Jasper Kent - Thirteen Years Later

‘Yelena Vadimovna said you were coming,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry it’s been so long.’

‘I know you are. You have “business” to attend to, I’m told. You still think of it as “business” with me?’

Aleksei smiled. For the first months of their relationship, money had changed hands each time they met. In all honesty, it still did, but now he had the pleasure, and pleasure it was, of paying out even when they were apart.

‘I have to go to Desna,’ he said.

‘Desna?’ she asked, the concern showing in her voice. ‘Isn’t that where…?’

‘That’s right,’ interrupted Aleksei. Of those who knew of Maks’ fate, only a few would remember the name of the place where it occurred thirteen years on. Only Domnikiia would make the association immediately. She knew his mind. He corrected himself. There was one other person who made the connection – whoever had summoned him with that message.

‘I’m guessing that’s not a coincidence,’ she said.

Aleksei shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was sent a message. It was signed by Maks, ostensibly.’

‘My God. You don’t think…?’

‘Thankfully, no. I saw Maks’ corpse, two months after he died. Vampires don’t rot.’ That was speculation, but it fitted the facts he knew. The image of Maks’ putrefying face – the rim of his spectacles sinking into his yielding cheek – filled Aleksei’s mind. But there was more than that. Aleksei had been told that only a willing human can become a vampire. Maks would never willingly have done that. He looked into Domnikiia’s eyes and remembered another occasion when he looked down upon her. He chose not to mention the idea of a human volunteering to become a voordalak.

‘So who else?’ asked Domnikiia.

Aleksei shrugged.

‘You never saw his body, Lyosha.’ Domnikiia did not use the name, but he knew who she was talking about – Iuda.

‘He drowned, or froze.’ Aleksei pictured his left hand forcing Iuda’s head beneath the icy surface of the Berezina, his three fingers entwined in the long blond hair. He recalled feeling the body writhe and spasm as the freezing water hit Iuda’s lungs, but realized that he had never in truth experienced that feeling – his own hand had been too numb. He’d kept the few strands of hair that were all he found when he pulled his hand from the water.

‘Those were a long six months,’ she said. She was referring to the time between his departure from Moscow to pursue Iuda and his return in 1813, after the Russian defeat at Lützen.

‘There was a war,’ he said. ‘And I did write.’

‘I know.’ This was not the first time they had discussed it. All his explanations were reasonable, and yet between the Battles of Berezina and Lützen, Aleksei had found time to go home to Marfa.

‘The landlord was ready to throw me out,’ she said.

‘He knew my credit was good.’

‘And then you set me up in the hat shop.’

‘The family trade – you must have inherited your father’s skill.’

‘My father went bust. I would have – more than once – if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘You miss it?’ asked Aleksei.

She smiled. ‘How could I?’

A call came through from the doorway to the other room, small but piercing, demanding their attention.

Domnikiia stood up. ‘Come on,’ she said, taking Aleksei by the hand. They went through to Tamara’s room. Toys, on shelves and on chairs, surrounded the bed. Aleksei recognized some as being gifts from him. Tamara had tucked herself in. Only her red hair and her small, pale face peeked out of the sheets. Domnikiia sat beside her on the bed and took her hand. Aleksei knelt down on the other side, resting his elbows on top of the blankets.

‘Are you tired?’ he whispered.

‘Yes,’ said the little girl, with certainty.

‘Are you going to go to sleep?’

‘Yes,’ came again, in the same tone.

‘Do I get a kiss goodnight?’

Tamara nodded. He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. Domnikiia bent forward and did the same. Then she began to sing a lullaby.

‘Bayoo, babshkee, bayoo,

Zheevyet myelneek na krayoo,

On nye byedyen, nye bogat,

Polna gorneetsa rebyat.

Vsye po lavochkam seedyat,

Kashoo maslyenoo yedyat.

Kasha maslenaya,

Lozhka krashenaya,

Lozhka gnyetsa,

Rot smyeyetsya,

Doosha radooyetsya.

Bayoo, babshkee, bayoo.

Bayoo, babshkee, bayoo.’

It was a meaningless song, about a miller and his children at carnival. Aleksei had never heard Domnikiia sing until Tamara was born. She had a sweet voice. He listened and watched Tamara drop off to sleep.

‘Yelena Vadimovna and Valentin Valentinovich have been very good to me,’ said Domnikiia, picking up their earlier conversation as she stroked the sleeping child’s hair. ‘They must owe you a great deal.’

‘Owe me? It’s not really like that. You never met Vadim, did you?’

She shook her head.

‘He did everyone favours,’ Aleksei continued, ‘without asking for anything in return – though he often got it. After he died, I think, those of us who knew him best realized if we couldn’t pay him back, the closest thing to do was pay each other back.’ That explained some of it, explained Yelena’s attitude, but it had taken more to bring Valentin on side.

‘It sounds like the Freemasons,’ said Domnikiia. Aleksei nodded. Because of its involvement with the revolutionary societies, he knew something of Freemasonry, but the Society of the Friends of Vadim Fyodorovich was infinitely more exclusive. ‘So how have you paid them back?’ asked Domnikiia.

‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Aleksei, realizing he had heard the phrase years before, but unable to remember where. ‘They don’t even have to know that I will. As long as they know that I would.’

‘Don’t they think they owe anything to Marfa Mihailovna?’ It had taken years for Domnikiia even to go beyond the deliberately distant ‘your wife’, but she still stuck with the formal combination of name and patronymic.

Aleksei laughed briefly. ‘Morally, I’m sure, but she hardly knew Vadim.’

‘So they’re not doing it for me?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Aleksei. He leaned over the bed and kissed her. ‘But you’ll never be able to tell the difference.’

‘I wish I had met Vadim,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I’m glad I met Maks.’

You fucked Maks. The thought blurted itself out in Aleksei’s mind, but he did not give voice to it. Their brief relationship had meant nothing to either. For her, it was work; for him, nature.

‘I met Dmitry, too,’ she added ruefully. ‘Dmitry Fetyukovich, that is.’ It was strange how they could both remember in precise detail conversations they had had years before, and also how they could each be confident that the other remembered too. In 1812 she had toyed with him as to whether she would rather meet Dmitry his friend or Dmitry his son. She had met his friend, and it had not been a pleasant experience.

‘Shall I ever meet Dmitry Alekseevich?’ she asked, just as teasingly as all those years before.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

‘Wouldn’t he like me?’

‘He’d probably like you,’ replied Aleksei, ‘but he loves his mother.’

‘Wouldn’t he love his sister?’

They both gazed down at the tiny figure of Tamara Alekseevna, asleep in the bed, the child whom, with neither intention nor regret, they had conceived together five years earlier, whom Vadim’s daughter and son-in-law had agreed to secretly raise as their own, with her true mother never far away. Aleksei bent forward and kissed her cheek, then squeezed her mother’s hand.

‘Who couldn’t love her?’ he said.