by Ann Swinfen
‘Better than the barge?’
I laughed. ‘Much better.’
However, now that we were out in the countryside there were no buildings or walls to protect us from the wind. The pace also increased, so that the sleigh skimmed along at the speed of a cantering horse. Inevitably, the bitter wind found its way into the sleigh. Christopher had been right to warn me. I drew one of the furs up over my face, so that only my eyes were exposed. It was cold. Bitterly cold. But I loved the speed and the excitement of dashing over the glittering snow along an invisible road lined with birch trees. This was surely the finest way to travel.
I am not sure what the distance was to Vologda, but we covered it in eight days, with breaks to rest the horses and reindeer. One striking aspect of the countryside we passed through was the number of abandoned villages. Robert explained the reason.
‘There have been several desperately poor harvests in the last few years, but at the same time Godunov has introduced vastly increased taxes. The government is short of money, for legitimate reasons, like maintaining an army, and others not so legitimate, like extravagance and corruption. But the common people simply could not pay. With the threat of government tax inspectors coming, the peasants have fled their homes.’
We were spending the night in the largest house in one of these deserted villages, sitting around an open central hearth after a meal of bread and dried reindeer meat. These houses had no chimneys.
‘But where have they gone?’ I asked. Snow was falling again and we could hear it thrown softly against the window shutters. I wondered where anyone could go in this desolate land.
‘Some in despair have sold themselves into debt slavery. Others have tried to escape over the border into Poland. Those have mostly been caught and brought back.’
He broke off and glanced uneasily to where the drivers were sitting a little apart, the three Sami together, the Muscovites separately. I realised that his comments could be taken as critical of the government and he had suddenly remembered that one of the drivers might be a government spy.
Vologda was smaller than Kolmogory, and clearly less important. No special goods were manufactured here, and it was not a place of great political significance, although it possessed a fortress, like all the towns a little too close to Sweden. The fortress was enclosed by a wall built of stone and brick, unlike the usual wooden palisades, and there were numerous churches. As far as the Company was concerned, Vologda served mainly as a staging post for men and goods, although Christopher mentioned that it was an important centre for Muscovite merchants.
We stayed there just four days, while Christopher examined the accounts and discussed business with the local staff. It also meant that the beasts were given a longer chance to rest. I asked once again about Gregory Rocksley, but heard only what I already knew. He had reached Vologda the previous year, a little earlier in the season than we had, and stayed one night before carrying on to Yaroslavl.
It was no more than I expected. There would be nothing new to learn until we reached Moscow. There I must try to uncover what had happened during Gregory’s second visit to the capital, whether he told anyone why, after returning from Narva, he had decided to head south to Astrakhan.
The distance from Vologda to Yaroslavl was much shorter than that from Kolmogory to Vologda, probably about a quarter of the distance, and only took us three days, despite the fact that we had to cross several frozen rivers and innumerable frozen streams. At one point we travelled along the surface of the frozen Sukhona, one of Muscovy’s ‘winter roads’, where we skimmed faster than ever, an exhilarating but somewhat frightening experience, for it seemed the sleigh might tip over at any moment.
Yaroslavl was a considerable town, standing on the great river Volga and of a similar size to Kolmogory, or so I judged, for I did not venture outside the compound, confined indoors by yet another blizzard. Here too the Company house was large and comfortable, with substantial warehouses but no rope factory. I had enjoyed the journey by sleigh, but we had been hit by storms twice on the way, so it was pleasant to sit by a fire, burning in a proper fireplace, and relax for a few days.
Once again I received the same uninformative answers about Rocksley’s visit last year, but I had expected nothing better, so I settled in for a quiet time while Christopher and Robert were busy about Company business with the agent at Yaroslavl, Walter Deynes. Pyotr disappeared again, saying that he had a married cousin living in the town, one he had not seen for several years. I paid little attention to this, for I had accepted that Pyotr’s family might be spread throughout Muscovy, for all I knew. Instead I discovered that the Company house possessed a small library of books, half a dozen or so, left here over the years by employees going back to England.
On our third day I settled by the fire with a book, enjoying the sensation of remaining still for a time. The book I had picked up was a small, square volume, rather battered: Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundreth Pointes of Good Husbandrie. It seemed a strange book to find in a snowbound house of the Muscovy Company. Having no knowledge of farming, and no experience of agriculture other than my childhood visits to my grandfather’s estate in Portugal, I had never read the book, though (like most people, I suppose) I knew of it. Why was it here? Had some past employee of the Company carried it with him to this place in the heart of a Russian forest, pining for the gentle fields and familiar hearth of his father’s country manor? And why had it been left behind? When I asked, no one could tell me.
It was no great work of literature, but its simple rhyming couplets, setting forth the inherited wisdom that comes with generations of working the land, provided a soothing picture of the English countryside, which I found comforting.
In Cambridge shire forward to Lincolne shire way,
the champion maketh his fallow in May.
Then thinking so dooing one tillage woorth twaine,
by forcing of weede, by that meanes to refraine.
I turned over the pages idly.
Get downe with thy brakes, er an showers doo come,
that cattle the better may pasture have some.
In June and in August, as well doth appeere,
is best to mowe brakes, of all times in the yeere.
To be honest, it was fairly baffling. Aristotle in the original Greek made more sense. I turned over more pages. It seemed that Tusser included advice for the farmer’s wife, as well as the farmer – husbandrie and huswiferie, hand in hand.
Call servants to breakefast by day starre appere,
A snatch and to worke, fellowes tarrie not here.
Let huswife be carver, let pottage be heate,
A messe to eche one, with a morsell of meate.
No more tittle tattle,
Go serve your cattle.
What tacke in a pudding, saith greedie gut wringer,
give such ye wote what, ere a pudding he finger.
Let servants once served, thy cattle go serve,
lest often ill serving make cattle to sterve.
That made more sense. I could picture that hasty farmhouse breakfast, with no idle chatter, and was smiling over the farm servants being hustled through it and chased off to tend the cattle, when the door was thrust open and one of the servants hurried in. He looked pale and frightened.
‘What’s to do, man?’ I said, starting from my chair in alarm.
‘Oh, Dr Alvarez!’ He was shaking. It must be serious.
‘Aye, out with it!’ I set down Thomas Tusser and strode across the room to him.
‘A man has ridden in from Uglich, sir. You are sent for, by the Tsarina Maria Nagaya. That is, we are not meant to call her the Tsarina.’
This made almost less sense than Thomas Tusser.
‘I am sent for? Why am I sent for?’
He gulped and drew a deep breath.
‘The Tsarina was the late Tsar Ivan’s last wife. His fifth wife, I think, or was it his seventh? I misremember. Their peculiar church here does not recognise marriages after t
he third as being legal, but Tsar claimed it was legal and he had every right to have as many wives as he chose, as long as he had them one at a time. I think he murdered some of them.’
He gave me a conspiratorial grin. ‘Not like our Henry, eh, sir? He used the law to rid himself of the ones he tired of.’
‘Better not say that back in England,’ I said grimly. ‘Start again. This Maria Nagaya who was or was not a lawful wife of Ivan the Terrible is somewhere called – did you say Uglich? Is there a place called Uglich?’
‘There is, sir. About seventy miles from here. That’s nearby as the Russes reckon.’
‘She has sent for me? Is she in need of me as a physician?’
‘Aye, that’s it, sir. Only not for herself. For her son. The Tsarevich Dmitri Ivanovich.’
Suddenly it made sense. This was the younger half brother of the ruling Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich. But I had expected to find him with the court in Moscow. Not out here in the remote countryside of northern Muscovy.
‘I understand now who the child is, but why is he not in Moscow?’
Another voice came from the doorway.
‘He was sent away into exile with his mother and her brothers a long time ago. The present Tsar’s wife is childless, and likely to remain so. The Tsar Fyodor – he’s a poor weakling.’
It was Pyotr taking up the story. He had come in unnoticed behind the servant.
‘Uglich is the boy’s own manor,’ he went on. ‘His appanage city, as it is called. Godunov had them all exiled there because there is a danger some of the boyars may try to overthrow Tsar Fyodor and put the little boy on the throne. According to church law, he is illegitimate, with no claim to the throne, but Godunov cannot risk it, since he intends to make a bid for the throne himself.’
‘Has he any claim?’ I had picked up my satchel of medicines and walked toward the door. I was not greatly interested in the shifts of Muscovite politics, unless they should prove dangerous to me.
‘Nay. No claim at all. Except that he rules the country. And any who oppose him must keep a watch over their shoulders.’
We walked together toward the door.
‘I knew that the services of an English physician were requested for the child, but I understood that it was the Tsar himself who made the request, for his half brother.’
Pyotr shrugged. ‘Who knows? He may have done. And forgotten it afterwards. Or it might have been Maria Nagaya who sent, passing off the request as coming from her stepson, the Tsar.’
‘You will come with me?’ I said. ‘I am likely to need an interpreter.’ I paused. ‘Seventy miles! Are we to go by sleigh?’
‘The messenger came on horseback, and we could ride, but you are likely to be too exhausted at the end of it to be much good in physicking the child.’
It seemed he accepted that he must accompany me.
I nodded. ‘You are right. A sleigh it is, then. It will take us about two days, will it not?’
‘If we start now, we can be there by tomorrow evening. We can make a stop for the night at one of the villages where post horses are kept. Or we can sleep in the sleigh.’
‘And travel in the dark?’ I thought of the rough countryside and the dark forests through which we had passed on the way to Yaroslavl.
‘We will have a local driver. The road from here to Uglich is better than most,’ he said. ‘He will be able to drive by night. Nay, best with two drivers, who can take it turn about. Go and don your thick clothes. I will see about the sleigh. And you.’ He cricked a finger at the servant. ‘Go to the kitchen and tell them to pack us a hamper of food.’
I started up the stairs to my room as Pyotr went off whistling. He seemed excited at the prospect of a drive over the snow by night to Uglich, but I remembered Christopher Holme’s warning, to stay away from the royal family if possible. Well, it was not possible. One of the reasons for sending me here had been the request for an English physician. But if it were true that the child had the falling sickness, there was no cure.
Master Holme was not happy at the prospect of our starting off at once for Uglich, but I felt bound to answer the summons.
‘I have questioned the messenger,’ I told him.
I had found the man in the kitchen, eating a hasty meal before setting off back to Uglich on horseback.
‘It seems there have been several attempts to poison the little prince,’ I said. ‘He has fallen mysteriously ill on four different occasions, so that his mother has now insisted that every dish put before him must be tasted by one of the servants first. Three days ago, the maidservant who tasted his food died in terrible agony a few hours later.’
Christopher looked shocked. ‘I know there is talk that Godunov wants him out of the way. First the exile. Afterwards, rumours began to circulate, which could be traced back to the Kremlin, that the child was violent and unstable, torturing and killing animals, having inherited his father’s madness. Edmond Leget spoke of it. But he says that anyone who has seen the boy declares that he is a bright lad and kindly, nothing like the monster the palace portrays him to be.’
‘There is this question of the falling sickness,’ I said.
‘Aye. I do not know if there is any truth in that.’
‘The servant from Uglich told me that the child has indeed had moments of seizure, foaming at the mouth, but they have all happened recently. Now, the falling sickness usually manifests itself early in a child’s life, though it can be brought on later in life as a result of some fearful shock. We think it may be an inherent imbalance in the humours which can be set off by some such a shock.’
‘Could that be the case here?’
‘Unlikely,’ I said. ‘It seems the household lives very quietly, for fear of attracting worse treatment from Godunov. I am wondering whether the seizures may be the after-effects of the attempts as poisoning. If so, I am not sure what poison may have been used, but I will see the child and try to investigate the cause. It seems his mother does not believe it is the falling sickness, and it is often worth listening to mothers. They know their children better than anyone else.’
‘It would be convenient for Godunov,’ Christopher said slowly, ‘if the child were shown incapable of ruling through suffering from the falling sickness. Therefore, if you show that there is no such sickness, I think you may be in danger. It is a diagnosis which would not be appreciated.’
‘If his enemies really believed the child to be afflicted, why should they take the trouble to poison him?’
‘Because that way they can make doubly sure of him. Mad like his father and brother, and conveniently dead.’
‘The falling sickness is not madness,’ I objected. ‘It is an illness. It is said that Julius Caesar had the falling sickness. It did not prevent him from becoming Rome’s greatest general.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Christopher said, ‘I think I should come with you.’
‘Nay. That would give the wrong impression. I am simply a physician called in to see a patient. Let us not involve the chief agent of the Muscovy Company. That would draw far too much attention to a simple visit.’
‘Very well,’ he said reluctantly. ‘But if you have not returned within a week, I am coming after you. I feel that I, and the Company, must take some responsibility for your safety.’
I inclined my head. ‘Very well. It is agreed.’
Privately, I thought that if I had not returned within a week I would probably be beyond his or anyone else’s help.
By the time I had donned my heavy Muscovite clothes, Pyotr had arranged for a horse-drawn sleigh with two drivers to be made ready for us. It was already mid morning, with much of the daylight already gone, but he assured me that the drivers would be able to carry on through the hours of darkness. They had loaded a supply of lamps, and would change horses at staging posts along the way.
‘The government maintains a system of staging posts where post horses are always kept available,’ Robert said, standing with us and watching the sleigh being prepared. ‘It
is advantageous for a village to keep post horses, for they are then excused a large proportion of their taxes.’
I eyed the horses which were being backed into the harness of the sleigh. They were small, nondescript creatures, hardly more than ponies, but they looked sturdy, with their thick necks, bony heads, and heavy coats.
‘Are they as sure-footed as the reindeer?’ I asked. On our previous journeys I had been impressed by the deer, swift and seemingly untiring.
‘They are shod with special spiked horse shoes in winter,’ Robert said. ‘To give them a better grip on ice. Mostly, you will be travelling over snow, but the icy banks of the streams you will need to cross can be treacherous.’
That was a comforting remark, considering that we might have to negotiate those slippery banks in the pitch dark.
‘There is a moon tonight,’ Christopher said, as if he anticipated my worries about travelling by night. ‘The darkness will not be so very dense.’
‘And the moonlight will be reflected by the snow.’ I was cheered, remembering that the previous night had also be lit by a near full moon.
Two more sleighs, with the pairs of horses ready harnessed were led into the courtyard from the stables.
‘I thought you were not coming with us,’ I said.
‘I am not,’ Christopher said, ‘but it would not be safe for the two of you, unarmed civilians, to travel seventy miles alone in this part of the country. It may appear deserted, but some of those masterless men from the abandoned villages have taken to banditry and live in the forests. There is nothing to say there may not be some between here and Uglich. I am sending four of our guards with you. They are armed with muskets and cross bows. Their presence should deter any likely attackers.’
‘I am sure that is not necessary,’ I protested. ‘No need for so many of us to endure a long, cold journey through the night.’ I did not draw attention to the fact that I was indeed armed, for my sword was hidden by my heavy cloak, and I had slipped my dagger into my boot.
