Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [171]
Elena missed her friend, who had so often kept her company, and felt sorry for the priest, now monk.
By that September, it was clear that a new campaign in the Baltic was imminent, and Boris was looking forward to it.
During the summer he had made numerous visits to Russka and even spent some calmer, happier times with Elena. Perhaps, yet, there might be a son.
He had also paid a visit to the Tsar at Alexandrovskaya Sloboda.
It was a strange place, about fifty miles north of Moscow, just east of the road up to ancient Rostov; not far away lay the great monastery of Trinity St Sergius. And, indeed, the Tsar’s headquarters was run rather like a monastery itself.
His first evening inside the heavily guarded enclosure, he was shown to a small hut where two other Oprichniki were sleeping and offered a hard bench.
‘We shall be up early,’ they told him with a grin.
But even so, he had not expected to be awoken long before dawn, by the harsh clanging of a bell.
‘To prayer,’ they muttered, and then, with more urgency, ‘you’d better hurry.’
In the blackness of the large courtyard he could see only his two companions, one on each side of him, and a distant square of light which he took to be an open church door. But as they crossed he heard from somewhere high above a harsh, ringing voice accompany the clanging of the bell.
‘To prayer, dogs,’ it cried out. ‘To prayer, my sinful children.’
‘What foolish old monk is that?’ he whispered.
But he had hardly got the words out before he felt a hand clapped over his mouth and his companion breathe in his ear: ‘Shut up, you fool. Didn’t you realize? That’s the Tsar himself!’
‘Pray for your souls,’ the voice cried and, though he had been party to executions himself, and had cut down traitors without a second thought, there was something eerie in the cry from the tall, invisible figure in the darkness above that sent a chill of fear down Boris’s back.
It was three in the morning; the service of matins lasted until dawn. He realized that the Tsar was there amongst them, watching him perhaps, yet did not dare turn round to look. After a time, however, there was a rustling sound, and the tall, dark figure moved quietly past him to the front. Looking neither to right nor left he walked to the head of the men at prayer and stood there silently, occasionally stroking his long reddish beard that was streaked with black.
Then, at a certain moment, he slowly prostrated himself on the floor and knocked his forehead firmly on the ground.
Never, since that dawn on the Volga, had Boris been so close to the Tsar. It filled him with awe.
But that was nothing to his feelings when, later that day, after mass and the mid-morning meal, he was summoned into the presence of the Tsar, all alone.
Ivan was dressed in a simple kaftan, black in colour but lightly embroidered in gold and trimmed with fur. His tall, lean figure and long aquiline face were as Boris remembered from the days of Kazan; but how much older he looked. It was not just that his hair had grown thin so that the upper part of his face had a bony, almost skull-like appearance. It also seemed to Boris that, under his long, drooping moustaches, Ivan’s mouth had assumed the shape of a thin crescent moon, downturned, strangely animal. Half Russian prince, half Tatar Khan and … something else: Boris was not sure what.
And yet, within moments, it was as though he were with the young Tsar again; once more Boris felt that same melancholy charm, that inner passion that belonged to another, mystical world. When he smiled at Boris, rather sadly, there even seemed to be kindness in the Tsar’s dark eyes.
‘So, Boris Davidov, it is many years since we met, you and I, on the bank of the Volga.’
‘It is, Gosudar.’
‘And do you remember what we said to each other then?’
‘Every word, lord.’ He