Authors: Jasper Kent
Still Dmitry held his hand in the air, like the conductor of some orchestra, holding off for as long as possible the delicious resolution of a suspended chord. When the boat was close enough – close enough for the men on board to dream that their assault might be successful – he dropped his hand, and accompanied the motion with a shout of ‘Fire!’ Again the order was echoed down the line, followed eagerly by the report of gunfire. At that range, not even a Russian musket could miss its mark – and there were far more muskets than there had been men on the boat.
With a slight thump, the vessel hit the northern bank of the river, but no one was able to disembark. They were fools to have attempted a landing in this weather. For all his faults, Tsar Nikolai understood how Russia fought a war and had expressed it very clearly. ‘Russia has two generals in whom she can confide – Generals
Janvier
and
Février
.’ It was true, even as far south as this. It was the Russian winter that had defeated Napoleon, and the same winter that, so far, was holding off this new French assault. But January was over, and February was the shortest month, and then there would be ten more when the Russians would have to fight alone, without the assistance of Nikolai’s two favourite generals.
Another shout came from further down the line. Dmitry spurred his horse and rode on to see what was happening. This time it was a minor success by the pontoniers – they had managed to lash together two sections of a bridge, spanning perhaps a tenth of the total width of the river. Russian artillery fire quickly saw off the attack, destroying in seconds the work of many hours, along with
most
of the workers. Dmitry sat and watched impassively. The snow was stopping now, but it had done its work. It would soon be dark, and the enemy would not attack at night. Sevastopol was safe; until tomorrow.
The storm had settled down overnight and the following day was calm and clear, though it was still cold and the ground remained blanketed in snow. There had been no word of a further attempt to cross the river – the enemy had lost enough men and equipment to make them think twice about trying that route of attack again. Today Dmitry was off duty, back in the centre of the city. He sat in the mess at the Nikolai Barracks, trying to write a letter.
Dear Papa
,
That was as far as he got. He knew precisely what he wanted to express. The problem was he had written the same thing in a hundred different ways before, and always with the same response: no response at all. He rested his head back against the chair and tried not to think too hard. As ever, when he relaxed, music came to him. It had been so since he was a child, whole orchestras playing in his head, music that was familiar and yet strange. The harmony was harmony that he knew. The rhythms and counterpoints were all of a kind that would be accepted as correct by a professor of music, though perhaps frowned upon for being a little too avant-garde. But it was all original. Certainly Dmitry could summon up a well-known tune, but when he simply let the music flow through him, it was a creation of his own, something that neither he nor anyone else had ever heard before. In the whole of his forty-seven years, he didn’t believe it had ever repeated itself. But neither in that time had he ever managed to write a single note of it down on paper.
Perhaps one day it would happen, but he wouldn’t attempt to force it. Today it was with words that he was trying to express himself. The last time he had heard from his father had been in 1847. Neither of them had corresponded with enormous frequency, but it had been common for there to be one or two letters in each direction every year. Of course, 1848 had its significance. That was the year Dmitry’s mother had died. Many people in Petersburg had died, when both famine and cholera had
struck
the city. Marfa Mihailovna had been wealthy enough to have no concern over the famine, but disease was no respecter of status. Dmitry had not even been at home to comfort her, or to bury her.
But it was hard to see why that should have stopped Dmitry’s father from writing. Marfa had not been his wife in any real sense for years. It was his mistress, Domnikiia Semyonovna, who had followed him into exile after his participation in the Decembrist Uprising, thirty years before. Dmitry had loved his father for his stance against the tsar, but hated him for choosing his lover over his wife. But as the years had passed, the heroism of the former had eclipsed the human failing of the latter. And in truth it was Marfa who had made the choice, in not following her husband to Siberia. Long before her death she had forgiven her husband his infidelity, and urged Dmitry to do the same.
And so Aleksei’s distant silence made even less sense. There was the possibility that it was down to censorship. Dmitry was well aware that the Third Section read all letters to and from exiles; and a few more besides, he would guess. But he’d always been careful not to write anything that would cause them to be intercepted, and his father had been wise enough to do the same. Neither of them ever made mention of military matters, or politics, or mentioned Tsar Nikolai without expressing the deepest and sincerest affection for him – and without any hint of irony.
Dmitry looked down at the paper again, but still could not think of a way to express himself. It was simple enough; he just needed to say, ‘Please write, however little you put, however you wish to insult me, just to let me know you’re alive.’ But Dmitry already knew his father was alive. If he had died, Dmitry would have been informed. He knew other sons of Decembrist exiles who had been. By his reckoning, there could only be a score or so of them left alive – but his father was undoubtedly one of them.
He tried to stop thinking and listen again to the music in his head, in the hope that it would help him. Instead, all he heard was a vaguely familiar gypsy melody, played on the mess’s out-of-tune piano. He did not need to look round to know that Prince Galtsin had come into the room and gone straight to the instrument. The rivalry between them was unspoken. Dmitry was convinced he was
the
better pianist, but Galtsin had the more popular repertoire; around here at least. Dmitry had seen the appeal of peasant music in his youth, but as he had grown older it had struck him as increasingly trivial. But Dmitry’s tastes did not chime with those of the common – or even the noble – soldier. He found his playing more in favour among the ladies of Saint Petersburg.
Eventually Galtsin finished the piece and a round of applause broke out through the mess. ‘
Bis
!
Bis
!’ cried a voice that Dmitry did not recognize, but he did not look round for fear that he might seem to agree with the sentiment.
‘Perhaps Mitka would like to play for us,’ said Galtsin, raising his voice to be sure Dmitry would hear him.
‘The regiment seems spoilt for talent,’ said the unknown voice.
‘Come on, Mitka,’ said Galtsin. ‘You know you want to.’
Dmitry stood and turned, his eyes immediately fixing on the figure standing beside Galtsin at the piano. It was a naval lieutenant of perhaps thirty-five years. What many would immediately note in him was his height, but as Dmitry approached, he realized that their eyes were on the same level. Dmitry was a tall man, and this newcomer matched him exactly. What struck Dmitry was his leanness. He was thin, but not skinny, as though every limb was composed solely of muscle, from what Dmitry could judge through the uniform. Certainly on his neck and jaw the flesh was sculpted as though part of some ancient statue.
‘Anatoliy Vladimirovich Tyeplov,’ said Galtsin, introducing them. ‘Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov.’
They shook hands. Tyeplov’s grip was as firm as Dmitry had expected.
‘Danilov?’ said Tyeplov. ‘Son of Aleksei …’
‘Son of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov,’ Dmitry completed. ‘The Decembrist.’ Nobody had ever held Dmitry’s father’s actions against him. For all his faults, the tsar had been scrupulous in announcing that no stain should attach itself to the innocent relatives of any of the conspirators, however close the relationship might be.
‘Of course,’ said Tyeplov happily. ‘I knew I’d heard the name somewhere.’ As he spoke, he fiddled with the fingers of his left hand, as if toying with a ring that he evidently did not possess.
‘Play
for us,’ he added, indicating the piano as Galtsin vacated the seat.
Dmitry sat down and considered. He was not going to pander to the crowd, as Galtsin had. There was one composer whom Dmitry loved above all others, and over whose early death he still sometimes felt the desire to weep. The officers in the mess would be bored with his work, if they knew enough to recognize Dmitry’s obsession. Even so, Chopin it would be. But what piece? He let his hands fall to the keyboard, his left little finger and right thumb falling on two low Cs, an octave apart. Then his hands wandered upwards over the keys, always with the same interval between them, before the piece settled into the slow, sublime six-four of Chopin’s first ballade.
He lost himself in the music, enjoying the fast, complex arpeggios and the huge, understated main theme, letting it flow into him as well as out of him. The music seemed to tell him a story of mystery and joy, of adversity and victory, that he could never quite remember once it had ended, like the details of a dream. It was a story of which he was the narrator, but as with his own music, he could not both create it and consume it at the same time. He felt as though he had scarcely begun when he heard that the music had come to an end. His hands were still, sustaining the final low Gs. He breathed deeply. He had lost any sense of time, but he knew that the piece usually took him about ten minutes. He resisted the urge to move on to the second ballade, hearing the pa-pom, pa-pom of its opening notes only in his head. Galtsin was standing over on the far side of the room with a glass of vodka in his hand, chatting in a low voice. Others were displaying the minimum of polite interest that they could get away with.
Only Tyeplov remained, leaning on the piano and staring at Dmitry with a look of surprised rapture that would only be expected from a man who was listening to Chopin for the first time in his entire life.
Dmitry paced angrily through the slush-filled streets of Sevastopol. Winter was departing, sooner than he had expected, but then he was used to the weather in Petersburg, far to the north. When the siege had first begun, the previous autumn, he had wondered
whether
in winter the harbour itself might freeze over, making the journey between the north and south of the city easier. But it was a foolish idea, now he knew the climate. He’d even imagined the possibility that if the harbour did freeze then the enemy might be able to march across its icy surface and into the city. He’d soon dismissed the fear. A few well-aimed cannonballs would break up the ice and send the troops fleeing back to land.
His mind went back, as so often, to 14 December 1825. He’d not seen it but he had heard how many of the fleeing rebels ran out on to the frozen Neva to escape, only for Nikolai to order just the same tactics. The ice over the river was broken into pieces, and many brave men froze or drowned. For months Dmitry had believed that his closest friend had thus perished. Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov had been like a second father to Dmitry, often understanding him better than his own father did. After the uprising Vasiliy had gone into hiding and written to both Dmitry and his mother from Prussia. And when he finally returned to his homeland, it had been under a different name: Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin. Tsar Nikolai had a long memory, and was not likely to forgive anyone who could be identified as having stood in Senate Square that day. Dmitry was lucky not to have been so identified – he had both his father and Yudin to thank for it, but in saving him, they had made him a coward.
Today Dmitry was heading to the Severnaya – the northern part of Sevastopol, a region of the city which held no real danger, not for the moment. When the Allies had first landed, they had come at Sevastopol from the north, but believed the defences were too strong and so circled round to the south, only to be met by Lieutenant-Colonel Totleben’s improvised but utterly effective fortifications. Now, it was Russian troops that occupied the territory here and all the way to the isthmus at Perekop, the narrow link to the mainland. But things could change.
There were many boats waiting on the harbour shore, eager to transport both soldiers and civilians across to the north. Dmitry stepped into the nearest and sat down on the thwart. Without a word, the oarsman cast off and began the slow, short journey. There had been talk of assembling a pontoon bridge to make the crossing easier, but nothing had come of it yet. There was more
than
one general who suspected the men would fight with greater bravery if they knew there was no prospect of retreat. Even so, desertions were commonplace, as was demonstrated by Dmitry’s duty today.
The water was calm, and the only sound was that of the oars as they dipped in and out of it. It was a moment for Dmitry to relax. He looked out across the water. To his right the harbour split. The main part – the Sea Harbour – stretched out east, while pointing south there was a smaller branch known as the Military Harbour. The British, so he had heard, called it the Man-of-War Harbour.
But it was to the west that the real interest lay. Out to sea, only versts away, the British and French fleets stood, waiting. It was from them that the real threat came; their guns that had caused the severest damage during the first bombardment back in October. There were big guns on land too, but they were as nothing compared to what the ships had. The fleet had remained quiet, mostly, for months now, but in the spring they’d be heard again. At least they couldn’t simply sail into the harbour and land marines. Two narrow strips of white, breaking waves stretching across the water were testimony to that, one only a little way from the dinghy, the other at the very boundary between the harbour and the Black Sea.