He had undertaken a number of profitable deals, but none so profitable as the one he was contemplating now. It was a pity that, strictly speaking, it was illegal.
The problem was not the Russians, but the English. For since Chancellor’s return to Russia in 1555, the English trade had been organized as a monopoly under the charter of the Muscovy Company. Trade had been excellent. Wilson had been active in the trading depots from Moscow to the distant northern seas, and would have had nothing to complain of but for two things: the fact that Ivan had now managed to get his hands on some of the Baltic shore, especially the port of Narva; and that a few years back a cunning Italian had managed to sow ugly rumours about the English traders in Moscow, on behalf of a group of Antwerp merchants. As a result, the English trade through the distant northern sea was not quite so easy as it had been.
‘And the fact is,’ he told his father-in-law, ‘if I break the Company rules and ship some goods through Narva on my own account, the profits could be excellent.’ He would not be the only English merchant to do so.
Wilson had no great love of his fellow countrymen. In recent years, half the fellows they had sent out had been wild young men, who seemed to the Russians, and to Wilson, to be searching for women and drink as much as for trade. The question was, where could he get goods undetected by his fellow traders?
There was an added urgency about this business, too. For Wilson was nervous for the future. The war in the north was sure to continue. When the chief representative of the Muscovy Company had last returned to England, it was with an urgent request from the Tsar that he should bring back both skilled men and supplies for the war in the north with Poland. They had recently arrived. If he was to make a shipment out through the Baltic, the sooner the better, before the trouble started.
But there was another piece of news, a whispered rumour that had gone through the English community like a shock wave in the last few days; and it was this which had caused him to look at the Tsar’s stout fortress so carefully.
For to the departing Company envoy Ivan had given a secret message, which had at once been shared with the tight-knit English community. He had asked Queen Elizabeth of England for asylum, should he ever wish to flee Russia.
‘Is he in such danger?’ ‘Are there things we do not know?’ the merchants asked one another.
Whatever Ivan’s reasons for this strange request, it cast a cloud over the sky. Wilson wondered what to do.
And here was one of the black-shirts, standing right beside him. Wilson had learnt to speak passable Russian: one had to in a country where no one spoke any foreign languages. As an English merchant, he was not especially afraid of the Oprichniki. He decided to address the fearsome figure in black, therefore, and see what he could find out.
Boris was surprised to be addressed by the merchant, but answered him politely enough. Indeed, pleased to find that the foreigner spoke Russian, he conversed with him for some time. Wilson was cautious. He gave no hint to the black-shirt of what he knew, but by careful questioning he soon satisfied himself that Boris, who had recently been at the Tsar’s headquarters outside Moscow, had no sense of impending disaster. And for his part, Boris made a great discovery. This Englishman wanted a cargo of furs, and he wanted to obtain them discreetly. Boris did not have many, but he was sure he could find more. What a stroke of luck.
‘Come to Russka,’ he said. ‘None of your English merchants has ever been there.’
That autumn and the following spring were busy times for Daniel the monk. They were also disturbing.
The fact of the matter was, he was losing the abbot’s favour.
It was his fault. In his zeal to make money for the monastery, he drove the traders in Russka too hard. Nothing they did escaped him; and as a consequence, they tried all the harder to cheat him. The net result of this was that both the monk and the traders were in a state of irritation with one another and the monastery’s profits benefited very little.
Though discreet complaints were made to the monastery from time to time, the abbot, who was an elderly man, did little more than half-heartedly reprove Daniel. And when, in reply, Daniel assured him that the townspeople were all rogues, the old man usually found it easier to believe him.
And so matters might have continued indefinitely, if Stephen the priest’s wife had not died, forcing him to enter the monastery.
For it did not take long for the traders to suggest that things would go better if Stephen, whom they liked, were to be put in charge of Russka.
The abbot was loath to act. He was, truth to tell, a little nervous of the determined monk. ‘He’s very efficient, you know,’ he lamented to an old monk who was his confidant. ‘And if I took Russka away from him,’ he sighed, ‘one never knows what he might do. He’d make a fuss, I’m afraid.’
All the same, he began to drop small and not very subtle hints. ‘You have done good work in Russka, Daniel. One day we must find you a new challenge.’ Or: ‘Are you tired, sometimes, Brother Daniel?’
It had only taken one or two such conversations to whip Daniel up into a fever of anxiety and activity, which had made the abbot in turn more afraid of offending him, and at the same time to wish, still more, that he could find some way of getting rid of him.
Stephen, for his part, was aware of these developments but did nothing to encourage them. He was not afraid of Daniel and privately disapproved of him but, he concluded, he had enough souls to pray for, including his own.
Besides, he had other and more personal problems to deal with.
It was the greatest pity for him, however, that he did not realize the strength, and desperation, of Daniel’s passion.
Stephen was still the priest at the little church in Russka. The people of the town still looked to him for spiritual guidance, just as people in the area had looked to his father and grandfather before him. It was also only natural that he should continue to minister to Elena in her own home and, perhaps, to visit her a little more often than he had before, simply because her former companion, his wife, was no longer there to do so. God knows, he often thought, her life must be lonely enough.
And so it was. She had even made two visits to Moscow that autumn to see her mother; she had gone back the second time because she had sensed her mother was worried about something – though what, she would not say. At one point her mother had suddenly asked: ‘Your Boris, is he still our friend?’ And when she had hesitated, because she did not know herself, her mother had quickly said: ‘No matter. It’s of no consequence.’ And then a moment later: ‘Do not tell him I asked you.’
‘Would you like me to stay here for a while?’ she had asked. Little as she now liked Moscow, it seemed to her that her mother needed company at present.
But her mother had put her off. ‘In the spring, perhaps,’ she had said absently.
Elena was lonely, and concerned. How, therefore, could she help smiling with pleasure to hear that the priest had arrived to see her?
It was not long before there existed between them a friendly intimacy that could safely last as long as neither allowed it to be established, by any word or gesture, that they were half, perhaps more than half, in love.
The tall, dark-bearded priest, in his late thirties, was showing the first streak of grey hair in his beard which if anything, in her eyes, added to his attractiveness. She admired him: indeed, he was to be admired, for he was a fine man. And they experienced the passion of those who have first come to terms with suffering, which is more measured and therefore potentially more powerful than the instantaneous passion of the young.