Above all, they took their tone from Silas, who on several occasions had been seen talking quietly to the big fellow and who pronounced firmly: ‘He is a godly man. He has the true blagochestie.’
For two years the strange fellow came each week to Dirty Place, keeping himself to himself and scarcely speaking to a soul. And still no one was any the wiser about him. All they knew, with satisfaction, was that when he made the sign of the cross, he did so with two fingers.
1684
For Nikita, the whole business had been a disaster.
It might have been all right, despite everything, if he hadn’t quarrelled with that damned Tolstoy. That was the trouble. ‘And now we’re completely out of favour,’ he lamented to his wife.
The question was – what could they do about it? Which was when she had made her curious suggestion.
It was doubly galling because the family had been doing well ever since the Romanovs came to the throne. The first Romanov had rewarded Nikita’s grandfather in two ways. He had allowed him to convert the old estate – held on pomestie service tenure under Ivan the Terrible – back into the hereditary votchina that could not be taken away. And he had given him some more votchina, from the good land beside the monastery, as well. Nikita’s marriage had brought him fresh estates. He kept them all in good order. His peasants worked three days barshchina and paid him modest rents in cash and kind. They were, he supposed, no better and no worse off than most peasants. In addition, he had bought several small parcels of land south of the River Oka in Riazan province, on the edge of the steppe where the soil was rich and where his stewards used slave labour – a combination of men who could not pay their debts and of captured Tatar raiders. The returns there were excellent.
Nikita had done well. Indeed the family’s status had never been higher. For though the Tsar had finally abolished the old mestnichestvo records of precedence – which, though terribly inconvenient, had guaranteed the Bobrovs a certain status – Nikita had managed to get himself raised into the coveted ranks of the Muscovite nobility. This meant that he lived in Moscow, close to the Tsar, and even dreamed of being a candidate for the provincial governorship. If only he had been able to take that one, further step into the Tsar’s favour, he might have become a rich man.
And though his wife and he had known the sadness – all too common in Russia – of losing children, in 1668, Praise the Lord, a robust little boy had been born who showed every sign of surviving. They had named him Procopy.
As he approached his fifties, therefore, Nikita had been sanguine. He enjoyed good health and high rank. Though growing stout, he was elegant. All he had to do was attract the favourable notice of the Tsar.
Things had certainly been changing in the capital. The court of Alexis had been growing more cosmopolitan, more western. Great men like the Tsar’s friend Matveev encouraged western manners; a few of the inner court circle even shaved their beards.
As an ambitious man with some education himself, Nikita was drawn towards these court circles. The great Matveev liked him and became his mentor. Though he still had a healthy suspicion of all foreigners, Nikita occasionally changed his kaftan for a Polish coat. He had heard German musicians play at Matveev’s house. He occasionally attended a church with a choir that performed part-singing in harmony, in the western manner. And in 1673 he had even obliged his wife to attend one of the new entertainments arranged by the Tsar – a play.
She had not approved.
Her name was Eudokia, or in full: Eudokia Petrovna Bobrova. She was Bobrova because, like all Russian married women, she took the feminine form of her husband’s name, Bobrov. Her patronymic came from her father Peter, whose memory she still revered. And people usually addressed her, respectfully, as Eudokia Petrovna.
She was a powerful woman: black-haired, thickset, with a round face whose placid gentleness completely belied her character. A strict conservative, she was fully conscious of her wealth and her late father’s high position as a military commander. When guests came to their house, she remained out of sight until she was summoned to serve the men brandy after their meal; then, having saluted the guests, she would discreetly depart again. But in private, with other women, or alone with her husband, she had no hesitation in expressing her views. On no subject were they stronger than the changes favoured by the court. A foreigner without a beard, she told him, looked like a chicken that had just been plucked. The western music and plays were sacrilegious: ‘I go to church to hear the Word of God, not some Polish whining,’ she would say.
Above all, honouring her father’s memory, she was contemptuous of the Tsar’s army with its foreign officers. ‘These Germans: what do they know? They know how to give orders. Good.’ She would stand up and mimic an unfortunate peasant standing in utter confusion with his musket. ‘I’ve seen them,’ she would cry. ‘The officer calls out. Nobody understands. He tries again – ah, now they understand. So this one turns left. This one goes right. This one fires his musket. One advances, one retreats. They don’t know what they’re doing. And why? Because the officer who drilled them the week before had a different method altogether. Imbeciles!’
And Nikita would roar with laughter because it was perfectly true, the officers from different countries often brought their own drill books with them, which did not agree with each other, and which they utterly refused to change.
On this, as on many other matters, Eudokia would conclude with the words: ‘Things were better in the time of Ivan the Terrible. He’d have sorted them out.’
It was strange, therefore, that she did not approve of the Tsar’s wars. To Nikita, the absorption of the Ukraine and the drive into the Polish territories to the west meant glory for Russia. To his practical wife, however, they did not. ‘War just means ruin for our poor peasants,’ she complained.
Even Nikita admitted she had a point. There were at this time a hundred thousand men under arms. The military took up sixty-two per cent of the state’s budget and, as always, the taxes fell on the peasants. ‘If we go on like this, we’ll have another rebellion like Stenka Razin’s,’ Eudokia predicted.
She began to insist, each year, that they inspect their villages, which Nikita found a great bore; and she personally would interview the peasants and frequently give them money. ‘It’s lucky we’re rich, with so many peasants to feed,’ he would remark wryly. But she paid no attention.
Given her conservative views, therefore, it did not surprise Nikita that in religious matters his wife should sympathize with the Raskolniki. Nor was she alone among the noblewomen of the day. The Tsar’s first wife had done so. And a little group of prominent ladies, including one of the great boyar family of Morozov, had not only supported the followers of Avvakum but even gone to prison for it. Such sympathies, however, were becoming unfashionable amongst the noble class, as well as dangerous; and Nikita had told Eudokia she must keep her thoughts to herself.
He supposed that she had.
The troubles of Nikita Bobrov began with a change in the court, when suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, Tsar Alexis had died, leaving behind him a court split into two factions.
By his first wife he left several daughters and two sons: Fedor, pleasant but sickly and Ivan, an unfortunate child, mentally retarded and with a growth of skin over his eyes. By his second wife, a woman of modest birth, Alexis had left two infant children – a baby girl and a boy of three.
The little boy’s name was Peter.
The family of Alexis’s first wife, the mighty Miloslavskys, had not been pleased at the appearance of the second wife’s family, the humble Naryshkins. Above all, they hated the Tsar’s friend Matveev, who had first introduced the couple.
It was a predictable Muscovite business. Young Fedor became Tsar; Peter and his mother were kindly treated, but the Miloslavskys took over all the reins of power. It did not take them long to find a pretext for arresting Matveev. That educated gentleman was foolish enough to be found with a book of algebra in his baggage, which was, nat
urally, taken to be a form of black magic. Even Nikita, when he heard of the arrest of his mentor, could only shake his head and remark: ‘He was asking for trouble. What did he want with such stuff anyway?’
Though he had lost a powerful patron, the change at court did not mean the end for Nikita Bobrov. He was not important enough to worry the Miloslavskys. He had friends. Given time, he might have continued his advance.
Except for those fatal words to young Tolstoy.
The palace of Kolomenskoye lay not far outside the city of Moscow on gently rising ground beside the river.
It was an extraordinary collection of buildings. For generations a summer residence of the Tsars, Alexis had added to its stone churches and bell towers a large, sprawling set of wooden houses and halls as exotic and striking to the eye as the twisted cupolas of St Basil’s Cathedral in Red Square. Great bulbous domes, high tent roofs with windows peeping out, huge onion-shaped gables and massive exterior staircases – the place was a riot of Russian forms taken to extremes. Like much of the church architecture of Alexis’s reign, it was exuberant and ornamental. It was as though, seeing their own architecture for the first time with partly westernized eyes, some of the builders in Russia had decided to take their traditional forms and play with them, twisting them, piling one next to another, until the final result was a tremendous, exotic stage-set, a gigantic Muscovite honeycomb imbued with an impressive, rich heaviness.
And it was on a sunny summer’s day, walking in the gardens before Kolomenskoye Palace, some years into Tsar Fedor’s reign, that Nikita encountered Peter Tolstoy.
Why was it that he disliked the fellow so much? Tolstoy was a strong man – no doubt about it – with heavy black eyebrows and piercing blue eyes. He was intelligent. Perhaps too intelligent, perhaps cunning. He was about ten years younger than Nikita, but he knew more – and both of them were aware of it. His family’s no better than mine, Nikita thought irritably; yet something about Tolstoy told Nikita that he was going to the top.
When, therefore, young Tolstoy started to walk along beside him, Nikita experienced a wave of irritation. As far as he could, without being rude, he tried to ignore him. He only vaguely listened to what was being said. And so three or four minutes passed before, to his surprise, he suddenly realized that the damned fellow was talking about Eudokia, his own wife.
He started to listen. What was Tolstoy saying? Schismatics? Danger? Now he really began to pay attention, and what he heard made him tremble.
For it seemed that Eudokia had been talking. Behind closed doors, to other women, thank God, but she had been talking all the same: arguing, in her usual way, in favour of the Raskolniki.
And very quietly, like the smooth courtier and diplomat he was, Tolstoy was warning him about it. Women’s talk of course, but things were being said. If such things came to the wrong ears … ‘We men are always the last to know,’ Tolstoy remarked with a smile. But it seemed all Moscow knew. And as Nikita looked across at the other’s calm, impassive face, he was filled with a sudden fury. Why was Tolstoy saying all this – as an act of kindness? Or was it a threat – a piece of information he could use at a future date? Was the fellow trying to establish a hold over him for some reason? It wasn’t clear.
Worst of all, he was being made to look a fool. He had little doubt that Tolstoy was speaking the truth. Eudokia was disobeying him, and this young man was quietly telling him that he couldn’t control his own wife. Yet even then, he might have kept his temper, had it not been for one tiny thing.
The two men had paused in their walk. Nikita, full of resentment, had been staring at the ground when, feeling the other man watching him, he looked up into his face. And met Tolstoy’s eyes.
Nothing in the world is more unwise than to give an expressive look to a person one does not know very well. For it is sure to be misinterpreted, usually because the other sees therein the reflection of his own thoughts. So it was with Nikita and Tolstoy. By the look of worldly cynicism Tolstoy then gave Nikita, he had meant to convey: ‘Ah, my dear fellow, there’s no accounting for women’s chatter.’ But what Nikita saw was: ‘My God what a fool you are, and we both know it.’ It was the last straw. He exploded.
‘You vile young rascal,’ he abruptly burst out. ‘Do you think I haven’t always known you for what you are? If you want to spread gossip about my wife, you’ll find it rebounds on you. I promise you that.’ And then, very quietly: ‘Take care or you may regret this.’
It was foolish. He knew it almost before he had finished. But seeing Tolstoy wince in surprise, he mistook this also for a look of contempt, and turned on his heel.
As for Tolstoy – who in reality had only meant to do a favour to a useful fellow – he at once concluded that Nikita must be an enemy: just important enough to be dangerous, and who might need to be neutralized one day.
‘Yet how,’ as Nikita afterwards moaned to himself, ‘could I have been so stupid?’
For the Tolstoys, though only of the minor aristocracy themselves, had married into the family of the mighty Miloslavskys.
Nikita continued to serve, and to hope. He made friends in high places. He even came to know the great prince Basil Golitsyn – a powerful westernized noble whom he hoped to secure as a patron. From Tolstoy, he heard nothing, and he put the incident at Kolomenskoye out of his mind. A few years more, a little luck, and he still might secure that governorship.
He was away, visiting a distant estate, when in the early summer of 1682 news reached him of the unexpected cataclysm in Moscow; and the whole business was so quick that, though he hurried back, it was all over before he reached the capital.
Poor Tsar Fedor had died. He had produced no children and so there were two possible heirs – the unfortunate Ivan, last son of Alexis by his Miloslavsky wife; and the handsome young Peter, still only nine years old, son of the Naryshkin girl. A half-blind, simpleton cripple or a young boy; the mighty Miloslavsky clan or the upstart Naryshkins.
But there was one other factor which Nikita had never considered: poor Ivan had a sister.
Princess Sophia was not a beauty. She was fat; she had an oversize head; her face was rather hairy and, as time went on, carbuncles appeared on her legs. As a princess, she was also expected to live in seclusion in the royal palace. But Sophia was both intelligent and ambitious. She had no intention of staying in seclusion, or of allowing the Naryshkins to push out her Miloslavsky relations.
In an astonishing series of events, and taking advantage of a sudden revolt of the powerful Moscow regiments of streltsy, Sophia had the Naryshkins hacked to pieces in the Kremlin Palace itself. It was an appalling and terrifying affair, taking place before the very eyes of young Peter and his mother – a terrible reminder that this was old Muscovy still, as dark, as morbid as in the days of Ivan the Terrible.
Then she had both Peter and the unfortunate Ivan declared joint Tsars – and herself made Regent.
The strange coronation took place in late June. Nikita Bobrov, having returned, was present. The two boys, robed in vestments glinting with gold, and heavy with pearls – one youth blind and half-dumb, the other only a child – were each crowned, in solemn state, with the so-called Cap of Monomakh. But behind them was Sophia. For the first time in Russian history, a woman held the reins of power.
And as he watched, Nikita thought of something else, which made him very afraid. For when Sophia began her bid for power, two men had ridden into the streltsy quarter to whip them up. One was Alexander Miloslavsky. And the other was Peter Tolstoy.
‘My dear Nikita Mikhailovich, my dear friend. We must have a talk.’
There was no more urbane man in all Russia than Sophia’s new chief minister, Prince Basil Golitsyn. Some whispered that he was also her lover. Could it really be so? Nikita was not in a position to know. But Golitsyn was certainly powerful and, Nikita believed, looked upon him with favour.
When he had been summoned to attend upon the prince in the Kremlin, therefore, he had dared to hope it might be g
ood news. And now, seeing the great man advancing towards him, with these friendly words, he scarcely even noticed all the other people in the room, or the expressions on their faces. He saw only Golitsyn, and the fact that he was smiling.
For even to a man of some importance, like Bobrov, the prince was dazzling. He was, in truth, the first of the great, cosmopolitan Russian aristocrats who were to impress even the grandees of Europe for the next two centuries. Had it been anyone else, Nikita might even have been shocked by Golitsyn. It was not just that he spoke Latin; nor even that he drank only moderately and that his palatial house contained western pictures, furniture, even Gobelin tapestries; but he would welcome foreigners to his house, including even – Nikita had heard with horror – the dreaded Jesuits. Yet no one could deny that Golitsyn was a true Russian. No family was nobler or more ancient. And besides all this, as he now came towards Nikita, the more modest noble was aware of the wonderful quality which God had given to nearly all members of the grandee’s family: an extraordinary charm.
Instead of a kaftan, Golitsyn wore a close-fitting Polish coat, with buttons down the front. His beard, instead of flowing broadly over his chest, was trimmed to a neat point. His calm, slightly Turkish face suggested a subtle, perhaps veiled, intelligence.
Gently he took Nikita by the arm and walked with him to one side of the large room. ‘You know, my dear friend, I had hoped to see you a provincial governor,’ he said quietly. Nikita’s heart missed a beat. What did he mean? Some other promotion? But seeing his agitation, Golitsyn only sighed. ‘I want you, my friend, for both our sakes, to be very calm,’ he murmured. ‘As I say, I had hoped. But, alas, it will not be possible. You see, our local administration in Russia is, as you know, less than perfect.’