Jasper Kent - Thirteen Years Later

Jasper Kent

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First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Jasper Kent 2010

Jasper Kent has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780593060650

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For
H.E.C.

Born in Worcestershire in 1968, Jasper Kent read natural sciences at Cambridge before embarking on a career as a software consultant. He also pursues alternative vocations as a composer and musician and now novelist.

The inspiration for Jaspers bestselling dbut, Twelve (and indeed the subsequent novels in The Danilov Quintet ), came out of a love of nineteenth-century Russian literature and darkly fantastical, groundbreaking novels such as Frankenstein and Dracula . His researches have taken him across Europe and to Saint Petersburg, Moscow and the Crimea, including three days on a train from Cologne to the Russian capital, following in the footsteps of Napoleon himself.

Jasper lives in Brighton, where he shares a flat with his girlfriend and several affectionate examples of the species rattus norvegicus .

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Also by Jasper Kent

TWELVE

For more information on Jasper Kent and his books,
see his website at www.jasperkent.com

Distances

A verst is a Russian unit of distance, slightly greater than a kilometre.

Dates

During the nineteenth century, Russians based their dates on the old Julian Calendar, which in 1825 was twelve days behind the Gregorian Calendar used in Western Europe. All dates in the text are given in the Russian form and so, for example, the Decembrist Uprising is placed on 14 December, where Western history books have it on 26 December.

Names

Names used are transliterations of the Russian spellings. For historical figures, these transliterations can be unfamiliar to readers used to the more common Western renderings. The main examples are:

Pyotr Alekseevich Tsar Peter I (the Great)

Yekaterina Alekseevna Tsaritsa Catherine II (the Great)

Pavel Pyetrovich Tsar Paul I

Aleksandr Pavlovich Tsar Alexander I

Nikolai Pavlovich Tsar Nicholas I

Aleksandr Nikolayevich Tsar Alexander II

I would like to say a sincere thank you to Mihai Adascalitei for his help with the Romanian language.

Selected Romanov Family Tree

Reigning tsars and tsaritsas shown in bold.

Dates are birth [start of reign][end of reign] death.

On 14 December 1825 (26 December) a crowd of three thousand men overwhelmingly members of the military assembled in Saint Petersburgs Senate Square to oppose the succession of Tsar Nicholas I. The origins of the revolt lay in 1814, when victorious Russian troops, led by Nicholas predecessor Alexander, occupied Paris, having pursued the French all the way from Moscow. The nation that they found, even in defeat, seemed to many a utopia of liberty and enlightenment at least in comparison with their own country. At the same time Alexander, who had once been hailed as a modernizer, began to turn towards more conservative policies. For a decade resentment festered. Revolutionary societies formed and re-formed, but took no action. The death of Alexander, a thousand miles away in Taganrog, was the flashpoint. With confusion as to which of Alexanders brothers Constantine or Nicholas was to succeed, the revolutionaries seized their one, slim chance.

The uprising was quickly suppressed. Loyal troops, at the tsars direct orders, opened fire on the rebels, scattering them into flight across the capital. Many were killed and more arrested. Five of the leaders were hanged and a further 284 were exiled to Siberia. Ever after, Nicholas referred to them as mes amis du quatorze . It was only after Nicholas death in 1855 that the exiles those who were still alive were allowed to return to the west.

In 1925, one hundred years after the uprising, Senate Square was renamed Decembrists Square, in memory of that first Russian revolution. In July 2008, the name was changed back to Senate Square.

The metropolitan spoke:

He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in Him will I trust. Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with His feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day. Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Suddenly the chapel seemed empty; empty of noise, empty of its congregation, empty of the metropolitan himself. Aleksandr perceived only the words, surrounding him not as sounds but as creatures angels sent by God, sent to convince him of what he must do. And what he had to do was so simple: to trust in God.