A Game of Soldiers. Stephen Miller

without arrest or embarrassment the whole event had become an exciting, giddy experience. Not something to tell their wives and children about, but nevertheless, a most unusual night. A thrill, even though somewhat frightening for a time, surely, but invigorating for all that, and even fun…

      ‘Hey!’ Dudenko suddenly cried out and rushed ahead to their cab. Two of the prostitutes were now angrily demanding a ride from Muta. Dudenko began waving them away but the girls simply parted and neatly circled him.

      ‘Thank you…thank you…ladies, I’m sorry we are full.’ Hokhodiev pushed the girls away, yanked Dudenko up on to the step.

      ‘This place looks like your home for the night, girls,’ Hokhodiev called out to them. The men at the door of the café laughed and one of the girls slung her bag at Hokhodiev as he got into the cab. Ryzhkov saw it was the angry one again, the same girl he had seen staring down the street. He watched as she pirouetted on the pavement in a complex negotiation between her friends and the laughing men in the doorway.

      He could see her closely. She was even more dishevelled now, certainly intoxicated, hysterical from the shock. Her tears had made dark rivers down her cheeks. Her nose was red, from crying. Attractive, if you went for women of that type. On the thin side. Yes, certainly, somewhat attractive. Even beautiful in a lewd, trashy way.

      Then suddenly there was the crack of Muta’s whip and she was gone.

       TWO

      Led by the splendid figure of Prince Nestor Vissarionovich Evdaev, two thousand horsemen proceeded along the embankment of the Yekaterininsky Canal, a route which took them past the Church of the Resurrection, a short way from the capital’s huge parade ground, the Field of Mars. It was a great plain, a huge rectangle with one end sliced off by the Moika and the Mikhailovsky Gardens, a corner defined by the Marble Palace, and one long flank bounded by the Summer Gardens.

      A breeze billowed down the canal, thick with the heat of an early summer and the many fragrances of soldiery. Prince Evdaev’s mount was Khalif; snow-white, his mane shorn and ribboned with satin – a perfect animal. For two weeks Zonta, his groom, had trained Khalif, fed him a secret diet devised by the old equerry. In preparation for today’s ceremonies Evdaev and his officers had returned to the gymnasium and he was hard now, his skin browned by the hot Russian sun, his legs strong, his moustaches waxed, freshly bathed and barbered that very dawn, his cheeks stung with a mint lotion. His valet had spent an hour polishing his helmet, his breeches were newly tailored for the occasion, his gloves chalked to perfection.

      Oh, and were the streets not glorious! No expense had been spared for today’s celebrations, only one of a year’s worth of events marking the 300th year of the Romanov dynasty. Oh, it was wrongheaded, of course. An extravagance. A veneration of incompetence. But nevertheless, Evdaev thought…glorious.

      Golden double-headed eagles, flags hanging from every lamp standard, decorations in every shop window. The evening before (only a few hours ago!) he had been here in the throng, giggling at the amazing fireworks overhead – a display especially designed by talented Spaniards, a gypsy family that specialized in the beautiful and the dangerous.

      They clattered along the cobbles that curved beneath the Church of the Resurrection. Evdaev looked up to the mosaics set into the bricks, the arms of the great royal families of Russia. Above he saw his own family’s arms – a burning flame suspended over a bloody stockade wall – the House of Evdaev. He bowed his head, made the sign of the cross, a small act of contrition as he rounded the site. The next time he raised his eyes he saw the ikons of the saints staring down at him and for just a moment he could see his own image there – his face transformed into a grinning skull, with eyes burning hellfire for eternity.

       Treason! I am committing treason!

      Was God watching him, protecting him? The church was new, only completed a few years earlier, and known as the Saviour on the Spilled Blood, because it had been built on the exact spot where Tsar Alexander II was killed. On that bloody day a terrorist had thrown a bomb as the Tsar arrived to visit his aunt. Alexander had escaped injury from the blast, and had even attempted to help wounded bystanders, truly a saintly act.

      But there was a second assassin lurking with a second bomb and Alexander had died in his palace, the bedroom preserved as it was when he’d succumbed; the bloodstained sheets, his last lists to himself. A water glass, reading glasses. Could Alexander’s ghost see into his traitor’s heart?

      There was still time, he thought.

      He could dismount, crawl up the steps to the church, confess and make his penance atop the bloodstained cobbles. Still time, still choices to make.

      But…thousands of hooves clattering on the road blended with the cheers of the bystanders – a buoyant, jittery torrent of sound. The crowd was screaming, their faces upturned; smiling red-faced shopkeepers off for the day, families dressed in their finest marshalling their children into some sort of order, newly arrived peasants transfixed with amazement, girls laughing with their hands covering their mouths, boys running ahead to keep the pace.

      Everything was too quick, everything was irrevocable. Evdaev held his breath, waiting for the dead Tsar’s revenge, waiting for a Romanov curse to strike him from the saddle.

      But it did not come.

      They rounded the church and gradually the apparitions vaporized behind him. Nothing ahead of him but cheering citizenry. No curse, no ghost, no revenge.

      ‘God give his blessings to you, sir!’ his young adjutant shouted to him, and Evdaev turned and saluted. ‘And to you, Lieutenant. But we are late, we’d better hurry along!’ He smiled, raised his sabre, and spurred Khalif into a canter as they reached the bridge. A scream of trumpets heralded their arrival and an immense cheer went up from all sides of the field.

      Evdaev sighted the blaze of lime spread across the ground ahead, all but eradicated by the caissons of the artillery and the herds of infantrymen who had shuffled across the field. By the time the trick riders of the Caucasian Regiment had done with their acrobatics – diving beneath their saddles to retrieve handkerchiefs tossed by the young grand duchesses – there was nothing but a chewed-up field of stubbly grass. Then, because of the extraordinary heat, his guardsmen had been delayed yet again by a comical team of sprinkling carts unloading themselves in a futile attempt to keep down the dust.

      Finally the whistles blew. Now his guardsmen waited – two thousand gleaming statues as the priests finished their blessings. There was no way that a regiment of cavalry could charge across the field and bring their mounts to an abrupt stop without some accident taking place. It could happen to anyone, a horse would certainly go down, bringing others with it. There would be blood, broken bones, fractured spines, death. Certainly it would occur here in just a few moments. Somewhere inside he was praying.

      Afterwards, after he had celebrated with his officers, he would go to meet Sergei.

      Somewhere secret, somewhere utterly safe. They would feast, and drink toasts to the success of their camarilla. Things were progressing well, he’d been informed. There was not much longer to wait. Surely before the year was out.

      Across the holy ground, soil that was consecrated with the blood of generations of Russia’s soldiers and their animals, sheltered within a gingerbread-trimmed pavilion, sat the man he was destined to supplant. Nicky. The Tsar. The Tsar of all the Russias. One sixth of the world’s surface. They had been children together, cadets. Courted and bedded the same ballerinas. A lifetime of memories.

      And soon…surely before the year was out. He would have to die. And the boy.

      Evdaev could see the royal family, Nicholas shuffling into his seat. The pretentious lieutenant’s dress uniform that he wore. Flaunting his power by dressing as a junior officer. Absurd. The dull eyes, the invisible smile beneath the moustaches that covered up his rotten teeth. Smiling and blinking. He’d grown into a silly, even weaker version of his childhood self.

      Soon.