Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [158]
It was a splendid building, made for the Tsar’s grandfather by an Italian architect, but modelled on the splendid old cathedral at Vladimir – a simple, pale stone Byzantine cathedral with five domes. Here, Boris knew, the Metropolitans were buried; with awe he looked around at the huge, high bare walls and round columns with their layers of enormous frescoes staring out into the airy spaces they owned. In this cathedral was housed the most sacred of all Russian icons, the Virgin of Vladimir, Our Lady of Sorrows, which had given the men of Moscow their great victory over the Tatars at Kulikovo, back in the time of the great St Sergius.
But to Boris even this great icon seemed less important than the narrow, canopied golden throne that stood to one side.
‘So this,’ he murmured reverently, ‘is where my Tsar was crowned.’
And he stayed there, staring at it for several minutes, until at last Philip had to drag him away.
They crossed to the Cathedral of the Annunciation.
The icons in question, which had caused such fear and trembling, did not look so unusual to Boris. Indeed, until Philip started to speak, he could not see anything wrong with them at all. But the intense young priest soon disabused him.
‘Look at that: did you ever see such a thing?’
Boris looked. Before him was a figure of Christ, with wings, and with his palms closed.
‘It’s perhaps unusual,’ he ventured uncertainly.
‘Unusual? It’s outrageous! Idolatry. Don’t you see, the artist has invented that? Invented it for himself? There is no authority for depicting Our Lord in such a way. Unless,’ he added darkly, ‘it comes from the Catholics in the west.’
Boris looked carefully. It was true. There was something markedly individual about the thing if one considered it. He was still doing so when he heard a gasp of outrage from Philip.
‘See here.’ He was in front of another icon. ‘Our Lord depicted as David, dressed like a Tsar. And over there – ’ he had glanced across at another – ‘the Holy Spirit depicted as a dove. Never! Never in Orthodoxy.’
He turned to Boris confidentially.
‘There are frescoes in the palace, they say, that are even worse. Heretics! Cunning fiends!’ His head bobbed so violently it was as if he feared contamination. ‘I tell you,’ he said, with his eyes, it seemed, focused angrily upon the tip of his beard, ‘I tell you, young Lord Boris, those accursed Catholics in the west may be rascals, but they have one good idea, and that is the Inquisition. That’s what we need in Russia. Root them out.’
They left quietly, but all the way back to the Kremlin Gate and beyond the priest would mutter, every few paces: ‘Root them out. Root and branch.’
And just as they came out into Red Square, Boris had his idea.
‘I think,’ he said quietly, ‘that they make icons like that in Russka.’
On an overcast day in early November, the two visitors appeared in Russka. There was a cold, wet wind biting into their faces that threatened to bring heavy rain, or possibly snow at any time; and if Boris had not been anxious to make the journey at once, Philip the priest would have preferred to wait until a better travelling season.
They went straight to Boris’s house and the young lord of Dirty Place soon sent a friendly message to Stephen the priest asking him to call. Meanwhile Boris had sent his servant scurrying to summon a pair of plump chickens from his steward, a bottle of wine, and anything else he could think of for their comfort.
Despite the fact that they were both rather chilled, Boris was elated in a nervous way.
Within two hours, they were dining, and while Philip was still eating, which he did with the same, emphatic bobbing motion that he used for everything else, Stephen arrived.
He was glad to see Boris, and wondered if this visit could signal something good for the unfortunate Mikhail. Boris’s slightly nervous gaiety suggested to him that the young man might have been through some kind of minor crisis in his thinking recently;