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By Root 3017 0

of the prince and his courtiers, the storehouses, the kitchens, the stables, the workshops; the markets, the painted churches in brick and in timber, the hooded arches of convent and monastery; the blessed walls and chapel which sheltered the Metropolitan, who was next unto God, our Lady and Saint Nicholas only excepted. Walking between the monasteries of St Nicholas on his right, of Constantine and Helen on his left; past the square belfry where, on Easter night, the great bell of Moscow would set off the carillons of three hundred and fifty churches in the low city outside the walls, Adam Blacklock, the artist, was gripped by an open-eyed silence, as if a volume of miniatures had surrendered to him, and was submitting, book by book, to his advance.

This garden of towers: this confection of wrought stone and round tulip heads, copper and gold, spiralled and lobed in a frilling of leaved stone and damascened roof-planes; this ancient assembly pleated with steps and fretted with a nonsense of archways and ivorine galleries; dissolved in fire; lost in neglect; masked; altered; rebuilt; painted; carved; gilded; dressed within and without to a thousand different tastes, stood at the headwaters of four civilizations, and the sunlit white scallops of Italy smiled daisy-fresh down on the squares, garrets, towers, steps, passages, shafts and deep frescoed arches of the earlier ages, spanning two hundred years to the low-stalked domes and squat shapes of St Saviour with its budding of chapels fit, one felt, to be stood in the palm of one hand.

Then Lymond said briefly, ‘Blacklock!’ and he found that they had passed the cluster of cathedrals, and the dust of a tall church rebuilding, and had arrived before a square wooden pavilion, resting among the newly sprigged bushes and trees running down to the slope of the Moskva.

It seemed an unlikely presence chamber for the Tsar of all Russia, until you remembered the fire of a few years before, which had destroyed so much of Moscow that the Emperor had moved from the Kremlin to Vorobievo, ruling from over the river, and seventeen thousand of his subjects had died. Then they were inside, their heads covered again, as was the custom, and standing waiting in a room lined with guards, their axes lifted shoulder high against the white fur of their hats; their white velvet gowns brushing the smooth wooden floor, laid with fine carpet. They stood there, Viscovatu, Guthrie and Lymond sustaining a weird conversation in Latin, embellished with gems from Fergie’s professional repertoire, until the interpreter arrived, twenty minutes later, and at the end of the room the carved double doors were flung open. The interpreter, a cheerful monk called Ostafi, shook them one by one by the hand as they were ushered forward, and grinned even more widely when Adam addressed him in English.

‘My dear man!’ said Guthrie sardonically. ‘Where ever would he learn English? Our friend here speaks Russian and Latin and Greek, and if you can’t teach yourself one of them quickly, you’ll have to become the world’s leading exponent of mime.’ And so he walked, deaf and dumb, after the others into the Audience Chamber, and became aware of space, and a high tented roof, of carpets and benches and a standing group of men dressed in identical robes of gold tissue, and of a high dais at the far end on which was a state chair of gold on which a crowned man was seated, surrounded by a handful of courtiers more richly dressed than the others, and a bearded man in the black hat and robes of a priest. Then Ivan IV, Tsar of Russia, lifted his heavy, ringed hand and they moved forward, coming to rest below and before him while in clear, echoing Russian the interpreter began his preamble.

The windows, some glass, some latticed, were small. But shafted sun danced on the walls, reflected from the gold tissue, and gathered itself to blaze and glint on the sceptre, the tiara and gown of the Tsar. He was wearing, as Adam learned later, the Kazan cap of state, a sable-based pyramid of foliated gemmed gold; and the fabric of his robe was