Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [134]
‘From the Baltic to the Black Sea shore,’ Boris answered. ‘From Novgorod to Constantinople.’
‘Yet now the Turks occupy the second Rome; a Tatar Khan controls the Black Sea ports. And in the north,’ he sighed, ‘my grandfather Ivan the Great broke the Hansa merchants in Novgorod, yet still those German dogs control our northern coasts.’
Boris knew how Ivan the Great had ended the near cartel of the Hansa merchants in Novgorod. But alas, rich though Novgorod was, it still had to trade with the west through the Baltic ports which were mostly in the hands of the old German knightly orders or of German merchants. The only ports belonging to Russia herself were too far north, iced up for half the year.
‘Russia is landlocked,’ Ivan said bitterly. ‘That is why she is not free.’
How it touched Boris to hear these words. It was not just what the young Tsar said, but the pain that Boris heard in his voice that stirred him. This mighty sovereign, whom he already revered, suffered pain just as he did. He, too, felt a sense of indignity – in his case for Muscovy itself – just as poor young Boris suffered all the pangs of impotent fury when he considered his pitiful little inheritance at Russka. Truly, the Tsar in his noble and bitter rage was a man like himself and forgetting, for an instant, his own lowly position, he turned and whispered urgently: ‘But it is our destiny to be free, to be great. God has chosen Moscow as His third Rome. You will lead us!’
He meant it, passionately, every word.
Ivan turned and Boris felt his piercing eyes upon him, yet he was not afraid.
‘You truly believe what you have said?’
How could he not?
‘Yes, lord.’
‘That is good.’ Ivan nodded thoughtfully. ‘God led us to Kazan and gave it into our hands. He answered the prayers of His servant.’
Indeed the campaign to the Tatar city out on the eastern reaches of the Volga had resembled, at times, a mighty pilgrimage. Not only were the icons carried before the troops, but Ivan’s own crucifix, containing a piece of the True Cross, was brought from Moscow; priests had sprinkled holy water all over the camp to drive away the bad weather that was hampering the siege. And Ivan’s prayers had indeed been answered. He had prayed so long in his tent that some had even said he was afraid to join his troops, but Boris could not believe that. Was it not at the very moment in the liturgy when the priest had exclaimed: ‘Your enemies shall bow down before you,’ that the Russian mines had exploded and breached the stout oaken walls of Tatar Kazan? And was it not the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God when this had occurred?
He had never doubted the Tsar for a moment. Nor had he any doubt that Moscow was destined to lead the Christian world – she was the third Rome, until the end of days. God had given so many signs.
Sixty years before – in the year, by the western count, 1492 – the Russians had assumed the world would end. Indeed, it is a historical fact that for the year 1493, or 7001 by the old Russian count, the Orthodox Church had not even troubled to calculate the date of Easter. When, therefore, the millennium failed to arrive, there was genuine and official astonishment. What could it mean?
It meant, certain important churchmen decided, that a new age was beginning – an age which Moscow must surely be destined to lead. And so, in the reign of Ivan the Great and his successors, there began in the state of Muscovy the idea that Moscow was the third Rome.
After all, the imperial city of Constantinople, the second Rome, had fallen to the Turks. St Sophia was now a mosque. Though the Russian Church had waited patiently for the Greek Patriarch to assume his former authority, he had continued to be no more than a puppet of the Turkish ruler; and as the years passed, it became clear that the Metropolitan in Moscow was, for all practical purposes, the true leader of Eastern Orthodoxy.
An imperial destiny. The young Tsar’s grandfather, Ivan the Great, had