Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [218]
The Tsar is drawing men from all countries into his service, he thought, with some satisfaction.
It was at the end of his first week that Andrei made a new friend.
He had gone into the Kremlin to visit the cathedrals. His mood was light-hearted. The sun had appeared once or twice through the clouds that morning and just as he had left his lodgings, he had had a delightful experience. A young girl had gone tripping by, so close that he had nearly bumped into her as he came out. She could not have been more than fifteen. She wore a long pink cloak trimmed with fur, a tall cylindrical fur hat, and her hands were tucked neatly into a fur muff. She was very fair, her fresh young face glowing in the sharp air, and the long golden plait of hair that hung down her back was gaily tied with a bright red ribbon.
Before he had time to collect his thoughts, she was gone, but he smiled to himself as he thought: When this business is over, it will be time to think of getting married. Perhaps I’ll take one of these pretty Russian girls with me.
Now, as he walked past the palace in the Kremlin, he paused for a moment below the window in the Terem Palace where one of the streltsy guards stood to receive the people’s petitions.
How remarkable it was that anyone, even the lowest peasant, could come here, place his petition in the little box provided, and know that it would go straight to the Tsar’s personal secretariat in the famous Golden Room above – very likely be read out to the Tsar himself. The mighty autocrat was like a personal father to his people. And a kindly one too. Andrei had already heard stories of the young Tsar’s kindness: how he would visit the prisons in person, give the poor fellows sheepskin coats, even sometimes set them free by paying off their debts. ‘The Tsar is like a sparkling sun,’ the Russians liked to say.
He had just turned towards the cathedrals when he heard a friendly voice behind him: ‘Well, if it isn’t my friend the Cossack.’
He turned and saw a young fellow in a beaver coat grinning at him. He had to think for a moment to remember where he had seen him before, then realized that it had been in the government office where they had delivered their letters: this was the young clerk who had greeted them and conducted them to the senior secretary who had interviewed them.
He was a pleasant young man of about Andrei’s own age. Andrei now noticed that he had pale, rather ivory skin and a broad, handsome forehead crowned with thick, wavy black hair parted in the middle and brushed carefully back. Yet if this upper part of his face made Andrei think of a Polish nobleman, the rest seemed to derive from a quite different source. His high cheekbones and rather slanting eyes, despite the fact that they were blue, suggested a Turkish or Tatar ancestry. It was as though a high European face had been compressed in its middle section to produce a slightly squashed though quite agreeable effect.
He introduced himself as Nikita, son of Ivan, Bobrov. The name meant nothing to Andrei.
The two young men fell into an easy conversation. The clerk seemed eager to talk to this visitor from the south and it was not long before he warmly suggested: ‘Come to my lodgings today. We can talk better.’
It seemed an excellent chance to learn more about this great state which the Ukrainians were trying to join, and Andrei accepted willingly. He agreed to come that afternoon.
The lodgings of Nikita Bobrov were in the fashionable kitaygorod quarter, but they were modest, consisting of three rooms on the upper floor of a stout wooden house belonging to a merchant.
His host was not alone when Andrei arrived. Standing at one side of the main room was a middle-aged man in a heavy sheepskin. At the far end stood a plump woman with a younger one beside her, whose face Andrei could not quite see in the shadows.
The man in the sheepskin was of medium height. His bad-tempered face might