the reign of Aleksandr I and completed even before the start of the Patriotic War. That was too early for the letters.
Saint Isaac’s, on the other hand, fitted perfectly. It had taken forty years to construct, spanning more than the entire reign of Nikolai and reaching into that of both Aleksandrs. When Aleksei had stood with the Decembrists in Senate Square it was scarcely begun. The letters from the ’30s were bang in the middle of the period. Mihail tried to recall their detail. What he could remember now began to make sense in the context of what he knew, but he still couldn’t be sure.
He walked briskly through the snowy streets. As so often he was grabbed by the fear that someone would have broken into his room and taken the papers and the blood, but once again they proved to be safe. He read through the letters voraciously, nodding as each statement suddenly made sense in the context of the cathedral. The last lines he read had originally been the most bewildering of all with their reference to ‘the toes of Saint Paul’, but now Mihail began to have some idea of what it might mean.
He itched to test out his theory, but it was dark now. Only a fool would go hunting vampires at night. Even by day, in the dark passages that he guessed he would discover beneath Saint Isaac’s, it could be dangerous. Thankfully, just that morning, a delivery had arrived for him from Saratov.
Mihail chose midday to visit the cathedral. The sun was rising higher in the sky now as winter drew gradually to a close. The days were over ten hours in length and gaps were beginning to appear in the ice sheet that covered the Neva. Saturday was a busy day at the cheese shop – remarkably, for the purpose of selling cheese. Thus they did not dig on Saturdays out of fear that they’d be overheard.
Mihail walked from his hotel along the English Quay and then turned across Senate Square to approach the cathedral. It was built to impress, and it succeeded. The great golden dome, gleaming in the sunlight, was visible from all over the city but seemed designed to be most imposing from just about this distance, close to the Bronze Horseman. Across the water the spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral was still the tallest structure in the city, but it had none of the fat, squat authority of the dome, itself stolen, in some sense, from both Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
Mihail had only ever seen them in pictures, easy to find during his researches at the Imperial Library, but the similarities with Saint Peter’s in Rome and Saint Paul’s in London were unmistakable, particularly with regard to the latter. De Montferrand had even managed to incorporate the Greek Cross floor plan that Wren had been refused permission to use.
But he was not here to admire the building’s exterior. He began walking again towards the steps, noticing how the whole edifice seemed almost to shrink as he moved closer, away from the ideal viewing point. As he approached he noticed a hunched figure emerge through the massive bronze doors and walk gingerly down to street level. Mihail recognized him as the old man he had met in the square on the day of Dostoyevsky’s funeral, almost two weeks before – the one who had first told him what Ascalon meant. He hurried his pace so as to intercept him and offer a greeting, but once on the pavement the man moved with unexpected sprightliness and was soon heading towards the Admiralty. Mihail chose not to be distracted from his quest.
Inside the cathedral was quiet, but not empty. It was bright, but the sun was high and Mihail guessed that there would be more light still when the morning or evening sun shone through the tall, arched windows. Two or three people knelt facing the iconostasis, praying. Others simply stood, their necks bent back and their jaws hanging loosely as they gazed up at the painted interior of the dome, or at the walls, or the columns. Almost every surface displayed artwork, either statues or paintings or mosaics, each depicting an individual or scene of the holiest nature. A dyachok pottered about the place, tending to candles and incense, as was his duty. Mihail stood among the gawkers, and studied the decoration, with a specific interest in just one adornment that he knew was somewhere inside the