by Ann Swinfen
‘Oh,’ she cried, the tears gone, gently wiped away, ‘oh, I feel so much better already. Am I cured?’
‘Not yet. Your skin must heal. Then you will be cured.’
I fervently hoped this was true. It was the worst case of eczema I had ever seen. Not even amongst the paupers of Southwark had a child’s rash been treated like this. I blamed the appalling soap, the bandaging, and probably the tight, hot woollen clothing, but there might also be something in her diet, which would be more difficult to track down. In the places where the rash had broken into a raw wound I gently applied a little soothing cream, but elsewhere I left the skin simply open to the air.
When we were about halfway through the washing, I told Pyotr to order the nurse to find a linen shift for Xenia, which, after much grumbling, she did. Now I replaced the woollen shift with the linen.
‘Now, my pet,’ I said. ‘This is what you must do. You are a clever girl, and you need to understand yourself what is best for you. From now on, you must wear no more wool. Only linen or silk. And no heavy, tight clothes at all until the rash is healed. You understand?’
She nodded.
‘No more of that terrible grey soap. I will arrange for an apothecary to supply soapwort, and that is what you must use to wash. Do you think you can do that yourself?’
She nodded again. Her eyes were shining. ‘But what of them?’ She barely nodded in the direction of the waiting woman and the nurse, who had both retired to the far side of the room and were holding a muttered conversation.
‘I will ask my friend Pyotr Ivanovich to write all my instructions down in Russian. They will be delivered to your father, and he will see that they are carried out.’ I stretched and yawned. ‘It must be nearly morning. We have been up all night!’
I glanced over my shoulder at the two women, then reached into the breast of my doublet and drew out Dmitri’s packet, standing so that I blocked their view.
‘This is for you,’ I said, as I pressed it into her hands. ‘From your cousin Dmitri.’
‘You have seen Dmitri?’ She almost jumped off her chair, but I laid my finger to my lips.
‘I will come back the day after tomorrow, to see how well the rash is healing,’ I said. ‘We will talk then.’
Suddenly she threw her arms around me and clung. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for making me better, and bringing Dmitri’s present.’
For a moment I was afraid I would weep. These children, these poor children.
‘Till the day after tomorrow,’ I said, giving her a quick hug. ‘Let the air get to your skin. There is no miasma here that can hurt you.’
Only people, I thought. Only people.
The following day I wrote out a schedule for Xenia’s care, explaining in precise detail exactly what was and what was not to be done in the treatment of the rash and in her clothing. She was also not to be exposed to excessive heat. Moreover, her diet was to be watched carefully. If eating any particular food caused the rash to flare up again, that food was to be omitted altogether in future. I recommended that she should be given boiled water to drink several times a day. I underlined ‘boiled’ twice. No one else was to touch the rash. The lady Xenia Borisovna herself understood how to wash the affected skin with boiled water and soapwort. I would arrange for soapwort to be supplied.
Pyotr read my instructions through with a barely suppressed smile. ‘You sound very fierce. I hope the Konyushy may not be offended.’
I glared at him. ‘You did not see what they had done to that child. She might have been flayed. It was an abomination. Besides,’ I added, more mildly, ‘I suspect the Konyushy will appreciate frank guidance. For all his faults, I think he loves the little maid. Is she his only child?’
‘There is a small boy, not yet two.’
‘Well, I pray that he may not suffer the same treatment. If he develops eczema, which he may, for it can occur in families, then I may have saved him similar agony before it can be inflicted on him. Xenia is so brave.’
‘I will translate this into Russian,’ he said, ‘then write it out fair. Will you sign it?’
‘Aye, and seal it. When you are done, we will visit the apothecary.’
The apothecary was only too pleased to receive the order for a regular supply of soapwort to be sent to the Godunov household. I saw no reason to spare the Konyushy’s coin, so I made it a generous order. The apothecary beamed. It would be a lucrative source of income for him.
Pyotr translated, for I feared I might make a mistake in my instructions if I spoke Russian. ‘He thanks you, and says he will supply the dried plant for now, but once the soapwort grows again in spring, he will provide the new growth.’
‘Either will do,’ I said. ‘Remind him he can also make an extract from the roots. I do not know whether they make it here in Muscovy.’
Even without Pyotr’s translation I could tell from the apothecary’s bows and smiles and eager rubbing together of his hands that he would retire to his back room and his equipment before the day was out, with a pile of soapwort roots.
As we walked back to the Company house, it was beginning to snow again. Pyotr looked at me sideways and laughed.
‘I suspect the fellow will be selling extract of soapwort for high prices in future, “recommended by the English physician to cure all manner of skin diseases”. Your fame will be ensured.’
I grinned. ‘Perhaps. As long as he does not claim it is a cure for the plague. It is nothing but a mild form of soap. I should be lynched if ever I returned to Moscow.’
We began to hurry, for the snow was falling more thickly.
‘When do you think we will be able to leave for the south?’ Pyotr’s voice was muffled by the fur collar of his cloak, which he had pulled up to cover the lower part of his face.
‘I hope that, once I can certify that Xenia’s eczema is on the mend, they will let us go. I am anxious to pursue the search for Gregory Rocksley, now that I have a little more to go on.’
‘Good. Further south it may not be quite so cold.’
I had lost track of the date. The winter here seemed to go on for ever. Was it about the middle of February?
‘When does spring come in this country?
‘Not for some time yet,’ he said. ‘April, perhaps, brings the first hint? It depends on how severe the winter has been. By May most of the snow will be gone.’
‘Dear God! How can people live in such a country?’
‘We are a sturdy people,’ he said stiffly.
I must be careful. He was in one of his Russian moods.
The following day we returned to the Kremlin by daylight, and were admitted more courteously this time. Word must have been left at the gates. Once we reached the Godunov house, I insisted on seeing the Konyushy’s private secretary. He proved to be a harassed man with a stoop and grey hair. I explained, through Pyotr, that these were the medical notes and instructions for the care of the lady Xenia Borisovna. They were to be given to the Konyushy, and no one else. I tapped his desk sharply with my fingernail, to make sure he paid heed.
He promised fervently to give the document into no one’s hands but the Konyushy’s, and rang a small bell on his desk for a servant to conduct us to Xenia’s apartments.
I was glad to find that the stove had been damped down somewhat, so the room was warm but not unbearably hot. The shutters were open and the windows, I noticed, were glazed with mica, which allowed a thin winter sunshine to enter. It showed up the expensive clutter crowding the room. As I had seen at Uglich, there was much effort at rich, even vulgar, ostentation, but rather less effort was directed at combating the inevitable dust. This would not be good for my patient. I gave orders that many of the useless objects should be removed. The lady Xenia Borisovna should decide which ones, and then everything was to be given a thorough clean.
‘You may make use of that grey soap,’ I said, pointing, ‘to scrub the floor.’
It still lay where I had thrown it two days before. Which spoke vo
lumes about the cleaning carried out here.
There were more attendants present this time, putting an end to any hope of much frank conversation with Xenia, but I took her behind the screen, where I could examine her in private. She was wearing a loose gown of silk with full sleeves. The neck was low cut, so I was able to see that the rash on her neck was already beginning to dry up.
‘And how are you feeling today, my lady?’ I thought we should revert to the formal mode of address now, by day, with so many pricked ears on the other side of the screen.
‘I am much, much better, thanks to you, Dr Alvarez.’ She spoke in a clear, loud voice, intended to be heard by those listening ears.
Then she whispered, ‘Dmitri says you are called Kit? May I call you Kit.’
‘Certainly you may, Xenia.’ We smiled at each other in shared conspiracy.
I examined the other areas of rash, and interspersed my running commentary with whispered information about what I had seen of Dmitri and the wolfhound Volk. The unpleasant lesions were beginning to heal, even on the back of her knees, where they were the worst, probably rubbed by folds in those accursed bandages whenever she bent her legs. Before I left, she drew a small package from the pocket of her gown where it lay over a chair. It was smaller but fatter than the one Dmitri had sent to her. She handed it to me.
‘Will you see Dmitri again?’ she whispered, as I helped her dress.
‘I do not expect to.’
Her face fell.
‘But on my way north to St Nicholas, perhaps I could call in at Uglich.’ It would add several days to my journey, but I hated to disappoint these children, who seemed to have no other friends.
‘It would be very kind,’ she said. Her voice was polite, but there was hope in her voice.
‘I will do my best,’ I promised.
She nodded. ‘If you cannot give it to Dmitri, I would like you to keep it for yourself. As a remembrance.’
Twice more, while I was in Moscow, I visited Xenia Borisovna, and by the last visit the rash was nearly gone. The lady-in-waiting who had been present at my first visit was not seen again, something which worried me a little. I was glad she had been dismissed from attending on Xenia, but I hoped that nothing worse had happened to her. No one spoke of these things. The old nurse had become less hostile when she saw that the child was recovering, and remained with her.
At last one of the servants from the Godunov household appeared with a sealed letter and a purse for me. The purse, too, was heavily sealed with wax, bearing Godunov’s imprint. It seemed he did not trust his servants not to filch some of the contents. The letter was, naturally, written in Russian, which Pyotr translated.
‘The Konyushy thanks you unreservedly for your care of his daughter, who has now been relieved of much suffering. He has received your instructions for the future care of the lady Xenia Borisovna, which he will see are carried out to the letter, and sends a purse in recompense for your services. He also understands that you are required to carry out a mission for the Muscovy Company in his southern territories, and is providing a passport to allow you to travel freely. You may leave as soon as you wish.’
I gave him a sharp look. ‘Did you say his southern territories? Surely the Tsar’s?’
He looked down at the letter, then up again with an enigmatic smile. ‘It definitely says “his”. He must have been distracted when he dictated the terms of the letter, or else the secretary who wrote it absent-mindedly wrote the reality instead of the pretence we all subscribe to. Interesting.’
‘It was written by a secretary?’
‘Great men do not normally write their own letters. Besides, he is spoken of in the third person.’
He picked up a small sheet of vellum which had been enclosed in the letter and bore a seal at the bottom.
‘This is the passport for you, with attendants. That will ease matters for us.’
‘Good.’
I had very nearly decided to leave Moscow without permission, if it did not come soon. I picked up the purse and broke the heavy wax seal. There was a great deal of money inside, for which I was grateful. The Russian money provided by Rowland Heyward before I left London and the coins from Uglich were dwindling. I was not sure how much I would need on the further journey and this would be one less thing to worry me.
Now that I had permission at last, I wanted to depart the next day, but neither Austin Foulkes nor Christopher Holme would hear of it. Austin was about to leave Moscow himself, to make his way slowly north. It was March, and for the last part of his journey the snow and ice would have melted too much to allow travel by sleigh. He would either need to journey by boat or on horseback.
‘Depending on the weather and the condition of the ground,’ he said. ‘By the time I reach Kolmogory, it will most probably be boggy again, but we shall see.’
‘You need to think of this as well, Kit,’ Christopher said. ‘You could start out by sleigh, and then, since you will be further south, where the thaw comes earlier, find yourself unable to carry on.’
Pyotr agreed. ‘Horseback would be better.’
‘I am agreeable,’ I said. ‘Let us by all means go on horseback.’
‘In any case,’ Christopher said, tapping Godunov’s letter and passport where they lay on the office table between us, ‘in any case, you need a letter of authorisation to use the post horses. I will see to it that the government authorities provide one. It may take a few days.’
I groaned. I had learned to know what ‘a few days’ meant to the bureaucracy of Muscovy. ‘Why do we not simply take Company horses and rest them at intervals?’
Once again Pyotr intervened. ‘The journey will be made quicker by changing post horses, rather than constantly waiting while our horses recover. You forget how great the distances are in this country.’
‘Very well,’ I said in a resigned voice, ‘tell me how far it is to Astrakhan.’
We all looked at Austin. He was accustomed to dealing with merchants in the south. He would have a better idea than any of us.
‘I cannot be certain, not exactly. It will depend on river crossings and how directly you are able to travel, but it must be the best part of a thousand miles.’
I put my head in my hands. Even with fast horses, changing at the posts . . . it could take weeks. And just as long to travel back again.
‘Perhaps we will not need to go all the way,’ I said, but I said it without much hope.
It was another week before Pyotr and I were able to leave Moscow. By then Austin had started by sleigh on his way to Yaroslavl, taking armed guards with him, after Alexander Wingrave had reminded him of the ambush which had killed the letter carrier on that stretch of road the previous year. Before he left, he insisted that we should also take an armed escort. This was not my intention at all.
‘We need to be unobtrusive,’ I complained. ‘How can we be unobtrusive with an armed guard?’
In the end, we compromised. One of the Company guards would attend us, and would do his best to appear a simple traveller like ourselves. When I met Thomas Edgewick, a huge Yorkshire man with fists like cannon balls and a sword to match, I found it hard to believe he could make himself unobtrusive. His whole appearance shouted ‘English soldier!’. However, I had agreed, so I must make the best of it.
The weather was good when we started out from Moscow. The sun had gradually been rising a little sooner and setting a little later every day. Already I was conscious of more daylight, but I insisted we must set out at dawn. I had been growing more and more impatient to begin at long last on the first reasonable search for Gregory Rocksley. Looking back, I wonder whether something more than reason, some blind instinct, prompted me. To begin with, we followed the west bank of the Moskva river, which led us in a south-easterly direction, under a clear sky, and were troubled by very little wind. There had been no more snow since the brief fall on the day Pyotr and I had visited the apothecary. The path we followed was beaten down hard from frequent traffic, for villages
and small towns were strung loosely along the bank of the river, like occasional beads on a string.
There was no real sign of spring yet. The river was still hard frozen, hard enough to be used as a winter road. We saw passenger and goods sleighs moving along it in both directions, but it wound a good deal, so we were able to save time over the river traffic by taking short cuts across the neck of some of the loops, where the ground and trees permitted it. For there were trees here too, interspersed between the settlements and the areas cleared for farming, although it was probably never so densely forested as the northern lands we had travelled through.
Our plan was to ride the good Company horses for most of the first day, then leave them at a post station, where they would be collected by the next Company men to pass this way. This was located at a major trading town, where river and road traffic crossed. Like all the Company horses, ours were branded on their left rumps. Woe betide any Muscovite who tried to steal one of them! The animals at the post stations would be a poorer form of horse flesh, but if they were like the other local horses I had seen, they would be sturdy and resilient, if not too fast on their feet. I fancied that our large Yorkshire man would look somewhat incongruous on a small Muscovite horse, but when it came time to change our mounts, he accepted it with equanimity. His feet did not quite touch the ground when he was mounted, but they came near.
We continued like this, changing horses four or five times a day. It was not the way I cared to ride, for how can you get to know your mount in such a short time? In difficult or dangerous circumstances, horse and rider need to understand one another, but there was never time to build up this trust. I could only hope that such difficult or dangerous circumstances would not arise.
At last we reached the confluence of the Moskva with the Oka river, where we were obliged to take a ferry across to the far side. We now left the water ways behind and headed across a thinly inhabited region. There was a clearly marked road – more of a track, in truth – which headed east, rather than south. It was still early morning after we had crossed the river, and the sun shone painfully into our eyes as it rose.