The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible (16 page)

‘Aye,’ said Smith. ‘As the saying goes, it takes hard times to make a hero.’

They wondered. Could this Vorotinsky be the saviour of Moscow after all? For the first time they began to have hope, faint hope.

‘A hero’s someone who gets killed young for a lost cause, isn’t it?’ said Hodge.

In the late afternoon the indefatigable Vorotinsky found them again and said there was a good crowd of people gathered in the square before the Church of the Ascension.

‘I want you to speak to them,’ he said.

‘Us?’ said Stanley. ‘We are foreigners, Westerners, Catholics. The ordinary people of Moscow have no great interest in us.’

‘But tell them about Malta. That will interest them.’

Then Stanley understood.

He stood on the steps outside the west door of the church, the others alongside him, and addressed the small crowd. Vorotinsky told them to listen well, and to pass on what they had heard.

He spoke to the people calmly and confidently, as leaders should, especially on the eve of a battle with the odds so hard against them. The people listened. They had not heard such calm authority in a long while. The blond giant, he spoke Russian with an accent, but at least he spoke Russian and not some unholy foreign tongue.

These two powerful-looking knights, these Englishmen, they had been at the island of Malta, at that siege a few years back that had already entered folklore, and they had triumphed over far greater numbers of unchristened Turks, in just such circumstances as these now. The people thrilled to hear the story. They had fought at Malta, all four of them on the steps there, defeating an Ottoman army thirty thousand strong when they were but seven or eight hundred. It was a magnificent tale, and the people listened spellbound. They began to murmur among themselves that all things were possible in God. Some even became boisterous.

‘We will drive these wretched Tatars into the ground!’

‘Death to the Golden Horde!’

‘We have defeated them before, we have taken Kazan, we are a great nation, they are but stinking horsemen of the east, what have we to fear? We are true Christians and Russians!’

Then their own noble Prince Michael Vorotinsky spoke to them too. Prince Andrei Kurbsky went over to the north of the city and addressed more gatherings of people likewise. They said, Do not be afraid. Do not fall prey to panic. A siege is hard work, so keep working. Carry water, beat out fires, carry ball and powder to the walls, tend the wounded. The Tatar army is coming for sure, they have rejected all our offers of peace, and yes, they will attack us. This is now certain. It is also true that they come in very great numbers. Yet to defend a strong walled city with far fewer numbers is not impossible. Far from it! You have heard the story of Malta. So now let the story of Moscow ring out as glorious in the annals of the world!

The people erupted in tumultuous cheering.

‘I’d like Devlet Giray to hear that,’ murmured Stanley.

‘Brother,’ said Smith. ‘Morale is everything. I am truly beginning to have hope.’

‘I too. I think we can do this. We can defend this city.’

26

They oversaw more work at the walls for the rest of the day, and at dusk they went back to the English House. Despite the small successes, again an air of foreboding seemed to weigh down more heavily upon the city as night came over them from the east. People bolted their wooden shutters and crossed themselves as they rode by, though many now kept their shutters bolted across their windows all day, living in darkness but for tallow candles and rushlights. As if that would be their defence against the Horsemen of the East.

‘I cannot believe there are still no outriders permitted to tell us where the Tatars are,’ said Nicholas.

‘We’ll know soon enough anyway,’ said Smith.

When they came into the main hall, Thomas Southam and Robert Greene were talking together with a manservant, the stalwart Edward Ballard, and seeing the four enter, they fell silent. They felt only just about welcome still in this trapped house.

They were eating a light supper in the gloom of the hall, no longer accompanied by the rest of the household. Nicholas had not set eyes upon Mistress Southam since last night, and was rather relieved.

Smith tore his bread apart. ‘If we could but use those guns,’ he muttered. ‘Czar Ivan must relent. Just a few shots …’

‘That would hardly destroy an army of fifty or a hundred ­thousand,’ said Nicholas.

‘No need to destroy it,’ said Stanley. ‘These are Tatars, not Mohammedan fanatics like the Bektasi, nor the highly disciplined ranks of the Ottoman Janizaries, obedient unto death. Like the Cossacks, these are light horsemen, skirmishers, chancers. Coming before the walls of Moscow, one thing they would not expect, would hate, would be a long protracted siege. That is not the Tatar way.’

Smith added, ‘If they saw our guns roaring out in defiance, if they made no progress, brought down not a single gate in, say, the first week, and if the Cossacks were riding about behind them, harrying them, cutting communications … then they might well pull back. The siege might well be abandoned. That would have been our hope. No need to destroy them, merely dismay them. But for now we have only the citizen militia and their muskets. If Devlet Giray and his khans scent our weakness – or maybe they have already scented it, have snuffed the wind across the steppe that has told them Moscow is weak. Doubtless they know very well that Russia’s only professional fighting force, the Streltsy, are in the west, doubtless they have access to all the military intelligence of the Ottomans and know the position of every company in Livonia—’

‘So there is little hope after all?’ said Hodge. ‘Despite all those stirring speeches today?’

Stanley smiled gently. ‘There is always a little hope.’

‘Why do we stay?’

‘We just do. For the doomed people of Moscow, who must defend themselves, and for this English House, a little square of English soil.’

Aye, thought Nicholas. And the people in it. These are our ­people now. Forget that mad Czar in his gilded palace. He is nothing.

For what are Kings, when regiment is gone,

But perfect shadows in a sunshine day?

He was going to his chamber when the girl appeared at the end of the corridor. She carried a candle in a small dish that illuminated her face from below in a soft light. She looked so beautiful. She could not die.

She came towards him and slowed, her heart beating furiously. She had sent her nurse Hannah down to the evening market to buy fresh berries, so that she might meet him … like this …

He stopped in front of her.

‘Will we,’ she whispered, ‘will we be safe?’

He looked at her and his heart burned and he could think of nothing to say, for no, they would not be safe. And with nothing to say, all he could do was take her swiftly in his arms and kiss her, and she returned his kiss. It was all so sudden, it was clumsy, like the first time, and she dropped her dish and candle with a clatter and he put out his foot and rubbed the candle out, and still no one came. They pressed back against the wall, he was hard against her, and she was returning his kisses with such maiden ardour, their breath warm and mingling, and then the door behind them opened and they were in a chamber, her chamber, her white bed, and his hands were roving, her eyes were half-closed, she was gasping—

‘No!’ she gasped at last.

He stopped. His head cleared. No, indeed. What was he thinking?

She pushed him away and straightened her hair, rearranged her dress, tried to control her breathing. Thrilled and shocked all at once.

‘You wrong me, sir,’ she said, with a sudden affectation of primness.

He stood and bowed meekly. Now was not the time to argue, and especially not the time to point out that she had seemed just as enthusiastic as him until a moment ago.

She said, her voice still absurdly prim and now trying to sound older than her years as well – how he loved her for it! – ‘I suppose at least your future bride can be assured that you are very skilled and experienced in all the arts of love. Even if in the arms of other men’s wives.’

‘I swear, I … I …’ he stammered, aiming to be charming and self-effacing, ‘I was an innocent victim of that Mistress Southam, she took of advantage of my youthful innocence. I swear I have never lain in the arms of any other woman in my life, I was a hapless victim of her womanly wiles—’

He was so obviously lying, smiling his charming smile while he spoke, playing some sort of game with her, and he was so handsome too with his fair hair and clean jaw and his mysterious scars of battle, that she thought she ought to slap him at this point.

So she slapped him. He still smiled, then he seized her around her slim waist again and kissed her again, and she held his kiss for a few more rapturous seconds, their lips parting … Then she pulled away from him.

‘Please quit my chamber,’ she said. ‘I am not like your other women.’

Great God she was not.

He was gone without another word, gallantly and annoyingly obedient, leaving her open-mouthed and with her heart on fire.

The Czar himself had also been busy that day, in his whirlwind and omnipotent thoughts. He had seen great things, and come to great decisions.

Feeling a day of beautiful inwardness and insight come upon him, such as the saints themselves experienced, he had the lamps in his chambers extinguished, the candles snuffed out. He felt the Darkness of God come upon him. Daylight through a single high window of coloured glass was all that illuminated the gaunt figure below, striding back and forth in the visionary gloom. The Czar paced in his palace of shadows. He was discomposed by all this sense of activity in the city, and the arrival of more people flooding in from the country villages round about, with their goats and their chickens, their handcarts and their diseases. Why were they here? What were they plotting? Fleeing, it was said, from the Tatars. Let them flee. It was all most uncleanly. He himself had had two baths already today. And he had heard news of great speeches being made in the squares. What was going on? He did not care for it.

His mind worked furiously, his thoughts trailed down winding and deep-shadowed labyrinths. He did not believe now that this was simply about fighting the Tatars. He, Ivan, and he alone, saw through such deceits. Men were wicked from the day of their birth, there were always black secrets, bloody deeds plotted, mutterings and treachery. Twice he had received requests from Vorotinsky today to allow the guns on the walls to be armed, and also for scouts and outriders to cover the surrounding country. Why? Why? Something was afoot. He had forbidden it. He saw further, through the foul window of appearances to Ultimate Reality.

He gazed hard into a looking-glass.

I am alive yet I am filthy, ugly – a huge sore, a corpse already in the grave, I stink in the nostrils of God, O slay me, my God, that my land may be redeemed by my own precious blood, slay me, my father, my God …

For it was only by a miracle of God that he was still alive today. He tried to make better sense of it. Clearly there had been treachery for the Tatars to get so close. Then who? His Streltsy were gone to the west, damn them. They must fight. God would help him, yes, God! He stared at a servant hovering terrified before him, holding the ewer of wine he had ordered but two minutes earlier. He struck out with his iron-tipped staff, the servant fell, still clutching the ewer. It smashed on the floor, the servant lay still, the wine was red, blood-red. A sign from God his loving Father.

Blood-red the wine in the hands of the people!

He had always been blessed with second sight, a great and ­solemn and terrifying gift. So then: let the Blood of the Lamb be shed for the sacrifice. A sickly patient was bled by the physicians for his health. Then – he turned about on the spot, his long robe swirling, arms wide, face raised to Heaven – then let the Russian people on the eve of this great battle be bled, that they may find strength in the battle to come …

It was all perfectly logical.

He flung open the door and roared for his own physician, who came scuttling. He demanded that special mixed wine that Bomelius made up. Full of special herbs, and strong in alcohol, it brought happiness and visions but also tremendous energy. Bomelius smiled, bowed, scuttled away and returned soon after with a tall decorated cup of the sacred draught. The Czar drained it in three gulps. Bomelius took the cup and vanished.

He dropped his staff, leaned on the wall. His head thumped, his vision swam. Belly sweetly burning. Then his vision slowly cleared again and he felt the potion begin to work. He stood tall, stretched his arms wide once more, breathed in the swimming air, felt his chest expand. He was so tall, a mighty warrior before the Lord. He breathed in more deeply, his head thumped harder, but not painfully, rather with the exhilarating Drumbeat of War. His veins flooded with fire, he could laugh aloud like a madman! He could ride from here to the Great Wall of China and not tire!

Now there was much to do. He clapped his hands together. Had he not become master of the Kremlin at eleven, with not a friend in the world to trust? His childhood one long, trembling, lonely terror in the dark, one unending bloody nightmare of screaming, stabbing and throat-slitting? The leading boyars had even had his beloved horse assassinated! And his beloved sister, who had also been his nurse and suckled him in infancy, imprisoned in a fetid dungeon, her health ruined ever after.

One day he had seen a man killed in his very chamber by two drunken, raging boyars, and thrown out of the window. He had seen girls raped from an early age, but that was nothing. God had kept his eyes pure through it all. He had taken comfort in ancient wisdom, in old manuscripts of the monks in Church Slavonic, which told him of Czar David of Judea, beloved of God, and of the war chariots of Czar Solomon the Wise. He had read of the histories of Byzantium and Greece, they had haunted his dreams, and he had grown cunning and wise in the ways of men. And he had discovered that he was blessed and visionary.

He heard serving women gossip when they were many rooms away, he heard bells under the river at midnight, ghosts weeping among the gravestones in the cathedral, he walked through a pine forest and the trees all bowed down to him. Yes, Moscow would be the Sixth Empire spoken of in the Apocalypse of St John, and the Third Rome. The Mohammedans, those sons of Satan, they had conquered Jerusalem, and then Constantinople, but they would not take Moscow. Here, here, the true Christian Church would take its last stand.

Yes, it was the Apocalypse come down! It was all so clear now. His head was filled with heavenly voices, instructing him, inspiring him. He was the appointed Scourge of God, and his people were to be scourged by the Tatars. He paced, fists clenched, one held to his chin. His veins ran with molten gold, gold as an icon. Let us go forth, yes, let us face the enemy, the enemy in our midst, that is it. Have we not seen? His people feared him, for they knew he was no ordinary Czar, but a visionary and a holy man. Perhaps even the Prophet of God! No mere earthly monarch like that red-haired English slut Elizabeth, he had turned against her, she had not agreed to marry him. He reeled with the insult of it. Did she not recognize who he was, his holiness? May she be ravished by wild bears. She had been toying with him, he knew it, she was interested only in playing him along like a hooked fish, for her sordid trade agreements. Those English envoys … His heart welled up with sudden hatred for that purse-mouthed miniature they had brought. What did that red-haired slut know of Great Empires, of vision and destiny and the New Jerusalem? She was not Anointed of God, as he was. And he saw now where the danger lay. It lay all around. It lay in this City of Sin, this Moscow. It lay at his door.

It lay at his door.

He snatched up his scabbard where it hung over a chair and drew his sword and flung open the door and glared at the guard standing outside.

The guard fell on his knees. ‘Majesty …’

Ivan raised his sword ready to drive it down into the fellow’s neck. The fellow shook and pleaded for mercy.

‘Dost thou bow before the Lord’s Anointed?’ he roared.

‘I bow, Your Majesty, I bow!’ he cried, scrabbling contemptibly on the ground as if for purchase.

‘Dost thou see in my hands the New Jerusalem, Golden like the Sun?’

‘I do, Majesty, anything, I am loyal, I would never—’

‘Silence!’ Ivan lowered his sword. It was hopeless. This dung-dwelling peasant could not be expected to share in the Visions of the Holy. He buckled his scabbard around his long black robe, sheathed his sword, and said, ‘Take up the traitor servant in there and cast him into the river with the Gadarene swine. If he is not dead already, see him executed.’

‘Majesty, I …’

And then he was gone. For there was much to do.