They rode hard the rest of the day. The pine trunks whipped past in slender shadows and the blades of sunlight sliced between them like knives. They had waited in the undergrowth by the river until their shadows had lengthened and they were certain the patrol was long gone. The soldiers missed Mikhail’s horses, tucked away deep among the trees, but their clothes lying at the water’s edge must have caused some comment. Sofia and Mikhail rode in silence, wary of further patrols, but they kept up a good speed and the horses’ flanks were soon flecked with foam. It was almost dusk when Mikhail spotted the silver thread of another river through the trees ahead of them.
‘We’ll stop here,’ he said. ‘The horses need a drink.’
‘My canteen is nearly empty too.’
‘I’ll keep watch.’
They dismounted and stood still, listening hard. There was no sound except the bickering of crows, so with Mikhail in the lead they emerged from the ragged edge of the forest. Instantly he stopped dead. A groan escaped his lips.
‘What is it?’ Sofia asked from behind. Then the smell hit her and she vomited.
It was the patrol of soldiers. They lay like rag dolls that a child had tired of playing with and tossed aside, their khaki uniforms spoiled by holes and rust-coloured stains. They were dead, all nine of them. Wild animals had been gorging on their carcasses, bellies torn open by wolverines, but worse were the faces. The eyes had been pecked into black holes by crows that still perched with a stiff-legged challenge on the chests of the young soldiers. Their bodies were swarming with a shiny moving crust of flies.
‘Stay here,’ Mikhail said and handed Sofia the reins.
The horses were stamping their hooves and rolling their eyes with nostrils flared, spooked by the odour of blood. Mikhail tore off his shirt, bunched it over his nose and mouth, and moved down the grassy slope. The soldiers were young, none more than twenty, and each body bore a bullet hole, sometimes two or three. Whoever did this did an efficient job.
Without hope or expectation Mikhail examined each one, but none showed any sign of life. At one point he dropped to his knees on the soiled grass beside one boy’s body and held his hand. It felt warm to the touch and for one second he believed the soldier’s heart must still be beating, but it was only the sun warming from the outside what could never again be warmed from the inside. These poor young men were Russia’s lifeblood, like Pyotr would one day be, and the sight of them sickened Mikhail. He lowered his head in his hands. After a moment he was taken by surprise when a hand stroked the back of his neck with a tender touch.
‘Who would have done such a thing, Mikhail? Bandits? Subversives?’
‘No, it’s almost certainly horse thieves out here in this wild region.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Nine lives in exchange for nine horses and maybe a couple of pack animals as well. But they’ll have to move fast if they hope to get away with their miserable lives.’
‘Come quickly, my love, we must go.’
She stooped to pick up a rifle that was lying at her feet.
‘No,’ Mikhail said quickly. ‘Don’t take anything. When these bodies are found, the army will sweep through this whole region like the plague. If you possess a single item belonging to this troop you’ll be…’
He didn’t say the word. He didn’t need to.
58
Tivil July 1933
‘Is she there?’
Rafik shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Is she close?’
‘She’s close to death.’
‘Can you save her?’
‘No.’
A sigh like the moon’s breath whispered round the walls of the chamber. Three faces grew pale.
‘Save her.’
‘Save her.’
‘Save her.’
‘I cannot. I am losing her down a labyrinth.’
Blood, like wine, was poured into a copper bowl.
‘She is too far from me. I cannot disentangle the shadows.’
White flesh, like bread, was crumbled into the blood.
‘She is alone and beyond my reach.’
Herbs, bitter as pain, were scattered on the glistening surface.
‘How can we protect her, tell us how?’
‘I need greater power.’
‘Drink the blood.’
‘Eat the flesh.’
‘Swallow the herbs.’
Rafik drank and looked at the faces gazing at him. ‘It’s not enough.’
‘You’ve come.’
The priest swept into the room, red hair ablaze, eyes bright with belief. His beard gleamed like a breastplate of fire.
‘I’ve come.’
‘Your strength is needed.’
‘My strength is the strength of the Lord God Almighty.’
Rafik rose to his feet, ghostly in his white robe. ‘The girl is in an abyss.’
‘All are in peril of the Bottomless Pit, all who worship the image of the Beast. It is written in God’s Word.’
‘Help us, Priest.’
‘Gypsy, if what you are doing provides food for the Devil, the smoke of your torment will be never-ending and you shall have no rest by day or by night.’
‘We need her, I tell you this. She is rich in power.’
‘What are riches? God in His infinite wisdom tells us this: that it is when we think we are rich that we are at our most wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. And as surely as night follows day, His wrath shall come to smite the scorpions of this earth.’
‘Priest,’ Rafik’s voice rang out clearly, ‘this village knows too well that it is poor and wretched. Will you join with us?’
‘God will curse you, Rafik.’
‘Will you watch Tivil bleed to death?’
‘Sorcerers are condemned to dwell outside the City of God and you are a sorcerer.’
‘Rafik.’ It was the blacksmith, his darkened fingers pointing at the gypsy’s chest. ‘Tell the priest.’
‘Tell me what?’
The light seemed to flicker and dart across the copper bowl as Rafik spoke slowly. ‘The girl has a stone, a White Stone. It has drawn help to her side already.’
Priest Logvinov’s face grew pale as his long fingers sought the cross that hung on his chest and clung to it. ‘Do not blaspheme.’
‘I do not.’
The priest shook his fiery locks. ‘The Lord says in the last Book of His Holy Word, “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna and will give him a white stone and in the stone a new name is written which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.”
‘She has the stone.’
59
Marshlands August 1933
The light was so clear and so white that at times the land looked as if it was made of bone. As they journeyed north through the taiga, the forest of pine and spruce thinned, giving way to open marshland that left Sofia feeling exposed. They were waiting for the creeping gloom of night before they crossed the flat wetland that stretched ahead, but every delay drove Sofia to distraction.
‘Patience,’ Mikhail cautioned.
He was adjusting the packs on the horses and picking burrs from their manes. The chestnut’s head hung low, its eyes half shut, and Sofia was shocked by how weary it looked and how its ribs poked through its hide. Was that how she and Mikhail looked too? She studied Mikhail as he tended the animals. She loved to see the skill with which his hands moved over them, soothing their twitchy skins the way he soothed hers. They didn’t talk much now, images of the dead patrol ousted words from their heads, and in silence her fingers ruffled the ears of the yellow dog that was resting its head against her thigh.
‘I’m not good at patience,’ she said.
Mikhail’s grey eyes skimmed over the marshland. ‘You’re good at other things.’
‘Anna’s out there.’
‘So are the soldiers who are searching for that patrol.’
A thickset old man sat half asleep in the afternoon sun, leaning back against the timber wall of his solitary izba, a picture of contentment in the middle of nowhere. He wore patched trousers and a threadbare shirt, a twist of smoke rising from the carved pipe in his mouth, keeping the mosquitoes at bay.