by Jasper Kent
Gribov stood, picking up a lamp that had been glowing dimly on his desk, and went to the door. Tamara turned her head to follow his movements, but did not realize that he intended her to accompany him until his curling finger beckoned her. She rose and walked out of the office after him.
‘I hope you don’t mind my natural sense of discretion,’ he said as they walked along the dim corridor.
‘Not at all. It does you credit,’ she told him. She had not been sure that it would work, but in the end he was like any official – afraid of his superiors. At first she had asked him, and he had said no. Then she had shown him the letter. She had verified that Yudin was away from his office, otherwise Gribov would have gone straight to him, unwilling to let the decision rest on his shoulders. But in Yudin’s absence, a letter from General Dubyelt, with the general himself too far distant for personal verification, had seemed certain to sway Gribov. In the end, he had reacted just as she had hoped. She understood men like Gribov – she understood men.
‘If it were down to me, I would allow anyone in,’ he explained as they walked. ‘Such a beautiful library should not be kept a secret.’ They had come to the top of the dark stone stairway down to Yudin’s lair, opposite which the door led out to the open air of the Kremlin. In front of them was a dead end, decorated with a hanging tapestry, a copy of something French and medieval – a virginal woman attended by a unicorn and a lion. The red of the woman’s hair reminded Tamara a little of herself, but the slight figure and diminutive bosom of the tapestry were more akin to Raisa than Tamara. The unicorn gazed vainly into a mirror held in the woman’s hand, but Tamara had only a moment to study the reflection before Gribov pulled the curtain aside to reveal a door that Tamara had not known existed. He unlocked it with a heavy iron key.
Beyond lay a staircase, longer, narrower and far, far older than the one that would have taken them to visit Yudin. Gribov led the way and the path twisted and turned until the memory of daylight above was forgotten and all sense of direction was lost. The stairs ended in a long straight corridor that Tamara could only guess led beneath the Kremlin, since to lead out of it would be nonsensical. Other corridors connecting, presumably, to other entrances split off, but Gribov ignored them. At last they came to another door, which Gribov unlocked with another key. Now he allowed her to enter first. The room was too dark for her to make out any detail, but she sensed a vast space in front of her. Then Gribov stood beside her and turned up his lamp, suddenly illuminating all that was around them.
Tamara clicked her tongue in a mixture of astonishment and admiration, but was able to form no articulate sound.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Gribov, after a considered pause.
Tamara could only nod. The chamber stretched out further than she could see. Brickwork pillars, from which sprouted the vaults of the roof, were regularly spaced throughout, perhaps fifty or more of them, sharing between them the entire weight of whichever of the Kremlin’s buildings stood above. Tamara guessed they must be as old as the citadel itself. But what was most enthralling was what lay between the pillars: documents – thousands of them, if not millions, piled on to tables and crammed into shelves. There were ten times as many as she’d seen in Petersburg.
‘This was built to the instruction of Ivan the Fourth,’ she heard Gribov say, correcting her estimate of the library’s age. ‘Built to hold the Liberia – the collected knowledge of the whole of Byzantium.’
Tamara had heard tales of such a thing, but believed them to be myths. It was designed to bolster Moscow’s claim to be – after Byzantium and Rome itself – the Third Rome, the newest heart of Christendom, wherein resided knowledge that could be trusted neither to the Turks nor, worse, to the Pope.
‘This is it?’ she whispered. ‘Here?’ Her own interest lay in far more recent documents, but she could not help but be thrilled by the thought of what she might find. She thought of her adoptive father, Valentin Valentinovich, and realized how much his love of books had become a part of her. He would envy her presence here.
‘No.’ Gribov chuckled as he answered her, as if this were a routine he followed with everyone he brought down here. ‘Perhaps once, but not for many centuries. The documents from Byzantium have been removed. My guess is that there is another similar room, near here, perhaps just the thickness of a wall away from us’ – he reached out and caressed the brickwork as he spoke – ‘where they are housed, but I don’t know how to get to it. Perhaps His Majesty does. Perhaps one of his ancestors once did, but forgot to hand the secret down.’
‘But this has the records I want?’ asked Tamara, her mind just able to focus on its purpose.
‘It contains everything we’ve collected since the time of Pyotr the Great; everything that’s not in Petersburg.’
‘That’s just what I need.’
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ said Gribov. There was more than a hint of victory in his voice – the knowledge that too much information was as unhelpful as too little. But Tamara was thrilled. Ever since she had been allowed the freedom to roam through her father’s library she had loved books in an almost physical way: the smell of them, the feel of them, the anticipation of what new worlds she might find within. This place was like a dream to her.
‘Thank you,’ she said, only slightly exaggerating the relish she felt at the idea with the intent of deflating Gribov’s sense of victory. ‘Where do I find Volkonsky?’
Gribov waved his hand in front of him. ‘Who can say? Some of the material is sorted, some not. Most remains where it was placed when it arrived. Towards the back it’s very ancient indeed.’ From a table near to the door he picked up a candle and lit it from his lamp. ‘I’d stay to help, but I’m sure you understand, this is not my only duty.’
She heard his footsteps receding behind her, and then the slamming of the door. He had taken the candle to guide him, but left her the lamp. She felt suddenly entombed, but looking around she saw that he had left the key on the table beside her. She took the lamp and ventured out into the chamber – into the past. It was an overwhelming task, but she felt more hopeful than she had done in years. If the truth about her parents did not lie somewhere beneath that high, vaulted ceiling, then she could not imagine anywhere that it might be.
The sound of some gigantic bell resonated across Red Square, and was ignored by most. Climbing the hill from the Moskva Bridge past Saint Vasiliy’s, Yudin reacted perhaps more than those around him; he hadn’t realized it was so late. Time could be a vital matter for a voordalak. To return tardily to his coffin, or at least to some place of dark seclusion, and to be caught in the first rays of the dawning sun would be a foolish and unpleasant way to die. But he didn’t need clocks to tell him the position of the sun. Around dusk and dawn, he could feel its presence, like a wolf, lurking below the horizon, hoping that the laws of physics might momentarily change so that it could pounce unexpectedly and take him. But Yudin trusted the laws of physics more than anything in the whole world – more than his own instincts.
Currently those laws dictated that the sun was somewhere on the far side of the Earth and so although Yudin might be late, he had little to fear from it. He looked up at the clock on the Saviour’s Tower, having to strain his neck since he was almost directly underneath it. It wasn’t the hour, or even the quarter, and the single stroke of the bell sounded nothing like the distinctive, newly restored chimes of the clock. Most likely it was from a church – one of the many inside the Kremlin.
He tightened his grip on the wooden box under his arm and strode through the gateway beneath the tower, eager to make use of its contents. It was his most treasured possession: his microscope – one of the few things he had rescued when he had fled his laboratory in the caves deep beneath Chufut Kalye. Out there in the Crimea, the war had been going on for months, but he had heard of no action anywhere close to his old haunt. What would anyone find if they went there now, he wondered. He had fond memories of the place, but now he kept his scientific paraphernalia
at his house. It was a place he rarely visited, to the south of the river in Zamoskvorechye, but it was useful. He stored most of his possessions there, and in the cellar was a coffin where he could lie during the day if unable to reach his more regular sleeping place beneath the Kremlin. It was not his only bolthole in the city.
It had been almost a week since Raisa had handed him the sample of the tsarevich’s blood – a sample which she had so expertly drawn from him without his even noticing. Perhaps afterwards he had felt the cut to his lip, and connected it to his stolen encounter with her. But even if he did, he would put it down to unbridled passion overcoming her in the presence of so powerful a figure. But how much did he know about the Romanov Betrayal? His uncle and namesake, Aleksandr I, had understood it all. Surely that knowledge would have been passed down to those most in danger. Would the younger Aleksandr have made the connection when he raised his hand and discovered the blood on his lips? It did not matter. Yudin had his sample, and in a moment he would be able to examine it.
Yudin had made most of his discoveries years before, when working in those caves. Zmyeevich possessed the Romanov blood – blood which Pyotr the Great had willingly allowed to be drunk from him. With that came the risk for any Romanov that, merely by drinking a few drops of Zmyeevich’s blood, they might become like him. With Yudin’s help he had almost succeeded with Nikolai’s brother, Tsar Aleksandr I. But Aleksandr’s death had saved him.
And there lay the problem. Yudin had discovered that within each generation of Romanovs there was only one chance of success. Zmyeevich had attempted to exert his power over Aleksandr and had failed. That meant that he could not attempt it with Nikolai, or any of Aleksandr’s other brothers. The chance had moved to the next generation: Aleksandr, Konstantin and the others.
Yudin smiled. Tsar Nikolai was a sentimental man. His father, Tsar Pavel, had had four sons and named them, in order, Aleksandr, Konstantin, Nikolai and Mihail. Nikolai had four sons and named them, in order, Aleksandr, Konstantin, Nikolai and Mihail. The first set of brothers bore the patronymic Pavlovich, the second Nikolayevich. It was to the Nikolayevichs that Zmyeevich would turn his attention – but not yet. Not until one of them became tsar. It would most likely be Aleksandr, but who could tell? If Zmyeevich shot his bolt too soon, the young tsarevich might never live to be tsar, and the chance would be lost for another generation. Zmyeevich would wait until there was certainty.
And what would Yudin do? He and Zmyeevich were no longer allies – far from it – and Zmyeevich was not to be taken lightly as an enemy. For Yudin there seemed only two options: to win Zmyeevich’s favour, by helping him, or to defeat him for ever.
He had not yet decided. And in order to decide he needed knowledge. There was no rush to it. Nikolai was healthy and had many years of life before him. When he did die then his son’s blood would take on the highest importance, but for now it was merely a matter of interest. Yudin revelled in such matters.
The bell sounded for a second time. Now that the sound was not deflected by the walls of the Kremlin, Yudin could get a better idea of where it was coming from: almost straight ahead of him – the Assumption Belfry. It was the Assumption Bell itself that had been rung. A few passers-by stopped to look, surprised that the bell should be sounded at that time of day, but Yudin pressed on. He had his microscope and he had his blood sample and he was eager to make use of them. He was right in front of the belfry now, and his office was only a few minutes away.
At the back of his mind, a memory lurked – almost like the sun, prowling below the horizon, waiting. There was some tradition about that particular bell that he could not remember. It had to strike three times. It had happened once before in his lifetime, or at least since he had been in Russia, but he had not been in Moscow to hear it. It marked an event that happened rarely – an event that would change everything.
The bell was struck for a third time and memory rushed back to Yudin. He continued to walk, but only because he lacked the willpower to make himself stop. His mind focused solely on the awful realization, closing out the world around him and attempting to calculate the ramifications for Russia, for the Romanovs and most of all for himself. When the Assumption Bell tolled three times it conveyed a precise and unmistakable message – that the tsar was dead. The last time it happened had been in 1825 and Yudin had been far away in the south, in Taganrog, close – and it was no coincidence – to the deathbed of Tsar Aleksandr. He had been on a boat with Zmyeevich and seen the flag lowered to half-mast. He remembered his horror as Zmyeevich announced that he could sense no connection with Aleksandr, that the tsar would not be reborn as a voordalak and that he had died a normal death.
That moment had marked the parting of the ways for Yudin and Zmyeevich, and had almost cost him his life. For Zmyeevich the cost had been merely a postponement – a knowledge that the Romanov Betrayal could not be avenged for another generation, not before the day when Aleksandr II held sway as Tsar of All the Russias. That day had arrived – and Yudin was quite unprepared.
He broke into a run.
He was the spitting image of his father and had the same temperament. Tamara’s nephew burst into the Lavrovs’ drawing room without knocking, shouting the phrase, ‘Have you heard?’ and then stopping to catch his breath.
‘Vadim Rodionovich, how dare you!’ Valentin’s stern shout at his grandson reminded Tamara of her own youth, when Valentin would shout at her and Rodion, and with equally good reason. She was relieved, however, at Vadim’s arrival, which had broken the uncomfortable silence of her visit.
Vadim was too out of breath to speak and instead just stood there, panting. It had been four years since Tamara had seen him last. He reminded her of how her own sons, Stasik and Luka, might have grown up, and she was surprised to find such thoughts more of a pleasure than a cause for tears. Yet the tears still came often.
‘But have you heard?’ Vadim asked again.
‘Heard what, Vadya?’ she asked him, with a little laughter in her voice.
‘The news. It came on the railway telegraph – from Petersburg.’
‘What news?’ Yelena’s voice was more irritated than Tamara’s.
‘He’s dead,’ panted Vadim. ‘His Majesty – he’s dead.’
There was a moment of silence as the three adults looked at the boy’s face, trying to judge whether he was telling the truth and praying that he wasn’t, but they quickly realized it was a thing that no Russian, not even a child, would joke about. Yelena covered her face with her hands and let out a moan.
‘The poor man,’ said Valentin. ‘That poor family.’
Tamara was surprised by her own reaction to the news. Her first thought had been for the political implications; the fact that Aleksandr Nikolayevich looked far less kindly upon the Third Section than had his father. Beyond the obvious personal problems that any weakening or even disbandment of it would cause, she truly believed that it would be to the benefit of the country’s enemies. But then she noticed the moisture in her eyes, and the tightness of her stomach. Valentin Valentinovich was right, about both the man and the family. Nikolai had been so strong, such an appropriate man to lead his nation. He had been only fifty-eight.
Tamara glanced around the room. It was a very Russian scene, one which would be played out across the country as the news spread – in each home a private grief, as though a member of the family had been lost. It was quite insane and quite beautiful. She went over to kneel beside her mother, taking her hand. No one spoke. Her mother forced a smile and stroked her hair. Her father sat very still with his hands resting on his thighs, shaking his head slowly from side to side. Vadim seemed confused, trying to reconcile his excitement at the news with the sorrow that it had brought to everybody.
Suddenly, Tamara was four years old again. She knew the age precisely because it was the time they had heard of the old tsar’s death – Aleksandr I. News travelled more slowly back then, but it had reached them within days. She had been like Vadim was now, too young t
o understand the grief of others, but she remembered Yelena and Valentin being very much the same as they were now.
For perhaps the first time she appreciated the magnificence of their old age and understood why they were so affected. They were not just grieving for Nikolai, but for their memories of the death of Aleksandr, and of his father Pavel before him – perhaps even the death of Yekaterina. They would have been as young then as she was at Aleksandr’s death. Perhaps they realized too that they would not live to see the end of this new tsar’s reign – or at least hoped it.
And from the distant reaches of that four-year-old mind came another thought – the memory of a hope, but not of its fulfilment. What had affected her most as a child on hearing of the death of the tsar had not been a sense of sorrow, but a realization that the news also meant that her father – her real father – would be coming home.
CHAPTER V
THE IMPERIAL ARMY was taking the news surprisingly well. The death of the tsar made no difference to daily life in the besieged city of Sevastopol. The enemy guns had not fallen silent in deference to the departed emperor, nor had they fired a salute in honour of the succession of the new one. Many were pleased that Tsar Aleksandr had at last relieved the woeful commander-in-chief, Prince Menshikov, and replaced him with Prince Gorchakov, but those who bothered to read the dates on the dispatches soon realized that this had not been the first act of the new tsar, but the last of the old one. Some of the men had shed a tear for their departed emperor, but among the officers it was only those who knew him personally who showed any real emotion at his passing.
