Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [245]
It was foolish. He knew it almost before he had finished. But seeing Tolstoy wince in surprise, he mistook this also for a look of contempt, and turned on his heel.
As for Tolstoy – who in reality had only meant to do a favour to a useful fellow – he at once concluded that Nikita must be an enemy: just important enough to be dangerous, and who might need to be neutralized one day.
‘Yet how,’ as Nikita afterwards moaned to himself, ‘could I have been so stupid?’
For the Tolstoys, though only of the minor aristocracy themselves, had married into the family of the mighty Miloslavskys.
Nikita continued to serve, and to hope. He made friends in high places. He even came to know the great prince Basil Golitsyn – a powerful westernized noble whom he hoped to secure as a patron. From Tolstoy, he heard nothing, and he put the incident at Kolomenskoye out of his mind. A few years more, a little luck, and he still might secure that governorship.
He was away, visiting a distant estate, when in the early summer of 1682 news reached him of the unexpected cataclysm in Moscow; and the whole business was so quick that, though he hurried back, it was all over before he reached the capital.
Poor Tsar Fedor had died. He had produced no children and so there were two possible heirs – the unfortunate Ivan, last son of Alexis by his Miloslavsky wife; and the handsome young Peter, still only nine years old, son of the Naryshkin girl. A half-blind, simpleton cripple or a young boy; the mighty Miloslavsky clan or the upstart Naryshkins.
But there was one other factor which Nikita had never considered: poor Ivan had a sister.
Princess Sophia was not a beauty. She was fat; she had an oversize head; her face was rather hairy and, as time went on, carbuncles appeared on her legs. As a princess, she was also expected to live in seclusion in the royal palace. But Sophia was both intelligent and ambitious. She had no intention of staying in seclusion, or of allowing the Naryshkins to push out her Miloslavsky relations.
In an astonishing series of events, and taking advantage of a sudden revolt of the powerful Moscow regiments of streltsy, Sophia had the Naryshkins hacked to pieces in the Kremlin Palace itself. It was an appalling and terrifying affair, taking place before the very eyes of young Peter and his mother – a terrible reminder that this was old Muscovy still, as dark, as morbid as in the days of Ivan the Terrible.
Then she had both Peter and the unfortunate Ivan declared joint Tsars – and herself made Regent.
The strange coronation took place in late June. Nikita Bobrov, having returned, was present. The two boys, robed in vestments glinting with gold, and heavy with pearls – one youth blind and half-dumb, the other only a child – were each crowned, in solemn state, with the so-called Cap of Monomakh. But behind them was Sophia. For the first time in Russian history, a woman held the reins of power.
And as he watched, Nikita thought of something else, which made him very afraid. For when Sophia began her bid for power, two men had ridden into the streltsy quarter to whip them up. One was Alexander Miloslavsky. And the other was Peter Tolstoy.
‘My dear Nikita Mikhailovich, my dear friend. We must have a talk.’
There was no more urbane man in all Russia than Sophia’s new chief minister, Prince Basil Golitsyn. Some whispered that he was also her lover. Could it really be so? Nikita was not in a position to know. But Golitsyn was certainly powerful and, Nikita believed, looked upon him with favour.
When he had been summoned to attend upon the prince in the Kremlin, therefore, he had dared to hope it might be good news. And now, seeing the great man advancing towards him, with these friendly words, he scarcely even noticed all the other people in the room, or the expressions on their faces. He saw only Golitsyn, and the fact that he was smiling.
For even to a man of some importance, like Bobrov, the prince was dazzling. He was, in truth, the first