Pyetr Pyetrovich got on to the front wagon beside the coachman, and the convoy set off. As the carriage turned the corner I caught one brief final sight of Domnikiia sitting there, calm and, little though it suited her, demure.

She was safely on her way out of Moscow, and of the Oprichniki there had been no sign.

I returned to bed and managed a few hours of thankful sleep before setting out for my appointment with Vadim and Dmitry. Progress was slow, as in daylight the streets once again thronged with people, horses, carts and wagons. On one corner, a crowd was gathered around a man who was tied to a tree and being flogged. Although it was not they who were being flogged, fear showed on every face in the crowd – a fear of the coming invaders which they tried and failed to forget by gazing on this spectacle. Amongst them was an artillery sub-lieutenant, relaxing with a clay pipe and watching the beating with a smile.

'What did he do?' I asked.

'He was a footman,' came the artilleryman's incongruous reply.

'I mean, why is he being flogged?'

'Oh, I see.' He tried a clearer explanation. 'He's French.'

'How did he get here then?'

'He's lived here for years. They dragged him out from over there.' He indicated a large, well-appointed house of the type one would expect to have French servants. 'They say he's a spy.'

'Has he been tried?'

'Nope.' He drew deeply on his pipe. 'That's why they're only flogging him.' I couldn't help but wish that other suspected French spies had been treated with such leniency.

'Shouldn't you do something to stop them?' I demanded.

He turned to me and I saw for the first time that his right eye was missing, the socket scarcely beginning to heal over the all-too-fresh wound. He spoke with passion.

'Stop them? I stood and watched as half my platoon was blown to pieces by a single French shell. You think I had this done' – he gestured towards his missing eye – 'just so I could look like General Kutuzov? When civvies like this lot decide to take some revenge on my behalf, you think I'm going to do anything when a damned civvy like you asks me to stop them? You go fight for yourself before you tell a soldier what to do.'

As usual, I wasn't in uniform, and though I could have shown him my papers to prove my rank, what business was it of mine? From stories I heard later, the man was lucky he was only being flogged.

I carried on towards the Moskva. The crammed streets became even more slow-moving. Whatever desperation had inspired the people to flee the city had failed to translate into any keenness in their actual progress. Crowds like the one that had gathered around the flogging did not help, since even those people who didn't stop and cause the obstruction slowed down to get a view of what was going on as they passed.

Along Nikitskiy Street, I came to another constriction in the flow of traffic. A small, flat cart pulled by two grenadiers from the line infantry had come to a halt. On it, lying crossways, side by side, were three of their comrades, their uniforms tattered and bloody. There was an argument between the two men – boys really – who had been pulling the wagon, and two other soldiers – both dragoons, forced to travel on foot. Of these two, one – the one who was in reality doing all the arguing – was in reasonably good shape. His friend was in a sorry condition. His head hung limply, without the desire to look again on anything above the ground. He supported himself on a makeshift crutch; just a conveniently sized branch with a fork in it, which was crammed into his armpit. The need for his crutch became all too apparent as I scanned down his body. His left foot and lower leg hung loosely off the rest of him, just below the knee. Of the shinbone, there was clearly nothing left, and it was only flesh and skin that kept the limb attached. As the cart moved on a little and he took a few steps to keep up, his leg trailed behind him uselessly, dragging in the dirt like the tails of an adult's coat worn by a child. Most likely, the wound had come from a cannonball, bouncing inexorably towards him across the battlefield of Borodino. Whatever the cause, the leg should have been amputated at a dressing station in the field, but at that great battle, the demand for surgery had far outstripped supply, and it looked as though the injured soldier's comrade had helped get him all the way to Moscow in hope of finding room in a hospital. Now, the argument was over a place on the cart.

'But the man's dead!' said the limping dragoon's friend, indicating the middle of the three men lying on the cart. 'Throw him off and give his place to someone who still has a chance.'

'He's not dead,' insisted one of the cart-pullers. 'He's been like that for days, ever since we picked him up. If he was dead he'd be rotting by now. Your mate smells worse than he does.'

It was sadly true. The gangrene that had set in to the man's wound had most likely already spread far enough to take his whole leg, if not his life. I pushed my way forward to examine the man on the wagon.

It was plain enough to see; he was most certainly dead.

His face and arms and neck bore many cuts and scratches, but none that seemed to be the cause of his death. His dark-green uniform was stained with unimaginable amounts of blood, which may well have belonged to others, but, if it was his, explained not only his death, but also the terrible pallor of his skin. There was no sign of breathing, no hint of a heartbeat and his body was as cold as water. I lifted his eyelids and looked into his dead, threatening eyes. The huge black pupils – grown so large that his irises were obliterated – gave no response to the light of the sun.

'He is dead,' I announced, trying to convey an authority which would achieve the end of getting that poor, limping man on to the cart.

'So why doesn't he rot?' asked one of the men who had been hauling him across the city. It certainly was an odd phenomenon. It might have been the case, of course, that he had been alive when they started out and had only died recently, though to judge by his temperature, not all that recently – at least a day ago. But he was undoubtedly dead now.

'I don't know,' I said, giving the accurate impression that I didn't much care either. I began to drag the body from the cart.

'Wait!' The voice belonged to a priest who had emerged from somewhere amongst the onlookers. He spoke softly, but thanks to the resonance of his voice and the eminence of his occupation, he commanded immediate respect from the crowd.

'There may be a reason for this,' he said, approaching the body. He gave it much the same examination as I had done, but with a little more of the showmanship that, I am sorry to have to say, one expects from a priest. 'He is dead. The gentleman is quite correct.' People looked at me and nodded, happier with my conclusion now that it had been confirmed by someone they could trust. 'And he has been dead many days.' This was more than I had been prepared to venture. 'And yet the body does not decay.'

The priest lifted the corpse's hand and kissed it. He then took a step back from the cart and closed his eyes for a moment of silent prayer, opening them again to make his pronouncement.

'When a holy man dies – a man who is without sin or a man whose sins have been forgiven – then there is no need for his sins to leave his corporeal remains. The putrefaction of a man's body is caused by the departure of his sins. If there are no sins to depart, then there cannot be decay. I have seen this in the bodies of many departed priests and monks, but to see it in a common soldier is rare. And yet there is no reason why a soldier cannot be without sin. This man must have led the most saintly of lives.'

I missed the point completely. 'But now he's dead, he can still be removed to make way for the living,' I said.