The state of Muscovy might yearn to possess the Baltic ports that would give them free access to the west but here at Moscow, her heart and mind would be safe, impenetrable, protected by mighty walls that should never be broken down. Neither Tatars with sword and fire, nor treacherous Catholic, nor cunning Jew should ever enter and conquer here. This was Russia’s protection against fear.
A great procession was moving from the city gates. The clergy was coming led by the Metropolitan. With banners, icons, shining vestments, they came from the huge walled city with its gleaming domes, under the heavy grey and orange sky, while the air was riven with a thousand crashing bells. They were coming to greet the Tsar.
‘Slava – all praise. Conqueror, saviour of Christians.’
And it was on this day that Boris heard the soldiers give a new name to the conquering Tsar Ivan. They were calling him Grozny – meaning ‘Awesome’, ‘Dread’, or, as it is usually if inaccurately rendered: ‘Terrible’.
The snows had already fallen when his wedding day arrived.
A few friends, all made in the last year, came to the little house in the White Town suburb to collect him; but despite their attempts at gaiety, he felt very much alone.
Already, though it was less than a month before, the triumphant return to Moscow seemed far away.
What a day that had been! After Metropolitan Macarius had made his speech of welcome, Ivan had replied, comparing the Tatar yoke to the captivity of the ancient Hebrews. Even Boris had felt like a hero as they passed through the city gates and came to Red Square and the mighty Kremlin.
He had felt like a hero as he drank in the taverns with the other young fellows. He had felt like a conqueror when he came out into the night and walked about the citadel admiringly.
The huge space of Red Square had been nearly empty. In summer, it was full of market stalls, though in winter the whole market moved down on to the frozen river below. The big open space stretched away before him like the empty steppe. Beside it rose the massive, impenetrable walls of the Tsar’s fortress with its vast, high towers. The tallest soared up two hundred feet into the starlit night and somewhere, in that vast, closed fort, dwelt the Tsar. Some day, he had thought contentedly, I’ll be asked to go inside those walls.
His elated mood had lasted until he had gone into the quarter just east of the Kremlin.
This was the kitaygorod – the so-called Basket Town – a walled area within which great nobles and the richest merchants dwelt. Here were big houses not only of wood but even of masonry too. The rich nobles were celebrating. The street was full of big sledges pulled by magnificent horses. The coachmen were drinking and talking together. Even by torchlight, he could see splendid furs and oriental carpets piled in the empty sledges, for the comfort of the burly, wealthy men who would in due course stomp out into the night.
His prospective father-in-law, he had realized, was probably in there somewhere. True, he did not live there – he had a substantial wooden house in the White Town – but he was sure to be at the feast of some powerful men in this noblest quarter. And this knowledge had reminded Boris of the central fact of his life. He was poor.
Indeed, as his future father-in-law Dimitri Ivanov had made clear, he was only giving Boris his third daughter as a favour to Boris’s father, who had been his friend in bygone years. Not that Boris was making such a brilliant marriage – though it was the best that his poor father had been able to arrange.
But for Dimitri, it was certainly a sacrifice. The possession of three good-looking daughters was an asset to a noble like him. They were kept in seclusion in the women’s quarters upstairs and could be used to make marriages that would benefit the family. Though young Boris was acceptable by his birth, that was all; and so the dowry that Dimitri gave his youngest daughter Elena was very modest and caused Boris sadly to realize a simple truth. ‘The richer you are, the more people think they ought to give you,’ he sighed.
As for his feelings about Elena, Boris was both excited and uncertain. His father had arranged the betrothal long before, and it was only when he had come to Moscow before leaving for the Kazan campaign that he had met her.
He would never forget it. He had entered the big wooden house late one morning. They had offered him bread and salt and, in the proper manner, he had gone to the icons in the red corner, bowed three times and murmured, ‘Lord have mercy.’ It was as he crossed himself from right to left and turned that the girl and her father had entered the room.
Dimitri was short, fat and bald. He wore a dazzling blue and gold kaftan. His face was broad and narrow-eyed, revealing the existence of a Tatar princess in his family some generations before, of which he was very proud. His beard was full, and red, and reached luxuriantly down his swelling belly over which it was carefully brushed outward like a fan.
Elena was at his side. She was wearing a long embroidered dress of pinkish red. Her hair was golden and plaited in a single braid down her back. On her head was a modest diadem, and over her face a veil.
With a faint grunt of satisfaction, Dimitri whipped off the veil and Boris found himself staring at his future wife.
She was not like her father at all. Her eyes were blue and soft: Boris noticed that at once. They were set rather far apart and were, perhaps, somewhat almond in shape; but that was the only hint that she might be related to this short, cruel-looking man. Her nose was narrow, yet slightly and nervously flared above her broad, rather full mouth. She seemed pale and tense. The muscles in her neck were standing out as she looked up at him.
She is afraid I may not like her, he saw at once, and this made him feel tender and protective. She does not realize that she is beautiful, he also shrewdly observed. That, too, was good.
And best of all, as he stared at her thoughtfully, he realized something else: he wanted her. He wanted her with the simple, definitive passion which says: She will be mine to order as I please, and I can make her beautiful.
‘I had a fine offer for her the other day,’ Dimitri told him frankly, ‘but I had kissed the cross on this with your father and there’s an end to it.’
Boris gazed at her. Yes, she was lovely. He started to smile.
And it was then that the little incident had taken place that caused him, on his wedding day, to be uncertain. It was nothing really. He told himself it meant nothing at all. Elena had looked down at the floor. Yet what was the expression that had flitted across her rather anxious face? Was it disappointment? Or could it conceivably have been disgust? He had looked carefully but been unable to see. Surely if she had utterly disliked him she would have said so to her father? He would not have held Dimitri to his oath in such a circumstance. Or was she remaining silent out of a sense of duty?
In the few meetings they had had since, he had tried to suggest to her that if she was unhappy in any way she should tell him, but she had modestly assured him that she was not.
All was well, he told himself, as the party came near Dimitri Ivanov’s house. All would be well.
And surely, he thought, as they stood together before the priests, surely this was meant to be.
The Russian marriage service was long. The tall tapers, decorated with marten skins, filled the church with brightness; the air was heavy with the smell of wax and the priests with their long beards and their heavy robes coated with pearls and gemstones seemed almost heavenly presences as they solemnly moved about and the choir chanted. Candlelight, incense, hours of standing: like every Orthodox ceremony, by the time it was over, ‘you knew you had been to church’.