The Third Section (Danilov Quintet 3)

by Jasper Kent

  ‘A letter?’ asked Tamara.

  ‘When we heard about the tsar’s death. Lyosha knew that Iuda would go after Tarasov. We had to warn him.’ Her voice became urgent. ‘Is he all right? Did Iuda get him?’

  Tamara had no idea how to provide an answer to the question, but Domnikiia clearly needed one. ‘He’s fine,’ she said soothingly. ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘And then I set off back to Irkutsk, but I stopped in Moscow on the way. I heard about the murder – went to Degtyarny Lane. And then I saw you. I didn’t know it was you, but the hair reminded me. And then when you said it was your birthday, I knew it must be you.’ She coughed and Tamara saw blood on her lips. Domnikiia tried to raise her hand to wipe them, but it was impossible. She didn’t seem to understand that her arms were useless. Tamara cleaned the blood away for her.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’

  ‘I wanted to, Toma. How I wanted to! But I was as much an exile as Lyosha. If I’d been recognized, I’d have been arrested. And then what could I have done?’

  ‘But now you’ve come back.’

  ‘We both have. He’s free again and we’ve both come home, to see Dmitry and to see you.’

  ‘Aleksei’s in Moscow?’ Tamara felt a thrill deep inside her. The news was not striking in any rational way, but it was the event that she had been anticipating for months. It seemed too good to be true. So many questions would be answered.

  ‘We arrived today. I came straight to find you, but he wanted to see Dmitry. You understand?’

  Tamara felt the urge to squeeze her former nanny’s hand, but she knew it would only cause pain. Instead, she stroked her face. ‘Of course I understand,’ she said. ‘Dmitry’s not your son. They deserve some time together.’ Tamara quietly contemplated the horror of Aleksei’s potential encounter with his son. She could only pray that it would never happen. ‘But you saved my life by coming to find me.’

  ‘I didn’t understand why you ran. Then I realized you were following that woman. I guessed what she was, and when you shot her I knew for sure.’

  ‘You’ve met them before?’

  Domnikiia smiled again. ‘Not like that,’ she said. ‘That was always Lyosha. Do you think he’ll be proud of me?’

  ‘Of course he will,’ said Tamara, her enthusiasm only a little forced. ‘He’ll be so, so proud.’

  ‘You’ll tell him?’

  ‘You’ll tell him,’ insisted Tamara.

  Domnikiia chuckled, as best she could, and shook her head. ‘You’re a good liar, Toma, just like Lyosha. You always took after him more than me, but neither of you could ever fool me. I’m not going to be seeing him again; not here. At least I’ve seen you.’ She closed her eyes and turned her head to one side, but Tamara was scarcely listening to her any more.

  She had been blind, but now her mother – her mother – had explained it all. ‘You always took after him more than me.’ More like Aleksei than Domnikiia – more like her father than her mother. Aleksei was an old friend of Vadim Fyodorovich – his closest comrade. Who else but Vadim’s daughter, Yelena, would he choose to care for his bastard daughter? And little wonder she could not distinguish the hazy memories of her nanny and her mother – they were one and the same: Domnikiia Semyonovna. What better way to ensure that the mother could keep watch over the child, and yet never have the truth discovered?

  It was only the Decembrist Uprising and Aleksei’s exile that had spoiled things. Tamara recalled how she had once scorned the idea that her father might be a Decembrist, but the more she had learned about Aleksei, the more she had grown to see him as a great man, of whom any child would be proud. ‘A brother and an unhailed hero of the nation,’ that was how Prince Volkonsky had described Tamara’s father in one of his letters. Tamara was still to discover precisely what he’d meant by that, but soon she would know. Soon she would speak to Aleksei himself.

  A mother and a father and one other; a brother too – Dmitry. A brother no more – he had died before she had even known him for what he was. Now he was nothing to her. She pushed the thought from her mind. She already had too much joy and too much sorrow to bear. She threw herself down and hugged her mother, squeezing as tightly as she dared, scarcely caring about the pain she inflicted, knowing that she would gladly suffer the same and more to feel the warm body of one so long separated from her. She felt her mother attempt to return the embrace, despite her broken arms, but then she fell back. Tamara raised herself up and looked at the ancient, wrinkled, beloved face beneath her.

  ‘I had to go with him, Toma.’ Domnikiia’s eyes flicked frantically across Tamara’s face. ‘You must understand.’

  ‘I do. Of course I do,’ said Tamara. She had not stayed with her husband in Petersburg, and had never seen him again. Domnikiia’s was the wiser choice. ‘You left me in good hands.’

  ‘We knew they’d look after you. Because of Vadim.’

  ‘I’ve heard all about Vadim,’ said Tamara, feeling the sting of tears on her cheek as they infiltrated the wounds that Raisa had given her. ‘And Maks and Dmitry.’

  Domnikiia closed her eyes again, but her voice was still clear, if quiet. ‘I don’t think I ever spoke to Vadim, but I know that to Lyosha he was the greatest man in the whole world. I knew Maks, and Dmitry. Maks was lovely. Marry a man like Maks, Toma, not one like Lyosha.’

  ‘I married a doctor – he’s called Vitaliy.’ There was no need to go into details.

  Again Domnikiia’s smile spread, and then descended into a cough. Now the blood that came with it seemed not to bother her, and there was too much for Tamara to wipe away. When she had recovered, Domnikiia spoke again, quieter than ever. ‘Children?’

  Tamara managed to produce the standard answer. ‘Three,’ she replied. Domnikiia said nothing, but nodded slightly, her eyes still closed. ‘Milenochka is fifteen now,’ continued Tamara. ‘Almost a woman. She’s so beautiful.’ It was so easy, and so wonderful, to lie about it. Domnikiia would never know of the deceit, and Tamara could experience the pleasure of pretending to someone else; something that usually she could only enjoy alone. ‘Stasik is thirteen. He wants to be a doctor, like his papa.’ Would he have wanted that? Would she have been disappointed if not? Would she and Vitya have tried to force him down that path? It did not matter; she was liberated from all such worries. She looked down at Domnikiia, but there was no response.

  ‘Luka’s only ten,’ she went on. ‘The other two tease him, but I think they love him even more than we do. I took him down Nevsky Prospekt a few weeks ago.’ The memory was blatantly stolen. ‘He stopped at every toyshop, and pressed his nose against the window. We spoil him – me more than Vitya, though I think Vitya buys him things and makes him promise not to tell me.’

  It was pointless now. Domnikiia was dead. Tamara wasn’t quite sure when it had happened, but she was certain she had died happily with thoughts of her phantom grandchildren filling her mind.

  Tamara continued to talk, telling stories about her children, Domnikiia’s head resting in her lap. Some of them were true – taken from their infancy – but most were just elaborations on the imaginings that had run through Tamara’s mind ever since. It was bliss to be reunited – mother with children. Domnikiia with Tamara, Tamara with Stasik, Milenochka and Luka.

  At last she could speak no more. She hoisted the old woman up in her arms, surprised by how little she weighed. Then she began to trudge with her alongside the railway track, heading north-west towards the green lanterns, and the bridge, and the river far below.

  It was the first woman he had consumed; Katyusha, if names mattered. Dmitry had followed her closely up the stairs to Milan’s rooms, eager to sense her reaction when she found what was up there, wondering whether she would perceive first the blood, or would see her lover on the couch and presume him asleep. Or would she instantly see the wounds to his neck, and understand what had befallen him? And after that, what would her reaction be with regard to Dmitry? Would she cower from him in fear, and soon discover her fear qui
te justified, or would she throw herself upon him for protection, only to find her trust in him betrayed?

  What in fact resulted was merely irritating. She screamed; a loud, repeated scream that, whether by chance or design, was most likely to save her life by attracting the attention of neighbours. Perhaps he should have let them come, but instinct took him over and he hit her, his knuckles striking the line of her jaw and knocking it upwards into her skull. She fell to the floor like a pile of wet rags, and he saw blood trickling from her mouth. He knelt down. She was unconscious, but not dead. That at least would preserve the blood, but there would be little to enjoy in a victim whose awareness of her fate had lasted for so inconveniently brief a duration.

  He dragged her over to the couch and hauled her up on to it, sitting her beside Milan. She didn’t groan or offer any resistance, as he had hoped. She made no movement at all. He slipped his hand inside her blouse and rested it below her breast, feeling her heartbeat. It was slow, very slow, as though she were supremely relaxed, but there was still life. Her jaw was broken and dislocated, twisted at a bizarre angle. She was no longer pretty. He would tell her that when she came round. Perhaps there was a mirror he could use to show her.

  He went into Milan’s bedroom and soon found one – a simple hand-held glass in a wooden frame. He came back and sat next to Katyusha. He looked at her through the mirror, but she appeared much the same as in real life. Then he held it close to her face, so that her own reflection would be the first thing she would see when she came to. She remained oblivious to the world, but Dmitry noticed the glass become fogged by her breath. He waited, perhaps for an hour, in the hope that she would revive naturally. Perhaps she would awake only to scream again, but the pain of her broken jaw might persuade her to keep silent, at least until she realized what was about to befall her.

  Eventually he became impatient. He took hold of her shoulders and began to shake her, hoping to force her back to consciousness. A strange scraping sound emanated from her broken jaw. Then at last he got some reaction; her body jerked from somewhere around her stomach, then again. A sound that he could not make out emerged from her throat, and then she convulsed again and retched. Unconscious as she was, and seated almost upright, there was small chance for anything to escape her body. A little of the vomit reached her mouth and dribbled down her chin. Dmitry could smell it, but he did not find the scent objectionable as he once might have done. In fact, there was much to be learned from it. He could tell that she had been eating potatoes, and cabbage, and a little chocolate.

  Another spasm ripped her body, this time a cough. The reflex cleared her mouth, spattering flecks of half-digested food across the room. Afterwards she was still again. Dmitry had hit her too hard – he had been forced to act without thinking. She was, for most purposes, as good as dead. She would never come round and if he waited too long she might escape him for ever. In her current state, there was still some enjoyment to be gained from her.

  He knelt beside her on the couch and pulled her hair to one side, away from her neck. Her face was now a parody of what it had once been, even Dmitry could tell that. Her jaw still hung loose and bent, but the rest of her face was limp, as if paralysed. Strands of bile still dripped from her lips. Dmitry pressed his face into her neck and bit, at first tasting the vomit that coated her skin, but then feeling his mouth fill with the warm, rich blood that spurted from her pierced vein. He drank deeply, and forgot his disappointments over the manner of his feeding.

  Then, suddenly, nausea hit him. He thrust himself away from the woman’s body, for fear that what he was consuming had poisoned him, but he felt no lessening of the pain. Her blood had not grown stale, as it would have done if she had died, though death was not far from her now. This was something far more horrible, more fundamental, more all-consuming than mere tainted blood. It was as though he had received the most terrible news and awoken the following morning to have forgotten the details of it, yet still to remember the horror.

  He searched his mind, and it took only moments to understand what had happened: Raisa was dead. Her presence, sometimes close, sometimes distant, had been there since the moment he had first awoken as a voordalak. Tonight it had been hard to discern, obscured by confusion, but it had existed; even when she slept. Now it was gone, and although as a vampire Dmitry was young and naive, somehow he knew that she was dead. There was much he had hoped to learn from her, but the opportunity was lost. There was only one that he could learn from now, with whom there was no such bond as there had been with Raisa, but whose understanding of Dmitry’s new condition would be far greater.

  He glanced at the clock. It was too late for it tonight – soon Dmitry would have to head back to his adopted tomb, but he knew he could no longer put it off. When night fell again, Dmitry would not waste time on feeding. He would visit Yudin.

  It had taken Tamara all night and most of the morning to get home. She had carried her mother’s body north-west along the railway track. It hadn’t taken long for them to reach the bridge and beneath it the ravine stretching down to the river Skhodnya below; a little longer before Tamara had been able to find a path down to the water’s edge. If anyone had seen her she would have cut a strange image, carefully clambering down through the clumps of grass, tenderly clutching the frail corpse as though it were the most precious thing in the whole world.

  Then she had stood there, gazing at the flowing water, wondering exactly what she should do. She could think of no other way to lay her mother to rest. She would happily have carried the body barefoot across a thousand versts, but to what end? Tamara had no room in her life for further complications; not now. She scoured the riverbank until she found some wood – a couple of planks that she guessed were left over from the construction of the bridge that towered above her. Then she cut strips of material from the hem of her skirt and used them to bind the planks together. She laid her mother on the makeshift funeral raft. Finally she gathered leaves and foliage and covered the body. Before covering her face, Tamara had given her mother one final kiss on the lips, and then gazed at her, trying to remember any detail that she could of their life together when she was a child. The memories of the last few hours proved too strong, overpowering, for now, those that were more distant and more subtle. But even they were enough.

  She pushed the boat out into the water and let the current take it, murmuring a prayer that she remembered from her husband’s funeral. She did not know how long she stood there by the river’s edge before turning away – it was more than an hour. Domnikiia’s body had long since vanished into the distance.

  After that she had walked back to Khimki. Day had broken by the time she arrived, but she still had a long wait. A freight train came through, but with no passenger cars. At last the daily express train came in, two hours later than it should have done, but once she was on board, the journey back to Moscow was rapid and direct. She couldn’t have looked at her best, sitting there in the second-class carriage, after the night’s exertions, but after twenty hours on the train neither did many of the passengers.

  Moscow seemed unquantifiably different. Tamara knew that it was she, not the city, who had changed, but still she felt that everyone she passed was examining her. It was only later, when she saw herself in the mirror, that she understood the grotesque nature of the wound to her left cheek. At the time she had felt that every uneasy gaze was asking her why she had let Domnikiia Semyonovna die like that, why she had disposed of her body with so little propriety. They could all go hang, and yet Tamara knew that there was one man who could fairly ask those questions of her: her father. He, who had survived so much, who had covered the thousands of versts from Siberia back to the west in just a few months, would not expect that the woman who had stood by his side throughout his exile would be dead within hours of their arriving home. He would not expect that, on hugging his beloved son after three decades apart, he would find that Dmitry had been transformed into the creature that Aleksei had spent his whole life learning t
o despise.

  But first she must find him. She could not begin to guess where he would go. It surprised her that he had come to Moscow, not Petersburg, but then she remembered what Domnikiia had said. Aleksei had been eager to see Dmitry, and evidently they believed Dmitry to be in Moscow. They had not heard the news of his death, and before that, Moscow had been his last address. She would go and find out if Aleksei had called at his lodgings – sooner or later he would. But first she needed to clean herself up and, above all, to rest.

  The door was bolted from the inside when she arrived at Degtyarny Lane, just as it should be. It took two or three minutes before Isaak opened it, but when she entered, what shocked her most was the ordinariness of everything. Nadia was crossing the salon, carrying jugs of hot water to take upstairs to the girls’ rooms. Few of the girls themselves were out of bed yet. Sofia was coming downstairs and wished Tamara a bleary ‘Good morning.’

  None of them seemed concerned that Tamara had been away all night; none had noticed that Raisa was not there at all; no one had even discovered the broken-down wall in the gap between Raisa and Sofia’s rooms, nor the grim item that lay at the foot of the steps beyond it. They’d certainly never suppose what had become of Raisa – that her head had been severed from her body by the wheels of the Moscow train, and that her remains had in an instant wasted to nothing. It was hard for Tamara to believe it herself.

  It was only as Tamara turned towards her rooms that she heard a gasp and the crash of china breaking on the floor.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  Tamara turned and looked at Nadia, and realized that she was reacting to the scratch marks that Raisa had left on her cheek. She hadn’t even seen them herself yet, but judging from Nadia’s reaction it was none too pretty a sight.

  ‘You’d never believe me,’ she said.