Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [131]
Until this year, when they had found a master.
Boris smiled darkly. At his feet, with their hands manacled, lay two Tatars he had captured himself, and whom he was going to send down to his poor estate at Russka. That would teach the Tatars who was their lord.
Soon, he would get more. For this campaign was only the beginning. Kazan was the nearest of the Tatar Khanates. Far away to the south, by the Volga delta where once the Khazars ruled, lay another Tatar capital: Astrakhan. Astrakhan was weak. That would fall next.
And then would come the chief of all the western Tatars, down by the warm Black Sea – the Khan of the Crimea, at his stronghold: Bakhchisarai.
He was a terrible figure. The palace of Bakhchisarai was like the famous Topkapi Palace of the Turkish Sultan in Istanbul, and even the Ottoman ruler was glad to use the Crimean Khan as an ally. But in time he too would fall, and after that, eastwards across the Volga, the Kazaks, the Uzbeks, the Nogay horde – the fierce but fragmented tribes who dwelt in the Asian deserts – they too would fall: the power of Muscovy would crush them all.
This was the great destiny that Tsar Ivan had seen: that a Christian Russian Tsar would one day rule over the vast Eurasian empire of mighty Genghis Khan. Beside this even the largest ambitions of the western crusaders of old would look puny.
For the first time in all history, the men of the forest were going to conquer the steppe.
Indeed, even as they were leaving Kazan, Boris had heard some Tatars refer to Ivan as the White, that is western, Khan. No wonder therefore if he should gaze ahead at the young Tsar’s boat with such excitement.
Besides, he had another reason to be excited that day. That very morning, the young Tsar himself had spoken to him. Even now, Boris could hardly believe it. Tsar Ivan had not only spoken to him, but, it seemed, taken him into his confidence as well. Ever since, while those around him chatted, or gazed at the passing scenery, Boris’s mind had been full of the encounter with his hero.
And how heroic he was, this tall, dark young Tsar with his huge destiny. It had not been easy for him, Boris knew that. Yet he had overcome all obstacles. Only three years old when he inherited the crown, he had been forced to watch, humiliated, as the great princes and boyars fought to rule Russia in his place.
There were two mighty groups: the princes, descended either from the old Russian royal house or from the rulers of Lithuania; and the greatest boyar families – some thirty-five clans who made up the central core of the boyar duma.
These were the powerful schemers whom Ivan had overcome. They hated his mother because she was Polish; and they despised his wife. For when, like the ancient Khans, he had summoned fifteen hundred eligible girls to be brought before him, he had chosen this girl, from an ancient family, to be sure – but not from one of theirs. Yet Ivan had made them submit to his will. He had ruled through his own inner council of trusted, lesser men; and he had married his wife for love.
Anastasia. Boris had never seen the Tsar’s wife, yet he thought about her often. He thought about her because, when he got back to Moscow, he was due to marry himself and already, in his dreams, he had created for his wife the same role that everyone knew the lovely Anastasia played.
‘She comforts him in all his troubles. She is his rock.’ That was what they told him. ‘She is the one person in all the world he knows that he can trust.’
Her family might not be amongst the greatest magnates, but they were distinguished. Their name at that time was Zakharin. A little later they were to change it and call themselves by another: Romanov.
Boris had no love for the princes and magnates. Why should he support them when they wanted to