The Golden Horde (21 page)

Ivan saw the first hint of a smile at his antics flicker across Mar’ya Morevna’s face, and felt as warmly disposed to the Grey Wolf as he had been for a long time. She took a deep breath and glanced from side to side as that small sound drew all eyes to her.

“The crowns,” she said. “The Crown regalia. You know, don’t you?” Volk Volkovich nodded, but Ivan and Strel’tsin waited silently for further elaboration.

Mar’ya Morevna stared at the vodka in the wooden bowl, swirling it slowly as if the patterns were telling her something. And perhaps they were. “It isn’t just the taking of your crown,” she said to Ivan, “though God knows that’s bad enough. But if they gather all the crowns and sceptres of the wide white world together in one place, all that potential force contained in gold and jewels and centuries of belief, then something has to give way. We’ve been between the worlds and beyond the world and into the Summer Country, Vanya, but we’ve always done so carefully, closing the doors we open. What might – could –
will
happen in Sarai, is that all that accumulated weight of power is going to tear through into… somewhere else, and there’ll be nothing to plug the hole it makes.”

The vodka seemed to have lost its strength to burn his throat the way it had done before, but Ivan gulped it down anyway. “And then what?”

“I don’t know. Nobody can know, not until it happens. Maybe our world will drain away into that somewhere else. Or it might flow from there to here. Or there might be something out there that will be attracted to here like a moth to a flame.”

“Like a shark to bloody water,” said the Grey Wolf sombrely. He was no more specific than that, and didn’t need to be.

“Those imbecile shamans are behind this,” Mar’ya Morevna snapped. “They planted the idea in the Khan’s head. I’m sure of it.” She swore for several seconds with hair-curling ferocity, then rinsed her mouth out with vodka as if it might do some good. “No,” she said to Ivan before he could ask the obvious question, “that didn’t make me feel any better. Not at all. It’s been said before, it’ll be said again: they’re playing with forces they don’t understand. All they can see is a reservoir of power that they’ve taken out of the hands of a conquered but still-dangerous people, not what will happen when that reservoir finally overflows its banks!”

“What can be done?” Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin, Court Sorcerer amongst all his other posts, looked from face to face with the uneasy awareness that he should have been able to suggest instead of just ask. But like the shamans, he was so far removed from Mar’ya Morevna’s proficiency at the Art Magic that he was of no more use than…

Than Tsar Ivan Aleksandrovich himself.

It was a situation not too far removed from Ivan’s long-ago decision to submit to the Tatars if such a submission was necessary. Both were much harder to explain or understand than the
bogatyr
philosophy of finding an adversary that could be cut with a sword, then cutting until you were either defeated or victorious. From Koshchey
Bessmertny
to Baba Yaga to the Tatars, Ivan reflected grimly, he seemed to have a talent for attracting the sort of enemy unaffected by even the finest edge.

“All this takes away any choice we might have had,” he said at last.

“About what?”

“Going to Sarai at the Khan’s ‘invitation’, or staying here.”

Mar’ya Morevna squeezed her husband’s hand gently. “There was never any choice about that any way, Vanyushka,” she said. “You heard Amragan
tarkhan
as clearly as I did. If you want to remain Tsar, or Prince —”

“Tsar!”

“— Then you do it with the Khan’s authority, or not at all.”

“Um. And how likely is it that the Turk and his escort will let me leave Khorlov for Sarai without bringing the Great Crown with me?”

“Not very,” said Dmitriy Vasil’yevich. “He looks like the sort of man who’ll check the baggage train as each item is loaded.”

“There it is, then.” Ivan held out his drinking bowl. “Is there any more of that foul muck left? I need another drink!”

*

The feast had been under preparation for most of the day when Ivan and Mar’ya Morevna finally emerged from the kremlin to examine what was being done. Both had shared steam and then a long, leisurely bath before changing their clothes for something better than mere work garb, but if anyone thought their choice of colours somewhat out of season, there was no breath of it.

Ivan’s kaftan was figured velvet, high-collared and reaching to below his knees; his breeches, wide and silken, were tucked into heeled boots of glove-soft leather; he had a high-crowned velvet hat over all, fronted with a panache of egret feathers in a brooch of pearls and silver, and there was a single pearl drop glinting at the lobe of his right ear.

Mar’ya Morevna wore her kaftan to the ankles, her slippers encrusted with patterns in pearl and small cut diamonds, and her tall filigree headdress with its pendant rows of jewels framing her face was that of a Tsar’s consort rather than a ruling Princess. Ivan had insisted on it, and Amragan
tarkhan
could make of that what he liked. All the embellishment was either milk-white leather or embroidery in cobweb-fine threads of solid silver, all the gemstones were white diamond or translucent pearl, and everything else was black, from the figured velvet of their garments to the Sibir’yan sable that trimmed it. Though it was still high summer, they were dressed in the sombre formal garments worn for the day of first snowfall, for the dying of the year, and if it looked as if they wore mourning, to Tsar Ivan’s mind that was appropriate enough.

He had examined the weather – warm and sunny, with only the slightest breeze – and with that as a pretext, had issued instructions that the greater part of the banquet wouldn’t take place indoors, nor indeed within the walls of the city at all. To have Amragan
tarkhan
under his roof alone was unnerving enough; to invite the Tatar lieutenants of his guard as well, as custom dictated, was an experience the Tsar would as soon avoid. The other experience, that of the banquet itself, was one he planned to enjoy to the full, and among his string of instructions was an authorization to Yuriy Oblomov the Chief Cook that gave him a free hand both with the kremlin pantry and the domain’s exchequer. If the Tatars were intending to plunder one or the other, and probably both, Ivan meant to imitate his old reaver ancestors and get there first.

That was why a dozen huge fires of oak logs glowed and spat in the cleared space beyond Khorlov’s gate, why sweating kitchen servants not just from the kremlin but from several noble households within the city were scurrying to and fro with long-handled ladles – in fact, small saucepans lashed to broom shafts – and why the slowly drifting hot air trapped against the walls seemed like a meal in itself, with nourishment in every breath.

Whole pigs, whole sheep, and a single massive ox rotated glistening on thick wooden spits above the fires, turned from a safe distance by eager hands, basted with salted fat and their own drippings by the bucketful. They were watched and sniffed and tentatively prodded every now and again by the Firemasters of seven kitchens, each one with his and her own opinion of how to get the best result from a roasted joint. The joints – Ivan couldn’t help smile at how they could use such an insignificant word for five thousand pounds of meat, the ox itself weighing two thousand pounds or more – had been revolving slowly for hours, and each cook was growing passionate about what should be done in the last period of cooking to bring out the finest flavour.

As far as the Tsar of Khorlov was concerned, if the aroma was an indication of how they would taste then taking them down, letting them cool and standing out of his way was the best thing they could do.

There were fish on grills, and capons and squab on skewers, looking insignificant beside the vast bulk of beef and pork and mutton no longer quite on the hoof, but adding their own piquancy to the afternoon as they were smeared with lard or oil or butter in which onions and garlic had been crushed, then sprinkled with delicately fragrant herbs. Marjoram and rosemary, basil and thyme and dill all added their tang to the air, mingling with the more pungent scents of horseradish or sour-pickled cabbage, mushrooms and cucumbers.

Ivan wandered about as the Tsar was supposed to do on such occasions, smelling and tasting and complimenting this cook or that on some new masterwork of the culinary art. Here the simple, a pot of buckwheat kasha, simmered in meat stock and buttered to perfection; there the elaborate, chicken
tabaka
style, boned and fried flat under a weighted lid with a fierce seasoning of garlic, walnuts and the brutally hot, brutally expensive red pepper flakes of Si-Chüan. It was food for the fingers; Ivan didn’t even need to draw his eating-knife and spoon from their case at his belt, but simply ripped off a piece, dunked it in
tkemali
sour plum sauce, munched it up – and then drank a lot of cold wine very fast as the red pepper set fire to his throat.

“Make sure the envoy Amragan
tarkhan
has plenty of this,” he said to the headscarfed little woman who was tending the pans. “It might thaw him out.”

Leaving her gaping at being addressed so casually by her Tsar, he walked on, pausing every now and then to glance with satisfaction at the festival around him. Such events had been more common in the old days. Ivan smiled bitterly; those ‘old days’ were no more than six years ago. Before the Tatars. His wedding; the birth of the children; his accession to the crown he was soon to lose. Occasions when even the poorest peasant could ‘
eat
with
a
long
knife
and
a
big
spoon
.’ By his calculation there was enough food not just for the Tatar envoy and his escort and for the people from the kremlin palace, but for every man, woman and child in Khorlov. So far as drink was concerned, there was enough for twice that many. His people were Rus, after all, and drinking, especially at someone else’s expense, was a joy to them. What was the adage? ‘
Free
vinegar
is
sweeter
than
bought
honey
.’ True enough, and never more than when the Tatars all unaware were providing both the honey and the vinegar.

The Tsar of Khorlov squared his shoulders under the ornate black kaftan, hitched its collar just a little higher behind the nape of his neck, and sauntered down to where the official reception was being prepared. It was as though the banqueting hall from Khorlov’s kremlin had been brought bodily into the open air, and then its floor, walls and ceiling carefully removed so that just the furniture remained. It should appeal to the Tatars, thought Ivan: to eat like civilised human beings for once, yet under the canopy of their god’s blue sky.

“God, it is blue, isn’t it?” said Mar’ya Morevna as she moved beside him and took his arm and followed his gaze upward. The words were so apt that Ivan, not for the first time in their marriage, wondered whether his wife could read if not thoughts than at least images from his mind.

“Amragan and his Blackhats should appreciate it.”

“I should hope so. We’ve gone to a lot of trouble on their behalf. Giving the tax-collector a cup of wine, my father used to say.”

“Your father,” said Ivan, “was a lord in his own right. He didn’t pay taxes, they were paid to him.” Mar’ya Morevna punched him gently in the ribs.

“That didn’t make him any less entitled to the saying, did it?”

“And if this is what he would have called a cup of wine,” said Ivan, punching back, “then your father was wealthier than he had any right to be.”

“Are you fighting?” said a small, uncertain voice. Tsarevna Anastasya gazed solemnly at her parents, and in particular at Ivan’s still-clenched fist. “When I do that to Kolya, he doesn’t like it. But I hit him much harder than that,” – it sounded like a criticism of Ivan’s technique – “and then he tries to hit me back. Of course I don’t let him. It would be disker-, discor-,” Natasha furrowed her brow as the words refused to jump from mind to mouth, “discourteous-an’-inappropriate behaviour. To me, anyway.”

“Strel’tsin?” said Mar’ya Morevna.

“Not a doubt of it,” said Ivan. “He’s the only man in the palace with the nerve to let a seven year old child run loose with words like that.” He bent down and scooped his daughter up onto his shoulder, where she first knocked his hat crooked and then carefully set it straight again. “And no, little mouse, we weren’t fighting. You and Nikolai fight. Grown-up people only argue.”

“Then was that —?”

“Not even slightly.” Mar’ya Morevna pulled a kerchief from her sleeve and dusted at the child’s boots before they could track dust all over Ivan’s black velvet shoulder. “We were just having fun.” Ivan chuckled; the low, husky sort of chuckle that Mar’ya Morevna knew only too well. She glared at her husband and he felt the tension of another potential punch gather against his ribs; then instead she patted Tasha on the wrist. “But for Heaven’s sake don’t go telling people that you found Mama and Papa having fun together!”

“Why?”

“It’s… discourteous and inappropriate behaviour.”

“Oh.”

“You see, mouse, it’s not their business to be told things like that about their Tsar.”