Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [190]
‘Call down your wife. Let her come without delay,’ he ordered in a deep voice.
Not knowing what was to follow, Boris ran up the staircase and opened the door.
A single lamp was burning in one corner. Elena lay dozing, with the baby boy in her arms. She started to see Boris’s pale face, in such a state of nervousness, suddenly at the door. But before either of them could utter, they both heard Tsar Ivan’s deep voice below: ‘Let her come down at once. The Tsar is waiting.’
‘Come,’ Boris whispered.
Still not fully awake, utterly mystified, Elena got up. She was dressed only in a long woollen shift and felt slippers. Holding the sleeping infant in her arms, she came out to the top of the staircase, scarcely understanding what was going on.
As she came out, she stared at Boris and, glancing down at his hands, her eyes suddenly opened wide in horror. He, too, looked down.
He had not noticed before; it must have happened when he was goading the bear.
‘Your hands are covered in blood,’ she cried.
‘I stabbed your dogs; they barked too loud at a late guest,’ came the deep voice from below. It was an old, bitter Russian jest. ‘Come down,’ the voice went on.
She turned to Boris.
‘Who is this?’
‘Do as you are told,’ he whispered urgently. ‘Hurry.’
Uncertainly, she descended the stairs.
‘Now come to me,’ the Tsar’s voice softly commanded.
She felt the icy night air on her face and tried to cover the child. She walked over the frozen snow to where the tall figure stood, not knowing, in her confusion, how she should salute him.
‘Let me see the child,’ Ivan said. ‘Put him in my arms.’ And, letting his staff rest against his shoulder, he stretched out his long hands.
Hesitantly, she passed over the child. He took it gently. It stirred, but did not wake. Nervously, under a dark stare from his eyes, she stepped back a pace or two.
‘So, Elena Dimitrieva,’ Ivan said solemnly, ‘did you, too, know that the priest Stephen was a heretic?’
He saw her start violently. There was, at that moment, a large gap in the clouds and the whole of the sky above Russka was clear. A quarter moon, now visible over the gateway, sent a pale light along the street. He could see her face clearly. Boris was standing to his left.
‘The heretic priest is dead,’ he said. ‘Even the bears could not abide him.’
There was no mistaking it. He saw her face. It was not just the horror which some weak women felt at hearing of a death, even a grisly one. It seemed as if she had received a body blow. There was no doubt: she had loved him.
‘Are you not pleased to hear that an enemy of the Tsar is dead?’
She could not answer.
He transferred his gaze to the child. It was a small, fair infant, not yet a year old. Miraculously, it was still sleeping. He looked at it carefully in the moonlight. It was hard to tell anything by its features.
‘What is the child’s name?’ he murmured.
‘Feodor,’ she whispered back.
‘Feodor.’ He nodded slowly. ‘And who is the father of this child?’
She frowned. What was he talking about?
‘Was it my faithful servant, or was it a heretic priest?’ he gently enquired.
‘A priest? Who should the father be if not my husband?’
‘Who indeed?’
She looked innocent, but she was probably lying. Many women were deceitful. Her father, he remembered, was a traitor.
‘The Tsar is not to be deceived,’ he intoned. ‘I ask you again: did you not love Stephen, the heretic priest I have rightly killed?’
She opened her mouth to protest; yet, because she had loved him, because this tall figure terrified her, found herself unable to speak.
‘Let Boris Davidov decide,’ he said, and looking towards Boris asked: ‘Well, my friend, what is your judgement?’
Boris was silent.
Now, standing between them both, and with this child, half a stranger to him, in the freezing night, an extraordinary mixture of ideas and emotions crowded into his brain. Was Ivan offering him a means of escape, a divorce?