The Third Section (Danilov Quintet 3)

by Jasper Kent

  Suddenly there was a loud bang, and the whole carriage shook. For a moment Myshkin feared that a bomb had been laid on the track, but he soon realized that the train was continuing its swift, rocky motion. It had just been some kink or perturbation in the rails. The only thing that had been disturbed was the door that led through to the next compartment in the carriage. The noise he had heard had been its banging against the wooden partition.

  He looked through, and his pen fell from his hand and on to the floor.

  The scene was framed perfectly by the doorway. Its main element was a woman’s naked back. Not quite naked; her underskirts were still on, but were dragged up and bunched around her waist, held there by the hands of a man whose face was obscured by the woman’s body. Her own hands were raised and clasped behind her head, holding up a mass of curled red hair that would otherwise have hidden the beautiful – Myshkin could not deny it – curve of her back.

  Her knees were up on the train seat, on either side of the man who sat there. His trousers were down around his ankles. While the rocking of the train might have been a hindrance to Myshkin’s chosen occupation for the evening, it seemed to provide a convenient metronome for these two. Each time the wheels beneath the carriage crossed the join between two lengths of rail, which would have knocked Myshkin’s pen across the page, the woman’s body crashed down on to the man’s, and even on flat sections of track they performed the same movement, maybe with a little less vigour.

  Myshkin recovered his pen from the floor and put it on the table beside him. He was no stranger to the sexual act, as his wife would attest and his nine children demonstrated, but in the thirty-seven years of his life it had never occurred to him that anyone could – or should want to – perform it in so uncomfortable and precarious a position. A bed would prove far more suited to the activity, though it had to be admitted that there was no bed available in the carriage.

  It suddenly seemed to Myshkin that the train was beginning to travel faster, though a glance out of the window showed the landscape outside rushing past at the same speed as before. He quickly realized that it was not the train that had increased its tempo, but the couple in the compartment opposite. Like an unruly violin section, they had broken free of the rhythm dictated by their conductor, and were racing ahead to the conclusion of their performance. The train could no longer keep up with them, and Myshkin might have been convinced that it was their intention to arrive in Moscow ahead of it.

  Then the woman stopped moving. She tried to rise, but the man’s hands, still at her waist, held her down on him. She leaned forward and slightly to one side, putting her arms around his neck, and in so doing allowed her red tresses to fall down and cascade across her back. The man’s face peeked from behind her shoulder.

  It was the Grand Duke Konstantin. Though his eyes were shut tight, his spectacles were still perched unmistakably on his nose. Titular Councillor Myshkin could not see the woman’s face, but he felt certain that she was not the grand duchess. She certainly didn’t behave as though she was.

  Myshkin stood up and walked across the compartment to the door. He closed it quietly but firmly, and returned to writing his letters.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THERE WAS NO chance that tamara would have been granted a place within the Cathedral of the Assumption, nor would she have wanted it. It was a beautiful, warm day in late August, perhaps one of the last good days they would get before the autumn. Inside the cathedral it would be close and stuffy, and all there was to see would be stilted and formal. From here she could see Russia – not the entire land but, it seemed to her, the entire people, or a fair sample of them. Without even turning her head she could look out on what felt like half the population of Moscow.

  She had found herself a spot among the crowds in Ivanovskaya Square, in the south-eastern corner of the Kremlin. It was evidently an ideal viewpoint; clustered in the same area were a number of artists, making sketches of what they saw before them, so that posterity might never forget the day. Behind her was the Church of Saints Konstantin and Yelena, nestling in the Taynitzkiy Garden, and beyond that the river Moskva, flowing below the Kremlin walls, spanned by the Stone Bridge to one side and the Moskva Bridge to the other. Stretching across the skyline, their domes glistering in the sunlight, were more churches than she could count, some tiny, others vast cathedrals. To her left, beyond the Kremlin walls, she could see the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, built to celebrate the deliverance of Moscow from Bonaparte, and still not complete. Diametrically opposite, in Red Square, stood the garish painted domes of Saint Vasiliy’s; far older, and for her the true symbol of Moscow.

  She had begun the day in the company of Rodion and Vadim, but they had soon separated, her brother sensing her desire to be alone. She was almost at the back of the crowd, but the added height of the slope meant she had a better view. Ahead of her perhaps ten thousand people lined just this side of the path that His Majesty’s carriage had taken that morning, having entered from Red Square through the Saviour’s Gate. The crowd was held back and the pathway kept clear by three ranks of guards in their finest uniforms. On the other side, a similar cordon pinned back another huge crowd into the area in front of the Assumption Belfry. From where she stood, she could clearly see the Tsar Bell in its place in front of the bell tower, a huge gap in its side, big enough to walk through, where it had shattered in a fire.

  The imperial procession must have been over a verst long. The carriages and mounted guards had come down from the Saviour’s Gate, past the bell tower and the Cathedral of the Archangel and the Cathedral of the Annunciation, and deposited their charges outside the newly completed Great Kremlin Palace. After that, as the various members of the imperial family and other dignitaries had paused and waved to the crowds before going in, the carriages and horsemen had continued down to exit the Kremlin by the Borovitskaya Tower, in order to allow room for the remainder of the procession to pass through.

  When Konstantin had climbed down from his coach he had looked distant and minuscule, but Tamara had still been able to recognize him. With him were his wife and his little son, and two daughters, the youngest only two years old. It was strange for her to watch him like that – much like the occasions in Petersburg when she had silently, distantly gazed upon her son Luka. Today she was just like any other Russian who had come to see the imperial family on this grand occasion, but she wondered how many of the women in the crowd around her could boast that they had slept with one of the men in the royal party. She smirked to herself. At least one or two others, she’d be prepared to guess. The Romanovs were not the most chaste of men. But she hoped it would be only she who could claim to be part of that elite group who had done it at a speed of fifty-five versts per hour.

  She had been quite unprepared for the encounter, understanding that even to speak to Konstantin in such a public place as on the train risked their being discovered. But once they were alone in the carriage, he told her how he had yearned for her all the time they had been apart, and how the momentary glimpse of her walking along the platform had inflamed his passion. It was evidently true. Their brief liaison in the small compartment had been the most fervent she had ever known with him. She had left him at the next station, even before the train had come to a halt, so that no one would connect her to the fact that, a few minutes later, the grand duke had emerged from exactly the same door.

  In the few days since then, since she had returned to Moscow, life had gone on very much as usual. Raisa had refused to tell her any more detail of what had happened in Klin between her and Dmitry and Tyeplov, but seemed to be back to her usual self. Tamara had not seen anything of Dmitry, despite calling twice at his rooms, but Yudin had assured her that all was well with him. The strangest thing was that Dmitry had not once called on Raisa. But that was their problem, not Tamara’s.

  Things had quietened down a little now that the entire procession had passed and all who were needed for the coronation had gone into the Great Palace. Tamara had lo
oked, but not caught sight of Dmitry at the head of the Izmailovsky Regiment as it paraded past. She knew how easily she might have missed him. The crowd happily remained, knowing that the imperial family would soon re-emerge. The mood was one of light-hearted chatter. Cheering could often be heard above the sound of the bells that pealed from every church in the city. She scarcely remembered the coronation of Nikolai I. She had been only five, but had a vague image of watching from somewhere in the city, hand in hand with Yelena and Valentin – not with her true parents, they had gone by then, though it couldn’t have been too long before. The Lavrovs described it as quite a solemn occasion – the most obvious noise from the crowd being the sound of their prayers for Nikolai’s long life and safety. It was a sign of how times were changing.

  Another cheer rose up, louder than the general hubbub. Tamara looked in the same direction as everybody else, and could just see a vague movement of figures, all but obscured by the multitude between her and them. But she knew what was happening. The tsar and his entourage were leaving the Palace of the Facets and stepping out on to the Red Porch, before descending into Cathedral Square and thence into the Cathedral of the Assumption.

  Tamara held her breath. It was a sublime moment. A new tsar was about to be crowned.

  Yudin peeped into the nave of the cathedral. There was some light shining in through the high windows, but he would be safe if he remained in the shadows. It was hard to say why he had come here, but the simple answer was that it was because he could. It would not have been possible for him to walk across Cathedral Square and enter the church by the normal means, but there were other ways through the Kremlin, known only to a few. An underground corridor had led him up to a small enclosure, just behind the right-hand Deacon’s Door in the iconostasis. The most risky part was to move from there into the nave, but all eyes were on Aleksandr, standing in front of the Beautiful Gate; and in a church of this size, nobody’s attention encompassed both that and the door through which Yudin now slipped.

  But there was more to being here than proving that his inability to walk in sunlight was no bar to his attending this most important of occasions – Yudin also felt a sense of history. He had failed to attend the coronation of Nikolai – it being at a time when he was still coming to grips with his new state as a voordalak – but he had been instrumental in the ending of the reign of Nikolai’s predecessor. There were powers in the world that would now be focusing all their attention on this new Aleksandr. Did Zmyeevich, Yudin wondered, know that he could not make his move on Aleksandr II until Aleksandr I, wherever he might be, finally died? It seemed likely. Yudin had his blood samples and his microscope, but Zmyeevich had his mind, and that would tell him in seconds what it might take Yudin months to methodically ascertain.

  But Zmyeevich would not come in person to see this; it would be too great a risk. That did not mean that he might not send someone through whose eyes he could see. If Tyeplov had, like Yudin, found a way into the cathedral that avoided the sun’s light then he might stand as a proxy for Zmyeevich, allowing one to bear witness to everything that was seen through the eyes of the other.

  He glanced around the crowd that filled the nave – brows glistening in a heat that Yudin perceived but did not suffer from. Though the people stood shoulder to shoulder, still the great height of the building meant that it had a sense of emptiness. The pillars that supported the roof, ten times higher than the tallest man in there, soared upwards, the painted faces of the saints staring down on the proceedings below. The vast iconostasis filled the eastern wall. It was all as though it had been built as an antidote to hubris, a reminder to the new tsar that however powerful he might believe himself to be, he was puny compared to the one who gave him that power. Whether that one was God or Zmyeevich, the tsar himself would have to choose.

  Yudin saw no sign of Tyeplov. The only unexpected face was that of Gribov, who caught his eye from his vantage point beside the South Portal. He seemed almost to merge into the biblical scenes that were painted on it. Yudin was surprised that someone so lowly would be invited here, to the heart of the ceremony, but he realized that Gribov had almost as good a knowledge as he did of the ancient passageways that ran beneath the Kremlin – perhaps better. If he did know of all of them, at least he did not have the keys to access the most important ones, beneath Yudin’s office.

  The tsar and his entourage moved away from the iconostasis and on to a raised platform closer to the centre of the church, where all could get a better sight of him. The tsar and the tsaritsa sat on their thrones. An elderly general approached them – Prince Gorchakov, hero of the Russian army and leader of the defence of Sevastopol. In his hands he carried a red velvet pillow, and on it sat the Golden Orb, the most important item of the imperial regalia. Gorchakov shuffled forward slowly and ceremoniously, his head bowed in deference. Then he appeared to stop dead in his tracks, before tottering, at first gently but with ever-increasing speed, to his right, overcome by the heat. The pillow dropped from his hands and the orb spilled over on to the wooden floor. The crack as it made contact filled the silent space of the cathedral. Yudin covered his mouth to hide a smirk.

  Attendants stood in momentary confusion as to whether to rescue the fallen orb or the fainting prince. In the end, both were raised back to their proper positions, little the worse for wear. There was frantic checking to ensure that the diamond-encrusted cross, which was mounted above a huge sapphire at the top of the orb, was not bent out of shape, but it seemed that all was in order. The tsar said a few reassuring words to his general.

  ‘It’s all right to fall here. The important thing is that you stood firm on the battlefield.’

  The words were spoken softly; at the distance Yudin was standing, a human ear would not have been able to catch them. Yudin had to admire Aleksandr’s quick thinking, but it was a poor way to inspire confidence in the general. Some time later that evening the old man would play those words over again in his mind and remember that he had not stood firm – it was he who had ordered the evacuation of Sevastopol.

  The ceremony continued with prayers and blessings from Metropolitan Filaret and then at last he handed the crown – more reminiscent of a jewelled mitre than the image of a royal crown that Yudin had grown up with in England – to the tsar. Aleksandr placed the Great Imperial Crown upon his own head, just as Bonaparte had done over half a century before. Today though, no denial of God’s authority was implied.

  Next, the emperor was to crown his empress, but again there was to be mishap. She looked pale as she rose from her throne and knelt before him. He lifted the Lesser Imperial Crown – distinguishable from his own only by its size and its slightly more modest jewels – and placed it on her head. Four attendants reached forward to clip the crown to her hair, but as she rose, it slipped to one side and was only just caught before it too fell to the ground. A look of horror filled the tsaritsa’s face, but Aleksandr remained calm. He replaced the crown on her head and the same attendants, with hands that Yudin could only imagine were trembling, clipped it again. This time it stayed in place.

  Now the cathedral was filled with sound, from within and without. The bells of the cathedral and all the churches around began to toll, and a salute of 101 guns boomed. The choir struck up the Polychronion. All in the church then knelt to pray, and Yudin decided that it was best to follow suit. More hymns were sung and another salute was sounded by the guns outside. At last the tsar was led away by the metropolitan, through the Beautiful Gate and into the sanctuary where he would receive communion. It was the only time – and the tsar the only man – that someone who was not ordained was allowed before the altar in any church in Russia. Even the tsaritsa had to remain in front of the iconostasis, to receive the bread and wine together on a spoon in the normal fashion.

  The thought of the consumption, however symbolic, of flesh and blood caused stirrings in Yudin’s own stomach, and he could only smile at the mimicry that existed between the world of Christianity and that of the voordal
ak. It also gave him pause to wonder what was to become of Dmitry. It had been a week now since Yudin had shown him the letters from Raisa, which Yudin himself had so carefully dictated to her. And yet he had heard nothing of Dmitry going to Raisa to discover the truth. But he knew not to worry. Dmitry would act as Yudin had predicted he would act. He had no need to go back to his labour – to peek at it as it bubbled in the oven and give it an extra stir. Like any great chef he knew that that could ruin a recipe; he knew to trust in himself.

  Aleksandr was back on his throne now, receiving homage from the closer members of his family, including his brothers, Konstantin, Nikolai and Mihail, and also his son, the tsarevich Nikolai Aleksandrovich. Perhaps it would be on to that boy – not yet thirteen years old – that Zmyeevich would now turn his attention.

  Finally the dismissal was read and the tsar and his family began to process out of the cathedral to the strains once again of the Polychronion. Once they had gone, the rest of the congregation began to follow. But it was still light outside in Cathedral Square, and Yudin could only disappear back through the Deacon’s Door and return the way he had come.

  Raisa was alone. She was standing by the window, looking out at the moon that hung over Degtyarny Lane. She turned as he closed the door behind him. In her eyes he saw only terror.

  ‘Hello, my little Mityenka,’ she said softly.

  Dmitry said nothing. He gazed at her, trying to take in what she was, and what she had been. The silence seemed almost painful to her. Tears began to form in her eyes and she took a step towards him.

  ‘I know why you’re here, Mitka,’ she said. ‘But I beg you, on everything we’ve ever meant to each other, give me a chance to explain first.’