And now, with a hundred others, he was digging a trench. While Procopy Bobrov went to look for him.

And what the devil will I do if I find him? he wondered.

It was a ticklish situation. He could, of course, have ignored the girl when she begged for his help. But no their families had been friends and ... well, there it was, he was ashamed. But what could he do ask the Tsar for clemency? He dare not. Peter could forgive many things, but never treachery. Even the name Mazeppa was enough to make him burst out in fury.

Perhaps Procopy could bribe the fellow in charge of Pavlo? That was risky, though and besides, the Cossack knew too much about his family and the Raskolniki Raskolniki.

He didn't know what he'd do, but he was sure he didn't want the girl to see him not doing it!

Ah, here was the place. He gazed down into the trench, scanned the faces he saw. But he could not say any of them resembled Pavlo.

He called the foreman over and did his best to describe the Cossack. The foreman nodded.

'Yes, sir, indeed, we had such a fellow. I had to thrash him yesterday, as a matter of fact.'

'Why?'

'I saw him talking to strangers. A girl.'

'Ah, yes. He's not here today?'

'No, sir.'

'Tomorrow, perhaps?'

'Don't think so, sir.'

Procopy looked at him carefully.

'He must've been weaker'n I thought,' the foreman mumbled.

'You mean he's dead?'

''Fraid so, sir. Is that all right?'

Oh, yes. It was all right.

Indeed, it would hardly be noticed. For though history is uncertain how many workers died of disease, fatigue and starvation in the building of St Petersburg, it was certainly tens, some say hundreds, of thousands.

Another morning, rather warmer, two days later.

There was a light breeze stirring the waters of the Neva, like those of the sea beyond, into short, choppy waves.

Maryushka was leaving at last. In a way, the news about Pavlo seemed to sever her last link with the past. She knew she must only look forward now. But to what exactly? For herself, to happiness with her husband, she hoped. Yet what did that happiness mean, in this huge land of Russia?

The clouds were high in the sky. The whole day was filled with a strange, bright greyness. Further east, beyond the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul, and high above the waters, three seagulls were soaring and swerving in the sky. As they turned, one after another, their bodies seemed to glow with an unearthly luminous light.

She allowed her gaze to run along the Neva. At that moment, for some reason, she suddenly felt her father's presence with her. Old Daniel. At the thought of him she smiled.

But then her smile disappeared. For as the wind caught her face, and as she stared at the huge, harsh geometry of that mighty place, it was as if another presence was emerging from that city to face her father something frightening, grim as a Mongol Khan from ancient times.

And then she saw it.

It was a vast sun, hurtful to the eye yet cold as ice. It was rising, implacably, from the northern sea into the endless Russian sky. It would, she sensed, dry the very blood from her body with its terrible rays.

And by this vision she, too, understood that, as her father had told her, the awful days of the Apocalypse had come.

And the name of the Antichrist was Peter.

In 1718, after conspiring against his father, the Tsarevich Alexis was foolish enough to be lured from exile back to Russia by promises of forgiveness from his father.

He was persuaded to do so by an elderly and cunning diplomat: Peter Tolstoy.

Soon afterwards the Tsarevich Alexis, after torture, died in the St Peter and St Paul Fortress.

It did not matter. There were other heirs.

In 1721, by the Treaty of Nystadt, the Baltic lands, including those known as Latvia and Estonia, were formally recognized as belonging to Russia. They would remain in her hands for two centuries, until 1918.

For this the newly created Russian Senate gave Tsar Peter the grandiose tides of Pater patriae, Imperator, Maximus Pater patriae, Imperator, Maximus: Father of his country, Emperor, The Great.

In 1722, after the unexpected death of Procopy Bobrov, his son decided to revive a village of his, called Dirty Place, near the little town of Russka. So he transferred half the population of another of his villages to the place.

Amongst the villagers was a woman with three fine children. Her name was Maryushka.

Catherine 1786.

Alexander Bobrov sat at his desk and stared at the two pieces of paper in front of him. One was covered with figures scribbled in his own hand; the other was a letter that had been brought there by a liveried servant just half an hour before. As he looked at them now, he shook his head in puzzlement, then murmured: 'What the devil can I do?'

Outside the College, as the ministries were called, it was already dark for during December there were only five and a half hours of daylight in St Petersburg. Most people had gone home: the Russians normally dined at two but it was not unusual for Bobrov to be in his office this late, since he often dined in the fashionable English quarter, where they liked to eat at five.

The icy wind in the street outside could not be heard because, like every house in St Petersburg, the College's double windows had been put up in October and every interstice was caulked tight.

For months, Bobrov had been playing the most difficult and dangerous game of his life; and now, when the prize was in sight, he could hardly believe what had happened. For one sheet of paper was a tally of his debts; and the other was an offer of marriage. In fact, it was a demand.

'Yet surely,' he murmured again, 'there must be a way out.'

At this moment, he could think of only one.

With a sigh he pushed the papers away from him and then called to the ante-room beyond. Immediately, a respectful young man appeared, dressed in a light blue coat with yellow buttons and white knee-breeches the uniform of the St Petersburg government.

'Tell the lackey to find my coachman. I'm leaving.'

'At once, Your Highly Born.' The young man disappeared.

Your Highly Born. This honorific referred not to Bobrov's ancestry, noble though it was, but to the fact that he had already, though only in his early thirties, reached the dizzy height of fifth rank in the fourteen service ranks established by Peter the Great. Nobility could be achieved by service. Lower ranks were only addressed as Well Born; then Highly Well Born; then Highly Born. If Bobrov continued his brilliant career, he might hope to reach the final and most coveted appellation of all: Your Highest Excellency.

Alexander Prokofievich Bobrov was a good-looking man of above average height. He had a rather round, cleanshaven face with a broad forehead, slightly hooded brown eyes and a thin mouth which, when it moved, might have looked sensual if he did not disguise it with a faint, ironic twist. His hair, in the fashion of that decade, was powdered and arranged like a wig, with a single curl over each ear produced with heated tongs every morning. His frock coat was of plain cloth: tight-fitting, knee-length and of an English cut. His waistcoat was embroidered, his breeches white with a blue stripe. In short, he was dressed in the best European fashion of the day.

It was hard to guess this character from this carefully controlled exterior. Seen in profile, his face assumed a slightly Turkish look and the long, hooked nose was noticeable: was there, in this refined face, a hint of cruelty? But then, in company, seeing him unconsciously making that gentle caressing motion with his arm towards some person he was talking to, it was impossible to believe he could be harsh.

In the golden era of Catherine the Great, in the gracious city of St Petersburg, there was no more accomplished gambler than Alexander Prokofievich Bobrov. He did not gamble for money. Though he would often be seen at the card tables in the best houses, he only played for pin money. 'Only fools or rogues try to make their fortunes at cards,' he would observe; and he was neither. Bobrov the gambler was interested in a greater and more secret game: he was gambling for power. Or perhaps something even more. 'Alexander,' a shrewd acquaintance once remarked, 'is playing at cards with God.' Up to now he had been winning.

Yet he had worked for his success too. My God, he had tried! He might so easily have been a nonentity, like any other provincial noble of his day. As a child on one of the family estates near Tula, his education had consisted of little more than reading from the Orthodox Psalter and learning fairy tales and Russian songs from the serfs. And so he might have continued, but for one stroke of luck. For when he was ten, a friend of his father's, apparently on a whim, had taken a fancy to him and invited him to live in Moscow and share tutors with his children. That had been his break and it was all he had needed.

'From then on,' he recalled proudly, 'I did everything myself.' He had worked like a demon, amazing his teachers. Though only a boy, he had recommended himself to people at Moscow University and others with influence. Somehow he had been chosen for the elite corps of pages at the St Petersburg court; and while most of those young men gambled, drank and made love, he had studied as hard as ever until the greatest triumph of all he had been one of a handful of youths chosen to be sent to the great German University of Leipzig. What some thought of as effortless superiority was nothing of the kind. I paid with my youth, he would reflect.

And what drove him forward? Ambition: he owed all his success to ambition, but it was a cruel master. It drove you forward, but if you faltered, if you met an obstacle that stopped you, it leapt like a huge fiend on to your back, first screaming abuse, and then weighing down on you like a mountain, crushing the life out of you. Yet strangely, it also gave Alexander Bobrov a kind of purity. Whatever he did, however deviously he played his cards, it was all in the service of this single, secret idea that drove him on.

Yet what exactly was it that he wanted? Like most ambitious men, Bobrov did not really know. It had no name. The whole world, perhaps; or heaven; or both, more likely. He even wanted to be a benefactor of mankind, one day.

But that December evening, there was a more urgent question on his mind as he looked again at the sheet of paper covered with figures and shook his head. He had known he was in trouble for a long time, but he had tried to put off the reckoning. Now it had come.

For Alexander Bobrov was completely ruined.

He had been luckier than many, he was the first to admit it. Despite subdivisions over the generations, his father had still left him three estates: the one near Tula; another on the rich land south of the Oka, in the province of Riazan; and one at Russka, south of Vladimir. There were also part shares in two others. In all, Alexander owned five hundred souls as the adult male serfs were termed. Not a great fortune nowadays, for the population had been growing that century, but still a good inheritance. It was not enough, though.

'Half the men I know are in debt,' he used to say cheerfully. It was quite true rich and poor noble alike. The authorities were very understanding: they had even set up a special bank to lend to the gentry only, of course on easy terms. And since a noble's wealth was reckoned by the number of serfs he owned, the collateral for these loans was expressed not in terms of roubles, but in souls. Thank God, that very year, the credit limit had been raised from twenty to forty roubles per soul. That had kept him afloat for the last few months. But the fact was, the Tula estate where he grew up had had to be sold, all his remaining three hundred souls were mortgaged, and God knew what he owed to merchants.

The final blow had come that morning, when his major domo had asked for money to buy provisions in the market and Bobrov had discovered he had none. He had told the fellow to use his own, then paid a visit to his bank. To his astonishment, they had refused to advance him any more cash. It was iniquitous! On reaching his office he had forced himself to do his accounts and discovered to his horror that the interest he owed was far greater than his income! There was no question: he was bankrupt. The game was up. 'It's no good,' he sighed, 'I can't play this hand any more.'

And now he turned again to the letter. The way to safety: marriage to the German girl. How the devil could he get out of it?

He had been married once before, long ago. His bride had died in childbirth after only a year and he had been heartbroken. But that was far in the past and he had not married again. Instead, he had a charming mistress. In fact, the German girl had been only one of several desultory courtships he had begun in recent years, as a kind of insurance policy. Her family belonged to the Baltic nobility descendants of the ancient Teutonic Knights some of whom had taken service in Russia after Peter the Great had annexed their hereditary Baltic lands. She was fifteen; and the trouble was, she had fallen desperately in love with him for which he should have been grateful since she was an heiress. Her name was Tatiana.

All that year, the innocent girl had been putting pressure on her father to conclude the matter. As weeks and months had passed, and Bobrov himself had become increasingly uncertain of his finances, he had been forced to become further and further committed. For if things don't go as I plan, he calculated, I can't afford to lose the girl. Indeed, he had been getting increasingly afraid that her father would find out the truth about his debts and call the whole thing off. Then I'll have nothing, he sighed. Day by day he had played for time: and now, on this day of all days, had come her extraordinary letter.

It was straightforward enough. He had avoided her for three weeks, Tatiana pointed out. Her father had other candidates in mind. And it ended firmly: I shall ask my father tomorrow night whether he has heard from you. If not, then I shall not wish to hear from you again.

By the standards of the day, the letter was utterly astounding. For a young girl to write like that, in person, to a man: it was a breach of every rule of etiquette. He could scarcely believe that she had done such a thing. He hardly knew whether he was shocked or secretly impressed by this daring. But of one thing he felt certain: she meant what she said.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. What if he gave up? Would it be so terrible? With Tatiana's money he could keep his fine house in St Petersburg and the estates. He'd be rich, secure, respected. People would say he'd done very well. 'It's time to leave the gaming table while I'm still ahead,' he muttered.

Why then should he hesitate? Why not seize the life-line fate had thrown him? He opened his eyes and stared at the window, and at the winter darkness outside. There was just that one, last chance: a final, dangerous, throw of the dice. The old woman.

He sighed. It was horribly risky. Even if he got what he wanted, she could still change her mind. Then he would probably lose everything money, reputation, even the chance of recovery. I'd be a beggar, he realized. And yet ...

For several minutes more, Alexander Bobrov the gambler sat at the big desk pondering the chances. Then at last he sat upright, with a faint, grim smile on his face. He had decided on his play.

I'll go and ask the old woman tonight, he decided.

For Bobrov the gambler was playing a secret game, with higher stakes than even young Tatiana's fortune.

He was playing for St Petersburg itself.

St Petersburg: truly it was a miracle. At a latitude parallel with Greenland or Alaska, twelve hundred miles further north than the city of Boston, and nearer the Arctic Circle than to London or Berlin, the Russian capital was a second Venice. How lovely, how simple it was: built around the broad basin where the Neva, nearing its estuary, was divided into two forks by the big triangle of Vasilevsky Island whose apex gently pointed inland and whose broad base out in the estuary protected the city from the sullen rages of the sea.

Bobrov knew no greater joy than to approach by ship from the west, along that long, wide inlet of the Baltic known as the Gulf of Finland, to come through the markers, up the narrow channel round the island, and out into the basin of the river which lay before him like a huge, placid lagoon.

Was there any more beautiful sight in northern Europe? Nearby, in midstream, the tip of the island, the Strelka Strelka, with its houses and warehouses like so many little classical temples. Away to the left, in the middle of the north shore, and forming a little island itself, the old Peter and Paul Fortress. It contained a fine cathedral now, built by Trezzini, embellished by Rastrelli, whose needle-like golden spire, softly gleaming, soared a thin four hundred feet and linked the low lines of the city by the water with the huge open sky above.

Off to the right, on the southern shore, lay Peter's Admiralty buildings, and the baroque and classical facades of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. How calm and serene it was: the distant stucco facades mostly painted yellow, pink or brown in those days, blended so softly with the wide, grey waters.

'Perfect city,' Bobrov would sigh, 'that can be both masculine and feminine.'

City of Peter: he had laid it out. As if to remind the place perpetually of its military and naval origin, the three huge avenues of which the famous Nevsky Prospekt was the greatest which radiated from the centre of the south bank, converged not on the palace but upon the Admiralty. Yet the city's topography and its soft lines were so suggestively feminine. And, strange to say, ever since Peter's death, his city had been ruled almost entirely by women.

First Peter's widow; then his German niece, the Empress Anna; then for twenty years Peter's daughter Elizabeth. Each of the possible male heirs had either died or been deposed in months.

It had still been the reign of Empress Elizabeth when Bobrov was born. He remembered it with a smile: those were voluptuous, extravagant years. It was said the old Empress had fifteen thousand dresses and that even her French milliner had finally refused her credit! Yet she had talent: she had built the Winter Palace; her many lovers included some remarkable men like Shuvalov who had founded Moscow University, or Razumovsky the lover of music men whose names would not only usher in Russia's greatest age, but would grace European culture too. St Petersburg had become cosmopolitan, looking to the dazzling court of France for inspiration.

And then had come the present golden age.

St Petersburg: city of Catherine. Who would ever have guessed that this insignificant young princess from a minor German court would become sole ruler of Russia? She had come there as a nice, harmless little wife for the heir to the throne, Elizabeth's nephew Peter; and so she would have remained, if her husband had not become unbalanced. For though he descended from Peter the Great through his mother, the young man was German and obsessively so. Frederick the Great of Prussia was his hero. He loved drilling soldiers. He hated Russia and said so. And in his poor, long-suffering young wife, he had no interest at all.

What a strange contrast they had made: a blustering youth and a quiet, thoughtful girl; an heir who hated his inheritance, and this foreign princess who converted to Orthodoxy and diligently learned Russian. Though they did produce an heir, Peter soon turned his back on her, took a mistress, and virtually goaded her, out of desperation, into taking lovers of her own. Did he mean, subconsciously, to destroy himself? Bobrov thought so. In any case, when this dark and hated young man succeeded to the Russian throne, and the palace guards led by Catherine's lover deposed and killed him, Alexander Bobrov was one of many who heaved a sigh of relief.

And who should replace this young monster? Why, who better than his popular young wife, mother of the next male heir, and such a lover of things Russian. Thus, by a strange fluke of fate, had begun the glorious reign of Catherine II.

Catherine the Great. Worthy successor to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, whose work she would complete. Russia was throwing off the last of its chains. In the west, she had already taken back the rest of White Russia from a weakened Poland. In the south, the Turkish fleet had been smashed; and the ancient menace of the Tatar steppe had finally been crushed when Catherine deposed the Crimean Khan and annexed all his lands. To the east, Russia now claimed the entire north Eurasian plain to the Pacific. Across the Caspian Sea, Russian troops had struck into the Asian deserts to the borders of ancient Persia. And only last year, Bobrov had heard, a Russian colony had been set up beyond the Bering Straits, by the coast of Alaska. Perhaps, soon, the western American lands would be hers too!

More daring yet, Catherine even hoped to take Constantinople itself, seat of the Turkish Empire the ancient Roman capital and home of Orthodoxy! She wanted to set up a sister empire there; and had already named her second grandson Constantine in preparation for the Black Sea empire she planned that he should rule.

Catherine the reformer. Like Peter before her, she wanted Russia to become a modern, secular empire. Slavs, Turks, Tatars, Finns, tribes without number: they were all Russians now. To help colonize the vast steppe-lands she had even imported German settlers. In imperial St Petersburg, eight religions were freely worshipped, in fourteen different languages. In the lands taken from Poland, there were even Jews. Already, the Church's lands had all been taken away and put under state control. The laxer monasteries had been closed. New cities at least on paper had been created by the score. She had even tried to reform Russia's outdated laws and organize the gentry and the merchants into representative bodies.

Catherine the enlightened. This was the Age of Enlightenment. All across Europe in the eighteenth century, rational philosophy and liberal political ideas had been making progress. In America, just freed by its War of Independence from the English King, the new age of liberty had begun. And now, to the astonishment of the whole world, this extraordinary, enlightened woman was ruling the vast and primitive land of forest and steppe.

Catherine the giver of laws. Catherine the educator. Catherine the champion of free speech, the patron of the philosophers who sang her praises. Voltaire himself, the most free-thinking man in France, used to write her endless letters. Catherine the sage, Catherine of the many lovers. St Petersburg and its voluptuous palaces were hers, and how serene, how calm it seemed.

Nobody took any notice of the quiet figure in the heavy coat who waited in the shadows near the entrance to the College. It was a talent he had, not being noticed.

He could have gone in. They would have welcomed him respectfully, without a doubt. This however he did not wish to do. Alternatively, of course, he could have given his message to a servant to carry. But he preferred not, and for this too he had his reasons.

And now at last, here was his man: State Councillor Bobrov was at the entrance, under the lamp, dressed in a thick fur coat and ready to go home. He looked rather pale. For some reason his sled was not ready and the lackey at the door had gone along the street to summon it.

The quiet figure left the shadows, walking quickly. As he drew close, Bobrov glanced at him, and seemed to start in surprise. The stranger made a little signal, reached him, and with an almost imperceptible gesture handed him the message. Then, without a word being spoken, he withdrew, and in a few moments had turned round the corner and was out of sight.

Bobrov stood quite still. The place was still deserted: no one had seen. He broke the seal and, in the lamplight, quickly read it. The message was very short: You are requested to attend a special meeting of the brothers at the pink house, tomorrow at six.Colovion That was all. There were not a hundred people in all Russia who would have known what it signified, but to Alexander Bobrov the message meant a great deal. As soon as he got home he would destroy it, for all communications of any kind were to be burned: that was the rule. For the moment, however, he pushed the letter into his coat pocket. Then he sighed, 'The voice of conscience.'

His sled was coming. There was much to do that night.

Before Alexander, on the big mahogany table, were several dishes: a chicken, bought frozen from the market that morning, a bowl of sour cabbage, a plate of rye bread, beluga caviar, and a glass of German wine. But he had scarcely tasted anything. He was dressed for the evening now, in a blue velvet coat, and, nervous though he was, his face wore the gambler's impassive expression.

He gazed round the large, high room. Its walls were papered dark green. On the side walls hung biblical scenes done in the classical manner, with sombre backgrounds. In the corner stood the big stove, tiled in green and red. The solemn effect was lightened, however, if one looked closely at the tiles: for half of them depicted some heavy, usually dirty, joke. These tributes to Russian humour were to be found everywhere, even in the formal rooms of the imperial palaces. At the far end of the room hung a portrait of his great-grandfather Procopy, the friend of Peter the Great, staring down morosely and looking rather oriental. Alexander had been brought up to revere the great man. 'But I wonder if you ever attempted anything like this,' he murmured.

It was time to go and face Countess Turova.