There, as had happened before with Prince Fenist the Falcon, he was comforted to see that Prince Vasiliy the Eagle didn’t flinch from the holy words and the holy water, or from being signed three times with the life-giving cross.
Indeed, it seemed to the Archbishop that this Prince, and any other who might come along – since such sorcerous happenings normally took place in threes – might not be so bad a match after all. This time he didn’t take to his bed, but watched with the rest of the people as Tsarevna Yelizaveta drove off with her husband, looking splendid and fine in a handsome coach that was all red and gold, drawn by strong chestnut horses. It said much for his new peace of mind that he showed no curiosity about how that coach came to be outside the cathedral after the wedding, when there had been no such coach anywhere in the city before it. Many said that was simply a sign of his wisdom, when he knew not to ask any questions.
Tsarevich Ivan watched them go, and at the same time watched Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin. The beginnings of a small, amused suspicion were taking shape in his mind, and he determined that once he was sure, he would have a long talk with the Court Wizard. Provided, of course, he could catch Strel’tsin as such, rather than the High Steward or the First Minister, neither of which were incarnations that held the slightest interest. When the old councillor had spoken of marriage in the past he had been dull beyond belief, and it had taken all this time – and those two dramatic arrivals – for Ivan to realise the significance of what had been said…
*
Tsar Aleksandr had known the search for three husbands and a wife for his children would be no easy task, but even his High Steward had never foreseen how difficult it would be. Somewhere in the back of the Tsar’s mind was an optimistic half-formed notion that everything would resolve itself once banquet invitations filled the palace with suitably eligible young men and women. That was before Dmitriy Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin consulted his books, then put pen to paper and drew up a list which defined exactly what ‘eligible’ could mean in terms of alliance, allegiance, ancestry, precedence, protocol and rank. It wasn’t an encouraging list, much shorter than anyone had expected, since for one reason or another it left out most of the young people whom the Tsar had seen in company with his son and daughters.
Ivan, when he first saw it, poured himself a cup of spiced-honey sbiten and sipped in silence, saying nothing at all. It occurred to him that Dmitriy Vasil’yevich might have done himself more good by wearing his Court Wizard’s hat. That way at least he would have shown a little imagination.
His eldest sister the Tsarevna Yekaterina felt herself bound by no such constraint. “Dmitriy Vasil’yevich,” she said coldly, “I have always thought the words of my father’s promise contained no unvoiced restrictions regarding the birth and lineage of prospective husbands.” Yekaterina picked up the sheets of fine parchment and leafed through them, counting off the names and accomplishments of worthy boyaryy and their doubtless equally-worthy sons. “A list of twenty names, and no more than twenty, is not what I had in mind.” Her voice was as deceptively gentle as the thin-lipped smile that she bestowed on him.
Ivan heard and saw both of the warning signals. Better if she’d shouted, he thought and picked up his cup, ready to make what Captain Akimov called ‘tactical withdrawal from an untenable position.’ Instead, he found himself pierced by Yekaterina’s glittering blue stare as though by a pin.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she said icily, not bothering to say more. The three Tsarevnas had spent a lifetime keeping their brother in what they considered to be his proper place – Ivan as the youngest child had never been consulted about what that proper place might be – and by now a single short sentence was more than sufficient.
“Just making myself more comfortable, Katyushka.” Ivan’s bland smile fooled nobody, and his sister least of all. Looking and feeling as if he was taking shelter behind a kremlin rampart, he managed to sit lower in his chair than was really possible. His cup he kept below the level of the table, well clear of the paperwork. Ivan knew what sort of storm was gathering.
The High Steward, however, did not. His rank and position was so much concerned with matters of state that he had never troubled to acquaint himself with the Tsar’s three daughters, any more than to realize that some day they would have to be married off as advantageously as possible. More he neither knew nor probably cared.
That was unfortunate.
Defending himself with reasoned and long-winded argument was still more unfortunate. Yekaterina was in no mood for reason. She wanted apologies, grovelling and abject for preference, or at the very least excuses with a spark of originality about them, and Strel’tsin’s words had more the effect of sparks near a Chinese firework. Katya’s fuse took a time in burning, but her ultimate detonation was worth the wait.
“Court Wizard, High Steward and First Minister of the Tsars of Khorlov,” she said, her voice laced with the deceptive acid sweetness of unripe fruit, as she studied Strel’tsin as if not entirely sure he was worthy of a single one of his several positions, styles and titles. Her expression suggested she had just met a louse with a hat on who had made an improper suggestion. Ivan tried to work his way further down into the wooden embrace of the chair, and wished Strel’tsin had enough sense to do the same. The only time that she had ever called him by his full title of ‘Tsar’s son and Prince of Khorlov’, he’d finished up in the lake, and it had taken a long time to get the frogspawn, the weeds and at least two dead fish out of his hair.
It had also been damnably cold.
They’d been children then, and flinging people into lakes had been the extent of her fury. Now she was a Princess and a grown woman of marriageable age, her displays of irritation had also grown until they had the status of near-legend.
“It were as well for you to remember, Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, that we are the eldest daughter of your master and liege lord. We are not to be addressed as common folk, nor are we to be patronized…” She drew a long breath, and Ivan held his. “And we will not be spoken to as though we were an assembly of thick-minded yokels! Speak to your own peasants as you desire, master High Steward, but do not presume to use that tone to me! To us! Any of us! As for this heap of useless scribblings—” Yekaterina seized the heap of documents in both hands and shook them as if they had a neck and it was between her fingers, “—you can take them away!”
Strel’tsin’s carefully prepared list spun across the table in a flat, solid blade of parchment that looked capable of taking his head off his shoulders. An instant before it hit, and whether Strel’tsin or Katya was responsible Ivan couldn’t tell, it exploded into separate sheets that flared up with a sweet scent and a coruscation of dazzling multi-coloured lights. The ashes, smelling like scorched roses, swirled about his shoulders then rustled softly as they fluttered back to the ground with a sound like autumn.
Yekaterina stalked from the room, leaving the High Steward looking distinctly foolish. “One must be more careful of passionate young women,” he said, speaking to himself as he sometimes did, without seeming to move his mouth. The words appeared, and were audible, but their source was never certain. Perhaps that was Strel’tsin’s intention, or perhaps there was no hidden motive at all.
Ivan sat up straight as Strel’tsin came around the table and sat down facing him. The High Steward had a businesslike look Ivan had come to know and avoid, and for want of anything better to do he took a long swallow of the fast-cooling sbiten remaining in his cup, wishing it had been wine, or kvas, or vodka, or anything with some trace of alcohol in it. He had a feeling he would need something more than lukewarm spiced honey to bolster up his small reserve of courage against whatever Dmitry Vasil’yevich Strel’tsin might want to say next.
“Scarcely passionate,” he said, then paused, choosing his words carefully. One never knew in what form they would be reported back to any number of ears better off not hearing them at all. “Indignant, certainly. Annoyed. Outraged. Even when we were mu
ch younger, one or other of my beloved sisters was always being annoyed or outraged about something or other. They were moods I learned to recognize, if I wanted to survive childhood outnumbered three to one. But never passionate. It seems an improper word for a brother to use when describing his sisters.”
Strel’tsin looked at him, and Ivan could see both curiosity and a certain amused satisfaction. “Improper perhaps, highness,” said the High Steward smoothly, “but in this instance, accurate.”
There was little for Ivan to do but raise his eyebrows, so he did. At least, he raised the right one, in an elegant, understated gesture of interrogation that he’d envied from the first time he’d seen Guard-Captain Akimov use it when listening to the inadequate excuses of an erring sentry. Ivan had practiced in his mirror every morning and evening after that and at one stage had come close to setting up a permanent twitch in one side of his face before he mastered the trick. But it had come right at last, and now looked just as coolly impressive as he always hoped it might.
“Explain,” he said, putting all he could gather of his father’s quiet power into the single word.
This time when Strel’tsin looked at him there was a new respect in the High Steward’s eyes. If a Prince could sound like a Tsar there was every possibility he might also act like one, and there were such Tsars in Ivan’s ancestry that a braver man than Dmitriy Vasil’yevich would flinch from the encounter. Instead of flinching, but still without rising from his seat, he bowed low from the waist.
“The explanation, highness, is money. Or more precisely, bride-price. You will remember from our last lesson, how when the daughter of one of the old kings or chieftains was to be married, her prospective husband would show how he could support his new wife by listing his wealth and what expectation of profit, plunder or inheritance he might have, and prove these claims by a rich gift of bride-money to the maiden’s father and family.”
“I remember, Dmitriy Vasil’yevich, I remember!” Ivan interrupted, before the gates of the scholarly flood could open any further. “Do you remember that you lectured me on just this subject no more than ten, no, nine days ago?”
“So recently, highness?”
“Yes. So there’s no need to repeat it all again.”
“As you command, highness.”
Ivan investigated the jug on the table, mercifully unspilled despite Katya’s efforts, and found more sbiten in it, though barely warm after the flurrying of paperwork extinguished the little spirit lamp built into its stand. He thought about relighting it then dismissed the idea. There were too many things already in his mind for a properly constructed focus pattern, and without it – well, last time the blisters on his fingertips had taken more than a week to heal. Nonetheless the discovery cheered him up considerably.
“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 on
e 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.”
Prince Ivan Page 4