'You shouldn't joke about that,' she said.

'Don't you believe in vampires?'

She stood up. 'Oh, I believe in vampires, Lyosha,' she said, a hint of anger in her voice, 'but you don't, I'm pretty sure. It's not fun to be teased for not being as smart as…'

I interrupted her. 'Didn't,' I said.

'What?'

'I didn't believe in them. I do now.'

She smiled a little. 'Well, that's one small victory for the peasant mind.' Then she shook her head. 'But they can't be. Why do you think they are?'

'You see,' I said. 'You have doubts.'

'I suppose. I don't know. Just because you believe in something doesn't mean you think you'll ever see it. How do you know?'

'I've seen them kill,' I said. 'I've seen them die.'

'My God,' Domnikiia murmured.

Suddenly, she got down on to her knees and started to frantically undo my shirt. Then, just as suddenly, she stopped.

'Thank God!' she exclaimed.

'What?'

'You're still wearing it.' She was staring at the icon that lay on my chest – the one that Marfa had sent me and that only now I remembered Domnikiia had insisted I wear.

'Will that help?' I asked.

'That's what they say. It has done so far, hasn't it?' She pulled from the neck of her dress a small silver crucifix on a chain. I had noticed it many times. 'I always wear this.' She kissed it and put it back. 'So it's not true that they live for ever?'

'No,' I replied. 'Seven of them are already dead.'

'Did you kill them?'

'Some of them. They're harder to kill, but they're mortal, like the rest of us.'

'I was always told they never age,' she said, her eyes gazing blankly at memories of childhood. 'They can't die, they can only be killed. Sunlight does it. Or a wooden stake, piercing their once-human heart.' It was astonishing how quickly we could both be taken to a world where such things were commonplace.

'What about fire?' I asked, still aware that I had no certainty in believing that Iuda and Ioann were dead.

She thought for a moment, then nodded. 'Yes, I think I heard that works too.' Then the reality of what we were discussing seemed to dawn on her. 'Is that how you did it?'

'Two of them,' I said. 'Maks killed three.'

She lay her head back down on my chest. 'Good old Maks,' she said quietly. I hoped that she would raise the question of how Maks had died, knowing that I never could, but she remained silent. I watched a tear creep across her cheek and become absorbed into her skin. When she spoke, it was not to discuss Maks.

'It would be lovely to never age,' she said. 'To always be young and have the vitality of youth.'

'And to watch all of your friends age and die around you,' I added.

'It wouldn't have to be like that. What if we were both vampires?' Her mood was almost deliberately light-hearted. 'We could live for ever together. If we did no one any harm, they'd leave us alone. Don't you think you could love me for ever?'

'They have no life and they have no love,' I said with all the gravity I could muster. 'They have hunger. They have to eat and they enjoy causing pain as they do it.'

'But that's probably just what they were like in life. We'd be like us. Do you think any man would refuse to have his blood drunk by a vampire as pretty as me – and then be made immortal by it too?'

This was too much. I leapt to my feet, causing her to fall to the hard wooden floor. I grabbed the dagger I had been carving and held it out to her, simply to show to her, not to threaten, but I don't think she saw it like that.

'Do you know what this is for?' I shouted. 'This is to kill them – to stab them in the heart, because that's the way to destroy them. They can't be killed like men because, as men, they died a long time ago.' Without getting up off the floor, she backed up against the wall with a look of fear in her eyes which, I'm sorry to say, I enjoyed seeing. 'If you were a vampire, people would hunt you down and kill you in just the same way. And they'd be right to do it, because these things are monsters – animals – worse than animals, because they once had souls enough to know right from wrong.'

I flung the dagger back across the room and threw myself on my bed. She sat huddled in against the wall, right next to the bed, silent and thoughtful, but showing no sign of moving from the uncomfortable position. It was an hour before either of us spoke.

'I didn't mean it,' she said moodily. 'It would be a fantasy to have you to myself for a year, let alone for ever.'

I should have replied, but I didn't. Five minutes later she stood up and left the room.

Domnikiia never visited me again in Yuryev-Polsky. While he had been in hospital, and after, she had taken to calling on Dmitry. She did this, I think, largely for my sake, since she had no reason to like him, and also out of some sense of duty as a nurse. Even after we argued, she continued to visit him, and so our paths still crossed occasionally; she was always polite, but always devastatingly formal. No more 'Lyosha's emanated from her lips.

I occasionally came across Margarita too. Like Domnikiia, she was working as a nurse, although the rumours from some of the soldiers under her care were that she was still keeping her hand in at her former trade. I begged her to talk to Domnikiia for me, or to tell me what I should say to her myself.

'Can't you even work that out?' she said with an uncalled-for hostility that I felt came to her from Domnikiia.

'If I knew what to say, I'd have said it.'

'But you didn't.'

'So what should I say?'

'What would you say to your wife?' replied Margarita acidly.

'I can't help being married,' I explained, but evidently I had missed the point. With a sharp 'tut', she turned and left.

The day after my argument with Domnikiia, it had snowed for the first time. It was early – October had only just begun – and the snow was very light, not even trying to settle. Many versts away in Moscow, that same snow must have placed a chill in Bonaparte's soul. He had not planned to spend the winter in Russia.

Just over a week later, news came that the Grande Armée had at last quit Moscow and was heading out of the city to the southwest. Bonaparte had stayed for five weeks – just as the wave stays for a few moments at the top of the beach – before understanding that he had won a worthless trophy. Now his starving army had to flee for safety, with a reinvigorated Russian army in full pursuit.

I went to see Dmitry. His hands and arms were, though scarred, almost fully usable. His beard was not growing back. He did not shave it off completely, but left the smooth, ruddy bald patch so that all could see the long straight scar from a French sabre that the flames had been unable to erase. We discussed the news from Moscow.

'So what do you plan to do?' he asked.

'Get back as soon as possible. Half the town will be setting off there in the next few days.'

'Wouldn't it be better to join up with the regular army? Moscow's no longer the battlefield. We should be chasing the French.'

'We have to try and make contact with Vadim. And let the Oprichniki know what's happening.' The first half of what I said had been honest.

Dmitry thought for a moment. 'We can't be sure that he or they are still in Moscow. I'm planning to go south and join up with the main body of the army. If Vadim's there, I'll get word to you. You go to Moscow.'

I decided to test the water. There had been a thousand opportunities in the weeks since our departure from Moscow, but, as with Domnikiia, I had always put it off. Now was my last chance, at least for a while, and I knew that if there was any hint in Dmitry of the loathing of the Oprichniki that dwelt in me, then there was a chance that he could once again be turned into a formidable ally.