The Empire of Time

54

Katerina. Let me tell you about Katerina.

The day is freezing cold, even for March in that northern latitude. Novgorod in winter is cold, with the wind coming off Lake Ilmen and the frozen Baltic, but this day is bitter even by its severe standards. Ice clings to my lashes and brows, and as Ernst and I make our way to the merchant’s house, we pull our thick furs close about our necks and hunch forward, taking care not to slip on the snow-covered logs that constitute the main street.

Novgorod at this time – and we are speaking of 1237 Anno Domini, or Year 6746 by the old Orthodox calendar – is a sprawling metropolis of thirty thousand souls. But it is still a frontier town. Few of its buildings are made of stone. Like Moscow, it is a town built of wood, a product of the primeval forest that covers all these northern lands.

But before you get things wrong, Moscow in this Age, important as it is, is little more than a military outpost. Novgorod is the capital of the north, a thriving city-state with massive colonies between the White Lake and Lake Kubenskoe – in the Zavoloch’e, ‘Beyond the Portage’. It was to Novgorod – or, to be pedantic, to Gorodishche, the old town, just to the south, known also as Holmgarthr and Nemogardas, that the Varingians, later called the Rhos, or Rus, first came a full five centuries ago, from their homelands in the Aland Islands and central Sweden. The same men who, in time, became the grand princes of Kievan Rus’.

For its time, this is a massive city. Only the cities of ancient China are larger. Twenty-five volosti, or districts, sprawl across both banks of the Volkhov river, each a small town in itself. We are heading for the west bank, the Sofiyskaya storona, or ‘cathedral side’ as it’s known, the great square church of St Sophia, with its golden cupolas, looking out across the river to the eastern bank, the Torgovaya Storona, or ‘Trade Side’.

This is not my first visit. For two years now I have been cultivating contacts in the town, posing as a German merchant from Lubeck. This is Ernst’s project, and I am only one of four agents helping him, but Ernst confides in me, and I repay his confidence by aiding him as often as I can.

That is why I am there that day, walking at Ernst’s side as we cross the narrow wooden bridge that spans the turbulent Volkhov, heading up past the onion domes of St Sophia to see the merchant.

Mikhail Razumovsky is a relatively new contact, a rich boyar with trading links in Scandinavia. Ernst met him a week ago through a mutual friend, and they got drunk together. The invitation to supper came three days back. And so it is that we struggle against the wind that whips the snow up from the logs, even as the sun begins to set.

I pause on the steep path that leads up from the river, seeing the raw beauty in the day. The sun is a low, orange circle balanced on the dark edge of the world. Beneath it, huge bars of red-gold light lay on the rooftops and on the patchwork of lakes and rivers beyond. But it is the forest that awes me most, for it stretches all the way to the horizon, covering the land so densely that the night seems to well up from its dark and endless reach.

There is no darkness like the darkness of northern Russia, and when night falls one can believe that the world is in the grip of some force far older than Man.

Two blazing torches light the wooden gateway to our host’s residence. Razumovsky himself comes out to greet us, a tall man with a bushy black beard and fierce dark eyes. He embraces Ernst, slapping his back like they are the oldest of friends, then leads us across the frozen courtyard.

We are expecting a small, private meal with our host, but we are not alone. A dozen or more faces – heavily bearded, some familiar, others not – grin back at us from about the long table as we enter the room. A huge log fire blazes in one corner of the room, crackling fiercely, its smoke rushing up into the ceiling gap, yet the men still wear their heavy furs at table.

‘Ernst!’ one of them, a big man with an impressive bright red beard calls out. ‘Come! Sit with me!’

The table is stacked high with food and wine. There’s meat enough to feed a small army, let alone this gathering. This is not the ‘supper’ we were promised, but a feast – a bratchina.

I look to Razumovsky and smile. ‘We have not met before, Mikhail. My name is Otto.’

And, taking off my gloves, I shake his hands firmly and then embrace him, holding him close a moment, as is their fashion.

Razumovsky grins. ‘I’m glad to meet you, Otto. You speak our language well for a Nemets.’

‘I try,’ I say, then let myself be led to a place beside my host.

Ernst is deep in conversation with the big man. I don’t recognise him, but Ernst clearly knows him well.

Razumovsky leans close, speaking to my ear. ‘I didn’t know your friend, Ernst, knew the tysiatskii.’

I look again, surprised. So the big man is Novgorod’s military commander, second only to the posadnik in the civil administration of the town. The two men work with the prince to govern Novgorod and, like him, are elected by the veche, the council of boyars.

I look around the table, reassessing the situation. Far from being a simple supper, Razumovsky has gathered together a small yet impressive group of men. Five of them, at least, I know to be on the veche, and of the others, at least two are merchants of considerable wealth. I smile and nod, acknowledging each in turn, then look to Razumovsky.

It is not their way to be direct, and so I do not ask him what the purpose of the gathering is. Instead I ask a simple question. ‘Your family, Mikhail… they are in good health?’

Razumovsky grins at the question, his poor, yellowing teeth showing through his thick black beard. ‘Most well, thank you, my friend. Indeed, you will meet them in a while. They would have greeted you ordinarily, but we were not sure when you would come, and besides, Masha is supervising the slaves. But here now… here they are!’

He stands, and a moment later all about the table rise to their feet as two women enter, small trays of drinks held out before them. Heads bow respectfully, and I lower mine in accord with their custom. Yet as I raise it again, I look across and meet her eyes…

And catch my breath, for there, before me, is such a beauty as I’ve never yet beheld. Her eyes are like the bluest of lakes, and yet so deep…

And in that single, fateful moment I am lost to her. I do not even know her name, only that, in that instant, her soul has touched mine, and fused.

She looks down, blushing, even as her father goes to her and, grinning with pleasure, parades her for his fellow boyars.

I stand there, unable not to stare, conscious that if any there were to study me, they would see at once my fixed attention on her. Even so, I cannot help myself. I drink in the sight of her.

‘Ernst, Otto, may I present my eldest daughter, Katerina.’

Katerina. The very word seems to glow with special meaning. Yet now I feel embarrassed. I look away, flustered, disturbed by the suddenness, the very strength of what I am feeling.

‘And this,’ he continues, ‘is my wife, Masha.’

I look back and see how the girl is staring at me now, her eyes wide, questioning. What has happened? she seems to ask. Who are you and what do you want of me?

Yet even as our eyes make contact, she quickly looks away.

Her eyes – I speak as if she is but a pair of eyes. But it is so. Her hair is dark and lustrous, her figure the full figure of Russian womanhood. A beauty she is, without doubt, yet it is her eyes I fall in love with.

‘She does you credit, Mikhail,’ one of the guests – Vavilov, I think it is – cries out. ‘She’ll make young Oleg Alekseevich a good wife!’

Her eyes find mine. There is shock in them now and pain, the very mirror of my own, for in those brief, few seconds I have both found and lost the woman of my dreams.

‘So she will!’ Razumovsky crows, his self-satisfied grin seeming to mock me. ‘The banns are to be read next week in St Sophia’s, and the wedding will follow in the spring.’

He puts his arm about his daughter’s shoulders and squeezes her to him, oblivious of her suffering. ‘May they have many children!’

Goblets are raised, and all about that table a dozen bearded faces grin broadly as they robustly echo Razumovsky’s hideous words.

‘Many children!’

55

I can remember little else of that evening Only that my heart has been torn from me. On returning to our rooms in the Peterhof, I lock my door and refuse to talk to Ernst. He knows that something has happened, but what it is, he can only surmise. I am no lover, after all. If anything I have a reputation for being a cold fish when it comes to love. Besides, he’s drunk, and far from capable of riddling it out.

‘Otto… what is it?’

But how can I answer? It seems ridiculous even to me. Do I know this girl? Then how can I say I am in love with her? Besides, there are strict rules – laws more than guidelines – to which we travellers must adhere, and the most important of those is not to spill our seed anywhere in the past. Things can be complex enough without messing up the gene pool.

And if sex is forbidden, how much more so love?

I know my duty. My duty is to forget the girl and get on with things. I am not here to fall in love. I am here to help Ernst undermine the current Prince of Novgorod, Alexander Iaroslavich. But I am hurting so badly I cannot focus on my duty. All I can think of is that I have met someone, and that that someone – Katerina – seems to want me as much as I want her. To no avail. For she’s to be married shortly.

I should have gone back, right then. Jumped back to the platform and confessed to Hecht. They might have treated me, erased my memory of her, perhaps, or cured me by some subtler means. Yet I do not want to be cured. It is as if some strange sickness has overtaken me. Wherever I look I see her eyes, staring back at me, as naked in their love for me as mine for her. And even when I close them, there she is.

Such nights are endless torment. Dawn finds me sitting on my bed, staring at my hands, the situation unresolved. I want to go to Razumovsky and tell him how I feel about his daughter; to throw myself at his mercy and beg him to break off the engagement and marry her to me. But the man would only take that as an insult, and then Ernst’s long-worked-at schemes would be undone.

No. Directness is not an option. What then? Be sly? Pursue the girl by covert means?

I know what that would mean. It would be dangerous, for it would mean defying all that this society believes in. A young woman like her will be protected from all suitors but her future husband. Why, even to glimpse her, as I had glimpsed her, was a privilege allowed only to the few. Most of the time their women are kept well out of sight of prying males, in the Byzantine fashion, closeted away inside the terem, where only women are allowed to venture.

The day is barely an hour old when Ernst comes and knocks upon my door. I unlock it, then sit again.

‘Otto? Are you all right?’

I look up at him, then shake my head. ‘I’m not well, Ernst. I need to go back.’

Ernst sighs, then sits beside me. ‘I didn’t think you were. You barely touched your drink last night.’

I smile faintly. Ernst smiles back, then places his hand on my shoulder. ‘Can it wait half a day? There’s something I have to do, and I really do need your help.’

‘I don’t know…’

‘I have to see Razumovsky again. I told him that you were far more important than I’d first made out. I said that you were the representative of certain trading concerns from Utrecht, and that you could get him silver. I would have briefed you last night, only…’

I look down. The last place I need to go this morning is Razumovksy’s, for she is certain to be there.

‘Okay. But I leave, once we’re done?’

‘Of course!’ And he slaps my back, Russian-style. ‘Good. Then grab your furs. It’s bloody cold out there.’

56

The place looks different in the daylight. Less magical. What’s more it smells, though faintly, thank Urd. These houses are all the same, an enclosed stockade with a single gateway and buildings to all four sides of the main courtyard which doubles as a rubbish dump. In summer the place would stink worse than a farmyard.

Razumovsky’s steward meets us and leads us through, into the same huge room where we sat last night, only cleared now, the table against the far wall, the benches stacked away elsewhere.

I sniff the air, as if to get her scent.

It’s several minutes before Razumovsky finally makes an appearance. He’s in his shirtsleeves despite the cold. He looks to have been washing, for even as he greets us a servant brings in his jacket and a thick fur hat, which he pulls on.

He looks at me differently this morning, as if I have been concealing something from him. Yet he doesn’t seem displeased. If anything, he’s more respectful.

‘I’m told,’ he begins, glancing at Ernst, ‘that you can get us silver.’

I meet Razumovsky’s eyes – brown, not blue – then reach into the deep pocket of my furs and bring out the heavy cloth bag Ernst gave me and hand it to the merchant.

With what seems indecent haste, Razumovsky goes to the table and, untying the mouth of the bag, spills its contents out on to the surface.

Twenty tiny ingots of pure silver, each stamped with the symbol of the town of Utrecht.

He looks up at me and grins. ‘If this is pure…’

‘It’s pure,’ I say. ‘Take one and test it.’ I smile. ‘I trust you, Mikhail.’

He nods, then slips one into the pocket of his jacket. ‘Okay. But just how much silver can you get?’

‘How much would you like?’

He laughs, as if I am playing with him now. Then, seeing that I’m serious, his eyes narrow. ‘I need to—’

‘Ask?’

‘Yes.’

There’s a moment’s silence – the silence of mutual understanding – between us, and then he grins again and takes my arm firmly. ‘I think, dear Otto, we shall become good friends.’

And, turning, he shouts into the darkness of the passageway behind. ‘Oleg! Bring us more wine to celebrate!’

Turning back, he grins and nods once more. ‘Such good, dear friends…’

57

If there is one thing these Russians can do, it’s drink. We pull out a bench and sit and talk and drink. And so the morning slowly passes. Yet Fate, which has thrown me back into Razumovsky’s house, has one further twist for me that morning. Two hours have passed and, feeling light-headed, I stand and beg Razumovsky’s excuse while I go to empty my bladder. I know the way. Twice the previous evening I had sought out the crude pit at the back of the house.

As I stand there on the wooden boards, pissing down into the hole, I think of her. No less romantic place could there be for such thoughts, yet she fills my mind, as she has done all morning. Even as Ernst, Razumovsky and I talked, I was wondering all the while just where she was in the house – whether above me or to the side, whether to my left or right – as if that knowledge were the most important thing I might possess. I had hoped – vain hope, I know – that she might stray into the room, to see her father, perhaps. Yet as the hours passed I’d grown resigned. I was to be tormented. To be this close, yet be denied the sight of her.

I button up and step out into the dark, narrow corridor, but I have not gone three paces when I hear the soft rustle of cloth behind me. I turn, my hand going to my belt to seek my knife. Yet I know who it is. I utter her name, the word the merest breath.

‘Katerina?’

She comes close, a dark, mysterious shape in that stifling darkness, then leans yet closer and whispers in my ear.

‘Don’t say a word. If my father were to know…’

The smell of her is intoxicating; not perfume, but her own sweet bodily scent. I close my eyes, savouring the softness of her breath upon my neck. And then, heaven itself, her hand brushes my arm and seeks my left hand, her fingers lacing with my own.

‘Tomorrow,’ she whispers. ‘In the marketplace after morning service. In the lane beside the cathedral.’

And saying that, she squeezes my hand and lets it go, moving back into the darkness.

I stand there a moment, as if bewitched, then put my hand to my face, smelling it, seeking even the faintest trace of her, my skin tingling from the touch of her.

Sweet Urd, I think. Oh gods protect me!

But it is far too late. I know now that I’ll not go back. Tomorrow. I shall be seeing her tomorrow.

58

But Ernst has other plans.

Back at our rooms, he tells me what he’s arranged for that afternoon. We are to jump forward six years, to a specific date and time. There we’ll make a detailed note of circumstances before returning here. It’s fairly routine. We often do this, to measure just how the changes we are making are affecting history. Only this once I do not want to know, because she will be there. Katerina. Six years older. And I will learn just how she’s filled those years.

If I dare ask.

I should have done it then. I should have told Ernst and let him solve the problem for me. No doubt he would have sent me back, taken me off the project. But I will never know. And why? Because I didn’t tell him.

And so we jump back to 2999 and the platform, and then jump again, to Novgorod, but this time in the summer of 1243.

The town has barely changed, though without its winter coat it seems transformed. There is a bustle to the place, as well as a stench. Traders from Denmark and Sweden, Finland and Germany, Byzantium and the Bulgar kingdom crowd its streets, their carts piled high with the produce of a dozen different cultures: silks and spices, jewellery and furs, glass bracelets and beautiful, colourful necklaces, woollen cloth and tubs of wax, carved bone and leather goods, pottery and – most rare of all – silver; oriental dirhams mainly, but with a scattering of ingots from the west.

Ernst looks about him as we push through the crowd, seeking a face he knows, but there are only strangers here.

He turns to me, yelling above the noise. ‘Razumovsky’s!’

It’s what I feared, yet at the same time I am compelled to go. I cannot stop thinking about her, not for a second. To not know what has befallen her – that’s an impossibility. I have to know. And yet I fear it. Fear the hurt I know is in store for me.

As we climb the steep, log-lined thoroughfare, between those endless, windowless wooden houses, I imagine what I’ll find. There will be children – four at least, maybe five – for that’s a woman’s role in this time and place. But what of her? Will her eyes still shine? Or would the drudgery of marriage have aged her – worn down her soul until the light in her was doused?

The place has barely changed. Razumovsky’s sign – a red boar’s head – has been carved and then painted on a rounded shield and hung beside the gate. Otherwise all is as I remember it.

Ernst bangs loudly on the gate, then turns and smiles at me.

‘Next time we come, we’ll see a change, eh, Otto? Razumovsky doesn’t know his luck! He’ll be able to pull this shit-house down and build himself a palace with what he makes from us!’

But I am only half listening. The truth is I feel sick just thinking about what lies ahead.

The gate creaks back.

‘Masters?’

It is the steward, Oleg. The last six years have aged him badly, bent him like an old man. He blinks at us, then stands back, letting us pass.

‘Is your master home?’ Ernst asks.

‘He is, merchant. If you would follow me.’

The place stinks, but no more than any other in the town. Even the prince’s quarters stink at this time of the year. Yet it reminds me once more of how crude this age is, how uncivilised. And not merely its dwellings, but the people, too.

Mad. I have to be mad even to think what I am thinking at that moment. Yet I cannot stop myself. I can feel her fingers interlaced with mine, feel the soft warmth of her sweet breath on my neck, and know I am lost.

Razumovsky takes his time appearing, and when he does it’s clear that he’s drunk. Bleary-eyed, he stands in the far doorway, swaying slightly, staring in at us as if looking at two strangers. He gives a grunt. ‘Oh, it’s you. I wondered when you’d show your pasty faces.’

Ernst seems taken aback. ‘Mikhail?’

But Razumovsky doesn’t seem to care. He comes across and sits, kicking out at the dog that’s lying under the table. It runs from him, yelping.

Razumovsky wipes his mouth, then turns, looking back at his steward. ‘Oleg! Bring me a drink!’

As Oleg scuttles off, I look to Ernst. ‘Maybe we should come back. When he’s not…’

‘Drunk?’ Razumovsky stares at me, his red eyes challenging. ‘If you’d had my misfortune, you’d want to stay drunk.’

‘Misfortune?’ Ernst takes a step towards him, but the merchant raises his hand as if to fend him off. The drunken slur has gone from his voice. Now there’s only bitterness.

‘Since that arrogant bastard beat your fellows on the lake nothing has been the same. His faction rules here now. And woe to those who once opposed them. What trade I had has vanished, like the sun in winter.’

‘Prince Iaroslavich?’

Razumovsky sneers. ‘Nevsky, as they call him now.’ He turns his head and spits. ‘Curse the day his mother bore him!’

‘And your daughter?’ I ask.

Ernst looks to me, puzzled. It’s such a non sequitur, that even I am surprised that I’ve asked.

Razumovsky stares at me, then shrugs. ‘I do not see her, trader. Her husband…’

I understand, or think I do. The husband is part of the triumphant faction. To mix with Razumovsky – even as his father-in-law – would not be wise, and so Razumovsky does not see his daughter.

‘Does the marriage go well?’

This time Ernst glares at me. ‘Otto!’

But Razumovsky laughs. ‘She hates the little cunt. Why, it’s said—’

He stops dead, realising he is saying far too much. But I am intrigued now.

‘What is said?’

‘Nothing,’ he snarls, getting to his feet. ‘Not a damn fucking thing! Now if you gentlemen will excuse me…’

‘Wait,’ Ernst says. ‘I think we can help you.’

‘Help?’ Again the merchant laughs, but this time there’s bitterness etched deep into his face. ‘The only way you could help me would be to kill that fucker… yes, and all his men. I’m leaving here, trader. Finding some place where his word isn’t the law. Vladimir, maybe. Or Kiev itself.’

‘Kiev has been sacked,’ I say. ‘The Mongols rule there now.’

He grunts, then sits again. Reaching out, he picks up his tankard, then drains it. Wiping his beard, he looks at me again. ‘You asked about my daughter, trader. Well, you could do me one favour, if you would.’

I glance at Ernst, then nod. ‘Name it.’

‘I would send a note to her. Her mother…’ He hesitates, awkward now. ‘Her mother misses her.’

But I can see that it’s not his wife but he himself who misses her.

‘If you’ll have her write a note, I’ll do my best to deliver it.’

‘Write?’ Razumovksy laughs, and I realise as he does what I have said. Barely anyone can write in this Age. Why, Razumovsky himself is barely literate.

‘And Katerina, your daughter, she would be able to read this note?’

Razumovsky nods exaggeratedly, beaming with pride. ‘The priest taught her. Old Alexandr. He’ll write the letter for me. I’ll go to him now, if you’ll wait.’

‘We’ll wait.’

As soon as Razumovsky has gone, Ernst turns on me. ‘Otto, what are you doing?’

‘You want information?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘We’ll get nothing from him. But his son-in-law… He’ll know what’s going on. That is, if it’s as Razumovsky says it is.’

‘Maybe…’

‘No, Ernst. Trust me. The daughter’s the key.’

I am persuasive, but I am also lying. For once I do not care what’s happening in Novgorod. We are there to change it, after all. No, I want one thing only: to see her again, and to find out how she is.

She hates the little cunt…

The words had almost made me laugh with joy. But I had to play this carefully. If Ernst even guessed what I was thinking…

59

Oleg Alekseevich Kravchuk meets us at his door and welcomes us like long-lost relatives. He is indeed a little man, a good head shorter than his father-in-law. What’s more he has the kind of eyes that never settle. They take little sips of sight, then move on, as if fearing to let you see inside.

Shifty, I think, and know why Katerina would come to hate him.

‘Come in, sit down. You gentlemen will have a cup of wine?’

Ernst looks to me, then turns and bows and smiles. He knows the game. But this once he’s at a loss to know just why I’m acting thus.

I look about me, seeking some sign of her, but when someone does come, it isn’t her, only a young slave girl – a Turk by the look of her – whose sultry familiarity with her master tells me all I need to know.

This is a house in turmoil; an unhappy, selfish place, the product of a small man with his small wants. And I look to Oleg Kravchuk and hate the man with a vehemence I have never felt before. If I could, I would kill him for what he’s done here.

Ernst makes to speak, but I talk over him. ‘Kravchuk. I need to speak to your wife.’

He stares at me, shocked and outraged. This is not how a guest behaves. But I don’t give a shit. All this will change. I’ll make it change. So what I say here doesn’t matter. Only I do need to know. I need to see her.

‘Careful what you say,’ he begins, the quietness of his voice itself a threat. But I am not to be threatened by such a toad as Kravchuk.

‘You heard me, Kravchuk. Bring her now!’

And I draw my gun.

Ernst makes a small noise of surprise, and takes a step towards me, but I warn him off.

‘Don’t interfere, Ernst!’

Yet I realise, even as I point the gun at Kravchuk, that he doesn’t have any idea what I am aiming at him. He has never seen a gun and never will again, after today. And so I fire the thing, burning a dark, round hole in the floor beside his feet.

And he yelps and crosses himself, as if suddenly I’ve changed into an ogre. This is dark magic indeed, and he knows now he’s in peril.

‘Bring her!’ I yell, and point the gun directly at his face. ‘Have your slave girl bring her straight away.’

Ernst is shocked. ‘Otto – what the fuck are you doing?’

But I ignore him. I am driven now. The madness is like a tidal bore, filling me, sweeping me along. I have to see her. To discover what she has become without me.

Kravchuk’s eyes are out on stalks. He trembles as he gestures to the girl. She too is terrified, yet she does what she is told and, running from the room, calls out her mistress’s name.

‘Ka-ter-i-na! Ka-ter-i-na!’

I look at Ernst and see how fixedly he’s watching me.

‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘All this will be undone.’

But it’s not that that’s worrying him. I can almost see what’s going through his head, and I know I’ll have to deal with this just as soon as we get back. But right now there’s only one thing that I need.

It’s mad. Even I know it’s mad. Urd help me, I hardly know the girl. Yet instinct is driving me on, as if naught else is important. She is the centre. She and she alone.

I hear her footsteps come and then she’s there. Older and much larger than she was. Careworn and dowdy now. Yet when her eyes meet mine I know her. As if I have known her since the first day of eternity.

‘Otto…’

I smile at her, then raise my gun and fire, and Kravchuk falls. Dead. Dead like he’s never lived. And in the silence that follows, I look at her and say the words I know I’ve said a hundred times to her.

‘Wait for me, Katerina. You know I’ll always come for you.’

And jump. Back to the platform.

60

I tell Zarah nothing, only that I have to go back: back to the moment before I first arrived. While she’s making the calculations, I go to my room and quickly write two separate notes, then, pocketing one of them, return to the platform.

Zarah smiles at me. ‘Are you ready, Otto?’

And then I’m there, back in Novgorod, ten minutes before Ernst and I will shimmer into being in this room.

Only now we won’t. Not in this reality. For if I change but a single thing, then that strand of time in which I kill Kravchuk will be shunted off into non-existence – into a shadowy realm, inaccessible, unless I were to come and change this back again.

And why should I do that?

I go to the table in the corner, then take the note from my pocket and place it where I know I’ll see it, my name boldly underscored in jet black ink.

I stare at it a moment, wondering for once if it will be enough, then jump back.

To find Ernst waiting for me on the platform. Like me, he wears thick Russian furs.

He grins and holds my arm familiarly. ‘Otto… I wondered where you’d gone.’

For a moment I have the strangest feeling that there’s something wrong – that there’s something I’ve forgotten. And then I smile:

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Let’s go fuck with Nevsky’s head.’

61

The note surprises me. I read it through, twice, then hand it to Ernst. He reads it and shrugs.

‘I guess you have your reasons, Otto. But it’s most unusual.’

It is indeed, and I wish I knew more about what happened, but I trust myself. Kravchuk, it seems, is the key. If we can discredit him…

We go to Razumovsky’s, and it’s there that it happens. I fall for Razumovsky’s daughter, Katerina. And find myself once more, alone in my room, staring at my hands, cursing fate for showing me the woman and then taking her from me.

Only there’s the note.

I stand then walk across. I pick it up again and read it through, trying to get some clue from it, only there’s nothing in the words, not even a hint. Yet I do know one thing: all of this has happened once before. And then something went wrong. Something to do with Kravchuk. Something I’ve been warned not to repeat.

You must stay calm, it warns, but already I’m finding that difficult. It’s Kravchuk, you see. For now that I know he’s to marry Katerina, I’ve come to hate the man. It’s irrational, I know, but I can’t help it.

Nor can I tell Ernst what I’m feeling.

Her eyes. For a time I see nothing but her eyes. And then I snap back to the now.

Think, Otto, think.

I need to find out all I can about Kravchuk. What he does, who he is, who he knows. Only then will I know what to do about the man.

Only I dream of her, and when I wake – Ernst hammering on the door – it’s her I want to see.

We go to Razumovsky’s, and we give him silver, and we sit and drink, and later, as I step out from the midden, Katerina comes to me and promises to see me the next day, in the street beside the cathedral, and my heart skips a beat at the thought of it.

Only Ernst has other plans.

We go forward six years and meet Razumovsky again. He’s annoyed with us and bitter at his fate, but he directs us to Kravchuk, giving us a note to deliver to his daughter.

We’re on our way there when it hits me.

I stop dead, then turn to face Ernst. ‘I’m sorry. I have to go back.’

He stares at me strangely. ‘Why?’

‘In case I left something.’

‘Another note, you mean?’

I nod. And it is possible, after all. It’s how I do things. Only this business with Katerina and Kravchuk has thrown me. I’m not thinking straight.

‘Go back to my room,’ I say. ‘I’ll meet you there.’ And, stepping into a side alley, I jump.

This time Hecht is there. He wants to know what’s going on.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. And it’s no lie. ‘But I might have left myself something.’

He comes to my room with me, and waits while I read the second note. Only this one’s no more useful than the first. All it says is ‘And don’t take a weapon.’

Hecht reads it and smiles. ‘Brief and to the point, I’d say.’

I hand him my gun and he nods and says ‘Good luck.’ And I go back.

Ernst is waiting for me. Stretched out on my bed and sleeping. I wake him and tell him what I found.

‘Maybe you killed him,’ he says.

And we both laugh. It’s preposterous, but it sets me thinking. What if I did go there and argue with Kravchuk? What if it came to blows? And what if, in the heat of the moment, I’d had to shoot him, to defend myself?

It was possible. Possible but unlikely.

Yet the note had been specific.

We set off again, to Kravchuk’s, sweating in the mid-afternoon heat. Kravchuk greets us personally and ushers us through, welcoming us like long-lost relatives. He’s a tiny little man, a good foot shorter than Razumovsky, and his eyes are shifty, yet he seems genuinely pleased to see us.

‘Come in,’ he says, ‘sit down. You gentlemen will have a cup of wine?’

Ernst glances at me, then bows to Kravchuk, accepting his kind offer. Meanwhile, I look about me, seeking some sign of her, yet when someone comes, it isn’t Katerina, merely a young slave girl of Turkish descent, whose familiarity with her master tells me all I need to know.

She sleeps with him. I can see it by the way his eyes linger on her too long. You might say it is his business what he does, yet all I can think is how hateful the little toad is, because I know instinctively that his pleasure is bought at his wife’s expense. At Katerina’s. This is a house in emotional turmoil; an unhappy, selfish place – the product of a small man with his small needs.

I feel the sudden impulse to challenge him in his own house, to demand to see Katerina and talk to her alone, yet even as I go to speak, Ernst beats me to it.

‘I hear you’re doing well, Oleg Alekseevich.’

Kravchuk smirks at that and gives a little bobbing nod of his head.

‘I do all right, thank you, Herr Kollwitz. Enough to feed my wife and daughters.’

The words chill me. A tiny spike of ice is driven into my guts. Daughters. He has daughters, then. But what was I expecting? A wife’s a chattel here. One might beat her and even kill her, and no one would interfere. At most her relatives might come knocking on Kravchuk’s door, seeking compensation, but the law would do nothing. So making her do precisely what a wife was meant to do, and bear him children… what was so terrible about that?

Yet the thought of him going near her drives me close to madness. I am so jealous I want to choke him with my bare hands.

‘Would you prefer wine, gentlemen, or beer?’

I let Ernst answer, not trusting myself to speak, and when the girl returns I take the solid silver goblet and join Ernst in a toast to the man, stiffening my features into the rictus of a smile. But Kravchuk’s attention is on Ernst.

‘It’s a few years now since we’ve been in Novgorod,’ Ernst says. ‘Things have changed.’

‘Changed?’ Kravchuk gives a disarming laugh. ‘If you mean that things are better run than before, then that’s true. Under Nevsky, the town is flourishing.’

It seems the truth. Yet we know for a fact that only a select few are benefiting from this recent upturn. For most, the burden of the Mongol tribute lies heavy. And who is it who’s responsible for raising that levy? None other than Prince Alexander Iaroslavich himself – or Alexander Nevsky, as he’s known. The people’s hero.

‘Will you stay for dinner?’ Kravchuk asks. ‘I have friends coming tonight. You might wish to meet them.’

Ernst looks to me, then nods. ‘That is most kind, Oleg Alekseevich. We have some business to transact this afternoon, but later… yes, that would be good.’

Ernst and he shake hands, then toast again, as if the very best of friends, while I look on, longing to crush the man.

Outside, I have to stop and lean against the wall, I feel so faint.

‘Otto? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s okay,’ I say, fending him off. ‘It’s just the heat.’

I feel as though I’ve walked through a furnace. My shirt is soaking wet and clings to me. Salt stings my eyes. Yet Ernst is dry as a bone.

‘I can’t come,’ I say. ‘Tonight, I—’

‘You must,’ he answers. ‘Kravchuk’s expecting us both, and we won’t get a better chance to find out what’s been happening here. Besides, you’ve a letter to deliver.’

I stare at him, shocked, then take the letter from my pocket. ‘I—’

‘Forgot? I know. I was wondering if you had, or whether you were just biding your time. After all, you can’t just go barging in, demanding to see such a man’s wife. There are ways…’

Yet that’s precisely what I’d wanted.

I shake my head, then start to walk again. Away from Kravchuk’s house. Away from Katerina and her daughters. And the thought of it makes me want to cry. Only I can’t tell Ernst that or he’ll send me home.

Tonight. What new depths of misery will tonight bring me?

62

The table’s laid for a feast. There’s more wealth on display than in a dozen neighbouring households. No wonder Kravchuk hires guards. And, seeing it all there, I begin to wonder just what Kravchuk’s trade is, and realise that I know practically nothing about the man.

Ernst had suggested going back and finding out, but that kind of thing is risky – more risky than going forward. A few inadvertent changes and the whole picture could be different. Besides, we don’t need to be so specific. We need a far more general picture of events.

As it turns out, we’ve met four of the guests before at Razumovsky’s, all those years – those few hours? – ago. They remember us but vaguely, and that’s no surprise, for in this time-line we have barely begun our work. Once again the talk is of Nevsky and the new affluence. There’s no mention of the levy, or of the Mongol threat, and certainly no reference to Nevsky’s part in policing the bought peace. And when I talk finally of the great victory on the ice, they seem to glow with pride at the reminder, and mock Ernst and I gently, for we are Nemets – Germans – after all.

Our enemies. But they do not know that. They think us friends, concerned more with coinage than with the currency of blood.

But we will humble them.

We feast and drink, the roars of laughter from the Russians like a constant gale. But for me it is an hour and more of terrible anticipation, until finally, when I have ceased to expect it, she steps into the room, her two infant daughters clutching her legs.

Silence falls about the table as I turn to look at her. She is older than I remember – a good deal more than six years, it seems, have passed in her face, and she has put on weight. She looks somewhat dowdy and careworn, her hair unbrushed, yet when she turns and looks at me, I know her, as if I have known her since the first day of eternity.

‘Otto…’

And she almost smiles at me. Then, abruptly, she looks down and, gathering her daughters in her skirts, makes to turn and leave the room. But I am on my feet and call to her.

‘Katerina…’

She stops, her eyes averted. Afraid of me now. Every eye but hers is on me now. But it is Kravchuk who answers me.

‘Herr Behr – what is this?’

‘I have a letter,’ I say, looking at her, not him. ‘A letter from her father.’ And I hold it out towards her.

She looks up and meets my eyes again, and what I see there dismays me, for I see that he has broken her. Destroyed whatever spirit she once possessed. Even so, she looks at the letter longingly.

‘Here,’ I say gently. ‘Take it.’

Kravchuk stands, his chair scraping back, his goblet clattering to the floor.

‘Give me that!’

I swallow, then take a further step towards her, willing her to take the letter, but Kravchuk snarls at me.

‘I said give it to me! Now!’

I turn and stare at him. He’s trying to act big in front of his friends, but something in his voice gives him away. He wants to be stern, but there’s a slight edge of hysteria to his words. And so I slowly walk across and, giving him the slightest bow, hold the letter out for him to take.

He snatches it and rips it open, slowly mouthing the words to himself. And then he laughs and, turning to his friends, gives a mocking smile.

‘The nerve! The old fool wants to meet her! Well, fuck that! He’s meeting no one. Least of all my wife.’

And he crumples the note and throws it into the fire. I hear Katerina’s cry of dismay, then see her begin to run towards the flames, yet even as she makes to pass his chair, he turns and lashes out, catching her about the side of the head.

My hand goes to my belt, but the gun’s not there. Yet even as I take a step towards him, my arm raised, I see her get up from the floor. Her face is dark, her eyes ablaze. Someone shouts a warning, and it’s only then that I see what’s she’s holding.

The burning log strikes Kravchuk directly in the face. He screams and falls back and as he does, so two of his servants rush forward, pinning Katerina’s arms, while another goes to help his master. But Kravchuk beats him off and, standing, pulls out his short sword.

The sharpened edge winks red in the firelight.

She struggles, pulling an arm free, then glares at her husband, defiant now. One eye of his is closed, and his hair still smoulders, but from the look in his face I can tell that all thought of pain’s forgotten now. He simply wants to hurt her.

‘I never loved you,’ she says quietly, triumphantly almost. ‘It’s him I loved.’

And she points at me.

Ernst stares at me, astonished, but the room’s in sudden turmoil. Men make to grab me and drag me down, but I pull away, even as a woman servant gathers up Katerina’s daughters and takes them, kicking and screaming from the room.

Ernst jumps, his warning to me fading in the air, but I’m not going anywhere. I lash out at one of them, then duck, trying to get at him. But I’m too slow. As in a dream I see him grab her hair and tug it back, exposing her pale white throat.

‘Nooooo….’

Arms grab me, hold me, stop me moving forward.

‘Katerina!’

But the word is barely formed when Kravchuk turns and glares at me, and draws the glistening blade across her throat.

63

I sit on the platform, my head in my hands. A crowd of women surrounds me, concern in every face. Zarah lifts my chin and looks at me, but I turn my head aside.

‘Noooooo…’

I am in agony. Somewhere, in some other universe, she is dead, her throat cut by that half-man Kravchuk, her children grieving, just as I grieve for her now.

I sit there and sob like a child, and they hold me and try to comfort me, until Hecht comes and, waving them away, sits beside me, his arm about my hunched shoulders, his soft and quiet voice speaking to my ear.

‘What happened, Otto?’

The words come shuddering from me, as if on jagged strings.

‘The bastard killed her.’

‘Killed who?’

‘Razumovsky’s daughter.’

‘Ernst says…’ Hecht hesitates. ‘No matter. So what are you going to do?’

I know the answer. At least, I know what Hecht wants me to say. But that’s not what I’m thinking. I want to jump right back there, my gun in my belt, and burn a hole between that bastard’s eyes. I want to see him fry. And I want her to live. I don’t want her to die. Not in any universe. But I say what I’m expected to say.

‘We go back,’ I say quietly. ‘Get Nevsky. Concentrate on that.’

‘Good,’ Hecht says. ‘For a moment…’

I meet his eyes, a question in mine.

‘No matter,’ he says once more. ‘Focus on Nevsky. The woman…’ Hecht sighs. ‘They all die, Otto. You can’t prevent that.’

And I know it’s true. Only I want her to live. I want it more than…

Well, more than life itself.

I look down at my hands, knowing that I’ve got to go back. I’ve got to change it.

Yes, but how?

Tomorrow, she said. She was meeting me tomorrow, in the lane by the cathedral. I look up at Hecht and nod. ‘I’ll be okay,’ I say. ‘I just need to rest for a while.’

64

Only I hardly sleep at all. I keep seeing it – that awful, helpless look in her eyes. And I burn to make it not so. Never have I felt this urge so powerfully. But I know I must take care. Ernst is sure to have said something to Hecht, and if Hecht thinks for a moment that this might get in the way of me doing my job, then he’ll pull me from the project.

And I can’t allow that. I have to see her again.

So when Ernst sends a message, I take my time, as if I’m unconcerned, and when finally I get there, he looks at me quizzically.

‘Otto, where have you been?’

‘Sleeping,’ I say. ‘It was a shock, that business. I guess…’

And then I shrug and smile. ‘Hecht’s right. We need to focus on Nevsky. If we can build on those contacts we’ve made…’

I see the relief in Ernst’s eyes, and know he’s been worrying about me. Yet even as he begins to spell out the next stage of things to me, I find myself only half listening, some part of me transfixed by the thought of seeing her again.

And so we go back. To Novgorod, in the winter of 1237, and there, in the tiny lane beside the cathedral, I stand in the shadow of that great white-painted building, its golden onion domes raised high above me into the blue, as I wait for her to come.

It’s bitterly cold, and I am not quite sure when the service will end, but I know that I would wait for ever just for a single glimpse of her.

You’re mad, I tell myself, time and again, as I pull my furs closer about my neck and stomp my leather-booted feet, trying to keep warm. Nor do I know quite where this madness leads, only that it must have meaning. If not, then why feel such painful intensity?

I ponder that a while, as if I can make sense of it, then give it up. If Hecht is right, then everything’s genetics – cell calling to cell – and all our human instincts just a means our DNA have found for propagating themselves at the expense of other ‘lesser’ strands. We’re but the vehicle that they use.

If so, then powerful genetics are at work here, for each single cell of mine cries out for each of hers. Or so it feels.

But now the great wooden doors swing open, and slowly the congregation – the great and good of Novgorod, in their fine furs and expensive trappings – emerge from that warm, candle-lit, inner darkness out into the snow and the cold mid-morning glare.

I crane my neck, trying to get a sight of her, but it’s hard to make out who is who among that fur-clad throng. But then a small group breaks off and begin to walk up the side of the cathedral, directly towards me.

I step back into the shadows, not wishing to be seen if it’s not her. And it seems as if I’m right, for the small party passes me by, talking among themselves. I step forward once more, gazing down the lane towards the milling crowd, trying to make out Razumovsky, and even as I do, so I feel a hand on my shoulder and turn to find her there before me.

White fur rings her perfect face, framing the dark curls of her hair as she looks up at me from those deep blue eyes.

‘Katerina…’

The word’s a breath, pluming in the air between us. Her eyes quiz me once more, their tiny, darting movements making me catch my breath. It’s as if she sees the whole of me in that moment. And then she smiles. Such a smile as lights a thousand years.

‘Who are you, Otto? What do you want?’

And I want to tell her everything. Only I know she’ll think me mad. So I say what’s in my head and watch her smile turn to wonder.

‘I want you, Katerina. I want you for ever.’

65

We do not kiss. We barely even touch. There is that one brief moment, and then she is gone, hurrying to catch up with her maids before she’s missed. Yet in that instant we are pledged to each other. For all time.

‘Well?’ Ernst asks, when I return to him. ‘Did you make contact with him?’

‘He wasn’t there,’ I lie, as if I’d bothered looking for the posadnik. ‘We’ll have to go to his house.’

Ernst sighs but doesn’t question me. I’ve never lied to him before, and there would seem no reason why I should be lying now, so he accepts what I’ve said. Only I don’t feel comfortable with it. Ernst is my closest friend, and I hate such shabby subterfuge. But what other option have I?

To give her up…

Only that’s not going to happen. I know that now. It’s the only certainty I possess right now. I have no plan, no way of making her mine, only an absolute and unshakable belief in Fate. She will be mine. How, I do not know, but it will happen.

I could look, of course. See if and how and when… or so you think. Only it isn’t so. Right now she isn’t mine, she’s Kravchuk’s. To have her I must act, must sully the timestream. To gain her I must triumph over Kravchuk. But how? How can I manage that without first killing the little weasel?

Oh, I want to kill him. How could I not, having seen him murder her? But I am not that kind of man. Or so I think. For I am learning things about myself. Things I never guessed.

Ernst and I agree to visit the posadnik; to knock at his gate and seek an audience with the great man. It’s rather more direct than Ernst likes, but there seems no alternative. No one’s offering us an introduction. Why, even Razumovsky’s shy of it. And without gaining the posadnik’s friendship, there’s no way we can get to Nevsky.

And that’s the next stage of Ernst’s plan.

We take expensive gifts to bribe his steward.

And so it is that we find ourselves inside his palace. A palace made of wood, of course – more fort than castle – yet with a touch of grandeur for all that, for this is a powerful man. He rules alongside the prince – both appointees of the veche, the council of boyars that rules Novgorod.

He greets us sullenly, never leaving his big, carved wooden chair, as if he’s little time for such as we. We are only traders, after all. And Nemets, too, come to that. He sees us as an unfortunate necessity. Beyond that… well, his distaste is evident in the way he looks at us, like we’re the lowliest of insects. But that doesn’t matter. We could buy the likes of him ten times over. That is, if we wanted to alert the Russians.

They’re here. We know they are. After all, it is as much in their interests to defend Nevsky as it’s in ours to bring him down. That’s the nature of the game. But who their agents are and what their strategy – that we do not know.

The posadnik is a thin fellow of indeterminate age. His bright red beard suggests an aristocratic background – these are Rus, after all – yet I know for a fact that his grandfather was born a common man.

‘What do you want?’ he asks disdainfully.

‘Forgive me, my lord,’ Ernst says, bowing low, ‘but these are dark, uncertain times, and—’

‘Uncertain times?’

We have his full attention now.

‘I mean, what with the horde…’

He stares at Ernst fiercely. ‘We are a long way from Kiev.’

‘But not from Moscow. Word is it was burned to the ground. With not a single house remaining. In such circumstances…’

The posadnik leans right forward in his chair and points at Ernst.

‘Enough! Now state what you want or leave!’

It is blunt enough, and I almost laugh at his pomposity, only we need this man.

Ernst nods, then says it outright. ‘I wish to purchase a letter of protection. From yourself, my lord. To allow us to travel to Vladimir.’

He sits back, happy now he knows what hold he has over us.

‘I see. Well, you ask a lot, trader. In these times, as you say…’

But these are only words. What follows is a haggle, as common as any in the marketplace, and when we finally settle it’s at a price far lower than we were prepared to pay. Ernst bows and wishes the posadnik health and many children, and promises to bring the silver by the following morn. In return, the posadnik will prepare a letter for us.

But why Vladimir? Because that’s where Nevsky is right now. Beside his father, Yaroslav, who’s such a popular man, his servants will poison him, a dozen years from now.

It will be another three years before Prince Alexander Iaroslavich is appointed Prince of Novgorod, but ours is the art of preparation, and right now we aim to sow the seeds of future circumstance. We must meet the man on numerous occasions, such that when we finally need to act, the prince will trust us, maybe rate us as his friends.

It is snowing as we leave the posadnik’s house, and the town, spread out below us, seems almost magical. I have seen many sights over many centuries, yet this, I have to say, is truly beautiful. A feast for the eyes. Or is it something else that makes me think so?

I turn to Ernst and hold his arm a moment. ‘Go on back,’ I say. ‘There’s something I need to do.’

‘Otto?’

‘I’ll be all right,’ I say. ‘An hour at most.’

He nods reluctantly, then reaches out and holds my upper arm. ‘Take care, Otto. This is a dangerous Age.’

Yes, and quite wonderful, I think. And I turn away and in less than twenty paces I am lost to his sight.

But then you know where I am headed. To Razumovsky’s.

I reach there as the man himself is about to set out.

‘Otto,’ he says, ‘what can I do for you, my friend?’

‘It’s Kravchuk.’

‘Kravchuk? What of the man?’

‘I’m sorry to impose like this. I mean, I know the man is to become your son-in-law, but…’

Razumovsky stares at me oddly. ‘But what?’

‘It’s just that I’ve heard things. In the taverns. And Ernst and I were about to do some business with him, and I thought…’

‘What have you heard?’

I sigh heavily, as if I hate saying what I’m about to say, then launch in. ‘I’m told he’s dissolute.’

Razumovsky laughs. ‘Aren’t all young men? But when he’s married…’

‘I’m told he keeps a mistress. A Turkish woman. And that he beats her.’

Razumovsky’s mouth opens then closes again. He quickly walks across and closes the door that leads out to the passageway, then comes back, standing closer to me. When he speaks again his voice is quieter than before.

‘What he does is his own business. But I thank you, dear friend, for bringing it to my attention. It cannot have been easy for you.’

‘I was in two minds…’

‘Yes, yes, I’m sure.’

‘And so I went to the priest at St Sophia’s and I told him what I knew, and he told me that if it troubled my soul so much I ought to come and see you, Mikhail.’

He nods solemnly, my mention of the priest enough to convince him now that what I’ve done is right.

‘Well,’ he says, after a moment. ‘What a business, eh?’

‘Only I thought you might have known…’

He looks at me a moment, just the slightest flush of anger in his face, then shakes his head. ‘You think I would have let her marry him if I’d known? What kind of man do you think I am?’

‘Then what’s to do?’

He sighs, then sits, putting his hands in his head, and I truly feel sorry for doing this to him.

Only it is true, in a way.

Kravchuk will be a bad husband to his daughter and he is dissolute.

It’s just hidden by the years.

But I hate having to lie, even if it’s for a good cause.

Razumovsky looks up at me, bleary-eyed. ‘God help me, Otto. If this is true…’ And he stands and paces the room a moment before stopping and looking to me again.

‘I guess I could buy him off, only… well, a promise is a promise.’

‘And what does she think?’

‘She?’ He laughs, then sits again. ‘She’s not been well. Not since the other evening. She stays in her room all the while, pacing back and forth. The only time I’ve seen her is when she came to church with us this morning.’

I almost smile, but that would give the game away. Instead I spin another lie.

‘Maybe I can help.’

‘Help? In what way, my friend?’

‘I was a healer once. Back in Lubeck.’

Razumovsky stares at me, then shrugs. ‘I don’t know, Otto. It’s just, well, what am I to do about Kravchuk? If I had known…’

‘Confront him,’ I say. ‘Give him a chance to clear his name. I’d say that was the fairest course, wouldn’t you?’

His eyes light at that, and he stands and slaps my back. ‘I shall. And I’ll do it right away. Oh, and Otto – will you be here when he comes?’

‘Do you think that’s wise, Mikhail?’

‘Who knows what’s wise when it comes to such matters. But I know something. I would welcome one impartial observer at that meeting.’

66

And so it is, that evening, much to Ernst’s surprise, we are at Razumovsky’s again, waiting for Kravchuk to appear. Razumovsky has given him no notice of why he’s summoned him, and he clearly has no idea, for when he comes he’s rather too cocky, thinking himself the certain master of this house. Which is something that, in all of this, I had forgotten. When Razumovsky dies, Kravchuk will inherit. So it is in this society. And Katerina would have no say.

I watch the little bantam enter the room, see his surprise to find me there. Ernst is in one of the back rooms, drinking wine while this matter is sorted out.

Kravchuk greets me cautiously, then turns to wait for Razumovsky, staring towards the door, ignoring me.

‘So what is it you do?’

He almost twitches. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I am curious. You seem a prosperous man.’

He half turns, but does not quite deign to look at me. ‘I do well enough,’ he says.

‘So I see by your furs. Silver fox, is it not?’

He smiles this time and nods. ‘I have several, actually. But this, yes, this is a fine fur.’

And expensive, I think. So what does he do? Something he doesn’t want the world to know about, perhaps?

But I do not get to question him much more, for Razumovsky appears.

‘Mikhail!’ Kravchuk says, going to embrace him, but Razumovsky raises a hand, and Kravchuk steps back, confused.

‘Mikhail?’

‘There have been rumours, Oleg Alekseevich.’

‘Rumours?’ And now he turns and glares at me, as if he knows whence they’ve come. ‘Rumours of what?’

‘I thought you might explain yourself. About the woman you are said to keep.’

Kravchuk looks astonished.

‘Well?’ Razumovsky says, his dark eyes watching the smaller man. ‘Will you not deny it?’

But it seems that Kravchuk’s lost his tongue. He stands there staring at Razumovsky, and I realise with a start that it’s true – it’s actually true! My wild surmise was right. He has a woman that he keeps!

I laugh and both men look to me.

‘Who is this fellow?’ Kravchuk asks.

‘A friend,’ Razumovsky says. He’s watching Kravchuk closely now. ‘But you’ve not answered me. Or perhaps you have.’

Kravchuk laughs, but it’s so lacking in sincerity it falters before the sound has died. His eyes move restlessly between Razumovsky and the floor. ‘You know how it is, Mikhail. A man has needs.’

But it’s a poor excuse, and not one Razumovsky is about to accept. This is his daughter’s honour we are talking of, and if this news gets out and she still marries him, then he, Razumovsky, will be a laughing stock. Besides, he loves his daughter. He would not let her suffer the humiliation.

‘You shit! You fucking little shit!’

And, without warning, Razumovsky swings his arm and smacks the little bastard straight across the chops with his open hand. It’s a stinging blow, and Kravchuk cries out and buckles instantly, clutching his face.

‘The wedding’s off! I’d rather you married my neighbour’s pig than had a sniff of my daughter!’

But Kravchuk is backing away. ‘You cunt,’ he mumbles. ‘I’ll get you, see if I don’t…’

But Razumovsky is not listening. He aims a kick at Kravchuk’s departing backside, then picks up a chair and throws it after him, even as he runs across the courtyard towards the gate.

‘And don’t think of coming back, you little toad!’

But Kravchuk is not coming back, and inside I feel a joy that’s inexpressible. He’s gone! The little bastard has gone!

67

Only he hasn’t. Kravchuk is a weasel, after all. And, what’s more, he has friends in high places. The posadnik for one. And when Ernst and I visit the posadnik the next morning, Kravchuk is there, standing beside his chair, and I know that we’re in trouble.

‘Are these the ones?’ the posadnik asks.

‘They are, my lord.’

‘Then I shall leave this matter to you.’

And with that, the posadnik stands and leaves the room. Kravchuk stares at us a moment, then grins and takes the old man’s seat.

‘Well, well,’ he says. ‘Fancy us meeting again so soon.’

I’m about to walk away, when Ernst brings my attention to the letter in Kravchuk’s right hand. He holds it casually, as if it’s of no moment, but we both know what it is. It has the posadnik’s seal upon it, after all.

‘And how is your friend this morning?’ he asks, after a moment’s silence.

‘My friend?’ I ask, seeing that he’s addressing me.

‘Yes. That loser Razumovsky. I thought, maybe, he’d have a change of mind. Send me an apology. But the man appears to have no manners.’

I stare back at him, astonished by the words, but he’s not finished yet.

‘I’d try and reason with him, only such a man scarcely knows what’s in his best interests.’

‘Best interests!’ But before I can say another word, Ernst grabs my wrist in an iron grip and glares at me. I fall silent, but I cannot help but show my hatred for the little creep as I meet his eyes again.

‘I see you have something we want,’ Ernst says with an icy calm. ‘So tell us what you want for it, and we’ll tell you if you have a deal.’

Kravchuk smiles. This is more his language. In his world, anything can be bought.

‘That’s good,’ he says, waving the letter at Ernst. ‘But I warn you, this doesn’t come cheap. I had to pay my old friend the posadnik dearly for this privilege. However, there is one unbreakable condition…’

‘Go on,’ Ernst says, his expression set.

‘I want Razumovsky’s daughter for my wife.’

‘Never!’ I say, but Ernst rounds on me.

‘Shut up, Otto! You’ve no say in this! Understand?’

And when I go to say something more, Ernst slaps his hand across my mouth, then roughly pushes me back.

Kravchuk looks from one of us to the other and then smiles. ‘I’d say your friend was sweet on the girl, Herr Kollwitz.’

Ernst turns and faces him again. ‘I assure you, nothing is further from the truth. My friend will do his best to help you reconcile things with her father…’

‘I’m glad to hear that. I thought perhaps there would be difficulties.’

Too fucking true, I think, but I keep my face a mask. I want to kill the bastard more than ever, but that’s becoming more difficult by the moment. Ernst wants that letter of protection. Without it he can’t get to Nevsky, and without getting to Nevsky his scheme will never work. I know that and ought to be working hard to help him, only I’m in the grip of a jealous rage that threatens to unhinge me. The thought of going back to her father and supplicating for this arsehole fills me with horror. Ernst will have to do it. And even then…

My mind races, trying to think of ways out of this, but I can’t think of a damn thing. Kravchuk has the letter, and he has his condition. If we don’t play his game, we’ll find ourselves stuck here in Novgorod.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking. We could jump direct to Vladimir, and fake the letter, but in the longer term that would cause more problems than it would solve. Vladmir is four hundred miles inland, beyond Moscow, and we can’t just walk out of the forest. In Novgorod it’s not a problem, but in Vladimir we must be known. That letter of protection is essential. Without it, we would be cast into a pit and left to rot.

And so I hold my peace and leave it to Ernst, even as I rage inside. Kravchuk will never have her! But can I prevent it? Not without ruining Ernst’s plans.

I groan and Kravchuk looks to me.

‘Eaten something bad, my friend?’

He laughs, and I swear to myself that I will kill the man.

68

Back in my room, Ernst slams the door and faces me.

‘Just what do you think you’re doing, Otto? Why are you being so bloody-minded?’

I look down, wanting to tell him just what I’m suffering, but I know I can’t, because then I would be out.

‘I’m sorry, Ernst. There’s just something about the man.’

‘I know. But it’s not like you to let it get to you.’ He pauses, then laughs, more at ease for seeing me so contrite. ‘For a moment there…’

‘Go on…’

‘Well, just for a moment, I thought, well, that maybe Kravchuk might have been right. That you have a, well, a thing about the girl.’

His hesitations are telling. He’s trying now to make a joke of it, but I sense he’s half-convinced that Kravchuk’s right. And he has every reason to think so. But now’s the perfect time to allay those fears of his.

‘That’s nonsense, Ernst. Why, I’ve met her only twice and both times were in a crowded room, remember? I doubt she even noticed me.’

‘Then why…?’

I look a query at him, but he just shrugs. I know what he’s alluding to, however. If there’s nothing between us, then why did she say what she did in Kravchuk’s house, six years down the line? And why, if she meant nothing to me, was I so shaken up by her death?

I have to make a gesture. To prove she means nothing.

‘I’ll go,’ I say. ‘I’ll talk to Razumovsky. Persuade him to have Kravchuk back as his son-in-law.’

‘You’ll do it now?’

I swallow. It was not what I had in mind, but I nod.

‘Good. But spin him some tale, Otto. Something that will convince him that it was all a misunderstanding. Tell him you’ve new information. You know the kind of thing.’

I do. Yet I am loath to use my verbal skills in Kravchuk’s service, especially when it means handing my soul itself into his hands.

And that’s the hardest part of this. For there’s really no decision to be made here. If I do what Kravchuk says, I might just as well take a knife and slit my own throat. Not to have her – for her not to be mine – oh, my soul, that would be hell itself.

69

Razumovsky is pulling on his furs when I get there, a black look on his face.

‘What is it?’ I ask, and he almost growls his answer.

‘It’s Kravchuk. I don’t know what’s he’s done or said, but that little fucker’s meddling in my business. I’ve lost more trade in a morning than I could drum up in a month!’

That fills me with foreboding. Especially as I’ve the task of pleading for the man.

‘You’re sure it’s him?’

He stops and looks at me, then pulls on his right boot. ‘Who the fuck else would it be? No one says it’s him, of course, but what other reason can there be? I kick the fucker out of my house and this happens!’

Razumovsky’s not stupid, nor is he mistaken. This stinks of Kravchuk. But why is he doing this if he wants to be reconciled to Razumovksy? To show his power? To bring Razumovsky to his senses? If so, he’s read the man completely wrong, for even I can see that all this has done is to enrage him.

‘Listen, Mikhail,’ I say, as I watch him pull on his other boot then stand, preparing to leave. ‘I have to talk to you.’

But Razumovsky’s barely listening. ‘Not now,’ he says, then turns and looks at me. Relenting, he reaches across and pats my shoulder with his massive hand. ‘Make yourself at home, Otto. We’ll talk when I get back.’

I watch him go, then slump on to a bench, relieved as much as dismayed by this turn of events. I sit there for a long time, trying to sort things out in my head, but nothing’s resolved. What’s more, this business with Kravchuk grows more mysterious by the moment. I had no idea he had such influence. But Kravchuk seems to be pulling the strings, and important men are dancing to his beck and call.

I walk over to the window and, lifting the thick cloth covering, stare out into the yard. It’s strangely silent in the house. Outside the morning sunlight glistens on the snow. I take a long, calming breath, then turn, hearing the soft swish of cloth.

Katerina is standing there, on the far side of the room; her dress is the purest blue, her top a brilliant carmine red, with threads of bright yellow and green and blue sewn in. Her long, dark hair is braided in the old style, tied with tiny blue ribbons, and a silver necklace of tiny carved animals hangs about her pale white neck.

She is all I remember and more. For in the sunlight from the window she seems to glow, as if lit from within, and as I step towards her now, she smiles, and her eyes, which are the windows to her soul, seem to open to me, as wide as eternity itself.

‘Katerina…’

She hushes me, then quickly steps across to where I stand. I make to speak, but she silences me with a kiss.

And such a kiss. Our mouths as they touch seem to melt, and as we embrace, my hands at her neck, her arms locked about my back, so it seems that we have always kissed this way, since the first hour of the very first day of the world. And when our lips part, there is wonder in both our eyes.

To feel her pressed against me inflames me. Never have I felt this way with a woman, and I know, as I look at her, that she wants me. She stares into my eyes and speaks, her voice the softest lilt.

‘I knew you’d come.’

She sighs, and my heart is moved so much by it, that I put my fingers gently to her brow, as if to calm a child.

She smiles, and then a cloud appears. She looks at me directly. ‘What’s happening to us, Otto? What strange enchantment is this?’

And again I want to tell her. Tell her that I have stepped from the air itself to come to her. But the truth is stranger than any enchantment, for I am unborn these many centuries, while she, in my time, lies in the earth, long dead, her bones turned to dust.

And yet we kiss and stare and touch, as if Time itself did not exist.

Oh, this is alchemy of sorts, but no words can encompass how I feel, standing there, holding her, looking back into those eyes. And so I kiss her once again, and the kiss becomes a flame, igniting us, and our mouths, which were so soft, press now with a hard and sudden longing that we can no longer deny.

But Fate denies us yet. There is a hammering at the outer gate, then shouts and voices arguing. She breaks from me, a sudden fear in her eyes, then turns and hurries from the room. I am left there, staring at the empty doorway, willing her back in my arms, but servants are everywhere suddenly, hurrying here and there, as men invade the inner courtyard, their voices raised.

‘Where is he?’ someone bellows. ‘Where is the murdering bastard?’

And suddenly he’s there, pushing his way through, beating off the hands that seek to grab him. As Razumovsky turns and looks to me, I see there’s a dagger in his hand, slicked red with blood, and I know whose blood it is.

‘Mikhail! Why, in God’s name? Why?’

But I know why. And as he casts the knife aside, I put my hand up to my chest.

And vanish from the air.

70

Hecht stretches and draws his fingers through his stubble-short silver hair, then sits forward again, looking from Ernst to me.

‘I must consider this,’ he says. ‘For now, do nothing. Carry on with your duties here. When I’ve thought this through, we’ll reconvene, and…’

I go to speak, to interrupt him, but he stares me into silence. I bow my head, and he continues.

‘And then we’ll make a decision.’ He looks to me, a certain sympathy in his cool, grey eyes. ‘I know how frustrating all of this is. But Kravchuk’s an unknown quantity. He could be a Russian agent.’

‘Then why don’t we find that out?’

‘Otto. Be patient. This is unlike you. We have time. All the time we need. But we need to think it through. We can’t afford to lose another one.’

This is true. Recently the Russians have pressed us on every side. And it would be nice to turn the tables on them. But that’s not what’s bothering me. I need to see her; to hold her once again and kiss her. Right now, every moment spent apart from her seems a moment of purest torment. But I can’t say that. I can only argue necessity. Can only twist what I know to somehow get me there again, beside her.

If this were my project it would be easy, only it’s not. This is Ernst’s. When it comes down to it, he calls the shots, not me. Or, in this case, Hecht. I’m a mere foot soldier.

Hecht reaches into one of his drawers and brings out a chart. He studies it a moment, then looks to me again. ‘I see you’re down to teach, Otto.’

‘Tomorrow,’ I say, frowning, wondering if, in the confusion, I’ve got it wrong.

He consults the chart again, then nods. ‘Ah, yes. Well, you could bring the session forward if you like. Leave you more time later on to help Ernst… when we’ve come to a decision, that is. In fact, there are other duties you could bring forward. You might as well free up the week.’

My mouth goes dry. I know what he’s referring to and, yet again, I wonder if Hecht can read my mind. It’s Zarah’s turn next, you see. But that’s three days away.

Unless I bring it forward.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I say. ‘I—’

‘Yes, Otto?’

I nod, then stand. ‘I’ll think about it.’

But back in my room, I find myself restless, unable to settle to anything. I ought to be working – researching my period, or preparing my lesson for later on – but I can’t do anything but think of her. My body tingles, just thinking of her.

I close my eyes, knowing that she’s out there, a billion separate references on the grid. I could go to the platform now and jump to her, wherever in Time she is. Only I can’t. Hecht won’t let me. And so I pace my room like a caged animal, until Ernst’s soft suden Deutsch voice breaches the silence.

‘Otto. Come to the Map Room. Something’s happening.’

71

I stare at it in wonder, then shake my head. When did it change? And why did I feel nothing? Or did I, and have I just forgotten the moment?

For the map now is almost purest red. Red from left to right, from top to bottom. Only in one small place is it black. Berlin alone remains.

I look to Hecht for explanations, and he shrugs. ‘We don’t know,’ he says. ‘Not all of it, anyway, but it looks as if it originates in the thirteenth century – at the time of the Horde.’

Or 1240. Which is precisely where we’ve just come from.

It’s too much of a coincidence.

‘You’ve got to send us back,’ I say, and for once Ernst agrees. But Hecht’s still looking thoughtful.

‘It’s something we missed. Something obvious.’

Ernst shakes his head. ‘We took it all into account. You know we did. Fifteen years, I spent, checking out details. This…’

But he can’t say what ‘this’ is. None of us can. So we are going to have to go back.

‘I just can’t see how,’ Hecht says, puzzled. ‘I mean, how do you stop the Horde?’

‘Assassinate Genghis Khan?’

‘The Russians tried,’ he answers. ‘We outmanoeuvred them. But even those times they succeeded, they couldn’t stop what he’d set in motion. The Horde succeeds, and so keeps Russia in check for the next two hundred and forty years. Without that…’

He stops, as if he’s stumbled on to the answer, and then he sighs. ‘No, I just can’t see it…’

Which leaves only one thing.

72

We are back in Novgorod, Ernst and I, in the summer of 1237. That fateful summer, before I first met her. Only we’re not here to make contact with Razumovsky this time. We’re here to find Kravchuk. Because that’s the only factor that changed. Kravchuk died and the map went red. But why? After all, history doesn’t even mention Kravchuk.

Which, for Hecht, is reason enough.

‘Not everyone who shapes history leaves a mark,’ Hecht said before we left. ‘And maybe Kravchuk is one such.’ But I can’t imagine how such a weasel of a man could possibly have made such an impact.

We arrive back in May, after the thaw, and begin at once, trying to track him down. We go to his house, only it isn’t. It belongs to a man named Vyshinski, who has never heard of Kravchuk. Further investigations reveal that he’s not alone. Not a single person we ask has ever heard of our friend. It’s like he doesn’t exist.

Only he does. And he’s going to marry Katerina.

We jump forward a month, to a time of heat and fires. I beg Ernst to be allowed to call on Razumovsky, but he’s against the idea.

‘Not until we’ve tracked down our man,’ he says, and I’m forced to rein back. Only it’s three days subjective now since I last saw her and held her in my arms, and I’m going slowly mad. Or so it feels, for I want her like my lungs want oxygen. Like…

But there are no ‘likes’ in love. It is itself. Pure. Perhaps the purest force there is.

Two days later and we’ve located Kravchuk in an inn to the south of the city, in an area dominated by craftsmen from Kiev and Vladimir, Pereiaslavl and Riazan.

We try to be discreet, not to draw attention to our interest in him, but somehow he gets to know, and so, on our third evening in town, he comes to us.

It’s late evening and we are sitting at a trestle table in the corner of the smoky, barn-like inn, when Kravchuk enters.

‘Kollwitz? I hear you’ve been looking for me.’

Ernst is seated across from me. As I look up, Kravchuk is just behind him. Ernst turns, to find a knife at his throat.

‘So? What do you want?’

His accent is strange, like he’s been away for a long time and is only now getting used to speaking Russian again.

I stand. Or try to. Strong hands hold me down. And now I notice them, standing in the shadows just beyond Kravchuk. Two men in strange, oriental attire.

Mongols.

I half turn my head and see another of them – the biggest of the three – just behind me. They are his hands on my shoulders.

‘I want to trade,’ Ernst says, as calmly as he can. ‘I hear you have goods you might wish to sell.’

‘Then you heard wrong. You think me a common trader, Nemets?’ And there’s a sneer in Kravchuk’s voice as well as his face. But he puts the knife away, his point made.

He sits down beside Ernst on the bench and stares at me a moment, his eyes narrowed.

‘Do I know you?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘We’ve never met.’

But it’s not true. I do know him. Know him for the sadistic little slug that he is. Only there’s something more to him, I realise now, and his companions are the clue. They shouldn’t even be here. Not for another year, at least. But they are. So what does that mean?

‘So…’ Kravchuk begins, looking from one of us to the other. ‘Who gave you my name?’

‘A friend,’ I say, nodding to Ernst who was about to speak. ‘A certain Alexander Iaroslavich.’

There’s a moment’s reassessment in Kravchuk’s face, then he laughs and shakes his head.

‘You know the Prince?’

I nod, but I can see that Kravchuk’s not convinced. What’s more, Ernst is looking at me with a puzzled expression.

I lean towards Kravchuk, lowering my voice. ‘So just what is the deal?’

Kravchuk stares back at me, stone-faced. ‘Deal? Who said there was a deal?’

‘But your masters…’

There’s a sudden, tense stillness about the table, and I know I’ve said the wrong thing. This is a secret mission, and we seem to know too much. Kravchuk stands, then draws a finger across his throat. And as he does, I jump…

73

I’m bleeding badly. There’s a three-inch gash on the right side of my throat and I’m conscious that if I’d left it another second I’d be dead. Ernst is untouched but he’s angry and very confused. As Urte sees to me, sealing the wound with plasflesh, he stands over me, his hands on his hips, shouting down at me.

‘What the fuck were you doing, Otto? You almost got us killed!’

‘The Mongols,’ I say, wincing as Urte presses down on the gash. ‘The little fucker’s working for the Mongols!’

‘I don’t care who he’s working for, when you’re back there you shut the fuck up! It’s my project and the sooner you realise that, the better!’

I stare at him, shocked, then look away. Was I that out of order back there?

‘Look, Ernst,’ I begin, ‘I’m sorry, but—’

But he’s not listening to my apologies; not this time.

‘You’re out, you understand me, Otto? Out! You’re a bloody wild card, and I can’t afford you. I don’t know what the problem is, and I don’t want to know, but I won’t have my project endangered by you.’

Everyone’s gone still around the platform, listening, and though I know I ought to leave this and take it up again when Ernst is in a better mood, I’m stupid enough to fight him there and then.

‘You can’t,’ I say. ‘You can’t.’

‘Can’t I?’ And he turns and makes to leave, but I call him back.

‘Look, I’m sorry, Ernst. I won’t do it again. Only I…’

He turns, staring back at me. ‘Only what?’

Only I can’t say, because then everyone will know.

‘Well?’ he insists.

I push Urte away, ignoring the pain in her eyes, and get to my feet.

‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Not a damn fucking thing!’

74

Zarah comes to me that night. It’s her turn, and I’ve no right to send her away, but I do. I can’t do it, you see. I physically can’t do it. And she’s so bloody understanding about it that it hurts, so much so that I almost call her back. Only that would be a mistake, the way I feel.

For the best, I think, wondering whether I’m thinking now of Zarah or of Katerina. Only I’m not convinced that it is. In fact, I’m hurting so bad that I actually contemplate going to Hecht and throwing myself at his mercy. He’ll understand. Surely, he will.

Which only goes to show how deeply this madness has got into me.

Leave it be, Otto, I tell myself. There’s no future in it.

Ironic, huh? Only it’s not. Because it hurts too damn much. I need her, like the Earth needs the sun and the soil needs the rain. And if Ernst says I’m out…

That galvanises me. I decide there and then what I must do to get back in. Hecht’s the key, of course. If I can prove to him just how important this is, and how vital it is that I’m involved…

Yes, but that means undermining Ernst. And Ernst’s a friend. The best I have. He was with me as a child in the Garden, and later on he roomed with me when we were boys at the Academy. A dozen times and more he’s saved my life. Only…

Only I don’t love Ernst. I love Katerina.

It sounds callous, even to me, but I have no choice. If I’m to see her again, I must take charge. I must overrule Ernst. And so I take out a pad and begin sketching out a plan to present to Hecht.

Not that it’s hard, because this is what I’m best at – what my life has been shaped to do. To evaluate and make decisions. To seek out the right events and act. And I’m not just good at this, I’m the best. There’s no other operative – not a single agent – who can analyse circumstance the way I do and see where to act and when. Ernst doesn’t even come close, so that when I go to Hecht that following morning, Ernst has not even begun to think the problem through, whereas I…

Hecht looks up and smiles. A smile of deep satisfaction.

‘This is good, Otto. This is very good.’

I have it all, you see. Oh, not the fine details, but the broad strokes. I can see how Kravchuk worked it, and when and who with. It’s only a question now of filling in the gaps. For he is, indeed, working for the Mongols. Using Mongol silver to buy off Russia’s princes. To prevent them from forming a united front against the Horde, such that when the Great Khan’s armies appear on the steppes, there will be no effective opposition.

I feel almost a sense of admiration at the scheme. It’s so simple, after all. Only there’s one big problem. For it to work, Kravchuk has to live. And every atom of my being cries out to kill the little toad.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

I’m down to teach that morning. It’s a small class of six students, cadets in their late teens, and the subject’s one of my favourites, identifying the patterns of history, but halfway through I find myself preoccupied and, rather than cheat them, I decide to involve them in my problem.

‘Okay,’ I say, looking about me at their eager faces. ‘Let me float a hypothetical at you. What if, when the Horde invaded Kievan Rus’ in the thirteenth century, the Rus’ had been prepared for them? What if, when Batu’s army had attacked Riazan in the winter of 1237, the other princes had rallied to Riazan’s aid? What if they had defeated Batu outside Riazan and thrown him back across the steppes?’

Six hands go up. I choose a slender, blond-haired boy to the right of the group.

‘Yes, Muller.’

The young man hesitates, getting things clear in his head, then begins: ‘In the short term, things would have been very different. The Suzdalian reinforcements would not have been destroyed, and so Moscow and Vladimir would not have fallen to the invaders. Suzdal and Pereislavl would not have been besieged and there would have been no defeat of the depleted Russian armies at the Sit River in March the following year.’

‘Good. So you’re saying that from that first failure, all the rest follows?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That there would, in effect, have been no Mongol campaign that winter of 1237–38?’

‘Yes, sir. It’s clear – at least, from the historical record – that they reacted much too slowly to the threat and grossly underestimated the size of the Mongol army that was facing them. They clearly thought that the Mongols were merely another raiding party, like the Polovtsy, who they’d been fighting for the previous two centuries.’

I smile. ‘And in the longer term?’

Muller shrugs. ‘I think they would have crushed the Russians. Come back in greater force and finished off the job.’

‘So you might think. But let’s widen the net a little, and see what else was going on. The initial success of the Mongols in destroying the major power in the region allowed them to concentrate, for the rest of 1238, on subduing all of the minor powers. The Polovtsy, the Circassians, the Ossetians of the northern Caucasus, and – perhaps most important of all – the Mordva and the Bulgars, who rebelled against their rule that year. You see, victory over Kievan Rus’ – even as partial a victory as they attained – allowed them to consolidate at little cost. And when, two years later, they turned against Kiev itself, Rus’ was so weak by then that, when the Mongols laid siege to Kiev, the Grand Prince abandoned his own people, and left them to their fate. If the princes had worked together…’

A hand goes up.

‘Yes, Alpers?’

Alpers is a big, well-rounded boy with fine dark hair. His grey-blue eyes look puzzled as he speaks.

‘Forgive me, sir. I understand what you’re trying to say, but surely that’s exactly the point. Even when the Rus’ princes worked together, they failed. And would it really have mattered much if their conquest had been delayed a year or two? In the end it would all have worked out much the same.’

Again I smile. They’ve learned their lessons well, these young men. But like me, they’ve been making far too many assumptions in this one regard.

‘I take your point, Alpers, but for once I want to challenge that. A question for you all. How long did that first Mongol invasion last?’

Haller’s hand shoots up first and I point to him. ‘Five years, sir.’

‘And why did it cease?’

I point to Kubhart, who shrugs, so I ask Haller again.

‘Because the great khan, Ogedei, died. And Batu had to return to attend the khuriltai in Central Asia to appoint his successor.’

‘Good. So we might ask, how did the Mongols succeed? Was it purely, as is usually argued, because of brute force and superior military technique, or were there other, crucial factors involved? We might note, for a start, that the Mongols did not campaign at all during the period of the thaw. Their campaigns were mainly winter ones, when they could ride across frozen rivers and ignore those natural barriers that, at other times of the year, would have held back their advance. And the most crucial of all their winter campaigns was the first, not only because it allowed them to create a power base in the Caucasus, but because it also instilled in the minds of their enemies the myth of their invincibility. There’s no doubt that, in attacking Kievan Rus’, the Mongols overstretched themselves considerably. Why, one only has to look at the failure of their campaigns against Poland and Hungary to see that their expansion was unsustainable. And so, I feel, it might have been in Rus’ itself, had the princes cooperated, instead of bickering among themselves.’

Alpers raises his hand again, and I nod to him.

‘But the fact is, sir, that they did, and the Russian cities fell, one by one, to the Horde. Even if they’d been delayed a year, it wouldn’t have mattered much. They were far too strong for the Rus’.’

Or too clever.

But I’m suddenly convinced. More than when I visited Hecht earlier. Kravchuk is the key. His bribes, his influence, are crucial to the Mongol victory. By buying advisors and sowing the seeds of doubt, he’s done as much as any Mongol army in the field. And it is our job to aid him, because if we don’t…

I spell it out for them. The failure of the Horde, the great empire of the Khans falling apart in the space of eleven bleak years as internecine warfare rips it asunder, its demise as spectacular as its expansion under Genghis Khan. And into the vacuum steps a new, regenerated Rus’, under a vigorous young ruler, Alexander Iaroslavich. No longer ‘Nevsky’, but ‘the Great’, a heroic leader whose forces cross the great plains of Asia and conquer China.

They laugh, as if I’m playing with them, but for once this is no jest. This is what has happened. It is history now, not hypothesis.

Unless we change it back.

I end the class, then spend the next three hours reading in the main library. Every book is different now, yet everything I read is familiar somehow. So it is sometimes. For this change is far from set, and the memory of what was is still strong in all of us. Thus it is that I notice the omissions. Under Alexander, Rus’ grows strong, and his seed – the Riurikid dynasty – thrive in their new conditions, extending all the way into the current age, not ending in 1598 with the death of Ivan’s son, Fyodor. There is no Peter, no Catherine, no Lenin and no Stalin, for all’s transformed.

Minute by minute it grows stronger. Minute by minute what is takes hold, and what was slips from us. Yet we retain enough to know what we must do.

Hecht is waiting at the platform next to Ernst. Ernst can barely look at me, but that no longer matters. What matters is that we act and act quickly. And so we jump. Back to the moment before I went to visit Razumovsky. There, I meet myself in the snow-covered street and tell myself to go back to the room with Ernst and wait, while I walk on, answering destiny’s call.

And so the circle’s broken. For once there, I argue with Razumovsky, and keep him in the room, persuading him not to go and confront his enemy. And so Kravchuk lives and history’s re-made.

Except I want him dead. Dead so he can’t come back.

Or is there another way?

Razumovsky’s daughter is there, above me in that house. And if he’d left, she would have come to me and kissed me. But that’s all changed now. Now we have never kissed. And I ache to kiss her. Ache to have her in my arms. And so I offer him a deal. I’ll recompense him whatever Kravchuk’s cost him – ten times more, if need be – only there’s one condition: his daughter’s hand in marriage.

He stares at me, as if I’ve suddenly changed shape. ‘Is this what it was about, Otto? Is this why you told me what you told me?’

I want to tell him the truth, even if it costs me, but I know I can’t. This man is proud enough to kill, and I’m not so good a friend that he’ll forgive me. And so I lie.

‘Think, Mikhail,’ I say, standing over him. ‘Think what this will have done to her reputation. To cast off such a suitor as Kravchuk… she’ll not find it easy to find another, will she?’

It’s a truth he finds unpallatable. ‘Maybe so, but what are you, Otto? A Nemets. A mere trader. You could not pass for Russian even if you tried. And half the year you’d be away…’

‘And she could live here, with you.’

I see he likes the idea. Even so, he’s far from convinced.

‘You have no house, no servants…’

‘Then I’ll make one, and buy some. I’m rich enough.’

‘And bold.’ But he looks aside, despair on his face, not joy. In a day he has gone from being a useful member of his community to becoming a pariah, and whatever I offer doesn’t help change that. Unless…

‘Mikhail… what if we were to become partners?’

He looks up sharply. ‘How’s that?’

‘Trading partners. I have the goods, you know the markets. You see, I am limited by the Prince’s decree as to where I travel. But you, you have no such restrictions. You could travel to Vladimir or Kiev itself. They say you can charge three times what they’ll pay here in Novgorod.’

He nods, knowing the truth of it. ‘And what of your compatriot?’

‘Kollwitz? He’ll do as I say.’

But I can see, even as I say it, how much Ernst will rail against this. He’ll see it as another erosion of his authority. And rightly so. But I can’t pull out. Not now. Because I can see that Razumovsky’s half-convinced. If his business here has fallen apart, he’s as well off trying some other avenue of trade.

‘Well?’ I ask.

‘All right!’ he says, and standing, grins at me. He takes my hands, then pulls me closer, embracing me in the Russian fashion. ‘All right! Let’s seal it with a drink!’

And my heart exults, for she’s mine. Katerina is mine.

75

Hecht stares at me then shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry, Otto, but Ernst is right. We can’t afford to get involved with this man, Razumovsky. It’s Kravchuk we need to focus on. We need to keep the man sweet. And we really need to keep things quiet. So I’m sending Ernst back to change things again. He’ll meet with Razumovsky alone and this time he’ll say nothing about Kravchuk. We’ll let things take their course, okay?’

‘And Nevsky?’

Hecht looks to Ernst, who seems suddenly deflated. ‘I’ve decided to put that scheme on hold. Nevsky seems to be an important figure in this other matter. If we undermine him, who knows what other damage we might do. No? We need to find out a good deal more about Kravchuk and his activities before we return to that.’

I keep the disappointment from my face. In fact, it’s only when I get back to my room that it hits me. They’re going to leave things as they are. Which means that Kravchuk will marry Katerina. And he’ll father children by her, whereas I… I won’t even get to meet her.

The thought of it destroys me. I lie on my bed all afternoon, unable to raise myself. It’s as if I’ve died, only if I’d died there’d not be this pain. And it doesn’t cease. The torment is endless. Until, eventually, I can take it no longer and I get up and go to the gym and spend an hour pushing myself to my limits.

Evening finds me in Kurtz’s Bar in the recreation area. There’s a dozen or more people scattered about the place, but no one I’d call a friend. Besides, there’s something about my body language that discourages them from coming across.

I’m on my fifth whisky when Urte comes and sits with me.

‘Hi,’ she says.

‘Hi.’ But I can’t even force a smile, and she sees that.

‘You want to talk?’

I stare back at her coolly. ‘No.’

‘You sure?’

‘Completely sure.’

‘Only I…’

I wait, and eventually she finishes the sentence.

‘Only I couldn’t help noticing what’s been happening.’

‘And what has been happening?’

She looks down. I’ve already done enough to rebuff her, but she’s sticking it out, and I realise that she must like me a lot. Not that it matters. Not that anything matters right now.

She reaches out and touches the scar at my neck. It’s almost healed, but it’s still tender.

‘It’s the only one that shows.’

‘What?’

She smiles sadly. ‘Look at you, Otto. You’re a classic, you know that? Walking wounded. A bullet to the heart, endlessly repeated.’

My mouth is suddenly dry. I go to speak, but she shakes her head, then turns and orders two more whiskies. Doubles.

We end up in bed, of course. Where else is there to end? But it’s not for sex. No. I let her comfort me. I let her hold me while I cry, never saying a word, never explaining a thing. Only she knows, I’m sure. Or guesses. And when I wake, she’s gone. Only there’s a note beside my bed and the lingering smell of her perfume in the air.

‘Otto,’ it reads, ‘ follow your heart. Love Urte.’

76

For the next two days I try to keep myself busy, catching up on my work, but my heart’s not in it. People leave me alone, like they know something’s wrong. I send in a request to go back and visit Frederick, but my note comes back stamped ‘REFUSED’, and no explanation. I know I need a break, maybe even a mind-clean, but the thought of losing her – even the little I have – fills me with dread. This is indeed a form of madness, for I would rather have the memory of her – torment that it is – than nothing.

And so I persevere, into a third day. A day of reckoning.

77

It begins as any other day. I wake from dreams of her and roll on to my back and groan. For a while I lie there, my eyes closed, listening to the silence. And then I sense it. Something’s changed. Something’s happened in the past, and everything is different again.

I go to see Hecht, only he’s not there. At the platform they don’t seem to know where he is, but then, suddenly, he’s there, jumped back from who knows where, his hair smoking, his clothes on fire.

I help put him out, then stand there, waiting for him to say something, but all he says is: ‘Briefing. My room. Now.’

‘What’s happened?’ I ask, before he can say a word. ‘I felt the change.’

His eyes widen. ‘Did you?’ And he sits. For a time he’s silent, thinking some problem through, and then he looks at me, his mind made up.

‘I want you to go back, Otto. To Novgorod. Ernst is missing. I think he may be dead. He was… compromised.’

I wait, and Hecht explains.

‘You were right, Otto. Kravchuk is an agent for the Mongols. And Nevsky’s definitely on his payroll. But something else is happening. I think Yastryeb has made a move.’

‘And Ernst?’

‘We lost contact with him, and when we activated his focus, nothing happened. He didn’t come back. That’s why I went in, to see if I could find him. I jumped to his last known location, but he wasn’t there.’

‘How long was he in there?’

‘Two months subjective.’

‘And what do we know?’

Hecht spells it out. Ernst jumped back twice, to report on things. On the second occasion, Hecht felt he seemed nervous, but as Ernst made no reference to any threat, he let it pass. What he’d learned confirmed our suspicions. Kravchuk was one of a network of Mongol agents sent in before the invasion. Each carried letters from the Great Khan, offering generous terms should the recipient prince come to an agreement with the Khan. But those letters were to be handed over only once other, more covert negotiations had been concluded. They were to ‘sound out’ all of the princes of the ruling Riurikid dynasty and certain princes – those who it was felt would be willing to listen to the Great Khan’s inducements – would then be targeted. Each agent was given the means to ‘buy’ whoever they needed to gain access to those princes. Kravchuk’s target was ‘Nevsky’.

‘So what’s Yastryeb’s involvement?’

‘I don’t know. But they’ve agents there. Ernst saw one of them. A fellow named Alekhin.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘No. But it seems he’s an expert on that period. A big, heavily bearded man. Fits in perfectly with his surroundings. The interesting thing, however, is where Ernst saw him.’

‘Go on.’

‘He was in Nevsky’s entourage. Part of his druzhina, his comrades-in-arms.’

I take in the significance of that. To get that close to Nevsky means he would have had to have stayed in situ for a long, long time. Years, maybe even tens of years.

‘A bodyguard, you think?’

‘Maybe. And maybe not the only one. Ernst was going to try to find out.’

‘Do you think they know about Kravchuk?’

Hecht shrugs. ‘I don’t know, but I’d guess no. If they knew, they’d have had him killed, don’t you think?’

It’s what I’d do if I were them.

‘And the fire?’

I indicate his charred clothes, and he nods. ‘When I couldn’t find Ernst, I went back to your rooms. I was only in there five minutes when the whole place went up.’

‘Yastryeb?’

‘Who else? Unless someone’s invented the grenade four centuries early.’

‘So how did they know you were there?’

Hecht smiles, and it’s like the sun on a winter’s day. ‘That’s what I want you to find out, Otto. That’s why you’re going back.’

78

Back again, to the summer of 1237.

I arrive at the town gates, a heavy pack on my shoulders, and pay the toll. Inside, I make my way quickly through the packed streets, the mid-morning sun making me sweat beneath the rough clothes I’m wearing. Hecht has told me to find a room, then seek out Kravchuk. He wants me to be Kravchuk’s friend, to win his trust and be his confidant, but I’ve another plan. I know that Kravchuk’s been here only three days – not time enough to make friends – but time’s limited, and I want to be sure.

Razumovsky stares at me doubtfully, then has his steward search me for a knife. The fact that I know his name makes him wary of me, for he’s never heard of me, and he deals with many Nemets. Moreover there have been troubles with the Germans lately. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword have merged with the Teutonic Order and are pressing all along the north-west border of this land, so strangers are highly suspect, and I’m a stranger. Even so, he does not shirk his hospitality, and as I sit there, so his servant brings me a beer, and we drink a toast to his family.

‘You have a family, trader?

‘No. But I am looking for a wife.’

Razumovsky grins. ‘A good German wife, I suppose.’

‘Not at all. I mean to settle here, in Novgorod.’

‘To settle?’ His eyes take on a thoughtful cast.

‘That’s so. I plan to buy a plot of land in the Peterhof and build myself a house. Nothing grand, you understand. Nothing as grand as this, anyway.’

Razumovsky smiles at my compliment.

‘But who knows,’ I say. ‘I have contacts back home in Stuttgart. Men who know me and trust me, and would welcome an agent in this town. If all goes well…’

He studies me, his right hand pulling at his beard, and then he stands. ‘You have the means to do this, trader? To buy land and set up home here?’

‘I do,’ I say. ‘And call me Otto, please, Mikhail.’

He nods, then tilts his head a little. ‘And you say you are looking for a wife?’

‘She must be young,’ I say, ‘and pretty. And she must come from a good household. I’ll not marry one who doesn’t. Oh, and she must be of the Orthodox faith.’

This last surprises him. ‘You’re Orthodox?’

‘Not yet. But I plan to convert. I want to put down roots here, Mikhail. Novgorod is a growing town, and I want my sons to be a part of it.’

This impresses him and sends him into a second bout of thoughtfulness. He looks at me, then nods to himself. ‘You have your eye on a young woman, Otto?’

‘No one in particular. But your friend Chernenko told me you would be sure to know someone.’

‘You know Chernenko?’

I do, only he hasn’t met me yet. Not in this time-line. But I will rectify that later. Even so, it does the trick.

‘Look,’ he says, putting his arm about my shoulder. ‘There is a girl, but, well, it’s delicate. Maybe we could talk some more. Over dinner, perhaps?’

‘Dinner?’

He nods and grins at me. ‘You’ll be my guest, I hope.’

‘I’d be delighted. Only…’

He narrows his eyes. ‘Only what?’

‘You see,’ I begin, as if this is awkward for me. ‘It’s not that I don’t trust the people I am staying with, but, well, all of my worldly goods are here, in my pack. If I had somewhere I could store it. Somewhere it would be safe…’

Razumovsky beams. ‘Look no more. You can leave it here, my friend. There’s no safer place in the whole city.’

I look embarrassed. ‘You’re very kind, but…’ I pause, then, going to the pack, pull out the top item, and, stepping over to the table, open up the plain white cloth in which it’s wrapped.

Razumovsky’s eyes open wide in astonishment. ‘Mother of God!’

‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ And I hand him the silver dagger with its jewel-encrusted hilt, and watch as his eyes drink in the beauty of its workmanship.

‘Who made this?’ he asks.

‘A friend.’

‘A good friend, or did you pay him for it?’

I meet his eyes and smile. ‘Oh, I paid him. One hundred thaler.’

Razumovsky’s eyes wrinkle with calculation. ‘One hundred? And it’s worth…?’

‘Five hundred. Maybe a thousand. The jewels are real, not paste.’

In fact, they’re made of my DNA, but they’re good enough to fool anyone in this Age. And there are other things beside. I show them to him, one by one, and know, as he hands each back, that his mind has been busy calculating.

‘There is a girl…’

And I smile and accept his kind offer of a room.

‘Tonight,’ he says. ‘We’ll talk some more tonight.’

79

I have washed and dressed, putting on a long shirt of the finest linen and a deerskin jacket, long leather boots and a hat of soft kid. Dressed so, I look more like a prince than a trader, and Razumovsky greets me with a respectful bow before turning and introducing me to his other guest.

Who smiles, and stands, and offers me his hand.

Kravchuk.

Razumovsky sees nothing, but Kravchuk notes the hesitation, and there’s a sudden question in his eyes.

‘You know me, trader?’

I smile, trying to disarm him, but my pulse is racing and I find it hard to breathe.

‘No,’ I say. ‘No, it’s just – you reminded me briefly of someone. A friend.’

He accepts that, nods, then grasps my hands and shakes them. But I am still surprised to find him here. When did he call? Or has he known Razumovsky a long time now?

I look to my host, as if seeking an explanation, but he seems unaware that there’s a need. It seems, however, that he’s told Kravchuk about me.

‘I hear you are from Stuttgart, Otto. It’s a very pleasant town.’

It is, but I have never been there. Not in this century. And so I shift the subject, to my fictitious travels in the Asian heartland, and find Kravchuk staring at me thoughtfully, as if maybe I know him after all.

He says little, not wishing to betray whence he’s come, and so I change the subject once again.

‘They say the veche here are unhappy with their prince.’

Kravchuk’s eyes go to me, then he looks away. But Razumovsky laughs. ‘If it were possible, we would have no prince at all! But it will be a cold day in hell before Kiev imposes one on us!’

He leans toward me, about to say more, when there’s a movement in the doorway behind him. He turns and grins.

‘Ah, Masha, Katerina…’

The two women of the house enter, each carrying a large wooden tray stacked high with food. There’s ham and chicken, cheese and pickled fish and more besides.

I look on, amazed, falling in love with her again. Yet for a time she does not even notice me, but goes about her task, helping her mother set the table. And only when she’s done and turns, a half-smile on her lips, do our eyes finally meet.

I watch as her lips slowly part with the shock of recognition. There is a moment’s naked panic in her eyes, and then she looks away, colour forming at her neck and in her cheeks.

I am a stranger to her, yet now – and I can see it clearly from where I stand – her heart beats quickly beneath the bright blue blouse she wears.

‘Gentlemen,’ Razumovsky begins, stepping between the two women and turning, an arm about each, ‘let me introduce my wife, Masha, and my daughter, Katerina.’

And I make to step forward, to take her hand and kiss it, but Kravchuk is there in front of me, bowing low before her, his hat removed.

‘Katerina,’ he says. ‘What a delightful name…’

80

It is an evening hardly to be borne. It is not simply that the man is odious, it is the fact that Razumovsky can’t see through his boasts and flattery and glimpse the little slug he really is. In fact, by the evening’s end, I have come to think Katerina’s father a total fool. Even so, I try one last, vain time to speak to him alone about his daughter’s hand, only to have him raise it at the table.

‘Hark, Oleg! Otto here wants my daughter’s hand!’

Kravchuk stiffens, then looks at me challengingly. ‘He is no Russian, Mikhail,’ he says coldly. ‘And Russians should marry Russians. It is not good to mix the blood.’

I stare back at him, furious. I want to kill him, only I’ve no weapon on me. Besides, it’s Razumovsky’s decision, not his.

I look to my host and realise just how drunk he is. Bleary-eyed drunk. Can’t-hold-your-head-up drunk. He just wants to fall over in the corner and sleep.

‘Wha—?’

‘I said,’ Kravchuk begins, but I cut him short.

‘Don’t interfere. Hear me? You say another word, I’ll kill you.’

‘You’ll what?’ And Kravchuk laughs, and reaches across to take another chicken leg. ‘Kill me, my arse! You’re all hot air, you Germans. As full of shit as a pig’s intestines!’

I stand, glaring at him. But he’s not even looking at me. It’s as if I’m of no consequence, and I feel the urge to tell him that I’ve killed him once already – burned a hole in his fucking head – only he’d think me mad. So I leave before I do something I regret. Only as I go to step into the street, someone catches my arm and I turn to find her there, wrapped in a cloak, a shadow in the darkness by the gate, and she says the words I sense she’s said a hundred times or more.

‘Who are you?’

And I answer her with a kiss, and then I take her hand and lead her out into the darkness of that thirteenth-century night, away from Kravchuk and her fool of a father. And she asks me where we’re going, and I say I don’t know, just away, and I realise that I have left all of my belongings behind, but it doesn’t matter. I have the only thing I need with me. The only thing I value. And when we stop, beyond the bridge, beneath a cresset lamp that burns fitfully in its metal cage, I take her face in my hands and kiss her once again and tell her that I love her, and her eyes, the image of which are burned into my soul, shine back at me in that wavering light as she smiles and softly laughs.

81

As the dawn’s light fills the room, I wake to find her there beside me, naked, her dark hair spread across my pillow, and I know that I must have died and gone to heaven, for I have not ever seen such beauty.

I watch her for a time, content to see her sleeping there beside me, the memory of what we did in the night filling me.

Razumovsky would kill me if he knew. But she is no longer his. She is mine now. My wife. For all eternity.

And I know that I have crossed some Rubicon of the soul, but it matters nothing. All that matters lies beside me now, her warmth, her sweet reality my compass and my anchor for all time. And I know now what I sensed that very first time I saw her, that nothing will part us now. Nothing.

Even so, I must go and see her father.

She wakes, and her eyes, opening to me, are filled with love. We kiss, and that kiss reminds us of the night, and she and I begin again that sweetest game of all, that game of mouths and tongues and fingers, and our bodies press hard, as if to merge, my need and hers a single, growing force, until she cries out, her body arching under mine, and I groan and feel my seed course into her.

Afterwards she lies there, crying quietly, and I ask her why, and she tells me it’s because she has never been so happy. And I am struck with awe that she is mine. Wiping her tears away, she lifts herself up on to her elbow, looking down at me, a strange intelligence in her eyes.

‘How do I know you, Otto? Where is it that we’ve met? And how, then, did I ever forget you? For surely I must have. It’s just that it seems… unnatural.’

I almost laugh and tell her everything: that I hail from a time so distant that more than fifty generations separate us… Only I don’t, for I know that such knowledge would frighten her. And, having won her so completely, I fear to lose her now. Yet she seems to sense something. It is as if she knows. But knows what?

‘The priests who taught me,’ she says, one finger gently tracing the length of my jaw, making me shiver at the touch, ‘they claim that everything is pre-ordained. That God alone has set our destiny. Only being here with you I begin to question that. You and I… it’s like we were fated. I’m not even sure what I mean by that, only… I knew you, Otto. Knew you at first sight. One moment nothing, and the next…’

She leans closer, lowering her face to mine, her lips to mine, her breasts warm, like silk against my chest. Yet even as I turn and reach across to caress her face, there is a hammering at the door.

‘Behr! Come out! Come out, you bastard!’

I look to her, seeing the fear in her eyes, and try to reassure her.

‘It’s okay,’ I say softly. ‘It’ll be okay.’

But I know I’m in trouble, and while normally I could just jump right out of there, I cannot leave her. That’s Kravchuk’s voice, and if he’s come, he’ll not be alone. He’ll have his Mongol friends with him.

‘Get dressed,’ I tell her. ‘Then go over to the corner. They’ll not harm you.’

‘But Otto…’

My voice grows hard as the hammering comes again. ‘Do as I say! We’ll be all right.’

She dresses hurriedly, and once she’s ready, I go to the door and draw the upper bolt.

Kravchuk is there, of course, and his three friends. He stares at me, surprised to find me naked, then steps inside and sniffs the air. A cruel smile appears on his lips.

‘Oh dear… Our friend Razumovsky won’t be pleased.’

I face him squarely. ‘What do you want, Kravchuk?’

‘I want your bollocks, trader. I want them on a string about my neck.’

And he steps aside, to let his goons come at me. And they’re good. There are few fighters throughout history to equal the Mongols for their savagery. But I am trained for this. I’ve been trained since I was four – turning and kicking and punching, using my hands and feet as lethal weapons. This much is pure instinct. And as the last of them falls, clutching his crushed manhood, I turn to Kravchuk and smile.

‘You want to cut them off yourself, Oleg Alekseevich?’

The worm swallows and backs towards the door. He’s drawn his knife, but he has no confidence in using it. It trembles in his hand.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to try?’

And I want him to make a move, so I can throw him down and choke the life from him. But he’s seen enough and, throwing down the knife, he runs for it.

I watch him go, then take a shuddering breath. For a moment I stand there, swaying, coming down from that peak of intensity, my body relaxing after the adrenalin rush. And then I turn, remembering her.

She’s watching me, like she hasn’t really seen me till that moment. And as I step towards her, she flinches, and I say:

‘It’s okay, Katerina. It’s only me. We’re safe now.’

And her face seems to break, and tears come, and I hold her, like a father holds his child, until the storm has passed and she gives a shuddering sigh against me.

‘Who are you, Otto? Who are you really?’

82

Razumovsky is out with a host of his friends, searching the back streets of Novgorod to find his daughter, but his wife, Masha is there when we call at the house, and she greets Katerina with a single look that takes in everything. She knows. But then, I’m not about to deny it. I plan to brazen this out. What I know is that Razumovsky as good as promised me his daughter until Kravchuk turned up. But now things are different. He might kill me, but he’ll find it hard to find another husband for his daughter, now that I’ve stolen her away. Word will go out. And, after all, it’s better for her to have a live, rich husband, than a dead one who’s worth nothing.

Or so I hope. For I know that Razumovsky is a passionate man, and would as soon kill a man as listen to reason. He’s done it once before, with Kravchuk, and he could just as easily do it to me.

And so we wait, while a servant runs off to find his master and give him the news that we’re here. Eventually he comes.

I am standing there alone when he steps into the room. His friends are behind him, but he turns and waves them away. This is for him to deal with alone. Turning back, he shoots me a fierce look, as if I’m in for it now, yet what he says surprises me.

‘You’re a cool one, Otto Behr. To come back here, after what you’ve done.’

I wait, not saying a word, and he speaks again.

‘So? What am I to do? Kill you? Or make a son of you?’

And he smiles, and I realise that, even as he’s searched the streets, he has been thinking. And maybe – for it’s likely in a town this size – he’s also heard what I did to Kravchuk’s friends. And maybe that too has set him thinking.

‘I’ll make her a good husband.’

‘That we’ll see.’ But he doesn’t seem aggrieved now. After all, if I marry her, then no harm’s done. Even so, when he takes my hands, he squeezes them a little, just to show me who’s the master here.

‘Father,’ I say and bow my head to him, then turn, as Katerina enters, looking first to her father and then, her eyes wide with delight, to me. She rushes over and clings to me, and I look past her at her father, who now stares at me, puzzled by this.

And I know what he is thinking at that moment.

Who are you, Otto Behr? Just who are you?

83

Hecht’s mad with me, but that doesn’t matter. Now that she’s mine, I can focus on the rest of it.

The map’s still red, you see, which means that Kravchuk and his fellow agents have failed. But now that I’ve bested him, I can put that right. Now that he knows who’s master, I can be his ally.

You’ll find that odd, perhaps, yet it’s so. Now that she’s mine, my animosity towards the man has gone. He’s lost that contest, but he needn’t lose the game. In fact, we need him to win.

But first I have to find him.

Leaving Katerina with her father, I go to the east of the town, the Torgovaya storona, to the rooms where Ernst and I unearthed him first time round. He’s not there, but I’m told by the innkeeper that he did return, not an hour back, and left almost immediately.

So where’s he gone?

I jump back an hour and wait and watch him go inside, then, less than two minutes later, leave hurriedly. I follow, keeping well back, as he makes his way to the western gate. There he waits, pacing back and forth, as if he’s meeting someone.

Ten minutes pass, fifteen, then someone comes. I recognise the man from the first time we visited Razumovsky’s house. It’s Ernst’s friend, the tysiatskii, Novgorod’s military commander. Kravchuk talks to him a while, huddled close, talking to his ear, his whole manner urgent, and then the tysiastskii turns and hurries away, leaving Kravchuk alone once more.

I wonder just what’s happening, and how the tysiatskii knew he’d be there, when the town’s bells start to ring.

I turn, looking back over the roofs of the houses and see the reason why. There is a fire down near the river, in the direction of the Peterhof – the foreign quarter. I watch for a while, seeing the dark pall of smoke swirl upwards in the morning sunlight, then turn back.

Kravchuk’s behind me, no more than ten paces away. As I turn he stops, looking at me uncertainly. I don’t know what he intended – to surprise me, perhaps – but I can see he’s still afraid of me, and so I put up my hands in a gesture of peace.

‘We’ve no need to be enemies,’ I say. ‘I’ve got what I came here for.’

He doesn’t answer, so I continue.

‘I could help you, Kravchuk. Smooth the way for you. Get you introductions. Even help you find a wife.’

Anyone, I think. Anyone but Katerina.

He wets his lips, then shakes his head. ‘I don’t need your help, trader. I’ve friends of my own.’

‘You mean Batu’s men?’

His eyes widen with surprise at the warlord’s name. He didn’t think that anyone here in Novgorod had ever heard that name before.

‘Oh, I know what you’re doing, Kravchuk. But it doesn’t matter. You and I want the same thing. For the Horde to be victorious. That letter you carry from the Great Khan. I’ll help you deliver it. I’ll help you get it to Alexander Iaroslavich.’

This is too much for him, however, and I can see he’s torn between running and staying to fight me. Only he’s seen what I can do, and he clearly doesn’t rate his chances.

‘How do you know all this? Who told you?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘All that matters is that I know. Everything. And I’m willing to help you.’

But he’s still suspicious. Up until a moment ago I was a deadly rival, so why should he trust me now? Only I’m saying all the right things.

‘Your friend, the tysiatskii, where has he gone?’

Kravchuk glances to his left, then to his right, as if he suspects some trap; as if, while I’ve kept him talking, I’ve brought up men to surround him. But it’s only his paranoia.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘I saw you, talking to him. And then he hurried off. Why?’

But Kravchuk’s not about to say.

The smell of burning is stronger and the great pall of smoke has risen so high now that it starts to block the sunlight. Kravchuk glances toward it, then looks back at me.

‘Tonight,’ he says. ‘At Razumovsky’s. We’ll speak then.’ And he turns and hurries away, back towards the river. Towards where the fire burns fiercest.

84

That evening, Razumovsky holds a great feast, announcing to his astonished friends that I am to marry his daughter just as soon as I’ve converted to the faith. A massive cheese is brought out and laid upon the table, its ritual slicing symbolising our obruchenie – our betrothal – and later a priest arrives and takes me aside and tests me, and, satisfied with my responses, says I am to be baptised into the Russian Orthodox faith tomorrow at dawn. In fact, things are moving so fast that I forget about Kravchuk until, returning to the feast, I see him, seated quietly at one corner of the great table, the big Mongolian at his side.

Talk at the table is of the great fire that swept the Peterhof that morning. The inn I was staying at was among those buildings destroyed, and I thought, perhaps, the Khan’s men might have perished in the conflagration, but I can see that one at least survived, and so I go across and, standing before Kravchuk, bow to him in greeting.

‘I see you’ve got what you wanted,’ he says tonelessly.

‘It would seem so.’

I look to the Mongolian, trying to gauge what his response to me now is. He seems okay, but these men are fiercely proud, and he’ll not forget what I did to him earlier, so I give him the slightest bow of respect.

‘You want to talk?’ Kravchuk asks.

‘Not here,’ I say. ‘Outside.’ And, as the Mongolian makes to accompany him, I add, ‘Alone.’

The Mongolian shakes his head, but Kravchuk places a hand on his arm and nods.

We step outside, into the warm darkness of the evening. The courtyard stinks, but we ignore it. Kravchuk is first to speak.

‘You said you could help me? How?’

‘I can get you introductions. Meetings with the men you want to see.’

He laughs. ‘You’re a Nemets. You don’t even know these people.’

‘Oh, I do. Much better than you think. And I also know that you’re in danger. There are agents here – Rus’ agents – who want to kill you.’

That makes him think. ‘They know who I am? What I’m doing here?’

‘Yes.’ But the truth is I don’t know. I’m only guessing now. I am assuming that the Russians got to Kravchuk. That they worked out what was going on.

‘It’s like I said earlier. I want what you want. I want the Horde to succeed.’

‘And is that why you’re marrying a Russian?’

I smile, but he doesn’t see it in the darkness. We are but voices.

‘Expediency,’ I say, not wishing to let him know just what I feel. Not wishing to give him any power over me. ‘If I’m to function here, then I need to blend in.’

‘I see.’ And he does seem to understand that. After all, it’s what he’s doing. Even so, he’s not entirely satisfied, and now he asks the crucial question. ‘So who are you working for?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

He hesitates, then, quieter. ‘The Poles? The Livonians?’

I lower my voice, as if I don’t wish to be overheard. ‘No. But close. I report to the Grand Master himself.’

It’s a half-truth, and I’m proud of it, makeshift as it is.

‘I see,’ Kravchuk says, and there’s a new respect in his voice. ‘I should have guessed.’

‘Maybe. But now that you know, there seems no reason for us to be enemies. You and I, we want to bring these barbarians to their knees, no? To humble them. What better way than to undermine their princes, eh?’

And he laughs. A soft and quiet laugh that sounds like genuine amusement. And I begin to laugh also, and when Razumovsky comes out to find me, he finds Kravchuk and I arm in arm, laughing together, as if we’re drunk.

‘Gentlemen!’ he says, putting his arms about us both. ‘It’s good to see you two becoming friends! But come inside now. Come! It’s time for the toast.’

We return inside, and there is my beloved, her single plait, the symbol of her maidenhood, unplaited now, the lace kokoshnik removed from her head. As I step towards her, so she holds out a heavy gilded cup. There has been no time for a devichnik – a maiden’s party – but she has bathed, as is the tradition, and now she offers me a drink of her bathwater. In another time, another age, this might seem ludicrous, but here this is seen as an almost magical rite, a throwback to their ancient worship of Lado, the fertility god. I take the goblet reverently, cupping her hands gently in my own, and sip, my eyes smiling at hers all the while, drinking of her, knowing that by this time tomorrow she will be mine.

85

I am up an hour before dawn, preparing myself. First light finds me kneeling in the front bench of St Sophia’s, Razumovsky at my side, the tall, dark-bearded priest six paces distant, praying to the altar before he turns and beckons me across. There is the smell of burning incense, the flicker of candles in golden sconces. All goes well, and within the hour I step from the church, the taste of wine and communion bread strong in my mouth. Razumovsky looks at me and grins, then strides on in front, leaving me to catch up.

The wedding is to be that afternoon, in St Sophia’s, and invitations are hurriedly sent out. I find the haste of it almost indecent, but Razumovsky’s not to be denied. Now that he has me, he wants to keep me and make sure. He doesn’t want me rushing off on some trading venture, only to find his unwed daughter swelling out, the townsfolk gossiping.

Not that I’m against the idea. Oh Urd no. I want her more than anything I’ve ever wanted, and the thought of marrying her that afternoon is like a dream. Indeed, it is my dream. Only Ernst is still missing, and I’ve not a clue yet what the Russians are up to. And Hecht wants me back.

But he can wait. This once they all can wait.

And now the hours crawl slowly, as if Time’s an uphill gradient, and when the bells of the town sound for the midday service, I wonder just how it can be that the seconds can drag so, such that they seem a good twice their normal length. And, of course, I am not to see her yet, not until the ceremony, and as some one is always calling in to congratulate me and bring me presents, there is no way I can slip back and visit Hecht.

And so I wait, and wait some more, until the hour comes and, dressed in my finest clothes, I accompany Razumovsky’s steward to the church.

It’s only then that I realise I’ve no one to give me away. It ought to be Ernst if anyone, but, looking across at the hastily filled benches, I spot one face I’ve come to know too well. Kravchuk.

Impossible, I think. But someone will have to do the job. Besides, there’s a kind of irony to this. Before I changed things, my bride was his. So maybe Fate intends this.

I walk across and, whispering to his ear, ask him if he will stand in for my father. He straightens, looking strangely flattered by my request, then nods and, standing, follows me back across.

And so we stand there, Kravchuk and I, at the head of that great aisle, as the incense burns and the choir moans its strange, alien refrains, and my love, my darling Katerina, walks towards me, her arm in her father’s arm.

Slowly she comes as in a dream, her dress, hastily adapted from some party gown, seeming to float across the dark stone floor, her hair, braided with silver chains, flowing out from the pokoinik – the marital veil – she wears. And as she draws parallel to me, her eyes meet mine and smile, like the promise of an everlasting summer.

I am bewitched. I have never seen such a glorious sight. As we stand there, she to the left, I to the right of the priest, each of us holding a lighted candle, so I understand that all of my life, all of my travels throughout the length and breadth of Time have led to this one, single moment. This is the centre of it. The focus. All else leads to or away from here, like the hub of a great wheel.

We exchange rings – obruchei – and then join our right hands as the priest places a lightweight crown on each of our heads, then switches them, blessing us with incense and wishing us ‘a peaceful and long life’ and ‘children and grandchildren to fill your house with abundance and beauty’. All this transpires, and yet for me the service passes in a daze. Somnolent, I say the magic words and make her mine. Till death do us part. And even Kravchuk’s presence there – a man I’ve killed, a man I’ve seen kill her – does not affect my happiness. Indeed, his presence seems to be the seal on things, for if the wedding has his blessing, then surely nothing can unbind this.

Even so, as I turn, Katerina’s arm in my arm, and face the congregation, my smile is tempered by the knowledge of Time’s inconstancy. If I could win her from the very teeth of Time, then what’s the chance of keeping her? What tricks and twists might yet unbind this moment?

I cannot bear the thought. A cloud crosses my face. But Katerina seems not to notice. She beams with happiness at my side, and, looking at her, I cannot help but feel that this was meant.

The great table’s set once more, stacked high with food, a regular bratchina. And as I drink the first of a dozen toasts, the room packed with Razumovsky’s friends, so my darling is taken off, to be prepared for her bridal bed, and the thought of it is more intoxicating than any wine, and I long to be there, alone with her, and not here in this stifling room with these endless, foul-smelling, bearded, grinning men.

An hour passes, and I find I’m feeling drunk. It’s hard to deny Razumovsky and, as he fills my goblet once again, I look about me, wondering when she’ll be ready.

Yet even as I turn, there’s a commotion in the doorway and the crowd parts to reveal the tysiatskii and several of his men in full armour, their swords drawn, and I wonder what in Urd’s name is going on. As the noise dies, so he takes out a scroll and unfurls it and, clearing his throat begins to read, and even as he does, his men push through that throng and lay their hands on me.

Razmovsky stands there, shocked by what he’s hearing, staring at me in open-mouthed astonishment, even as I struggle to break free. But it’s done now, and I know exactly who has done it. Traitor I am, according to the tysiatskii’s words. An agent of the Teutons. I turn my head furiously, looking for him, and find him, smiling in the corner, and curse him, and tell him I’ll cut out his heart and feed it to his lifeless mouth. But Kravchuk merely laughs, his wet mouth showing red as he raises his silver goblet in a toast.

‘To you, Otto! To you!’

86

I am clapped in irons and thrown into a dark, damp cell beneath the tysiatskii’s palace. It would be easy to jump right out of there, only I’m curious to see how they’ll proceed, and what they know, and so I bide my time. Even so, I am in torment, for I had hoped this night to be in Katerina’s arms again, as her husband, staring down into those beautiful eyes as we made love. The thought makes me wonder how she’s taking this, and what her father’s said, and my heart breaks once more thinking of her sorrow. And then, because there’s time to think of everything, I wonder just why Kravchuk acted as he did.

It’s clear I misread him. Whatever else is going on, it’s clear he considers me a threat – a factor to be eliminated. More than that, the man truly is a slug. I bested him and so he takes his vengeance on my wedding night. And maybe, just maybe, he has designs on her still. Maybe he’ll try to have the marriage vows annulled.

The thought horrifies me. I groan aloud, and the guard, hearing it, mistakes it for despair and laughs and begins to taunt me. But his words can’t touch me. Nothing can touch me now, for I have lost the world.

I doze and wake to find them over me. There’s two of the fellows. They haul me up between them then throw me against the wall. I’m winded, but they’ve only just begun. One of them strikes me with the back of his hand, and then the other brings his knee up into my balls. The pain’s excruciating, but I still don’t jump. If I can get to see the tysiatskii, if I can get him to listen to me for a moment, maybe I can set things right again.

The beating goes on for several minutes, and then they stand back, chuckling, enjoying my discomfort. I look up at them, then, pulling my chained hands up to my mouth, wipe away the blood. I climb to my feet, then face them, uncowered. My whole mouth stings and I know it’s beginning to swell up, but I can still talk.

‘I must speak with your master. There’s been a mistake…’

But they only laugh, and the bigger of the two, a surly looking fellow, kicks me back against the wall.

‘You’ll speak to us, Nemets. And you’ll say “Master”, understand?’

‘I have to speak to him…’

This only angers him. He runs at me and throws a punch, and though I turn my head, it hits me squarely on the lower jaw and I feel the bone crack, and the pain’s so great that I slump against the wall, almost blacking out. And I know now that I’m never going to get to see the tysiatskii; that there’s never going to be a hearing, and that I’m going to die in this awful, stinking cell unless I jump. And as the Russian stands over me, raising his fist ready to beat my bruised and bleeding face to a pulp, so I raise my eyes to his and spit full in his face, blood and saliva mixed.

Go tell your master that…

And jump.

87

Zarah’s angry with me – much more than Hecht was last time out. When she comes to see me in the care ward, she lectures me for a full half hour and, when I refuse to tell her what’s really going on, warns me that she’s going to do her best to get me grounded before I get myself killed. I’m touched by her concern, but there’s no way she’s going to stop me going back. She’s like a mother and a sister to me and, if she had her way, she’d be my lover too, but that doesn’t mean she can dictate to me.

I’ve kidney damage and partial damage to one of my testicles. Nothing they can’t fix, but it means several days’ rest before I can go back. In terms of the Past, that doesn’t mean a thing – I can drop back any time I want – but it makes me restless in the Now. I don’t want to lie there and recuperate, I want to get back to thirteenth-century Novgorod and kick seven shades of shit out of Kravchuk.

To change the subject, I ask about Ernst and whether there’s been any trace of him, and in doing so I learn something that Hecht neglected to tell me first time round.

‘That’s right,’ Zarah says, combing back her short blond hair with her fingers. ‘He jumped back and disappeared immediately. We thought that maybe his focus was faulty, and wasn’t showing a signal, but when Hecht jumped back there was nothing. Not the slightest trace of him. And that’s not right. It’s like he never was there. Only he was.’

‘Has this happened before?’

‘Never.’

‘And Hecht doesn’t have an explanation for it?’

‘No.’

Then it’s a mystery. And maybe I’m the one to solve it. I look at Zarah. ‘Where’s Hecht?’

She shakes her head. ‘No way. You’re getting some rest.’

‘I only want to talk.’

‘Yes, and try to persuade him to let you go back before you’re ready to.’

‘He’s not that stupid.’

‘No? He’s a man, isn’t he?’

And I almost smile at that. But I’m not leaving this. ‘Just tell him I want to speak to him. If he’s too busy…’

But Hecht isn’t too busy. He would have come before, only Zarah didn’t inform him that I was back, let alone that I’d been beaten up. He stands at the end of my bed and studies me.

‘Nice bruises, Otto. They go with the scar you got last time.’

I’d forgotten that, but now my fingers find and trace the three-inch scar on the right side of my neck.

‘Kravchuk again,’ I say. ‘Or his friends, should I say.’

And I tell Hecht the story. Or some of it, anyway. Nothing about Katerina.

‘The problem is,’ I conclude, ‘that if I let Kravchuk live, he always – and I mean always – seems to get the drop on me. Yet if I don’t…’

‘The map turns red.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Then become Kravchuk.’

I stare at Hecht then laugh. But it’s a brilliant idea. I could go back, find out where and when he first made contact with the Mongols, eliminate him, and set myself up as their agent in his place. That way there’s never a conflict. That way I can kill Kravchuk, marry Katerina and keep the map from turning red, all at the same time.

The only trouble is that it’s going to take time to set up. Maybe more than I can afford. After all, I’ve Frederick to look after. And it’s clear Hecht thinks so too, for after pondering a moment, he says: ‘Maybe someone else should take this on, Otto. Someone with some background on the Horde.’

Normally I’d not argue. It makes complete sense, after all. But I’m not in my senses. Not where Katerina’s concerned.

‘It won’t take me long,’ I say. ‘I’ve some background already. And I’m the only one who knows who our contacts are in Novgorod now Ernst is missing. I know what’s going on there. A new agent, well, they’d have to start again, from scratch. Besides, I know Kravchuk. Know his weaknesses.’

It’s enough. Hecht nods. ‘Okay. But first you get some rest. I’ll bring you whatever you need on the Horde and their social organisations. Who’s who, where they’re based.’

He stops, then smiles. ‘You know what?’

‘What?’

‘I think we’re doing this the hard way, Otto. We want to find out Kravchuk’s movements, right? Where he went? Who he met?’

‘Right.’

‘Then let’s not bother following him around. Let’s take the bastard prisoner, pump him full of drugs and let him sing.’

I smile. ‘Okay. I’m game. I’ll make a list of things I’ll need to ask.’

‘Good. And one other thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Try not to get in trouble this time, Otto. It’s upsetting the women.’

88

I’m all ready to go, when I have an idea… about Ernst and what happened to him.

That’s the beauty of having to rest up. Because while the body’s relaxing, the mind goes into overdrive.

I go to Hecht and ask him to send me back to precisely the point where Ernst disappeared, only fifteen minutes before he ‘arrived’. And before I go, I visit Hans Luwer in his workshop.

As I enter, all nine of Hans look up and, lifting their spectacles from their noses in an identical manner, say:

‘Ah, Otto…’

There is only one Hans, of course, but the man has much to do and this is how he copes, jumping back and forth through Time. Multi-tasking.

‘Here,’ says the third of him, seated slightly down the work bench from where I’m standing. ‘I finished it an hour back.’ And he hands me the camera I’m about to ask him for.

‘Thanks,’ I say, and then, because I must – to complete the loop – I hand him the rough sketch I’ve made for him and he stands and nods and wanders off, heading for the platform.

‘So what’s happening in the world?’ Hans asks, his eight mouths working as one.

‘Ernst Kollwitz is missing, and I’m trying to find out where he’s gone. He disappeared.’

‘Ah…’ And again the sound is echoed from eight mouths, as Hans looks to himself, as if, between his selves, he might come up with an answer.

I stay and talk a while, then head back to the platform. Zarah is there, still angry, and she glares at me as I climb up. Even so, she cannot help but wish me luck, as she checks the readings.

And then I’m there, in the clearing in the forest, where Ernst and I have come so many times.

In roughly five minutes Hecht will come through, and I don’t want him to see me there, mainly because he didn’t. Then, ten minutes later, Ernst will come through. Or rather, he won’t.

I move into the trees, setting my camera up well back, out of sight, but with a clear view of the centre of the clearing.

Minutes pass, and then the air in the clearing shimmers and Hecht steps through. He looks about him then, like a thief, moves stealthily into the trees on the far side.

I wait, looking at the timer on my wrist, and as the fifteen minutes pass, so I see the slightest ripple in the air…

And nothing. No sign of Ernst at all. Only the vacant air.

I watch Hecht step out and look about him. He crouches, studying the ground, then, frowning, puts his hand to his chest and disappears.

But I already know I have the answer, and, picking up the camera, I walk out into that space and, touching my chest, jump back.

89

Only three of the thirty frames catch it, but it’s clear. Ernst did appear in the clearing. But just as quickly he vanished, into another dimension.

The question is how?

Hecht’s puzzled, staring at the prints.

‘It’s some kind of trap, set off when he jumps through. The question is how did they know when and where he’d come through?’

‘They didn’t.’

Hecht looks at me. ‘What?’

‘They didn’t have to. I reckon he had it on him, like some kind of mine. They must have made it of his DNA. It would be easy enough to take a sample from him. Some special device, triggered only when you jump back through time.’

Hecht considers that, then nods. ‘Okay. So where is he?’

I look about me. ‘Some place like this, I reckon. A no-space place.’

‘Then how…?’ But Hecht sees how. He smiles, and stands and says, ‘We’ll get a team on to it straight away.’

And I know that Ernst will be okay. But meanwhile I’ve got to go and see Kravchuk and ask him a few questions.

90

Kravchuk shrieks when he next sees me, and tries to run. Only there’s nowhere to run. The door to his room is locked and he’ll need to get past me if he wants to unlock it.

I raise the gun and fire, then watch as he tries to pluck the dart out of his neck. He struggles for a time, then his hand falls away and he slumps on to the pallet bed. I kneel beside him.

‘Oleg… Oleg, can you hear me?’

He rolls over, on to his back, and smiles up at me, his eyes unfocused.

‘Oleg, I’ve some questions I want to ask you. About your visit to the Great Khan.’

And so I learn it all. How, as a young boy, his father and his uncles took him to Samarkand where he first set eyes upon the Mongol Horde, and how those ferocious warriors had fired his imagination. Kravchuk’s father was a Bulgar, who traded in furs, which the Mongols loved to have. He was a particular friend of the Mongol leader, Subodei, who, though born a mere blacksmith’s son, had risen under Temuchin to become the commander of a ‘Thousand’, a Mongol army.

He had spent the next two decades among the Mongols, learning the Uighur language of the conquered Naimans, which Temuchin – Genghis Khan – had adopted for his people, and subsequently served as a bichechi – a secretary – to General Subodei.

I listened, fascinated, as he spoke of the great khuriltai of 1228, held at the thousand-tent encampment on the Kerulen River, deep in the heart of Mongolia itself. It was there, as I knew, that the Mangqolun ninca tobchan – the ‘Secret History of the Mongols’ – had its origins, and it was there that he saw, for the first time, all of the great names from Temuchin’s campaigns – veterans now, their teeth black, their hair grey – as each evening they stood up and, in the flickering blaze of an open fire, recounted their tales of battles they had won and brave deeds they had witnessed or enacted.

And strangely, as he spoke I came to understand how this man might have been won to their cause, how, listening to those old men, he might have longed to be a part of it, however small, and how, when the chance came to serve his master, Subodei, and even the Khan, Batu himself, Kravchuk had leapt at it, eager to prove himself.

‘I went to Karakorum,’ he says, a glow of wonder in his face, ‘to Ogodei’s great palace, and saw the silver tree. Oh, it was beautiful. And the women…’ He laughs. ‘But things were changing. They were growing soft. You could see it. All those riches they had won for themselves. Once they used to wear the skins of dogs and were a fierce, proud race, but now… now they wear silks and furs and carry pockets full of jewels, and they grow fat and dull.’

‘Then why serve them still?’

‘For what they were. And what they yet might be.’

It is a good answer. It is why I serve my people. But there is something else I need to know before the drug wears off, and I ask it now.

‘So, now that I am out of the way… will you marry Razumovsky’s daughter?’

Again he laughs. ‘The deed is done. Or good as. He’s promised me her hand – once the annulment’s passed by the church elders.’

His answer chills me. I had thought for a moment that I might let him live. But now…

I have all the answers that I need. All that remains is to kill the man. But still I hesitate. I do not like to kill in cold blood, nor is there any honour in cutting the throat of a drugged man. But if I leave him be, he’ll marry Katerina, and that can never be. I have seen him slit her throat with not a flicker of remorse in the bastard’s eyes. So now I steel myself, and draw my knife, remembering that.

Then jump, before the image of him smiling, his blood pooling beneath his head, haunts my nights.

91

And jump back, three nights later, outside the Razumovsky house.

Hecht’s working on my list; sending in researchers to find out where and when’s the best time to slip into Kravchuk’s skin. Subodei is a problem, naturally, because he knew Kravchuk for so long, and he’d notice straight away if it was me pretending to be Kravchuk. So we need to find some point at which I can become him, and such things take time. So here I am, at Razumovsky’s once again, less than a week after my wedding supper and the events that followed.

I ignore the gate. There’s no chance that Razumovsky will invite me back with open arms, not after what I’ve done. Like all of them now, he thinks me some kind of enchanter – a man who can cast a spell and step out of the air. The truth, of course, is far stranger. But right now I’m not interested in Razumovsky. I need to see her. To let her know that I’m not what they say I am. And to let her know that I still love her and will come for her.

Only I’ve got to find a way inside.

It’s dark. Only the faintest sliver of moon shows through the thick cloud cover. I climb in over the back of the stockade, then crawl up one of the roofs and drop down into the narrow space between two buildings. It’s pitch black down there, but there’s a door at the end, and it’s unlocked, so I listen a moment, then slip inside.

And stop, getting my bearings clear in my head before I proceed. If I remember rightly, she’s to my right and up a floor, but where precisely I’m not sure.

It’s late, but there are still noises in the house: voices; the creak of a door being opened somewhere to my left. Fortunately there are no dogs. Razumovsky hates dogs, and I am grateful to him for once, for the last thing I want is to set a dog barking.

A sturdy set of wooden steps – more ladder than stairs – leads up, and I climb them quickly, then turn and stop, feeling with my hands.

Bare wooden planks give way to a door frame. I find the latch, and slowly, very slowly, push back the door. In the faint light from the window I can make out the bed, a big, carved, wooden bed, and in it Razumovsky and his wife, their snores filling the room, bass and treble.

I close the door silently, then move on down the corridor. She’s here. I know she’s here. Unless, of course, they’ve sent her away.

The thought stops me dead. What if they have? What if she isn’t here at all?

I tiptoe on, searching the walls with my hands until I come to another door. I open it, and there, like heaven itself, she lies, her cloth-shrouded figure picked out in silver by the crescent moon which now shines forth from between the parted clouds.

I close the door behind me, then walk across, looking down at her from the foot of her narrow bed.

My wife. My Katerina.

And yet I fear to wake her – fear to see not love but horror of me in those eyes – and yet I must, and so I gently sit beside her and, reaching out, brush her forehead gently with my fingertips.

She moans, a soft, sweet moan, then turns the slightest bit, the cloth moving down to expose her perfect breasts. And now I am enchanted, for there’s true magic in what is between two lovers. Magic beyond all Time. And I ache to kiss each sweet, soft bud and make her cry out once again as she did in the night beneath me, but I know this is neither the time nor place for that, and so I cover her and, brushing her forehead gently once again, softly call her name.

‘Katerina, Ka-ter-i-na…’

Slowly she wakes, and as her eyes adjust so she sees me. She smiles, but then, as she remembers what has passed, her eyes fly open.

‘Otto… what…?’

She sits up, reaching out to me, barely conscious of her nakedness beneath the cloth. There’s fear in her eyes, true, but I see it’s fear for me, that I might be discovered.

‘I must go,’ I whisper, thrilled by the touch of her hands against my upper arms, the womanly scent of her, her very closeness. ‘But I had to see you. Had to let you know I’d come for you.’

Her eyes search mine a moment, looking for the truth of that, and, satisfied, she smiles. But then, once more, a sudden seriousness grips her, and she looks away.

‘Did you…?’

‘Kill Kravchuk, yes? It was he who did it. Who came between us.’

She looks at me, then nods, no blame in her eyes. ‘Otto?’

‘Yes, my love?’

‘Take me away from here. Somewhere where no one can find us. To the ends of the Earth.’

Or the end of Time…

I swallow, moved by her words, then lean forward, brushing her lips with my own, fearing to do more, meaning to leave right there and then before I find I can’t, but she reaches up and, holding my face between her hands, kisses me softly, fully on the mouth… the sweetest, most intoxicating kiss I’ve ever had – sweeter than any she has yet given me. And I know, there and then, that she is mine for ever. Nothing can change that. Neither Time nor Death.

Katerina. My darling Katerina…