Thirteen Years Later (57 page)

At last he saw his quarry. Iuda had his back to him, intent on his task of dragging a dinghy down towards the sea. Destabilizing though it might be, the sand brought the blessing of making Aleksei’s approach silent. When he was only a few paces away, he launched himself, feet first, at Iuda’s back. With the run-up he had had, his feet landed with tremendous force, smashing Iuda’s ribs against the side of the boat. Aleksei felt confident he had managed to break something.

Aleksei was on his feet in moments, but Iuda lay on his side on the ground, clutching his chest and moaning. Aleksei pressed his boot against Iuda’s shoulder and rolled him on to his back.

‘Not enough of a head start over me this time,’ he said.

‘It would seem not.’ Iuda’s voice croaked with pain.

‘Where were you off to, I wonder,’ said Aleksei. ‘You couldn’t have been going very far in that.’ He glanced out to sea. That yacht – which had been there every day while he had been in Taganrog – stood on the horizon, as if waiting. ‘Over there, perhaps?’

Iuda rolled slightly on to one side, as if trying to look where Aleksei was pointing, but in an instant he flung himself back the other way, and Aleksei felt a sharp pain in his calf. His sword was in his hand in an instant; its tip at Iuda’s throat. He could see the double-knife in his hand, with fresh blood on it; Aleksei’s own, mixing with Lishin’s. The wound to his leg stung, but he doubted it was serious.

He jerked his head to one side and pressed the blade a little harder against Iuda’s skin. Iuda threw the knife away from him. It rolled half a dozen times before coming to rest in the sand.

‘I take it my plan failed,’ said Iuda.

‘Which plan?’ Aleksei never understood his reason for asking it. Perhaps some subconscious voice, thinking faster than he ever could, had suggested it to him. Perhaps that voice came from outside of him. Perhaps he was just trying to be sarcastic. The reason did not matter – the result did.

Iuda considered for a fragment of a second before answering. ‘The poisoned-soup plan.’ Aleksei scarcely listened to the answer; the delay had told him everything. Iuda had needed to think about it, which meant there was more than one answer – more than one plan.

Aleksei turned and began to run back to the palace. The pain in his ankle from the rockfall at Chufut Kalye was beginning to hurt, but he ignored it. Ultimately, Iuda had chosen the right answer – the plan Aleksei did know about. It was obvious enough; the soup had been handed over by a man in a lieutenant’s uniform, and Iuda, lying there in the sand, still wore that uniform. If he’d answered differently, he’d have told Aleksei even more, but he had told him enough. Iuda had at least one more line of attack, and Aleksei had to get back to the tsar and prevent that attack from
coming to fruition. He had had to abandon Iuda, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice to save the tsar.

Damn it! Why hadn’t he just killed Iuda? A single thrust of his sword would have done it. Somewhere inside Aleksei there were the remnants of an absurd sense of chivalry. You have a man as your prisoner – it would be ungentlemanly to kill him. He was a fool, but it was too late to turn back now. Iuda would be gone already, and there was no time to be wasted if Aleksandr was to be rescued. He didn’t even turn his head. There would be nothing to see, and it risked unbalancing him as he ran across the sand.

He had to consider what Iuda’s other plan might have been. Surely it could not succeed. There were three men around the tsar’s bed who knew he should consume nothing – not to mention the tsar himself. Iuda had described the other plan as the ‘poisoned-soup plan’. How precise had he meant those words to be? It had not been the ‘blood in the soup’ plan, but Aleksei would bet there was Zmyeevich’s blood in there too. Iuda had to improve on his previous attempt – he had to ensure that death came to Aleksandr within moments of him consuming the blood. A cocktail of blood and poison would serve his purpose – and also block off the one possible escape route the tsar had: to survive a few more weeks and wait once again until the influence of Zmyeevich’s blood left his body.

Aleksei was on the road now, and able to run faster, though his own exhaustion compensated for any advantage. Ten years ago, he would have covered the ground more quickly – but ten years ago, he might not have been wise enough to guess what Iuda was up to. He arrived at the house with aching lungs, but still he dashed on through towards the tsar’s room. Outside it stood Diebich. His face was disconsolate, but it was impossible for Aleksei to tell whether this was in anticipation or consequence of the dread event, nor was there time to ask. He opened the door to Aleksandr’s room.

* * *

‘Drink, my darling. Drink.’ It was a voice Aleksandr trusted. He was still drifting between sleep and wakefulness, but he had listened to the conversations around him.

‘The end is close.’ It had been Wylie who said that. He was a good doctor, and a good friend. There were many men in Russia like him – from all walks of life. It was not simply their skill or their kindness that was remarkable, but the fact they had chosen to make Russia their home. It was easy for a native to love his country – he had no choice. But that someone like Wylie should adopt Russia as his homeland said a lot about the man – and the country.

‘Might we be alone?’ His wife’s voice.

‘We must stay by his side.’ Volkonsky. They went back to before Aleksandr was tsar. Pyotr Mihailovich had helped make him tsar. There was no matter upon which they did not trust each other.

‘Some privacy, please!’ Yelizaveta Alekseevna again.

No one else had spoken. Aleksandr had strained to open his eyes and seen that many around him had taken a step back from the bed. Volkonsky looked fixedly out of the window; Wylie and Tarasov were in feigned conversation.

‘Please drink.’ The tsaritsa’s lips were close to his ear. He felt her warm breath. Her fingers rested upon his cheek and her palm cupped his chin. There was something cold there too – glass. She was pressing a bottle against his lips. ‘It will cure you,’ she said.

Aleksandr knew that he was beyond cure, but he was thirsty. He smelled wine; good, red wine. His doctors had refused him any drink, but for the little water they carefully rationed to him. He understood why they were doing it – he had agreed, but this might be his last ever chance to taste a fine French vintage. And it came from his wife, of all people. She would never harm him.

And besides, there was another figure in the room – tall and dressed in dark clothes. Aleksandr could not see his face, but he was sure he recognized him. On his finger was a ring in the shape of a dragon, with emerald eyes and a red, forking tongue. Aleksandr did not know how he had entered, but if the others
in the room had been aware of his presence, they would have cowered in terror. His deep, grinding voice was compelling as it spoke.

‘Drink! Drink! Drink!’

Aleksandr parted his lips slightly and his wife began to tip the bottle.

Aleksei strode across the room and swung his open palm at the tsaritsa’s hand. The tips of his fingers caught Aleksandr’s cheek, but it did not matter. What mattered was that the vial in her hand was flung from the tsar’s lips and on to the bed. Huge gobbets of the thick, crimson liquid inside spilled out, sitting as perfect, hemispherical domes upon the sheet for a few seconds before slackening and oozing their way into the linen as wide, red stains.

What the hell had they all been thinking, wondered Aleksei. Tarasov, Wylie – even Volkonsky – all looking away like wise monkeys. Were they all in league with Iuda? Possessed by Zmyeevich? No – they were simply fools, persuaded by a woman’s love. Now that the spell was broken, they rushed over to Aleksandr.

‘How dare you?’ hissed Yelizaveta Alekseevna.

‘How dare I?’ replied Aleksei, his voice quiet, but unshakably firm. ‘I would not condemn His Majesty’s very soul.’

‘How could the gift of a holy man condemn his soul?’ asked the tsaritsa.

Aleksei calmed. She seemed sincere.

‘A holy man?’

‘A starets, from the monastery.’

Had she been fooled? It was impossible to tell. It seemed likely she was quite ignorant of the horror she had almost perpetrated, but that could be a façade; Iuda had wiles that could persuade the most faithful of wives.

‘A starets? Tall and blond, with grey eyes, I imagine.’

She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said in a whisper.

‘That was no medicine,’ said Aleksei.

She looked up at him. She had not moved since he had struck the vial from her hand. She knelt on the floor, arms stretched out across the bed and across her husband’s pale, limp body. ‘It could not have made things worse,’ she said bitterly.

Aleksei wondered if he should reply. He could find no words that would help her. The decision of whether to speak was taken from him. Dr Wylie had approached the tsar’s bed and been examining him. He raised his hand and Aleksei obeyed the gesture with silence.

The tsar’s breathing was shallow. His eyes were closed and his skin showed a pallor worse than Aleksei had ever seen, but there was no sheen of sweat to it. The tsaritsa knelt up and Volkonsky stepped in closer. Aleksei took a step backwards. It was not his place to intrude on this moment.

Aleksandr’s eyes opened slowly, flickering like the shaking fingers of an old man as he tried to gain a final glimpse of the things he loved. His frail hand reached for the table beside him, feeling its way, and his fingers found the crucifix that lay there. He lifted it and turned his head so that he might glimpse it. Now he lay back, exhausted from the effort, letting the figure of Christ fall back on to the tabletop. His eyes remained open, gazing at the woman who had stood beside him, and a smile formed on his lips.

He breathed in deeply, then released a sigh of unutterable contentment. Then he breathed in no more.

Wylie took a step towards him and examined him briefly. The tsaritsa looked up into the doctor’s face, but saw in his eyes no hint of solace. She released a sob, but then became silent. Wylie raised his hand towards the tsar’s face, but Yelizaveta saw what he was doing and reached out herself. The doctor withdrew his hand and the tsaritsa touched her late husband’s face, gently closing his eyelids. Wylie stood and faced the room before making his announcement.

‘The great monarch has stepped into eternity,’ he said.

I
UDA WAS TERRIFIED. IT WAS A NEW AND REVOLTING SENSATION
. He enjoyed the feeling of fear – more in others, admittedly, but also in himself. Fear focused the mind, precipitated action, punished failure, but above all it forced Iuda to flee from it. It forced him to the extremes of his abilities – mental and physical. There was no other emotion that could so powerfully drive him to achieve what most would regard as impossible.

But terror was different. Terror was to sit in the dank hold of a ship, in the presence of a creature so dangerous even Iuda would hesitate before deceiving him, and to wait for events to unfold. That was the worst of it – it was out of his hands. Not like a stone rolled down a hill, which gathers momentum, dislocates more stones to join it in its descent, ever accelerating in a noisy cascade until they crash upon some innocent in a terrible, but predictable landslide. This was like a coin thrown in the air; a coin he had weighted, but whose landing still had no certainty. The die was cast.

‘Look again.’

He reached out and took the spyglass from the hand that offered it, wincing at the pain in his cracked ribs. His eye dwelt on the ornate ring rather than looking up at the face of its owner. The tail of the gold dragon curled around his finger and the red, forked tongue seemed to flick out, reaching for Iuda. The emerald eyes
were almost as compelling as those Iuda was so conscientiously trying to avoid.

He walked over and pulled back the shutters on the porthole. In the distance, he could see the Taganrog shoreline and the tsar’s palace. He had been aboard
R
zbunarea
before, several times – to plan, to discuss, to gloat over events which had not yet come to pass – but this time there was nothing to be decided, except perhaps his own fate. And his fate was bound to the fate of the tsar. He glanced across the hold before raising the spyglass to his eye. Zmyeevich had retreated into the shadows, wary of even the small patch of sunlight Iuda had allowed to enter. Perhaps, if it came to it, Iuda would be able to flee. The steps were not too far away, and outside the daylight was bright. It was a cool autumn day in human terms, but for Zmyeevich, it would mean an instant, burning death. But Iuda would still have to get as far as those steps – and Zmyeevich could move with enormous speed. The open porthole might help, but Iuda did not rate his own chances.