The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible (12 page)

20

It was a grim place to stay the night but they decided they must. Most of the Cossacks slept out on the heathland some way away, but a few kept to the ruined village, including the four Englishmen. Stanley wanted to stay near the girl.

Stenka shared his brandy with Nicholas, watching a red sun go down through the darkening pines. Then he took back his flask again and eyed him. ‘Fools die,’ he said abruptly. ‘We Cossacks have many good sayings, but the briefest and best is, “Fools die.” You were a fool today.’

Nicholas burped. ‘Everyone dies. And I do what I choose, even in your country.’

Stenka grinned and clapped him on the back. ‘So best to die nobly, a noble fool, for the life and honour of some peasant slut? Ach, we’ll make a Cossack of you yet! Sometimes I like a fool!’ And to Nicholas’s embarrassment, Stenka Timofeivitch suddenly embraced him and planted a kiss on each cheek. ‘Young Englishman, I salute you!’

Stanley fell asleep, sitting propped against the burnt wall of the cottage, and when he awoke at dawn the girl was gone. He and Nicholas and Hodge ran into the forest, calling. It was Nicholas who found her, swinging from a tree. She had hanged herself in the night. And – the cruel, the laughing Fates of the world, those old hags – she had hanged herself with the very rope Nicholas took down from the tree before, the rope of the Oprichnik. He took her
down and laid her on the ground and knelt and wept. Stanley wept also, and thumped the ground in rage.

Later they burnt the rope and dug a grave and buried her and put a cross at the head of the grave and said a prayer over her. Even Stenka, standing beside the sorry spot with his sword drawn as if ready for vengeance, tip to the ground, bowed his head and wept. It was no shame for a Cossack to weep at such a thing. It was as if the silent nameless girl, the young mother, had been a symbol of something they had all lost. Lost innocence, perhaps. Only a few years before she had still been a little girl running through the forest, wondering at it all, all life before her. And she had grown up and married and lived to see her man and her child slain before her eyes, and had killed herself in grief.

The priests said that such suicides could not enter Heaven. But Stenka thought, If God is just, as they say, she will enter Heaven, as surely as any saint. He saw a white bird taking flight for the country of Heaven, the girl healed and reunited with her parents and her man and her child. Surely it must be true. If God was just, if the world was not a mere idiot’s tale and a bloody charnelhouse, surely better must come hereafter.

They rode on that last morning until midday, and then the main body of the Cossacks set up camp on a thinly wooded heath some five miles from the town, eyed by suspicious villagers. Messengers were already riding to the city in warning. Only a small party would go on from here: the four Englishmen, Stenka, and Andriushko. The two Cossacks dressed down specially for the occasion, amid much grumbling. They wore clean white shirts that covered up their ­battle scars and Stenka said sourly that he would try to look civilized. ‘Like a fat city-dwelling burgher with a wife like Tamburlane,’ he said.

As they were about to ride out, there was a hubbub in the camp and then Yakublev trotted hurriedly over to them, as sombre as they had ever seen him.

‘Brothers, make haste. Impress upon the Czar Ivan that it is coming. It is no rumour.’ He looked about him. ‘A party of riders has arrived in the camp, distant kinsmen. They say the Tatar host
has crossed the Oka river to the east. They are maybe three or four days from Moscow.’

‘Three days!’

‘Let me talk to them!’ cried Smith, kicking his horse.

‘No need,’ said Yakublev with stentorian firmness. ‘It is as they say. The Tatar host is three or four days off, and as we have always feared, their numbers are beyond counting. Our kinsmen reckoned at least fifty thousand. They also saw siege cannon, ox-carts groaning with good supplies and powder – and tall men marching in good order. Too good order for Tatars.’

‘Janizaries,’ said Smith.

Yakublev inclined his head. ‘Get you to Moscow. We Cossacks are committed to this now, doomed though we are, and every moment counts.’

And so they galloped out, and came to Holy Mother Moscow.

At first sight over a flat plain, Nicholas’s thought was, This is a city we can defend.

There were outlying houses, a river, strong stone walls, and then they came to mighty wooden gates, standing wide open, and were admitted with little delay.

‘Have you heard of the coming of the Tatars?’ Stanley asked of the guards.

One shrugged. ‘The Tatars are always coming.’

‘This time in great numbers, and in earnest.’

The guard looked at him blankly, as if he didn’t want to hear.

Riding on in, Stanley glanced back and all around. The gates were sturdy enough, but there was no sign of stones or timbers for bulking anywhere to hand.

They trotted up narrow streets, among wooden houses, some with elaborately carved doors and eaves and gable ends. Hurried as they were, Nicholas took in hastening people, the flame of oil lanthorns in dark taverns, pretty maids with fair hair and high cheekbones, gold cupolas on the skyline – and a faint atmosphere of sullen oppression.

This grew heavier when Andriushko reined in his horse and glared down a dark alleyway to the right.

‘What is it?’

‘Down there,’ said the Cossack, ‘was where I was almost whipped to death by four of the Oprichnina. Ah, happy memories.’

They rode silently across a wide square busy with market day, where Manchu and Persian merchants traded from fringed stalls. They saw suntanned warriors in silk shirts and furs, blind bandura players with hanging scalplocks, a troupe of Polish actors performing a miracle play, Finnish minstrels singing their ancient myths of Maria the White Swan-Girl and Baba Yaga. Smith and Stanley looked grimmer by the moment … This was no city readying for attack.

‘Maybe Czar Ivan has paid off the Tatars already,’ murmured Nicholas, ‘or has the gold for it.’

Stanley shook his head. ‘Do not even mention his name in public. Nobody dares.’

They took directions for the English House, and were greeted formally and politely by a Thomas Waverley, and an older Thomas Southam, and Robert Greene: sober merchants and embassy men, determinedly neutral, interested only in peace and trade. The last men to confide in that they had just yesterday slaughtered a party of the Czar’s Oprichnina. But another enemy was coming.

The merchants invited them to drink, to dine with them, but they brushed them off in their haste. They must speak first. Waverley winced with displeasure.

‘A Tatar army is three days off,’ said Stanley. ‘They mean to burn Moscow to the ground. Have you not heard?’

The English merchants’ attitude was evidently that of the city in general. Waverley said, ‘Tatar raiders are always coming. There is endless threat and bargaining. The Imperial coffers are vast, the wealth of this country is already immense. The barbarians will be paid off and ride home. Do not excite yourselves. You have come on Royal business, we hear?’

‘I tell you,’ said Stanley, his voice rising, ‘this is no ordinary raid, this is a full-scale invasion. They will destroy Moscow.’

‘Moscow is their pot of gold, their paymaster,’ put in Robert Greene. ‘Why would they destroy it?’

‘And how do you know this?’ said Waverley. ‘Have you seen this great army yourselves?’

Damn their complacency. ‘We have not,’ admitted Stanley, ‘but we have good report of it.’

‘Rumours, conjecture, exaggeration. All part of the negotiations, in fact.’

‘And we know the Ottoman Court is involved too. It is far larger than an ordinary Tatar raid. Turkey wants back Astrakhan, command of the Black and the Caspian Sea. It fears the rise of this new Russia to the north.’

Waverley looked ironic, amused. ‘You have heard this from the Grand Sultan himself ? You have dined with him lately, perhaps?’

Stanley bit his tongue. Hell and damnation. It would be better not to tell these merchantmen everything. They were not untrustworthy, but their view of the world was limited indeed – like a money-grubbing mole’s.

Smith blurted out, ‘Can the city not at least prepare for a possible attack? Even if it does succeed in paying them off ? Surely the Imperial Court must be aware of an army approaching in such numbers?’

Waverley said smoothly, ‘You must understand that this is a vast country, no England. His Imperial Majesty’s intelligence network, his Oprichnina—’

‘That’s his intelligence network?’ said Nicholas. Waverley raised an eyebrow at such rude passion. Stanley laid his hand on Nicholas’s arm.

‘The Oprichnina,’ continued Waverley, ‘are not perhaps as sophisticated as my Lord Cecil’s in England. There is, if it is not undiplomatic to say so, a great deal of ignorance in this country, of what is what, and indeed of who knows what. Often it seems nobody knows anything. Nobody even knows what nobody knows.’

Hodge harrumphed. ‘You may be speaking good English now, but that sounds like Russian, or double Dutch. Not plain sense.’

Waverley eyed him. ‘Many people feel it is better to know nothing, to say nothing, and to remain as unobtrusive as possible.’

He added that it was well known the Russian defensive line lay perilously close to Moscow, stretching between Nizhni Novgorod and Tula, and it was often pierced by Tatar raiding parties. He spoke eloquently and soothingly of how they followed the black roads and the secret trails over the steppe, camping in birchwood clearings, no more than ten or twenty miles from Moscow and yet often their approach still unknown or unreported in this immense, thinly peopled country.

‘Aye,’ said Smith sharply. ‘In fact only a day’s ride away camps a Cossack force of some three thousand.’

Waverley paled slightly. ‘Cossacks?’

‘Loyal allies,’ said Smith. ‘We rode in with them. They come to fight for Moscow.’

‘Cossacks,’ repeated Waverley. ‘This could be merely escalating hostilities. The Cossacks and the Tatars are deadly enemies.’

Stenka finally snapped. ‘We know they are deadly enemies!’ he roared at the quailing merchants, and gesturing at Andriushko by his side, ‘We two are Cossacks! And that’s why we make such damned good Tatar-killers! That’s why these English brought us here, you whey-faced, pigeon-livered, ducat-counting cotquean!’

Stanley stepped in front of the red-faced chieftain. ‘Our pardon, gentlemen, it has been a long journey and we are weary. A glass of wine, perhaps, would restore us all.’

‘Wine might only inflame your passions more,’ said Waverley coldly.

Stanley smiled. ‘And then perhaps, if you might introduce us at Court.’

‘Court?’ echoed Waverley. He looked them over as if inspecting bedlam beggars. ‘The Imperial Court?’

Nicholas spoke up. ‘We are under direct command of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, and we come bearing gifts for Czar Ivan.’

‘Gifts? Ah!’ Waverley relaxed a little. Gifts, overtures of friendly intent, better trade agreements … and Her Majesty. ‘Yes indeed. Then after you have washed and dressed afresh, perhaps, we may go to the Court. But,’ he added, ‘an audience with the Czar can take time to obtain. Days, sometimes.’

In three days it would be too late. But for once they all managed to restrain themselves and obsequiously bowed their heads.

They washed, shaved, dressed in fine clean clothes laid out for them in their guest chambers, and ate a hurried meal. Black ryebread and thinly sliced mutton. Nicholas could see Hodge about to comment, so he got in first. ‘Not as good as Shropshire mutton.’

Hodge harrumphed. He always commented unfavourably on foreign food.

A maidservant came in with more bread, face modestly lowered, dark curled hair worn long over the shoulders, bright young eyes and rosy cheeks, her slim figure evident in a plain green dress, matched with some rather dainty shoes. Nicholas stared. Something within him lurched.

‘Eat,’ said Smith gruffly, jabbing him. ‘Concentrate. No time for that now.’

‘Is she – is she a maidservant?’ he whispered.

Smith chewed and swallowed. ‘Daughter of the house. One of Waverley’s own, I think.’

‘They have their families here?’

‘Some of them. This is the English House, a little square of English soil, in law.’

‘Don’t they know the danger they’re in? Why haven’t they sent them away?’

Smith shrugged. ‘Eat. Things to do.’

He glanced back at the girl as she left the room again. She reminded him of someone, and it filled him with fear more than pleasure. She reminded him of Maddalena, his first love, on Malta.

After their brief meal, they were indeed introduced to merchants’ families. There was a rather blowsy, flaxen-haired Mistress Ann Southam, not at all what you would expect, and a shrewish Mistress Greene, and three children of the Greene family, Jane, eleven, Robert, nine, and Cecily, five. Thomas Waverley had lost his wife to a fever some years ago, but he had a daughter of seventeen years, raised by her beloved nurse. Slender, bright-eyed, in a plain green dress. She curtsied, blushing. Her name was Rebecca.

21

The two Cossacks agreed it would be better for them to remain at the English House for now, so Thomas Waverley conducted the other four out into the streets, and towards the towering dark red walls of the city within a city called the Kremlin: the Fortress.

They passed by Imperial Guards in white brocade trimmed with fur, holding long silvered axes, standing under banners of the black two-headed eagle, previously of Byzantium and before that of Ancient Persia. Enquiry after enquiry of palace guard and seneschal led them at last to the west door of one of the Kremlin’s magnificent cupola-topped churches. It was now late afternoon, and within, a choir was singing.

‘His Excellency is at worship,’ said their guide in hushed tones. ‘Please follow me.’

Ivan was known to be devout.

They entered into a church as vast and dark as a cave, and took their seats amid a congregation of elaborately dressed ladies and noblemen who remained rigid, not one turning to look at them. When his eyes became accustomed to the dimly candlelit interior of the church, Nicholas’s eyes began to make out magnificent ­coloured frescoes of white-bearded saints, blazing golden icons, distant gleams of lanterns through a forest of pillars reaching skywards, like low stars seen through trees at night, and the air was filled with intoxicating incense and the hot smoky oil of gleaming brass lamps. The music of the choir was powerful and profound. As a boy he had often heard the choir sing in the abbey church in Shrewsbury, but it was nothing like this. His soul stirred. He began to see this was a country of great beauty and depth, as well as great fear and wildness.

Finally he saw that before the choir, with his back to the congregation, there stood not a black-robed priest of the Orthodox Church, as might be expected, but a tall, thin figure in a long, elaborate robe, dark midnight blue but covered with gold embroideries. Nicholas could only glimpse his face sidelong when he turned: high cheekbones, sunken cheeks, a long straggling beard, reddish but shot through with grey, for all the world like some old storybook wizard, some woodcut of Merlin himself. This bizarre figure was conducting the choir with a long black baton.

The hymn came to an end and a priest took up reciting the liturgy in Old Slavonic. The figure before the choir turned round. Immediately all the assembled noblemen and women bowed their heads so as not to look directly at him, but Nicholas continued to spy from beneath lowered eyelids. There was something chilling, even horrifying in that haunted face.

No, he was not old, no more than his mid-thirties perhaps, yet already his expression was one of haggard gloom. His skin seemed grey and wrinkled, his eyes deep-set and brooding, the only light in them one of quick suspicion as he looked out over his assembled nobles. His hair was already scanty, his lips thin and clenched, his brow deep-furrowed, and though tall and bony and strong-looking, he was also stoop-shouldered and hollow-chested. And then Nicholas realised that Czar Ivan IV Vasil’evich – for it could only be him – had not been conducting the choir with a long baton. It was a spear.

For a moment he wondered if, had one of the choristers sung a wrong note, he would have been instantly impaled. But he dismissed the idea as an absurd fantasy.

Later on, he would not be so sure.

The church service lasted for two hours. Smith stamped his feet as they stood for yet another psalm, impatient as a bull in the stall. Finally it came to an end, and the Czar with a long retinue swept from the church and vanished.

Stanley seized their guide. ‘We must speak with the Czar in haste. We have urgent news of the movement of Tatars. For God’s sake, man, we cannot wait!’

The guide looked troubled and disapproving. He detached himself. ‘I will see what can be done. There are many levels of court etiquette …’

Smith raised his face to the high iconostasis and closed his eyes and prayed to St John himself.

St John must have heard his prayer. Three hours later they were being ushered into an antechamber, then another more grand, ­servants carrying the boxes and crates that they had brought so far over sea and steppe. Only Nicholas himself carried a gift personally, the miniature of the Queen, discreetly covered in a white linen cloth.

He took in a palace of armour and spears on the walls, daggers glittering with jewels, Polish and Tatar cavalry sabres captured in the wars. Silent chamberlains in ermine pelts, a courtyard with two falconers, one with a hooded hawk, the other with a giant Berkut eagle used for hunting wolves. Cabinets of brilliant deep red and blue Venetian glass, silver goblets and crested gold plate on crude trestle tables, silk pillows on rough-hewn benches, priceless cloth-of-gold tapestries nailed to bare wooden walls. Savagery and splendour. Wealth had only just come to this country; and civilized conduct not yet.

At last they came into the most magnificent chamber of all: magnificent yet oppressive, with a low, heavy, gilded ceiling, blood-red walls and massive squat pillars similarly painted in diagonal bands of red and gold. The sense of danger and oppression was only emphasized by both sides of the blood-red chamber being lined with heavily armoured men, standing as motionless as iron statues, holding long gleaming halberds. The thick rugs beneath their feet, too, were all blood red. If any visitors did displease the Czar and had to be cut down where they stood, reflected Nicholas with grim humour, at least it wouldn’t leave any difficult stains.

And on a gilded throne at the back of the chamber sat the gaunt figure they had seen before. He now wore an ankle-length golden dalmatic, with gold slippers beneath – too much gold – and sat so still and hieratic, eyes fixed unblinking upon them, he might have been a carven idol.

A servant led them grovelling forward, bent almost double. The four walked upright, but at least kept their eyes lowered.

Another court official stepped forward and declared in ringing tones, ‘Ivan the High Prince, Caesar Augustus, by God’s grace Emperor of all Russia, Grand Duke of Vladimir, Moscow and Novgorod, King of Kazan …’

Caesar Augustus? Nicholas was thinking, as the list went on and on. How does that work?

Finally the recitation of Ivan’s titles ended, and the official waved his hand over the new arrivals.

‘Visitors from the Court of England, Your Excellency. They have brought gifts.’

The glowering idol on his gilded throne remained terrifyingly still. It was indeed unnerving, thought Nicholas. He had stood before Elizabeth herself, one of the most formidable rulers in all Christendom – but this was worse. Elizabeth did not deliberately try to create an atmosphere of cold fear. Yet though from his deeds, and those of his barbaric servants, Nicholas could already class him as an evil man, it was also true that like all leaders of men, all kings and captains he had known, Ivan IV Vasil’evich possessed a damnable charisma.

He remained still, silent and expressionless as the gifts were presented: the porcelains, the linens and fine stuffs, the lengths of creamy Bruges lace. Hodge was getting annoyed. After all they’d been through an’ all. He wanted to bow and tug his forelock and say sarcastically, So glad they please you, Your Majesty.

Bloody Czars.

At last the gifts were all displayed and then taken away and the court official raised an eyebrow at Nicholas. He stepped forward and unveiled the exquisite miniature of the Queen, a small oval of Her Majesty against a dark background, her pearls and pale skin gleaming.

‘An image of my beloved Queen, Your Excellency. Queen Elizabeth of England.’

At once the idol came alive. Ivan leaned forward and snatched it from Nicholas as eagerly as a child. He surveyed it with bright eyes.

‘This is she?’ His voice was low, strained, hoarse.

‘It is, Your Excellency.’

‘And it is true to life?’

Nicholas said evenly, ‘It is.’

To his astonishment he said, ‘You are her cousin?’

‘I? No, no, I am no royalty, I am but a baronet, Sir Nicholas Ingoldsby, her loyal servant.’

‘A nobleman?’

‘Not a lord, no, but a, a …’ He did not know the Russian.

Ivan cried, ‘A boyar! An English boyar!’ He leaned forward, dark eyes burning and fixed on Nicholas. Already he could sense this Ivan’s furious energy, his wild and unpredictable changes of mood, his crackling power. ‘Tell me – step closer, step closer, you please me already, Englishman, your gifts and your manner both – tell me, are you as treacherous and disloyal to your Queen as my boyars are to me? Eh?’

‘I would lay down my life for my Queen, Excellency. All English­men would.’

‘I like this England! Are there other Russians in England now?’

‘A few merchants, in London. Traders in fur.’

Ivan sat back. All ceremony was gone from him, he even seemed relaxed for a moment. ‘If only Russia were more like England,’ he murmured. Then he leapt up. ‘Tell me your name again.’

Nicholas told him. Ivan could make nothing of it. He roared out, ‘Bring me a translation.’ A hare-eyed clerk dashed forward and fell to his knees. ‘Get up, you drivelling fool, and tell me what his name means.’

The clerk found that Nicholas’s father was Sir John, and finally decided, trembling visibly, that in Russian, this Englishman’s name would be Prince Nikolas Ivanovitch of the Golden Town.

‘Then so I declare you!’ said Ivan. ‘Your gift is a noble one. Tell me’ – and once again this extraordinary figure stepped close to him, a little too close – ‘what do you make of our country?’

Stanley willed, Tread very carefully, Brother Nicholas.
Think
.

Nicholas breathed and said, ‘I and my companions find it most interesting.’

‘Interesting? And vile?’

‘Vile? No, Your Excellency, not vile.’

Ivan rubbed his beard, eyes searching the carpet, brooding. ‘Vile as a rotting corpse. It is the Lord’s affliction for our sins.’ He then grasped Nicholas by the arm, his new confidant, and led him aside a little so no one else could hear. Nicholas glanced again at the Czar: that expression, those dark, damned eyes. Yes, horrifying. That was the word. He breathed as slow and deep as he could, to stay calm.

‘It all depends on God what your destiny may be,’ Ivan was saying softly, musing, distant. His grip on Nicholas’s arm like a vice. ‘God Himself is not rational, he loves the violent in nature and detests the lukewarm and the Laodicean. Does He not say in Holy Scripture that He will spew the lukewarm out of his mouth? He damns to eternal torment the timorous and calculating. Everywhere in nature you see ferocity rewarded and gentleness savagely punished.’

It was a monologue, the confessional of one accustomed only to speaking, not listening.

‘When I was a boy,’ said Ivan, laughing a ragged, tortured laugh, ‘a happy, innocent child, living in the eternal innocent sunshine of the Kremlin, in my days of innocence and Eden! – I had a little pet bird. One day out of curiosity I held it tight and kissed it and it cheeped merrily and then I pulled a feather out and it squirmed in my hand, and I pulled another and it squirmed more and more … In the end I cut its belly open …’

Nicholas exerted all his self-control not to pull away. Ivan was so close to him physically yet so distant, stinking breath and far-off gaze.

‘I cut its belly open, wondering all the while if I should be struck down by Heaven for my cruelty. But it never happened. The little bird was in my hands, my power. I cut its belly open and pondered a while and then the little bird died and I threw it out of the window, as many a man and woman has been thrown out of the high windows of the Kremlin to land mortal in the dust below.’

He nodded gravely, looking hard at his new English friend.

‘This is the world God in His Wisdom has made. Better to cut the throats of ten thousand innocent men than leave one guilty man alive. To cut out infection, it is wise also to cut out a wide circle of flesh around the wound. Do you understand?’

Nicholas nodded, understanding nothing, desperate only to get away. There was something both deranged and evil here. And this was the man they had come to serve, to fight for if need be. He remembered the words of the man down at the riverside fair.
He is the Devil Incarnate, come to earth to torment men for their sins.

Abruptly Ivan dropped his arm and took in the audience ­chamber once more.

‘Who are these companions?’

They gave their names. Ivan looked pleased. He liked Englishmen. For now. At least they were not Russians, like his people – and himself.

‘You reside at the English House? And you came with Cossacks?’

Even Stanley was momentarily startled.

‘Some three thousand Cossacks,’ said Ivan, ‘camped now not ten miles off ?’

So it was in Russia. Nobody knew anything, but more danger­ously, nobody knew what anyone else knew either. This Ivan obviously had some spy network, however unreliable. Stanley confirmed it was true about the Cossacks. ‘And loyal servants to Your Excellency, every one. They come for the defence of Moscow.’

‘They know of a plot against me?’

‘The Tatars.’

‘The Tatars?’ he echoed with disbelief, and again Ivan brooded awhile. They would become accustomed to these long, silent, threatening gulfs in conversation. Then he said, ‘These Cossacks are welcome. They must be hungry after so long a journey. We will send them grain.’

Immediately Stanley thought he must send Stenka back with the grain, to warn them to test it on an animal first. Ivan could easily have the whole lot laced with poison.

Ivan sighed and added, in characteristic non sequitur, ‘Oh, how my people suffer.’

Stanley seized his chance. ‘Yet their suffering will only be magnified, Excellency, if Devlet Giray of the Crimea and the Tatar Host come against you. All that we have heard, even with intelligence from the English House at Constantinople, tells us that they mean wholesale invasion.’

Ivan waved his hand, as if entirely uninterested in this immediate and severe threat to his people. He was still thinking of this Elizabeth. ‘The Tatars would not dare,’ he said vaguely. ‘They would not stand against the might of the New Jerusalem that has already taken Kazan from them, and now Astrakhan. They are mere barbarians of the steppes.’ He resumed his place upon his gilded throne and addressed them once more as a High Czar, a distant being of another order. His voice became louder. ‘We are a great new Empire, under the protection of Almighty God! My commandments are obeyed from the heights of Caucasus to the Aral Sea, to the red deserts of Samarkand, to Novgorod the Great! They pass over the black roads of the steppe, the black earth of the Don and the Volga like the wind. By my commandment the great bell of Novgorod now hangs in the Ouspensky cathedral, here in the Kremlin, and its tolling protects all who hear it. Those unchristened Tatars would not dream of riding against Moscow of the White Walls. No.’ He shook his head violently. ‘It is not the Tatars who are a threat to us—’