by Ann Swinfen
‘At Uglich I shall simply tell them that I was passing on my journey back to England,’ I said, ‘and wished to make a brief call on my patient. I will slip him the present from Xenia, and then we can be on our way to Vologda.’
‘You forget the single-mindedness of the Tsarina,’ Pyotr said. ‘She will try to keep you there.’
‘I shall not let her,’ I said firmly. ‘She has my diagnosis. The boy is perfectly healthy. And she has my certificate, stating that he does not suffer from the falling sickness. She will be glad to be told that I am about to leave the country, which puts an end to her restriction on using the certificate.’
He shook his head, but did not protest any further.
We rode on. We were perhaps five miles from Uglich when we noticed groups of agitated people gathering in the corners of fields and outside the houses of two villages we passed.
‘I do not like the look of this,’ Thomas said when we reached the second of these. ‘Something is afoot.’
‘Aye,’ Gregory agreed.
I wanted to argue, but I knew they were right. There was a vibration in the air, like the sense of an approaching thunder storm. I saw two women gather up their children and begin to run away into the forest.
‘What can it be?’ I tried to sound calm, but I do not think I succeeded.
‘I will find out. Stay here.’ Pyotr rode toward a group of men standing outside a village forge. As he leaned down from his horse to question them, they began gesticulating wildly, all talking at once. One man drew his finger across his throat in a gesture that needed no words.
‘I like this even less,’ Thomas said uneasily.
Pyotr galloped toward us and without a word, grabbed the slack of my reins to turn my horse.
‘Back!’ he said. ‘We must go back!’
‘What has happened?’ I jerked my reins out of his grasp. I would not be manhandled like this with no explanation.
‘The whole countryside is up,’ he said. ‘Ride back the way we came, for God’s sake! There will be no getting through to Vologda. They are killing people indiscriminately.
‘But why?’
‘The Tsarevich is dead. Cut his dog’s throat and then his own. Had an epileptic fit and cut his own throat.’
Chapter Twelve
I wanted to howl, to rage against a heedless God who could let this happen to a child. Instead I dragged my horse to a stop and shouted.
‘Never!’ Tears were running down my face unchecked. ‘Never! Dmitri would never harm Volk.’
So the wolfhound had tried to save the boy and been killed for it.
‘He could not have cut his own throat,’ I said. ‘He was not epileptic. And besides, someone in an epileptic fit could not cut his own throat. The hands are like this.’
I dropped my reins and held out both hands, splayed out like rigid starfish.
‘He could not even have held a knife.’
‘It seems the people here agree with you,’ Pyotr said, grabbing my reins again and urging us all back the way we had come. ‘They are running amok, killing anyone they think is connected to Godunov. Men and their families in the town. That supercilious steward at the palace. They are roaming the countryside, fired up with an insane blood lust. They loved that boy, and they believe Godunov had him killed.’
‘Of course he did,’ I said, suddenly exhausted.
‘But they will not be a danger to us,’ Thomas objected. ‘They will not think we are supporters of Godunov.’
‘We are strangers, that will be reason enough. I do not think they will stop to ask you for your allegiance. We are in danger from the crowds, but there’s more.’
I held my breath, for I thought I knew what was coming.
‘The Tsarina has produced the certificate Kit wrote, confirming that Dmitri did not have epilepsy. She has men copying it, to be sent out everywhere, as proof of the lies being perpetrated by Godunov’s men, who have arrived with remarkable speed.’
‘They weren’t far away, then,’ Thomas said. ‘Convenient.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So Kit is in danger.’
‘If Godunov’s men catch us, I wouldn’t give that for Kit’s chances.’ Pyotr snapped his fingers together. ‘A sealed certificate from a respected English physician? Proving that the boy could not have had an epileptic fit? It would destroy their whole fabricated story.’
‘But which way are we to go?’ Thomas said. ‘We cannot go back to Moscow.’
The two of them continued to debate as we headed back along the road toward Yaroslavl, as if Gregory and I were not there.
Suddenly Gregory reined in.
‘Wait!’ he said. ‘If Godunov’s men are in the area and have heard about the certificate, they will be bound to search for Kit at all the Company premises. Including the nearest one, at Yaroslavl.’
‘They are protected by treaty,’ Pyotr protested.
‘And what is that worth? Look how Ambassador Bowes was kidnapped and held. These men would care nothing for any treaty. They would act first, on Godunov’s orders, and the Company could argue all it wished, later, about infringement of the agreements, but it would be too late.’
If anyone should know, I thought, it would be Gregory.
‘But we plan to travel back through all the Company houses,’ I said. ‘What other way is there to get to St Nicholas and our ship home?’
‘By not going to St Nicholas,’ Gregory said.
‘I do not want to stay in this country a moment longer than I need to.’ I was suddenly seized with a frantic wish to leave Muscovy immediately and never come back.
‘I am not suggesting we should not leave,’ Gregory said. ‘I am suggesting we should go in a direction they will never suspect.’
‘Where?’ Pyotr said sceptically.
‘Narva.’
‘Narva! But Narva is in Swedish hands, and there is a war going on all along the border.’ Pyotr stared at him as if he had gone mad. Perhaps he had. ‘We could not get through to Narva.’
‘We are not Russians,’ Gregory said quietly. ‘Three Englishmen and a man who can pass for an Englishman. Peter Aubery. Why should we not travel to Narva? It is a major trading centre. Everyone goes to Narva. Even Englishmen and English ships. There are ways past armies. I have made my way past armies and I daresay Kit has as well. And I speak Swedish. Not well, but enough to get by.’
They all looked at me.
‘What do you say, doctor?’ Thomas only called me that in his most serious moments.
‘How far is it to Narva?’ I asked. ‘And do any of you know the way?’
They looked at one another. Thomas shrugged.
‘Never been in those parts.’
Pyotr did not admit it, but I could read the same answer in his face.
‘Gregory?’ he said. ‘You have been there.’
‘It would be something like six hundred miles, I’d think. And I do not know the route from here, but I can guess. We cannot go north then west, because of the outbreak of violence and killing. We must go a short way south first, then take the first road leading west. I reckon Narva must be about due west of here.’
‘And when we get there,’ I said, ‘if we survive that far – what then?’
‘I know people in Narva,’ he said vaguely. ‘It was how I picked up information before. They will help us find a ship. Dutch or English.’
His confidence began to give me a glimmer of hope, despite the despair I felt at the murder of Dmitri.
‘Then let us try for Narva,’ I said. ‘Only another six hundred miles.’
Gregory and Thomas led the way, and Pyotr and I were content to let them. Gregory had not traversed this particular part of Muscovy, but before he had been captured and imprisoned he had criss-crossed the country and gained a good deal of skill in finding his way. Thomas, the oldest of us and a soldier with campaigning experience, might not know this area of the country, but he had spent five years here and knew how to venture across uncharted and possibl
y enemy territory.
I am not sure how far we travelled that first day. I was still too numb with horror to pay much heed to my surroundings. Try as I might to blot it out, that terrible scene kept rising before my eyes. The armed men. The valiant dog attacking and dying, his throat cut. The child seized. The very last thing he must have seen before he was killed would have been his beloved Volk lying in a pool of blood at his feet.
It was unspeakable. It was obscene. Most obscene of all was the claim that the child, that gentle, brave child, had killed himself. In my heart, I could not blame his mother for betraying her oath. She had proof that he could not have killed himself. Of course she would use it. I would have done the same.
Some time after we had ridden south, Gregory and Thomas found a track leading west. It was less than a road, but it led in the right direction, so we followed it, and this became the pattern of our days. Long days they were, as time drew nearer to the summer solstice, so we rode as long as we could see, then snatched a few hours’ sleep on the ground under the trees, while the Company horses grazed. Robert had provided us with fine mounts, far better than the broken-winded post horses. Even so, we could not ride fast and hard, for we must spare the horses. Without them we would be lost in this country of forests, where men had left scarcely any mark.
There was one sizeable village I remember, Kalyazin or Kolyazin I think it was called, where we had to cross a river in boats which could barely hold a horse. The horses were frightened, but the river was too deep and too fast for them to swim, still carrying away the melted snow of winter. I had to pay the man heavily to make the trip four times, although Pyotr argued with him, and almost came to blows.
Pyotr was showing the strain almost more than any of us. It was foolish to draw attention to us by arguing, but he seemed unable to stop himself. I think he chafed at being unable to take the lead in this country which was partly his, but it was an unknown wilderness, far from the comfortable string of towns along the navigable rivers in the centre of the country which he knew so well.
After the river crossing, we seemed to ride for days through a land entirely devoid of people. If this was territory Sweden coveted, I could not help wondering why. There seemed to be nothing but forests, and surely they had enough of those themselves? Perhaps their purpose was merely to ensure that Muscovy was held back from its ambition to seize land along the Baltic coast.
After my months in this country, I had come to experience a sense of claustrophobia. To the south there were troublesome neighbours. Expansion to the east meant tackling the trackless wastes and bitter cold of Siberia. To the north, England had opened up a route through arctic seas, a lung, as it were, to catch a breath, but only during the short months of mid summer. No wonder the milder west, with the Baltic waterways providing a route to Europe, was a tempting prospect for the Muscovites.
At the end of a long, long ride we reached a place called Mednoye. By now we were growing weak with hunger, for there had been few places where we could buy anything to eat. Gregory and I waited on the outskirts of the large village with the horses, while Pyotr and Thomas went to try and buy food. I was so exhausted I fell asleep on the ground, only waking when they returned.
‘You found food?’ I said. It was all that concerned me at the moment.
Pyotr nodded. ‘Food and news. There is fighting ahead of us, between the Swedish and Muscovite armies. If we want to reach Narva without being caught up in it, we must head north. It will add some time to the journey, but it cannot be helped.’
I groaned, but I seized one of the loaves and began tearing pieces off it. I knew I must not eat too quickly, but the bread was fresh and warm, better than any palace feast.
‘Tell them the rest,’ Thomas said grimly.
‘The rest?’ Gregory had cut himself a chunk of cheese and was poised with it on the tip of his knife, halfway to his mouth.
Pyotr grimaced. ‘It seems we have been enquired for. A troop of men in government livery were asking for us two days ago.’
‘What!’ I said. ‘How could that be?’
Gregory bit a morsel off his cheese.
‘Simple tactics,’ he said.
‘Of course.’ I came to my senses.
The men sent to look for us would have split up. We would not have gone north because of the riots. Some would have made a search quickly back to Yaroslavl and found no trace of us. That left only the way south and the way west. They would have known the roads and come more directly, while we had felt our way more slowly across country. So they were ahead of us now. Or were they?
‘The people in the village,’ I said, ‘did they tell you which way the government men went? Did they also go north?’
Pyotr shook his head. ‘They did not care to see. I had the impression they retired back into their homes and barred their doors.’
‘So what should we do?’
‘I think we must go north,’ Gregory said. ‘As it is, I think we have strayed a little too far south. All we can do is go on, but with caution.’
‘I wish I had an astrolabe,’ I said. ‘I could calculate how far north we are. Though I do not suppose you know the latitude of Narva, Gregory?’
He shook his head, with a smile at my attempt at a diversion. ‘I’m no mariner, Kit.’
So we went on. More of these endless forests. They no longer seemed beautiful to me, but a hateful barren country where no one would want to live or even linger. Once, we heard fighting in the distance to our left. Cannon fire. It meant continuing to travel north, until I began to wonder whether we would miss the way to Narva altogether and find ourselves in Lapland, the land of the Sami. By now there was almost no darkness, so that night differed from day only by a slightly greyish tinge to the light. The lingering daylight drove us to ride on and on each day. We were all, as well as the horses, growing exhausted.
At last, when our track met a road heading west, by mutual consent we turned on to it. Perhaps we had left the warring armies behind us, to the south, perhaps not, but we must head west if we were to hope to reach Narva.
Two days along this road, and I began to sense something different about our surroundings. The forest thinned out, certainly, and there were occasional farms, with fields cleared from the woodland. There were even a few poor villages. But it was something else. There was a mild west wind blowing toward us as we rode, and I lifted my face to it. I turned to Thomas, who was riding beside me.
‘Do you smell anything?’
His raised his eyebrows in enquiry, but sniffed.
‘Am I right?’ I said.
His face broke into a smile. ‘The sea! Hey, lads, we can smell the sea!’
I was suddenly back with my father, doing my lessons in Coimbra. It was the first Greek text I read right through. Xenophon’s men, fleeing an enemy army across heartbreaking territory, then the cry of: ‘Thalassa! Thalassa! The sea! The sea!’
At the next village Pyotr enquired how far it was to Narva. He came back smiling.
‘We have done well to find this road. It will take us to Narva. About forty versts, they say.’
I did a quick calculation in my head. ‘About twenty-five or twenty-six miles?’
‘Aye. About that.’
It was almost unbelievable, for it had begun to feel as though we would go on riding for ever through this endless country. Sometime tomorrow, we should reach Narva, provided we did not encounter either army on the way.
We continued all the rest of that day until the horses needed to rest. In this more inhabited part of the country we had obtained food and even ale, which it seemed the local people brewed. We drank it gratefully after the endless mead, a drink I thought would surely rot my teeth with its clinging sweetness.
‘We must have shaken off those government men,’ Pyotr said, stretched out his legs on the carpet of pine needles and cradling his wooden cup. He closed his eyes. ‘God’s bones, I shall be glad to get out of the saddle. The blisters on my backside are developing blisters.’
/> I laughed sympathetically. ‘We’re all in the same state. I just want to find myself aboard ship again. These friends of yours in Narva, Gregory, you think they will be able to find us a ship?’
‘Almost certainly, though perhaps not at once. Two are former Company men who have set up as merchants for themselves. Brought their families over from England and settled in the town. Although it belonged to Muscovy for a few years, you will find it more like a town in the Low Countries. Or Denmark. Have you been to Denmark, Kit?’
I shook my head. ‘Never. You say “two” friends. There are others?’
‘Aye. There’s a Dutchman. Met him first in Amsterdam. He was in the same line of business as you and me, reported to the Earl Leicester, God rest his soul. Decided to give it up when the Earl went back to England and took up trade instead. If we can’t find an English ship, we can probably sail to Amsterdam and take an English ship from there.’
It began to feel hopeful at last. Not many more miles to go, with the prospect of a ship home at the end of it. And here we were in peaceful countryside, well away from the fighting, with no sign of pursuit. This was still Muscovite territory, but we must be near the Swedish border, where Gregory said we might expect the road to be blocked and guarded. We were counting on his knowledge of Swedish to win our way through.
Thomas was to take the first watch. I curled up on the cushioning pine needles, with my knapsack under my head and soon fell asleep.
We made an early start the next morning. The forest thinned out to nothing more than scattered clumps of trees. The road now ran along a causeway, just wide enough for us to ride two abreast. The reason was soon clear, for here and there on both sides of us there were tussocks of bright green marsh grass, and between them patches of water flashed reflections of sunlight. The scent of salt water was unmistakable now.
‘This looks as though it might flood at times,’ I called out to Gregory, who was riding ahead with Thomas.
‘Aye, it does,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘There’s a network of small lakes and streams all around here. And Narva has a good harbour. Ships from every country call there.’
