As Procopy had announced, the executions of the mutinous streltsy had begun the day after Daniel’s arrival.
Indeed, they might have started sooner if the interrogations – which had been going on down at Preobrazhenskoe – had not been so difficult. For very few of the mutinous soldiers were prepared to talk, despite some extensive persuasion.
It was at that time in Russia normal procedure in all cases of this kind to give prisoners the knout to elicit a confession. The use of torture in interrogation was normal in most countries at that time, whereas it is used in far fewer countries today, but a word of explanation may be needed about the Russian method.
For it is sometimes thought that the famous Russian knout was just a kind of whip, or a flail like the English cat o’ nine tails. But whereas the English navy, in the last century, would give a man a thousand lashes with the cat and reckon he might live, a twentieth of that ration with the knout would have killed him. And though, say, a Bobrov might have thrashed a peasant on his estate for some misdemeanour, he would probably have used the rods called batogs, not a knout.
The knout was three and a half feet long and made of leather. Much thicker than batogs, it was also very heavy. As a result, when a blow was struck, which the knout-master did by leaping forward and swinging with all his force, it actually sunk a wound, like a bar, into the victim’s back for the depth of half an inch or so. The skin was completely pulverized. Blood and tissue flew with every stroke. If the knout-master worked down your back, by the second time round he would be at the bone.
In order to appreciate how thorough the Russians were in this matter, however, it should further be explained that the more severe method was first to tie the victim’s hands behind his back and then haul him up by the hands with a rope over a beam. This meant not just that he hung before the knout-master but that his arms were actually dislocated from their sockets while the knouting went on. When lowered, the arms could then be forced back into their sockets again.
This was the Russian knout, with which most prisoners were interrogated.
Tsar Peter was very concerned about the mutiny of the streltsy. He had seen his own uncle hacked to pieces by them when he was a boy and he knew they were capable of overturning him and putting Sophia back in his place. The questioning was urgent, therefore. Not only the streltsy but two of Sophia’s maids were stripped and knouted – although Peter leniently allowed one of these a simple execution when he discovered she was pregnant.
As well as the knout, Peter in person supervised the putting of some prisoners to the rack and also had them roasted on a fire in front of him. Yet the streltsy were still so obstinate in their silence that on at least one occasion Peter tried to cure a mutineer’s silence by breaking open his clenched jaws with a stick.
Procopy Bobrov was present at a number of these interrogations.
He was there for a particular reason. As soon as they arrived back, Peter had joined the young man to his newly formed government department. It was called the Preobrazhensky Prikaz – in effect, a secret police bureau. And right from the start, it would make itself feared.
‘The streltsy aren’t talking much, even under torture,’ Procopy told his father. ‘But we do know they planned to replace Peter and they were going to kill every foreigner in Russia too. We’ll deal with them, though.’
The executions that autumn went on for three weeks, from the last day of September to October 18.
On October 12, there was a sudden dense fall of snow, plunging Moscow directly into winter, but the daily public executions went on.
Daniel witnessed several. The victims died in various ways, though usually they were beheaded or hanged. Peter also demanded that his boyars and friends should take a hand in the executions, and Daniel heard Procopy say to his father one evening: ‘The Tsar’s curious to see some people beheaded in the European way, with a sword instead of an axe tomorrow. Have you a good heavy sword you could lend me?’
Daniel saw Procopy at work the next day. Someone else in the crowd told the old man that he had seen the Tsar himself behead several men.
All these events Daniel witnessed with sorrow, but not with horror. The knouting, the executions: the streltsy had rebelled and it was only to be expected that they would be punished.
His horror began one morning when they brought out the regimental priests.
It was in Red Square. There, before the great, exotic towers of St Basil’s Cathedral, Peter’s men had erected a huge scaffold – but not just an ordinary scaffold: this one was in the shape of a cross. They led out the priests to the scaffold. Daniel braced himself to witness a monstrosity.
But what happened next took his breath away entirely. For now, to perform the hanging, came the court jester. He was dressed as a priest.
The same day, in the gardens of the Novodevichy Convent, a hundred and ninety-five more of the streltsy were hung on gibbets, near Sophia’s window.
All these corpses were to be left dangling – strange, frozen spectres, for five long months through the winter.
And what was Daniel to make of all this? He thought he knew. As the months passed, he became increasingly certain. Yet even then, he did not wish to form the thought himself.
Why had Eudokia summoned him? For comfort. Because, Daniel soon realized, there was no one else she felt she could trust.
Her son was godless. Her husband, wanting success for his family, said nothing.
‘You see for yourself, all around, what has come to pass,’ she told him privately. ‘Help me, good Daniel, to know what to do.’
Ostensibly he was there as a carpenter. And, indeed, he did some beautiful joinery in their house, so that Nikita himself soon forgot his irritation at his wife’s unexpectedly sending for the fellow. The landowner would proudly show Daniel’s workmanship to visitors, and had he not refused to work for anyone else, Daniel could have had many commissions.
In a way, both the Bobrovs came to be glad of this addition to their household. For while his wife was devoted to the parents, Nikita found himself delighted by the presence of the little girl.
Maryushka was, indeed, an enchanting little girl. With her bright, freckled face and shining eyes she seemed to suppose that it was only natural that all the world should be her friend.
‘She’s a dainty little thing,’ old Nikita would marvel. ‘She could be a dancer.’
Even Procopy, whose impatience with Daniel was not always concealed, used to pick her up and carry her about with him whenever he visited the house. He had a wife and two little children of his own. ‘So you,’ he would tell her, ‘must be my sweetheart.’
‘Where’s your beard?’ she would always, fearlessly, ask him. ‘Why haven’t you got a beard?’
‘The Tsar tore it off,’ he would laugh.
She revered her father. She knew that he was older than the fathers of the other children, but knowing also with what respect he was treated in Russka, supposed that he was therefore someone quite out of the ordinary. When she was very little, she had for some time thought that he and God the Father must be one and the same.
If Nikita was amused by Maryushka, Eudokia did indeed find the comfort she sought with Daniel and Arina. Each day, she came quietly to pray with them. Often, when Daniel was working in the house, she would stand near him, watching silently. He was, Daniel saw at once, necessary to her. And as she once confessed to him herself: ‘I have been a strong woman all my life, but in this new world, I feel as if all that I have known is being taken away. Do not leave me just yet, faithful friend.’