‘And then in Muscovy itself – this delicate matter.’
If we get there alive in our own skins, thought Nicholas sourly.
Cecil coughed. Elizabeth let him go on.
‘The Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan by name’ – even Cecil hesitated – ‘has sent our beloved Queen a Proposal of Marriage.’
Elizabeth touched a kerchief to her mouth in amusement. ‘Notwithstanding that he is married already.’
A little like your own father, thought Nicholas. But silence now, traitorous thoughts.
Cecil said, ‘What do you know of this Ivan yourself, as a travelled, somewhat educated gentleman of England?’
Nicholas racked his brains, found little but tall tales there. ‘Tales of a Grand Prince of the East,’ he murmured, ‘who moves about with a horde who live in tents, or hibernates like a bear in a far northern fastness of ice and snow, in a gold palace set with jewels.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Cecil. ‘Exaggerations to some degree, perhaps.’ His humour was drier than Arabian sand. ‘Nevertheless, this Proposal is in earnest, and this Muscovy is a great and rising power. This Caesar of Muscovy, Ivan – Caesar becomes Czar in their barbarous tongue – was a mere tribal chieftain only four decades ago. His kingdom no more than a huddle of wooden houses and churches on the River Moskva, deep in the heart of this great unknown land.’
He waved his hand over Jenkinson’s map.
‘Now, suddenly, he has risen to rule from the icy wastes of the White Sea and the Baltic in the north, all the way down to the desert sands of the Caspian Sea in the south. He has twice conquered the Mohammedan hordes in great battle, these Tatars – warriors of Turkic custom, Turkic blood and Turkic ferocity. Kinsmen and of course powerful allies of the Ottomans. We believe the Tatars are descendants of Ghenghiz Khan, who terrorized all the world. The Russians call them the Golden Horde, their most ancient and bitter enemies.
‘Now Ivan has already taken the city of Kazan from the Khanate to the east, and the important port of Astrakhan on the Caspian. With Russia’s great, broad rivers flowing through flat lands without mountain passes, Czar Ivan rules over trade routes of unimaginable reach, from the Baltic to the shores of Persia across the Caspian Sea. From there lies a land route straight to India and China. He could sell German salt herrings to the Shah in Isfahan if he wanted, in straight exchange for Eastern silk and spices. Imagine the profit in that.’
Nicholas’s eyes roved over the map, struggling to picture the scale of this vast empire risen so suddenly from obscurity.
Cecil said, ‘He can only wax wealthier and more powerful still with such a kingdom.’
‘And become a greater threat to the Turks,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What are his intentions? Where will he turn next? If he turns against the Khanate of the Crimea, and conquers, he will then have access to the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean beyond. Then his reach will be beyond all other empires of the world.’
‘And so you see,’ said Cecil, his hands clasped as if in prayer, ‘negotiations regarding this Proposal of Marriage will have to be delicate. We are playing for time, but not refusing. You will take Ivan a fine oil portrait of Her Majesty, and other gifts.’
‘You are not …’ at last Nicholas could not help himself, and against all court etiquette he blurted out, ‘you are not going to accept his Proposal?’
But Elizabeth only smiled tolerantly and said with softened voice, ‘Of course we are not. But that is not why you are going.’
He bowed out of her presence, greatly relieved. Only later did he reflect that he still wasn’t exactly sure why he was going. As a kind of freelance spy?
5
‘Tell me the bad news,’ said Hodge, already dark of temper.
‘We’re commanded to go to Constantinople.’
‘Turkey!’
‘Just so. By royal command. So you can’t even say no.’
Hodge’s scowl deepened still further.
‘It gets worse,’ said Nicholas.
‘How could it get worse?’
‘We then go on to Russia.’
‘Russia!’
‘The Caesar of all the Russias, Ivan, has proposed marriage to our Queen.’
‘The villain. And what are we supposed to do about it? I’m not marrying the bugger in her stead.’
Nicholas slapped him on the shoulder and said cheerfully, ‘We’re going as emissaries, ambassadors, with gifts, and also as spies. With no experience, no support, and no escape if things go wrong.’
‘When things go wrong.’ Hodge raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Why us, O Lord, why us?’
‘And also, I think, to make friends with this Czar Ivan of Russia.’
‘How quaint.’
They spent the afternoon at the duelling school in the Artillery Gardens north of the city, near Moorfields. Nicholas felt they should exercise their sword arms. ‘Just in case.’ The Italian master there said they were clumsy and out of practice, but by the end of two hours’ hard exercise he grudgingly admitted they had some skill.
‘You will need thees skill too,’ he said. ‘London full of bad men, bad men. Wild men. Terrible. Worse than Italy.’
‘What about Russia?’ said Nicholas.
Things moved rapidly. Nicholas negotiated with his belligerent new mariner friend back at the Mermaid, who gave him word of a sea captain sailing for Spain with a load of Suffolk cloth in two days’ time. Smith and Stanley reappeared from their unknown lodgings and he told them Cecil knew where they were. Smith grunted, ‘We know where he is too.’
‘Russia?’ said Stanley. ‘Interesting.’
They found the captain at Wapping Stairs, looked over the plump little merchantman going to Cadiz, agreed a price. Bought some provisions. Sent word to Cecil, had two precious crates loaded on board, one bound for the court of Constantinople, one for Muscovy.
‘This is unreal,’ said Hodge. ‘Pinch me.’
‘Business of State,’ said Nicholas. ‘Not ours to question it.’
And a day after that they sailed down a gilded Thames at dawn into the rising sun. Nicholas looked back on the slowly awakening city, and pictured the green shires of England beyond. He had no idea when they would return, but it would not be by Michaelmas now, and he felt that familiar thrill and ache of traveller’s joy, traveller’s sorrow.
Tacking down the Channel they passed the new St Catherine’s lighthouse on the Isle of Wight. Mercifully God sent them clear weather for rounding the dreaded Eddystone, sixteen miles off the Devon coast.
‘Sixteen miles out to sea,’ said Hodge wonderingly. ‘A huge mountain arising from the seabed miles below, its peak just breaking the waves. Beggars imagination.’
Nicholas stared down into the black depths. If you took away all the sea it would stand a huge lonely mountain, higher than any in Wales or Scotland perhaps. Everywhere the fearful grandeur, the illimitable power of the Creator. There was no reckoning it.
‘Tell us what you know of Russia,’ said Nicholas. Already he dreamed of the place, he had seen woodcuts. Carriages on huge sledges, men in long fur coats and outlandish conical hats, monstrous bears …
Stanley said, ‘Her River Volga makes our Thames look like a stream. As she nears the sea you cannot see one shore from the other.’
‘Travellers’ exaggeration,’ said Hodge scornfully.
‘Truth,’ said Stanley. ‘It was a while back now, nearly twenty years ago. We were very young knights then.’
‘You have – been in Russia?’
‘He’s a born liar,’ said Hodge.
Stanley grinned. ‘Oh, it was cold when we washed up on the shores of the White Sea with the noble Richard Chancellor! There were whale bones littering that shore like the bleached roofbeams of a great church.’
Hodge yawned. But Nicholas wondered if it was possible. Perhaps they worked as special agents, stirring up this nascent Muscovy to attack Turkey’s Tatar allies? If so, they had succeeded. Thrilling to think what tales Smith and Stanley had to tell of their travels and secret missions. They had murmured also of the Yemen, of India, he remembered, when they sailed from England that first time, he and Hodge but skinny, shivering, innocent boys of sixteen. So long ago, yet less than a decade. How Stanley had teased them with his travels and marvels. But was it only teasing?
The Knight Commander claimed to have sat beside the Great Mughal, riding into battle on an elephant dressed in scarlet silk. Ascended the High Kashmirs, met with holy men who could fly. Seen the very flower of Austrian chivalry fall beneath the curved blades of the Turk, seen Christian skulls whitening on the great Hungarian plain. Gazed upon the ruins of Antioch, of Heliopolis, and the wondrous pagan temples of Isfahan. Slipped unseen through the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb beneath the bright Arabian moon. And now, yes, walked in thick furs along the banks of the frozen Moskva, and set eyes on the Czar of all the Russias himself, whom they call Ivan the Terrible.
‘He’s just read a lot of travelling books,’ said Hodge, ‘and has no reverence for the truth.’
‘But the Russians have their own way of doing things,’ said Stanley. ‘They are not of the West. You will learn this for yourselves. You will encounter before long Ivan’s own special forces. The Oprichnina.’
Nicholas had never heard the word before, but something in Stanley’s tone made him shiver. ‘Like our constables of the watch?’
Stanley smiled an uncomforting smile. ‘Yes, if our constables of the watch rode about on black horses, dressed like black monks, armed with whips and spears and with severed dogs’ heads tied to their saddles—’
‘Severed dogs’ heads?’ cried Hodge indignantly. He was always a great dog-lover.
Stanley nodded.
‘The savage, sick-hearted villains!’
‘Of all the barbarous bastards I ever met,’ put in Smith softly, ‘they are the most bastardly of them all.’
‘The people of Russia might agree with you there, Brother Smith,’ said Stanley. ‘But they have to keep quiet about it. The Oprichnina are great favourites of the Czar.’
‘Why are they tolerated though?’ said Nicholas. ‘What of the law?’
‘In Russia,’ said Stanley, ‘Czar Ivan’s word is the law. And Czar Ivan, our supposed Christian ally now, may prove the most dangerous threat of all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because—’
‘Because he’s a mad dog,’ said Smith curtly. ‘Because he’s a bloody loon. All the cruelty he suffered as a boy has multiplied in him tenfold, a hundredfold, and now comes out like poison. We have heard that he roasted a warlord of the Finns on a spear over an open fire – roasted him alive, himself. We have heard he murdered his own chancellor – tore him limb from limb – and had his own State treasurer skinned in front of him. We have heard he had Leonid, Archbishop of Novgorod, sewn into a bearskin and thrown to ravenous hounds. Doubtless,’ he added sarcastically, ‘for some deep symbolic reason.’
Nicholas gaped. ‘Exaggerations, surely?’
‘You think? Ask the people of Novgorod. He slaughtered them in their thousands. Men, women, children … The streets ran with innocent blood. Ivan rejoiced to see it.’
‘And the people of Moscow admired him for his strength,’ said Stanley. ‘It is very hard to understand why one country follows one path, another country another. But England, for all its troubles, is a green and gentle country compared to most. Ideas like Magna Carta, or the King-in-Parliament, do not flourish in Russia. Perhaps they cannot afford such civilized luxuries. They need a tyrant to rule them, to keep order. They have spent centuries just struggling to survive, fighting off the Tatars.
‘And the Tatars, believe me, know how to fight.’
They caught a good west wind over a bad sea and pitched and rolled across Biscay. Retched and spewed, lay groaning, wrapped in blankets on a soaking deck, already wondering why they came. Smith refused to spew. Just refused. Said it weakened your sinews. Stood at the stern with a face the colour of the green sea itself and held it in. Stood for twenty-four hours solid, mighty hands strangling the taffrail.
‘He’s not human,’ groaned Hodge.
The seamen’s curses would have set the Devil’s own ears burning and all had seaweed flies crawling in their matted hair. But the captain knew his business, and there was no drink but weak beer aboard. They rounded Cape Finisterre and Galicia’s fanged coastline and followed the Portugal coast down and then rounded Cape St Vincent and passed a low-lying marshy Spanish shore and so came to the bright white city of Cadiz.
They took on fresh water, anchovies, oranges, almonds and fig cake. Nicholas said, ‘I know a good tavern on the quayside. Surely just a cup or two of sweet Spanish wine … ?’
Stanley shook his head. ‘No chance.’
‘Why the hurry? Such vulgar haste does not befit our ambassadorial dignity.’
Smith snorted with derision at this new-found status of his scruffy young Shropshire friends. Then he said, grim and curt, ‘We hurry because they hurry. They will be riding soon.’
The good west wind was holding and the captain open to the persuasion of gold. He would sail on to Malta for a fee.
‘And any Barbary pirates,’ said Stanley, ‘we will deal with ourselves.’
None came. The great Christian victory of Lepanto did indeed seem to have brought some peace to the bloody saltwater battleline of the Mediterranean. For now.
‘That’s just why we’re puzzled,’ said Stanley.
‘Why so?’
‘Because the Turks are surely still too exhausted after Lepanto to fight again in the Mediterranean. Yet something great is stirring. We can feel it. And we need to find out what.’
They took on water in the Balearics and three days later dropped anchor in the magnificent harbour of Malta beneath the majestic new city of Valletta. The two Knights sent word to their Grand Master. Nicholas and Hodge did not step ashore. Though they could have gone to visit old friends, and more than old friends – the beloved family of Franco Briffa, whom they had lodged with and fought for, and the grave of Maddalena, the first girl Nicholas had ever loved – yet they chose not to. Many tales, many tears. Sometimes it is better never to go back. He and Hodge would be greeted with open arms by the people of the old city – had he not been christened, embarrassingly, the English Hero, for one or two accidents of foolhardy gallantry that long hot summer? Nicholas smiled sadly to himself. Nine years ago, yet it all seemed so long ago, when he was sixteen, barely more than a schoolboy. And now already they were saying it was the Greatest Siege in History – and he and Hodge had been there, alongside Smith and Stanley and all the other knights, so many of them slain. And when victory came at last, victory scarcely believable against such odds – nine hundred knights fought and defeated an Ottoman army of thirty thousand or more – it was a mixed victory, a tainted triumph, as perhaps all victories are. For the girl Maddalena, the daughter of the house, whom he had fallen in love with, was among the many fallen. He thought then he would never love again. She would always be young, beautiful, ageless, perfect.
The English captain was pleased enough to offload his bales of woollen cloth and kersey, Cornish tin, pewter, lead and rabbit skins, and bring home raw silk, indigo, currants, oil, wine, camelhair cloth and angora wool, and make a fine profit for both himself and his employers back at the London Exchange.
Word came from the Grand Master that afternoon. Stanley listened, nodded, turned and said, ‘There’s a Sicily merchantman leaving for Constantinople within the hour. Ship out.’
They sailed at sunset over the Ionian Sea and fell asleep on deck with the warm breezes in their hair. They rounded Cape Matapan and passed between Cythera and Crete, the last Christian land in the east, and then north among the Cyclades and into the waters of the Turks. Dreamlike it seemed, to be sailing into the heart of the enemy’s world, an enemy that they had fought so bitterly at Malta and Lepanto. Now they took them gifts. Such was the way of things.
They passed Chios to starboard and Lemnos to larboard, and entered the Dardanelles Strait preceded by a school of curvetting porpoises. The Sea of Marmara lay sunlit and calm and the breeze dropped off as they sailed with slow and stately dignity into the capital of the Mohammedan world, and stepped ashore near Seraglio Point, below the Palace of Hormisdas.