The Last Rite (Danilov Quintet 5)

by Jasper Kent

  ‘Working?’

  If I’d been talking to a man I would have had no qualms about being direct. ‘She’s the girl I told you about. They don’t carry yellow tickets any more.’

  ‘Oh!’ she said quietly, understanding. She looked down at the floor, lifting her toes up in the air as if she were inspecting them. ‘Well, I suppose the city’s never been short of moths – more so now.’

  I hid a smile at her use of the euphemism. I didn’t know who had coined it, but you only had to notice the way they gathered around streetlights to see the connection.

  ‘It explains the baby, I suppose,’ she continued. Then she brightened. ‘All the more reason that we should have taken her in, though, wouldn’t you say? To keep her safe from all that.’

  I nodded. Nadya was probably right, though I suspected she might have felt very differently if I’d told her precisely who I’d seen Anastasia with.

  I went out again to meet up with Dmitry, at the same time and in the same place as the previous night. This time he had come alone.

  ‘Just you?’ I asked.

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘So now you trust me enough to come along without anyone to protect you?’

  He laughed, genuinely. ‘You think I’m afraid of you?’

  ‘Just a joke,’ I acknowledged.

  ‘I’d have thought you had better reason to be afraid of me.’ He paused for a moment in thought. ‘And yet you don’t seem to be.’

  ‘I’m a good enough judge of character to know you wouldn’t harm me – not out of simple hunger, anyway. I’ve known that for years.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps I’ve just never been that hungry.’

  I ignored the barb. ‘So where are the others?’

  He shrugged. ‘Somewhere in the city – or still in their graves. I’ll find them when I need them.’

  ‘I thought you were in charge.’

  ‘Not always. That’s why we’ll have to leave the city as soon as this is over.’

  ‘And feast on peasants instead?’

  ‘We have to sustain ourselves. But in a city, with so many people, there’s a temptation to do more than that.’

  ‘Only a temptation?’

  ‘I lived in New York. I managed to resist, mostly.’

  I knew there was little point in trying to judge him by human standards. I changed the subject. ‘You did good work with those snipers last night.’

  He smiled wistfully. ‘It felt right – the climb before the kill. Natural.’

  ‘It’s quieter tonight. Nothing much for you to do.’

  He looked at me gravely. ‘Men will die tonight, whatever you tell us. Their throats will be ripped open and their bodies drained of blood. I may abstain, but I can’t stop the others – not all of them. It will ease your conscience to know that those who died were our enemies, rather than chosen at random.’

  It wasn’t really a threat – more a simple statement of fact. But he was right; these creatures were not a weapon one could easily lay aside when it was unneeded.

  ‘You know the Astoria?’ I asked. ‘The hotel?’

  He nodded curtly.

  ‘There’s still a few holding out there.’ I felt like Judas, but just like Judas I believed what I was doing was right. I didn’t mention the other buildings that were still showing resistance. They were essentially military establishments, obeying orders from those above them. Once the officers changed sides, so would the men.

  Dmitry emitted a brief laugh. ‘You remind me of my Uncle Dmitry.’

  ‘Your Uncle Dmitry?’ He was my uncle, but I’d never been aware that he himself had an uncle of the same name.

  ‘Not technically an uncle, but I called him that. Dmitry Fetyukovich Petrenko – one of Papa’s comrades in the Patriotic War.’

  ‘And how am I like him?’ From what I’d heard of Dmitry Fetyukovich I didn’t think I was going to like the comparison.

  ‘Didn’t you know? It was he who invited the oprichniki to Moscow, fully aware of what they were, having seen them in all their dreadful glory when he served in Wallachia. He just thought of them as a weapon; like a cannon – you point it at the enemy and fire. And if the weapon is slightly more distasteful than a cannon, what difference does that make?’ He spoke as though he were merely thinking out loud, quite unaware of how his words turned the knife in me. ‘How do you feel about gas attacks at the Front? What do they call it … vomiting gas – chloropicrin – like Brusilov used at Lutsk?’

  I didn’t have to think. I’d long ago come to a conclusion on that. ‘They’re a necessary tool if we’re to win the war.’ I heard the words on my own tongue and understood how easy it was for him to compare me to Dmitry Fetyukovich.

  ‘But a dirty, underhand trick when the Boche use them, I suppose?’

  I wasn’t going to be so parochial. ‘They have their war to win,’ I replied.

  ‘And you have yours. Or in fact you have two. The one against Germany and the one here in Petrograd. And in neither does the choice of weapon matter, as long as you win.’

  He was right, and so was I. He understood my motivation perfectly, but I knew my reasoning was valid, and would lead to the greater good.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ I said, then turned and left. I heard Dmitry’s voice call after me.

  ‘Remember what happened at Loos.’

  I ignored him and headed home.

  The journey didn’t take long. I circled south to avoid any fighting, and to avoid seeing any of what Dmitry might achieve at my behest. I understood perfectly well what he had meant. In 1915 at the Battle of Loos the British had used their own gas of choice – chlorine – for the first time. But the wind had been blowing the wrong way and the gas had drifted back to the British trenches, choking and killing soldiers of the side that had launched it. It was the same with Dmitry and his comrades, just as it had been with the oprichniki a century before. It was just a matter of when the wind would change, of anticipating it and knowing that then would be the time to act.

  The only question was, why was Dmitry telling me this, telling me what he was eventually bound to do? Chlorine gas didn’t turn to the British generals and warn them of its own fickle nature.

  At home there was no sign of Syeva, but it was late and he’d most likely gone to bed. I went upstairs. Polkan poked his head out of the door of the living room as I approached, then turned back inside. Nadya stood as I entered. As if caught in the act of something. I could see that she had been crying. On the table beside her chair there was a pile of torn-up paper. On one of the fragments I could make out three toes, drawn in charcoal, and I realized it was Anastasia’s sketch of her.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  She tried to speak, but couldn’t. Instead she threw herself against my chest and sobbed silently. I held her tight and said nothing, waiting until she was ready to speak.

  ‘I saw her,’ she said at last, not moving from my embrace.

  ‘Anastasia?’ It seemed like a reasonable guess.

  I felt her head move against me as she nodded.

  ‘Where?’ Perhaps ‘doing what’ would have been a more apposite question.

  ‘After you left. I was standing at the window, looking to see if Syeva was coming back.’

  ‘Is he still not home?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him all day, but that’s not important. I saw a man leaving the house – a soldier.’

  The sudden fear gripped me that it might have been Ilya again. ‘Who? Did you recognize him?’

  ‘That hardly matters, does it? I came out and looked over the banister. Anastasia was just coming back up from the front door. She’d let him out.’

  I could guess the implication, but it was by no means cut and dried. ‘It could just have been …’ I searched for a sensible possibility but could find nothing that didn’t sound inadequate, ‘… a friend of hers.’

  She laughed caustically.

  ‘So what shall we do?’ I asked. ‘We can’t th
row her back out on the street.’

  ‘We should talk to her. Both of us. Now.’

  I thought for a moment, but no better ideas occurred to me. I held the door for her, letting her lead the way in the hope that she would take the lead again when it came to speaking to Anastasia. We went down the stairs to the first floor, where we could see a light shining under Anastasia’s door. Nadya knocked softly.

  There was no response. She tapped her knuckles against the wood once again, harder this time, but with the same lack of reply. I banged against it with the base of my fist, producing a loud booming that would have awoken anyone inside.

  ‘Anastasia!’ I didn’t shout, but the sound was just as loud. Years of addressing the Duma had taught me how to make myself heard. But still nothing came from within.

  Nadya turned the handle. The door was not locked. She pushed it open, but stopped after only an inch. She turned to me. ‘Let me go first. She may not be decent.’

  I took a step back and Nadya went inside. After only a few seconds she called out calmly, ‘Misha!’

  A sudden feeling of dread filled me and I strode across the landing to go into the room. As soon as I entered I saw that my fears were quite unfounded. Anastasia’s bedroom was empty.

  CHAPTER VII

  WE CHECKED HER room again the following morning and found it was still unoccupied. But she had certainly been there – or someone had. Where the bed had been neatly made the previous evening, now it was rumpled. Whether she had slept there alone or with company I did not know. I didn’t mention the possibility to Nadya, but I couldn’t doubt she would have thought of the idea herself.

  More concerning was the continued absence of Syeva. It had been two nights now since either of us had seen him.

  ‘Perhaps they’re together,’ suggested Nadya.

  ‘Eloped, you mean?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘They’ve only known each other a few days.’

  Her eye glinted at me and I recalled just how rapidly our first acquaintance had descended into the consummation of a passion that neither of us had suspected could be roused so quickly – and we’d been adults. Syeva and Anastasia were still children, however much they might have seen of the world in their brief lives. But while Syeva’s attraction to the girl had been unmistakable, I couldn’t see why he would leave us without a word.

  ‘Did she show any interest in him?’ I asked.

  Nadya shook her head. ‘Not that I noticed. But she’d have tried to hide it from us, wouldn’t she?’

  It was possible, but I had a darker explanation, which I kept from Nadya. The streets out there were dangerous. I didn’t know how many had been killed at the hands of government forces, or even by the protestors, but there was little chance that families or employers would be notified of a death. And there was another way that people were dying out there. A boy like Syeva was no military target, but I didn’t expect all Dmitry’s comrades to be as assiduous as he claimed to be.

  There was nothing to be done but wait and hope that either or both of them returned. I went to the Duma again. As I walked through the streets I sensed an air of stalemate. There were even more people out there now than there had been over the previous days, but on the other hand there was very little for them to do. Whatever complaints they might have, who were they supposed to address them to? No one was there to represent the tsar. There were no more loyal forces to stand in the way of the protestors – not that I saw on my short journey to the Tavricheskiy Palace – and so no one to become the object of their anger. I could only count it to the good. The more peaceful this revolution, the better its chance of producing a stable government in its wake. And on a more personal note, if Syeva was out there in the city, then there was a better chance that he was safe.

  A crowd was still congregated outside the Tavricheskiy Palace. I wondered how many of them understood the difference between the two sources of power that lay within: the Duma and the Soviet. Did they see us as distinct, or did they see us as linked by the only belief we held in common – opposition to the tsar? I’d have liked to believe that, though I couldn’t help but notice how much bigger the crowds were now that the Soviet had come into being.

  I went through the main entrance and walked down the hallway, along with dozens of others, most of whom I did not recognize and doubted whether they had genuine cause to be here. We came to the point where the corridor split and we could choose to head for the left or right wing of the building. I made my way to the Duma, but I was in a minority. In the Convention Hall the first person I saw was Nekrasov. Beside him was Konovalov, also a Kadet. Before I could greet either of them Nekrasov handed me a piece of paper. It was dated that day, 1 March 1917, and headed ‘Order Number 1’. I read it quickly.

  To be immediately and fully executed by all men in the Guards, army, artillery and navy and to be made known to the Petrograd workers.

  The Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies has resolved: …

  It went on to list seven instructions, all of which took power away from officers and handed it to local committees of soldiers or sailors, who in turn would report to the Petrograd Soviet.

  ‘What do you think?’ Nekrasov asked.

  ‘They had to do something after Rodzianko ordered the troops back to barracks.’

  ‘It’s not as though any of the troops obeyed.’

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘That was mutiny – God knows where it might lead. Better to give them some order – any order, as long as they obey it. Otherwise they’ll be a law unto themselves.’

  ‘You think they’ll obey this?’

  ‘It hardly asks much of them, does it?’

  ‘It says they should obey the Duma,’ said Konovalov.

  I laughed. ‘Like hell it does. It says they should obey the Soviet, and if the Duma happens to concur, that’s not a problem.’

  ‘They’ll be happy with the last two points – soldiers should be treated like human beings and officers shouldn’t be treated like gods.’

  ‘If Nikolai had granted them that much ten years ago then we wouldn’t be here now.’

  Konovalov nodded in agreement, but Nekrasov was more sceptical. ‘You think so?’

  ‘Who can tell? I know one thing for sure.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re no longer at war with Germany.’

  Nekrasov grabbed the paper back off me and looked at it again as if searching for something he’d missed. ‘It doesn’t say that here.’

  ‘It says all weapons are under the control of the battalion committees. They don’t use the word “soviet”, but it’s the same thing. I’m not saying the war’s over, but it’s not us fighting it any more. It’s them.’ I nodded towards the other side of the building, to where the Soviet sat.

  ‘I’m not sure it’s going to be “them” and “us” for too much longer,’ said Konovalov.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the early hours of this morning they sent a delegation over to negotiate with us on forming a provisional government.’

  ‘Are they serious?’

  ‘Rodzianko’s taking it seriously. Of course, it’ll mean nothing until Nikolai makes a move.’

  ‘He’s still at Tsarskoye Selo?’

  Nekrasov answered before Konovalov could speak. ‘He never arrived. The train couldn’t get through. He’s still on board as far as we can guess.’

  ‘And while he dithers, the Soviet grows stronger.’

  ‘It’s not like that. We’ll bring them into power, but we can control them. They give us what we need – influence over the workers and the soldiers. Once we’ve got that, we can forget about the Soviet itself.’

  It sounded very simple, but I couldn’t help remembering one spring, when I’d been growing up in Saratov and Mama had shown me a cuckoo’s egg in the nest of a tree pipit. We watched the chicks as they grew. From the start it was obvious that one of them was different – bigger for one thing, and therefore stronger. It
got the lion’s share of the food its adoptive mother brought, while her own offspring starved.

  I pictured the Duma and the Soviet as being in the same relationship. We would happily feed it, but in a few months’ time it would have grown to four times our size – four times our strength – and we would be able to do nothing to control it. But if we didn’t help it out now, neither of us had any chance of survival.

  I went home at lunch time. I knew that Nadya would be worried, and I couldn’t deny that I was concerned myself, primarily about Syeva. Still he didn’t come to greet me as I entered. For that matter, neither did Polkan, who was busy scratching at the wall near the kitchen door. I went through, shouting, ‘Sergeant!’, but he wasn’t in there either. When I came out I saw Nadya on the stairs. She must have heard me call.

  ‘No sign of either of them,’ she said. ‘I asked at some of the shops near by, but no one has seen him, though how they know who’s queuing outside I have no idea. Polkan!’ She snapped at the dog, who was still intent on destroying the already threadbare wallpaper. ‘He’s been doing that all morning,’ she explained.

  ‘I’ll go out this afternoon and look for him.’

  ‘He could be anywhere.’

  I paused. I didn’t want to tell her where I intended to look, but I had to be honest with her for once. ‘I meant the morgues.’

  She looked away from me. Polkan turned his attention once again to the wall.

  ‘I’m not giving up hope,’ I went on. ‘Far from it. But at least we’ll know, one way or the other. What’s wrong with him?’

  I meant Polkan, not Syeva. The dog was whining now, and snuffling at the skirting board.

  ‘Probably just a dead rat. This place is filled with them.’ She said it as though she blamed me for the rats. Or perhaps I just imagined that, for the simple reason that I blamed myself. Our home was my responsibility. I could have afforded a better place for us, if only I’d had the time to bother with it. But I was suddenly gripped by a concern more profound than the matter of rodents in the wall spaces.