fallen apart completely. A victory for Nikolai now and the tide could turn.’
‘Or if he came and spoke to them in person,’ suggested Lvov.
Nekrasov laughed, and I couldn’t help but join in.
‘Rally the troops behind him?’ said Kerensky scornfully. ‘His father maybe, but not Nikolai.’ Kerensky talked like he knew a lot, but he couldn’t have been more than about twelve when Aleksandr III died. I doubted he’d ever heard him speak.
‘He wouldn’t dare anyway,’ said Nekrasov. ‘What the people need is something to vent their anger on. He’d be it.’
‘Nikolai Vissarionovich!’
The shout came from across the room. We all turned to see that it came from Mihail Rodzianko, the Duma’s chairman, standing on the platform that was the focus of the chamber. He looked ashen, fear written unmistakably on his face. Despite his huge belly, he had an air of emaciation. Nekrasov obeyed the summons and went over to him. We stood in silence as the two of them and a few others held a whispered discussion, huddled in a circle. Then Rodzianko stood upright. He banged a book on the table in front of him to attract attention. A hush filled the room.
‘Gentlemen.’ Rodzianko’s voice boomed across the hall. ‘I have just received a pronouncement from His Imperial Majesty, Tsar Nikolai.’
I swallowed. Could this be it, the announcement of his abdication? Had it taken so little for him to abandon what his ancestors had fought so long to keep? The room became quieter yet as every man held his breath, each with the same expectation. Behind Rodzianko I caught Nekrasov’s eye. His face was grim and he gave me a slight shake of the head. He had guessed what we were all thinking, and we were wrong.
‘In the light of the ongoing civil disturbances, His Majesty has instructed that the Duma be dissolved. His intention is that we should reconvene when order has been restored – April at the earliest.’
He paused to let the news sink in, scanning his eyes across the chamber to gauge our reactions. A soft murmur of conversation began to rise, indicating he had given us long enough. He had only to draw a deep breath and it subsided.
‘So, gentlemen, what do we tell him?’
It was not meant as a rhetorical question. While opinion varied widely across parties as to what the fate of the country should be, almost all adhered to the concept of the rule of law, and legally Nikolai had the authority to prorogue the Duma. It would not be an easy decision.
For Kerensky, though, there was no such dilemma. I heard his voice whispering in my ear. ‘What do we tell him? We tell him to go fuck himself.’
I didn’t stay long at the ensuing debate. It seemed to me that the matter had gone beyond political niceties. Whether the institution of the Duma existed – whether the office of tsar itself existed – was not down to any decision that either we or he would take. It was down to the mood of the people, or that fraction of the people who had taken to the streets of Petrograd in the hope of changing their lives. But beyond that, I had more important things to do than help decide the fate of my country.
It was drawing dark now and any vampire in the city – one in particular – would be waking up.
I had few clues, other than where I had seen him last. But that was on the other side of the Fontanka and I would have to cross the defensive ring that had been thrown up around the city centre. The atmosphere simmered with a mood of anticipation. There were more people out on the streets than when I’d gone to the Tavricheskiy Palace earlier in the day, but they were quieter, grouped around fires that they’d built at street junctions. Pickets of soldiers still manned every bridge on the Fontanka. I skirted along it to the south as far as the Simeonovskiy Bridge, but then decided my best chance of getting through was via the Neva.
I went back north and stepped down on to the ice just opposite where the Nevka branched off, between the Liteiny and Troitsky Bridges. Like the Liteiny, the Troitsky had its moving span open. This gave me some slight advantage. The opening sections of both bridges were close to the left bank, where I was, and since sentries could not stand where there was no roadway to stand on, they were less likely to see me. The ice was almost abandoned now that it was dark. It was cold again, and it would be madness to light a fire on the frozen surface, so most had moved on to the land.
I crept forward furtively, hugging the wall of the embankment, and soon I came to what I’d been looking for: the entrance to the Lebyazhya Canal, one of the shortest waterways in the city. I could hear footsteps above me on the bridge at its mouth, which stood as a part of the Neva embankment, and prayed that no one looked down. I slipped under the bridg
e, finding purchase for my fingers against the brickwork and sliding smoothly and silently across the ice. Now I was inside the cordon. I carried on down the canal. Looking up I saw a few people, soldiers and civilians, walking around, but none looked down to see me. For the moment it seemed safer to remain as I was below street level, avoiding the crowds and following Petrograd’s alternative network of thoroughfares. I passed under another bridge and was now on the Moika. To my left the Moika joined the Fontanka, just a stone’s throw from my house, but I turned right, heading deeper into the heart of the city.
Down here it was difficult to keep one’s bearings, with landmarks hard to see. Even when you could spot them, they were at strange angles. But there were fewer turnings to choose from and I knew that the next left would be the Yekaterininsky Canal. I carried on down there a little way and finally found some steps to climb back up. There were no soldiers around, and those few people who saw me clambering up from the level of the water seemed unperturbed. One even offered a gloved hand to help me to my feet. I stood up and took my bearings. I’d emerged just opposite the Church on Spilled Blood.
I looked across at it for a few moments. It was a foul building, for all that I shared in the sentiment of wanting to commemorate the death of my uncle. Russia had forever been torn between the east and the west, and nowhere was that better exemplified than in the two capitals. Here in Petrograd, Pyotr’s gateway to the West, the architectural style was generally modern; European – but with a distinctively eastern twist. In Moscow, the old capital, it was uniquely Russian. The buildings of the Kremlin dated back centuries, to a time when Russia shunned Europe and shunned enlightenment. Both were beautiful cities, each in its own way.
But for every tsar like Pyotr or the first two Aleksandrs, who embraced what the West had to offer, there was a Nikolai I or an Aleksandr III, who rejected it and feared it. There was even talk that the current Nikolai wanted to return the capital to Moscow, though at the moment he had greater issues to deal with. But one way these tsars could display their distaste for the West was to impose the older style of architecture on Petrograd. Saint Vasiliy’s in Red Square in Moscow was a beautiful church, built in the sixteenth century. Its coloured onion domes, though garish, fitted perfectly with its surroundings. The Church on Spilled Blood was a fake, designed to emulate Saint Vasiliy’s. It was built at the wrong place and in the wrong time – in the wrong city and the wrong century; built by a spiteful tsar. Aleksandr III must have known, even as he commemorated his father, that his father would have hated what he was attempting. Let Moscow have Saint Vasiliy’s but leave Petrograd its Saint Isaac’s. And leave it its name – Saint Petersburg – too, while we were about it, for all we hated the Germans.
I turned away and went back into the courtyard where I had seen Ilya the previous night. I looked in the doorway where they had been, but there was no sign of the girl’s body. It would most likely be revealed when the spring thaw came and the snow that had been blown into huge piles finally melted. I went back out to the canal. I’d get a better view from the other side, but it was a long walk to the bridges at either end. I considered climbing back down on to the ice and walking across, but my thoughts were interrupted.
It was less than a scream but more than a yelp, stifled before it really began – female, I guessed, though it was possible a man could make such a sound if shocked or scared. I looked around but could see nothing. It was quiet here, with few people about on either side of the canal. Opposite, on the corner of Inzhenernaya Street, a couple stood against the wall in an embrace. My mind wandered to thoughts of Nadya. How much would I rather be with her now, wrapped in her arms? I’d not explained the reason I would be returning home late tonight, but it wouldn’t have been entirely shocking to her. I had long ago told her of the existence of vampires and of my family’s battles against them. I had not one jot of proof to show her, but she had taken it all in her stride. Yet still I balked at revealing that her own brother had become one of them.
Across the water the man stepped back from his lady friend and she crumpled to the ground. He walked briskly away alongside the canal, heading south. I didn’t see his face, but I knew. Two men passed him in the opposite direction. Moments later they saw the untidy pile that was his victim. One of them bent forward to examine her. It took him only moments to discover her wounds.
‘Jesus Christ!’
The sound echoed up and down the canal, channelled by the tall edifices on either side, but I was already moving. Even if it wasn’t Ilya, I was most certainly dealing with a vampire who therefore merited no less a fate. And the chances were that there was some connection between them. Following one would lead to the other.
I had no immediate opportunity to cross the canal and get closer, nor had I any desire to. This way it would be easier to track him without being seen, and if he did see me, he wouldn’t be able to get at me so easily. The only problem would be if he decided to leave the canal and head east, away from me. Then I’d have to find the nearest bridge pretty sharply, or cut straight across the ice.
My first chance to cross came as the canal went under Nevsky Prospekt. The road was so wide that the waterway vanished completely. Those travelling along the prospekt might not even realize that they were on a bridge. Without the channel between us, it might have been more obvious to Ilya that he was being followed. But we were outside the Kazan Cathedral and the streets were thronged, just as they had been the previous day. There were soldiers, but faced by too many people for them to know what to do with. I hung back in the shadows and watched as the figure crossed the prospekt. Diligently, the vampire looked both ways, allowing me a glimpse of his features.
There was no doubt about it; it was Ilya. He carried on along the embankment. I followed, staying on the other side. I was almost at the spot where I’d seen the girl with the roses. The cathedral was built right up to the water’s edge, but it was easy to slip between its tall columns and continue my pursuit. The canal turned right and then left again as we traversed the city. Ilya walked swiftly and I had no real need for subterfuge. There were plenty of others heading in the same direction as me, perhaps returning home now that they realized things were settling down for the night; that the revolution would not be happening until tomorrow, or the day after that.
Finally Ilya abandoned the canal and cut through to the Haymarket. There was nowhere for me to cross the canal – I was midway between two bridges. I could only guess that from the Haymarket he would continue southwest along Sadovaya Street, otherwise why not leave the canal sooner? I ran forward, but a sentry was standing at the bridge. He didn’t seem concerned with who was going past, but I’d rouse his suspicions if I was in too much of a hurry. I walked calmly until I was across, and then with a slightly greater pace down towards Sadovaya Street, hoping that Ilya had not gained too much ground on me.
He hadn’t. Indeed I almost bumped into him as I emerged into the street, and so I decided to cross to the far side, if only to waste a little time while he got far enough ahead of me. He crossed to my side of the road near Saint Nikolai’s Cathedral and so I dropped further back. Still we were inside the boundary defined by the Neva and the Fontanka. It seemed unlikely that his nest would be within that area, but so far he had been disinclined to leave it.
At last he turned south, towards the Fontanka, along Lermontovsky Prospekt. I could only presume he was unfamiliar with the city. Of all places to cross the Fontanka, this was the worst, since the bridge that had once taken the prospekt over the river – the Egyptian bridge – had collapsed years before, killing a number of men and horses. It had never been rebuilt. But as we approached, I realized that that was precisely Ilya’s reason for coming this way.
The trapezoidal steel archway still stood where the foot of the bridge had once been, mimicking the stone entrance to some pharaoh’s ancient tomb. A railing prevented pedestrians from accidentally falling in. There was a picket mounted, but consisting only of two men. I could just make out another two
on the far side. There was no need for more – it was quiet around here. Ilya approached them, hailing them with words that I couldn’t catch. It allowed him to get close and as he drew near the two of them stepped towards him, so that they were standing side by side. Ilya struck.
I heard the crunching sound almost before I realized what had happened. His hands had moved quickly, smashing their heads together. Given his inhuman strength there was little hope that either of them would survive. He hadn’t bothered to use his most natural weapons – his fangs – but as I had seen, Ilya had already fed that night.
He didn’t tarry. He dropped straight down on to the ice below. I moved forward a little to get a better view. Ilya was already across, looking up at the two guards on the far side. He leapt, his fingers and toes somehow managing to find purchase on the wall and launch him further. He grabbed the tails of the coat of the right-hand man and then fell back, silently taking his victim with him. Once down on the ice Ilya did use his teeth, swiftly dealing with the sentry – but not silently. The man had time to emit a brief scream. It was enough to attract the attention of his comrade, who looked downwards and saw what was happening. He jumped, his bayonet already aimed. It was an impressive manoeuvre – the blade pierced Ilya somewhere near his kidney before the soldier’s feet even touched the ice. Against a human it would have been a devastating assault, but to Ilya it meant nothing. He turned with the bayonet still in him, causing the rifle to twist and wrenching it from the soldier’s hands. He lunged forwards and bit him, again giving his prey a brief opportunity to cry out, but this time there was no one to hear. Within moments Ilya had climbed up from the river and was continuing on his way.
I briefly examined the two soldiers on the embankment, then lowered myself down on to the ice to take a look at the other two. All were dead, beyond help, but even so a part of me felt the obligation to do something – anything; to seek out their families and tell them what had happened, or to lay them out in a more decent fashion. But I didn’t have time to linger. I looked at the high wall which Ilya had so deftly climbed to get out of the gully of the river, but it was too much for me. In my prime I might have managed it, but not today. I hurried along a little way and found a ladder fixed to the brickwork. Once over the river there were several directions that Ilya could take, and I knew I must hurry if I wasn’t going to lose him. We were close now to the Izmailovsky Barracks and I wondered briefly whether he was returning to the fold of his former regiment, but as I looked around I could see that he was pressing south.