The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible (10 page)
The Hetman Yakublev was a distant kinsman of Stenka Timofeivitch, or so they both believed, of the mighty Host of the Don Cossacks; and they were invited, nay, ordered to join in tonight’s feast. The wounded ox had been brought down, several antelope, numberless quail driven into nets. Tonight they would set the plains alight. Tomorrow they would retreat to the safety of their island home on the Don.
They cantered through the long grass, howling with triumph. With such numbers they were surely safe from a Tatar attack.
‘One thing,’ called Stanley. ‘Do we tell them we are hunted by the Tatars?’
Stenka gave a curt laugh. ‘Of course not. We might be less welcome guests.’
‘Is that just?’
‘Just? Whatever keeps me alive in this evil world is just. Hah!’ And he spurred across the steppe.
The camp of the chieftain Yakublev was a festive sprawl of tents and wagons. In the tents and under canvas awnings sat many a silent female captive or slave girl patiently awaiting her fate, while the wagons were heaped with fantastical piles of loot from the summer raiding: everything from Ottoman carpets to chests of silver coins to Indian cloth of gold, jade, turquoise, sacks of salt from the Caspian, Tatar yak-tail standards and drums, a barbaric long pole with the gaping jawbone of a horse nailed to the top. Two captured caravans from far-off China carrying musk, satin and silk and candied rhubarb, barrels of whale oil from the far north, black gunpowder, shot – and most dangerous of all, Armenian brandy.
Stenka and Yakublev embraced like long-lost brothers, drank cup after cup of brandy and roared with laughter about nothing. Eventually the spirit moved Stenka to confess to Yakublev their small difficulty.
The drinking stopped.
Yakublev stared hard at Stenka. ‘You slew the son of a Tatar chieftain? Which tribe?’
Stenka indicated Smith and Stanley. ‘These fellows who travel with us did the slaying. And it was a brave act. It saved us awhile.’
‘But you do not hand them over? Though they are foreigners?’
‘We do not. We have fought together.’
‘Hm. Noble.’ Yakublev pulled his long moustaches. ‘Now you come among us, you may draw a whole Tatar nation after you.’
‘I admit it.’
Yakublev looked troubled.
Stanley seized the moment. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, stepping forward.
Yakublev eyed him from beneath lowered brows. Then he said, ‘Speak, foreigner who has put us all in such jeopardy. There will be no washing the blades clean between Cossack and Tatar now.’
At last Stanley decided the Cossacks must be told. They must be trusted.
‘There are much greater things stirring,’ he said. ‘The whole Tatar nation is coming together, supported by the Turks, under the command of their great general, Devlet Giray of the Crimea. You have heard of this.’
‘We have heard rumour of it. It is not our war. They ride against Moscow.’
‘We have it from the highest sources. All the Tatar nations, backed and financed by the Grand Sultan himself. They are riding north for Moscow, yes, and they will burn it to the ground. They will enslave all they do not kill, and destroy the power of Russia once and for all.’
Stenka himself and his Cossacks and Yakublev and his captains stirred, looked troubled. This impromptu festival of brandy and loot had suddenly turned into a council.
‘What is this to us free men of the steppe?’ said one of the bearded captains. He sounded almost angry. ‘What is Russia to us? We have fled Russia and the reach of Russia to live here, free men.’
‘Is Russia not your Holy Mother? Is Czar Ivan not your Holy Father?’
‘Some Mother!’ cried another sarcastically. ‘Some Father! We Cossacks have chosen to be orphans!’
Much cheering and laughter.
Stanley persisted. ‘So it matters nothing to you if the great Christian power of Russia is wiped off the earth? If these steppes, the great forests, all the way to the White Sea, are swallowed up once more into a Tatar and Turkish Empire – a Mohammedan Empire? And do you truly think this new Empire will let you roam free over your steppes as before?’
‘What is it to you, stranger, this fate of Russia?’
‘Because we are Knights of Malta, sworn to defend Christendom. Russia is a part of Christendom. There is no other reason.’
He spoke with such simple sincerity they could not but believe him.
This fair Knight went on, ‘If the lovely monastery of St Nicholas outside the Kremlin walls is burned to the ground, its holy monks slaughtered, is it nothing to you? While you feast and celebrate here, look! Under the very Icon of St Nicholas himself, patron saint of wanderers? Has he not protected you well? Is this how you repay him?’
Nicholas clenched his fists. A hit, a palpable hit! An argument as finely calculated as the trajectory of a well-aimed cannonball. Now all the Cossacks, from the chiefs and captains downwards, looked awkward, hunted. Yes, the magnificent Icon of St Nicholas in its great silver frame that went everywhere with them on their summer raids, it had guarded them well in their skirmishes and looting. Did they not owe the Saint a debt? And now Moscow was to be razed by unbelievers, and this fair-haired, red-cheeked Knight of Christendom was come among them like some early Rus or Viking Rurik, urging noble crusade. Just as they were about to settle down amid the plenty and riches of their fortified island home on the Don, with their loot and their lovely captured women, for a long, drunken and pleasant summer of it … Life was hard.
Then the angered captain who had spoken earlier stepped forward and pulled up his shirt, exposing a ragged, ugly scar: as if some madman had tried to cut into his belly and take out his liver whole.
‘This is what Mother Russia did to me!’ he cried. ‘This was the work of those vicious dogs, Czar Ivan’s Oprichnina.’ A murmur went up at this accursed word. He jerked his head furiously, eyes blazing. ‘Why do you think we fled here to the steppes, we Cossacks? To escape the cruelties of Mother Russia. Not one of us here is free from scars, beatings, flailings and tortures at the hands of the Czar’s dark servants. And now you ask us to ride and fight and likely die for him!’
‘Then fight for Russia.’
‘We are men without a country, we acknowledge neither king nor master, we are free men! The Czar may rule in Moscow, but the Cossack rules on the Don.’
‘You could be the noble bodyguard of the new Russian Empire, you could win great glory protecting this new rising power, you would be her elite soldiery, like knights of old, guarding her vast borders with your ferocious heroism, so that Russia would become great because of you.’
Stenka called, ‘Pass the bottle!’
Loud cheers and jeers. Stanley waited. At last he said quietly, ‘Then do not fight for Czar Ivan, or for Russia. Fight for St Nicholas and for God.’
There was no jeering then, only a long silence. At last Yakublev said, ‘These festivities are over, and I fear I smell Tatars on the wind. Come with us, brothers. To the island. We must at least stow our summer loot.’
The groaning wagon train of Yakublev and the Don Cossacks rolled east to the banks of the mighty river, Stenka and his men acting as outriders in case of Tatars. But they saw nothing.
It was a great operation to transport the wagons and horses and captured goods on huge rafts, poled across the river to an island the size of several English parishes, with hills and woods and freshwater springs and a permanent wooden settlement defended only thinly by wooden watchtowers. Nicholas saw the gleam of yellow eyes in the reeds as they poled out, but they were only wildfowl. No Tatars would cross a river or come by raft or boat. They were safe here.
That night they feasted again and celebrated their summer raiding, and the women danced with joy to see them returned. Andriushko got so drunk he rode on a bucking bull, and sang,
If you drink you will die,
If you don’t you will die,
So join with me, drunkards all
And raise your glasses high!
The unmarried men had their slave girls and some of the married men also tried to introduce their pretty young captives into their households with wide-eyed innocence, only to feel the terrible wrath of their wives. But over it all there hung the shadow of some grievous decision to be made. Stanley urged Stenka constantly that they must ride for Moscow, and the Cossack chieftain looked silent and troubled.
Nicholas felt torn between admiration and disgust for these wild men of the steppe: in Shropshire they would have been mere gangs of predatory bandits, hunted down and hanged – but here he could not help but envy the feral, untamed energy and joyous lawlessness. It was exhilarating to be among men so free – free as no men before or since – who still rode a measureless and unfenced steppeland that no one even owned. These Stenkas and Ivans, they would fight all their lives, drink, wench, gain scar after scar and die young. Very few of them would see forty. They would leave few good deeds behind them, many widows and orphans. No one could admire them, but they lived by their own code of fierce loyalty, and with a burning bright flame every day of their short wild lives. He could see why men rode south into the empty steppeland and turned Cossack. He could see it very well.
At night before they became too drunk they told tales: grim anecdotes of raiding and blood feud, or travellers’ tales of the land north and east over the mountains, the land of Sibir, where tribal peoples lived clad in furs before the Spirit Gate of the Sky, and the spirit flames that lit the sky in green veils, lighting the frozen white world at midnight. There were people who lived in holes in the ground, and sucked the blood of dogs, and slept six months a year in dens of ice. There were ancient peoples who hunted and crawled through perpetual night, diabolical spells worked by beautiful women, and
vourdalaki
, vampires, and on the Island of Bones there were elephants’ teeth dug up from the frozen earth of a size you could barely conceive.
And in the tents the women sang lullabies to their infants: lullabies of ancient hatred.
Sleep, my child, and dream – your father
Takes his arms down from the wall,
Rides out to kill the godless Tatar
And all his Kindred, all
Nicholas drank too much sweet Armenian brandy and had troubled dreams. He rode into Moscow on a huge black-haired elephant, bellowing with Biblical wrath, and when the elephant turned its head he saw it had a human face. A gaunt, haunted face, with deep-set eyes and haggard expression.
When he awoke the next morning he knew something had happened. He went groggily to find Hodge.
Hodge said, ‘A Tatar rider came to the riverbank at dawn.’
‘Alone?’
‘Aye. You slept through it.’
‘I am a drunken sot.’
Hodge did not disagree. ‘He came with a message.’
‘Saying?’
‘Saying that if the men who slew the chieftain’s son were handed over, there might yet be washing of blades clean between Yakublev’s Cossacks and the Tatars.’
‘But Yakublev would not?’
‘He would not.’
‘What the devil saved them?’
‘Last night it came out that we had fought at Lepanto and Malta. The Hetman Yakublev had barely heard of Malta, so Stanley gave him a rousing account, but he knew of the great sea battle against the Turks. When he heard that we were there, and heard the full story of it from the knights, he declared them great warriors and as good as blood brothers of the Cossacks.’
‘Hm. Lucky.’
‘So the Tatar said he had doomed his entire people. And when they had finished their other wars they would return and wipe the Host of the Don from the earth for ever.’
‘Quite a threat.’
‘It is.’
‘And Yakublev has decided to ride for Russia.’
‘Well.’ Nicholas belched stale brandy breath. ‘By the beard of the Prophet and his ten tiny toes.’
Hodge cuffed him. ‘Idiot. Get up.’
Riders were milling about in the early morning, sun gleaming on odd bits of armour, breastplates, purloined Persian shields. All was confusion. The mist was thinning from the river and women were weeping and singing songs.
Not with ploughs
Our black earth is ploughed
But with sharp Tatar spears;
Our black earth is harrowed
By horses’ hooves
And watered with Cossack tears.
Other women were too angry to speak or sing. Their men who had only just returned were riding out again on some madcap campaign against the ancient enemy, the Tatars. For many months. There was even talk of riding all the way to Muscovy. The fools.
‘Get your horses!’ cried Smith.
‘Are we – are we riding?’
‘The Hosting of the Cossacks!’ cried a crazed-looking zealot with an eyepatch, long robe hitched up absurdly above his bony knees. It was Chvedar. He whirled a long sword dangerously above his head, cantering to and fro among the smoky wooden huts. Children stared at him, a few burst into tears. From the riverside came shouts of boatmen, clunking of rafts, whinnying of many horses.
‘To war the Cossacks will ride!’ cried Chvedar. ‘For St Nicholas and Lepanto against Turk and Tatar, for Great and Little and White Russia and our Holy Mother of all the Russias! For the Lord of Hosts is with us, Christ and his Holy Mother—’ at which point his horse stumbled over a squealing porker and Chvedar rolled from the saddle and lay winded on his back, his robe unseemly hitched. Women laughed raucously.
‘He was lucky not to land on his own sword,’ said Nicholas.
‘Is this really a Crusade?’ said Hodge. ‘Stinks like a tinker’s privy to me.’
‘I remember reading of the first crusades,’ said Nicholas. ‘They began in chaos too. But God is with us.’
‘If you say so.’
They went to get their horses.
The vastness of the country as they rode north was at first astonishing, and then tedious, and at last dispiriting. No matter how long they rode, the terrain remained exactly the same the next day as the day before. As if no progress was made at all. Would they ever reach Moscow of the White Walls, the Kremlin of the Red Towers?
But they were joined along the way by more brother Cossacks, some at last persuaded of the holiness of the cause, although others more confused. Nicholas heard one say, ‘We will bring home some rich loot from Moscow, will we not?’
Stenka roared at him, ‘We’re not sacking Moscow, you dolt, we’re defending it!’
‘Defending it?’ He looked most disappointed. ‘Why would we do that, brother?’
They came from the Volga, from the Wild Lands and the borderlands, from Saratov and Kagalnik and Siech. At last the Cossack column raising such summer dust as it rode must have numbered as many as three thousand.
‘And how many Tatars, did we hear in Constantinople?’ murmured Stanley.
‘Remember Malta,’ said Smith, ‘and do not think in terms of numbers. Or we’d be lost.’
‘We’re already lost,’ said Hodge.
The only useful intelligence that came to them as they rode filtered through the ranks from some rider who had it from a cousin who had been trading down on the Moldavian border. He said that the Turks had recaptured the great city of Tunis on the African coast.
Smith looked black. ‘Don John of Austria had it in the palm of his hand.’
The Cossack shrugged. ‘I heard it fell again.’
‘So despite Lepanto, the Turks are conquering in the Mediterranean once more,’ said Smith bitterly.
‘They are still exhausted,’ said Stanley. ‘It is one small setback, no more. Tunis is just a lair of Barbary pirates.’
Smith grunted.
‘But maybe enough for the Turks to feel secure on that frontier again. To turn their attentions to other frontiers … Northwards, for example …’
Smith sullenly heeled his horse.
‘It never ends, does it?’ said Nicholas.
Stanley shook his head. ‘Not till Doomsday. It never ends and we never win. We just keep fighting for what is right. But it will never be done. Not in this world.’
At last, after many weary days’ riding, twelve or fourteen bone-aching hours a day, the landscape slowly began to change: more woods, rivers, cooler air, and they began to pass more farmsteads, and then villages and cultivated fields and orchards. The smoke of village hearthfires, glint of church roofs, gold crosses, steeples, the whitewashed walls of manors, waterwheels clacking to the peaceful trickle of slowly moving streams.
They were drawing near to their destination.
‘But two more days,’ said Stenka. ‘I remember this country here well. Two more days and your eyes will see Moscow.’
The huge column made its approach known far off, the ground rumbling, dust rising from the dirt roads, and people running inside, dragging their children, bolting the doors at this terrifying sight. But Yakublev gave the order to raise high the Icon of St Nicholas, and he told his men to sing hymns. Somewhat uncertainly they followed Chvedar in singing psalms of dubious provenance, and the villagers understood they were Christian, at least. News of their coming then seemed to spread before them, and sometimes women in headscarves would come forward and cross themselves and give them bread and cheese and apples and plums. Men showed them where they might best fodder the horses and they gave their word not to ride over hay meadows or damage crops.
‘Have you heard news from Moscow?’ they asked. ‘Have there been Tatars on the roads? Is all well?’
The villagers looked afraid at the very name of Tatar. But no, there had been no raids this year. There had been other troubles aplenty – but no unbelievers from the East. ‘Are the Tatars coming again?’ ‘Have you heard tell?’ ‘Friends,’ they pleaded, plucking at their reins, ‘tell us, for the love of God. We cannot survive another year of Tatar raiding. We will starve to death this winter.’
Their hearts went out to them. They were tongue-tied. It was Stanley at last who said gently, ‘The Tatars may be riding again. We have heard rumour of it. But look.’ He waved back over the mighty column, stretching a mile or more down the road. ‘We are come to fight for you. You need not fear.’
The villagers wept and tried to believe him.
It was late afternoon and they rode through dappled birchwoods and decided to camp there the night. Tomorrow they might make it to the gates of Moscow if they departed early and rode hard. This might be their last night of freedom for a long time. After this, they were in the iron grip of the dread and beautiful city.
Nicholas rode off a little way from the camp, needing silence. He stopped beside a sparkling woodland stream running over small moss-green rocks, and prayed, and thought of his family, and watered his horse. Then he knelt on one knee just upstream of the gentle beast and washed his hands in the crystal water and cupped them and drank. His horse nickered. He drank more. His horse raised her head, water dripping from her soft mouth, and snuffed the surface of the water. Flicked her ears. Nicholas stopped drinking and glanced upstream. A trail of rusty water from the iron-rich earth. No … He spat and stood swiftly to his feet. Fool. Never drink without walking the bankside a good hundred yards down.
There was a dense holly bush, a sharp turn in the stream, and then splayed across the muddy bank, a slain man. He lay on his back with his head under water, but what made Nicholas sicken and instantly draw his sword was the foul mutilation done to him. His breeches were pulled down to his ankles and at his groin there was nothing left but a garish red wound. Nicholas turned aside to spew, mere streamwater, his belly was so empty.
Sweet Jesus.
Some village cruelty, some ancient feud. Never idealize the peasants. Those who gave them apples just this morning were the same who would take up their pitchforks in an instant and run bloody riot, killing Poles or Jews or whoever took their fancy. His father used to say, ‘When the aristocrats rule, the peasants suffer. When the peasants rule, everybody suffers.’
Or maybe this sorry corpse was a man who ravished another’s daughter, the ravisher here quietly castrated and drowned by her brothers in a sunlit birchwood … But somehow he knew deep down that was not it. This was no simple village feud. There was something sickening and evil here. He sensed with some old battle instinct that there might be more bodies lying slain hereabouts, and his mare was stepping her hooves and trembling now too with deep discomfort. He patted her flanks. ‘Easy, girl. Easy.’ He took her reins. Suddenly he did not want to be alone here at all. He wanted to be back with Hodge and Smith and Stanley. Perhaps throwing up some defences round the camp. Could it even be that somewhere in these lovely summer woods, small ponies were moving with delicate hooves, and silent, narrow-eyed riders …
And then he saw them: but they were no Tatars. They were like something out of a nightmare, and he could not even mount up for frozen fear.
Dark wraiths among the light green trees, black riders, sun-dappled. They seemed to suck in the light. At their head came one on a black horse and he wore some kind of crude animal mask carved out of wood. He carried a long whip, and a sword at his side, and roped to his saddle was a severed dog’s head, clotted with black blood. Coming horribly slowly through the trees towards him in a broad fan were five or six more, similarly dressed, and again as in a nightmare, he could not move. He knew they had been watching him all the time. They were about to kill him too, as they had recently slain the poor soul on the bankside, but they hesitated a moment because they were not sure he was truly a worthless village peasant, there was some air about him … He stood speechless beside his restive horse, sword drawn but loose. He could not flee.
He knew who they were now. He hoped desperately that before they trotted across the stream and cut him down, he would have the strength to mount his horse and fight back and take at least one of the devils with him.
The one in the animal mask at the head of the group reined in across the stream. The mouth of his mask was carved as if baring its teeth in a savage grin, and the eyes of the rider glittered through the shadowed eyeholes as if in similar amusement. He spoke in a dry cracked voice, very deep, icily unpleasant.
He was too numb to take in what the rider said. But he spoke enough of the language now to shout back, ‘Friend, Christian – we have business in Moscow!’
They laughed, the leader’s laugh a muffled growl behind his mask. ‘We choose our friends. There is more than one of you?’
He said, voice quieter now, more controlled, ‘There are three thousand Cossacks under Hetman Yakublev, not a mile away. I am surprised you have not heard them, or smelt them.’
‘Smelt them? Do you think we are dogs?’
He in his barbaric animal mask, severed dog’s head at his side. Nicholas already thought them much lower than dogs. He said nothing.
Another of the riders had already trotted over the stream and was standing up in his stirrups close behind, throwing a rope up over a low branch.
Nicholas cleared his throat, painfully tensed, gripped his sword hilt harder, and said, ‘I know you. You are Czar Ivan’s Oprichnina. I ride with the Cossacks, but I am of a party from the Court of Queen Elizabeth of England.’ He sat straighter in his saddle. ‘Her Majesty and your Czar have had exchange of letter and gifts, and we bring more. I do not think your Czar and Lord would be altogether pleased if you lynched me now.’
He could hear the rider behind him continuing to haul the rope, the sound of it rasping over the bark, the rider knotting it around the branch to his satisfaction, throwing a hangman’s knot of seven or eight coils at the other end with practised hand. Nicholas glanced back. The rider tugged it hard and smiled at him. Another of the riders’ horses calmly cropped the sweet green streamside grass.
At last the leader said, ‘You interest me. What gifts have you brought?’
‘They are for Czar Ivan’s eyes, not yours. But there are fine silver plates, precious cloths, and a portrait miniature of our Queen.’
‘Does it flatter her?’
He felt his temper flare, despite the situation, and the hot blood of generations of proud Ingoldsbys, who had served their ruling monarch from Otterburn to Poitiers. For all his evil looks and hellish accoutrements, this dark-cloaked figure before him was really just another over-promoted thug on a nice horse. He remembered what he learned at Malta, at Lepanto: that the cure for paralysing fear is a kind of wild scorn, an aristocratic contempt, for danger, for life, for the Angel of Death himself. They can but kill me.
‘That is no business of yours.’ He swung up onto his horse and pulled the reins tight, the horse’s head jerking up with his own, chin jutting, defiant. ‘And do not think I am some helpless village peasant who can be castrated and murdered for your amusement. Now tell your thug here to take this rope down again, before I cut it down myself, and maybe him with it.’
The animal mask stared long and hard at him, the eyes burning, boring into him. Committing him to memory. Then he said, voice harsher than ever, ‘I wish you safe passage to Moscow, friend,’ and pulled his horse around. The hangman cantered back over the stream to join them and in a moment the whole dark troupe had vanished away into the trees.
