The voices of Vasiliy and Marfa began to merge into a succession of rhythmic, guttural grunts, and Aleksei realized it was time to leave. He would come back later tonight, or even tomorrow, having worked out some way to announce his presence well in advance so that no embarrassment need be felt by either of them. Even so – disguise it though he would try – in future he would look at Marfa in a slightly different way. He would look at her with a certain feeling of – God help him – pride.

As he departed, he glanced around the dressing room. The signs that there had been a man there were all too obvious now that he looked for them. Marfa’s own clothes were strewn about in a way that was quite out of character for her, but mixed in with them, Aleksei could easily spot the coat, the boots, the breeches of a man. There was even a leather bag on the chaise longue, which he knew was not his own. On top of it was what he took to be a cardboard box – a shirt box or something like that. He felt mildly peeved at the idea that Vasiliy might be taking advantage of the account Aleksei held at his tailor’s – a minor insult in the circumstances.

But as Aleksei moved closer, he realized that what he had seen was not a box, but a book – a book that was not properly bound, but which had a cover made simply of cardboard. There was no writing on the front of it. Aleksei flipped it open and examined the first page. The text was remarkably familiar for something written in an unfamiliar language. Then he looked at the inside of the cover. What he saw there told him everything; absolutely everything.

Richard L. Cain F.R S.

AS I THINK I TOLD YOU, LYOSHA, I AM KNOWN BY MANY NAMES.’ Iuda had emerged from the bedroom. He was naked, as if deliberately to disgust Aleksei. ‘But here in Petersburg I am Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov.’

‘You really must hate me,’ said Aleksei.

‘No,’ said Iuda thoughtfully, ‘no, I don’t think I hate you. But don’t feel flattered – I don’t hate anyone, any more than I love anyone. You really do interest me, though.’

‘How kind.’

‘I’m being honest, Lyosha.’

‘And Marfa – does she interest you?’

‘She does her best to entertain me,’ Iuda replied. ‘And I do likewise – which is more than you do.’

‘So which came first?’ asked Aleksei. ‘Your plan to tempt me with Kyesha and your book, or your plan to make me a laughing stock by screwing my wife?’

‘A laughing stock? That’s not you at all, Lyosha.’ Iuda knew Aleksei as he knew himself. ‘It doesn’t hurt you that your friends will know your wife opened her legs for some passing stranger, or that her love for you is not so consuming she cannot even contemplate the idea of being with another man. What you object to is that it’s me; that I can wander into your own bedroom without you having the slightest knowledge, and that I’ve been doing it for years. What you’re asking yourself now is, whither else have I wandered?’

‘For years?’ said Aleksei.

‘Several,’ confirmed Iuda.

Aleksei tried to think how long ‘several’ might be. Was there any moment in his marriage when there had been a noticeable change? When Tamara was born? When he returned from Paris? They were all times of change, but all had their explanations. But he was forgetting the golden rule: never believe Iuda. The earliest evidence of ‘Vasiliy’ being on the scene dated back only a few months. That was the limit he would give with any confidence to the time over which Iuda had been sleeping with his wife.

And it occurred to Aleksei that there were other, much more basic areas in which he should verify the facts for himself rather than believing Iuda. The words Nullius in Verba were no longer visible on the notebook, but they rang just as true as they had ever done. He leaned and tried to peer in through the bedroom door, but Iuda took a side step to block his view.

‘How ungentlemanly, Lyosha,’ he said. But then he seemed to read Aleksei’s thoughts. ‘Don’t fret; it is Marfa Mihailovna in there, for sure. I’m playing no is she-ain’t she, Dominique-Margarita tricks here tonight. Though I will admit, I did at first toy with trying that one with the lovely Marfa.’

‘What?’

‘I considered whether it might not be entertaining for you to see me at some window in the arms of your wife rather than your lover – or your lover’s colleague; we still don’t know, do we?’

‘In 1812?’

‘Yes,’ said Iuda.

‘But Marfa was in Petersburg in 1812. We were in…’ Aleksei tailed off. He already knew where Iuda had been for part of that autumn. He had paid a visit – in the guise of Richard Cain – to Tsar Aleksandr, as Aleksandr himself had told Aleksei. And the tsar had been in Petersburg. It could have been no great additional effort to locate Marfa and pay a visit to her in the guise of Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov.

‘What did you think I’d be doing while you were in Yuryev-Polsky hiding from the French?’

Aleksei was about to point out that it had not been the French he had been hiding from but Iuda and the other Oprichniki, but he decided it would do him little benefit.

‘So it’s been going on all that time,’ he said instead.

Before Iuda could reply, a call came from the bedroom. ‘Vasya!’ Aleksei could detect a timbre of repressed panic in his wife’s voice. Iuda went back inside, returning almost immediately.

‘Your wife would like to get dressed, Lyosha,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should retire.’ He picked up a robe – Aleksei’s robe – and put it on, then opened the door and invited Aleksei to step through it first. Aleksei was being made a guest in his own house, but now that he was in front of Iuda, at least he could decide where they would go. He led the way downstairs and chose the salon. Dmitry’s harpsichord had been pushed to one corner of the room. Where it had stood there was now a pianoforte – the instrument Aleksei had ordered as a gift for his son before they had left. It had not yet been fully removed from the wooden crate it had come in. Even in the present circumstances, Aleksei found time to hope his son would be pleased with it. He sat down in an armchair. Iuda seated himself opposite.

‘Since 1812,’ said Aleksei, picking up where he had left off.

‘Not as lovers, but as friends, at first.’

‘How did you find her?’

‘Oh that was no problem. The wife of Captain Danilov? They were all proud of their soldiers back then. I introduced myself as a friend of yours – at the time I still may have been, I can’t recall.’

‘You weren’t,’ growled Aleksei.

‘I’ll bow to your opinion on that. She was very friendly – not in any untoward way, I assure you – and by the time I left, I’d only dropped the fewest, lightest hints that you might have a lover in Moscow. But I presume it was enough to ensure she never mentioned me to you.’

He paused, waiting for Aleksei to confirm his side of the story. It was true enough, Marfa had not mentioned meeting Vasiliy, or any friend of his from Moscow, but he wasn’t going to give Iuda the pleasure of hearing him say so.

‘Then, of course, events intervened,’ Iuda continued. ‘I almost died in the Berezina – I really did – but I was washed up on the far bank, and some kind French soldat dragged me to my feet and forced me to march on with them. I was in Warsaw before I could get away.’

‘But you came back,’ said Aleksei.

Iuda nodded. ‘It was over a year before I managed to. By then you were marching across Europe in the opposite direction, and poor Marfa was all alone. She asked me directly whether you had a lover and – well, if you’d looked into that poor, confused woman’s eyes, you’d have had to tell the truth – I told her about this pretty young thing in Moscow called Dominique. I told the story backwards really. First how you’d set her up in a small home, then how you’d met her at a brothel and how she’d been working there since really just a child, then how you’d spent your free hours wandering in and out of such establishments and how I thought it was probably a good thing you’d settled down with just one whore rather than flitting to a different one every night. She teased it out of me, Lyosha.’