Yuryev-Polsky was packed with refugees and with wounded soldiers. Finding care for Dmitry was no problem. He was given a bed in a makeshift hospital – formerly a convent – and medical opinion was that he would recover. The scars would always show, but even the use of his right hand should return to him eventually.

I left him and went to look for Domnikiia. It turned out to be easier to find Pyetr Pyetrovich, whom everyone in the town seemed to know. If you needed something, anything, Pyetr Pyetrovich could furnish you with it – for a price. Food, alcohol, ammunition – he was the man to get it for you. I found him in a tavern. He was unmistakable as one of the courageous few who still opted for elegant French fashions; though that appeared to be no obstruction to his businesslike discussion with a colonel in the artillery. When he had finished, I approached.

'Pyetr Pyetrovich?' I said, offering my hand.

'Yes,' he replied, taking my hand and trying to remember where he had seen me before.

'I'm Captain Danilov,' I told him. 'I was hoping you could help me, I'm looking for Domnikiia Semyonovna.' He looked at me blankly. 'For Dominique.'

'Ah!' he exclaimed, recognizing me at last. 'For Dominique.' He lowered his voice. 'I'm afraid, captain, that for the time being, that side of my business is closed – not that I have had any problems with it, I assure you. It's just that at the moment there are far better ways to earn a living. But once you boys can clear Bonaparte out of Moscow, then it will be business as usual, don't you worry.' He winked.

'I simply want to see her,' I explained with some restraint. 'She is a friend.'

'Really? A friend?' The concept appeared new to him. 'Well then, you'll find her in the hospital next to the church of Saint Nikolia. She's a nurse there.'

'A nurse?'

'They all are. There's a lot of sick soldiers in town.'

I headed for the hospital. It wasn't large, consisting of just two long rooms running at right angles to each other, with about twenty beds in each. I looked into the first and instantly recognized Domnikiia, bending over the bed at the furthest end of the room. I waited, my hand resting on the door post as I attempted to look relaxed. In fact, I was gripping it for support.

She stood up from the bed and began walking to the next one. She looked towards me. She was too distant to make eye contact, but as her eyes fell on me, her footsteps faltered slightly, as though she had turned an ankle. She recovered instantly and continued walking only as far as the next bed. She bent over the patient, spoke to him and fluffed his pillows. Then she moved on to the next patient, and the next and the next. As she approached she never looked directly at me. Though she moved so agonizingly slowly, still the force of her approach felt to me as if I were being charged down by a galloping stallion. A feeling of dreadful anticipation built up in me the closer she got. I could not step away and yet the prospect of her finally reaching me filled me with a sense of some great impending impact.

At last, having done her duty by each of the twenty men in the ward, she arrived at the door. She looked up at me with her beautiful slanting eyes and smiled her professional smile – as useful to her in her current profession as in her former.

'Good afternoon, Aleksei Ivanovich,' she said, giving away no hint of emotion. I merely smiled in reply. 'Step outside with me for a moment,' she continued.

She led the way out to a quiet courtyard. I felt my heart beating in my chest, begging to be set free. She turned and put her hands to my head, pulling me down on to her lips. We kissed so ardently, but also so briefly, before she pulled away and put her lips first to my forehead, then to my eyebrows, then to my eyes, then my cheeks, then my ears, then my chin, my neck, my hands, my palms and my fingers. I was for the moment a passive, compliant body as her lips marked out every piece of me as her territory. Finally, she raised my left hand to her lips and kissed the tiny webbing of skin between my middle finger and what remained of my ring finger. Then she leaned into my chest, her arms not embracing me but held up in front of her, crushed between us. Now she was offering passivity, and I held her tight to me with all my strength.

'I feared you were dead, Lyosha.'

'Why would you think that?'

'I didn't think it, I just feared it.'

'I watched you leave Moscow,' I told her. 'Early that morning.'

'Good,' she smiled up at me. 'I didn't see you.'

'I'm a professional,' I replied.

We began to walk, hand in hand; finger woven with finger.

'Why have you left Moscow so soon?' she asked.

'Dmitry was badly burnt in the fires. I brought him here.'

'You should have let him burn.' She changed her mind, almost without pausing. 'I'm sorry, he's your friend – important enough for you to bring here.'

'He wasn't for a little while, but I think we're over that now.'

'Why weren't you? Because of Maks?'

'And you.'

'So why did you come here to Yuryev-Polsky?'

'Dmitry suggested it. I wasn't too keen,' I said with a smirk. She made a tight little fist and jabbed me in the ribs.

'And your other friend, Vadim; is he here too?'

'No. As far as we know, he's still in Moscow. I'm hoping he'll join us.' It sounded hollow, even to me.

For the next couple of weeks, our relationship was the least physical it had ever been. I had found accommodation in a barracks near to where Dmitry was recovering, and Domnikiia was living in nurses' quarters. In the time that we had together we were forced to behave much like any other courting soldier and nurse thrown together by the forces of war. We spent our time talking and holding hands and walking round the town, and though it would be nice to say that through these conversations we learned to understand one another better than we ever had before, it simply wouldn't be true. Our conversations were no more and no less intimate or stimulating than those we had had naked and entwined in her bed in Moscow. For me, at least they had the benefit of being cheaper.

I told her much of what had happened since we had parted in Moscow; of the state of the city under French occupation and of the destruction brought by the fires. I told her of Boris and Natalia and how they had cared for us before we left, but I told her nothing of the Oprichniki and what I had discovered about them. I knew that I would have to tell her, but whenever an opportunity arose, I shied from it. My silence assisted the cosy delusion of safety which I had deliberately built for myself, but underneath, the terror was never far from my mind.

'You never ask about me,' she said one day from nowhere as we walked through a late summer's evening.

'I ask you every day what you've been up to,' I replied, mildly offended.

'I mean about who I am – about my life before you knew me.'

'Oh, that,' I said, and after a moment's pause, 'So tell me.'

'What would you like to know?'

'Everything' would have been the true answer, but specifics would be easier. I started with, 'Where were you born?'

'Moscow,' she replied. 'I've always lived in Moscow.'

'Never been outside?'

'I don't think I'd ever been three versts from where I was born, until I came here.'

'You must find Yuryev-Polsky very exotic,' I said.

'It's small and boring,' she said. It was an accurate summary.

'So where are your family?'

'I don't know,' she replied. 'My father owned a shop – a milliner's. We lived above it – him and my mother and my brother and me. We weren't rich, but he had ambition. He believed the best route to success was to make friends of his customers, if they were rich enough or important enough. But the rich get rich by not paying their bills until they have to, and he didn't feel he could ask people so much above him for something so grubby as payment of a bill.'