Leaving her gaping at being addressed so casually by her Tsar, he walked on, pausing every now and then to glance with satisfaction at the festival around him. Such events had been more common in the old days. Ivan smiled bitterly; those ‘old days’ were no more than six years ago. Before the Tatars. His wedding; the birth of the children; his accession to the crown he was soon to lose. Occasions when even the poorest peasant could ‘eat with a long knife and a big spoon.’ By his calculation there was enough food not just for the Tatar envoy and his escort and for the people from the kremlin palace, but for every man, woman and child in Khorlov. So far as drink was concerned, there was enough for twice that many. His people were Rus, after all, and drinking, especially at someone else’s expense, was a joy to them. What was the adage? ‘Free vinegar is sweeter than bought honey.’ True enough, and never more than when the Tatars all unaware were providing both the honey and the vinegar.
The Tsar of Khorlov squared his shoulders under the ornate black kaftan, hitched its collar just a little higher behind the nape of his neck, and sauntered down to where the official reception was being prepared. It was as though the banqueting hall from Khorlov’s kremlin had been brought bodily into the open air, and then its floor, walls and ceiling carefully removed so that just the furniture remained. It should appeal to the Tatars, thought Ivan: to eat like civilised human beings for once, yet under the canopy of their god’s blue sky.
“God, it is blue, isn’t it?” said Mar’ya Morevna as she moved beside him and took his arm and followed his gaze upward. The words were so apt that Ivan, not for the first time in their marriage, wondered whether his wife could read if not thoughts than at least images from his mind.
“Amragan and his Blackhats should appreciate it.”
“I should hope so. We’ve gone to a lot of trouble on their behalf. Giving the tax-collector a cup of wine, my father used to say.”
“Your father,” said Ivan, “was a lord in his own right. He didn’t pay taxes, they were paid to him.” Mar’ya Morevna punched him gently in the ribs.
“That didn’t make him any less entitled to the saying, did it?”
“And if this is what he would have called a cup of wine,” said Ivan, punching back, “then your father was wealthier than he had any right to be.”
“Are you fighting?” said a small, uncertain voice. Tsarevna Anastasya gazed solemnly at her parents, and in particular at Ivan’s still-clenched fist. “When I do that to Kolya, he doesn’t like it. But I hit him much harder than that,” – it sounded like a criticism of Ivan’s technique – “and then he tries to hit me back. Of course I don’t let him. It would be disker-, discor-,” Natasha furrowed her brow as the words refused to jump from mind to mouth, “discourteous-an’-inappropriate behaviour. To me, anyway.”
“Strel’tsin?” said Mar’ya Morevna.
“Not a doubt of it,” said Ivan. “He’s the only man in the palace with the nerve to let a seven year old child run loose with words like that.” He bent down and scooped his daughter up onto his shoulder, where she first knocked his hat crooked and then carefully set it straight again. “And no, little mouse, we weren’t fighting. You and Nikolai fight. Grown-up people only argue.”
“Then was that —?”
“Not even slightly.” Mar’ya Morevna pulled a kerchief from her sleeve and dusted at the child’s boots before they could track dust all over Ivan’s black velvet shoulder. “We were just having fun.” Ivan chuckled; the low, husky sort of chuckle that Mar’ya Morevna knew only too well. She glared at her husband and he felt the tension of another potential punch gather against his ribs; then instead she patted Tasha on the wrist. “But for Heaven’s sake don’t go telling people that you found Mama and Papa having fun together!”
“Why?”
“It’s… discourteous and inappropriate behaviour.”
“Oh.”
“You see, mouse, it’s not their business to be told things like that about their Tsar.”
“Oh.”
“They’ll think we can’t afford a lock for the door.”
“Ivan …”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
“Should I go out of earshot and come back again?” The throaty, accented voice sounded amused, even though the only suggestion of a smile was a movement of those damned moustaches again. Amragan tarkhan had taken Ivan’s parting words to heart. Except for the knife in his lacquered eating-case he was wearing neither armour nor weapons, even though the ten Mongols of his personal guard were wearing both, polished to mirror brightness so that whenever they moved the scales of their harness reflected the sunlight like the facets of a well-cut gemstone. Instead the Khan’s envoy was wearing a simple red headband around his brows with the long braids of his hair hanging down his back, and a plain shirt of heavy linen with his usual baggy trews and soft boots. But over it all was a magnificent cross-wrapped robe of royal purple silk that shimmered whenever he made the slightest movement. It was woven with a complex pattern of curly branches and long-tailed birds so that when the light struck just so, they shone pale violet against the purple background. The brocade of soft gold thread that edged and hemmed it was hardly worth as much as the fabric itself.
Ivan eyed it, envied it, and wondered how many lives it had cost. “No need,” he said. “A family matter, nothing more.”
“You do your family well, it seems,” said the Turk, indicating all the food being prepared further up the hill.
“That’s for my people, not my family. But one of the Tsar’s titles is ‘Little Father’, so maybe you could call them my children after all.”
“Did we come to Khorlov on some festival holiday?”
“No. It’s just …” Ivan couldn’t really think of a good way to explain how he was making sure all his stores of the best food and drink were consumed now, by his own people for the most part, so that Amragan or those who came after him would have no chance to loot it. “It’s the day the Tatars came, and didn’t burn the city.”
“Indeed.” The way the tarkhan spoke suggested he was well aware of what was going on, because he looked up at the sun and smiled. “Remember, we are still here, and the day is not yet over.”
At least he was smiling when he said it, and this time at least more than his moustaches moved. Ivan smiled right back, and reached towards the nearest table for the jug of wine almost encased in ice, and two large cups.
*
Once, and not so very long ago, Ivan had been like every other Russian, whether of high birth or of low. He had drunk kvas and ale and vodka, and when he could get it, red wine imported at great expense from Frankish Burgundy, and white wine transported at much less expense from the Krimean coast of the Black Sea.
Then Ivan had discovered the Greeks. These weren’t the crafty Byzantines hired to teach martial and political skills to Mar’ya Morevna. Nor were they the hairy, wild inhabitants of the equally-wild Peloponnese, who were little better than animals and maybe a bit too closely related to those same animals. Certainly they wore more goatskin than ordinary folk could stomach, and as a result smelt worse than their own flocks.
Ivan’s Greeks were safely pinned to the pages of a dog-eared copy of the Il’yad found in Mar’ya Morevna’s library. He had been reading strategy and tactics: Tacitus, Vitruvius, Polybius, Demetrius, and just for a change from the Latin -us names, Heron and Caesar. Even though there had been brief sparks of interest, most of the reading had been as dull as listening to any elderly commander move the cutlery about the table.
But the Il’yad was another matter, full of sarcasm and savagery, love and war. Ivan couldn’t read the original Greek, but it had been transcribed first to equally unreadable High Church Slavonic written in the crabbed letters of the old Glagolitic script by some Orthodox monk, and then painstakingly translated into Russian by Mar’ya Morevna’s father. Long before even the North people who were Ivan’s ancestors had sailed their longships down the Volga, trading as they called it –
though if the odds were right they tended to take rather than haggle – these Greeks had laid siege for ten years to King Priy’am’s kremlin at Troy. They had eaten great feasts of roasted meat, just like this one, and quaffed great quantities of wine, and Ivan, after several evenings curled up with a lamp, a bottle and the book, had determined he wanted some of that same wine.
As a result, and with some effort, he had developed a taste for the nauseating varnish that the old poet claimed was drunk by heroes. Wine mixed with resin wasn’t something he’d ever tasted before, and the first mouthful convinced him that anyone who drank it on a regular basis had to be a hero.
Either that, or desperate enough to drink lamp-oil.
To Mar’ya Morevna’s amusement, Ivan persisted. At least it didn’t surprise her. She had long known her husband was a stubborn man, given to fads and fancies that he would describe at boring length until his audience either fled into the night or rose in rebellion, but she was relieved that his stubbornness didn’t extend to adding sea-water to his wine as well as resin. Not that Ivan hadn’t tried it, though not having sea-water to hand, he had dissolved salt in ordinary water instead. Once. That once had made him as spectacularly sick as a whole evening’s indulgence in more common brews, and the sea-water idea was hastily discarded. The resin, however, remained.
Mar’ya Morevna wasn’t the only one to shake her head. The Rus were fond enough of sour, tangy things like pickled cabbage, but in equal measure, they had a notoriously sweet tooth, with swarms of bees kept not just for mead and sbiten, mead’s non-alcoholic little brother, but to provide the vast quantities of honey they used to sweeten their food.
And here was Ivan Aleksandrovich Khorlovskiy, Tsar by his father’s abdication and by his own acceptance of it, married to the ruler of a principality, lord of wide domains, with a self-developed taste for a wine so acid – never mind its bouquet and aftertaste of turpentine – that all but the most depraved peasant would refuse to have it in the house. That he admitted it was hardly surprising. Other Tsars and Princes had admitted to other far more interesting vices, though the most interesting of all usually only came to light when those who had indulged in them were safely dead, but the drinking of wine deliberately matured in barrels made of raw pine-wood wasn’t so much interesting as simply peculiar. It had one advantage, however: there was no mistaking the Tsar’s preferred drink, served in its own distinctively shaped jug buried in a bucket of ice, and little likelihood of anyone wanting to steal it.
The jug in his hand contained that same stuff, resinated wine vinegar in all but name, though packing a velvet punch that no vinegar could claim. Ivan offered one of the cups to Amragan tarkhan, then filled the other for himself and took a long, confidence-inspiring draught from it before pouring for the Tatar envoy. The confidence he meant to inspire was partly his own, through the rapid ingestion of a favoured form of alcohol, and partly that of the tarkhan so that the man wouldn’t think he was being poisoned. There had been too many people who made that assumption from their first sip for him to run any such risk with the Khan’s man. Coughs and curses were one response, and more or less acceptable; torching the city was quite another, and not.
After that, Ivan had intended to drink Amragan tarkhan into a foolish stupor, to leave him sickened with his head pounding, to prove…
Something that had made perfect sense earlier.
When the Turk drained his first cup and asked for more, the game lost much of its sparkle. Amragan tarkhan had not only drunk the Greek wine before, but liked it and was much taken that Ivan shared a common interest. That wasn’t something which the Tsar of Khorlov viewed as complimentary, though mercifully he was nothing like drunk enough yet to say anything of the sort. Instead, Ivan pressed the barely-reduced jug into Amragan’s hands, made some sort of excuse and stalked off to see what was happening with regard to food.
Enough and more than enough was happening to ease the mood of any Tsar, even one in a worse temper than he was. The various roasted beasts were being eased from their fires as he approached, to ‘rest’ as the cooks called it, before they were carved and served out. Ivan admired them, and let the pleasure of that simple – or not-so-simple – artistry clear various flickers of poorly targeted malice from his head. Even though they were no longer near the raked, banked beds of coals they still bubbled gravy and sizzled faintly, and their scent was that of Heaven with the angels singing. Each creature, whether sheep or pig or the titanic ox, was glazed and crackling with a baked accumulation of herb-laden oils, with browned butter and with its own fragrant juices, varnished onto the meat in a coruscation of tints that ran the spectrum from dainty pink to a crisp-edged, savoury deep brown. Everyone in Khorlov was there to watch them unshipped from the great roasting-trestles, and more than a few Tatars from Amragan tarkhan’s guard as well. It was odd to see old enemies, or predators and victims, united in a silent, inhaling appreciation of good food.
“Smells a damnsight better than grut,” said Amragan tarkhan at Ivan’s elbow, making the Tsar jump slightly. For such a tall, strong man he moved with surprising lightness on his feet, even though – Ivan went surreptitiously on tiptoe to peek inside – the jug of resinated wine was a good deal emptier than the last time he had seen it. Of course most of its contents could have been poured out on the ground and what remained carried about like this just to impress, but the tarkhan’s breath and Ivan’s nose said not.
“Grut? It even sounds appalling.”
“Marching rations,” said Amragan without much enthusiasm. “The women separate mare’s milk into curds and whey, dry the curds in the sun, then they crumble them up and pack the crumbs away because once dried, they keep forever. Then on a hard march with nothing else and no time left to hunt, we mix the crumbs with water and drink it. That is grut.”
Ivan made a face and recovered the jug of wine then, lacking a cup, took a generous and most unTsarlike swig. “Whatever reason Chinghis-Khan —”
“The Great Ancestor Temujin.”
“— Or whatever. Why he was conquering everywhere.” He swallowed some more wine. “It probably had to do with finding somewhere rich enough that he wouldn’t need to eat grut again.”
Amragan tarkhan stared at Ivan and raised his eyebrows at such disrespect for the first Khan of all Khans of the Mongols. His tongue passed once over those thin lips as though in response to the fragrance of good roast beef, though Ivan expected it was more likely the prelude to a threat or maybe a pronouncement of punishment. What he hadn’t anticipated was a cheerful slap on the back and another of those crashing guffaws of laughter. Ivan staggered a little and hid a crooked smile as he worked his shoulders to ease the ache; despite his steadiness of feet and speech, the wine had taken effect on Amragan tarkhan in no uncertain terms.
For all the looting and pillaging he had done, with the guzzling of stolen wine it had entailed, the Turk was likely far more used to the fermented mares’ milk drink kumys. Ivan had tasted it, and though sour enough it had nothing like the potency of even the most ordinary wine. Only the wealthiest Tatars could afford to grow accustomed to stronger fare and they habitually drank to excess – Ogotai Khan had died of it – so when lesser mortals had the chance to emulate their betters, the results were immediate and drastic. Amragan was nowhere near falling-down drunk, and was unlikely to be so for a while, but he’d forgotten his dignity as an envoy for a while.
Heads turned at the noise, and most of the people looked on with approval and no small relief to see the Khan’s ambassador so friendly with their Tsar. Others were less pleased; the men to whom an enemy was always an enemy and never someone to be reasoned with, the men whose word for friendship with an enemy was ‘treason.’ They glared at Ivan from the cover of all those other smiling faces, and turned away, and made their own decisions about what to do with enemy and traitor both.
Though he might have suspected something of the sort, Ivan saw none of it, for at that moment Yuriy Oblomov handed him a carving-knife as big as a sh
ort sword, the largest and most impressive in the kremlin kitchens. Only when the Tsar had formally made the first cut in the meat could the revels and the proper eating begin, and with his stomach beginning to make enthusiastic and undignified noises, Ivan wasted no time in wielding the blade. As he moved aside to let the Chief Cook and his professional carvers do their work, he found himself grinning wryly at the cheer which went up from the crowd; it was an unusual sound for any Russian city with Tatars encamped outside its walls, and was made more unusual still by the shrill whoops as those same Tatars joined in the cheers.
But then, after the aroma that wafted from the roasted ox when Ivan sank his carving-knife into its brisket, a stone statue would have been cheering too.
*
Despite the presence of Amragan tarkhan and his merry men, a presence increasingly merry and hard to ignore as the jugs and flagons went round, it was a good old-fashioned Russian feast. Everyone, not just the Tatars, merrily ate and drank too much. As the drink went down and the singing and dancing began, inevitably one or two fights also broke out among the peasants for this reason or for that, but they were settled amicably with fists or meat-bones rather than more deadly weapons, and prompted a few amused wagers between the boyaryy at the kremlin tables.
Seated in the guest’s place at Ivan’s right hand, Amragan tarkhan leaned forward. There was a brimming wooden beaker of something or other in his hand – in fact Ivan couldn’t remember when there had not been one – and the Turk was grinning. “I begin to understand,” he said, “more of why you laughed when I spoke of the Ilkhan Batu’s intention to maintain peace in the Rus domains.”
The Tsar watched one of Khorlov’s blacksmiths lift someone else above his head and fling him bodily into the piled fodder for the Tatar horses. That at least was more of a wrestling move than an attempt to do real harm. The truly pugnacious had already had their fights and were sleeping off the effects under trestle tables somewhere. “My people are a sturdy lot, tarkhan,” he said. “Enslaving them would break their spirit; turn them into nothing more than serfs, pieces of property. I’d rather not live to see that happen.”
The Golden Horde Page 16