The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [139]
By the time the processions had come: the hundred robed priests of Moscow, two by two with their copes and their shining panagias; the monks and abbots and friars; the six Bishops of Riazan, Tver, Torshok, Kolemska, Vladimir and Susdal; the four Archbishops of Smolensk, Kazan, Pskov and Vologda, and the Metropolitan Makary himself, led between two priests in his gemmed mitre and cloth-of-gold cope, with the double gilt crozier with its wrought cross in his hand, the sky behind them had paled and lightened to almond. And as the Tsar moved to his seat, with his courtiers sparkling about him, the sun showed its vermilion rim beyond the river; beyond the dark bulk of houses and wall, and behind the tall crowded towers of the Kremlin.
Beside him, Diccon Chancellor saw his son’s face, and the grey, cold-drawn faces of Price and Killingworth, Best and Lane turn ruddy and shadowless, formal as a Book of Hours painting. Great as a city, the red sun rose higher.
The Tsar’s gold sabled crown burst into flame like a coal, his shoulders suddenly dazzling, and as the Metropolitan stepped slowly forward, his sakkos with its flat plated orphreys flashed like a mirror in firelight. A prayer began, and a soft, close-grained chanting behind it.
Chancellor and the others were silent, feeling the cold air no longer. As the light grew, and the singing, and the domed censers swung to and fro, clouding the dim ice with frankincense, the peopled landscape before him grew in line and deepening pigment, like a painting redeemed from its shadowy burial and alight with Russian colours: yellow, brown and blood-red. And Russian detail: a sloping shoulder; a pursed mouth; a squat hand outspread. And behind, dormer roofs unevenly drawn through the treetops. The snow stood sherbet-pink on the roofs, and among the burning domes of the Kremlin, Chancellor thought he saw a hastening angel in sandals, its head bent; its kneecaps sharp under the lines of its robe. Christopher said, ‘Father! You’re sleeping.’
The Devil was conjured out of the river. Salt was cast, and the cross dipped and shaken over the Tsar, who stood bareheaded to be thrice blessed, and kissed it. Then the Metropolitan, dipping his hand, cast the holy water in turn over the child Ivan and each of the princes, and Chancellor, roused and doubly alert, saw the Tsar stretch to draw someone else forward.
The fair hair was unmistakable, although at this distance he could not see the Voevoda’s face. Killingworth grunted. It seemed to Chancellor that the Metropolitan hesitated, and someone else spoke: a tonsured figure with a long, square-collared robe frogged and slit at the sides. Viscovatu. It was, he was sure, the Chief Clerk of the Council. Then the Tsar made an angry gesture, as if brushing something aside, and Viscovatu bowed, and Chancellor saw the spray of water, fine as dust over Lymond’s bent head.
Then it was over, and the Tsar withdrew to his tower of mica, and the Metropolitan to his throne and the guards, stepping back, let the people bring their young and their sick to the water.
The Tsar stayed only a short time afterwards, to see some Tartar men christened, and some boys jump naked into the water, and the first of the thousands fill their pots and their pails with the blessed water, to take home to worship. Afterwards, they would bring his horses to drink, and those of his chief courtiers, so that the virtues of the cold, hallowed river would be evenly spread. Some, given the icy draught on their sickbeds, would die of it. Some, thought Chancellor suddenly, overcome with a sense of inexplicable danger, would die of the hallowing, though they had not drunk the water. He said in Russian to the Pristaf, ‘I wish to speak to the Voevoda Bolshoia.’
An uncommunicative man, the Pristaf was not unfriendly, but a stickler for orders. He said, ‘You will see the Voevoda at the banquet.’
Chancellor said, ‘We go to the banquet this evening. I wish to speak to the Voevoda Bolshoia now.’
The Pristaf looked over the heads of the crowd,