The silence continued. Occasionally Boris, a little guardedly, allowed his eyes to rest on her, as though he were mulling over some abstract calculation of which she might, or might not, be a part. Once he turned to her and quietly asked after the health of Lev the merchant. On hearing that he was well he nodded his head, but said nothing. Lev was in charge of the collection of local taxes now and was therefore a fellow servant of the Oprichnina with Boris. They acted together in all official matters.
‘And our daughter?’ she asked him at length.
The girl had been given in marriage to a young noble at the start of the year; he did not live within the Oprichnina, but he was modestly well-off and Boris had satisfied himself of the family’s loyalty. Elena suspected that he had been glad to get the girl – who was only twelve – out of his house and into that of her in-laws. Though he was always kind to his daughter, Elena knew that Boris had never really accepted her existence in place of the son he should have had.
‘She is well,’ he answered briefly. ‘I spoke to her father-in-law.’ It was not much; but she did not pursue the subject. From time to time, Boris glanced at her.
Elena seldom went to Moscow now. Despite the fact that her family were there, she did not care to, nor did Boris encourage her to do so.
Since the Oprichnina began, the atmosphere in the capital had been tense and often frightening. Right from the start there had been disappearances and word of executions. From the old princely cities came news of wholesale confiscations, great princes and magnates losing all their lands and being sent to miserable little farms on the distant frontiers of Kazan. ‘The whole business is disgusting,’ Elena’s father told her on one of her few visits to the city. ‘Half the people being executed have done nothing at all.’ She had heard that, the other day, one brave fellow called Gorbachev, following his father to the block, had picked up his father’s head and told the people watching: ‘I thank God we both die innocent.’
‘You know what’s most frightening?’ her father had continued. ‘People think he’s kicking these people out to make room for his henchmen, these cursed Oprichniki! Forgive me, I know your Boris is one. But look carefully and you’ll see that’s not what he’s doing. Most of these confiscations haven’t been in Oprichnina lands at all. The Oprichnina is full of his supporters. He’s actually destroying the opposition outside; then he’ll turn these black-shirts loose upon all the rest of us. It’s a plot to destroy us all.’
She had found the Oprichniki terrifying. Some were nobles and gentry but many were little more than peasants. ‘Some are even foreigners – just common mercenaries,’ her mother exclaimed in disgust. ‘They have no ties, nothing.’
Indeed, in their black uniforms and cloaks they looked to Elena like some strangely vicious order of monks.
There was something else her father told her, too.
‘Do you know what the latest orders from the Tsar have been? That if any foreigner asks about what’s happening, we are to deny that the Oprichnina exists. Can you imagine it? I was in a magnate’s house the other day, and an envoy from Lithuania was there. “What about this Oprichnina?” he asks our host. “Never heard of it,” says he. “But the Tsar’s holed up in a fort outside the city,” the fellow protests. “And what about those fellows in black shirts?” “Oh,” says the magnate, “that’s just a summer residence, and those are some of his servants, a sort of new regiment.” There were thirty of us in that room and none of us knew which way to look. But we all kept mum, of course.’
That spring there had been a reprieve for a few of the exiles. But two Metropolitans had resigned, or been forced out, because they couldn’t stomach this new terror state.
And now had come this latest, appalling news.
As he looked at Elena, Boris tried to analyze what he saw. She was still the same girl he had married: quiet, a little nervous, anxious to please, yet at the same time capable of taking refuge from him in the web of family and women’s relationships from which he felt himself excluded. But there was something else now: suffering had given her a certain quiet dignity, a self-sufficiency that sometimes made him admire her and sometimes made him angry. Was her dignity a reproach to him; was it, even, a sign of scorn?
Only when Boris had finished eating, only when to delay the question any longer would have been absurd, did she finally ask, very quietly: ‘So what really happened in Moscow?’
What indeed? It had been Ivan’s own idea to call the great council of the people – the Zemsky Sobor. And to Boris and everyone else, it had seemed a good idea. Not of course that it was representative in any true sense. They had just collected together nearly four hundred of the gentry, clergy and some leading merchants into an assembly. But even so, that such a body existed at all was a remarkable concession to the people.
For the war in the north had not been successful. Russia needed those Baltic towns, the Poles were opposing them, and the Tsar needed money. The idea of the Zemsky Sobor was to get approval for the war, and the tough new taxes needed, and to show the enemy that the whole country was behind it. The great assembly had met that July. They had agreed to all the Tsar proposed.
There was just one problem. The impertinent assemblymen, supported by the new Metropolitan, petitioned Ivan to give up the Oprichnina. The Tsar was furious. And then…
Elena watched her husband thoughtfully. It seemed to her that he hesitated. Did he feel guilty? Was he uncomfortable inside his protective skin?
‘They were traitors. The Tsar treated them like traitors,’ he said gruffly. ‘There are still many traitors, many Kurbskys to be rooted out.’
Ah yes, she thought: Kurbsky. Of all the things that had turned the mind of Ivan on its present, dark path, perhaps nothing – at least since the death of Anastasia – was more important than the desertion of Prince Kurbsky. For in 1564 this commander, who had been one of those Boris had followed to Kazan, had suddenly defected to Lithuania.
It was not that Kurbsky was so important in military terms: he wasn’t. But he had been a friend of Ivan’s since childhood. It was a desertion that had struck him to the heart.
Historians have since studied a lengthy correspondence between Tsar Ivan and this exiled prince. It has been the centrepiece of several biographies. Recent scholarship reveals that this correspondence, like that other great classic of early Russian Literature, The Lay of Igor’s Host, may be a later forgery; but forgery or not, it is significant that the terror of Ivan began only months after the departure of this minor prince.
‘Is it true that the Tsar locked up the whole assembly?’ she asked quietly.
‘Only for six days.’
‘How many were executed?’
‘Only three.’
‘In public?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then in front of all the people he had the tongues of all the others cut out?’
‘No. Fifty of them were beaten, that’s all. And quite right too.’
‘They had their tongues cut out?’
‘No. Only some of them.’ He paused, his face still giving nothing away. ‘There was a plot, you know. They had plotted treason.’
‘Was it proved?’
‘There was a plot. That’s all.’ He got up from the table. ‘There’ll be no more assemblies, I can tell you that,’ he added with a short, awkward laugh.
Elena did not ask any more. She did not ask if he had taken part. She did not want to know. What could she say? What could she do? Slowly, a little tentatively, she went over to him and put her arm around him in the hope that, perhaps, her love might cure his evil. But he knew that her love included forgiveness, and, being unable to submit to that, turned silently away. Only by the just perceptible hunching of his shoulders did she know that he was protecting himself from her. If only she could help him, and help herself in this darkening night. Indeed, she secretly decided in her inner heart, she would even sacrifice herself to save what she saw – how could she not? – as his lost soul. But saving a soul, perhaps, took more skill than she had.