Jasper Kent - Twelve

True to my promise, I returned to see Domnikiia that evening. As I made my way through the city, the streets still pulsated with the flow of people and their possessions and of retreating soldiers. The proportion of soldiers was increasing as more and more wounded came into the city. Some could walk, others were carried on stretchers by their companions and still others lay, conscious or otherwise, on flat wagons, the dying mixed indiscriminately with the dead. It may not have been that all of the 30,000 Russian casualties came through the city over those few days, but it seemed very close to it.

When I arrived, the brothel was still closed and the door bolted. This time, a stone at the window attracted the attention of Domnikiia herself. She came down and I suggested that we should walk for a while. We were away from the main thoroughfares of the city and so the streets and squares were a little quieter. We were not the only couple that wandered the streets of Moscow that night, hand in hand, knowing that they would soon be parted.

After some talk and some silence, I came to the point.

'Maks is dead,' I announced quietly.

'I didn't like to ask.'

We walked on in silence for a little longer. 'Don't you want to know what happened?'

'Yes,' she replied, 'but you don't have to tell me.'

'He was a traitor.' I didn't offer any more detail and I felt confident she wouldn't ask.

'I liked him,' she said after a pause. To her, as to me, liking him was quite orthogonal to his being a spy. There are likable traitors and hateful patriots.

'So did I.'

'Did he know that?'

'Yes,' I said with a misunderstanding laugh. 'We'd known each other seven years.' Except, of course, I hadn't completely known him.

'I mean at the end. Did he know that you still liked him?'

Did it really matter what a man felt in the last few minutes of his life, compared with all the things he's felt in the years leading up to that? Perhaps now, less than a day after Maks' death, those final minutes mattered more than they would in ten years' time when his whole life could be viewed from a distance. Mattered more to me, I meant, not to him. I doubted whether I could have gone through with it – gone through with leaving him to the Oprichniki – if my final thoughts or my final words to him had been of friendship. I had pushed all such ideas out of my mind with thoughts of him as a traitor. Although our liking of Maks could be quite independent of our knowledge of his treachery, in the final reckoning of him, one had to be counted as outweighing the other. In Desna, Maks' treachery had been the weightier matter, but the scales still fluctuated hour by hour, reluctant to reveal the side on which they would finally come to rest.

I said nothing in reply to Domnikiia's question.

'What are you going to do?' she asked after a while.

'About what?'

'Are you going to stay in the city?'

'I don't know. I'll talk with Vadim and Dmitry tomorrow.'

She stopped and turned to me, speaking with a new intensity. 'Why don't you leave with me in the morning?'

It was tempting, but I knew my cowardice and my self-centredness could only reveal themselves in more subtle situations, where they could hide within a maze of soul-searching analysis.

To abandon my fellow men and my country to an invading enemy for the sake of a woman – that would be too blatant a betrayal of my duty.

'Russia needs me more than ever now.' It sounded pretentious, but I meant it genuinely. 'There's a lot we can do to undermine Bonaparte's army once it gets here.'

'So you're staying?'

'That's my guess.'

'And if you have to leave?'

'I know where you'll be.'

'And if you're killed?'

Again, Domnikiia had asked a question to which I could find no reply.

We were back at the door of the brothel. We stood facing one another, her hands in mine, with nothing more to say, but not wanting to say what could well be our final goodbye.

We heard the sound of the bolts being drawn from inside. The door opened to reveal Margarita, who must have seen our approach. She pulled the door open further to reveal another figure – tall, blond-haired and pale.

'Good evening, Aleksei Ivanovich,' he said.

It was Iuda.

IN MY SHOCK I SQUEEZED DOMNIKIIA'S HANDS SO TIGHTLY THAT I made her flinch. The surprise at seeing Iuda there was quickly followed by questions. Why was he there? How had he known where to find me? The answer to the latter came to me easily – Dmitry. I felt more than ever that Dmitry's feet were both far too firmly planted in the Oprichnik camp.

'Aren't you going to introduce me to this delightful young lady?' Iuda continued with a smile. It had taken me a moment to realize that he was speaking Russian, and extremely fluent Russian at that. Previously, we had communicated with the Oprichniki in nothing but French. I scoured my memory for any conversations that we – Vadim, Dmitry, Maks and I – might have had in their presence under the assumption that we would not be understood.

'I'm Dominique,' Domnikiia told him, holding out her hand. As he kissed it, gazing throughout upward into her eyes, I once again felt a certain secret pride that to others she was still Dominique. I was one of the few who knew her by her Russian name.

'People call me Iuda,' he replied. 'I was just saying to my old friend, Margarita Kirillovna' – Margarita giggled as he spoke – 'how much I've come to admire Aleksei since we've been working together.'

'Old friend?' I asked with a raised eyebrow.

'Of all of five minutes,' said Margarita. 'He said he'd come here to find you. It didn't seem right to let him wait outside. He says he's going to save us from the French.'

'Not by myself,' protested Iuda, falsely it seemed to me, but others might have been convinced. 'I am merely a tool to do as Aleksei Ivanovich wishes.'

'Did you know Maksim as well?' asked Domnikiia. She wanted to talk about him, but knew that it was difficult for me.

'Not well,' replied Iuda, 'but what I knew I liked. I can't agree with his reasons for turning to France, but I'm sure he did what he did with an honest heart and for what he thought was the good of humanity.'

I was astonished at his duplicity. It was he who had forced me to hand over Maks to him and the others, and here he was quoting Maks' own words back at me. What was more, he had completely boxed me in. If I were to take a contrary position now, then I would be attacking Maks. I realized how much wiser it would have been to tell Domnikiia every detail in the first place.

'I know that you had a dreadful decision to make, Aleksei,' he continued, putting his hand on my arm and displaying a look of intense sincerity in his eyes, 'but I know too that, deep down, you feel that you were right in what you did. It's never easy to place one's country above one's friends. I too have lost some dear friends in this war, Aleksei. My heart goes out to you. Your friend Maks' – and now he was addressing Domnikiia directly – 'was a brave man until the end.' The pause between 'man' and 'until' was heard only by my ears.

She took his hand and held it in hers. 'Thank you, Iuda,' she said. 'Thank you for saying that about Maks.' He lifted her right hand and kissed it again. Then he raised his hat to both Margarita and Domnikiia.

'Goodbye, dear friends. I hope you both enjoy your time in Yuryev-Polsky. If Aleksei is half the soldier I know him to be, we'll soon have the city safe for you again.' Then, turning to me, 'I'm sure you have goodbyes to say, Aleksei. I'll wait for you.' He walked away, over towards the bench from which I'd first seen Domnikiia, almost a year before.

I noticed both women following his departure with smiling faces. I raised my hat to Margarita, feeling that the gesture would be seen only as a pale imitation of Iuda. 'Goodbye then, Margarita Kirillovna. I hope we shall meet again soon.'