Prince Ivan (8 page)

“God forbid!” said Liza. “Unless you know something about him that we don’t?”

“Probably I do. And probably you don’t want to hear about it.”

“Whatever in the world makes you think that, little brother?” Katya had set the almonds aside and was propping her chin on her hands, smiling the demure smile of a lady in the mood for a bit of juicy salacious gossip. “Tell us all about dear Sergey. Or perhaps you really do feel like a dip in the lake later today…?”

“He boasts,” said Ivan hastily. His sisters blinked, looked at one another, and then stared hard at him.

“Is that all?” said Katya.

“What about?” said Liza.

“Keep talking, or go swimming,” said Lena.

“About drinking. About how much he can drink.”

“Not much of a boast,” said Katya. “We could probably drink as much.”

“And about other skills.” Ivan turned a little and watched as Sergey, Nikolai and Pavel started on yet another bottle of wine.

“Do tell,” said Liza. “I presume it has to do with how well he can hold his liquor.”

“Not quite. When he’s really overstepped the mark we have to do that for him.” The three Tsarevnas stared even harder, and he could see the beginnings of a horrible suspicion grow in their eyes.

“No,” said Lena.

“Yes,” said Ivan. “In his hat.”

“Ugh,” said his sisters in chorus, and lost any interest they might have had in the cream-cheese.

“From nearly five feet away,” Ivan concluded inexorably. “And twice – as if to prove the first time had been skill, not an accident.” A huge grin spread across his face at their expressions, and he bowed low before making his escape. “If you’re interested, I’ll tell you about Nikolai and Pavel some other time…”

*

“Ivan, my son, just exactly what are you trying to do? Make certain your sisters never marry at all?” Tsar Aleksandr turned from the window and came back towards his throne, stalking stiff-backed with anger along the same route he had paced more than a hundred times since summoning Ivan to his private chambers on that cold Ash Wednesday morning. The Tsarevich said nothing; he felt fairly certain that despite the questions, he wasn’t expected to give an answer. He was right.

“Have you any idea, young man, of the cost to Khorlov’s exchequer of that little party during the last two days? Have you? I think not! Four and a half
poodiy
of silver! One hundred and sixty pounds of treasure we can ill afford! That’s your own well-nourished weight, and an acceptable dowry to accompany any one of your sisters to her husband’s home if it hadn’t just been spent on a total waste of time. Thank you, Ivan Aleksandrovich. Thank you very much indeed, for nothing.”

“My lord…” The Tsar had resumed his pacing, and either didn’t hear, or didn’t want to hear. Ivan tried again. “Papa…?” The pacing stopped abruptly, and Tsar Aleksandr’s silver lion’s head came up from staring at the floor to glare at his son.

“Until this matter has been settled, Prince Ivan, you will not address me in that familiar fashion. You made all of us look foolish in many several ways, and don’t presume it will soon be forgotten.”

“I…” Ivan’s tongue had gone abruptly dry inside his mouth, so that the words refused to leave it. He was remembering how Tsars in the past had lost their tempers in a violent and fatal way with sons who had annoyed them, and though the chronicles had always said they’d been sorry afterwards, it hadn’t done the sons a lot of good. “They may have been my friends, majesty, but you would not have cared for any of them as a son-in-law.”

“It wasn’t your friends who concerned me, blockhead – though why they were invited to a formal banquet in the first place is beyond my comprehension. It was the other guests, and the way your stupid comments set my daughters to think critically of every prince, every boyar, every potential husband in the entire palace.” Tsar Aleksandr paused beside the throne, drumming his fingers on its high back, then sat down hard and noisily on its velvet cushions. He was toying with his long, spike-tipped sceptre in a way that made Ivan keep his distance.

“‘Prince Oleg Vladislav?’ I asked them. ‘Too fat,’ they said. ‘Prince Aleksandr Yaroslavich?’ ‘Too thin,’ they said. Konstantin
bogatyr
was too tall, and Mstislav Mikhailovich was too short. They thought that Boris Rostislavl should have had a smooth face instead of that fine red beard of his, though everyone knows he’d sooner die than suffer the shame of shaving it – but they also thought Ryurik Gyorg’yevich the boyar’s son would have looked better with whiskers, though he’s two years younger than you are and can’t grow more than fluff on his chin.”

Ivan felt himself blushing steadily redder throughout his father’s recitation, until he felt certain that his ears glowed red enough to light the room. He felt just as certain that if he said the wrong thing he would live to regret it, though perhaps not long enough to set it right. “Then you must make the choice for them,” he said carefully, one eye constantly on the four-inch spike that capped his father’s sceptre. “And for me, too.”

“So your only advice is that I break my sworn word to my own children?”

“‘
If
the
need
requires
it
,
do
what
is
needed
,’” Ivan was hoping that surely, surely, the Tsar wouldn’t take exception to hearing his own words quoted back at him, but even so, when the sceptre’s spike grated on the tiles of the floor, he was already tensed to duck or dodge or run.

“Just so,” said Tsar Aleksandr. His face showed he had reached and passed the peak of his anger, and now it was tapering down to mere annoyance – though a Tsar’s annoyance was still something that the wise preferred to avoid, often by moving far enough that a steppe or two lay between them and harm’s way. “It may come to that.” He sat back and stroked his moustaches between finger and thumb for a few minutes until they ceased to droop and returned to their customary handsome sweep of silver across his upper lip. “Besides criticizing some of our guests, Prince Ivan, did you happen to notice any of the others? Those here through politeness or invitation, rather than hoping to get a Tsar’s daughter for their wife?”

“Rich merchants,” said Ivan after a moment’s thought, “and wealthy traders. Also certain crook-legged Tatars wearing dead men’s finery. Two, no, three men claiming to be lords or princes, even though nobody – not even Strel’tsin – could find where they were supposed to rule. And of course the genuine princes who were too much of this and not enough of that…”

“Carefully, my son.” The Tsar glowered at him from beneath heavy brows, and Ivan subsided at once. “Carefully. You’ll know when you’ve been forgiven enough to make idiotic jokes, and by Saint Basil, that time hasn’t come yet.” Aleksandr Andreyevich rattled another brief tattoo with his fingers on one arm of the throne. “But you saw enough. Merchants and traders indeed. Even though they weren’t from the Caliphate or from Khazar.”

“Then where…?”

“You said it yourself, before. Kiev and Novgorod. Or Novgorod and Kiev. They’d come to see how we were doing in the search for heirs, alliances and dowries. And thanks to you, they saw nothing impressive!”

“Then if they’re still within the walls,” said Ivan coldly, “we should find them, learn where they came from, and send their heads back to whoever sent them. Smoked and salted, of course,” he added as an afterthought. “Making the point we won’t be spied on is one thing, but we don’t want to cause needless offence.”

“Of course not.” Tsar Aleksandr listened to this outrageous suggestion, looked at his son, and realized with a very small shiver that Ivan meant every word. Whether the boy felt out of sorts after being chastised or showed an indication of something deeper, the Tsar didn’t know; but he made a mental note to keep an eye open from now on. Even the best sons sometimes grew impatient…

“The notion has already been considered,” he said. “And it’s not without a certain appeal. Unfortunately, it would be no more than one of the actions the Great Princes hope I might take. They’ve had far too much interest in Khorlov for far too long, less with an eye to marriage and alliance than conquest and annexation. Yuriy and the Mikhaylovichi may be high and mighty rulers, but they’re not so high or mighty that they’ll miss whatever chance they find to acquire yet more land. A provocation like sending people’s pickled heads about the country would justify their sending an army against me, and anyway, my son, this Tsardom has never been large enough to back up such grandiose gestures with the level of force they need. Not even with the support of the Golden Horde.”

“You surely don’t want an alliance with them?”

“Of course not!” The Tsar sounded faintly disgusted at the very thought. “But Yuriy of Kiev and Boris Mikhaylovich won’t know that. One more reason for leaving their spies alive: to report back what they saw here. And one of the things they’ll have to report is the sight of Manguyu Temir, eating his meat in my hall like a Christian, and well enough dressed that he must have done it to honour a new ally.”

“One of Strel’tsin’s plots,” said Ivan softly.

“It is. Why?”

“No reason. I was simply curious to know if I’d guessed right. It has the High Steward’s touch about it.” Ivan wondered to himself about the brief, broken conversation he’d had with Dmitriy Vasil’yevich. There had been the ‘personages of importance’, who had, as far as he knew, failed to appear at the feast. And he began to wonder what advantages might be gained by such a highly placed minister if his pretence of friendship with the Ilkhan of the Horde was more than just pretence…

*

Lent came, and was endured as a holy festival must be until it became
Paskha
, the joyful time of Easter. The Great Fast became the Great Feast and special foods were prepared: tall
kulich
cakes full of dried fruit and nuts,
paskha
tvorog
enriched with cream and formed in a mould that left the sign of the cross impressed in its sides, and lambs carved from fresh butter.

There were more banquets, attended by more suitors. None of the banquets were as large or impressive as the very first one, which was just as well because they were if anything even less successful. Tsar Aleksandr Andreyevich was spending considerable quantities of silver only to find himself and his realm exactly where they’d been before all of this began, with one vital and unpleasant difference. Not only did he still have four unmarried children, but now the Tsardom was in debt.

It no longer required spies from Novgorod and Kiev; the Great Princes of those cities had come in person to Khorlov, self-invited guests to one of the banquets, and had seen matters for themselves. It was only too clear that support for Khorlov and for Tsar Aleksandr was lukewarm at best among his neighbours, that his rumoured alliance with the Khan of the Golden Horde was indeed no more than a rumour, and that any territorial ambitions they might entertain were unlikely to be opposed except, perhaps, by one another.

It became plain to the people of Khorlov and to the children of its Tsar, that a storm was coming, and the only question remaining was from which direction would it strike first…?

*

But the storm held off, except for those two strange storms which had taken away the Tsar’s eldest daughters. Hours became days, and days became weeks, and the snows of winter began to fall, covering the grass and the flowers and the dead leaves of autumn, until all was still and silent and a shroud of white lay all across the gardens of the kremlin.

It had been a long time since Tsarevna Yelena had walked there with her sisters, and almost as long since she began to hope that she too would find a suitor as they had done. But for all the hours and days and weeks gone by, and for all the cold and darkness of the Russian winter beyond the firelit warmth of the kremlin palace, she had never given up that hope. Her hair was always arranged correctly, her garments always rich and fine, her face always painted with that small amount of paint permitted to a maiden daughter of the Tsar.

Prince Ivan was relieved that all the interest of marrying had settled on his sisters, and not so much on himself. He knew well enough that after Lena was wed and gone, that interest and the pressure with it would be transferred to him. He spent each day in what passed for merriment, when he wasn’t learning the lessons that a Tsar’s son must know if he was to be a wise Tsar himself. Ivan lived each of those days as though it were the last day of his freedom, aware that soon or late, it would be the truth.

When at last it came it wasn’t a day but a night, and one when the snow-laden wind was moaning under the eaves and around the kremlin’s onion-shaped domes. Everyone was gathered in the warmth of the lesser hall, where the walls were panelled with wood and hung with tapestries so the heat from the great log fire couldn’t escape. Musicians were playing, and while the Tsaritsa and Yelena worked at their embroidery and listened to a storyteller recite the
bylina
called ‘
The
Tale
of
Dobrynya
Nikitych’, Ivan played his father at chess and lost as gracefully as he could. He had just begun to set the pieces up for another and hopefully more successful game—

Snow began falling onto the board.

Tsar Aleksandr stared at the snowflakes for a second or two before sweeping them away with the back of his hand, then looked at Ivan, and grinned in his beard as fathers will grin at their sons – especially fathers who have just beaten those same sons at chess three times in a row. “Lenochka,” he said, “do you look pretty tonight?” He was rewarded by the sound of an embroidery tambour falling over, and the swiftly stifled beginnings of the sort of oath that Princesses learn when they have a brother.