The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible (7 page)
They stopped only once, a week later, to row to the Thracian shore and take on fresh water and food. The galley had been ill-provisioned, and they needed the rowing slaves well fed and strong. No whip was used but they made a good pace.
‘When we come to the mouth of the great river,’ Smith said, ‘there are slave fairs there. We may sell you to worse masters than ourselves – or we may simply turn you loose. Depends how you row.’
It worked better than any whip. The galley surged north over the inland sea, a hundred miles or more from dawn till dawn.
They came close to a broad flat country of plains and low pale hills and winding waters, and Nicholas had an overwhelming sense of a vast land spreading away on every side. The next sea was the frozen Arctic, many thousands of miles north.
There was a scattering of fishing boats and some smoke arising from a few homesteads along the shore, but no sign of any major settlement. Then a fair-haired boy came across to them in a bobbing wooden boat and back-rowed in the small waves, calling up to them in Russian.
‘He’s no Tatar,’ muttered Hodge.
‘Maybe Russian, or maybe Germanic,’ said Stanley. ‘There remain old villages of the Goths hereabouts. From a thousand years ago.’ He called down. ‘We don’t want your fish, boy! But find us a pilot for the river and you’ll have a silver penny.’
‘I can pilot you,’ said the boy. ‘It’s my river. Where are you from?’
‘And if we turn over on a sandbank?’ said Stanley.
‘Then you can beat the devil out of me,’ said the boy cheerfully. ‘You won’t though. I’m the best pilot for miles.’
‘Proud little beggar,’ said Smith with grudging admiration.
Stanley scanned the shore, glanced down at the slaves, considered. It might be good to deal with no one else but a boy for now. Keep low. He called back, ‘Very well! We’re sending you two more rowers. You go ahead, we follow. How many days can we go upstream?’
‘Three days. Then you come to the market. Saturday’s the fair!’
‘Perfect.’
It was no exaggeration. This great river made the Thames look like a stripling stream. In the morning mist, keeping close to the east bank, the far west bank was several miles away and barely visible. Nicholas felt almost humiliated. England was so small. But Hodge sneered, ‘No safe anchorage here. Might as well still be at sea. And I don’t see any Greenwich Palace neither, nor Whitehall, nor St Paul’s. Lot of barbarians they must be here.’
Just green shores, sandbanks, smoky huts. Just a thin growth of alder and willow and then beyond, the limitless steppe.
The further upriver they rowed, the further they left the cooling sea breezes behind them, the hotter it got. They all felt a growing oppression. The vastness. The wide slow river. The loneliness under this boundless sky.
It was with relief they came to habitation three days later, just as their young pilot had said. A huge, motley slave fair on the right bank of the river. They anchored two hundred yards off in the lee of an island and rowed ashore in the longboat. The boy came as their interpreter.
‘Keep your eyes skinned,’ said Stanley. ‘And answer no questions. We are here only to find horses and move on.’
They walled up a wooden jetty and into the mêlée, by no means exotic in that haggling, money-changing, hard-drinking hubbub of humanity. They walked between stalls fluttering with colourful banners, and the pony carts of fur sellers and sellers of sheepskins. Pushing through the crowds they saw all the races of Asia, not at cut-throat war but simply buying and selling. There was a round-faced, yellow-skinned fellow with a topknot and a long belted gown …
‘There’s your first Tatar,’ said Smith.
‘Shall we ask him if he knows of the planned attack on Muscovy?’
‘Perhaps not.’
There were Kipchaks and Uighurs, Russians and Germans and Ukrainians, Greeks and Armenians, Bulgars and even a white-robed desert Arab with a camel train of four. How on earth did he get here? But he well knew how much profit he might make from selling Damascus dates and decorated daggers and slim rolls of the finest watered silk in this country. He could then increase his gains tenfold, twentyfold, by buying a fair-skinned Circassian maiden here, long flowing hair the colour of spring sunshine, to auction in the souq of Damascus … If he made it safely back home with her untarnished, virgin, untouched by any robbers and bandits along the perilous way, and kept his own hands off her himself all that time – though the Prophet knew what continence that would take – he might sell her to a rich merchant of his native city for enough gold to keep him for life.
After a time he ceased to haggle over his wares and pulled out a small prayer rug and laid it down facing east and knelt and prayed to Allah. No one even commented. All mingled without enmity, amid barter and exchange. Money was a great healer of tribal differences.
There was a German soldier, or rather mercenary, called Heinrich von Staten. He had a booming voice and greeted them as fellow Protestants without asking. He had done well in the Polish Wars, and was also at the Sack of Novgorod, fighting for Ivan himself. Now he was shipping out and home via Italy. He had a troop of men under him and several wagons.
‘I went into Novgorod empty-handed, and came out with forty fine horses and twenty-two wagonloads of plunder!’ he roared, red face and beery breath. ‘A man can get rich in Russia – if he knows how to steal, and quits early. Once he has made his fortune, it is better to get away, abroad. Enrich yourself, then leave.’ He headed for his barge, calling back to them, ‘That is my advice, my friends! This is a shitheap of a country for anything but plunder!’
‘What of Czar Ivan?’ Smith called after the brute. ‘What was it like to fight for him?’
The mercenary looked back and there was an evil light in his eye. He rubbed his beard. ‘What was it like to fight for Czar Ivan? Well, put it like this. He does not mind how you treat his enemies. He does not protest at any …
entertainments
you may wish to have with the women you capture or the men you put to the sword.’ He laughed. ‘Oh, you will have a fine old time fighting for Czar Ivan, my comrades! But I say again – do not stay here too long.’ And then with a laugh he was gone.
‘What barbarians have we come amongst?’ murmured Hodge.
‘Christian barbarians,’ said Stanley bitterly. ‘As opposed to Mohammedan barbarians.’
There were hunched old fortune tellers outside tents embroidered with supposedly mystical runes of great power, dancing bears moving slow and lumbering to strange wooden pipes, slaves of every age and colour in wooden holding pens – Smith asked for some prices. There were fine-featured Armenian girls selling needles, knives, hatchets, ironwork. The huge fair spread right across a slow, winding tributary of the great river; you could walk from bank to bank over rafts and luggers. And everywhere were hastily built sheds and shadowy taverns, watchful merchants and black-robed priests drinking out of sight.
There was the spectacle of dogs attacking a wolverine, old blind ballad singers, a cripple on crutches singing as he went … A woman bartered a pot of sturgeon’s roe for some Tatar deerskin boots and a honeycomb. Another, a peasant, gambled away his precious furs, drank away the rest, finally sold the clothes off his back – Nicholas watched these transactions in wonder – then crossed himself three times, spat on the ground for good luck, and set off to walk back home, naked but for a loincloth.
Nicholas asked how far. The peasant muttered some slurred Russian. The boy translated. ‘He says thirty
versts
.’
‘Twenty miles,’ said Stanley.
‘He’s going to get sunstroke,’ said Hodge.
‘Doubtless,’ said Stanley. ‘But they say the Russian peasant is indestructible. Only God can take his life.’
The naked peasant called back one more time. ‘It’s not the sun I fear. It’s the wife.’
They saw only the crudest coins, no printed books, and not a soul you might call a fine lady or a nobleman. Nicholas felt he had stepped back in time, into a scene before the Conquest, in the Dark Ages, or even before the Greeks and Romans. A scene from the ancient world, before cities were built, when it was just villages and barter and drunkenness and no sign of kings or governments anywhere. He ought to feel scorn, yet he felt a mounting excitement. This was a wild country still.
‘Beyond here it becomes difficult,’ said the boy. ‘Many sandbanks, strong currents. Your galley will run aground and roll sooner or later. But there are other smaller boats to take you north, though it is slow, upstream.’
‘How many
versts
a day?’
The boy shrugged. ‘Ten. Twenty at most.’
Smith said, ‘Too slow. We need to take to the land then, and move fast.’
‘The land is much more dangerous.’
Smith hardly heard him. ‘We need horses. The best.’
‘You’ll find the best here.’
They brought the galley slaves ashore, with their sores and their blistered hands and their backs and shoulders burned chestnut brown even through the awning, yet in good shape for that. Powerfully muscled, well watered and well fed. They found a barber to shave their heads afresh.
‘You said you’d set us free if we rowed hard,’ snarled the black-bearded Ibrahim. ‘And we did. Now you’re sprucing us up for sale.’
Smith said nothing.
He spat. ‘Seed of the Devil.’
Smith grinned at him wolfishly.
Once shaven, they were led to a forge and the chains knocked from their ankles. They stood and stared, stupefied.
‘We are free?’
‘Aye,’ said Smith. ‘You rowed well.’
‘So why the barber?’
‘We just thought head lice did not become free men,’ said Stanley.
They shook their shaven heads, then smiled, then laughed. Several shook the knights’ hands, some even said, ‘Go with God.’ Then they were gone.
‘Back to their rapes and their thievery,’ muttered Smith.
‘You never know,’ said Stanley.
There followed hard haggling as they tested buyers for a sea-going galley, no crew, as seen. Buyers saw they were in a hurry and had no more use for it, and it was an absurd exchange, an entire galley for just four riding horses and four packhorses. But necessity demanded it. They also got saddles and kit, blanket rolls, millet flour, beans, pork fat, dried fruit, and some new fire flints, and were left with a few age-blackened coins of Ottoman stamp.
‘Here,’ said Stanley to their young guide. ‘These will only weigh us down.’
A man came over, greeted them cautiously. It was the boy’s father.
‘You are riding north?’
‘Aye, fast. To Moscow.’
He smiled, a very discomforting smile. ‘To Moscow?’
‘Aye.’
‘’Tis a good way to Moscow. Many days and weeks. And dangerous country all the way. There are just the four of you?’
‘Aye.’
‘You are riding through Cossack lands, Tatar lands. Debatable country. The land of the empty steppe, day after day.’
‘So we understand.’
‘And these cases and crates you carry with you. Gifts for the court of Moscow? Weapons?’
‘Nothing but empty air in ’em,’ said Stanley. ‘We like to carry empty crates.’
‘You are cracked in your wits.’ The man shook his head. ‘You will never arrive in Moscow. And if you do get there …’
‘What?’ said Nicholas, getting irritated. ‘What if – when – we do get there?’
His blood ran cold at the answer that came.
‘Moscow will destroy you,’ said the man. ‘Her Czar Ivan will destroy you. As he destroys everything.’ The man wiped his mouth and looked around and then looked back and fixed Nicholas with his eyes. He was smiling no longer and spoke with absolute conviction. ‘He is the Devil Incarnate, come to Earth to torment men for their sins.’
Smith spurred his horse with sudden violence. ‘Hah!’ And they left dust behind them.
After an hour they had left the fair far behind them and their horses tired so they slowed to a walk along a trail through a sea of tall and sighing feathergrass. Mile upon mile it stretched away, as far as the eye could see.
Hodge muttered to Nicholas, ‘I did think of having my fortune told back there, in one of those old crones’ tents. But there was no point. I can see it already. We’ll soon get our throats cut out in this grassy wilderness, and be left for one of these savages’ sky burials. Supper for buzzards.’
‘Hodge,’ said Nicholas. ‘It’s always a great comfort to have you with me.’
The trail faded soon and they rode on over grassland. Though the market was only a few miles back, they neither saw nor heard a mule train, not a living soul. Only the swish-swish of the tall grass against their leather boots, grass seeds lodging within, shaken out at eve by firelight.
They broke open the crate with the firearms in it and shouldered them. A wheel-lock musket for Stanley, Smith’s treasured Persian jezail, and squat matchlock arquebuses for Nicholas and Hodge. They freed the horses of their gear and watered them, then left them half-hobbled to forage. Campfire sunk in a shallow pit, a little millet paste and pork fat to silence their grumbling bellies. Did they dare hunt game with their muskets? They put up game birds from time to time, partridges and great ungainly fowl they could not name. But the report of a shot would carry for miles over the plains. They would wait awhile.
The dry wind, tongues parched, water rationed. They spoke little. Days in the saddle blurred into days, evenings stiff and weary, staring silently into the fire. The Queen’s Ambassadors indeed, a sorry and travel-stained troupe. They took water at every river or watercourse they came to, the horses drinking so greedily they had to prevent them from taking too much or they would swell and sicken. Nights under the open sky, the sigh of the grass, overhead a sea of brilliant stars and God’s own utter silence. Not a nightbird called. Occasionally by day a huge crane flapped leisurely across the vast sky, or they heard a waterbird’s lonesome call from a river and followed it down. The land parched, the grass shorter and paler now. Pale shallow hills on the horizon, treeless steppe. Once, far off, a herd of antelope, saiga antelope. Too distant to hunt. Their mouths watered, hearts ached, they could not say why. It was hard and bitter journeying.
Somewhere to the east, moving through the feathergrass of the parched summer steppe, the Tatars too were riding.
Late afternoon, and riding a faint trampled trail through tall grass again. Nicholas riding at the front, drowsing in the saddle, sun going down in the west and burning his left cheek, his left hand. He sat up. Something …
He reined in. His horse nickered, he stroked her neck.
The other three reined in behind, Hodge leading the packhorses.
‘I thought I heard something in the grass. Yonder.’
‘Some beast.’
‘No. Sound of a horseman.’
Smith said, ‘You were dreaming.’
‘I think someone’s coming.’
They waited in silence. The grass was so tall, the steppe rolling in shallow hills and swales, even a mounted horseman might be hidden from them. But nothing. Smith was about to grunt and ride on when he too heard it. A swish through the grass just a little too regular to be the wind.
‘Dismount,’ he said, rapidly doing so himself. ‘Behind your horses. Brother Stanley, fire up the matchcord.’ Then he was wadding his own firearm, ramming in powder and ball, resting it across his horse’s back.
A whinny. A single horseman, his horse catching the scent of other horses and wanting to be with them. They would surprise him.
And then he appeared on the faint trail ahead of them. An exotic creature in a pointed kalpak hat and a belted coat, riding a small dark pony. No saddle, not even stirrups, just a rope hackamore in the pony’s mouth. He stopped in an instant and pulled his pony restively round and stared down the trail at these unearthly intruders in his empty land. He had a narrow moustache and thin beard, and bright gold earrings gleamed through long shaggy hair, but most of all they noticed how he was festooned with weaponry: recurved bow, quiver and musket over his shoulders, leather belt carrying a knife, a broad-bladed sword curved like a Saracen’s, another pistol or two. A one-man arsenal.
Looking utterly unafraid of these alien horsemen facing him, not fifty yards off, weapons readied, he looked easily over their four-horse baggage train, eyes glittering. Then he astonished them outright by grinning at them hugely, yanking his pony around and, breaking into an instant gallop, vanishing away into the wilderness of the grass.
Smith rested his weapon. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘They know we’re here now.’
‘Evil-looking type,’ said Hodge. ‘He’ll be back, I suppose?’
‘Oh yes, he’ll be back,’ said Stanley with his usual good cheer. ‘With fifty of his fellows, I don’t doubt, anxious for us to show them the contents of our cases. We will just have to be polite. For that, my dear friends and gentlemen-at-arms – that was our first steppe Cossack.’
They made camp just half an hour later as usual. Even lit a fire. But kept their weapons always at the ready. It all depended on how badly this fellow and his comrades wanted to see what was in their baggage cases – or wanted them dead, said Hodge pleasantly. Stanley said he still thought a few well-aimed shots might startle them off for good. ‘All bandits are cowards.’
‘Some hope,’ said Hodge.
Nicholas slept for a couple of hours before he was shaken awake.
‘Nick. Nick. Wake up.’
‘Uh?’
‘We have company.’
Stanley himself had been keeping first watch, musket across his knees, but even he hadn’t heard a thing. The first he knew was a gentle tap on his shoulder and he froze. Around the back of his neck was a circlet of sharp blades held steady, like some strange floating ruff.
‘Lean forward, guest of mine,’ said a gravelly voice, ‘and lay your musket down in the dust.’
He did so.
The owner of the voice stepped before him. ‘Welcome,’ he said, bowing extravagantly, ‘to my country.’