The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible (14 page)
They dressed hurriedly.
‘How d’you feel?’ said Smith. ‘All ready there with your sword drawn. I was impressed, seeing you were nearly dead five hours back.’
‘A little frail,’ said Nicholas. ‘But we Ingoldsbys are made of stern stuff.’
‘You’re still pale,’ said Stanley. ‘And we want you looking especially hearty, for the sake of … the joke. Play the role well, and it will be most amusing if your poisoner is there at the palace to see us this morning. The healthier you look, the greater will be his surprise – and the evidence of his guilt.’
So with some mirth they mashed the last berries and applied a thin layer of juice to his cheeks for colour, and Smith gave him a light slap or two to stir the blood. Nicholas took a step sideways.
‘Gently, Brother,’ said Stanley.
Smith guffawed.
Nicholas shook his head clear again and looked at himself in the glass. ‘Like an Italian catamite,’ he muttered.
‘No chance,’ said Smith. ‘Not nearly pretty enough.’
‘Aye,’ agreed Stanley. ‘It’d be a lonesome old sodomite would want any of you.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Nicholas, ‘for Catholic monks, your wit is low indeed.’
Czar Ivan was striding up and down frenetically in a small, shadowed courtyard, nothing like the grandeur of yesterday. He rubbed his long, bony hands.
‘Ah, my Englishmen, my Englishmen!’ He sounded pleased, and gave absolutely no sign of surprise to see Nicholas. He even clapped him on the back. ‘My Prince Nikolas Ivanovitch. It will be a famous victory, and such glory will surely win the heart at last of this Elizabeth of yours, will it not? The marriage will take place in the Ouspenksy Cathedral, conducted by Patriarch Grigoriy himself—’
An elderly, soberly dressed secretary nearby made a movement, as if to prompt him.
‘Yes, yes, developments.’ He glowered at them all. ‘Your Cossacks are at the western gate. They will be needed. The Tatars are coming. They sent emissaries by night, but they have rejected all our offers of peace. They have demanded the return of Astrakhan. The scoundrels! We do not fear them. We will defend Moscow against them with all our iron Russian will. You are no ordinary ambassadors. You fought at Malta and Lepanto. You two,’ he nodded at Smith and Stanley, ‘are Catholic Knights of the Order of St John.’
They drew breath. No point denying it now.
Ivan went on. ‘You are men of sublime military powers. You defeated the Turks at Malta, you will mastermind the defeat of the Tatars at Moscow. Oh this will be a glorious victory! The Tatars ride against us, with Ottoman support it seems clear, for many reasons – for Kazan, for Astrakhan – and also because they now say we are leaguing with Catholic Christendom! Their evil Khan, Devlet Giray, knows of your presence among us.’
Their minds reeled. How …? Nicholas felt a sensation of sinking ever deeper. How did they know? He wondered about the Sultana Safiye, about the lovely Esperanza Malachi – but he knew in his heart of hearts they would not have betrayed them. Yet did this mean that their presence here in Moscow had triggered the final Tatar attack? No, they knew of the planned obliteration of Moscow long before. Nevertheless … they were ever more closely entwined now with the fate of this strange, isolated city and its crazed yet cunning ruler.
‘God himself has warned me of it,’ said Ivan, fixing Smith suddenly with blazing eyes. One of his usual non sequiturs. ‘I see the outcome. My wisest counsellor of all’ – they guessed he meant Elysius Bomelius – ‘sees it. He swears. No surrender. We will triumph. The Tatars will be stricken with plague within a week, they will die in their thousands below our white walls. We have seen it all in a dream sent by the Lord God of Israel. The Tatars will pay for their cowardly attack on our beloved Oprichnina in the woods some days ago.’
Confusion on confusion.
He raised his eyes piously to heaven. ‘How terrible it is to attack the Lord’s Anointed! We reign as Czar by the Will of God Almighty and not by the restless will of men. They can only be of Satan. We have read of it in the Book of Isaiah, in the Homilies of St John Chrysostom …’
He returned to earth. ‘You will command along with my best generals, Prince Andrew Kurbsky and Prince Michael Vorotinsky. They at least are loyal to me and return my fatherly love. You are now my counsellors. The rest all hate me, and they hate my Oprichnina for their undying loyalty to me.’ Then as abruptly as he addressed them, he turned and swept out of the courtyard, calling back only, ‘To the walls, English knights! To the walls of Malta once more with you, and victory!’
And so the Czar had changed his mind. They would never understand why. Neither would he.
Before he could hurry after his master, the elderly secretary was detained by Smith’s heavy hand.
‘What prompted this great change?’ he demanded.
The secretary looked nervously after Ivan, vanishing away into darkened state room after state room, and then said quietly, ‘News that the Tatars are merely days away. And they do mean to sack us.’
‘We told him as much ourselves!’
‘Hush, hush!’ He looked around nervously.
‘But where is the militia?’ asked Stanley. ‘We have seen nothing.’
‘There is a small force under Prince Vorotinsky,’ said the secretary. ‘But the major part of our army, the Streltsy, is in the west, fighting in the Baltic States.’
Stanley looked down, shaking his head. Ah yes. He had heard of the Streltsy, Ivan’s own trained brigade of musketeers. They were not ill thought of. But they were far off, caught up in fighting that interminable and unwinnable war with the Poles and the Livonians.
Ivan wanted to add Baltic sea ports to his growing empire, but Russia was no match for the Poles in arms. Russian soldiers were dying in their thousands there – while to the east, their own capital lay open to the ancient enemy …
‘And,’ said Stanley, ‘the Oprichnina?’
The secretary shook his head rapidly. ‘The Czar’s own bodyguard. Their sacred oath is to protect his life, not the city or the people, not even the priests or the churches. Only the Czar.’
‘Come,’ said Smith savagely. ‘Let us have a good tour of this city. Before it burns.’
They turned away, but Stanley called back, ‘Oh, and do give our kindest regards to Dr Elysius Bomelius when you see him.’
The secretary looked puzzled. ‘I will.’
‘And do assure him that we are all four in the most superlative health, as you can see for yourself. No doubt it was last night’s excellent dinner that so fortified us.’
Still more puzzled, the secretary nodded and hurried away.
The high walls were about the only consolation to them. Even at the gates there was no material to hand, no bulking, no neat pyramids of cannonballs or guns for replying to the guns of the enemy, and no gunners to fire them either. It was unreal. They walked empty walls from stone watchtower to wooden watchtower and met not a soul, until they found one old drunk slumped in a corner.
‘On your feet, soldier!’ Smith shouted in his ear.
He staggered up. He had an incredibly large and inflamed nose. ‘No soldier,’ he muttered. ‘Came up here to escape my brother Yuri. Was going to cut my balls off.’
Smith wondered if the old drunk would make a useful member of a citizen militia. But his eyes were so bleared and cup-shotten he could hardly see, and his hands shook like aspen leaves in a gale.
Smith sighed. ‘Clear off the walls and keep off.’
Stanley was looking south and east. Nicholas looked after him.
‘What is it?’ said Smith.
‘We are in such deep pigshit,’ said Hodge. ‘Can I leave now? I’d quite like a long walk westwards, if only—’
‘Nothing I can see,’ said Stanley. ‘But did I not hear … aye, my
ears are deafened by years of gunfire and cannonfire. Ingoldsby, tell me you hear drums. Or rather, tell me you don’t.’
‘I can hear my own stomach bellyaching and rumbling from last night’s adventure.’
‘I’m not surprised. But is there anything else?’
Nicholas strained to hear. The day was very still and hot, little wind blew. The air very dry, sound did not travel so well. And he didn’t want to hear either. Then, on a light breeze … yes, maybe a deep faint drumming as if out of the earth. He strained his eyes. He could see no dust. But behind the shallow hills and over the sandy plains that stretched away from the city, yes – they were coming. He simply nodded, his blood running slow and cold. How could they all survive this? Why was he here, and why now?
‘Quickly then,’ said Smith. ‘There is so much to see and we only have a few hours. Cathedrals and fine buildings are not so magnificent when burned to the ground.’
Finally they came upon a small band of men with a handsomely dressed officer in gleaming breastplate and helmet, and down below in a square, perhaps a couple of hundred city militiamen in cheaper breastplates, red ballooning breeches, carrying long pikes. Among them, they counted up a total of eight muskets.
‘Enough to fight the Tatars off for, oh, I should say a good two or three minutes,’ said Stanley cheerfully.
The officer stepped up to them briskly, unsmiling, bearded, eyes blue and keen. ‘Prince Michael Vorotinsky, commanding officer. You are the English knights?’
They bowed.
‘Why have you come here to die?’
It was not a flattering welcome, but a reasonable question.
‘We came in embassy from the English court,’ said Stanley, ‘and from our base in Malta, hearing that our Christian brothers in Russia were to be attacked. But I admit, we did not anticipate a situation so desperate.’
‘Desperate?’ said Vorotinsky. ‘Too optimistic a word.’
They walked on with him. He told them that Moscow’s only real strength was its great distance from anywhere else – ‘and General Winter. Any invading force that becomes trapped by the onset of our Russian winter is doomed. But it is high summer, and the Tatars know well the winters of Central Asia, and ride fast, and …’ He waved his arms helplessly. ‘They will be here in a day or two. We will fight and die, loyal to the end. But Moscow will fall.’
‘We will call in the Cossacks,’ said Smith. ‘We have a day and a night, at least. There are three thousand of them.’
Vorotinsky grimaced. ‘Cossacks? What good are they in a siege? They are skirmishers, riders of the steppe. They will never submit to hefting timber and building walls. Might as well teach geese to play chess.’
Stanley smiled. ‘Let us see. In any siege, the longer the city can last, the weaker the besiegers become. Moscow has fresh water, grain, many resources, has it not?’
‘Aye,’ said Vorotinsky. ‘Just no army to defend it.’
‘And guns?’ said Smith. ‘For the love of God, show us where your guns are.’
‘Guns?’ said Vorotinsky with a strange smile. ‘Yes, we have great guns. Mighty and powerful as any in the world, I think. Come, I will show you.’
He led them into a strong, square stone tower. The geometry was poor: an incoming cannonball would do far more damage to it than to a modern, Western-style round or octagonal tower. But in time, the knights knew, gunpowder and cannon would put an end to such old stone walls and towers altogether. Castles belonged to the past: proof against arrows, but not against the explosive power of phosphate and saltpetre.
Then another tower, then another. Each had a solid wooden gun platform, and within were sound and impressive guns called The Vixen, The Wolf, The Thunderer – and at last they came to one mighty piece that made them gasp.
‘This,’ said Vorotinsky, ‘is the Czar gun.’
Smith said, ‘What weight of ball does it fire? Eighty pounds? A hundred? Can the platform take it? And where the devil are they?’
And Vorotinsky said, ‘They are not.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Nor are there gunners to work them.’
Their hearts sank.
‘Our beloved Czar,’ said Vorotinsky, not hiding his contempt, ‘was concerned that the Czar gun, and the others, might be turned around.’
‘Turned around?’
‘To face into the city. To destroy Moscow.’
‘Why? By whom? The Tatars?’
‘By enemies, of course. Enemies all around. Perhaps even enemies within.’
Stanley rested his head on the cool bronze. So mighty a piece of work – had she ever been fired at all?
Vorotinsky said, in his elliptical way, the way people must speak who fear to be too directly understood by hostile listeners, ‘But then consider the Streltsy. Fine musketeers, with fine German muskets nowadays, yet still so badly commanded they lose every battle. The worst enemy of Russia is always Russia. Her only strength is her capacity to see everything destroyed – everything – and be undefeated still.’
Smith was still brooding over the Czar gun. He laid his hand against the side of the enormous barrel. It was a monster as great, even greater, than any of the guns the Ottomans could bring to a siege: those guns known and feared across Christendom, those guns which could bring down the walls of any city they were turned against. Had they not even brought down Constantinople? Guns with names like The Breath of Allah and The Angel of Death. But this Czar gun was as good as any of them, cast by the finest German engineers, and could match if not surpass the quality of anything produced in those vast glowing furnaces on the Bosphorus.
They stared around this square tower, studied the platform it stood on, stomped their boots. Their thoughts were much the same. If this monster ever was brought into use, what size of charge? How much power would it need? Pounds of it with every shot. A good five minutes between every firing. And you’d pray it didn’t erupt backwards with such force against its own blocks and its restraining ropes that it burst free – a terrifying image – smashed backwards through the wall and hurtled to the ground. It might even bring down the tower itself, a very dragon of self-destruction. How suitable it was called the Czar gun. But then imagine the shot! A ball of a hundred pounds, a hundred and twenty, hurtling through those Tatar cavalry ranks like some iron thunderbolt of the gods. Curving in long and low, it could slay a score of horsemen in an instant, and send a hundred more flying into each other in terrorized chaos.