by Tom Pugh
“Good to see you again, Meneer.”
Quist smoothed the tails of his long black coat and sat heavily on Longstaff’s bed. The ropes were loose and the mattress sagged beneath his weight.
“Great Lord,” he shouted, falling backwards.
Longstaff reached out a hand, laughing as he helped Quist regain his balance.
“You have a commission for me?”
“Another book, my friend. Greek this time, written on middling parchment, neatly bound in red leather and inlaid with metal. You do know Greek?”
“I know the characters.”
“Good.” Quist’s face was lined, but the eyes sparkled as he searched his robe for a piece of paper. “The book we want is a thirteenth century copy of a manuscript by Aristarchus; On The Planets, Their Characteristics and The Orbits They Describe Around The Sun.”
Longstaff remained silent. A book of astronomy, from the title – perhaps they were hoping to find support for the theories of the Polish stargazer, Copernicus.
“Where is it?”
Quist spread his paper on the bed to reveal the floor plan of a large building. Longstaff counted at least two dozen rooms.
“You’re looking at the upper storey,” said Quist, placing his fingertip on a pair of windowless rooms in the centre. “The book is here.”
It wasn’t like Quist to play games. As far as Longstaff knew, the merchant was a member of a loose-knit group of antiquarians, well-funded amateurs with an eccentric desire to preserve the last remaining scraps of the past.
“What is this building?”
“Before Constantinople fell to the Turks – more than a hundred years ago now – the library there was the finest in the world… ”
“Constantinople?”
The Dutchman shook his head. “Emperor Paleologus put up a brave fight. Before he was killed at the end of a seven-week siege, he made it possible for many of his subjects to flee. His niece escaped with several hundred books.”
“Several hundred? She must have been a courageous woman.”
“Sophia Paleologina was an extraordinary woman,” replied Quist. “Her reward was marriage to Ivan III, brokered by Pope Paul III in an attempt to unify the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. She took her books with her when she went to Moscow. Today, they form the heart of her grandson’s library.”
Longstaff let out a short bark of laughter. “Moscow? You’re out of your mind.”
“We’re offering a substantial reward.”
Longstaff gestured at the hand-drawn map. “What building?”
“The Terem Palace, where the royal family have their apartments. We know the exact location of the book…”
“Suicide,” Longstaff traced a line around the sketch. “The Terem Palace stands within a citadel. The Russians have been building the walls for the last three hundred years.”
“You’ve shown great resourcefulness in the past.”
“I’m not negotiating, Quist. I won’t do it.”
The Dutchman walked to the window. “Give me one last chance to change your mind?”
“You’re wasting your time.”
Quist raised his hand. “You never talk about your past, Meneer Longstaff, but it wasn’t difficult to discover a few facts. You made quite a name for yourself, fighting with Il Medeghino in the south.”
“I am no longer a soldier.” There was a hard edge to Longstaff’s voice. He did not want to be reminded of his years in Italy.
“No longer much of anything.”
Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Longstaff drew a dagger from his sleeve. “What is this?”
The door swung open. Two men stood in the entrance. The first moved like a soldier. Longstaff raised the dagger.
“No need for that.” The second man was richly dressed in a bottle-blue doublet. He wasn’t handsome – the eyes were too small, nose too flat, the mouth too wide – but he carried himself with unmistakable authority.
“Matthew Longstaff,” said Quist. “Allow me to introduce Sir Nicholas Bacon.”
The newcomer turned to his bodyguard. “Wait outside. Come at my call.” He looked hard at Longstaff before gesturing at the window. “Faces the docks. Deliberate on your part, or chance?”
An Englishman? Longstaff lowered the knife. Had they truly discovered so much of his past?
“Terrible waste,” continued Sir Nicholas. “A man of your talents working as a thief.”
Longstaff took a step forward. People were usually more circumspect in his company. “How I make my living is no business of yours.”
“Must have been a wrench for you, exiled from England at such a young age and abandoned at the home of a Lübeck herring trader.”
It wasn’t possible. Longstaff turned to stare at Quist.
“Don’t look at him, sir. Look at me. I’ve come a long way to make you an offer,” Sir Nicholas stood with hands on his hips. “What would you risk for the chance to wear your father’s name once more – walk his lands as their master?”
His father’s name? Sir William Longstaff had owned an estate at Martlesham in Suffolk. Longstaff hadn’t seen it since the age of nine. Memories were all that remained of the only place he’d ever called home – green lawns and the small parlour where his father used to sit in the evenings. Sir William had been a great traveller, coming into contact with Luther’s creed on the continent. Longstaff still remembered men arriving at Martlesham to construct a printing press. Four of them, shouting and joking in a language he couldn’t understand. Soon after, pamphlets began to appear on the streets of Ipswich, Bury St. Edmunds, Cambridge, and finally London, which was when they came to the attention of the King. Henry VIII ordered Sir William to the scaffold, confiscated his property and banished his son from the country.
Longstaff spat: “There’s no way back for me.”
Sir Nicholas laughed. “I’m Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England, Longstaff. Give me a year of your life and I’ll make it possible for you to return home with Elizabeth’s blessing, and lay your father’s ghost to rest.”
Longstaff stared at Quist. “A small group of scholars and clerks?”
“We seek a mighty prize, my friend. The kind which brings powerful friends.”
Longstaff missed the slight hesitation in the Dutchman’s voice – when he might have added, “… and enemies.” He was too busy remembering his final hours at the house in Suffolk. His father had gone to Cambridge for the day, and Longstaff had felt nothing but excitement when a score of the King’s men arrived.
One of his father’s oldest friends had ridden at their head; a well-built man named Jarrel, with a neat beard and crooked teeth. Longstaff had run forward, expecting to be grabbed beneath the arms and thrown into the air. A soldier seized him instead, and held him still while Jarrel directed the rest to the stacks of pamphlets in the cellars and the printing press in the stables. Minutes later, Longstaff and the servants were up against a wall in the great hall, Jarrel pacing back and forth in front of them.
“By the King’s command, this estate is now mine. I hope you will find me a merciful master. There is no reason why unknowing service to a traitor should ruin your prospects of a secure future… ”
Only Longstaff had fought, hands hooked like claws, aiming for the eyes. Jarrel had knocked him aside with ease. “As big a fool as your father.”
Quist’s map of the Terem Palace lay on the rumpled bed. Longstaff stared at the neat sketch without seeing it, his mind’s eye focused on another time and place; his father crashing through the heavy doors at Martlesham, sword drawn, his face a mask of fear and anger.
Longstaff had stared at him from the far side of the room, held fast in Jarrel’s arms, head yanked painfully to one side, knife at his throat. Sir William faltered in mid-stride – and his old friend laughed. Jarrel spoke, and Longstaff felt the knife-edge graze his soft flesh.
“A signed confession, or the boy dies.”
Quist perched at the end of the bed. Sir Nicholas shifted impatie
ntly at the window. Longstaff could still refuse their offer. And then what? England would remain closed to him. He would lose Quist’s patronage. He could return to soldiering or become a thief in earnest, find a post as fencing master to an inbred princeling – each option worse than the last. Longstaff shook his head, and Quist’s drawing of the Terem Palace swam slowly into focus. The Dutch merchant had pointed at two adjoining chambers.
“What are these rooms?”
Quist smiled. “Ivan’s wardrobe and his library, but the Tzar rarely visits either. They’re nearly always empty.”
CHAPTER 3
Moscow, January 24th, 1562
Moscow seethed and festered in the winter months. The Square of the Conflagration at the heart of the city was a daily melée of fear and folly. Hawkers roared the virtues of hot bliny and home-made kvas, acrobats turned cartwheels and minstrels recited ballads, but nothing could lift the shadow cast by the high walls of Ivan IV’s citadel.
Longstaff made his way through the press of people, snow crunching beneath his boots. Sparrow walked beside him; the dog was a cross – mastiff and greyhound, black as night against the dirty snow. Longstaff rested his hand on the hilt of his old katzbalger as he stepped over a drunk. The sword was nothing special, a straight, double-edged blade the length of his arm, but he’d grown accustomed to its weight and balance over the years.
The journey east had been almost pleasant. Travelling by boat and road through an unseasonably mild October, Longstaff had passed the time polishing his few remaining memories of Martlesham, excitement building at the thought of home. He had no desire to resurrect his father’s trading empire, but with tentative, growing hope he remembered the fields around the old house, stretching as far as the eye could see.
He paused beside the extraordinary new church, eight unequal cupolas in all the colours of the rainbow, a splash of joy in a city of snow and fear. He’d been busy since arriving in Moscow ten weeks earlier. He’d found lodgings, picked up a few words of the language and made contact with a group of Saamid wintering nearby. For a price, one was willing to harness his team of twelve dogs and drive Longstaff west. He wasn’t trapped in the city until spring arrived, only for as long as it took him to acquire the book.
Longstaff turned his back on the church, hardly glancing at the citadel as he made for his lodgings. He pinched the inside of his forearm: patience. Ivan had been in residence throughout the winter, but was due to leave the city soon, leaving only a skeleton guard at the citadel.
Longstaff had found a place to stay, and an ostensible reason for being in Moscow, with a German merchant in a neighbourhood of small traders and artisans. The house was cramped – two small rooms on the first floor with a single open space for stock below.
He followed Sparrow up the narrow stairs and opened the door.
Herr Fischer was in his mid-fifties, narrow shoulders sloping to a round belly. Beneath the grey hair, his normally sour face was wreathed in smiles.
“Are you alright?” asked Longstaff.
“Never better. A messenger came today. The new Tzarina has invited Moscow’s leading merchants to display their wares.”
Longstaff looked up. Was this the chance he’d been waiting for? “When?”
“Tomorrow. In front of the Terem Palace,” Herr Fischer threw open a chest, producing a bottle of spirits and two glasses. Longstaff had never seen him so animated.
“You’ll take me with you, of course.”
Fischer froze: “Out of the question.”
Longstaff reached for his purse. “Would one of Moscow’s leading merchants appear without someone to do his fetching and carrying?”
“I have a boy. Our arrangement is for board and lodging.”
“Arrangements change,” Longstaff made an effort to soften his tone. Ten years ago, Herr Fischer had been one of the city’s wealthiest merchants, before the English had forced a new route to Muscovy and smashed the German monopolies. “Your boy is a slack-jawed imbecile. Imagine the impression he’ll make on the Tzarina and her court.” Longstaff weighed the purse on his palm.
Fischer licked dry lips: “You’ll do exactly as I say?”
“You have my word,” said Longstaff.
*
The heavy cart rumbled over the ditch, which separated the Square of the Conflagration from the citadel. Herr Fischer turned on his seat, catching Longstaff’s eye. “Don’t speak,” he whispered. “Don’t look at anyone. Give them a single reason to think ill, and they’ll murder you. Then me, then your mutt.”
Guards stopped them at the gates. The merchant produced his invitation. Even after so many years in the city, he still spoke Russian with a heavy accent.
Longstaff looked up as the guards waved them on, narrowing his blue eyes against the pale winter sun. The high walls bristled with cannon; soldiers stared down from the gate tower.
The citadel was a city within a city. A long wooden barracks led away from the gates, warehouses to the left, then a cluster of towers and spires beyond an expanse of open land. Longstaff sat beside the merchant, hoping he cut a believable figure in the servant’s smock he wore over his leather jerkin – a bodyguard pressed into menial service by his tight-fisted master.
Fischer shifted on the hard seat. “Be calm,” said Longstaff softly. “Nothing is going to happen.”
The wagon rumbled past a tall stake set in the frozen earth. A pale woman, in a thin white dress, traced stumbling circles round a rigid corpse. She was talking to herself, arms wrapped around her body for warmth. A shudder ran through the merchant’s soft frame.
“Prince Yuri,” he muttered. “That woman is his wife. If she can protect her husband’s body from scavengers for twelve days, the Tzar will let her have it for burial. As a child, they say Ivan tore the feathers from living birds and dropped puppies from the citadel walls. Before her death, the first Tzarina was able to curb his grosser depredations. The new wife’s an illiterate fifteen-year old from Kabarda. She does nothing but encourage him.”
Longstaff forced his weather-beaten features into a smile, masking his disgust. The Russians were tough bastards – previous rulers had hardly showered them with the milk of human kindness – and even they’d taken to calling this one ‘the Terrible’.
Flanked on three sides by stone churches, the great square was crowded with servants, guards and at least two-dozen of Ivan’s boyars – his men-at-arms. Fischer steered towards a group of fellow merchants, arranging their wares in the shadow of the Terem Palace. Longstaff breathed a sigh of relief; from the outside, at least, it matched the sketch Quist had given him. A two-storey wooden building, with a narrow gallery running round three sides and a wide staircase leading to the main entrance. If the Dutchman was right, Ivan’s windowless library was at the centre of the first floor.
Fischer reined to a halt. “We have work to do.”
Longstaff touched a finger to his brow, lowering one side of the cart and helping transform it into a make-shift stall. Fischer handed him a bowl of water. “Wash your hands before unpacking the merchandise.”
Some of the traders sold fabrics from the East; others dealt in delicacies from the South. Herr Fischer had been a wholesaler once, Longstaff knew, until the arrival of the English forced him to part with Flemish linens at a loss and pay more for Russian furs and metals than they fetched in Bruges. Now he specialised in finished clothes from Italy and France, clocks and musical instruments from Germany, and curiosities from the new world.
It was noon when the Tzarina appeared, muffled in fur, at the top of the staircase. Twenty men and women accompanied her out of the Terem Palace, while dozens more rushed to join them from the square. The women were dressed to imitate their Empress, the men wearing layers of brightly coloured shirts to keep out the cold. Each had a dagger in his belt and a thick beard cut square to the chest.
The company moved quickly. The merchant pulled his fine robe across his round belly and pinched his cheeks until they glowed. He was everywhere at once, com
plimenting clients, laughing at their jokes. He sold three clocks, a dozen gowns and an emerald necklace without losing sight of the Tzarina. Fischer might be a coward and a cheat, but the German was a consummate salesman.
The Tzarina was a silent presence at the centre of the storm – a child with a thin, bird-like face. She pointed to a large beauty case on Fischer’s stall and he bowed so deeply his fingers brushed the snow. The Tzarina turned away, drawing the crowd to the next wagon.
The merchant smiled at Longstaff. “She’ll never pay, but her patronage is worth a fortune!”
Longstaff looked away. In the distance, Prince Yuri’s wife ploughed her circles in the snow. With Fischer distracted by the Tzarina’s Treasurer, Longstaff retrieved the beauty case and joined the line of merchants’ seconds carrying bolts of cloth, tapestries, clocks and sweetmeats into the Terem Palace. He dropped his shoulders, trying to make himself as small as possible. A guard barked. Longstaff lowered his eyes, following the seconds into a vast storeroom.
It was dark inside, the winter sun barely penetrating high, mica-filled windows.
A volley of commands sounded outside. Alarmed, a young merchant’s assistant dropped a packing case. Longstaff kept walking, past chests and rough-woven sacks, waiting for someone to stop him.
A boyar climbed the wide staircase, boots clattering on the wooden boards. “Prince Vorotynsky is resisting arrest!”
There was a stunned silence in the room, everyone knew of the famous conqueror of Kazan. It seemed another of Ivan’s closest advisers had fallen from favour. Longstaff heard the distant clash of steel on steel. He crouched, to set the beauty case down in a corner.
“All of you out!” roared the Captain of the Guard. The seconds dropped their burdens and fled. Longstaff didn’t move. He counted to five, heard the storeroom door slam shut and the sound of fighting fade into silence.