Thirteen Years Later Read online

  THIRTEEN

  YEARS LATER

  Jasper Kent

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Also by Jasper Kent

  Author Notes

  Map

  Prologue

  PART ONE

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  PART TWO

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  PART THREE

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409094739

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  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers

  Copyright © Jasper Kent 2010

  Jasper Kent has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9780593060650

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  For

  H.E.C.

  Born in Worcestershire in 1968, Jasper Kent read natural sciences at Cambridge before embarking on a career as a software consultant. He also pursues alternative vocations as a composer and musician and now novelist.

  The inspiration for Jasper’s bestselling début, Twelve (and indeed the subsequent novels in The Danilov Quintet), came out of a love of nineteenth-century Russian literature and darkly fantastical, groundbreaking novels such as Frankenstein and Dracula. His researches have taken him across Europe and to Saint Petersburg, Moscow and the Crimea, including three days on a train from Cologne to the Russian capital, following in the footsteps of Napoleon himself.

  Jasper lives in Brighton, where he shares a flat with his girlfriend and several affectionate examples of the species rattus norvegicus.

  www.rbooks.co.uk

  Also by Jasper Kent

  TWELVE

  For more information on Jasper Kent and his books,

  see his website at www.jasperkent.com

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Distances

  A verst is a Russian unit of distance, slightly greater than a kilometre.

  Dates

  During the nineteenth century, Russians based their dates on the old Julian Calendar, which in 1825 was twelve days behind the Gregorian Calendar used in Western Europe. All dates in the text are given in the Russian form and so, for example, the Decembrist Uprising is placed on 14 December, where Western history books have it on 26 December.

  Names

  Names used are transliterations of the Russian spellings. For historical figures, these transliterations can be unfamiliar to readers used to the more common Western renderings. The main examples are:

  Pyotr Alekseevich – Tsar Peter I (the Great)

  Yekaterina Alekseevna – Tsaritsa Catherine II (the Great)

  Pavel Pyetrovich – Tsar Paul I

  Aleksandr Pavlovich – Tsar Alexander I

  Nikolai Pavlovich – Tsar Nicholas I

  Aleksandr Nikolayevich – Tsar Alexander II

  I would like to say a sincere thank you to Mihai Adascalitei for his help with the Romanian language.

  Selected Romanov Family Tree

  Reigning tsars and tsaritsas shown in bold.

  Dates are birth–[start of reign]–[end of reign]– death.

  THE DECEMBRISTS

  On 14 December 1825 (26 December) a crowd of three thousand men – overwhelmingly members of the military – assembled in Saint Petersburg’s Senate Square to oppose the succession of Tsar Nicholas I. The origins of the revolt lay in 1814, when victorious Russian troops, led by Nicholas’ predecessor Alexander, occupied Paris, having pursued the French all the way from Moscow. The nation that they found, even in defeat, seemed to many a utopia of liberty and enlightenment – at least in comparison with their own country. At the same time Alexander, who had once been hailed as a modernizer, began to turn towards more conservative policies. For a decade resentment festered. Revolutionary societies formed and re-formed, but took no action. The death of Alexander, a thousand miles away in Taganrog, was the flashpoint. With confusion as to which of Alexander’s brothers – Constantine or Nicholas – was to succeed, the revolutionaries seized their one, slim chance.

  The uprising was quickly suppressed. Loyal troops, at the tsar’s direct orders, opened fire on the rebels, scattering them into flight across the capital. Many were killed and more arrested. Five of the leaders were hanged and a further 284 were exiled to Siberia. Ever after, Nicholas referred to them as ‘mes amis du quatorze’. It was only after Nicholas’ death in 1855 that the exiles – those who were still alive – were allowed to return to the west.

  In 1925, one hundred years after the uprising, Senate Square was renamed Decembrists’ Square, in memory of that first Russian revolution. In July 2008, the name was changed back to Senate Square.

  PROLOGUE

  Saint Petersburg – 1812

  The metropolitan spoke:

  ‘He that dw
elleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust.

  ‘Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day.

  ‘Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.’

  Suddenly the chapel seemed empty; empty of noise, empty of its congregation, empty of the metropolitan himself. Aleksandr perceived only the words, surrounding him not as sounds but as creatures – angels sent by God, sent to convince him of what he must do. And what he had to do was so simple: to trust in God.

  That the metropolitan had chosen this day to read those words hinted that God had not trusted Aleksandr to understand His meaning. He had read the exact same words yesterday, quite by chance – or, as he now realized, by design. A clumsy accident had caused a Bible to be dropped to the floor and to fall open at that same text, the ninetieth psalm. And the psalm was but the last of three signs. Aleksandr had read it even then with understanding.

  Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.

  ‘The destruction that wasteth at noonday.’ It was clear what that was: Bonaparte – a man who had laid waste to the whole of Europe and who now planned to destroy Russia too. Planned to? He had already made himself a home in the Kremlin.

  ‘The pestilence that walketh in darkness’ was something different, something Aleksandr had almost forgotten, but never completely. He had learned of the pestilence at his grandmother’s knee, and had never doubted her, as other enlightened grandsons might have doubted stories told them by their frail babushka. Yekaterina had never been frail. She had said that a traveller would come to avenge the Romanov Betrayal, and one such had come, just a week before.

  That had been the second sign.

  He had called himself Cain, but he was merely the emissary of another. Simply to mention the name of that other – a name Yekaterina had whispered to her grandson many years before – had been enough to allow Cain a private audience with Aleksandr. It had caused consternation amongst many, that this stranger should be so trusted by the tsar even at his country’s darkest hour. It was not trust, though, but fear that had persuaded Aleksandr.

  And yet he had discovered that in truth he had little to fear from Cain or his master, just as his grandmother had assured him. All that Cain had to offer was a bargain – a bargain that promised to save Russia from Bonaparte. And Aleksandr had no reason to doubt that it could. But the cost would have been too great. Yekaterina’s strength flowed through Aleksandr, flowed in his veins, and he found it easy to resist, easy to spurn perhaps the last hope that his country had.

  Cain had taken the news calmly but he had promised Aleksandr that the offer would be made again, in circumstances when the tsar would be more inclined to agree. More inclined than now, when his country was overrun by a foreign invader? It seemed unlikely, but he doubted Cain as little as he had doubted his babushka.

  The first sign had come in a vision.

  Aleksandr had expected a visitor, but Cain’s had not been the face he had been anticipating. Alone in his study he had been forewarned, even before Bonaparte had reached Moscow. It was not the first time he had seen through the eyes of another, but it was, so far, the most vivid.

  It began with his hands. He had merely glanced down at them, but even a glimpse was enough to tell him that they were no longer his own. His fingers had become broad, squat and coarse, with dirty nails – something that for Aleksandr was inconceivable. Then he noticed he was not alone, nor was he any longer in the palace, but in a dimly lit corridor. There were four men with him but, still gazing at his own fingers, he did not see them clearly. He held the hand of one of them in his, and soon looked up to glimpse the man’s face before kissing him on each cheek, perhaps bidding him farewell.

  He perceived the man’s jaw tighten as his lips came close, as if he were resisting the urge to recoil from some fetid stench. For the first time Aleksandr noticed a foul, metallic taste on his tongue, and wondered if it might not be his own breath that was so repellent. As he stepped away, he saw the man’s face in detail for the first time. He was a little younger than Aleksandr, in his early thirties, clean-shaven, with blue eyes and brown hair that extended in sideboards a little way down his cheeks. The jaw was square and solid. It was an unremarkable face, but one which Aleksandr would never forget.

  He stepped back, releasing the man’s hand and again glancing at his own. It was now that he saw what Yekaterina had so long ago told him to beware: a ring, in the form of a dragon with a body of gold, emeralds for eyes and a red, forked tongue. Its tail entwined his middle finger. Aleksandr mouthed the name his grandmother had whispered to him, the name of the man through whose eyes Aleksandr was now seeing, just as his great-great-grandfather had once seen.

  He reached out to touch the dragon ring, but as he did so, it vanished. His fingers were once again elegant and slender. He was in his palace.

  Aleksandr understood what he had seen – or thought he did; a master sending away his servant. It would not be long before that servant came to Aleksandr. And so a servant did come, but when he did, his face had been nothing like the one Aleksandr had seen in his vision. He had been mistaken, but it made no difference. He had sent Cain away, and now he knew that he had done the right thing – the psalm told him so.

  The metropolitan carried on reading, but Aleksandr no longer paid him any heed. Instead, he gazed at the floor of the chapel and made a silent promise to the Lord. What he had been, he would be no more. God would deliver him – would deliver Russia – and Aleksandr would make Russia into the country the Almighty wanted it to be. He would be delivered from the destruction that wasteth at noonday, and from the pestilence that walketh in darkness – the terror by night.

  Within days, the good news arrived. Bonaparte and all his men – what was left of them – had abandoned Moscow and were heading west. The Russian army would deal with them, with the help of the Russian winter. And the Lord would ensure, Aleksandr felt certain, that the winter would be a bitter one. Far more than ten thousand would fall at his right hand. Aleksandr no longer had to fear the destruction. Now he could do God’s work.

  And as for the pestilence, Aleksandr still feared that and awaited its advent, but it was not a threat that was to be faced by him, or by Russia, until thirteen years later.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER I

  ‘IT MUST BE BY HIS DEATH.’

  Ryleev spoke quietly, hiding neither his passion nor his distaste for his own words.

  ‘It’s not personal; it’s what he is, not who he is,’ he continued. He looked around the room, judging the reactions of the dozen or so men whom he was addressing, reactions with which he must already have been well familiar. ‘He’s the tsar.’ It was an unnecessary clarification, but it added to the enormity of what Ryleev was suggesting.

  Some in the room nodded with hesitant acceptance. Some avoided his gaze. Others faced it, demonstrating by the fact they had the stomach to look their leader in the eye that they also had the stomach for his plan.

  Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov was among those who allowed Ryleev’s eyes to fix on his. He revealed nothing – years of deceit had taught him how to make his eyes the barrier, not the window to his soul. In his time he had stared into eyes behind which there lay no soul whatsoever, and learned from that too. Ryleev’s gaze lingered momentarily longer on him, as though he were aware that he would detect nothing, but then moved on. Still no one commented on what he had said.

  ‘It’s changed him, being tsar – changed his nature,’ he continued.
r />   ‘It was the war that did that,’ said a voice from the back. ‘We all went to France and saw what liberty really meant. Aleksandr saw it too. Saw what it would mean for him. He was terrified by it.’

  ‘He should be terrified by it,’ said another.

  ‘He will be.’ This time Aleksei recognized the quiet voice as belonging to Pyotr Grigoryevich Kakhovsky. He had only recently returned to Petersburg, but had quickly become involved with the Society.

  Not for the first time, Aleksei noted how much older he himself was than all the others gathered in the room. It was true they all remembered the fall of Paris in 1814, and most could recall Napoleon’s occupation of Moscow in 1812, but it would have been their first campaign. By 1812, Aleksei was already a toughened warrior.

  ‘But you raise the problem yourself, Kondraty Fyodorovich,’ he said, addressing Ryleev. ‘It’s not who he is; it’s what he is. We may kill Aleksandr, but the tsar will still live. The serfs will still serve. The censor will still censor. We won’t have a duma, we’ll just have Tsar Konstantin instead of Tsar Aleksandr – and for all his faults, I know which I’d prefer.’