Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [169]
For the war in the north had not been successful. Russia needed those Baltic towns, the Poles were opposing them, and the Tsar needed money. The idea of the Zemsky Sobor was to get approval for the war, and the tough new taxes needed, and to show the enemy that the whole country was behind it. The great assembly had met that July. They had agreed to all the Tsar proposed.
There was just one problem. The impertinent assemblymen, supported by the new Metropolitan, petitioned Ivan to give up the Oprichnina. The Tsar was furious. And then …
Elena watched her husband thoughtfully. It seemed to her that he hesitated. Did he feel guilty? Was he uncomfortable inside his protective skin?
‘They were traitors. The Tsar treated them like traitors,’ he said gruffly. ‘There are still many traitors, many Kurbskys to be rooted out.’
Ah yes, she thought: Kurbsky. Of all the things that had turned the mind of Ivan on its present, dark path, perhaps nothing – at least since the death of Anastasia – was more important than the desertion of Prince Kurbsky. For in 1564 this commander, who had been one of those Boris had followed to Kazan, had suddenly defected to Lithuania.
It was not that Kurbsky was so important in military terms: he wasn’t. But he had been a friend of Ivan’s since childhood. It was a desertion that had struck him to the heart.
Historians have since studied a lengthy correspondence between Tsar Ivan and this exiled prince. It has been the centrepiece of several biographies. Recent scholarship reveals that this correspondence, like that other great classic of early Russian Literature, The Lay of Igor’s Host, may be a later forgery; but forgery or not, it is significant that the terror of Ivan began only months after the departure of this minor prince.
‘Is it true that the Tsar locked up the whole assembly?’ she asked quietly.
‘Only for six days.’
‘How many were executed?’
‘Only three.’
‘In public?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then in front of all the people he had the tongues of all the others cut out?’
‘No. Fifty of them were beaten, that’s all. And quite right too.’
‘They had their tongues cut out?’
‘No. Only some of them.’ He paused, his face still giving nothing away. ‘There was a plot, you know. They had plotted treason.’
‘Was it proved?’
‘There was a plot. That’s all.’ He got up from the table. ‘There’ll be no more assemblies, I can tell you that,’ he added with a short, awkward laugh.
Elena did not ask any more. She did not ask if he had taken part. She did not want to know. What could she say? What could she do? Slowly, a little tentatively, she went over to him and put her arm around him in the hope that, perhaps, her love might cure his evil. But he knew that her love included forgiveness, and, being unable to submit to that, turned silently away. Only by the just perceptible hunching of his shoulders did she know that he was protecting himself from her. If only she could help him, and help herself in this darkening night. Indeed, she secretly decided in her inner heart, she would even sacrifice herself to save what she saw – how could she not? – as his lost soul. But saving a soul, perhaps, took more skill than she had.
That night, when they were lying together, she tried to give herself. Yet he, like an animal that has tasted blood, wanted no other diet. How could she abandon herself to the simple, wild passion, the exercise, as she saw it, of a cat in the night, when it was just this animal in him that she feared? And how could he, seeking escape, seeking a companion who could match her strength to his, how could he find solace in her love which came with a prayer?
He slept fitfully. She, having given herself but knowing instinctively that it was not enough, pretended to sleep.
He moved about. At dawn she saw him gazing through the parchment that covered the window, at the grey light of dawn.
He turned and, seeing her awake, knowing her to have been long awake, remarked: ‘I go back to Moscow tomorrow.’
Should she beg