Prince Ivan (6 page)

“No, no, no,” he said, “not command. Request. That should be enough.”

“Of course, highness.”

“And have some of this
sbiten
, man. There’s plenty for two, and,” Ivan grinned crookedly, his father’s grin, “if you’re planning to talk as much as I think you are, you’ll need refreshment.”

“Thank you, highness. Most amusing.”

Ivan eyed him over the rim of his cup as he took a small mouthful of the spiced honey drink, and decided abruptly that it was late enough in the afternoon to justify something stronger. He emptied the cup in a single swallow, smacked its stoneware against the surface of the table, and clapped his hands for attention.

A servant and two mailed guards were through the door before the room had returned to silence. “Mead for two,” he said to the servant, and it arrived in less than a minute. He poured a cup for himself then another for Strel’tsin, filling both with the brimming abandon of one who didn’t really care about the quantity of alcohol being offered. Ivan was quietly curious about what truths might emerge after the High Steward had emptied his third or fourth cup.

For his own part, he’d learnt – practiced? experienced? – drinking under the tuition of Guard-Captain Akimov. That worthy and martial gentleman held certain opinions; one was that any Tsar who could outmatch his own courtiers and ambassadors from other realms had an advantage over all of them. In Akimov’s view a head for drink was a political weapon just as much as swords and arrows and armies. He had introduced Ivan Aleksandrovich to hard liquor with the same cool precision, and the same Tsar’s permission, as the first time he drew the sharp steel of a live-blade sword in the Tsarevich’s presence. One was as dangerous as the other; or as safe, depending on how it was treated.

Ivan had learnt that for every glass of vodka, wine or mead, he should match it with at least an equal quantity of water. He’d been told how every trusted servant worthy of his hire would know how to serve plain or coloured water in a vessel the same as those containing alcohol, but deliver those harmless jugs to the Tsar and his ministers. Even without such precautions, Ivan was young enough and fit enough to drink all of his companions under whatever table they might have sat around. He looked at the gold transparence of the mead and smelt its scent of fermented honey wafting around his nostrils, and suddenly the world wasn’t quite such an annoying place.

“Health and long life!” said Ivan, and drank the cup of mead down in a single long draught. He was deliberately daring the High Steward to match him, and was surprised when Strel’tsin did just that.

It was clear that Dmitriy Vasil’yevich was ready, willing and God alone knew, perhaps even able to go cup for cup with someone sixty years his junior. If anyone had suggested that so dry and shrivelled an individual was capable of such a thing, Ivan would have laughed aloud in their face. Confronted with the reality, he did nothing of the sort and dismissed the notion of drinking Strel’tsin into foolishness, instead watching the grey-haired, grey-bearded face with something much closer to respect.

“All right,” he said. “So the payment of bride-price by the would-be husband was the custom in the old days. That much I remember. But nowadays the payment goes out of the coffers, instead of in. Yes?”

“Yes, highness. As a dowry payment by the family of the bride to the family of her husband. Tsarevna Yekaterina was aware that your noble father the Tsar must find such a dowry not once, but three times.”

That was one of the many facts Ivan already knew and, because they were unpleasant, he had carefully forgotten until Strel’tsin’s dry, emotionless voice reminded him. He didn’t like the reminder. “Damn,” he said, and knew it was an inadequate response.

“Just so, highness. Khorlov is not wealthy, and three daughters—”

“Are three daughters, and scarcely the fault either of my father or my mother. Unless you would like to discuss the matter with them personally…?” There was a malevolence beyond his years in Ivan’s face and voice, the sound of a young man ready for the sort of quarrel he had kept bottled up for far too long, the sort of quarrel that could only be disarmed by an admission of guilt.

“Highness,” said Strel’tsin, “the matter has already been discussed, and they have honoured me with their opinions many times. No matter how we may approach it, this affair always means the same thing: three dowries leaving the treasury, only one coming in. It is a matter of simple arithmetic and simpler economics. The tsardom loses gold and land that it can ill afford, three times over.”

“Then why your wretched list, Dmitriy Vasil’yevich? Why was it restricted only to the high and the mighty?”

“Highness?” There was a tone in the High Steward’s voice that suggested he simply didn’t understand what Ivan was saying. “The Tsarevnas are princesses of royal blood. It would be most unseemly if any person of unsuitable rank should make proposals of marriage to any of them. And Tsarevna Yekaterina is a young woman of such high passions that she might accept the hand of an improper suitor, and live to regret her choice.”

Ivan shook his head and drank a little more mead, then topped up the cup with plain cold water. “I don’t think Katya would do any such thing,” he said. “But I agree with what you say on one count at least: in the present circumstance,
passionate
is the right word. It seems to me, High Steward Strel’tsin, that displays of passion are the only way to make you notice things.”

“As it pleases you, highness.”

“You see? That was an insult, if you like, but all you say is ‘
yes
, sir’ and ‘
no
, sir’. Have you no passions of your own?”

“Yes, highness, I have. A passion for order, for propriety, for the fitness of things. A passion for ensuring that if a thing is done, it should be done correctly and in a seemly fashion.”

“Such as the arrangement of ‘suitable’ marriages, despite the promise which our father the Tsar made to each of us?”

Strel’tsin drew breath as if to reply; then hesitated, as if editing that same reply into something more acceptable to the ears of a Tsarevich. Ivan snapped his fingers, a small, sharp sound excessively loud in the stillness of the High Steward’s considerations.

“Just say it,” he said, impatient and growing just a little weary. “I’ll forget whatever I hear.”

“Very well, highness.”

“Then speak.”

“Thank you, highness.” Again he paused, but Ivan waved him on. “Firstly, there are, ah, certain personages of my acquaintance who might appreciate an invitation to any courting-feast.”

“Relatives of yours?” said Ivan innocently.

Strel’tsin didn’t even blush. “Fellows in the Art,” he said with dignity. “And powerful, in more ways than the mere filling of coffers.”

Either
Tatars
or
sorcerers
, thought Ivan, but was too well mannered to say so aloud. “Very well, then. Put their names down on the next list, by my authority.”

“Thank you, highness.”

“Don’t thank me until you’re finished. Carry on.”

“Then you should realize, highness, that I have long believed your father’s promise, though kindly meant, was impolitic. Such good fortune as befell the Tsar in his own marriage is – forgive me, highness – unlikely to occur twice. Most certainly not four times in a row. One would need to journey far to find it again.”

Ivan looked at Strel’tsin very sharply, wondering what lay beneath that simple statement, knowing from long experience of the High Steward’s pedantic speech that he wasn’t given to making obscure references without good reason. And yet there was nothing to suggest he had made more than a comment. Certainly he hadn’t stopped talking for an instant.

“Also your father had no need to consider the ambitions of the Great Prince of Kiev. You have. All of his children must marry so as to bind strong allies to Khorlov, otherwise one day Yuriy Vladimirovich will simply reach out and close his fist and there will be no more Khorlov. Only another vassal.”

“One of these fine days the Great Prince of Kiev will reach out too far, and pull back a bloody stump,” said Ivan quietly. He had been expecting Strel’tsin’s lecture to bore or anger him, the way all the other litanies of policy and duty had done in the past. Instead, and to his private surprise, he’d found Dmitriy Vasil’yevich to be as passionate on this one subject – in his own dry and inimitable fashion – as his sister Katya had become on more personal matters.

“Very well, First Minister.” Ivan used the High Steward’s second title deliberately, to emphasize that he understood the political significance of what had been said. “I understand your reasoning. Now you should understand mine.” He reached out to refill Strel’tsin’s cup, for during the course of the discussion the grey man had emptied it not once but three times.

“Lords of lesser rank might make lesser allies, but at the same time they would also command lesser dowries.” Ivan smiled wryly, knowing he was beginning to sound like a merchant at the barter table. “More to the point, the sons and daughters of the lower nobility live in and around Khorlov, much closer than the estates of the great lords. They’ve been the friends of our youth and childhood. Including their names in your list might enable both the needs of the Tsardom and the Tsar’s promise to his children to be honoured.”

Strel’tsin bowed again, getting to his feet this time. He raised the replenished mead-cup in a salute, then drained it and began gathering his papers together. “You reason well, highness. I shall put this proposal to the Tsar’s majesty at once.”

Ivan watched him go, leaving the room in a curious gait that fell somewhere between his usual controlled, reptilian elegance and the bustle of a man eager to restore himself to something like good grace. The door closed behind him, leaving Ivan Aleksandrovich alone with the empty table and the half-empty mead jug. It occurred to him that he should have asked the names of Strel’tsin’s mysterious acquaintances… And then, without the High Steward’s beady eye on him, Ivan realized just what he’d done. It had nothing to do with Fellows in the Art, or anything so outlandish. He groaned softly, closing his eyes for several seconds like a man with a headache.

Several headaches, and he knew them all by name.

Not that he’d given any specific names to High Steward Strel’tsin, oh no. But Ivan knew in the instant it was too late to recall the words of his so-wise advice that when he suggested the inclusion of those sprigs of the lesser nobility who were his friends, he hadn’t given enough thought to all the implications. They were good fellows all, amused and amusing, fine companions for a day spent hunting in the great dark forests of birch and pine, or an evening spent drinking in the little taverns beneath the shadow of the kremlin.

But he certainly wouldn’t want his sisters to marry any of them.

*

The new list was drawn up, and it was just as Ivan feared. Sergey Stepanovich, Pavel Zhukovskiy, Nikolai Feodorov, all of them. Familiarity hadn’t really bred contempt for the young lordlings whose names were there; they were his friends, after all. But that same familiarity had given him an intimate acquaintance with the way high-spirited young men could behave in the company of their peers and a sufficient quantity of alcohol.

None of their various drunken vices were very dreadful, and most would receive no more from the Metropolitan Levon than an admonition and a wrinkling of his long patrician nose. Ivan, however, was discovering a fact that many brothers before him had learned about their gang of closest cronies. The sort of ribald antics which among a group of bachelors provokes only roars of laughter and deeper drinking, becomes less endearing when those same bold, raucous lads are among the men courting one’s sisters.

What was worst of all was to see the half-dozen boyar’s sons that he knew only as a bunch of drunken reprobates, acting with all the studied manners and gallantry of characters from an old and badly written romantic tale. Certainly courtly speeches and perfume in his beard seemed out of place on Sasha Levonovich. Ivan’s most recent memory of that dignified and currently sweet-smelling gentleman was of horrible oaths and a still more horrible stench, when after drinking a half-bottle of vodka Sasha had laid a wager that the ice on the tavern cesspit was thick enough to support his weight…

Ivan had only one advantage, and that was thanks to the season. There would be time for only one banquet during
Maslenitsa
, Butter Week, before Shrovetide came to an end and the Long Fast began. Khorlov’s Metropolitan Archbishop Levon Popovich had spent many years of ministry in the hard lands where, as a matter of simple caution, the old gods were still given respect. After much wasted effort in his zealous youth, he had discarded proselytizing in favour of pragmatism – but no matter how worthy its cause, he would never be persuaded to allow feasting during Lent.

Tsarevich Ivan knew the Archbishop’s intransigence would give him forty uninterrupted days in which to make sure certain facts were made known about certain names on the High Steward’s new list. In ordinary circumstances he knew he would really need no more than forty minutes, but he also knew, from wet and bitter-cold experience, that there was no such thing as an ordinary circumstance when a brother tries to influence his three sisters in their views of love and marriage.

Ivan wondered more than once, when the gloom and melancholy of the Rus stole over him, just how they would break the ice that covered the lake in winter so as to throw him in…