freedom. But there was never a question in his mind that he would fulfil his side of the bargain.
He took one last look around his cell. He had been here only a week, far less than in his previous gaol. He glanced up at the little window, high above. It was dark now. That was thoughtful on the part of the man who had ordered his release. There would be no hanging around just inside the gates of the fortress, looking for excuses to delay his departure. Everyone he encountered, it seemed, wanted to ensure he remained alive. It was not by accident. He could only congratulate himself on having become so indispensable.
He was escorted through Saint Peter’s Gate and the Ivan Gate. Only then did they unlock his manacles and allow him to cross the Petrovsky Bridge on his own. He was free. In his head he knew that his first thought should be for safety – not personal safety but the safety of his possessions. Luka was dead – Iuda had heard that through the pipes – but that didn’t mean he hadn’t let slip some information about Iuda’s rooms at the Hôtel d’Europe. There was much there that he treasured.
But he could not deny his nature. He was a voordalak, and however much he might insist to himself that he was different and that his brain ruled his actions, he still, like any of them, needed sustenance. He could have taken one of the guards once he was out of his cell, and would still have escaped easily, but that would not have pleased the man who had ordered his liberation. And it would have had to be quick. Much better to slip into the dark streets of Petersburg and hunt at leisure.
Once off the bridge he doubled back on himself and walked along the path beside the Kronversky Channel, separating Hare Island, on which the fortress stood, from the larger Petersburgsky Island. Some former inmates might have tried to get away from the place of their captivity as quickly and directly as possible, but Iuda enjoyed his freedom more for the sight of the building that had contained him. Even so it was soon behind him. He stepped down on to the ice and crossed the Lesser Neva to Vasilievskiy Island. Minutes later he was among the Twelve Colleges, at the heart of Petersburg’s university. It was busy here with students – both rich and poor – out in search of an evening’s entertainment.
It was nothing compared to Oxford. It reeked of modernity. Iuda had already been forty-one years old when Petersburg University was founded. Oxford was founded before … before even Zmyeevich was born. Iuda could not say he had enjoyed his time at Trinity, though he had certainly benefited from it. The young Richard Cain desired solely to learn of the natural world, but in those days that was only just beginning to be considered a subject suitable for gentlemanly study. His tutors had instructed him in languages, divinity and history, all of which would ultimately prove useful to him, but in studying and understanding science he had been forced to teach himself – dragging knowledge from those few dons who possessed it, instead of having it forced into him as with the other subjects.
On graduating he chose to travel, and managed to bluff his way aboard a merchant vessel – the White Hart – as an apprentice to the ship’s surgeon. They sailed south, then through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. It was quite unplanned, but there the ship became part of the great battle between Napoleon and Nelson for the possession of Egypt.
The White Hart and its crew – Cain included – had been captured by the French frigate Artémise which had in turn been sunk by the British at the Battle of the Nile. Cain had managed to salvage his notebooks, and a little of the captain’s stash of Louis d’Or, then thrown himself to the mercy of the waves. At the age of just twenty he found himself alone, washed up on an Egyptian beach.
He made his way east, following the path of the Israelites, but rounding the tip of the Gulf of Suez rather than waiting for the waters to part so that he could march straight through. He did not linger in the Holy Land but continued north, noting as he went the remarkable fauna he encountered, quite unlike anything he had observed in England.