Prince Ivan (9 page)

Above their heads, as silently as the falling snow, the ceiling had split open as wide as a door and, descending through it on wings muffled by winter, came a raven black as the night beyond the candle-light. It struck once against the floor and immediately a fire sprang up, enveloping its outspread wings in leaping flames of black and silver so darkly bright they dazzled the eyes of those who watched. The raven struck again and then a third time, so that the flames leapt high and higher still.

Then they winked out in the drawing of a breath, and the raven became a fine young man dressed all in deepest black, embroidered and brocaded all in black silk so cunningly figured with hair-fine silver thread that its brightness made the darkness darker yet, and its trimming was raven’s feathers.

If the Falcon had seemed sharp-eyed, and the Eagle had seemed strong, then this young man seemed wise indeed. Yet for all the difference in dress and in looks he was without a doubt their brother. He looked around him with dark eyes in a pale face, and when that dark gaze fell on Yelena, the young man smiled and nodded, seeming much content. Then he bowed low to all present, and saluted Ivan as one young man of noble blood salutes another. “Long life to you, Prince Ivan,” he said. “Before, I was a guest; now I am a suitor, to marry your sister the Tsarevna Yelena.”

With a bow and a nod, Ivan returned the salute, then made a courtly gesture to show where the Tsar sat beside him. “Prince Mikhail Voronov,” said Ivan, returning the salute with a bow and a slight smile. “Of three brothers who claimed my acquaintance, you at least I remember.” He made a courtly gesture to show where the Tsar sat beside him. “Where your request is concerned, you must speak to my father; but where my sister is concerned, she may have her own views.”

The Raven Prince nodded to show he understood, but the look Yelena exchanged with him said plainly as words that her mind was already made up. “Most High Majesty,” he said, “I am Mikhail Charodeyevich Voronov, Prince of the Dark Forests, and if your daughter loves me, I would have her to wife.”

Tsar Aleksandr saw the look that had passed between them, and smiled. “Sorcerer’s son and Prince of the Dark Forests,” he said, putting out one of his hands to Prince Mikhail the Raven and the other to his youngest daughter, “I give you her hand, for your gladness and hers.”

“Which now leaves me,” said Ivan with a smile, and if it was a little crooked he had reason, but the comment came better from him than the High Steward, who would surely raise the subject at the first opportunity. Mikhail glanced at him with good humour in his eyes, and was about to say something when the door-ward admitted a servant. Ivan looked first at the servant, then at his father, and finally back at the servant again. The man, out of breath and warm despite the winter weather, looked distinctly familiar.

“More than six in gold?” asked Tsar Aleksandr just before the servant opened his mouth.

“Yes, majesty,” the man said, and bowed low. “Just as before.” And just as before, the great opening in the ceiling of the kremlin closed as if it had never been there.

*

This time there were no objections, either voiced or silent, from Metropolitan Archbishop Leo Popovich Volkhov. He agreed to the wedding at once, and his voice had the tone of a man growing used to all manner of strangeness, if repeated enough. He merely looked long and hard at the Tsar, and stroked his beard, and finally said: “Once is strange, twice is coincidence, but three times is becoming a habit – so Majesty, why should I differ from you?”

When once they were married, Tsarevna Yelena drove away across the snow with her husband the Raven, very splendid and fine in a troika sleigh that was all glossy black except for the small silver bells on the harness of its three black horses, and no more was said about it. At least, to them.

*

But a great deal was said to Ivan, for the very next day his last sister did indeed leave Ivan subject to marriage pressures. The very next day High Steward Strel’tsin arrived with a list of young ladies suitable for Tsar’s sons to marry. Ivan was more even-tempered than his eldest sister, but as he read the list of names, he came to understand more and more why Katya had flung paper in the High Steward’s face.

That winter proved to be one of the longest in his memory. It was filled not only with snow but with a seemingly endless succession of young women, blonde-haired and red-haired and mousey and black, all keen to be married and all with the same thing in common. When they looked at him they saw not a man, a husband and a lover, but a Tsar’s son, a title and a crown.

Anastasya Fedorovna Solov’ev was the worst of them. It was evident that her family reckoned femininity by weight, or height, or volume, because she qualified on all three counts. Ivan had long ago admitted to himself that he would never be particularly tall. In fact, he had grown to a comfortably average height of about two-and-a-half
arshiniy
, or a little less than six feet by the Western measure. To encounter a hopeful would-be bride who towered over him by that little less and a little more besides, and whose delight in the pleasures of the table matched his height with her circumference, was something of an experience.

Certainly it was a challenge; despite his personal opinions, Ivan Aleksandrovich was still a Tsar’s son and a gentleman. Extricating himself from Countess Anastasya’s optimistically enthusiastic embraces had been as much an exercise in diplomacy as escapology, for despite her size, her weight and the fact that she seemed to have more than the usual number of hands, her father was one of his father’s more important nobles. Hurting the lady’s feelings would have been worse than tactless and rude; it would have been downright impolitic.

That was the week when Ivan discovered a hitherto unknown talent: the writing of fiction. His letters to Anastasya, sent by hand from the kremlin to the Solov’ev town mansion, passed from originality through inventiveness to a soaring understated exaggeration.

Her father put an end to the one-sided romance when one of the letters was handed to him by mistake, because Count Fedor Solov’ev was a man with a better sense of humour than Ivan had credited. He saw not only that the Tsar’s son was growing increasingly harried by Anastasya’s attentions, but that she was using him just to pass the dull winter days. That a man’s daughter should risk offending the Tsar’s son and hence the Tsar to relieve her boredom, wasn’t something the Count wished to tolerate. Not when the potential for repercussions was increasing with the shrillness of Ivan’s letters.

There was a certain amount of well-feigned regret on both sides when Count Fedor decided it was time he and his family went visiting their estates near the city of Suzdal, but not so much that mock sincerity might have been mistaken for the real thing. Tsarevich Ivan, a gentleman to the last, waved the Solov’ev
troyki
out of sight from the ramparts of the kremlin.

Then went and got happily drunk.

*

Finally, the winter was over, the snow was gone, and so, for a blessed respite, were the swarms of high-born maidens with hungry eyes. That was when he was summoned once more to the Tsar’s Chamber of Audience, to give an account of himself.

“We had this discussion last year, Vanya,” said Tsar Aleksandr. “Indeed, more than a year ago, because I remember the snow was still deep when I first brought the subject before you. So, son of mine: your sisters are married. What about you, and the succession, and the security of the Tsardom?”

“I thought it was secure again, Father. You said so yourself.”

“Temporarily, because of the bride-gifts your brothers-in-law left in the treasury. That gave Yuriy of Kiev and the others some pause for thought, but in all this time they’ve seen none of the armies that so rich an ally might have… And no sign of a wife for you, much less a grandson for me.”

“There was once a time when I thought you were putting a good deal of pressure on me,” said Ivan, smiling a bit wearily at his father. “I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

“You were, my son. Because now that the pressure isn’t divided four ways, you have it all to yourself.”

“Being the focus of attention isn’t as entertaining as it might be.”

“Perceptive of you to notice, Vanya. Now, answer the question. What are you going to do?”

Ivan thought desperately for an excuse that wouldn’t sound like one. “I thought,” he said, “that before I settle down I should travel. Go to visit Katya and Liza and Lena. Find out for myself what married life is like for people of my own age.”

Tsar Aleksandr Andreyevich nodded his head in agreement, trying not to laugh as he heard something he’d been expecting ever since the business with Anastasya Fedorovna. “That would be wise,” he said. “Many times I’ve seen you staring towards the horizon, when you think nobody is watching.” The Tsar smiled. “Even when you pour wine, my son, your face shows how you think of the lands the wine came from, and why if a simple barrel can journey across the face of Moist-Mother-Earth, a Tsar’s son can’t do the same. Go visit them: see how happy they are. And then,” the Tsar leaned forward in his throne, “come back and start behaving like an adult and the heir to my throne. Do you understand me, Ivan?”

“Clearly, Father. Quite clearly. However…” He hesitated, unsure how his next suggestion would be received.

“Come on, boy, speak. I won’t bite you,” Tsar Aleksandr grinned, and laughed the sort of laugh that turned the humour in it sour, “unless I don’t like what you say.”

“I want to travel alone.”

“What? You can’t do that! You’ll need a guard of honour, Ivan, and a
druzhinya
retinue! Don’t forget you’re my son and a Prince!”

“So you keep reminding me, Father. But I’m also supposed to act like an adult. Just this once, let me act like a
bogatyr
hero from the old tales and make my own way through the wide white world.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” muttered the Tsar, half to himself. “You shouldn’t be riding a solitary horse as if it was all you owned.”

The argument swayed this way and that for many minutes, but secretly Ivan was smiling. He knew from long experience that when his father reached the stage of grumbling in his beard, then willing or not he would grant whatever foolish request his children had troubled him with, and not grudge it to them till the next time.

Assuming there was ever a next time at all…

CHAPTER FOUR

How
Prince
Ivan
went
journeying
across
Moist
-
Mother
-
Earth
,
and
how
he
learned
something
to
his
advantage

A journey like the one planned by Tsarevich Ivan wasn’t something begun lightly, carelessly or without thought. It required many preparations, and the first was when he brought the best of his horses, grey Burka, to a smith, so that its hooves could be trimmed and all the animal’s shoes replaced both for the horse’s comfort and his own. Ivan didn’t need to have experienced it to know that being far out on the empty desolation of the steppes, with a horse that has thrown a shoe, was one of the best places in all the Russias not to be.

Then he brought his bow to be re-strung and his arrows to be re-fletched and given new points, took several spare bowstrings and a lump of fresh beeswax from the kremlin armouries, and while there had both of his swords newly sharpened. The heavy, straight
shpaga
went on one side of his saddle, under his knee; but the sabre he hung on his belt, to balance his bow-case and quiver.

Ivan took no armour, but his mother the Tsaritsa Ludmyla prevailed upon him to sling a long, teardrop-shaped shield across his back. When all was done, he put fresh clothing and several clean shirts into one of his saddle-sacks. Dried meat and smoked sausage, black bread and cheese, leather bottles of water,
kvas
and ale all went into the other, and then he was ready to take his leave.

High Steward Strel’tsin, excessively pleased with himself ever since Prince Fenist’s first appearance, gave him several letters of introduction to the abbots of monasteries that he might pass along his way. That familiarity with the route made Ivan look at Strel’tsin very hard; but the old man merely smiled, and said nothing. His mother wept over him, for it was the first time all her children had gone from Khorlov; but his father the Tsar gave him silver for his belt and then hugged him hard before he rode out on his first adventure.

Ivan had no map of where his sisters lived with their husbands, nor had anyone told him of which way to ride, but he knew it all the same. There were spells for that, small charms whose price was no more than a nagging headache between the brows and a weariness which occasionally kept him sleeping late of a morning. It was a strange sensation, as if there was an invisible guide riding on his shoulder, steering him this way and that. He heard no words, not even the small voice of thought or of conscience that everyone hears at the back of their mind sooner or later. Instead, he had no more than a sense of this road being right, or that track being wrong. It was a sense that served him well as he rode out across the face of Moist-Mother-Earth, keeping him from swamps or from brambles, leading him to the easier route up a hill or through a stand of trees.