Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [173]
It lay opposite the Kremlin, only a gunshot away – a fearsome fort with twenty-foot walls massively built of red brick and stone. The gate opposite them was sheathed in iron; above it a lion statue raised its paw angrily at the outside world. On the battlements they could see some of the several hundred archers who guarded the place.
As Wilson gazed at this sight wonderingly, Boris in turn looked at him with curiosity. He had heard a lot about these English merchants who were now to be found in several northern cities. They were a troublesome collection, but the Tsar apparently thought they could be useful to him. This fellow was so thin he might be a poor monk.
In fact, at that moment, Wilson was thinking of breaking the law.
Life had treated him well. He had married the German girl. Her plump young body had delighted him; her placid round face, he had soon discovered, could turn to a lecherous hardness that made him laugh for pleasure. They had two children now and he had become rather contented.
He was still a militant Protestant. He always carried some printed tracts inside his cloak as a sort of talisman against the all-pervading presence of the Orthodox churchmen with their incense and icons. Occasionally he would be stopped, usually by a black-shirt, who would demand to know what these sheets of paper were. They especially did not like the fact that they were printed. He knew that when Ivan had introduced a modest printing press a few years before to promulgate his laws, an angry mob led by the scribes had broken it up. The simple barbarism of these people amused him. When challenged about the tracts, however, he would always solemnly reply that they were his prayers, a penance for his wickedness, and this usually satisfied them.
He had undertaken a number of profitable deals, but none so profitable as the one he was contemplating now. It was a pity that, strictly speaking, it was illegal.
The problem was not the Russians, but the English. For since Chancellor’s return to Russia in 1555, the English trade had been organized as a monopoly under the charter of the Muscovy Company. Trade had been excellent. Wilson had been active in the trading depots from Moscow to the distant northern seas, and would have had nothing to complain of but for two things: the fact that Ivan had now managed to get his hands on some of the Baltic shore, especially the port of Narva; and that a few years back a cunning Italian had managed to sow ugly rumours about the English traders in Moscow, on behalf of a group of Antwerp merchants. As a result, the English trade through the distant northern sea was not quite so easy as it had been.
‘And the fact is,’ he told his father-in-law, ‘if I break the Company rules and ship some goods through Narva on my own account, the profits could be excellent.’ He would not be the only English merchant to do so.
Wilson had no great love of his fellow countrymen. In recent years, half the fellows they had sent out had been wild young men, who seemed to the Russians, and to Wilson, to be searching for women and drink as much as for trade. The question was, where could he get goods undetected by his fellow traders?
There was an added urgency about this business, too. For Wilson was nervous for the future. The war in the north was sure to continue. When the chief representative of the Muscovy Company had last returned to England, it was with an urgent request from the Tsar that he should bring back both skilled men and supplies for the war in the north with Poland. They had recently arrived. If he was to make a shipment out through the Baltic, the sooner the better, before the trouble started.
But there was another piece of news, a whispered rumour that had gone through the English community like a shock wave in the last few days; and it was this which had caused him to look at the Tsar’s stout fortress so carefully.
For to the departing Company envoy Ivan had given a secret