by Ann Swinfen
As we drew nearer, the sound of bells carried across the water, followed by a deep-voiced melodic chanting. It sounded like nothing I had ever heard before, neither Jewish nor Catholic nor Protestant, yet perhaps the music was closer to Jewish than anything else. It had a strange quality, that I can only describe as eastern. I knew that the Muscovites followed the Orthodox faith, like the Greeks, but since the rulers of Byzantium had been destroyed by the forces of Islam, the Greek church was in disarray. It was said that the Muscovite Church held itself to be the guardian of the only true Christian faith, regarding Rome as merely a recent and arrogant upstart, while Protestants were seen as nothing more than godless barbarians. Yet despite these claims, I had been told that in many ways Muscovy was ignorant and backward, ruled by a tyrannical and despotic system, which kept the nobles or boyars in a constant state of fear and the common people as little better than slaves. Well, it would not be long before I discovered the truth behind all these tales.
‘We will put in at the St Nicholas quay first,’ Christopher Holme said, coming to stand beside me to watch the land draw nearer. ‘Out of courtesy. And report to the abbot. Then we will cross to our own premises on Rose Island, where we have modern docks, with warehouses and cranes for loading and unloading the cargo.’ He shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘I see that we have built extensively since I was last here. Excellent. It is testimony to the Company’s success, despite our sometimes tricky relations with the government of the country.’
‘You said you had not been here for fifteen years,’ I said. ‘Is that not strange?’
‘For some of that time I was based in Narva. You knew that we had a trading post with the Russians there? When Muscovy lost Narva to the Swedes, I travelled on one unsuccessful voyage to the New Found Land. Since then I have worked in the London offices.’
He smiled suddenly. ‘It is good to be back.’
‘You like it here?’ I was incredulous.
‘I like the challenge. I like pitting my wits against the Muscovites. And the trade is rich and profitable, as long as we can keep their prices down and curtail the sharp practices of the Court, which tries to claim our best goods for next to nothing. Mark me, though, Dr Alvarez. It is a dangerous country. Put a foot wrong, cause offence to someone in power, and you could end in prison. They do not hesitate to use torture. Englishmen have been imprisoned and tortured here before now, for imagined offenses or merely in a game of diplomacy. The present Tsar has a weak mind and is unpredictable, while his brother-in-law Godunov can seem most charming, but he is ruthless.’
‘I was worried before,’ I said, with a poor attempt at a laugh, ‘now I am truly alarmed.’
‘I am sorry. I did not mean to frighten you, merely to warn you to be careful. Did you say you are required to physic two of the royal children?’
I nodded.
‘Then that is when you will need to be most careful. Better to stay away from those in power all the rest of the while you are here.’
I had been so absorbed in our conversation, that my attention had been drawn away from our progress toward land, so that I was startled by the jarring as the Bona Esperanza was laid alongside the quay at St Nicholas. A gangplank was run out and a few minutes later I would set foot for the first time on the soil of Muscovy.
I had left my small cabin on the ship with some regret. It held nothing but a bunk screwed to the floor, a chair, a shelf and a small coffer for my clothes, but it had provided me with a private retreat where I could escape when I did not feel like sharing the company of my fellow travellers. Since the players had been left behind at Wardhouse, I had spent more time there. Pyotr and Holme were pleasant enough, but I felt no particularly close friendship for them, and once we were in Muscovy I would hardly be able to avoid their constant company.
So I had packed up my few belongings in my knapsack with some reluctance, as much out of dread because of what lay ahead as regret at leaving the Bona Esperanza. Apart from the medical supplies in my satchel, stuffed as full as it would hold, I had a couple of changes of clothes, the odd knitted garment Goodwife Maynard had made for me, and my two books, which were growing rather battered from much travel – the volume of poetry Simon had given me for my seventeenth birthday and the small New Testament pressed on me by our old rector at St Bartholomew the Great. I had not much cared for it at the time, but it had brought me consolation in times of trouble, although I was uncertain what my father would have thought of it. Despite being a Christian convert, his roots had been deep in the Jewish faith. My own beliefs were confused. I must remember Pyotr’s warning about the banning of Jews from Muscovy and give no hint of my ambiguous heritage.
The gangplank seemed to ripple as I took my first few steps across it, so that I feared for a moment that I might topple into the uninviting waters of the White Sea, but it was probably no more than a sensation produced by my sea legs. Even on shore, the ground felt unstable. The monastery quay was an old structure, built of wood, slimy with ancient rotted seaweed. It looked to me as though it might collapse soon. I wondered that they did not rebuild it, now that the place had become an important port. There seemed to be money enough here, if the monastery was anything to go by, although the houses which lay outside the monastery’s fortified walls were poor hovels made of undressed logs, with roofs of yellowing turf or blackened reed thatch. Country houses in England are often poor, but I had never encountered any as wretched as these. I have seen better pigsties.
However, there was little time to study our surroundings, for I found myself being escorted, along with Holme, Pyotr and the ship’s officers, through a massive gateway into the monastery. The courtyard was crowded, and I fear my mouth fell open in surprise. If the appearance of the monastery dome was strange and the music alien, the crowd of monks which awaited us left me gasping.
They were very richly dressed, in black robes woven with gold and silver thread, and every man wore a heavy pectoral cross adorned with great uncut jewels which I took to be rubies, emeralds, pearls and turquoise. Each monk seemed bent on growing a longer beard than the next man – many had black beards down to their waists, a few to their knees. Their hair was long as well, sometimes hanging loose to their shoulders, sometimes braided. And they wore the most extraordinary hats, like tall black chimney pots.
Like some small, colourful, but alien bird amongst these native ravens, a fair-haired Englishman stepped forward and began to make introductions in Russian to the most imposing of the monks, a hawk-nosed man, elderly but fiercely upright, whose beard was turning white, as though it had been sprinkled with snow. This, I thought, must be the abbot. The Englishman would be William Holbeche, the Company’s agent in St Nicholas.
Whereas the Russians were robed to the ground, William Holbeche’s clothes were a mixture of European and Russian. He wore bright green hose, so that his lower legs were visible, elegantly shaped, like those of any gentleman at home, but instead of short padded breeches and a doublet above them, he wore a loose robe of scarlet wool, reaching just to the knee and drawn in at the waist with a belt of gold cords. The sleeves of the robe were loose and revealed a shirt which was certainly not English, for it had voluminous sleeves, gathered into cuffs embroidered with red and green thread. Around his neck there was a ruff, but a ruff so badly starched and pleated that it was clear that Company employees were forced to use local laundresses, who had not mastered the art of dressing a ruff. It flashed through my mind, irrelevantly, that I was glad I wore nothing grander than a simple gathered and unstiffened ruff. I could afford nothing finer. Besides, it would have interfered with my work. Looking at William Holbeche’s bedraggled affair, I thought it would be wiser if he left it off.
Christopher Holme was drawing me forward by the elbow, after he had been presented by William Holbeche.
‘My lord abbot, Father Sevastyan,’ he said in Russian, ‘may I present the physician, Dr Christoval Alvarez?’
‘My lord Abbot,’ I said.
Taking my clue from
the others, I knelt and kissed the ring on the hand the abbot held out to me.
‘You are welcome, Englishmen,’ he said. His voice was deep and his pronunciation a little different from Pyotr’s, but I found I could understand him. ‘We invite you to dine with us.’
I had thought we would be leaving at once for Rose Island, but it seemed it was a great honour to be invited to a meal at the abbey, so we obediently followed Father Sevastyan into a large building lying to the right of the church, and up wooden stairs to a refectory, where we were seated at a high table on a dais with the abbot and several of the older and more distinguished-looking monks, while the remainder filed in behind us and took their seats on benches at the lower tables. I noticed that there was a sprinkling of youngsters amongst them, some no more than twelve or thirteen. They too wore black, but no finery, merely plain robes tied in at the waist with a rope belt, like monks I had seen in Portugal when I was a child.
Food will always vary from nation to nation, and I was not sure what to expect here. It was with some nervousness that I watched the servants carry in platters of food. Clearly they were men from the houses outside the walls, dressed in rough woollen tunics which reached to their knees, below which they wore the sort of loose trousers I had seen on shepherds and other countrymen, both in England and the Low Countries. Their hands, I noticed, were not very clean and I wondered whether they prepared the food as well. Indeed, the monks’ hands were also not very clean. And now that I was seated between two of them, I was aware that, despite the gorgeous nature of their habits, they had not bathed for some months. Their breath, too, had the stink of rottenness, while they belched frequently and unashamedly.
More and more platters arrived on the table. It seemed the monks did not stint themselves in the matter of food either, although I noticed that beneath their bulky tunics the serving men were rake thin. To my relief, I saw that the food placed before the English guests was mostly recognisable: roast meats of the usual sorts – beef, mutton, pork – together with fish, some of which were unfamiliar. Platters containing only fish were put before the monks, and there were bowls of common vegetables – onions, garlic, carrots, beets, cucumbers, and cabbage. Wine, beer, and mead appeared (and quickly disappeared) in abundance. I was uncertain whether I was supposed to converse with my neighbours, but they were applying themselves with such enthusiasm (not to say greed) to the meal that it hardly seemed necessary. It was clear that the platters of meat were not intended for the monks, since I had been told that they were forbidden to touch the flesh of animals, though that did not prevent them reaching across to help themselves to choice morsels from the guests’ platters, if something took their fancy. Their long sleeves dragged in the grease and once my neighbour to the left knocked over his goblet of wine. He made no attempt to mop it up, so that I was obliged to lean sideways as the spilled wine poured over the edge of the table.
Most of the monks seemed at best boorish, although I noticed a few, including the abbot himself, who were abstemious, restricting themselves to vegetables, together with a small amount of fish, crossing themselves and murmuring prayers over each portion. Even these men drank freely.
The dinner was of excellent quality, though I ate little through nervousness. The meal ended with bowls of the new season’s apples and pears, and a selection of nuts – walnuts, hazels and almonds. There were no nutcrackers. The monks smashed the shells with a well aimed wine flagon, or cracked them between their teeth. I had more care for my own teeth, though I managed to shell a few hazelnuts.
We rose to listen to a grace in a curious language which sounded to me something like Russian, but was quite incomprehensible. The monk on my right bestowed a smile on me, and when it finished, essayed in English: ‘You like our food, English?’
‘Thank you,’ I responded in my simple Russian. ‘It was very good.’
To my relief, we were at last able to leave the refectory.
Despite the obvious wealth of the monastery, the buildings were of wood – very fine, nevertheless, with elaborate carvings on lintels and window frames. The curious dome resembled an onion, with its root end pointing to the sky, and appeared to have been given a twist. It struck me as strange, almost barbaric for a Christian church. It was painted blue, with the joints between the timbers overlaid with gold leaf. Before we could finally leave the monastery, we were conducted into the church, which was so bright with colour that it almost hurt the eye. After coming to England I had grown accustomed to the sobriety of Protestant churches, although I had known wall paintings and brightly coloured statues in Portugal. The St Nicholas church was flamboyant beyond belief. Every vertical surface which could hold paint was painted; every horizontal surface was draped with cloths stiff with gold thread and crowded with candles and holy vessels.
The strangest things were the small paintings on wood of the Holy Family and of saints, magnificently framed in gold and jewels, grouped together in side chapels and niches, spilling out into the body of the church. The faces were curiously flat, with large almond-shaped eyes, the painted clothes ornate and oriental, the haloes thickly layered with pure gold leaf. These ‘icons’, as they called them, were venerated beyond belief. According to a whisper from William Holbeche, the Muscovites believed that these stiff painted images were in fact the living saints themselves. I saw one man, a poor fisherman, prostrate before an image of St Nicholas, weeping and beating his head against the floor until the blood ran.
We all made polite comments about the splendour of the church, even William Holbeche and Captain Turnbull, who must have seen it many times before.
‘It is much changed since I was last here,’ Christopher Holme murmured in my ear as we escaped at last into the open air from a stifling fog of incense. ‘Clearly trade with the Company has brought great riches to St Nicholas. The church is even more . . .’ he sought for the right word, ‘. . . more embellished than it used to be. I remember speaking many years ago to one of the sailors who had served on Richard Chancellor’s first voyage, when they discovered St Nicholas. He said it was a wretched little place, a few monks living in hovels like these outside the walls.’
He gestured at the fishermen’s huts.
‘The few local people lived by fishing and making salt, which they carried south into the country, or traded into Norway. And they killed seals for their oil. The monks were as poor as the common people, living simple, devout lives.’
‘Then things have indeed changed,’ I said. ‘They eat like princes, and dress like them in fine cloth, even if their garb is black. Did you notice the gems on their crosses?’
He nodded. ‘How the Puritan preachers back in London would love to cite such flamboyant greed and worldliness!’
‘They would probably die from shock at the sight,’ I said.
And he laughed.
When we reached the wooden quay, we found that the eight ships of the fleet had already sailed across to Rose Island, but two pinnaces remained to convey the shore party after them. It was a sensible arrangement, to site the Company’s premises a little apart from the monastery. As we approached the island, I saw that the ‘factory’ had the form of a fortified manor, surrounded by a wooden palisade, which enclosed the main house and all the subsidiary buildings. There were two stone-built quays, running out into deep water and long enough for several large merchant ships to moor at each. The cranes for moving cargo must have been imported from England, for I could not imagine they had been built here.
William Holbeche showed us around while Captain Turnbull went to supervise the unloading of the English cargo, which had already begun. Pyotr wandered away on his own. No doubt he already knew the Rose Island establishment well.
‘This is our central building, as you can see,’ William Holbeche said, indicating a substantial house of three storeys. ‘Offices on the ground floor. Living accommodation on the first floor. Apprentices and servants on the second floor. There is also a locked cellar, for wine and valuable goods. Over on the right ar
e the three warehouses.’
These were impressive. I think I had not truly grasped until then the vast scale on which the Muscovy Company operated. They were larger than any warehouses I had seen by the Legal Quays in London.
‘Over to the left,’ William Holbeche went on, ‘the usual outbuildings – bakehouse, brewery, laundry, blacksmith, carpenter. We have two skilled shipwrights as well as a jobbing carpenter. Now, if you will follow me, I will show you your quarters.’
He led the way inside and up a curved staircase of some pale wood. Given the abundance of pine forests which crowded down to the shores of the White Sea on all sides, it was probably pine.
‘Do you know how long you will be staying, sir?’ He turned to Christopher Holme as we reached the landing.
‘Only a night or two,’ Master Holme said. ‘Dr Alvarez and I are both anxious to reach Moscow. It will depend on the availability of a boat to take us up river to Kolmogory. And of course, permission.’
There is was again. Permission.
‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ I said. ‘But what is this “permission” I keep hearing about?’
‘My apologies,’ Christopher Holme said. ‘I thought you knew. Perhaps I should have explained. The Tsar takes a very personal interest in everything that happens in Muscovy. No foreigner is permitted to move about the country without documents from the Tsar himself, authorising it. A kind of internal passport, as you might say.’
‘But I thought the Muscovy Company had a charter from the Tsar,’ I said, puzzled. ‘Permitting travel and trade and exemption from taxes.’
