After dusk, unknown to the knights or their two young companions, a servant went out from the English House with the best horse from the stables. He carried a letter from Thomas Waverley himself, addressed to none other than the Great Khan, Ruler of Asia and Scythia, Lord of the Faithful, His Excellency Devlet Giray. It was a request for safe passage for a party of English neutrals.
The servant was the trusty Edward Ballard, whom the four adventurers had previously seen talking with Southam and Greene. He came to the south gate of the city, bulked and barred, but a small postern gate left clear, barely large enough for a horse to pass through. He dismounted. The guards stood before the gate with pikes planted in the earth, unmoving.
‘From the English House,’ he said. ‘Let me pass.’
‘A strange hour to be riding out of the city,’ said a voice from the shadows of the guardhouse.
‘English business,’ said Ballard stoutly. ‘We have protection and free passage by Order of the Czar.’
‘In time of war,’ said the voice, ‘all such orders are rescinded. Needs of the State.’ And the speaker appeared from the shadows. Ballard felt a chill pass over him. Oh no.
He wore a long black cloak like a Dominican monk, but unlike such a holy man, he wore a long sword at his side, and a dark eye-mask pushed up on his forehead. In his hands he carried a whip.
Oprichnina.
Instinctively, Ballard drew near to his horse, groping for the stirrup, ready to remount.
‘Stay!’
He hesitated.
‘What are you carrying?’
‘Carrying? Nothing.’
The Oprichnik smiled. ‘Come, I do not think you are just riding out for a romantic moonlit ride. To appreciate the surrounding country. With the Tatars riding so close?’
A second, taller Oprichnik emerged lazily from the guardhouse, still picking his teeth, and said, ‘Unless perhaps you wanted to meet up with the Tatars?’
‘I, I …’ His hesitancy was fatal. The Oprichniki were onto it immediately.
‘Strip him down,’ they ordered. ‘Find it.’
They knew as if they could scent it like wolves. They looked at each other and smiled. What bungling amateurs these English must be.
Some streets away, in the very heart of Moscow, a sound like a dim roar went up, and overhead the dark sky began to burn with a dull orange glow, as if a huge bonfire had been lit.
Ballard, forced to his knees and stripped of cloak, doublet, shirt, craned around terrified. What the hell was that? What was happening? The Devil walked abroad tonight in Moscow. And this plan of Waverley’s was a stupid mistake, he had always thought so. But what could a servant say?
The second Oprichnik pointed towards the hubbub with his little toothpick. ‘You hear the festivities? The Great Cleansing? For it is the Eve, and the city must be cleansed, you know. You have heard of the Bonfire of the Vanities that they had in Italy, in Florence, some years ago? That too was overseen by a monk and a holy man, was it not? Brother Savonarola?’
The other smiled. ‘And we too are holy men, we Oprichniki.’ He planted his boot in the small of Ballard’s back and shoved him down flat in the dust. ‘And we too must have a great bonfire. Strip him naked. Everything.’
The guards tore off his breeches and underclouts with added brutality, to show their zeal. They found the letter. The second Oprichnik took it.
‘I can only read a little of the barbarous English tongue and the uncouth Roman lettering, but I see that it is in Russian too, and also Turkish. How very learned. And I see the name Devlet Giray here. This letter is a plea from the English House to the Tatar Khan, I see. A plea for mercy?’
Ballard said nothing. The Oprichnik kicked him ferociously in the side and felt the familiar, sharp crack right through his own heavily booted foot. At least one rib, perhaps two or three. It was always a thrill to find how easy it was to break a man’s bones inside his body, with just one well-aimed kick. Extraordinary.
Ballard howled and rolled onto his side, clutching his splintered ribs.
‘Push him flat again,’ ordered the Oprichnik. ‘Now, English dog. Tell me you have conspired with the Tatars, or I will kick you in just the same place again. This time you will howl like a hundred wolves. And remember that broken ribs can pierce lungs, and then you die fast.’
‘It is so, it is so,’ gasped Ballard, his speech going in his terror. ‘It is all so, we confess it, Father. Forgive me, forgive me …’
The Oprichnik rolled the letter up tightly and handed it to one of the guards like a baton. ‘Here. You give it back to him, in a safe place.’
The guard guffawed and knelt behind the naked wretch and shoved the letter home. Ballard howled again, weeping more with shame even than the excruciating pain in his ribs.
‘Sling him back on his horse,’ said the Oprichnik. They untied their own black horses, dogs’ heads jouncing from the saddle, and mounted up. ‘To the festivities!’
The other leaned down and spoke softly in Ballard’s ear where he lay across the horse, his chest in flaming agony. ‘For it is for such as you, Tatar-lover, that the festivities are being held.’
‘Shall we take the English House too?’ said the first.
The second considered and then shook his head. ‘All in good time. They are not going anywhere. Let them stew. We will soon be coming for them.’ He reflected. ‘But go and make sure they know.’
Nicholas and Hodge were standing at the window staring out into the dark Moscow night. A wind had begun to toss the treetops about. There might be a summer storm coming.
And then Hodge said, ‘Orange glow there. Seems a funny time to be having a bonfire.’
A horseman came up the street. A dark horseman. Instinctively, Nicholas and Hodge stepped back into the shadows. The horseman reined in before the door below and hammered on it with the butt of his whip. After a time, shutters opened and Thomas Waverley leaned out, demanding to know who disturbed the peace. Then he saw the horseman’s dress.
‘Bung it up and listen, you dog,’ said the Oprichnik. ‘Your man is taken, with your letter to Devlet Giray. Your treachery is exposed.’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ murmured Nicholas.
‘The letter, the letter,’ babbled Waverley, ‘I know of no letter. Come within, enter our house, have some of our—’
The Oprichnik spat on the door. ‘You will stay inside. All of you. We will deal with you anon. Any of you found on the streets, your lives are forfeit. Although in truth,’ he smiled unpleasantly, ‘it were best no foreigners were out on the streets tonight anyway.’
And then he was gone.
Fury erupted in the English House.
‘You sent your man out like a lamb to the slaughter!’ bellowed Smith. ‘Carrying a letter to the enemy Khan in his cloak like a village simpleton! What were you thinking, man? Do you realise what they will do to him now?’
Thomas Waverley babbled some more, about that being no mannerly way to speak to one’s host. But it was a little late for that.
‘And now you have condemned us all! Soon this house will be surrounded by the murderous Oprichnina, while the city is surrounded by your friends the Tatars, and we will be caught in the heart of a double siege! A wise plan indeed, Master Waverley!’
‘Smith, Smith,’ said Stanley, ‘not so loud—’
But Sir John Smith, Knight Commander of Malta, face flushed with blood and bull-neck bulging, was beyond calm. He rounded on Robert Greene and Thomas Southam as they too appeared in the upper chamber, still half asleep and blinking.
‘And you two, did you know of this cockaninny plan that’s doomed us all to a slow death? Tell me you did not.’
They looked at the ground and mumbled ‘all for the best,’ ‘desperate straits,’ and other phrases. Yes, they knew.
Smith slammed his fist on a small three-legged table and it nearly broke under him.
Rebecca Waverley was there too, and Ann Southam, more womenfolk and servants. Through the open shutters, from the heart of the city, came terrific sounds of uproar. Everything was erupting in chaos around them.
‘Father, is this true?’ Rebecca said quietly. ‘You offered alliance to the Tatars?’
Waverley snapped, ‘So it is, and if you had more knowledge of the real world, my girl, you would better understand why.’
‘But this is treachery,’ she said.
The humiliated Waverley turned on her, since he hardly dared turn on Smith. ‘How dare my own daughter question her father so!’ and he made as if to strike her. In the blink of an eye, Nicholas had taken one swift sidestep and was standing close by her side. He stood three or four inches taller than Waverley, but it was more the look in his eye that gave the merchant pause. Waverley’s trembling hand slowly fell.
‘Even if she is your daughter,’ said Nicholas softly, ‘you do not strike women. Not in my presence.’
‘Nor in the presence of the knights,’ said Stanley. ‘It is not something we favour. Any more than we favour treachery.’
At that repetition of the dread word treachery, it finally seemed to dawn on Waverley what he had done. Suddenly defeated, he sank down upon a stool, white-faced, and muttered, ‘What have I done? I thought to save all our lives, but sweet Christ, what have I done?’
The other merchants looked at the floor. Robert Greene pressed his forehead to the wall and closed his eyes.
Smith surveyed them with contempt. He could only think of the manservant Ballard in the hands of the Oprichnina. Even his tough, battle-scarred old heart went out to that poor, damned man.
‘You should all think most on what you have done to Edward Ballard,’ he growled. ‘I just pray that he dies quickly. As for you, sirs, you had best pray, and pray hard, that God forgives you all for the savage doom you have sent him too.’
At that, Waverley buried his face in his hands and wept. Then his daughter knelt beside him and put her arms about him. He was her father still.
‘Come,’ said Stanley. ‘Out of the room.’
No sooner had they stepped out of the chamber into the hallway outside, than more pandemonium erupted down below. The Devil indeed rode through Moscow tonight.
A Russian servant girl had come running to the back door, babbling in terror, and was now spreading her terror very successfully among the servants in the hall. They ran downstairs. She talked wildly, raising her grubby white apron to her face, crossing herself, gesticulating. The servants were listening wide-eyed. More of the household gathered.
‘The Czar himself is to lead the procession, they say, with a great cross!’ she babbled. ‘A great silver cross with Christ golden upon it, and a buffoon riding a bear, you never saw such a thing, and they say there is to be a great cleansing, and the traitors among us are to be found out and put to the test, the Jews and the Persians all drowned in the river, and all the while people say the Tatars are drawing near, but they say first we must be made strong through burning …’ And then she broke down and sobbed into her apron, the madness of it all too much for her.
Stanley understood immediately and his blood ran cold. The special Russian word for it was pogrom. It was a strange aspect of human nature, that when people felt threatened from without – invasion, famine or plague – they turned upon some imaginary enemy within. During the Black Death, maddened mobs had turned upon Jews or Lollards for scapegoats, killing them in the most unspeakable ways, as if to drive out the sickness in their midst. But the real sickness was in men’s own hearts.
Smith turned on the company. ‘Are we all within doors? All the English household?’
They summoned every last person throughout the sprawling townhouse and one was missing: old Hannah.
‘Wherever is the old dame?’ muttered Waverley. ‘We cannot go out after her, not amid this madness.’
‘She went out to the evening market!’ cried Rebecca. ‘Is she not back yet? I only wanted fresh berries, it is my fault!’
‘The fires are burning at the market!’ said the Russian girl. ‘There is talk of turning over the tables of the moneychangers, of driving forth the Jews to the Moskva River …’
‘To your room, girl,’ Waverley ordered his daughter. ‘Do not worry, Hannah will be found. They will not harm an old woman.’
Rebecca fled upstairs with a cry.
‘Does Hannah speak any Russian?’ demanded Stanley.
‘Not a word,’ said Waverley. ‘Despises it as a language of savages.’
‘Then the moment she is apprehended and questioned,’ said Smith, ‘they will know her for a foreigner, and then …’ He drew his hand across his throat.
‘But you cannot go out after her in this!’ said Waverley. ‘I remember the mob rioting in London, but gentlefolk who stayed indoors were quite safe. It was only on the streets that—’
‘Not everyone is safe here,’ said Stanley. ‘One is still out.’
‘She has been the girl’s beloved nurse since infancy!’ cried the Russian girl. ‘She is like a mother to her!’
‘She is a serving woman,’ said Waverley coldly.
‘And we cannot get out anyway, surely,’ said Robert Greene. ‘The house is being watched back and front.’
‘I think not,’ said Stanley. ‘I doubt if they have troubled. Where have we to run to? And whatever is taking place this night, whatever Witches’ Sabbath, no sane person would want to be out in it anyway.’
‘Quite so,’ said Waverley. ‘Come, let us have a glass. Call my daughter down again. Let her not be alone.’
Moments later – ‘Sir, Mistress Rebecca is not in her room.’
They searched the house. The kitchens being emptied of servants, she had slipped out that way. They counted the horses in the stables. All present. She had gone on foot, as unobtrusive as possible in her dark grey cloak. Too young to understand the danger, or how bestial a mob may be.
‘My daughter!’ cried Thomas Waverley in his grief. ‘My only child! Her dark hair! They will take her for a Jewess!’
Then why the devil wasn’t he already out looking for her this instant? thought Nicholas, running to his chamber to get his sword.
‘She at least speaks some Russian,’ said Robert Greene, ‘does she not?’
Smith and Stanley were buckling on too. ‘To the stables!’ Waverley was saying this was madness, Greene was saying they must exercise caution, let us not be hasty. But the time for their merchant advice was past.