I do not know how many hours it lasted. Sometimes we sat down on the ground to draw breath. This was the second night in succession I had spent underground and, Lord help me, I would be hard pressed to say which of them I liked less.
We could not even look to see what time it was, because our matches were soon soaked by the damp air and refused to strike. When I stumbled over those familiar bones for the second time, it became clear that we were wandering in circles.
Then Fandorin said: ‘You know, Ziukin, this will not do. Do you want rats to run over your naked ribs?’
I shuddered.
‘Well, nor do I. Sowemust stop simply strolling about, hoping for things to work out somehow or other. We need a system. From nowonwe followa strict alternation: one turn to the right, one turn to the left. Forward!’
But even after the introduction of the ‘system’ we walked for a very long time, until eventually we saw a feeble light glimmering in the distance. I was the first to go dashing towards it. The passage narrowed and shrank until we had to crawl on all fours, but that was all right, because the light kept growing brighter and brighter. At the very end I grabbed hold of a cold, rough root, and it suddenly tore itself out of my hand with an angry hiss. A snake! I gasped and jerked away, banging the back of my head against the stone ceiling. I saw yellow spots on the narrow head of the black band as it rippled away from me – a harmless grass snake – but my heart was still pounding insanely.
The burrow had led us out to the edge of the water on a riverbank. I saw a dark barge wreathed in morning mist, the roofs of warehouses on the far side of the river and the semicircular arches of a railway bridge in the distance.
‘We haven’t really travelled very far,’ said Fandorin, straightening up and dusting off his soiled coachman’s coat. I saw that he had already rid himself of the long black beard and I thought he had left the hat with the broad brim back in the vault. I followed the direction of his glance. Just a few hundred paces away the domes of the Novodevichy Convent were glinting gently in the first rays of sunlight.
‘Evidently the nuns used this passage as a secret way to reach the river,’ Fandorin surmised. ‘I wonder what for.’
I could not have cared less.
‘And there’s the bell tower,’ I said, pointing. ‘Quickly, let’s go. Mr Karnovich and Mr Lasovsky must be tired of looking for us. Or if not for us, for the Orlov. Won’t they be delighted!’
I smiled. At that moment the sense of open space, the light and the freshness of the morning filled me with the same feeling of life’s completeness that Lazarus must have felt when he rose from the dead.
‘Do you really want to give the Orlov back to Karnovich?’ Fandorin asked incredulously.
For a moment I thought I must have misheard, but then I realised that, like myself, Mr Fandorin was delighted by the successful outcome of our appalling night and was therefore in the mood for a joke. Well, there are circumstances in which even Ziukin is not averse to a joke, even if his companion is not the most pleasant.
‘No, I want to take the stone to Doctor Lind,’ I replied with a restrained smile intended to indicate that I had appreciated his joke and was replying in kind.
‘Well, that is just it,’ Erast Petrovich said, nodding seriously. ‘You understand that if we give the stone to the authorities, we shall never see it again. And then the boy and Emilie are doomed.’
Now I realised that he was not joking at all.
‘Do you really intend to enter into an independent bargain with Doctor Lind?’ I asked, just to make certain.
‘Yes. What else can we do?’
Neither of us spoke as we stared at each other in mutual perplexity. My mood of exaltation vanished without a trace. A terrible presentiment turned my mouth dry.
Fandorin looked me over from head to foot, as if seeing me for the first time and asked in a curious tone of voice: ‘Just a m-moment, Ziukin, don’t you love little Mika?’
‘Very much,’ I said, surprised at such a question.
‘And then . . . you are rather partial to Emilie, I believe?’
I was feeling very tired; we were both smeared with dust and clay; the air smelled of grass and the river; and all of this gave me the feeling that the ordinary conventions did not apply. That was the only reason why I answered this outrageously immodest question: ‘I am not indifferent to Mademoiselle Declique’s fate.’
‘So, the stake in this game is the lives of t-two people. People whom you . . . well, let us say, to whose fate you are “not indifferent”. And you are prepared to sacrifice those people for a piece of polished carbon?’
‘There are things that are more important than love,’ I said in a quiet voice and suddenly remembered that Fandorin had said the same thing to Xenia Georgievna quite recently.
I found this memory disturbing and felt it necessary to clarify my meaning: ‘For example, honour. Fidelity. The prestige of the monarchy. National holy relics.’
I felt rather foolish explaining such things, but what else was there for me to do?
Fandorin paused before he spoke: ‘You, Ziukin, have a choice. Do you see the police cordon around the chapel? Either you go across to it and tell them that Fandorin has absconded, t-taking the Orlov with him, or we try to save Emilie and the child together. Decide.’
So saying he took the black beard and shaggy wig out of his pocket – apparently he had kept them after all – and put on this hirsute disguise, transforming himself into a simple shaggy peasant of the kind who move into the large cities in search of work.
I do not know why I stayed with him. Upon my word of honour, I do not know. I did not say a word, but I did not move from the spot.
‘Well, are we off to hard labour in the same fetters?’ Fandorin asked with quite inappropriate merriment, holding out his hand.
His handshake was firm, mine was feeble.
‘Sit here for a while and don’t make yourself obvious. I’ll go and reconnoitre.’
He strode off in the direction of the convent and I knelt down beside the water. It was pure and transparent. I first drank my fill and then, when the ripples had dispersed, I contemplated the reflection of my face. Nothing in it seemed to have changed: a moustache, sideburns, a prominent forehead with a receding hairline. And yet it was not the face of Housemaster Ziukin, butler of the Green House and faithful servant of the throne, but that of a state criminal.
Erast Petrovich’s return roused me from my melancholy torpor but did nothing to improve my mood.
Apparently the police and soldiers had cordoned off not only the chapel but the entire convent. The search had already been going on for many hours in the underground labyrinth. The police constable with whom Fandorin spoke told him that all the police stations had been sent verbal portraits of two highly dangerous criminals who had committed some unknown crime that must be truly heinous. All routes out of Moscow were completely sealed off and it was only a matter of time before the two villains were caught. One of them was a lean youthful-looking man with dark hair and a slim moustache, special features, grey hair at the temples and a characteristic stammer. The other – and here Fandorin described my own modest person but in far greater detail. And so I learned that my nose was of the divided cartilage type, my wart was not merely on my neck but in its third left segment, and my eyes were of a marshy yellow hue with an almond-shaped outline.
‘How did you manage to get the constable to talk?’ I asked in amazement. ‘And did he not find your stammer suspicious?’
‘Getting a stranger to talk requires knowledge of psychology and physiognomical analysis,’ Erast Petrovich explained with a haughty air. ‘And as for the stammer, as you may have observed, when I assume a different identity, I change my voice and my way of speaking and all the other characteristics of speech. It is no longer me, or at least not entirely me. The stammer is the result of a concussion suffered very long ago by Fandorin, not by the grave little peasant who spoke so respectfully to the police constable.’