The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible (23 page)

36

They stepped cautiously into the wide square of St Basil’s, strewn with dead bodies, overturned wagons still smoking, spears stuck in the ground, smashed barrels, even the detritus of Ivan’s own festiv­ities. A huge overturned cauldron, and in cruel mockery, a gallows still standing undamaged, ready to execute more Muscovites for any treachery. They passed by, swords drawn.

‘This feels dangerous,’ said Smith. ‘Too open.’

‘Agreed,’ said Stanley. ‘Quickly, to the Kremlin Gate.’

They came to a low postern gate in the wall and Smith hammered on it. Stanley stood at the rear, turned, ready. Something was not right. Something was coming.

A Russian voice sounded within. ‘No admittance!’

‘Servants of the Czar!’ said Smith. ‘Let us in. The Tatars have been called back. There is no danger.’

‘No admittance,’ repeated the gatekeeper. ‘Czar’s own orders. The Kremlin is not Moscow.’

‘It’s not?’ Smith said sarcastically. Then, lower voiced, ‘Man, we have a whole bag of gold here. It’s yours if you open this door. We know the Czar is not within. Your fort must be almost empty.’

There was a slight hesitation, and then the voice repeated, ‘No admittance.’

In exasperation, Smith stepped back and looked up at the height of the walls. Impressive, but one might almost improvise some grappling hook and rope, and just climb in … Were there left more than fifty guards within that vast complex of churches and palaces?

Then Stanley said, ‘Smith,’ and he looked round.

In utter silence, a last troop of Tatar cavalry was clustering in the mouth of an alleyway across the square. No wonder it had felt bad. Here they were. Twenty of them, savage-looking brutes, the last of the scavengers, saddle-panniers overflowing. Several bloody scalps between them, hung from their horses’ barbaric trappings.

In an instant Smith was hammering thunderously on the postern gate, bellowing with all his might.

‘Press back against the gate!’ cried Stanley. ‘They may ignore us, they have their loot, and the horn has sounded!’

Nicholas pushed Rebecca behind him and stood before her. Hodge stood before Ann Southam, and Stanley before them both.

The Tatars hesitated. One indicated. They had seen the two fair-skinned women. Especially the younger one. And then they came cantering.

They reined in, a tight circle around the trapped little group.

The leader of the troop said harshly, ‘Hand them over. We may not cut your throats after. If you refuse, we will kill all six of you and ride on.’

Ann Southam began to wail. Rebecca hissed, ‘Silence, madam. Not now.’

Stanley shook his head, playing for time, already calculating. The smaller fellow to his left – he thought he could take him down and mount his horse. Once on horseback he could cause some mayhem. Of course he could not take them all, but they were mere pillagers, stragglers and cowards, the dregs of any army, and might yet be driven off. If only the damn door behind would open …

‘Not worth it,’ he said, both voice and sword steady. ‘You will lose good men if you come closer, and besides, your order of retreat has sounded. Back to your camp with your loot.’

The leader gave a thin smile. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Your ardour to protect this mare and this filly tells me they are good fucking!’

‘You savage!’ shouted Hodge, and spat at him.

The Tatar leader raised his spear, and at that instant Ann Southam rushed out from behind Hodge and threw herself on the ground at his feet. The others gaped.

‘Take me, sir!’ she cried. ‘Take me! My husband is slain, I am a poor widow, I have nothing. Take me, but leave the others. I am … I am obedient to your every wish.’

The Tatar leader looked down at her curiously, then jerked his head. ‘Bind her.’

Two horsemen dismounted and tied her arms tight behind her. She hung her head. Stanley checked the unmounted horses, and by an eye movement indiscernible to any but Smith, indicated he would take the skewbald, Smith the grey.

‘Very well,’ said the Tatar. He dangled his spear loosely again, dominant, amused. ‘Old venison sometimes has good flavour. But you know what we say among my people. Happiness is to ride a strong horse all day and a young girl all night.’ He waggled his spearpoint almost playfully now at Rebecca. ‘Let us have the other one too, and we will all go our way in peace and, what do you say, Christian forgiveness?’

A moment of silence, and then pandemonium. Simultaneously, Nicholas rushed at the leader, so fast he was past his spearpoint in a trice, and clutching the shaft in his left hand so he couldn’t use it, whilst thrusting forward hard with his sword. Horses whinnying, rearing, riders pressing in. A club whirling through the air. A scream from Rebecca. Mistress Ann Southam knocked to the ground. Smith and Stanley both up on horseback, and then one of the dismounted Tatars with unbelievable speed and ruthlessness, drawing his long knife across the skewbald’s back legs, bringing the poor creature slumping to the ground with cut hamstrings. Smith rolling in the dust, fighting to get up again, hidden by horsemen. A bellow of pain from Hodge. Nicholas pulling back his sword from under the leader’s quilted coat, quite bloodless, and then a blow to the head that made his eyeballs reel in their sockets, his very brain go ice-cold. He slithered down, half-senseless.

A minute or two, he was lying in the dust, barely able to move. There were Tatar voices. His senses slowly returning, limping, but his skull filled with ice, his innards clenched up, near to vomiting, and everything seen through a silvery early-morning mist. Others lay on the ground near him. He saw Hodge not moving at all, perhaps dead. Oh God. Stanley dragging himself up, three spears pressed down into his back, pushing him down again. A warrior leaning over Smith with a long curved knife in his hand, grasping his thick black locks in his hand, pulling his head up from the dust, slipping the knife under his grizzled beard, his throat … A shout. The warrior looking up, setting his mouth in disapproval, but obediently dropping Smith’s head back down with a clonk. Standing, thrusting the knife back under his sash-belt.

The leader still mounted, unhurt. Nicholas’s sword thrust had missed entirely. Seated behind him, skirts pushed up, legs bared, gagged, blindfolded, and her wrists tied, Rebecca. Nicholas heard his own cry, as if very distant, and struggled to rise but could not. His gorge rose. His hair was sticky with blood.

After Ivan’s senseless cruelties, the ruin of Moscow, the burning of the English House, the deaths of their countrymen – when they felt utterly defeated and it seemed it could get no worse – it had got worse.

The leader rode around them as they lay in the dust. He wanted them left alive so he could have his amusement.

‘See!’ he cried. ‘Look! How prettily she sits behind me. Akish, God of the Sky, there will be good fucking tonight!’

His men gave a raucous cheer.

‘And the old mare, she will serve a dozen of us by tomorrow dawn, I have no doubt, and still be begging for more!’

Ann Southam was tied behind another warrior. Her eyes blazed, but she was gagged. A faithless wife she may have been to old Southam, but she had proved herself brave just then, brave and self-sacrificing, more than any of them. But it had not worked. Bravery often won nothing in this harsh world but its own glory.

‘And you have taken all these wounds for nothing, look.’ The leader spat. ‘You fools. Now we ride away with your women, and you lie in the dust like sickly dogs. Remember what comes to you if you dare to fight the Tatars. You suffer. Only be grateful you have not died. But I, Zamurz of the Nogai Tatars – I am feeling joyous and merciful today. Perhaps,’ he grinned one last time, teeth white as a wolf’s, ‘perhaps because I know I shall have such sweet fucking tonight!’

And with many a harsh cry and a cloud of dust, they spurred their tireless little steppe horses and were gone.

Nicholas could not move. None of them moved. From their injuries or from their despair, it was hard to say.

But the sun rose relentless as ever, and it was yet the summer sun and rose equally upon all as the hand of God had ordained, and they needs must crawl as best they could and find shade. Hodge was still senseless, but his chest rose and fell, and so they dragged him staggering and crawling – Hodge was no lightweight – across the square and they found shade beside that grotesque, man-sized cooking pot in which only two nights ago, Ivan had laughed to see his suspected enemies boiled alive.

They lay in silence and gazed out upon ruination, and amid the ruination, the mocking finger of the gallows.

At last Smith croaked, ‘We must find water. Tend wounds.’

Stanley sat cross-legged, head bowed. ‘Aye,’ was all he said.

They had failed in every way. They had failed to protect innocence in this guilty and blood-stained world, time and time again. Every­­thing was lost.

They did not move. An hour passed, more.

Smith was thinking if he died, he did not mind. No Knight of St John feared death, but he feared creaky or palsied old age, feared ending up back in Valletta an old, powerless, enfeebled shadow of his former self. He would very happily die in battle, he was in his fifth decade, and at night he was a mass of aches and pains from three decades of battles. But now he needed to be very strong indeed. Find the very last reserves of willpower, when there was nothing left to fight for. But there was. Nicholas and Hodge, their old comrades and beloved friends, they were young, and they needed tending.

He dragged himself up and the sunlight on the bright square was blinding. His throat was almost too parched to let him draw breath. He closed his eyes, took one tottering step, like an old woman. And then he heard more horses’ hooves.

‘Are they coming back?’ muttered Stanley.

Smith looked towards the sound. They could not fight any more. Perhaps they would all be slain here. Well, all men must die. But their two friends were young.

Careless clattering of hooves, many in number, riding without fear. And then into the square rode a wild-looking troop of steppe horsemen, many moustachioed, most half-naked, magnificent ­physiques turning coppery in the summer sun. And heavily armed with pistols and muskets and daggers and long curved swords.

They reined in and the leader smiled down.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘At the very heart of the fight, my old Inglisz friends. You look like you have taken a little battering or two.’

It was Stenka. Even Nicholas stirred. He had almost forgotten the Cossacks, thought they had ridden away long since, back to the empty wilderness of the southern steppes.

Stenka dismounted. ‘I am glad I was not here.’ He looked around at the devastation, and then said, ‘My braves,’ and embraced each of them. ‘You have walked through hell. I salute you. This is an evil world.’

‘It’s not over yet,’ said Stanley.

Stenka looked at him. He saw a very strong man, very nearly broken. ‘Here,’ he said, pulling a deerskin flask from his belt. ‘Water. You look a little thirsty. Afterwards, vodka.’

‘Afterwards,’ said Stanley, ‘sleep.’

37

As they rode out of the ruined city, survivors were at last emerging here and there from cellars, knowing by some sixth sense that the Tatars had gone at last, the worst of the fires were over. Everyone wanted water – and to begin burying the dead.

Some stared at the passing Cossacks and crossed themselves, or held out their hands. The Cossacks gave generously, water, a few sacks of grain they had brought in, even a steppe gamebird or two. But they could not feed a whole city. Their work was done here. The steppes were calling.

‘We have sent scouts far and wide,’ said Stenka. ‘The main Tatar army is already long gone, south and east of the Sparrow Hills. We are safe now. They are heading home.’

‘Not for Kazan?’ said Stanley.

Stenka looked thoughtful. ‘Or maybe to take Kazan. It will not be hard.’ He waved around. ‘Russia is done for.’

‘We heard the order of retreat. That was you, harrying the rear?’

Stenka grinned. ‘The baggage wagons, and the slave pens. We got little for it, but we lost hardly a single man.’

It was something.

They camped out on the plains, where it felt clean, where the dry summer grass smelt sweet, where fire had not raged nor blood been spilt. It was a warm but clear night, little wind, the starry sky above with all its enchantment. They ate bread and roast meat and drank water and a little wine, and bandaged each other’s wounds. Chvedar the renegade priest himself splashed vodka generously over them against infection, intoning some words of Church Slavonic, saying, ‘I anoint you in the name of Christ. Take this holy chrism and be healed, my beloved children, fresh from slaying the Amalekites before the Lord.’

It was impossible to know whether he was being mocking or serious.

Hodge’s wound was the most spectacular. A Tatar had clubbed him with a ferocious iron-studded club, aiming for a crippling or even killing blow to the spine. But Hodge had twisted away from it just in time, and the mighty blow had landed on his hip bone.

‘Lucky it didn’t split your kidneys,’ said Smith. ‘Tell us if you start pissing blood.’

‘Now be very brave,’ said Stanley. ‘This is really going to hurt. Nick, give him a stick.’

Hodge chomped down.

‘I need to press down right on the heart of the bruise,’ said Stanley. ‘To know if your bone is broken beneath.’

Hodge closed his eyes.

‘And if it is?’ said Nicholas.

‘Then it won’t heal without rest. Weeks and months of it.’ He nodded to Hodge. ‘I’ll be quick.’

Hodge arched and gagged against the stick, hollered, eyes watering, as Stanley for several seconds pushed hard and probed directly upon the fantastically mottled flesh where the club had landed. Then it was done.

Hodge was weeping, to his shame. That had hurt. He spat the stick from his mouth and yelled out. Nicholas held him. Hodge glared at Stanley, despite himself.

‘My apologies, friend Hodge,’ said Stanley, smiling faintly for the first time since the fire. ‘But I bring you glad tidings. The hip bone is steady. Not moving or grating, not broken. Strong bones you have there. You’ve just got one almighty bruise. We can get a salve on it tomorrow if I find some herbs.’

‘Well held, Matthew Hodgkin of Shropshire,’ mumbled Smith through a mouthful of roast fowl. ‘Taken on the arse, like a man.’

‘If I didn’t hurt so bloody much,’ said Hodge, ‘I swear I’d be up and stick that chicken down your poxy throat.’

‘No pox for me,’ said Smith, ‘since I’ve never been with a whore, unlike some. And it’s not chicken either. Partridge. Here, let’s see that bruise.’

He squinted by firelight and whistled. ‘That’s going to colour up lovely. Pretty as a Cornish sunset.’

Hodge pulled his breeches up again. ‘Glad it pleases you. That blow to your arm hurt much, does it?’

‘A fair bit.’

Hodge grinned. ‘So sorry to hear it.’

Nicholas lay awake under the stars, for all his exhaustion. They would heal well enough here in the Cossack camp, and then … ride home? But how could he? She still lived. And he could not abandon her.

Hodge knew his thoughts, as ever.

‘Second time she’s gone missing, eh?’ he said clumsily.

‘She is young,’ said Nicholas, abrupt, savage, then turned away and talked no more.

Hodge cursed himself. Idiot. That had not sounded well.

He gazed into the firelight, took another mouthful of water and then vodka and sluiced it down. It was foul on the tongue but good for the soul. Aye, she was young, that girl. And pretty. A very pretty maid indeed, Rebecca Waverley. But now she was in the hands of the Tatar slave-drivers, and many miles away, and so too was that Ann Southam, who had been so brave for their sakes in the city, and what of her? What hope?

Their best hope was that they would find kind masters – surely there were some in Tartary or Araby? The Waverley maid might become some rich merchant’s wife in Baghdad or Samarkand or some such outlandish place. She was so lovely to look at, he would love her much, and if she bore him children, especially sons, he would love her all the more and she would be set up for life. And that life might not be too bad. You must be practical about things, thought Hodge, taking another swig. She might keep her Christian faith, if hidden. What else was there for her? Life was strange, a dream journey. You never knew what was next.

But then he glanced sidelong at his old friend and master Ingoldsby and saw the firelight in his tawny eyes and feared, with an inward sigh, that they might yet be riding out on some ridiculous quest for her anyway. Held captive as she was by fifty thousand Tatars.

Two days later there were signs of Cossacks making moves to pack up and leave for the south, when a horseman came galloping into the camp from the city.

Now that the Tatars had moved off, Ivan had returned. He was back in the Kremlin.

‘Has he brought his Oprichnina?’ demanded Smith.

He had. The entire guard.

‘Hardly enough to effect anything,’ said Stanley.

Smith brooded.

‘And he wants to talk to the Englishmen,’ said the Cossack. ‘He says you are his military advisors.’

‘That we are,’ said Hodge, shifting painfully on his bruise, ‘and I’ve got my military advice for him all ready. “You’re buggered, mate. As buggered as a blue-eyed choirboy in Algiers jail.”’

Smith was on his feet already.

‘You’re not really going back, are you?’ said Hodge.

Smith was buckling on his sword. ‘We are.’

Ivan’s rage was terrible. And no more realistic than usual.

‘They must be punished, those accursed heathen! They must be hewn in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal! Look at my beloved city! How could my wretched people fight so poorly? They are slaves and cowards one and all!’

Vorotinsky was there too. And, in the far corner, quiet and watchful – Maliuta Skuratov. They all bowed with exquisite politeness. Ivan ranted again until exhausted. Stanley then suggested he start another purge of his people, to make them strong once more.

Ivan regarded him a moment, panting, his burning eyes more deep-set than ever. He took it as a serious suggestion, not as sarcasm. Then he snapped, ‘No, we have not time. The Hour of Judgement is near. My people are beyond instruction and punishment. We might as well whip a pig for being greedy. Vorotinsky, you will lead the attack upon these infidel pillagers and barbarians, and cut them down upon the steppe!’

‘Excellency, we have no cavalry.’

Ivan’s rage increased. He pulled at his own robes like a small child in a tantrum. ‘Then your damned nobles, the boyars—’

‘Mostly slain, Your Majesty.’ He might have added, By Your Majesty.

‘Your own family!’

‘What, six of us?’

‘Aaargh!’ Ivan gave a howl of inchoate fury, fell against the wall, hammered at it with his fists, his face white and pouring with sweat like a man in a fever. They waited. He might faint. But he did not. He was muttering someone’s name. ‘Bomelius, Bomelius, where art thou? Thou of all my beloved counsellors, thou hast deserted me …’

At last he calmed himself enough to say, ‘What if you had the Streltsy?’

‘The Streltsy are all to the west, in the Livonian wars, Your Majesty.’

Through gritted teeth Ivan said, ‘No, I have ordered two ­thousand of them detached. They are marching back to Moscow after us, they will be here in another day.’

Two thousand Streltsy: Russia’s only well-trained, modernised troops, often under European commanders of great experience: Swedes, Switzers, Brandenburgers … They might have made some difference in the defence of Moscow – though they could hardly have resisted the firestorm, even so. But now, Smith and Stanley began to think fast.

Vorotinsky shook his head and said bluntly, ‘This is futile. The Streltsy are welcome in Moscow, to help rebuild, to keep order, to guard against further attack when we are so weakened. Even the Poles might come and attack us now. But Streltsy musketeers can’t march after steppe horsemen and expect to catch up with them. The idea is absurd. And we remain vastly outnumbered.’

Blunt words indeed. Ivan turned a furious gaze on him. He had had men beheaded as traitors for less blunt speaking than that. But Vorotinsky was unperturbed. He would speak the truth only, and die when he died.

Another voice said, ‘We need to lure the Tatars back to us again.’

It was Nicholas.

The older men glanced at him. Then Smith said, his heart beating with the faintest hope, for the first time in many days, ‘If there is one thing the Tatars do not like, it is a set battle. And we still have our Cossack friends.’

‘Cossacks!’ said Ivan with deep suspicion.

‘They did good service in the siege,’ said Stanley. ‘Harried the Tatar rearguard, drew them off, prevented worse damage.’

Vorotinsky nodded. ‘It is so.’

Ivan only repeated bitterly, ‘Worse damage,’ and spat loudly on the flagstones.

Vorotinsky said, ‘Two thousand musketeers, and perhaps three thousand Cossack horsemen – against fifty thousand? Well, it sounds a little better.’

‘But what are we fighting for now?’ said a sinuous voice. Maliuta Skuratov.

‘For God and for the Glory of Russia!’ cried the Czar.

‘And for—’ put in Nicholas. Stanley talked over him. Best not to complicate things.

‘We have known some difficult odds before,’ he said, trying to sound bullish. ‘The great thing is planning. And then keeping your head when your plans go completely awry.’

Ivan glared round at them all, mouth working furiously, and then he turned and strode from the room without another word.

He was beginning to have dark suspicions about these English­men.

Maliuta Skuratov glided after him.