CHAPTER VIII.BORIS AND HIS FELLOW-OFFICERS.
The young Tsar was himself surprised, as he sat alone at his eveningmeal, to find how very heavily the loss of poor Boris weighed upon him.He had scarcely realized how closely the young hunter had wound himselfalready around his heart--a heart which, in spite of its hardness andwaywardness, was capable of forming the warmest attachments. Peter wasall through his life on the look-out for men who were after his ownideal, and upon whom he could rely for assistance in carrying out thevast schemes and plans for the good of his people, and the developmentand aggrandizement of his country, with which his brain was filled fromthe first. Such a man Peter thought he had found in Boris--one uponwhose absolute faithfulness he could rely, and whose courage, as he hadseen already more than once, was equal to any emergency. He felt thathe could have trained Boris to be the ideal man for his purposes, to beemployed far or near with equal confidence, and in any capacity thatseemed good to his employer; and instead, here was the poor fellow gonealready, a martyr to his devotion to himself! "Why are there not moreof my poor Russians like this one?" thought the young Tsar; "and wheream I to lay my hand upon such another--even _one_?" It certainly wasmost unfortunate and deplorable; so no wonder the Tsar's servants foundtheir master in his most dangerous mood, and left him, as soon as mightbe, to himself.
Peter ate his cabbage-soup, and sighed as he ate. Why had he notanticipated the sudden action of Boris, and sternly forbidden him tosacrifice himself--ah, why indeed? Peter was not accustomed to personaldevotion of this sort. He had not come across a Boris before this one,or he might have guessed what the brave fellow would do, and couldhave pulled him back into the carriage at the last moment. He wouldrather have fed those thrice-accursed gray brutes upon the whole of hisretinue than that they should have feasted upon that brave heart. PoorBear-Hunter! he had killed his last bear. What a fight there must havebeen at the very last before he permitted the skulking brutes to crowdaround and pull him down!
Wrapped in these sad reflections, Peter sat before his neglected bowlof soup, when of a sudden the door opened, and the apparition of thevery subject of his dismal reflections stood before him. Bootless,dishevelled, and with his clothes, what was left of them, blood-stainedand in rags, was it the ghost of Boris as he had appeared at his lastmoment on earth? Peter was not superstitious, wonderfully little so fora Russian, but for a full minute he gazed in doubt and uncertainty uponthe apparition before him. Then he burst into one of his very loudestguffaws.
"Boris!" he cried. "Yes! it is certainly Boris. Come here, my brother.I was already mourning you for dead. How did you escape those accursedgray brutes? Here is a hunter indeed! Come here, my brother." Peterkissed his friend upon both cheeks; then administered a pat on the backwhich might have felled an ox, laughed aloud once more, and poured intoa tumbler an immense draught of strong vodka. "There," he said, "sitdown and drink that, my tsar of hunters, and tell me all about it."
"There's little to tell your Majesty," said Boris, taking a big sipat the spirits. "God was very merciful to me; and as the wolves rushedin and dragged the poor horse down, which they did almost immediatelyafter I left you, I grabbed at the branch of a pine and hauled myselfup out of their reach just in time--not quite in time to save my boots,in fact; for two active fellows jumped up and pulled them both offmy legs. I hope they choked the brutes! Afterwards I settled myselfcomfortably in the branches of the tree, and threw fir-cones at themwhile they pulled poor Vaiska the horse to pieces and fought over hiscarcass. In five minutes there was not as much of Vaiska left as wouldmake a meal for a sparrow. When they had eaten Vaiska, they sat aroundmy tree, watching me and hoping that I should soon let go and fallinto their jaws. I howled at them in their own language instead, andthey howled back at me. What I said seemed greatly to excite them, forthey ran round the tree, and jumped up at me, and licked their lips.I climbed down to a point just above that which they could reach byleaping, and there I reclined at my ease and slashed at them with myknife as long as they were inclined for the game. When they grew tiredof it, they sat round the tree licking their chops and looking upat me, and we exchanged complimentary remarks at intervals in theirlanguage.
"After a while the rumble and jingle of the carriages of your Majesty'sretinue was heard approaching. The wolves pricked up their ears tolisten. They made as though they would go back to the road at first, inthe hope of picking up more horse-flesh--greedy brutes! as if Vaiskawas not enough for them--but thought better of it, there was so muchnoise and rattle; and as the carriages came nearer and nearer, theygrew more and more anxious, until at length, with a final chorus ofabuse levelled at me as I sat up in my perch, they one after the otherretired into the wood. Then I came down and ran for the village; andhere I am, alive to serve your Majesty for many a long year, I trust."
"Glad am I to see you, my prince of hunters," said the Tsar earnestly."But what of your wounds--is there anything serious? You look as thoughyou had been half-way down their throats; you must have had a nastygash somewhere to have got all that blood on you. Call the surgeon andlet him see to it. I can't afford to lose so much of your good blood,my Boris; Russia has not too much of the right quality."
Boris laughed, and glanced at his saturated shirt and waistcoat. "It'sall wolf's blood," he said, "and I wish there were more of it; Ihaven't a scratch." And this was the simple truth.
So ended happily an adventure which came near to depriving Russia ofher greatest son and me of a hero.
Two days after this the Tsar with his following reached the capital,and Boris was given a commission in one of the Streltsi regiments,while retaining his place at the side of his master as body-attendant.In the ranks of the Streltsi our hunter soon learned the simple drillwhich the soldiers of the Russia of that day had to acquire. TheStreltsi were at this time practically the only regular regiments ofthe country, though they were not destined to remain so long underthe progressive rule of their present enlightened Tsar. Being the onearmed power in the state, and having on several occasions successfullytaken advantage of their position, the Streltsi had been loaded withprivileges wrung from rulers and statesmen who were afraid of them,and their present position was most enviable. The men were allowed tomarry, and to live at their private homes; to carry on any business ortrade they pleased by way of adding to the substantial incomes whichthey already enjoyed at the expense of the state; and, in a word, todo very much as they liked as long as they attended the easy drillsand parades which the regulations enjoined. Hence Boris had plenty oftime to spare from his military duties to devote to attendance upon hisbeloved master.
Peter had a double object in placing Boris in a Streltsi regiment.He was anxious that the hunter should learn all that there was tobe learned in so poor a military school of the life and duties ofthe soldier; but chiefly because he had good reason to mistrust theStreltsi as a body, and it suited his purpose to distribute a few ofhis more enlightened and devoted adherents among the various regiments,in order that he might rest assured that in case of disaffection amongthe troops he would hear of it at the first whisper. Peter had notforgotten a certain horrible scene of violence enacted before hiseyes by these very regiments in the days of his early childhood, whenthe entire corps had revolted, and, in presence of himself and hisyoung co-Tsar, had massacred their chiefs and others in the square ofthe palace of the Kremlin. It is probable that, young as he had beenat that time, Peter never forgave the Streltsi for that terribleexperience, and that his distrust of them as a danger to the statedated from that day. Growing as time went on, his hatred of themculminated in the horrors attending their ultimate extermination, towhich brief reference will be made at a later stage of this narrative.
Meanwhile Boris hastened to acquire all that he could pick up ofmilitary knowledge. He did not like this city life, accustomed as hewas to the free and healthy open-air existence of the old Dubinka days,neither did he like his fellows in the Streltsi regiment to which hehad been appointed; but it was enough for our faithful hunter t
o knowthat it was the Tsar's desire that he should associate with these men:so long as he could render service to his beloved master, Boris wascontent. Nor, in truth, was Boris popular with his comrades. It waswell known that the new-comer was the _protege_ and favourite of theTsar, and he was distrusted on this account; for the conscience of theregiment was not altogether void of offence towards the young head ofthe realm, and it was more than suspected that Peter had on that veryaccount placed Boris as a kind of spy upon their inner counsels.
The reason for the dislike entertained by the Streltsi for theirTsar was this:--The elder brother of Peter, Ivan, was still aliveand physically in good health; but, as is well known, though he hadacted at one time as co-Tsar with Peter, Ivan was quite incapable, byreason of the weakness of his intellect, of taking any real part inthe government of the country, and Peter, by his own brother's earnestwish, as well as by the expressed desire of the nation, had assumed thesole authority over the destinies of the country. The Streltsi, full oftheir own importance as the actual backbone of the state, and on thisaccount "busy-bodies" to a man, were never perfectly satisfied withthis state of affairs, and evinced at all times a nervous anxiety as totheir duty in the matter. Ivan, they considered, was the real Tsar orCaesar, successor to the Byzantine and Roman Caesars, and therefore thelord, by divine right, of Holy Russia. It mattered little that he wasincompetent and unwilling to govern; that was regrettable, no doubt,but it did not justify another, either Peter or any one else, sittingin his place and holding a sceptre which did not belong to him. TheStreltsi were probably perfectly honest in their opinions. They hadnothing to gain by a revolution; their position was assured, and avery good position it was. It was the feeling of responsibility whichweighed upon them, and filled them with a restless sense that theyought by rights to interfere.
Peter, acute as he was, undoubtedly realized the exact state ofaffairs, and was well aware that a constant danger of trouble with hisStreltsi regiments stood in the way of the many reforms and projectswith which his active brain teemed at all times; and it is probablethat he was on the look-out even now for a plausible excuse to ridhimself of an incubus which he felt was inconsistent with his own ideasof the fitness of things and with the spirit of the times. Boris wastherefore, more or less, that very thing which the regiment believedhim to be--namely, a spy upon their actions and intentions.
The hunter was far too simple-minded to comprehend that this was hisposition. As a matter of fact, unlettered peasant as he was, he knewlittle of the history of the last few years. He was aware, indeed,of the existence of Ivan, but he had no suspicion whatever of thegood faith of his companions towards the Tsar; all of which became,moreover, so apparent to his fellow Streltsi, that they soon learnedto look indulgently upon "simple Boris," as he was called, as one whowas too much a fool to be a dangerous spy. Hence, though never openlyairing their views before their latest recruit, the young officers ofthe regiment gradually began to disregard the presence of Boris, andto indulge in hints and innuendoes referring to the matter which theyhad at heart, even though Boris was in the room and sharing in theconversation.
Now Boris, as is the case with many others, was by no means such afool as he looked. He heard references to matters which he did notunderstand, and which he knew he was not intended to understand.He observed frequently that parties of officers seated dining atthe eating-houses frequented by the regiment would glance at him ashe entered the room and moderate their loud tones to a whisper. Heoverheard such sentences as--"The priests count for much, and they arewith us!" or again, "Who is to persuade the Grand Duke that his brotheris a mere usurper?" And once Boris thought he caught the Tsar's name,as he entered the room, received with groans, and striding to the tablewith flushed face, asked whose name the company had received with thesemanifestations of dislike; whereupon the Streltsi officers had laughedaloud, and replied that they had spoken of a dog which had stolen abone that didn't belong to it.
The simple-minded Boris laughed also, and said, "What dog?"
Whereat the company roared with laughter, and the major replied withstreaming eyes,--
"Oh, a big dog I saw up at the Kremlin, that found a little dog witha nice bone, and bow-wowed at him till the little dog thought he hadbetter let it go with a good grace. We all thought this so mean of thebig dog that we hooted him and drank his health backwards!"
Afterwards Boris recalled this and other curious sayings of hiscompanions, and revolved them in his mind as he lay at the Tsar's doorat night.