‘A lieutenant,’ said the maid.

‘Lieutenant Morev?’ asked Aleksei.

‘No, sir. I know Lieutenant Morev,’ she said. ‘We all do. I didn’t recognize this one.’

‘And he told you to fetch soup for His Majesty.’

‘That’s right – well, no. He had the soup; he’d brought it from the kitchen. He gave it to me and told me to take it in.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Tall, sir. About your age. Blond hair – needed cutting.’

Aleksei rubbed his hand across his mouth.

‘Cain?’ asked Volkonsky.

Aleksei nodded. ‘Did he drink any of it?’ he asked.

Volkonsky and the girl replied together, both in the negative.

‘Where is it now?’

‘It’s still there,’ said Volkonsky.

‘Well, get back and make sure he doesn’t touch it.’ If the prince objected to taking orders from a mere colonel, it wasn’t reflected in the speed of his departure. ‘Which way did he go?’ said Aleksei, turning back to the maid.

‘Back into the kitchen,’ she replied, pointing.

‘How long ago?’

‘Five minutes.’

Aleksei ran into the kitchen. The same air of gloom hung over the staff in there as it did in the rest of the house.

‘A lieutenant came through here,’ said Aleksei. ‘Tall. Blond. Which way did he go?’

The head chef pointed to the back door.

‘He just wanted something to eat,’ said a voice.

‘I thought I saw him heading for the beach,’ added another, more helpfully.

Aleksei ran outside and looked around him. ‘Heading for the beach’ covered a multitude of directions from a house situated so close to the sea. Aleksei guessed that Iuda would veer more to the east, avoiding going back past the tsar’s bedroom windows, from which he might be recognized.

‘Who goes there?’ came a shout. A young ryadovoy emerged from the bushes, his bayonet aimed at Aleksei’s belly. ‘I’m sorry, Colonel,’ he said, as soon as he recognized Aleksei.

‘Doing your job,’ said Aleksei curtly. ‘Did a lieutenant come by? Blond?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And where did he go?’

‘That way, down the coast road.’

Aleksei was already running. The boy was lucky not to have attempted to stop Iuda. If he had, it was unlikely he would be alive now. Within seconds, Aleksei came across someone who hadn’t been so fortunate. This one he recognized – a captain by the name of Lishin. He also recognized the wound to his neck, two jagged, parallel lesions separated by the width of two fingers. It was the signature of Iuda’s favourite weapon.

But in killing, Iuda had made a mistake. He’d dumped the body off the road and on the beach. Footprints – the round, tiptoe-like indentations of a man running – led away across the sand. Aleksei chased after them. He constantly felt he was about to fall over as the soft surface beneath his feet collapsed with every step, but still he ran as fast as he could.

At last he saw his quarry. Iuda had his back to him, intent on his task of dragging a dinghy down towards the sea. Destabilizing though it might be, the sand brought the blessing of making Aleksei’s approach silent. When he was only a few paces away, he launched himself, feet first, at Iuda’s back. With the run-up he had had, his feet landed with tremendous force, smashing Iuda’s ribs against the side of the boat. Aleksei felt confident he had managed to break something.

Aleksei was on his feet in moments, but Iuda lay on his side on the ground, clutching his chest and moaning. Aleksei pressed his boot against Iuda’s shoulder and rolled him on to his back.

‘Not enough of a head start over me this time,’ he said.

‘It would seem not.’ Iuda’s voice croaked with pain.

‘Where were you off to, I wonder,’ said Aleksei. ‘You couldn’t have been going very far in that.’ He glanced out to sea. That yacht – which had been there every day while he had been in Taganrog – stood on the horizon, as if waiting. ‘Over there, perhaps?’

Iuda rolled slightly on to one side, as if trying to look where Aleksei was pointing, but in an instant he flung himself back the other way, and Aleksei felt a sharp pain in his calf. His sword was in his hand in an instant; its tip at Iuda’s throat. He could see the double-knife in his hand, with fresh blood on it; Aleksei’s own, mixing with Lishin’s. The wound to his leg stung, but he doubted it was serious.

He jerked his head to one side and pressed the blade a little harder against Iuda’s skin. Iuda threw the knife away from him. It rolled half a dozen times before coming to rest in the sand.

‘I take it my plan failed,’ said Iuda.

‘Which plan?’ Aleksei never understood his reason for asking it. Perhaps some subconscious voice, thinking faster than he ever could, had suggested it to him. Perhaps that voice came from outside of him. Perhaps he was just trying to be sarcastic. The reason did not matter – the result did.

Iuda considered for a fragment of a second before answering. ‘The poisoned-soup plan.’ Aleksei scarcely listened to the answer; the delay had told him everything. Iuda had needed to think about it, which meant there was more than one answer – more than one plan.

Aleksei turned and began to run back to the palace. The pain in his ankle from the rockfall at Chufut Kalye was beginning to hurt, but he ignored it. Ultimately, Iuda had chosen the right answer – the plan Aleksei did know about. It was obvious enough; the soup had been handed over by a man in a lieutenant’s uniform, and Iuda, lying there in the sand, still wore that uniform. If he’d answered differently, he’d have told Aleksei even more, but he had told him enough. Iuda had at least one more line of attack, and Aleksei had to get back to the tsar and prevent that attack from coming to fruition. He had had to abandon Iuda, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice to save the tsar.

Damn it! Why hadn’t he just killed Iuda? A single thrust of his sword would have done it. Somewhere inside Aleksei there were the remnants of an absurd sense of chivalry. You have a man as your prisoner – it would be ungentlemanly to kill him. He was a fool, but it was too late to turn back now. Iuda would be gone already, and there was no time to be wasted if Aleksandr was to be rescued. He didn’t even turn his head. There would be nothing to see, and it risked unbalancing him as he ran across the sand.

He had to consider what Iuda’s other plan might have been. Surely it could not succeed. There were three men around the tsar’s bed who knew he should consume nothing – not to mention the tsar himself. Iuda had described the other plan as the ‘poisoned-soup plan’. How precise had he meant those words to be? It had not been the ‘blood in the soup’ plan, but Aleksei would bet there was Zmyeevich’s blood in there too. Iuda had to improve on his previous attempt – he had to ensure that death came to Aleksandr within moments of him consuming the blood. A cocktail of blood and poison would serve his purpose – and also block off the one possible escape route the tsar had: to survive a few more weeks and wait once again until the influence of Zmyeevich’s blood left his body.

Aleksei was on the road now, and able to run faster, though his own exhaustion compensated for any advantage. Ten years ago, he would have covered the ground more quickly – but ten years ago, he might not have been wise enough to guess what Iuda was up to. He arrived at the house with aching lungs, but still he dashed on through towards the tsar’s room. Outside it stood Diebich. His face was disconsolate, but it was impossible for Aleksei to tell whether this was in anticipation or consequence of the dread event, nor was there time to ask. He opened the door to Aleksandr’s room.

‘Drink, my darling. Drink.’ It was a voice Aleksandr trusted. He was still drifting between sleep and wakefulness, but he had listened to the conversations around him.