Caprice and Rondo - Dorothy Dunnett [242]
When he found how the furs unfastened, and she didn’t object, he went on to determine how everything else opened as well, and they ended up on the straw by the stove which was quite warm by then, although not as inflamed as they were: at one point, he thought he was dying. It had never been quite like this, since the night they decided to marry. She, fought him, devoured him, denied him until he was out of his mind with desire; then forced a climax that lasted so long he almost fainted. Then later, it began all over again.
He performed well, for he had much to make up for, but that night he was unable to match his magnificent wife. He was not ashamed. He couldn’t remember when he had ever been so exhausted with pleasure. And all his doubts were set to rest.
Two days later, he made the thirty-mile ride to the walled town of the lavra of the Holy Trinity and St Sergius, the largest and richest of Moscow’s defensive circle of fortified monasteries. Permission had not been easy to get: he was accompanied by a compulsory armed escort and Dymitr, who had insinuated himself as his interpreter. Anna had been forbidden to come: except for the Grand Duchess herself, women were not allowed at the Troitsa unless for rare festivals. The place for well-bred consorts in Muscovy was at home in the terems, where they spent their days sewing, spinning, and embroidering without soiling their hands.
They said that the Grand Duchess was in the course of changing all that. They said she was in the course of changing the habits of Ivan Vasilievich her husband, who paid grovelling tribute to the Tartars, and sprawled in drunken slumber at table, and lounged in sloth on his throne while others fought to preserve his realm. Zoe-Sophia, daughter of Imperial Byzantium, would not approve of that. Julius thought that she and Anna would get on well together.
It entertained him that Nicholas proved to think so as well, being already deep, when he found him, in plans for founding a business in Russia that would take the place of the promising Caffa emporium now lost. It was not hard to locate him, as one armed escort gave way to another, and Julius, with Dymitr beside him, was led over a frozen stream, through a portico and into a vast enclosed territory where diverse snow-burdened buildings of wood, brick and stone threw back the muffled ting tang of metal on metal, and the lowing of animals, and the cries of the labouring servants and workmen in their sheepskin caps and hide jackets. The monks themselves, in their tall hats and shawled robes, were either low-voiced or silent, and tramped the clogged wooden paths alone, or in clusters, bent like black barrel staves against the white of the snow. The cathedral, high against the grey sky, exuded incense, and the thrum and pipe of industrious chanting, such as you would hear in a rope-walk, or a finishing-shed, or on a good working vessel at sea. Musical instruments were not allowed in the lavra.
Privacy was not allowed, either, to visitors. A pair of bearded monks, hands tucked in sleeves, attended the vaulted stone chambers in which were incarcerated the two suspect Friazines: the Latin priest Ludovico da Bologna, so-called Patriarch of Antioch, and his large Frankish companion from Bruges. The invigilation did not, however, appear to be too severe: the sound of animated and agreeable