Indeed, there were whispers in her father’s house now – things said that she would never have told Boris about – but which made her wonder if the young Tsar would last.
And so their life had proceeded, with brief visits from Boris, and an increasing hint of suspicion in the air around them.
If only he were not so distant when he came. If only she could break through his armour of reserve.
There was only one way to do so – only one way to make her husband happy. If only she could give him a son! Why was it denied her?
There had been a boy, David, who had died when he was a week old, while Boris was away on the first campaign in the north. And after that, try as she might, nothing.
Perhaps if they could win a great victory in the north. If Russia signed a peace treaty and Boris returned home for a longer period: perhaps then there would be a son. She was still young. She prayed for sunnier days.
But after some early successes, things started to go badly in the north. The Baltic cities looked for protection from Sweden, Lithuania, Denmark. It seemed the conflict might go on forever.
Then, in August 1560, Anastasia, the Tsar’s beloved wife, the light of his life, died.
And when she heard this, Elena’s heart sank. For she had a woman’s premonition that a time of greater darkness was ahead.
1566
October. A cold, dank, windswept day at the little town of Russka; the vaporous clouds so low that sometimes their skirts seem almost to touch the tent roof of the watchtower.
A single figure is approaching, riding slowly up to the gates. His horse is black; on the front of its saddle are two little emblems: a dog’s head, because the rider is watchful, and a broom, because he will sweep away his master’s enemies.
The rider, too, is dressed in black. He looks carelessly from side to side, because he is master of all in this region. A monk by the monastery gates, seeing him, ducks out of sight nervously. Even the abbot is awkward in his presence. In the town, and in nearby Dirty Place, they are terrified of him.
It is over a year since he took his vows. They were biblical in tone, for he swore to love his master more than mother or father, son or daughter. He also swore to inform, instantly, upon anyone he suspects of disloyalty to his master, the Tsar.
The figure in black is powerful, and feared. It is true, as his wife knows, that he is not happy. But it has never occurred to him to be so.
It is his wife, now, that this grim figure has come to visit: for this is his home. His name is Boris Bobrov.
For at last Ivan had struck at all his enemies. The blow was devastating and took them completely by surprise.
In December 1564, without a word of explanation, he had left the city of Moscow with a huge baggage train and by St Nicholas’s Day had turned up at a fortified hunting lodge known as Alexandrovskaya Sloboda some forty miles north-east of the capital. No one knew what this evacuation meant.
Then in January, word came: he had abdicated.
Was it just a ruse?
‘In my opinion,’ Elena’s father told her, ‘the Tsar hasn’t been quite right in the head since Anastasia died. He’s decided the boyars poisoned her and he wants to get back at them. All the same,’ he added grimly, ‘there’s a kind of cunning in this business.’
There was. The boyars, fearing the people, had to ask him back. And when he came, it was on his own terms.
They were astounding. No ruler, perhaps, in all the world, had ever done such a thing. For after receiving a solemn oath from the boyars and the Church that he was free to rule exactly as he pleased and punish whom he would, Tsar Ivan split his realm in two. The greater part he left to be ruled in his name by boyars he trusted. But the smaller part he turned into a vast private estate, under his personal rule and peopled by his own handpicked servants.
This personal fief he called, with dark irony, the Oprichnina – which meant the widow’s portion, the land a widow received for her upkeep after the husband died. His servitors were called Oprichniki; they formed a closed order, like the old Livonian and Teutonic orders of German knights, and they dressed in black.
It was a state within a state. It was a police state. The Oprichniki could only be tried by their own courts – in effect, they were above the law. Part of Moscow was included; so was Suzdal and pockets of land above the Oka and south-west of Moscow. Most of the Oprichnina, however, lay up in the north, in the huge forest lands that spread above the loop of the Volga up to the distant northern port where the English mariners had landed. It was away from the old princely towns, a land of icebound monasteries, furs, huge salt beds, and rich northern traders. The mighty Stroganov family, those former peasants turned merchant princes, immediately petitioned the Tsar to be included in his state within a state.
And only those loyal to Ivan might live there. At every estate, the Tsar’s inquisitors held court. If the landlord were loyal, he might remain; but if he had any connection with a magnate or one of the many princely families, he would almost certainly be thrown out, and given a poorer estate, if he were lucky, outside the Oprichnina instead.
In this manner, the Oprichniki could be given the vacant estates for their upkeep, which they held, naturally, as service pomestie.
The town of Russka was included in the Oprichnina; and so it was that inquisitors had come to interview the young landlord of Dirty Place.
It was exactly what Boris wanted.
‘I serve the Tsar,’ he told them, ‘in all his wars. Let me, I beg you, be one of the Oprichniki. What could I desire more?’ And as he saw them make a note of this he added: ‘The Tsar himself may remember me. Let him know that he spoke with me, at dawn one morning, when we were returning from Kazan.’
At this the inquisitor smiled grimly.
‘If that is so, Boris Davidov, the Tsar will remember you. The Tsar forgets nothing.’
They continued to examine him carefully. They found no fault with his family. Though old, it boasted no great connections that might make it suspect. But there was one problem.
‘What of your wife’s family?’ they now asked him. ‘Your father-in-law has friends in quarters whose loyalty we are not sure of. What can you tell us about him?’
And now Boris considered carefully. He did not, however, have to consider for long.
‘What,’ he asked quietly, ‘would you like to know?’
A week later Boris was summoned to Moscow and after a brief interview was told he could keep the estate on service tenure and that he was accepted into the Oprichniki.
‘The Tsar remembered you,’ they said.
Soon afterwards, though she did not know why, Elena heard that her father was deeply worried.
The wind had dropped and the afternoon was already drawing to its close when Boris was served his meal.
As soon as he sat down, the old serving man placed before him a plate of rye bread and a little jug of vodka. Staring straight in front of him, Boris steadily poured himself three small cups, throwing back his head as he downed each at a single draught. Elena said nothing. To her it seemed a rather vulgar habit which, no doubt, he had picked up from the other Oprichniki.
He ate, for the most part, in silence. Elena sat at the other side of the heavy table and picked lightly at a few vegetables. It appeared that neither quite had the courage to start the conversation.
It was not surprising. For the matter they would have to discuss was, if the rumours from Moscow were true, too terrible to speak about.