They crouched in a burning doorway, once the back entrance to the English House, and looked back. Nothing but flame. Stanley’s right cheek had been burnt, a mottled and angry blister like a poached egg showing through the black charcoal dust that covered his face, all their faces. All were half-choked, half-blinded, their eyes streaming. How had they seen anything in that fight? But they still lived.
And even over the sound of the inferno, Stanley thought he heard a horn. A brazen horn or maybe a ram’s horn, made to carry over the steppe … He raised his hand. It came again. Smith heard it this time. They looked at each other.
‘What?’ said Nicholas, desperately hoping. ‘What is it? More Russian forces? Streltsy?’
‘Alas, not that,’ said Stanley. ‘But it may just be – our friends Stenka and Yakublev causing trouble.’ He tightened his kerchief over his mouth one last time. ‘We must go.’
They tore off doublets and shirts and wrapped their hands and pulled aside glowing timbers, crouched, crawling like serpents, under a low roof of smoke, and got through the stone-floored kitchens and came at last to the oak door to the cellars, still soaking wet, thank Christ. Stanley hammered on it and shouted in English, and a moment later they heard a fumbling on the other side. The ceiling of the kitchen over their heads gave a huge crack. The English House was burning from the top down, like many of the houses, lit by incendiaries from above. Those fine first-floor chambers, the bedrooms, the wood-panelled corridor, the attics, already consumed in the violence of the fire. If the House had burned from below, it would have been long gone by now.
The volume of the roaring flames increased, overhead, all around. The smoke was sucked up and away by it, but breathing was no easier, the heat almost enough to make them pass out. Nicholas crouched against Hodge, the cloth pressed to his mouth, wondering if you could inhale air so hot, your lungs began to roast from the inside. And then the door was open and they were stumbling blearily down a spiral of stone steps, the door bolted behind them. They came into a red-brick cellar lit by one candle, and a circle of terrified faces. Little Cecily Greene began to cry.
The denizens of the cellar saw four unearthly figures, coated in white dust and black, red-eyed, bearing wounds about them, one with a filthy bandage around his thigh, another with a horribly blistered cheek, one with a long cut in his forearm, the black-bearded one. Two them were down to torn shirts, and two, the blond giant Edward Stanley and the young Ingoldsby, were naked now to the waist, drenched in sweat, the torn remains of their shirts bound around their hands. Even by the single candle, the serving women, and Mistress Ann Southam too, could not help looking over the magnificent torso of the giant, strong as an ox, the biceps bulging, and the lean muscled chest and arms of the younger one, the handsome boy – and to think the giant, at least, was a Catholic monk, and sworn to celibacy! Even in this grim cellar, a city burning down around them, they could not help but think it was a crying shame. Though they had already heard some household gossip about the other. Men. Really.
And then a girl’s cry, and a slim figure rushed towards them and threw her arms around Nicholas. She stood back, her face smudged from his. Flushed, anxious, yet eyes sparkling with tearful relief.
‘Aye,’ he said fatuously, awkward before this audience, conscious he was bare to the waist and the women were observing him closely. ‘We made it.’
Her father coughed. He knew from the frightful look of the four, and knew it with some irritation, that they truly were strong fighters, unafraid of battle, and he resented it.
‘Your appearance is terrible,’ he said.
‘Aye,’ said Stanley, touching his hand to his blistered cheek. ‘It’s quite a warm summer night out there.’
‘And I always thought Russia was supposed to be cold,’ said Hodge.
Waverley did not comprehend their humour.
The four sank back with that utter exhaustion after battle that they knew so well. The others continued to stare at them, Waverley and Robert Greene and Thomas Southam and Mistress Ann and the several serving men and women, as if they were creatures come from the burning pit.
At last Waverley said, ‘Well, let us thank the Good Lord for your deliverance.’
Bit early for that, thought Smith. Have you seen what it’s like out there? But he manfully held his tongue.
Unheard by the fearful gathering in the cellar, but as Stanley had heard earlier, horns were sounding here and there in the south of the city: Tatar horns, echoing one great horn sounded from the nearby heights. It was the order to pull back. Because any battle now would be fought outside the walls – where the Tatar horsemen fought best.
Devlet Giray had surveyed the blazing city from the heights of the Sparrow Hills with considerable satisfaction. All was accomplished as planned. And they had said that the age of the steppe horseman was done! That the future lay with those dull drilled regiments of musketeers, like the Streltsy or those of the Turks! But where was the dash and the exhilarating gallop, the heroism and the glory in that?
But he could now see from his vantage point that the city before him was burning wildly out of control, and its fate was no more in the hands of any mortal commander, but subject only to the Will of Allah. He had no desire to lose any of his best men, always the first into any captured city, in that firestorm. There would not be any great loot from this molten inferno, but they had taken a good few hundred slaves, so let it be. The capital of this upstart Russian power was all but laid waste, and their entire empire could now be retaken bit by bit, with no resistance.
They should make for Kazan and take it. He might return to Moscow next year – and take up residence in the Kremlin for a while, with a slave called Ivan Vasil’evich serving him his coffee or his iced sherbet! That would be amusing.
He watched more slaves being whipped into the camp, women of Moscow with faces still covered in smuts and ash from the fire! He smiled at them. Some of the young Russian girls, with their pretty fair hair in braids and their high cheekbones and their pale blue eyes, were enough to drive a man wild. Perhaps a few for the Sultan on the Bosphorus, to flatter him, but not too many. That peace-loving scholar couldn’t be much of a one for swiving. Instead there would be a happy apportioning of these pretty blonde kittens among his generals tonight, a few to his bravest warriors, and much grunting and thrashing in the tents thereafter. He laughed aloud, a harsh, abrupt laugh. War was sweet!
And how he was looking forward to composing his next missive to that lank fool Ivan! A terror to his own people, but his enemies’ best ally. He had it in his head already. Devlet Giray would mock him for his rank cowardice, demand he swear fealty as a vassal, humiliate him utterly … It was all about scornfully trampling your enemy in the dust, taking his gold, and ravishing his women until they clung to you through the long night, wrapped their lissom limbs around you, and sobbed that they would never leave you even if you were to give them their freedom.
Oh, by the ten thousand names of Allah, but war was holy and sweet.
He saw one of his men raise his whip to a stumbling girl, and called out, ‘You there! Stay your hand.’
Victory made you benevolent, tender-hearted. You even began to dislike seeing slave-girls whipped! What a comedy. He looked closely at the girl. Head bowed, cheek flushed, breasts like small apples, something in the way she walked … A young fawn of a girl, and virgin still, or he was no judge of women.
He jerked his head. ‘Take her to my tent. Have the women attend to her.’
Far out on the plain behind the vast Tatar camp were drawn up the baggage wagons, beside the slave pens filled with hundreds more captured village girls, strong young men and pleasing children. The wagons were laden with loot taken from churches and monasteries along the way, guarded by well-armed eunuchs. Those geldings were thought to be more honest. Why should they seek to enrich
themselves? They had no heirs to inherit their wealth. And from this rearguard had come a message of some panic.
Accursed Cossacks again.
A messenger came running, breathless, saying they had been seen on some hills not far off, many hundreds, perhaps thousands, eyeing the baggage like vultures eyeing carrion, knowing the main Tatar host had been drawn into Moscow, and looking for easy pickings. They might be down at any moment like lightning, like a wolf on the fold, and away again with the best loot before the Tatar host even knew of it.
But then some of the Cossacks had fired a few arrows down onto the baggage camp. As if they wanted to make their presence known.
It was then that Devlet Giray had taken one last, good look at Moscow burning. Almost pitiful, its lack of resistance. And yet did it not say in the Holy Koran, Garments of fire have been prepared for the unbelievers. Boiling water shall be poured upon their heads, melting their skins and bursting their bellies. They shall be beaten with rods of iron, and when in their agony they try to escape from that Burning, my angels will drag them back down, saying, ‘Come, taste the torments of Hell-fire!’
Blessed be the word of Allah.
That was when Devlet Giray turned away and gave the order to pull back out of the doomed city, and the great ram’s horn sounded.
‘And reinforce the guards at the baggage camp.’
They had been crouched in the cellar for no more than twenty minutes, the four comrades doing their best to tend and rebandage each other’s wounds, when the brick-vaulted ceiling over their heads gave an ominous crack. Glancing up, Smith caught a faceful of dust cascading down, and saw an ugly black crack open up across the corner of the vault. Already the temperature in the cellar was far hotter than they had expected, to their silent dismay. The men’s and women’s faces were dripping with sweat, their clothes plastered to them, even their eyes reddening in the heat. Greene’s children had their faces buried in their mother’s skirts. It could not get any hotter down here or they would be in danger of burning alive. Old Thomas Southam was beginning to struggle for breath, head down, hands clenched into fists. Ann Southam, for all she was his trollop wife, held him close and talked to him low and reassuring.
But only moments after the ominous crack above, the temperature in the cellar seemed suddenly to rise, and from above their heads they could hear a tremendous, muffled roaring, like some caged wild beast behind a curtain at a fair.
The three children of Robert Greene began to scream. Thomas Southam’s gasping got worse, and Waverley paled and cried, ‘We are trapped like swine in a slaughterhouse! We will burn alive in here! This was a dreadful mistake, I tell you, a dreadful mistake, we should never have—’
Rebecca held his trembling arm. ‘Hush, Father, it is better here than outside, believe me. Had you seen the Tatar horsemen and what they did …’
Waverley groaned. They were doomed.
‘Lie down as low as you can,’ said Stanley. ‘All of you, flat on the floor, face down. Children, breathe only through your noses, keep your mouths closed, so you—’
But he was interrupted by another, far louder crack overhead, and suddenly the volume of the fire’s roaring increased fourfold, a storm right above them. The temperature was becoming near unbearable. Old Southam laid his hands flat out on the stone floor of the cellar and whimpered pitifully for air. But it was thinning fast.
‘The fire above is sucking it out of here!’ said Hodge urgently. ‘Like a log fire sucking air up the chimney.’
Smith nodded grimly. ‘He’s right. The cellar has served us well enough until now, but it is beginning to kill us.’
Stanley looked around in desperation. It was just possible that the back street was now burned out and quieter again, and the Tatars had been called back … And yes, they were roasting alive in here. Timbers heaved and cracked over their heads, the great oak posts and joists of the House burning back, the heat hellish. If a floor fell in from above it might smash through the ceiling and all would be crushed.
‘I cannot breathe,’ gasped Southam, clawing at the floor, ‘I cannot breathe, God save me!’
And then Mistress Greene suddenly reached out for her husband, and went limp.
‘Do something!’ cried Ann Southam.
‘Sir,’ said Smith, ‘blow air into her lungs! Shake her! Waverley, how thick are these walls?’
‘I do not know,’ said Waverley. ‘Thick, and half-buried too.’
Stanley said, ‘Is there no coalhole down here?’
‘No,’ said Waverley, ‘the other side of the house.’ He waved a limp hand. ‘There is a scuttle for the delivery of wine barrels but—’
‘Why did you not say, man?’
‘The door is locked and I have no key!’
‘How strong is the door?’ cried Smith. ‘Let me at it!’ He got to his feet and immediately sank to his knees again as if felled. The heat trapped just below the ceiling was enough to knock a horse senseless.
‘Open another vent, the fire may just roar up the fiercer with the rush of air,’ said Hodge.
‘A risk we must take,’ said Stanley.
He and the other three crawled into the neighbouring cellar, hotter still, tying their kerchiefs over their mouths once more. Smith stabbed his pike through a small tun of Madeira and it flooded the floor. They heard some wailed objection from Waverley behind, something about Crown property, but it made little impact. They wallowed in the sticky puddle, dipped their kerchiefs in it.
‘This’ll either make us drunk or save us,’ said Stanley. ‘There’s the door, Brother John, have at it. The hinges look weaker than the lock to me.’ He called back. ‘The rest of you, crawl to us! Keep low!’
At that moment there came a terrible noise from above – it sounded like a timber of oak was being twisted around like a blade of grass by some maddened giant, some Nordic fire-giant – and then it was as Stanley had feared. A huge fall above smashed through the cellar roof, and immediately half-buried it and the flames roared up.
Nicholas was back in amid the inferno in a trice, pulling Rebecca through, Ann Southam, she herself dragging at old Thomas, but then he stumbled and fell … It was chaos, Smith bellowing, smashing at the iron hinges of the scuttle door, smoke suddenly blinding them, Hodge and Stanley groping also, unseeing, for desperate hands held out to them, burning, burning …
A heavy wooden clatter and the door was wrenched off and they crawled out of the scuttle one by one, choking, blinded, hearing pitiful screams and cries behind them. Came out on all fours like dogs into a back alley and lay gasping, coughing up lungfuls of smoke, their very tongues burned and tingling, lips charred. Someone vomited. Stanley’s voice still shouting, ‘Get away, get away, keep moving!’ then turning and crawling back in to rescue any still alive.
Afterwards, Rebecca remembered crawling and then stumbling onward down an ashen lane, half fainting. Heaps of blackened timber, a crooked black hand reaching out to her from a heap of ash, and then a small stone stable, blackened without, miraculously untouched within. The randomness of fire. There was even straw inside, unburned even in this blaze, and a russet pig standing in the corner, eyeing her. She huddled close to Ann Southam, who she had little cause to like, and they looked about them, and at each other’s ashen and stricken faces, and then the women began to weep but with no noise. The last thing Rebecca had heard as she crawled out of that cellar was her father’s voice crying out, the last thing Ann Southam had heard, the quavering voice of her husband.
No more were rescued. The last fugitives fell into the little stable like broken men. Stanley looked back at the English House. No more would come out alive. None. It burned more violently than any other around, but perhaps it was a wonder it had stood so long.
He bowed his head and he too wept.
Robert Greene was burned to death in there, and Thomas Southam, and the fool Waverley, and Mistress Greene too, and the three children. The whole family wiped out. Stanley named them in his heart. Jane, aged eleven, Robert, aged nine, and Cecily, but five years on this earth. He named them before God, and begged God’s forgiveness that he had failed them.
Then there was a heavy, familiar hand on his shoulder.
‘Let us go on,’ said Smith.
But they were defeated. In every way. ‘Go on where, Brother?’
‘At least to the riverbank. Wash our wounds.’
‘The river is choked with corpses. Some good that will do our wounds.’
Even Smith was lost for words a moment. It was true. They had awoken to find themselves still in hell. Then he said, ‘A fountain, perhaps, a well. We must find water. The Tatars are gone.’
Slowly, liked dazed or dying creatures, holding each other, they rose up and walked out into a ruined city, a wilderness of ash.
Fires still burned fitfully, here a small chapel, behind them the accursed English House. There were corpses, pools of smoking human fat. Slaughtered pigs and mules. The severed head of a single militiaman, burnt black and stuck on a spike of timber like a rotten fruit.
‘Take care there,’ said Stanley indicating. Another pool, dark grey. Molten lead from a roof. A cat half-burned, still alive, dragging its back legs, mewing pitifully. Smith knelt swiftly beside it and gave it its release.
Half the city was gone. In the north, fires still burned. And in the centre stood the walled fortress, the cathedrals and the palaces of the Kremlin, hardly touched.
‘I never thought we would head there for refuge,’ said Smith. ‘But now …’
Stanley nodded wearily. ‘Bomelius is dead. Ivan is gone, with his Oprichnina. It may be a place of refuge, until we can find a boat and get away from here. Downriver, or northwards, to Archangel, and home.’
England or Italy or Malta – anywhere but here.
Smith nodded. ‘We should go.’