The Last Rite (Danilov Quintet 5)

by Jasper Kent

  ‘Do you recognize her?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘Does it matter? There’s probably vampires from all over Europe in Petrograd at the moment. It’s easy pickings. When humanity is at its lowest, we come to feed.’

  I knew it wasn’t as simple as that. Anastasia had been feeding on other vampires, not on humans – not solely on humans. But Dmitry seemed to have admitted to something else. ‘With the exception of your noble self?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve still fed,’ he said.

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t have the strength. I looked over to where Polkan lay.

  ‘But I believe I’ve done some good,’ Dmitry continued.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Things could have been a lot worse. Thousands more might have died if we hadn’t come.’

  I let out a curt laugh, which hurt my chest. ‘There’s still time,’ I said.

  He looked at me quizzically. ‘I take it you haven’t heard, then.’

  ‘Heard what?’

  He chuckled. ‘And you a member of the Duma.’

  ‘What?’ I insisted.

  He got to his feet and looked up at the stars, and at the tall buildings that loomed over us. He breathed deeply, though he had little need to. Then he looked back down towards me.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘Nikolai has abdicated. We’re free.’

  OCTOBER

  CHAPTER X

  ‘YOU’RE ON A list.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘A list of what?’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Mihail Konstantinovich.’ Yelena Dmitrievna’s voice sounded distant over the telephone line, even though she was just a few versts away. ‘The first thing they’ll do is round up anyone they think might be dangerous. It’s only a matter of days before we make—’

  She stopped mid-sentence. ‘Yelena?’ I raised my voice and spoke closer to the mouthpiece. ‘Yelena?’

  I rattled the switch from which the earpiece normally hung, more out of irritation than because it would achieve anything. The line had been cut.

  I wasn’t entirely surprised. A lot had happened since the February Days, not least that I’d had a telephone installed in our house. The Bolsheviks were far more powerful now than anyone had thought they ever could be. Their leader, Nikolai Lenin – not his real name – had returned from exile in April and then gone to hide in Finland. He’d only recently returned to the city again. Trotsky had been back since May. Together they’d managed to turn the Soviet into an instrument of Bolshevik power. The party itself was now based at the Smolny Institute, of all places – a former girls’ school attached to a convent, a little way to the east of the Tavricheskiy Palace. That’s where Yelena Dmitrievna had been calling from.

  It wasn’t in any way beyond the Bolsheviks to cut telephone lines if they couldn’t get what they wanted by more democratic means – but they were unlikely to disable communications to their own building. Of course it could have been I who was cut off. I wound the handle of the telephone rapidly. It reminded me of the detonators I’d used when I was in the sappers. It was the same mechanism, but to a different end.

  ‘Number, please?’

  I hung up the earpiece. It had been unlikely they’d bother to cut me off. I was nobody – nobody at all since the Duma had been disbanded. Even so, I was important enough to be on a Bolshevik list, according to Yelena. I should never have spoken out against Lenin. It had done no one any good, and could do me a lot of harm.

  But if it wasn’t the Bolsheviks who had cut the telephone lines then it could only be the government – still the Provisional Government. Whatever the upheaval since the tsar’s departure, some things hadn’t changed.

  The abdication hadn’t quite been the end of the Romanov dynasty. Originally Nikolai had thought to hand the throne over to his son, the sickly Aleksei. But he’d been told that he himself would almost certainly have to live the rest of his life in exile and so would be parted from the boy. He couldn’t face that and instead named his brother Mihail as his successor. Some people pointed out that this was unconstitutional – the tsar had no right to nominate who would replace him. But what did that matter in such times? We could make up the law as we went along. Mihail was an experienced soldier and he’d seen the rioting in Petrograd at first hand. He knew that accepting power would be a poisoned chalice. He turned it down. The reign of the Romanovs came to an end. Russia was, by default, a republic. Syeva was one of the first to be buried in land that he could truly call his own.

  I almost wished Zmyeevich were still alive, just so that he could see his chances of ruling Russia decay to nothing, much as his own body had. He would still have been able to transform any Romanov he chose into a vampire, sway to his will, but what would that gain him? Currently Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov’s dominion encompassed just one large house in Tobolsk. He could not even leave its grounds without permission.

  But the fall of the Romanovs had not brought any real gains to Russia. We were still at war, though we had no means to fight. We were still hungry, but had no means to feed ourselves. Lvov had struggled on as Prime Minister until July. Then there were more protests in the streets and troops were called out to stop them. It was called a counter-revolution, but no one took that idea seriously. Most of us thought that the Bolsheviks were stirring things up in order to seize power, but in the end they didn’t act. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to – they just weren’t ready. They were better prepared now.

  Kerensky took over from Lvov and revealed himself to be as self-interested as we’d always suspected. Within a month there was more trouble. The Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, General Kornilov, mounted an assault on the Soviet, but it was easily rebuffed. Some saw it as an attack on Kerensky, but others suggested that Kerensky was in cahoots with Kornilov and had decided that the Soviet was now a threat to him.

  Kerensky held on to his position, but was weakened. He promised elections and to hand over power to the resulting Constituent Assembly, but the date kept changing. We’d elected the so called ‘Pre-Parliament’, but that had only assembled a few weeks ago. I doubted it would prove to have much worth. To cap it all, Kerensky had moved himself and the Provisional Government into the Winter Palace. Nobody missed the symbolism of it.

  And all this time the Bolsheviks had been growing stronger. For the people – the soldiers and workers who had made the revolution – the Soviet was their parliament. And it wasn’t just the one in Petrograd. There were Soviets in cities and towns all over the country now, elected, representing the people at a local level. It was Lenin who had coined the phrase: ‘All Power to the Soviets’. Within the Soviets, it was all power to the Bolsheviks. And in case that didn’t work, they had men infiltrating the factories and the army and the navy, all ready to make sure the people acted correctly when the time came.

  They didn’t even bother to hide it. The Bolsheviks in the Petrograd Soviet had formed a ‘Military Revolutionary Committee’ which claimed authority over the garrison in the city, and just yesterday over the Peter and Paul Fortress. Kamenev, one of Lenin’s few opponents in the party, had written an article in Novaya Zhizn arguing that now was not the right time for a coup d’état. But why even write the article if nothing was being planned? Everyone knew it was coming, but no one had the first idea how to stop it. Now, though, it seemed Kerensky had acted. He’d had the phone lines cut. I could only imagine he’d be closing down the Bolshevik presses as well.

  As for my own problems, I’d seen neither Dmitry, nor Anastasia, nor any vampire, as far as I knew, since our fight on the ice of the Moika. Dmitry had been coming to find me after I’d failed to show up at Senate Square. I’d been lucky his path took him along the Moika. We’d spoken for a little while. I told him what Anastasia had been doing, and he grimaced at the thought of one vampire sharing its blood with another. But he’d assured me that he would keep his promise – that now the revolution was done he and his men, those of them he could trust, would leave Petrograd. He a
lso told me that he wouldn’t go far. There was always the risk of counter-revolution. He’d stay close enough to the city to come to its aid if the need arose. Part of me just wished he’d leave us alone, but I knew how powerful an ally he could be. We might have needed him in July, when the Provisional Government was close to toppling. Perhaps he came, but he wouldn’t have been able to do much in the height of summer, with only six hours of darkness. Now the nights were drawing in again. It wasn’t winter yet. There was snow, but it didn’t settle. The rivers and canals still flowed as water.

  I went upstairs, checking as I did the new switches and the new lights. A hundred years before – more like two hundred – a Russian peasant would have bedecked his home with garlic and crucifixes to keep the voordalak at bay. Nowadays people knew better. Most thought they knew better in that they believed there was no such thing as a vampire. I simply knew that garlic and crosses were no defence. It had taken me a while to find enough Yablochkov Candles to have one in every room. They weren’t as popular as they used to be. In some places I’d had to use other types of arc light. I could make a good guess that they would be as effective, but they were untested. Each room now had a second switch. If Anastasia came back then it would take only the flick of a finger to send her to her death, or flying out of the window again to safety. We’d never had cause to use them.

  ‘I’m going out,’ I said.

  Nadya looked at me. She could tell something was wrong. ‘Has she …?’

  I shook my head. ‘Nothing to do with that. Politics.’

  ‘Is something happening?’

  ‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’

  She began to stroke Polkan, taking comfort from his calm and warmth. He’d been lucky to survive, so the vet said, both that the knife missed his heart and that the wound hadn’t become infected. Even so, he didn’t have much movement in his left foreleg now. He could get about the house, but we never went for long walks any more.

  I went downstairs again and was soon outside. Superficially it was reminiscent of February – except for the weather. There were groups of workers and soldiers milling about, looking for something to protest at. Among them, though, was something new: men in dark leather coats. It had become almost the uniform of the Bolsheviks out on the street. The fact that the proletariat they purported to represent could never have afforded such a garment didn’t seem to matter – equality came to some before others. Just as with Kamenev’s letter, there was no secrecy to it. These men were there to lead the people, to rally them in support of the Bolshevik party. For now there was nothing to do, and so they waited.

  The reason that they had chosen to wait here, on our street, soon became clear. It was only a short walk to the Panteleimonovsky Bridge but once again – just as in February – it was guarded. There were probably fewer men in the army loyal to Kerensky than there had been loyal to Nikolai, but he had managed to find some. They would be all over the city – and those bridges that could be raised would have been. Now, with the water below flowing, guarding the bridges would be more effective than it had been in February, but the strategy still had the weakness that it relied upon the loyalty on the pickets and their willingness to fire upon their own countrymen. In February they had not proved faithful to a regime that had stood for three centuries. What allegiance would they show to one that had been around just seven months?

  Fortunately a member of the Duma – even though that body no longer existed – was better respected now than he had been in February, and so my papers saw me across the bridge. Within the cordon the city was not much different from outside. There were groups of factory workers, mostly accompanied by a distinctive Bolshevik leader. Kerensky had acted too late. He’d have done better to withdraw those men he trusted to a tighter perimeter. But even so, that would only defer the end.

  I followed the Moika, taking almost the exact same route I had when pursuing Anastasia; the only difference was that I stuck to the embankment. As I approached the Pevchesky Bridge I glanced down to the spot where we had fought. The dark turbid water flowed swiftly under the bridge, out towards the sea. It was hard to imagine that we had been able to stand there. And yet in no more than a month or so the surface would be solid once again. I turned away from the river and into Palace Square. Now it became clear that Kerensky’s mind had been following a similar path to my own. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hold the bridges. His plan was to make a stand here, at the Winter Palace. There were armed men out in the square and I could see figures at the windows too. It was hard to divine what purpose they might serve. If the Winter Palace were surrounded and isolated then Petrograd – and hence Russia – was lost. I could only guess that troops had already been recalled from the Front and that the hope was to be able to hold out until they arrived. But the army at the Front was as Bolshevized as anywhere, and there was little doubt as to whose side they’d be on if and when they arrived.

  As I crossed the square and got close to the façade of the palace I noticed that I had been mistaken in the term ‘armed men’. It turned out that the majority of them were women. At the gate the sentry who inspected my papers was one of them. She was in a military uniform, though I didn’t recognize it. Her pretty face peeped out nervously from beneath an oversized woollen cap. Next to her stood a boy – a cadet by the looks of him. He was half her size. It was laughable to imagine either of them on the battlefield.

  ‘What regiment are you from?’ I asked her.

  ‘First Petrograd Women’s Battalion of Death,’ she said earnestly.

  I’d heard of it, but its formation was a sign of how terribly things were going at the Front and how badly we needed anyone to replace our losses. And it wasn’t just casualties; sickness and desertion were having as great an impact on our numbers as did enemy operations.

  ‘Your country is very proud of you,’ I said as I walked past her.

  I’d been inside the Winter Palace a number of times since Kerensky had moved the government there, but before that only once, back in 1881, when I’d come here to visit my father Konstantin and his brother, Tsar Aleksandr II. I could hardly claim that the place was familiar to me. This time I made my way to the office of Aleksandr Ivanovich Konovalov. He was one of the few original members of the Provisional Government to still be in the cabinet. He had two roles: Kerensky’s deputy, which he loathed, and Minister for Trade and Industry, which, given his background in the textile business, he quite enjoyed. He’d not done too badly out of the war or the revolution. He’d always been good to his workers – comparatively speaking – and done so out of conscientiousness. But it did lead to the benefit that his business was far less hit by strikes when they came. Today he sat morosely at his desk, gazing into space. He smiled when he saw me, but it was unconvincing.

  ‘It’s started then?’ I said.

  He nodded. ‘Phone lines cut, presses closed, the city locked down. And now we wait for them to make a move.’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘The Soviet Congress starts tomorrow. Delegates from Soviets all over the country are already in the city.’

  ‘So?’

  Konovalov sighed. ‘When the Bolsheviks take over, they’ll need to legitimize their regime. Obviously they’ve got the Petrograd Soviet in their pocket. But if they can get approval from all the delegates – or most of them – it’ll make it harder for anyone to object. It’ll buy them time if nothing else.’

  ‘You don’t think we’ll be able to stop them?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s the plan. The idea is just to scare them off. They can only try it once. If they fail then we can deluge the country with propaganda about how they attempted to overthrow the legitimate government. But they have to try – and that’s a risk for them. That’s why they bottled it in July. It’s much easier for them just to sit there and claim that we’re the counterrevolutionaries.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Is it? Not to the people out there. You know how much they hate Kerensky – e
specially now he’s moved in here. They’re calling him Napoleon.’

  ‘Napoleon did a lot of good for France,’ I said.

  He gestured outside with his head. ‘Go and tell them that.’

  ‘So the defence here is just for show?’

  ‘If you can call it a defence.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘About three thousand.’

  ‘Can they be relied upon?’

  ‘Maybe. Problem these days is the more reliable a soldier is, the less capable he is.’ He searched through the papers on his desk until he found what he was after. He summarized it for me. ‘We’ve got two companies of Cossacks – that’s something, I suppose, though if they’re as loyal to us as they were to the tsar, we’re in trouble. The rest are cadets – just boys.’

  ‘And the women?’

  He laughed. ‘Well, at least they’ll be faithful to Kerensky. They’re his pet project – but only because he couldn’t recruit anyone else after February. And they don’t have soldiers’ committees, so there’s a chance they’re not Bolshevized.’

  ‘Can they fight?’

  ‘We’d do better to send them to the German barracks to spread the pox.’ He paused, then shook his head vigorously. ‘That was a stupid thing to say. They’re doing their best.’

  ‘Even so, it’s hardly a long-term plan, is it? If the Bolsheviks hold back this time, it’s only because they’re waiting for a better chance.’

  ‘There is one hope,’ he said.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘The Germans might invade.’

  There was another hope, though a slim one, and certainly not one that I could mention to Konovalov. I spent a few more hours at the Winter Palace, but heard much the same from everyone. Not many were as forthright in discussing the prospect of a German occupation as he had been, and I doubted he really meant it. It was an insoluble dilemma for any Russian patriot. We couldn’t give in to Germany and the central powers – that would be defeatist. But Russia was so debilitated by the war that it was ungovernable until a peace settlement was reached. We’d harboured some hope of a military victory in the summer – with the so-called Kerensky Offensive – but it had been a failure. Now if he sued for peace his failure would be complete. Only the Bolsheviks had a policy to end the war, but their idea of a ‘just peace’ was a pipe dream. The Germans had no reason to give us anything in a settlement. And the Bolsheviks had most to fear from them. Not so long ago Germany had been bankrolling Lenin and his party, but that had been a temporary arrangement. They backed whichever side was weaker – not out of love for the underdog; simply because it would destabilize the country. But in the end they’d act true to form. They’d restore Nikolai. The war would prove to have been a minor spat in comparison with upholding the Divine Right of Kings.