His cousin, a sea captain, had warned him about these northern waters. There were ice floes big as mountains, he had said. No place for a skinny little fellow like him. Well, here he was, halfway to Cathay, in a land of men like bears. And, as far as he could see, things were looking up. For his narrow eyes glinted as he saw how much money there was to be made.
How immense the land was: hundreds of leagues from town to town. How cheap was human life. When they had arrived in summer, he had watched the great barges being dragged upriver from the northern estuary by parties of men with ropes tied round them. He had heard their mournful singing; he had seen the overseers cut with whips those who fell. He wondered how many of these unfortunates survived the long journey.
Yet how fabulously rich it was, too. Since no one knew who these visitors were or where they came from, the English party had been kept almost in confinement in the north while their hosts awaited instructions from the capital.
‘These people’s hospitality is so great I can hardly tell if we are guests or prisoners,’ Chancellor had ruefully remarked to him.
It had been winter before they were taken to the capital, and so Wilson had seen the cargoes from these barges off-loaded on to a thousand sleds to be carried from the collecting points to the inner cities. He had never seen such a concourse of vehicles. Every league, every day, hundreds of sleds passed them on their way to or from the cities that rose out of the snowy wastes. Goods, all manner of goods, passed by: grain, fish, but above all he saw furs, furs, and more furs. Could there be so many sables, ermines, beavers and bears in all the world? This forest hinterland, he thought, must be greater than all the lands he had ever heard of.
But above all, one huge realization opened in his mind – an understanding that grew greater, more insistent, more awesome with every league they went: they were going further and further from the sea. This is the hugest country in the world, he thought, yet it has no shores.
How utterly different from his English home in London: nowhere in England were you far from its indented coastline; how utterly unlike the French, the Germans, the other folk who plied the busy North Sea and Baltic ports. These people in their vast, landlocked world of forest and snow were different, cut off, a race apart.
‘Truly, this is a rude and barbarous people,’ as Chancellor had remarked to his companions.
Yet their welcome in Moscow had been astounding. It had made an unforgettable impression on George Wilson. For no sooner had they arrived than they were summoned to attend the Tsar.
Even George Wilson, cunning and cynical little fellow that he was, found his knees shaking as they were ushered into the royal presence. He had already heard that, in this huge land, all men were the Tsar’s slaves: now he understood what that meant.
Ivan stood at the end of a great hall in the Kremlin Palace. On each side of him stood the huge forms of his boyars, in their heavy, rich kaftans. How tall he was – made taller by the high pointed hat he wore, trimmed with fur. A pale, hawk-like face; a terrible, piercing eye. He commanded all, dominated this heavy, Asiatic magnificence. The party were awestruck. As Ivan meant them to be, for he was anxious to impress these merchants from this strange and distant country. They might be useful to him.
He was friendly. Their letter of recommendation, written in Latin, Greek, German and other languages, was explained to him. Then they were invited to a feast.
It surpassed anything they could have imagined. A hundred sat down: they ate off solid gold. Stuffed fish, great roasts, strange delicacies like elk’s brains, caviar, blinis; wine served in goblets encrusted with gems. Everything was lavish, splendid, heavy. Tsar Ivan sat apart from the mere mortals he was honouring. From time to time he sent a morsel of food to one of the guests as a mark of his favour. Each time, all stood, while the name of the recipient was called out, and the Tsar’s own long title was proclaimed. Wilson noticed that the pious Tsar crossed himself, from right to left, each time he raised food to his own mouth. He also noticed that it was the fashion, amongst these huge, bearded people, to drink off a goblet of wine at a single draught.
The banquet went on for five hours.
‘I think we are at the court of Solomon himself,’ he whispered to one of his companions.
‘Or the court of Babylon,’ the other replied.
But it was only afterwards, when they were escorted round the royal palace, that Wilson truly appreciated that this strange, mighty empire was like no other.
For how splendid, yet how barbarous it was. Room succeeded cavernous room. It was like being in some endless succession of antechambers to a Russian church. Candles lit up the gloom. By their soft, gleaming light he saw walls painted with riotous patterns of plants, winding around each other like snakes, and with dancing animals –in reds, ochres, greens. No mirrors reflected the light, but everywhere hung icons that glimmered sadly with gold. There was little of the furniture that would have been found in an English palace: only plain chairs and benches, great studded trunks and huge stoves; but rich oriental carpets and hangings of silk and brocade more than compensated. It was a noble palace. And yet … And yet there was something else that made him fearful. It was a feeling of heaviness, of dark power. In this church-like gloom, the painted passages seemed to Wilson like tunnels, the chambers like halls in a labyrinth. As they went in, further and further, it made him think of something deep, subterranean, like a womb where a man might hide; and who knew what other passages, what chambers there might be, behind thick walls that would muffle any cry? He was glad when they came out.
Life for the English merchants was sunny, though. They were in the Tsar’s favour. Nor did it take them long to get to know the huge market into which they had accidentally come.
For Moscow, with its great fairs upon the ice, was a huge emporium. From the east, up the Volga and the Don, came cotton, sheep, spices. Each year, the Nogay tribesmen from the Asian steppe arrived with huge herds of horses. From Novgorod came iron, silver, salt; from other cities leather, oil, grain, honey and wax.
‘The opportunities are endless,’ Chancellor said excitedly.
Although Russia was rich in these raw materials, except for the arms she made, she had few manufactured goods. Wilson could think of any number of luxury items he could sell here. They could use a good English broadcloth, too, he considered. As for the return voyage home: This wax is no cheaper than I can buy in England, he calculated, but their furs … He could get a fortune for those furs.
Despite their powerful, burly appearance, his own shrewd intelligence soon detected that the big Russian merchants were essentially passive.
‘They only know their own country,’ he remarked to Chancellor. ‘In a way, they are like eager children.’
‘I agree,’ the leader replied, ‘but, remember, our first customer is the Tsar himself.’
For, they had quickly discovered, the Tsar had the monopoly of many of the chief goods in the market, including liquor. Every drop of vodka sold to the eager people at the little drinking booths belonged to him. All sables, all raw silk, all grain for export, was in the hands of his agents. And foreign merchants like themselves had to offer all their goods to him first.
Such was the all-pervading power of the centralized Muscovite state.
‘The Tsar wants chemicals, too, for explosives,’ Chancellor told him, ‘and he wants us to bring him men of learning. I have already promised to come again with doctors and men skilled in mining.’
At first some of these requests puzzled Wilson. He had already made the acquaintance of several German merchants who were allowed to reside in the city. He had seen there was a German doctor, too. Why, he wondered, should the Tsar want men from distant England when others could be found closer to his borders?
It was one of the Germans, a large, burly man who spoke some English, who explained it to him.
‘About six years ago, my friend, a German fellow offered to bring the Tsar all kinds of experts. He collected more than a hundred and brought
them to the Baltic ports. If he’d got them into Muscovy, I dare say the Tsar would have made him a rich man indeed.’
‘And why didn’t they get here?’
The German grinned.
‘They were stopped, that’s why. Arrested by the authorities.’ He looked at Wilson seriously. ‘And the highest powers were behind it – the very highest.’
‘Because?’
‘Do you suppose, my friend, that the Livonian Order, which controls many of the Baltic ports, is anxious to strengthen Ivan’s hand? He’s longing to walk in there and take over those Latvian and Estonian lands. Do you think Lithuania and Poland, or the Emperor of Germany want to see Russia any stronger than she is?’
He gazed around the market place.
‘Look at these people,’ he went on. ‘You can see for yourself: they’re backward. They have few industries, no learning at all. They eat and and drink, they whore and pray to their icons. And thats it. Their army is huge, but badly trained. When they try to get to the Baltic ports, the well-trained Swedes and Germans can cut them down in no time. And that’s how we like them. Who needs a civilized Russia? That’s why Tsar Ivan is so pleased to see you. You came round by the extreme north. It’s a long and inconvenient way, frozen half the year, but it still suits him very well. He can circumvent the Baltic that way and get the skilled men he knows he needs. You’re gold to him.’
While the English might be useful to the Tsar, he in turn could be very useful to them.
‘We sought a passage to Cathay by sea,’ Chancellor told Wilson, ‘yet it seems to me we can reach the east by land. Down the Volga, beyond the lands of the Tatars, lies the orient. Below the deserts lies Persia. With his protection, our merchants might reach such places after all.’
George Wilson soon decided that this strange, huge land was the best opportunity he would ever have to make his fortune. But he found it a disquieting place all the same.
It was not the violence, the crudity, or even the cruelty of the people. He cared nothing about any of these. It was their religion.
It was all-pervading. There seemed to be priests and monks everywhere. People crossed themselves for, it seemed to Wilson, no reason at all; and in every house there were icons to which people bowed.
‘’Tis like popery,’ he remarked, ‘only the idolatry of the Russians is even greater.’
Like most of his compatriots, George Wilson was a Protestant. He had been a boy when Henry VIII of England broke with the Pope in Rome. Now Henry’s son was on the throne, and all good Englishmen were supposed to be Protestant. This was a faith which suited Wilson very well, not from any profound religious conviction, for he had none, but rather because he had a rooted if secret dislike of all authority, and also because a certain harsh pride made him enjoy reading the tracts that attacked the abuses, and theology, of the old religion with fierce logic.
‘These Russians are fools,’ he concluded. But since he thought that of most people anyway, it did not greatly signify.
And when, in January, Chancellor told him that, after their return to England that spring, he intended to lead another expedition to Muscovy, and asked him if he wished to join it, Wilson insistently replied: ‘I do.’
He would make his fortune here. Besides, he had another reason in mind, too. The German merchant, also a Protestant, had an unmarried daughter, and no son. The girl was a little heavy, but handsome. A nice, plump girl, he thought.
He would return.
To Elena, it seemed that Boris had slowly grown another skin, on top of his own.
That, at least, was how she came to think of it.
Sometimes she had the impression that he was still moving about, rather uncomfortably, inside this carapace; that if she could find a way to break through, she would still find him within. At other times, it would be as if this new, ever thicker layer were stuck fast, glued on to his own skin and all of one piece with it. Then, even when he came to her intimately, it felt as if she had in her hands a strange animal with a thick hide, whose mind she did not know.
Not that, in the succeeding years, she saw him very often.
For three years the armies of Russia, led by Kurbsky and others, smashed the Tatar revolts around Kazan. They went further, across the eastern Volga into the land of the Nogays; even the distant Tatar Khan of West Siberia, beyond the Urals, acknowledged Ivan as his overlord. Twice, huge fleets went south down the mighty Volga, through the steppe to the desert lands of Astrakhan and took that city too.
Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan: how exotic Ivan’s new titles proclaimed him to be. Huge new chronicles were prepared, glorifying the Tsar and his family, and where necessary rewriting history so that the sacred mission of the Russian royal house should be clearly understood. All references that even hinted at former cooperation of the Russian princes with their Tatar overlords were removed.
It was now that, at one end of Moscow’s Red Square, the Metropolitan ordered the building of that fantastic collection of exotic towers apparently grafted together to make a new Russian life form. Unlike any other, the building later became famous in history as St Basil’s Cathedral.
Ivan would have liked, next, to defeat the mighty Khan of the Crimea as well; but for the present, that was too tough a nut to crack.
So it was that Tsar Ivan, trying to open the doors of his landlocked prison, turned northwards to threaten his neighbours – those rich Livonian ports he needed so much on the shores of the Baltic.
At first it seemed he might succeed.
No wonder, then, that Elena saw little of her husband. The life of the servitor was hard. Often there was little to eat. Blistering heat or tremendous cold: these were his lot. Before leaving for the north Boris had returned from Astrakhan with some modest plunder – a few roubles’ worth, that paid off some of his debts – and a hardened man.
His relationship with her father, never warm, now became distant. This was not a personal matter – indeed, Dimitri was pleased with his son-in-law’s career – it was a question of politics.
The trouble had begun when Boris had returned from Astrakhan. Beneath the new harsh exterior, Elena sensed a kind of elation in him. For while his armies had been subduing the steppe and desert by the Volga, Ivan and his inner counsellors had been pressing through another kind of victory at home: the reform of the realm.
Once again, in common with all the centralizing rulers of the era, it was the magnates and their clients that he was determined to crush. The old rewards for service, though they were not what they had once been, were curtailed. Instead of a boyar or serving prince being given a city to feed off, local men, chosen by the gentry and merchants, were to administer each locality. But most important of all, it was now decreed that all holders of estates – whether the service pomestie or the privately inherited votchina – must give the Tsar military service when summoned.
‘That will teach those lazy devils who is master,’ Boris grimly remarked in front of his father-in-law. ‘Do you know that half the estate holders in Tver were giving no service to anyone?’
‘Then tell me,’ Dimitri Ivanov asked acidly, ‘exactly what is the difference now between your estate, which you inherited, and a mere pomestie? Since the Tsar usually allows the son to carry on after the father on the service estates.’
Boris considered.
‘There’s a legal difference, technically; but in practice you’re right. There’s no difference. If you don’t serve, the Tsar will take your estate away.’
‘And you are happy with that?’
‘Yes. Why should I not want to serve the Tsar? Don’t you want to?’
It was a wicked question for he knew very well that his wife’s family held several estates and that, at present, none of them was actually serving.
Dimitri said nothing, but passed his hand over his bald head with obvious irritation.
‘If a man doesn’t want to serve the Tsar,’ Boris went on coolly, ‘I personally would have to conclude that he must be the Tsar’s ene
my.’
‘You should conclude no such thing, young man,’ Dimitri thundered.
‘I am glad to hear it,’ Boris answered drily.
Elena’s mother had managed to separate the two men after that. But the damage had been done.
Nor was it just a dispute between two men. Elena knew very well that the bad feeling between her husband and her father represented a growing divide between those who were behind the reforming Tsar, and the members of the old ruling classes, great and small, who disliked the whole tone of his rule.
Indeed, there were whispers in her father’s house now – things said that she would never have told Boris about – but which made her wonder if the young Tsar would last.
And so their life had proceeded, with brief visits from Boris, and an increasing hint of suspicion in the air around them.
If only he were not so distant when he came. If only she could break through his armour of reserve.
There was only one way to do so – only one way to make her husband happy. If only she could give him a son! Why was it denied her?
There had been a boy, David, who had died when he was a week old, while Boris was away on the first campaign in the north. And after that, try as she might, nothing.
Perhaps if they could win a great victory in the north. If Russia signed a peace treaty and Boris returned home for a longer period: perhaps then there would be a son. She was still young. She prayed for sunnier days.
But after some early successes, things started to go badly in the north. The Baltic cities looked for protection from Sweden, Lithuania, Denmark. It seemed the conflict might go on forever.
Then, in August 1560, Anastasia, the Tsar’s beloved wife, the light of his life, died.
And when she heard this, Elena’s heart sank. For she had a woman’s premonition that a time of greater darkness was ahead.