Read The Historical Nights' Entertainment: Second Series Page 4


  II. THE FALSE DEMETRIUS

  Boris Godunov and the Pretended Son of Ivan the Terrible

  The news of it first reached him whilst he sat at supper in the greathall of his palace in the Kremlin. It came at a time when already therewas enough to distract his mind; for although the table before him wasspread and equipped as became an emperor's, the gaunt spectre of faminestalked outside in the streets of Moscow, and men and women were soreduced by it that cannibalism was alleged to be breaking out amongstthem.

  Alone, save for the ministering pages, sat Boris Godunov under the ironlamps that made of the table, with its white napery and vessels ofgold and silver plate, an island of light in the gloom of that vastapartment. The air was fragrant with the scent of burning pine, foralthough the time of year was May, the nights were chill, and a greatlog-fire was blazing on the distant hearth. To him, as he sat there,came his trusted Basmanov with those tidings which startled him atfirst, seeming to herald that at last the sword of Nemesis was swungabove his sinful head.

  Basmanov, a flush tinting the prominent cheek-bones of his sallow face,an excited glitter in his long eyes, began by ordering the pages out ofearshot, then leaning forward quickly muttered forth his news.

  At the first words of it, the Tsar's knife clashed into his goldenplatter, and his short, powerful hands clutched the carved arms ofhis great gilded chair. Quickly he controlled himself, and then as hecontinued to listen he was moved to scorn, and a faint smile began tostir under his grizzled beard.

  A man had appeared in Poland--such was the burden of Basmanov'sstory--coming none knew exactly whence, who claimed to be Demetrius, theson of Ivan Vassielivitch, and lawful Tsar of Russia--Demetrius, whowas believed to have died at Uglich ten years ago, and whose remainslay buried in Moscow, in the Church of St. Michael. This man had foundshelter in Lithuania, in the house of Prince Wisniowiecki, and thitherthe nobles of Poland were now flocking to do him homage, acknowledginghim the son of Ivan the Terrible. He was said to be the living imageof the dead Tsar, save that he was swarthy and black-haired, like thedowager Tsarina, and there were two warts on his face, such as it wasremembered had disfigured the countenance of the boy Demetrius.

  Thus Basmanov, adding that he had dispatched a messenger into Lithuaniato obtain more precise confirmation of the story. That messenger--chosenin consequence of something else that Basmanov had been told--wasSmirnoy Otrepiev.

  The Tsar Boris sat back in his chair, his eyes on the gem encrustedgoblet, the stem of which his fingers were mechanically turning. Therewas now no vestige of the smile on his round white face. It had grownset and thoughtful.

  "Find Prince Shuiski," he said presently, "and send him to me here."

  Upon the tale the boyar had brought him he offered now no comment.

  "We will talk of this again, Basmanov," was all he said inacknowledgment that he had heard, and in dismissal.

  But when the boyar had gone, Boris Godunov heaved himself to his feet,and strode over to the fire, his great head sunk between his massiveshoulders. He was a short, thick-set, bow-legged man, inclining tocorpulence. He set a foot, shod in red leather reversed with ermine,upon an andiron, and, leaning an elbow on the carved overmantel, restedhis brow against his hand. His eyes stared into the very heart of thefire, as if they beheld there the pageant of the past, upon which hismind was bent.

  Nineteen years were sped since Ivan the Terrible had passed away,leaving two sons, Feodor Ivanovitch, who had succeeded him, and theinfant Demetrius. Feodor, a weakling who was almost imbecile, hadmarried Irene, the daughter of Boris Godunov, whereby it had fallen outthat Boris became the real ruler of Russia, the power behind the throne.But his insatiable ambition coveted still more. He must wear the crownas well as wield the sceptre; and this could not be until the Ruricdynasty which had ruled Russia for nearly seven centuries should bestamped out. Between himself and the throne stood his daughter's husbandand their child, and the boy Demetrius, who had been dispatched with hismother, the dowager Tsarina, to Uglich. The three must be removed.

  Boris began with the last, and sought at first to drive him out ofthe succession without bloodshed. He attempted to have him pronouncedillegitimate, on the ground that he was the son of Ivan's seventhwife (the orthodox Church recognizing no wife as legitimate beyond thethird). But in this he failed. The memory of the terrible Tsar, thefear of him, was still alive in superstitious Russia, and none dared todishonour his son. So Boris had recourse to other and surer means. Hedispatched his agents to Uglich, and presently there came thence a storythat the boy, whilst playing with a knife, had been taken with a fit ofepilepsy, and had fallen, running the blade into his throat. But it wasnot a story that could carry conviction to the Muscovites, since with itcame the news that the town of Uglich had risen against the emissariesof Boris, charging them with the murder of the boy, and killing them outof hand.

  Terrible had been the vengeance which Boris had exacted. Of the lucklessinhabitants of the town two hundred were put to death by his orders,and the rest sent into banishment beyond the Ural Mountains, whilstthe Tsarina Maria, Demetrius's mother, for having said that her boy wasmurdered at the instigation of Boris, was packed off to a convent, andhad remained there ever since in close confinement.

  That had been in 1591. The next to go was Feodor's infant son, andlastly--in 1598--Feodor himself, succumbing to a mysterious illness, andleaving Boris a clear path to the throne. But he ascended it under theburden of his daughter's curse. Feodor's widow had boldly faced herfather, boldly accused him of poisoning her husband to gratify hisremorseless ambitions, and on a passionate appeal to God to let it bedone by him as he had done by others she had departed to a convent,swearing never to set eyes upon him again.

  The thought of her was with him now, as he stood there looking intothe heart of the fire; and perhaps it was the memory of her curse thatturned his stout heart to water, and made him afraid where there couldsurely be no cause for fear. For five years now had he been Tsar ofRussia, and in these five years he had taken such a grip of power as wasnot lightly to be loosened.

  Long he stood there, and there he was found by the magnificent PrinceShuiski, whom he had bidden Basmanov to summon.

  "You went to Uglich when the Tsarevitch Demetrius was slain," saidBoris. His voice and mien were calm and normal. "Yourself you saw thebody. There is no possibility that you could have been mistaken in it?"

  "Mistaken?" The boyar was taken aback by the question. He was a tallman, considerably younger than Boris, who was in his fiftieth year. Hisface was lean and saturnine, and there was something sinister in thedark, close-set eyes under a single, heavy line of eyebrow.

  Boris explained his question, telling him what he had learnt fromBasmanov. Basil Shuiski laughed. The story was an absurd one. Demetriuswas dead. Himself he had held the body in his arms, and no mistake waspossible.

  Despite himself, a sigh of relief fluttered from the lips of Boris.Shuiski was right. It was an absurd story, this. There was nothing tofear. He had been a fool to have trembled for a moment.

  Nevertheless, in the weeks that followed, he brooded more and more overall that Basmanov had said. It was in the thought that the nobility ofPoland was flocking to the house of Wisniowiecki to do honour to thisfalse son of Ivan the Terrible, that Boris found the chief cause ofuneasiness. There was famine in Moscow, and empty bellies do not makefor loyalty. Then, too, the Muscovite nobles did not love him. He hadruled too sternly, and had curbed their power. There were men like BasilShuiski who knew too much--greedy, ambitious men, who might turntheir knowledge to evil account. The moment might be propitious tothe pretender, however false his claim. Therefore Boris dispatched amessenger to Wisniowiecki with the offer of a heavy bribe if he wouldyield up the person of this false Demetrius.

  But that messenger returned empty-handed. He had reached Bragin toolate. The pretender had already left the place, and was safely lodgedin the castle of George Mniszek, the Palatine of Sandomir, to whosedaughter Maryna he was betrothed. If the
se were ill tidings for Boris,there were worse to follow soon. Within a few months he learned fromSandomir that Demetrius had removed to Cracow, and that there he hadbeen publicly acknowledged by Sigismund III. of Poland as the son ofIvan Vassielivitch, the rightful heir to the crown of Russia. Heheard, too, the story upon which this belief was founded. Demetrius haddeclared that one of the agents employed by Boris Godunov to procurehis murder at Uglich had bribed his physician Simon to perform the deed.Simon had pretended to agree as the only means of saving him. He haddressed the son of a serf, who slightly resembled Demetrius, in garmentssimilar to those worn by the young prince, and thereafter cut the lad'sthroat, leaving those who had found the body to presume it to bethe prince's. Meanwhile, Demetrius himself had been concealed by thephysician, and very shortly thereafter carried away from Uglich, to beplaced in safety in a monastery, where he had been educated.

  Such, in brief, was the story with which Demetrius convinced the courtof Poland, and not a few who had known the boy at Uglich came forwardnow to identify with him the grown man, who carried in his face sostrong a resemblance to Ivan the Terrible. That story which Boris nowheard was soon heard by all Russia, and Boris realized that somethingmust be done to refute it.

  But something more than assurances--his own assurances--were necessaryif the Muscovites were to believe him. And so at last Boris bethoughthim of the Tsarina Maria, the mother of the murdered boy. He had herfetched to Moscow from her convent, and told her of this pretender whowas setting up a claim to the throne of Russia, supported by the King ofPoland.

  She listened impassively, standing before him in the black robes andconventual coif which his tyranny had imposed upon her. When he haddone, a faint smile swept over the face that had grown so hard in theselast twelve years since that day when her boy had been slain almostunder her very eyes.

  "It is a circumstantial tale," she said. "It is perhaps true. It isprobably true."

  "True!" He bounded from his seat. "True? What are you saying, woman?Yourself you saw the boy dead."

  "I did, and I know who killed him."

  "But you saw him. You recognized him for your own, since you set thepeople on to kill those whom you believed had slain him."

  "Yes," she answered. And added the question: "What do you want of menow?"

  "What do I want?" He was amazed that she should ask, exasperated. Hadthe conventual confinement turned her head? "I want your testimony. Iwant you to denounce this fellow for the impostor that he is. The peoplewill believe you."

  "You think they will?" Interest had kindled in her glance.

  "What else? Are you not the mother of Demetrius, and shall not a motherknow her own son?"

  "You forget. He was ten years of age then--a child. Now he is a grownman of three-and-twenty. How can I be sure? How can I be sure ofanything?"

  He swore a full round oath at her. "Because you saw him dead."

  "Yet I may have been mistaken. I thought I knew the agents of yourswho killed him. Yet you made me swear--as the price of my brothers'lives--that I was mistaken. Perhaps I was more mistaken than we thought.Perhaps my little Demetrius was not slain at all. Perhaps this man'stale is true."

  "Perhaps..." He broke off to stare at her, mistrustfully, searchingly."What do you mean?" he asked her sharply.

  Again that wan smile crossed the hard, sharp-featured face that once hadbeen so lovely. "I mean that if the devil came out of hell and calledhimself my son, I should acknowledge him to your undoing."

  Thus the pent-up hate and bitterness of years of brooding upon herwrongs broke forth. Taken aback, he quailed before it. His jaw droppedfoolishly, and he stared at her with wide, unblinking eyes.

  "The people will believe me, you say--they will believe that a mothershould know her own son. Then are your hours of usurpation numbered."

  If for a moment it appalled him, yet in the end, forewarned, he wasforearmed. It was foolish of her to let him look upon the weapon withwhich she could destroy him. The result of it was that she went back toher convent under close guard, and was thereafter confined with greaterrigour than hitherto.

  Desperately Boris heard how the belief in Demetrius was gaining groundin Russia with the people. The nobles might still be sceptical, butBoris knew that he could not trust them, since they had no cause to lovehim. He began perhaps to realize that it is not good to rule by fear.

  And then at last came Smirnoy Otrepiev back from Cracow, where he hadbeen sent by Basmanov to obtain with his own eyes confirmation of therumour which had reached the boyar on the score of the pretender's realidentity.

  The rumour, he declared, was right. The false Demetrius was none otherthan his own nephew, Grishka Otrepiev, who had once been a monk, but,unfrocked, had embraced the Roman heresy, and had abandoned himself tolicentious ways. You realize now why Smirnoy had been chosen by Basmanovfor this particular mission.

  The news heartened Boris. At last he could denounce the impostor inproper terms, and denounce him he did. He sent an envoy to SigismundIII. to proclaim the fellow's true identity, and to demand his expulsionfrom the Kingdom of Poland; and his denunciation was supported by asolemn excommunication pronounced by the Patriarch of Moscow againstthe unfrocked monk, Grishka Otrepiev, who now falsely called himselfDemetrius Ivanovitch.

  But the denunciation did not carry the conviction that Boris expected.It was reported that the Tsarevitch was a courtly, accomplished man,speaking Polish and Latin, as well as Russian, skilled in horsemanshipand in the use of arms, and it was asked how an unfrocked monk had comeby these accomplishments. Moreover, although Boris, fore-warned, hadprevented the Tsarina Maria from supporting the pretender out of motivesof revenge, he had forgotten her two brothers; he had not foreseen that,actuated by the same motives, they might do that which he had preventedher from doing. This was what occurred. The brothers Nagoy repairedto Cracow publicly to acknowledge Demetrius their nephew, and to enrolthemselves under his banner.

  Against this Boris realized that mere words were useless. The sword ofNemesis was drawn indeed. His sins had found him out. Nothing remainedhim but to arm and go forth to meet the impostor, who was advancing uponMoscow with a great host of Poles and Cossacks.

  He appraised the support of the Nagoys at its right value. They, too,had been at Uglich, and had seen the dead boy, almost seen him slain.Vengeance upon himself was their sole motive. But was it possible thatSigismund of Poland was really deceived, as well as the Palatine ofSandomir, whose daughter was betrothed to the adventurer, Prince AdamWisniowiecki, in whose house the false Demetrius had first made hisappearance, and all those Polish nobles who flocked to his banner? Orwere they, too, moved by some ulterior motive which he could not fathom?

  That was the riddle that plagued Boris Godunov what time--in the winterof 1604--he sent his armies to meet the invader. He sent them because,crippled now by gout, even the satisfaction of leading them was deniedhim. He was forced to stay at home in the gloomy apartments of theKremlin, fretted by care, with the ghosts of his evil past to keep himcompany, and assure him that the hour of judgment was at hand.

  With deepening rage he heard how town after town capitulated to theadventurer, and mistrusting Basmanov, who was in command, he sentShuiski to replace him. In January of 1605 the armies met at Dobrinichi,and Demetrius suffered a severe defeat, which compelled him to fall backon Putioli. He lost all his infantry, and every Russian taken in arms onthe pretender's side was remorselessly hanged as Boris had directed.

  Hope began to revive in the heart of Boris; but as months passed andno decision came, those hopes faded again, and the canker of the pastgnawed at his vitals and sapped his strength. And then there was everpresent to his mind the nightmare riddle of the pretender's identity. Atlast, one evening in April, he sent for Smirnoy Otrepiev to question himagain concerning that nephew of his. Otrepiev came in fear this time. Itis not good to be the uncle of a man who is giving so much trouble to agreat prince.

  Boris glared at him from blood-injected eyes. His round, white facewas
haggard, his cheeks sagged, and his fleshly body had lost all itserstwhile firm vigour.

  "I have sent for you to question you again," he said, "touching thislewd nephew of yours, this Grishka Otrepiev, this unfrocked monk, whoclaims to be Tsar of Muscovy. Are you sure, man, that you have made nomistake--are you sure?"

  Otrepiev was shaken by the Tsar's manner, by the ferocity of his mien.But he made answer: "Alas, Highness! I could not be mistaken. I amsure."

  Boris grunted, and moved his body irritably in his chair. His terribleeyes watched Otrepiev mistrustfully. He had reached the mental stage inwhich he mistrusted everything and everybody.

  "You lie, you dog," he snarled savagely.

  "Highness, I swear..."

  "Lies!" Boris roared him down. "And here's the proof. Would Sigismund ofPoland have acknowledged him had he been what you say? When I denouncedhim the unfrocked monk Grishka Otrepiev, would not Sigismund haveverified the statement had it been true?"

  "The brothers Nagoy, the uncles of the dead Demetrius..." Otrepiev wasbeginning, when again Boris interrupted him.

  "Their acknowledgment of him came after Sigismund's, after--longafter--my denunciation." He broke into oaths. "I say you lie. Will youstand there and pelter with me, man? Will you wait until the rack pullsyou joint from joint before you speak the truth?"

  "Highness!" cried Otrepiev, "I have served you faithfully these years."

  "The truth, man; as you hope for life," thundered the Tsar, "the wholetruth of this foul nephew of yours, if so be he is your nephew."

  And Otrepiev spoke the whole truth at last in his great dread. "He isnot my nephew."

  "Not?" It was a roar of rage. "You dared lie to me?"

  Otrepiev's knees were loosened by terror, and he went down upon thembefore the irate Tsar.

  "I did not lie--not altogether. I told you a half-truth, Highness. Hisname is Grishka Otrepiev; it is the name by which he always has beenknown, and he is an unfrocked monk, all as I said, and the son of mybrother's wife."

  "Then... then..." Boris was bewildered. Suddenly he understood. "And hisfather?"

  "Was Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. Grishka Otrepiev is King Stephen'snatural son."

  Boris seemed to fight for breath for a moment.

  "This is true?" he asked, and himself answered the question. "Of courseit is true. It is the light at last... at last. You may go."

  Otrepiev stumbled out, thankful, surprised to escape so lightly. Hecould not know of how little account to Boris was the deception he hadpracticed in comparison with the truth he had now revealed, a truththat shed a fearful, dazzling light upon the dark mystery of the falseDemetrius. The problem that so long had plagued the Tsar was solved atlast.

  This pretended Demetrius, this unfrocked monk, was a natural son ofStephen Bathory, and a Roman Catholic. Such men as Sigismund of Polandand the Voyvode of Sandomir were not deceived on the score of hisidentity. They, and no doubt other of the leading nobles of Poland,knew the man for what he was, and because of it supported him, using thefiction of his being Demetrius Ivanovitch to impose upon the masses, andfacilitate the pretenders occupation of the throne of Russia. And theobject of it was to set up in Muscovy a ruler who should be a Pole anda Roman Catholic. Boris knew the bigotry of Sigismund, who already hadsacrificed a throne--that of Sweden--to his devout conscience, and hesaw clearly to the heart of this intrigue. Had he not heard that aPapal Nuncio had been at Cracow, and that this Nuncio had been a stoutsupporter of the pretender's claim? What could be the Pope's concern inthe Muscovite succession? Why should a Roman priest support the claim ofa prince to the throne of a country devoted to the Greek faith?

  At last all was clear indeed to Boris. Rome was at the bottom of thisbusiness, whose true aim was the Romanization of Russia; and Sigismundhad fetched Rome into it, had set Rome on. Himself an elected King ofPoland, Sigismund may have seen in the ambitious son of Stephen Bathoryone who might perhaps supplant him on the Polish throne. To diverthis ambition into another channel he had fathered--if he had notinvented--this fiction that the pretender was the dead Demetrius.

  Had that fool Smirnoy Otrepiev but dealt frankly with him from thefirst, what months of annoyance might he not have been spared; how easyit might have been to prick this bubble of imposture. But better latethan never. To-morrow he would publish the true facts, and all the worldshould know the truth; and it was a truth that must give pause to thosefools in this superstitious Russia, so devoted to the Orthodox GreekChurch, who favoured the pretender. They should see the trap that wasbeing baited for them.

  There was a banquet in the Kremlin that night to certain foreign envoys,and Boris came to table in better spirits than he had been for manya day. He was heartened by the thought of what was now to do, by theconviction that he held the false Demetrius in the hollow of his hand.There to those envoys he would announce to-night what to-morrow he wouldannounce to all Russia--tell them of the discovery he had made, andreveal to his subjects the peril in which they stood. Towards the closeof the banquet he rose to address his guests, announcing that he hadan important communication for them. In silence they waited for him tospeak. And then, abruptly, with no word yet spoken, he sank back intohis chair, fighting for breath, clawing the air, his face empurplinguntil suddenly the blood gushed copiously from his mouth and nostrils.

  He was vouchsafed time in which to strip off his splendid apparel andwrap himself in a monk's robe, thus symbolizing the putting aside ofearthly vanities, and then he expired.

  It has been now and then suggested that he was poisoned. His deathwas certainly most opportune to Demetrius. But there is nothing in themanner of it to justify the opinion that it resulted from anything otherthan an apoplexy.

  His death brought the sinister opportunist Shuiski back to Moscow toplace Boris's son Feodor on the throne. But the reign of this lad ofsixteen was very brief. Basmanov, who had gone back to the army, beingnow inspired by jealousy and fear of the ambitious Shuiski, went overat once to the pretender, and proclaimed him Tsar of Russia. Thereafterevents moved swiftly. Basmanov marched on Moscow, entered it in triumph,and again proclaimed Demetrius, whereupon the people rose in revoltagainst the son of the usurper Boris, stormed the Kremlin, and strangledthe boy and his mother.

  Basil Shuiski would have shared their fate had he not bought his life atthe price of betrayal. Publicly he declared to the Muscovites that theboy whose body he had seen at Uglich was not that of Demetrius, but of apeasant's son, who had been murdered in his stead.

  That statement cleared the last obstacle from the pretender's path, andhe advanced now to take possession of his throne. Yet before he occupiedit, he showed the real principles that actuated him, proved how true hadbeen Boris's conclusion. He ordered the arrest and degradation of thePatriarch who had denounced and excommunicated him, and in his placeappointed Ignatius, Bishop of Riazan, a man suspected of belonging tothe Roman communion.

  On the 30th of June of that year 1605, Demetrius made his triumphalentry into Moscow. He went to prostrate himself before the tomb of Ivanthe Terrible, and then to visit the Tsarina Maria, who, after a briefcommunion with him in private, came forth publicly to acknowledge him asher son.

  Just as Shuiski had purchased his life by a falsehood, so did shepurchase her enlargement from that convent where so long she had beena prisoner, and restoration to the rank that was her proper due. Afterall, she had cause for gratitude to Demetrius, who, in addition torestoring her these things, had avenged her upon the hated BorisGodunov.

  His coronation followed in due season, and at last this amazingadventurer found himself firmly seated upon the throne of Russia, withBasmanov at his right hand to help and guide him. And at first all wentwell, and the young Tsar earned a certain measure of popularity. If hisswarthy face was coarse-featured, yet his bearing was so courtly andgracious that he won his way quickly to the hearts of his people. Forthe rest he was of a tall, graceful figure, a fine horseman, and of aknightly address at arms.

  But he soon found himself
in the impossible position of having to servetwo masters. On the one hand there was Russia, and the orthodox Russianswhose tsar he was, and on the other there were the Poles, who had madehim so at a price, and who now demanded payment. Because he saw thatthis payment would be difficult and fraught with peril to himselfhe would--after the common wont of princes who have attained theirobjects--have repudiated the debt. And so he was disposed to ignore, orat least to evade, the persistent reminders that reached him from thePapal Nuncio, to whom he had promised the introduction into Russia ofthe Roman faith.

  But presently came a letter from Sigismund couched in different terms.The King of Poland wrote to Demetrius that word had reached him thatBoris Godunov was still alive, and that he had taken refuge in England,adding that he might be tempted to restore the fugitive to the throne ofMuscovy.

  The threat contained in that bitter piece of sarcasm aroused Demetriusto a sense of the responsibilities he had undertaken, which wereprecisely as Boris Godunov had surmised. As a beginning he granted theJesuits permission to build a church within the sacred walls of theKremlin, whereby he gave great scandal. Soon followed other signs thathe was not a true son of the Orthodox Greek Church; he gave offence byhis indifference to public worship, by his neglect of Russian customs,and by surrounding himself with Roman Catholic Poles, upon whom heconferred high offices and dignities.

  And there were those at hand ready to stir up public feeling againsthim, resentful boyars quick to suspect that perhaps they had beenswindled. Foremost among these was the sinister turncoat Shuiski,who had not derived from his perjury all the profit he expected,who resented, above all, to see Basmanov--who had ever been hisrival--invested with a power second only to that of the Tsar himself.Shuiski, skilled in intrigue, went to work in his underground, burrowingfashion. He wrought upon the clergy, who in their turn wrought upon thepopulace, and presently all was seething disaffection under a surfaceapparently calm.

  The eruption came in the following May, when Maryna, the daughter ofthe Palatine of Sandomir, made her splendid entry into Moscow, thebride-elect of the young Tsar. The dazzling procession and the feastingthat followed found little favour in the eyes of the Muscovites, who nowbeheld their city aswarm with heretic Poles.

  The marriage was magnificently solemnized on the 18th of May, 1606.And now Shuiski applied a match to the train he had so skilfully laid.Demetrius had caused a timber fort to be built before the wallsof Moscow for a martial spectacle which he had planned for theentertainment of his bride. Shuiski put it abroad that the fort wasintended to serve as an engine of destruction, and that the martialspectacle was a pretence, the real object being that from the fort thePoles were to cast firebrands into the city, and then proceed to theslaughter of the inhabitants.

  No more was necessary to infuriate an already exasperated populace.They flew to arms, and on the night of the 29th of May they stormedthe Kremlin, led on by the arch-traitor Shuiski himself, to the cry of"Death to the heretic! Death to the impostor!"

  They broke into the palace, and swarmed up the stairs into the Tsar'sbedchamber, slaying the faithful Basmanov, who stood sword in hand tobar the way and give his master time to escape. The Tsar leapt froma balcony thirty feet to the ground, broke his leg, and lay therehelpless, to be dispatched by his enemies, who presently discovered him.

  He died firmly and fearlessly protesting that he was DemetriusIvanovitch. Nevertheless, he was Grishka Otrepiev, the unfrocked monk.

  It has been said that he was no more than an instrument in the hands ofpriestcraft, and that because he played his part badly he met hisdoom. But something more he was. He was an instrument indeed, not ofpriestcraft, but of Fate, to bring home to Boris Godunov the hideoussins that stained his soul, and to avenge his victims by personating oneof them. In that personation he had haunted Boris as effectively as ifhe had been the very ghost of the boy murdered at Uglich, haunted andtortured, and finally broken him so that he died.

  That was the part assigned him by Fate in the mysterious scheme of humanthings. And that part being played, the rest mattered little. In thenature of him and of his position it was impossible that his impostureshould be other than ephemeral.