Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [188]
And now here was this tall, solemn monk, hiding such filth in a monastery.
When he had finished reading the pamphlet he glowered at Stephen.
‘What have you to say to this?’ he intoned. ‘Do you believe these things?’
Stephen looked at him sadly. What could he say?
‘They are the views of foreigners,’ he said at last.
‘Yet you keep them in your cell?’
‘As a curiosity.’ It was true, or near enough.
‘A curiosity.’ The Tsar repeated the word with slow, deliberate contempt. ‘We shall see, monk, what other curiosity we can find for you.’
He glanced at the abbot.
‘You keep strange monks in your monastery,’ he remarked.
‘I knew nothing of this, lord,’ the old man miserably answered.
‘Yet my faithful Boris Davidov did. What am I to think of such negligence?’ He paused for a moment. ‘I need no church court to deal with this,’ he remarked. ‘Isn’t that so, abbot?’
The old man looked at him helplessly.
‘You did well, Boris,’ Ivan sighed, ‘to expose this monster.’
And indeed, even Boris had been astounded by the pamphlet Ivan had read out.
‘How shall we punish him then?’ the Tsar wondered aloud, his eyes moving round the room.
Then, when he saw what he wanted, he rose from his chair.
‘Come, Boris,’ he said, ‘come help me mete out justice.’
It took some time, yet even so, Boris did not feel pity. In that terrible night, heavy with wine, swept up in the Tsar’s hypnotic power, what they did seemed to him a final, fitting vengeance for the wrongs that he had suffered.
Let the priest die, he thought. Let the viper – a heretic too – die a thousand deaths.
He had seen many worse deaths than this. But the particular method seemed to amuse the Tsar that night.
Softly, almost gently, he had crossed the floor to where Mikhail was standing and taken out of his hand the chain by which the bear was led.
‘Come, Misha,’ he had said softly to the bear. ‘Come, Misha, Tsar of all the bears; the Tsar of Russia has something for you to do.’ And he led him over to the priest.
He had nodded to Boris, and Boris had quickly attached the other end of the chain to Stephen’s belt, so that now bear and man were linked together with just two paces between them.
Putting his long arm round Boris’s shoulder, the Tsar led him back to the table; then he called to the other Oprichniki: ‘Now let the good Tsar of the bears deal with this heretic!’
At first they had had some difficulty. Stephen, saying nothing, had gone down on his knees, touched his head to the ground and then, crossing himself as he rose, stood quite still before the bear with his head bowed in prayer. The wretched animal, starved and miserable though it was, had merely looked from side to side in confusion.
‘Take my staff,’ Ivan had commanded, and the black-shirts had circled the pair, prodding first one and then the other, pushing the priest at the bear from behind, jabbing at the animal with the sharp iron tip of Ivan’s staff.
‘Hoyda! Hoyda!’ Ivan cried. It was the cry of the Tatar drivers to their horses – his favourite encouragement. ‘Hoyda!’
They struck beast and man; they goaded the bear until, at last, confused, enraged, stung by the pain, it began to strike out at the man chained to it, since there was no other object within reach. And Stephen, bleeding from the blows from the mighty claws, could not help trying to ward them off.
‘Hoyda!’ cried the Tsar. ‘Hoyda!’
But still the bear did not finish the business in hand and, in the end, Ivan signalled his men to drag Stephen out and complete the execution in the yard.
Yet still the night was not over. Tsar Ivan had not done.
‘More wine,’ he commanded Boris. ‘Sit close by me, my friend.’
It seemed as if, for a time, the Tsar had forgotten the others in the room, put out of his mind, perhaps, even the priest he had just killed. He gazed moodily at the rings on his fingers.
‘See, here is a sapphire,’ he said. ‘Sapphires protect me. Here is a ruby.’ He pointed to a huge stone set in the ring on his middle finger. ‘A ruby cleanses the blood.’
‘You have no diamonds, Gosudar,’ Boris