by Jasper Kent
The fact that there were twenty bodies was of little help in telling him how long the voordalaki had been here. If necessary, three vampires could have eked out that supply of food for over a year. If they were greedy, it might be less than a week. He remembered the vampires he had come to Moscow with in 1812. They had usually each consumed one soul every night, sometimes two. But times had been different then. The war had meant there was little chance of them being discovered. That was why they had been so eager to come.
The degree of decay of the oldest body, however, could give some clue as to when it had been brought here. It was cold down there, and that acted to preserve what remained of the flesh, but Yudin’s guess was that this one had died two or three months before. Again it fitted with what Mihailov had said. He returned up the stairs to the nave.
Little had changed. The drunk had given up any hope of escape, and lay where Yudin had left him. Mihailov still hung from the arm of the Saviour. It was in the sound that Yudin first noticed a difference. The pitter-patter of drizzling blood had transformed into a slower drip, drip, drip. Yudin looked at the catheter protruding from Mihailov’s thigh and confirmed what he had heard. The voordalak’s body was now scarcely capable of manufacturing any more of the vital fluid. That didn’t matter for now, but it would spoil a little of the fun later. There was time to deal with it though.
Yudin went to the door and stepped outside. The moon was still bright, but low in the sky now. It was still several hours until dawn, although the city would be awake well before then. Would the other voordalaki return sooner? He hoped not. They would not want to waste the darkness of the solstice any more than he had. He skirted round the church and into the graveyard. High in the side of the building he could see the broken window by which he had gained entry.
The cemetery was old – Yudin could see no signs of new burials. Some of the graves were simple, some ornate mausolea. It was these latter that were of interest to him. He soon found the perfect refuge, comfortably distant from the church, which he could easily break into and therein hide from daylight. He went back into the church.
As he had noted earlier, the huge, richly decorated circle of a horos was suspended from the vaults of the church roof like a great crown bedecked with icons. The rope that supported it stretched across the ceiling and down the wall, where it was tied off on a cleat, almost directly below the window he had come in by. He unhitched it and took it over to the blood-filled font that still stood beneath Mihailov’s hanging body. He threaded the rope under the handle and tied it off.
The horos was heavier than the font, even with its cargo of blood. If he let go, the font would shoot into the air and spill. He didn’t want that. He carried it back over to the wall and began to climb, using his feet and one hand to grip the brickwork, and his other hand to hold the font, letting the weight of the horos gradually raise it up.
Inch by inch, they approached the open window.
Tamara opened her eyes. It was still dark, but in Petersburg in winter that did not mean it was early. Konstantin lay beside her – Kostya, as he had, at some point during the evening, insisted she call him. In turn he had called her Tamarushka. She was normally called Toma by those close to her, but it was nice to have something to distinguish their relationship – both in allowing her to forget her family and in having something that only she and Kostya shared.
He was breathing deeply, but not snoring. She turned to look at him, but it was too dark to see anything more than the lump of his body in the bed. She reached out and touched his cheek. He didn’t react. She ran her finger down to his moustache and stroked it. He emitted a single snort and turned on to his side. Tamara giggled to herself silently. Suddenly, she felt very guilty. He was six years her junior, but in terms of his understanding of sex, many years behind that. He’d had lovers before his marriage, he’d told her, but she was the first since – and with all of those, and his wife, the women had been too much in awe of him to venture far beyond the limits of his imagination. She had corrupted him.
She liked the feeling of guilt – so different from what she had felt after almost every other sexual encounter of her life, except those with Vitya. With Vitya it had always been sublime – as if ordained. She smiled – that was a rose-tinted memory. Sometimes it had been a duty, either on her part or, less often, on his. But even then, it had been right and good. With the men since, she had felt guilty, but it was a different guilt from now. Before it had come from deep within her, a knowledge that, by her own standards, what she did was wrong – it was shame. Now it was a guilt that asked merely: what if someone knew? A breach of morality that she could suffer, even if others could not. It was a child’s guilt, born out of external fear and before conscience had developed. She had not been bad, she had been naughty. She looked over at Kostya again. They had both been naughty.
She turned on to her back and gazed up towards the ceiling, but still she could see nothing. She knew she would have to leave before dawn – Kostya had told her he had appointments. Normally she wouldn’t regret so speedy a parting of the ways. They’d meet again, she had no doubt, but it would end eventually. Of course, she’d heard that grand dukes and even tsars often openly kept mistresses and set them up in lavish homes. But that was decades ago. Nikolai had frowned upon it and it had fallen out of favour. There were still mistresses, but their existence was kept secret. And none would ever be as lowly as Tamara.
Not for the first time, she wondered where she was going. Most women widowed at her age would have remarried – and it was by no means too late for that. But there had been no proposals, not least because she had never put herself in a situation where a man might think such an offer would be welcome. What had driven her, ever since 1848, was the search for her parents, but she had never clearly considered what she would do when that search came to an end. If she found them, would she suddenly become part of a happy, welcoming family? It was a dream, though not an impossible one, but achieving it would not be an ending. To be an adult child within a family was a beginning; a point of departure. It would be then she would have to decide on how the remainder of her life would play out. The search for her parents was merely a deferral.
Her profession – lying here now, beside a grand duke – was also a deferral. How many more years did she have? That a man like Konstantin should find her attractive was something that became less and less likely – and men like him were a rarity anyway. She had money saved, and Konstantin had hinted that he could give her more. She did not know whether she would take it. Having wealth meant merely that she would not starve, but not to die was one thing; to live was another. To live was to have a reason to live.
She had had a reason, and it had fulfilled her utterly – to be a mother. To be a wife had been a joy, but to be a mother was a purpose. She felt a sudden urge to go there now, march across Petersburg to their home and grab Luka and run away with him, to raise him as she should have been doing all these years – as they should have raised her. Kostya would help her; he had power – the power of the entire nation, almost. He knew how much she loved her son, and he’d let nothing come between them.
She let out an audible sigh – a mournful sound. It was all a rambling dream, like finding her parents, like finding the killer of Irina Karlovna – a way of escaping from the life that she had made for herself. She looked over again at Konstantin. Many women would think of this as a dream, and one to be welcomed, and for Tamara it was – now – a reality. She had been right last night to give herself to him, to yield to the moment. A momentary escape was better than none.
She sat up and slid her feet on to the floor. It was cold. She felt around the room for her clothes and began to dress. She knew that outside the door a servant would be waiting for her, just as Konstantin had ordered him. Once she was dressed, Tamara had merely to step outside and summon his attention and he would lead her across the landing, down the stone steps, down the wooden steps, along the corridor and back out into the real world.
Svetlana lay beside him. She wasn’t sleeping peacefully, but at least she slept. He’d noticed her turn many times, and occasionally heard her mutter some incoherent phrase. Once or twice his own name had emerged from somewhere in the babble that fell from her lips. He could have blamed her for keeping him awake, but it had nothing to do with that.
Even a separation of two years had not been enough to arouse his passion for her. At the first touch of her body against his, he had been reminded of Tyeplov and experienced a sense of guilt. He considered what Svetlana would think of it – a matter of such greater substance now that she lay beside him. He knew for certain that she would be horrified. Had he been unfaithful to her with another woman, she would have been upset, but she would have blamed herself.
He knew it for sure because it had happened in Warsaw. Then it had only been a kiss that Dmitry had stolen from the daughter of a brigadier. Someone had seen, and the story had got back to Svetlana. Dmitry was lucky it wasn’t the girl’s father who had been the recipient of the gossip. Svetlana had been angry, for sure, but in the end had said she understood. She was getting older, and though she tried her best, she knew she was not the woman she once had been. It was soon after that that she had returned to Petersburg. Dmitry suspected that she hoped he would insist on her staying, but he had been happy to see her go; not because he wanted to be free to consort with the daughters of brigadiers, but simply because he wanted to be free.
And so today he felt confident that, if he told her he had slept with another woman, she would react in a similar way. But that it had been a man – she would be disgusted. There would be no prospect of her competing, no way that she could blame it on her age and argue that once, in her youth, she could have been that muscular figure whom Dmitry had clasped to his chest. She had made her attitude plain enough, in conversations with friends about the supposed predilections of other friends. Dmitry had always been relaxed about it but he had been happy to let Svetlana have her views. She was only a woman.
Of course, even if Dmitry had told her that he had slept with a man, it would have been a lie. He had slept with a voordalak, although he’d had no idea of it at the time. How long would that have taken to explain to her? By the time he had told her all he knew, what had been told him by his father and what he had witnessed for himself, would she have forgotten the actual transgression? And, in the end, did it make any difference? Dmitry had not been attracted to Tyeplov as a vampire, but as a man. At least he hoped so. The idea that there was something in Tyeplov as an undead creature that had entranced Dmitry was as revolting to him as the concept of one man’s attraction to another was to Svetlana. Dmitry felt a momentary impulse to go out and find another man – a verifiable human man – to sleep with, just to prove the point.
From somewhere the image of Raisa had again forced its way into his mind. In many ways she was like Svetlana; a similar figure, similar hair. Their faces were not unalike, though Raisa was prettier than Svetlana had ever been. And yet in Dmitry’s mind, Raisa did not supplant Svetlana, but Tyeplov. There were no comparisons to be made between them that Dmitry could see – not of themselves – but the thrill that each had caused in him on their first meeting was similar, as was his desire for them to meet a second time. With Raisa, it would come to nothing, but at least it was a more healthy predilection.
And at that moment, Dmitry had turned away from his wife and told her to go to sleep and that they would try again later. He’d complained that his ankle was hurting, and she’d not been so ingenuous as to ask how an ailment in that extremity could spread to the rest of his body. She had gone to sleep quickly. The problem was that thoughts of Raisa had aroused him, and he had suddenly felt that he could not betray Svetlana by using the image of another woman to hide her face from him as they made love. Now, as he lay there in the dark, he wondered if the reverse might not be true – that it was better for him to deceive her, and thereby to flatter her, by reacting to her ageing body as he would do to the younger, lither one that he pictured in his mind, and fooling her into believing it was all down to her. He knew that he would not get much pleasure from the deception, but it wasn’t only about him.
Yet it should be about him. How quickly he had forgotten his new-found zest for life after escaping Sevastopol. He knew that during the siege he had been foolhardy in so many ways, trying to make his existence more exciting by toying with its abrupt ending. Now as he began to glimpse the earliest, pre-dawn light peeping through a tiny gap in the curtains, he understood. If Raisa Styepanovna found her way into his dreams, why should he reject her? If chance dictated that they met again, why should he avoid it? And if not Raisa, then why not some other beauty who was happy to offer herself to a wounded hero? Why not a dozen?
He closed his eyes and imagined the future.
Yudin loved the twilight – in the morning, before dawn, even more than in the evening. In five days’ time, as dawn broke, it would mark thirty years since he had last been able to enjoy the sensation of the sun’s rays upon his flesh. He had gone out that morning with no knowledge of what would befall him, but with the certainty that, whatever came his way, he could control it. The dark blue-black of the sky now was the closest he could ever again come to the sun, but his sense of mastery over events was absolute.
He sat in the arch of the window, high in the wall of the church; behind him, the snow-covered cemetery and the grave in which he would sleep. Immediately beneath him, close to the outer wall of the church, lay the font, just where he had dropped it. It was empty now, but Yudin had made good use of its contents.
Ahead he looked down on the interior of the church. The candles that Mihailov had lit were burning low, but still they illuminated the nave, and caused the gilt of the iconostasis to glitter. Soon, the light of the rising sun would make them redundant, but Yudin would not be able to stay and witness it.
The drunken man from the tavern had once again crawled a little closer to the door. Viewing from high above, Yudin found his gait fascinating. Obviously most of the effort went through his arms, but even with his legs broken he had found some way to at least make use of their upper part. Where his feet could not be lifted to find purchase on the floor, somehow he achieved some little amount of grip with his inner thighs. He had struggled on like that for over a minute, before collapsing, exhausted. Yudin had watched as a pool of his own urine had spread around him. That would make it harder for him to find purchase again, once he had recovered his strength.
He was sober now, and with his wits recovered had tried calling out for help. Yudin had let him holler until he was exhausted, and now he was quiet again. There was the risk that the sound of his voice might alert the others, as they returned, that something was amiss. More likely it would whet their appetites for the meal that Mihailov had provided for them to share. They couldn’t be long now. The sun would be up in twenty minutes. But the closer they left it, the better.
Yudin clutched Mihailov’s body close to him. The catheter still dangled from his thigh and an occasional drop of blood would slowly form at its tip, swelling until it became too heavy to support its own weight and so breaking free to fall gracefully to the black and white tiles of the floor below. There was quite a puddle gathering there. With luck they would notice it before understanding its source. Mihailov’s hands were still tied, and he had no strength to try and break his bonds. His feet were tied now too, to the end of the rope that had supported the horos. The tangle of the iron framework and the icons it supported now sat in the middle of the nave, the rope stretching up and, ultimately, leading to Mihailov’s ankles. They would certainly notice that before they saw him.
It was a disappointment that Mihailov would p
erceive so little of what was going on. Dmitry had described in a letter how the doctors had used ether to reduce the pain as they set his ankle. In a human, Yudin supposed, there was some sense in it. Too much pain could kill a man, however strong or brave. The same was not true of a voordalak, and so Yudin found that, though he enjoyed their suffering less than that of a human, he could indulge himself in the infliction of it with less need for restraint. But it was time for Mihailov to recover a little. Yudin plucked the catheter from his thigh and threw it over his shoulder into the churchyard. The wound healed slowly, and blood still dripped for a few moments, but at last the tiny puncture sealed itself. Now, as Mihailov’s body continued to manufacture blood, it would at least be of benefit to him. But he would not grow strong enough to be a danger to Yudin – not before dawn.
The building began to shake, not violently, but enough to make Yudin tighten his grip on Mihailov. It was only a train passing on the track nearby, something that Russians – the whole world – would have to get accustomed to. Again it reminded him that the city outside was awakening.
‘I take it they’ll be coming here,’ he whispered in Mihailov’s ear.
‘They’ll come,’ said Mihailov sleepily. ‘They like to leave it late.’
‘Proving to each other how brave they are.’
‘I suppose,’ said Mihailov. Yudin put a hand to his cheek. Already it was a little warmer, and the colour was returning. Yudin would have to be careful. He glanced sideways and verified that his knife was to hand.