'Do you want me to be?' she asked, looking directly at me. I thought for a moment about my answer, but before I could speak, she continued. 'It's either/or.'

I gave an exaggerated frown, and then smiled. 'Fair enough.' Then I changed the subject. 'Maks said there were more stories of the plague along the Don.'

'There are. Only it's not a plague and it's not just on the Don.'

'How do you know it's not a plague?' I asked.

'The way they die. It's all rumour. Some people are saying their throats are cut, others that they've been strangled, others that they've been attacked by animals. One story is that the French have sent saboteurs to attack us from the south.'

It sounded unlikely, but then it also sounded somewhat like what Vadim, Dmitry, Maks and I had been commissioned to do against the French. 'How do you know all this?'

'Lots of traders come to Moscow from Tula, leaving their wives safely at home. Or not so safely, now there've been deaths in Tula itself.'

'In Tula?'

'Yes. I looked at the places on a map. They follow the river Don. Rostov, Pavlovsk, Voronezh.' She turned to me and smiled. 'I looked at Petersburg, too. Is it nice there?'

'Not as nice as here,' I said, somewhat dismissively, but I was too concerned by what she was saying. 'And you say it's reached Tula?'

'Today someone mentioned Serpukhov; I haven't looked that up yet.'

'Serpukhov?' I was shocked. 'That's only about eighty versts away.'

'Really? Are you worried?'

I tried to be reassuring. 'No, not really. They're just rumours. You know what these peasants are like. Someone catches cold and it's a new outbreak of plague.'

But as I left her, I still felt in need of some convincing myself. Any concerns were, however, soon pushed to the back of my mind. That evening, the Oprichniki arrived.

CHAPTER III

THERE WERE THIRTEEN OF THEM IN ALL. I HAD BEEN IN MY room, writing to Marfa, when I heard a knock at the door. It was Maks.

'They're here.'

In the dim light of Maks' oil lamp, I saw a tall figure that I took to be their leader greeting Dmitry with the warm hug of an old friend – a hug which Dmitry did not quite return. He was an impressive man. His age could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy. A domed forehead was underlined by thick, bushy eyebrows which topped a thin, aristocratic nose. Arched nostrils were almost hidden by a long moustache of dark iron-grey, which contributed to a general air of unkemptness. The moustache, like his hair, was unevenly trimmed, due perhaps to the lack of a mirror on his long journey. The general appearance of nobility fallen on hard times reminded me of the fleeing French aristocrats who had begun to arrive in Petersburg during my youth.

Dmitry introduced him to each of us in turn. In his reaction to us, he seemed to both mimic and amplify Dmitry's own attitudes. To Vadim, he showed respect and, without any explicit signals such as a salute or a click of the heels, greeted him as one old campaigner greets another. Of Maks, he was almost dismissive.

As he came to me, he took my hand in a firm grip and patted me on the back. I noticed his broad, squat fingers and coarse, dirty nails, which again contrasted with his refined demeanour. 'Aleksei Ivanovich, I'm very happy to meet you at last,' he said with a wide smile. As was to be expected, we all spoke in French. None of us understood the language of his country and there was no reason to suppose that he or any of them would know Russian – in that respect they had something in common with many of the Russian nobility. 'Dmitry Fetyukovich spoke frequently of you as we fought side by side against the Turk,' he continued. 'His friend is my friend.'

Our side of the introductions was complete, and the stranger fell silent. Vadim was the first to speak. 'Forgive me,' he said, 'but we still haven't heard your name.'

'My name?' he replied, as if surprised at even the suggestion that he might have a name. I glanced over to Dmitry, who surely must have known the visitor's name, but he was staring at the ground as though embarrassed.

'My name is Zmyeevich,' announced the stranger with a sudden resolution. It was not a genuine Russian name, although somewhere at the back of my mind it struck a distant resonance with memories from my childhood. Literally, the meaning was simple – 'son of the serpent'. I could only guess that it was a direct translation of his name from his own tongue.

He followed us to the private room in the inn that we always used for our meetings. As they trooped in behind him, I got my first real glimpse of his twelve companions. While he had the manner of an officer who had seen better days, they seemed to me as men who had never risen above the gutter. All were scruffy and dressed without style, or at best with the style of peasants. They shuffled, round-shouldered, into the room, failing to make eye contact with any of us. They might be mistaken for a gang of convicts except that their failure to look up at us came not from respect or even fear, but simply from an utter lack of regard for our existence. Though not tall, each was broad and stockily built. I would have feared them in a contest that depended solely on brawn, but not in one of wits. They were not the type that I would expect to see in the officers' mess.

Only the last of the twelve showed any interest at all in his surroundings. He was taller than the others, though not as tall as their leader, and was marked out by his long, blond hair. The others all had their hair cut short, no doubt to reduce the numbers of lice which I felt sure would otherwise have infested them. As this last man entered, his eyes rapidly glanced around the room, taking in his surroundings and briefly scanning the faces of the four Russian officers whom he was meeting for the first time. Then his eyes dropped and he sat down, taking on the same cowed posture that his comrades had borne all along.

Maks muttered a single word in my ear: 'Oprichniki.' Despite their lack of character, there was still a feeling of menace about them which, Maks could see as well as I, justified Dmitry's original description.

Zmyeevich had remained standing and now began to speak in very precise, but very formal and strangely accented French. His voice had a darkness to it and seemed to emit not from his throat but from deep in his torso. Somewhere inside him it was as if giant millstones were turning against one another, or as though the lid were being slowly dragged aside to open a stone sarcophagus.

'Greetings once again, old friends and new. Greetings to you, Vadim Fyodorovich' – he turned and bowed briefly to each of us as he spoke – 'to you, Maksim Sergeivich, to you, Aleksei Ivanovich and, of course, to you, our dearest of friends, Dmitry Fetyukovich.

'Dmitry Fetyukovich and I, and some of our friends here,' he said, waving a graceless hand towards the twelve who were sitting around him, 'first fought together some years ago against the old enemy from the east. The Turk has been an enemy of your beloved Russia for longer than any of you could remember and the first, famous battles of my own now long-distant youth were to defend my land from those same heathen invaders. But now the threat to all of us comes from where we might once have least expected it; from the west.

'While the unchristian Turk,' he continued, seeming not to notice the ripple of movement that his mention of the word 'unchristian' sent through the evidently pious twelve, 'cannot be blamed for his heresy, having learned it from his father and his father before him, Bonaparte has led his country to an abandonment of the Christ Whom that nation had long known and loved.' I felt that Maks was about to comment on the accuracy of this and I pressed my hand on his arm to keep him silent. This was not a debating society and his point of information would not be considered in order. Even so, it surprised me as much as Maks that Zmyeevich should try to turn this into a religious conflict. It seemed to me almost that he was protesting too much.