Alexis remained silent.
“Speak!”
Alexis grew dizzy, his feet hardly supported him. Yet again somebody seemed to answer for him.
“Nothing.”
“You lie,” cried Peter, seizing him by the shoulders so violently that it seemed his bones would be broken. “You lie. You have concealed all about your mother, your aunt, your uncle Dositheus of Rostoff, and their whole cursed brood, the root of all this wicked rebellion.”
“Who told you, father?” stammered Alexis, looking at him for the first time.
“Is it not true?” His father looked straight at him.
His hand grew heavier and heavier. The Tsarevitch tottered like a reed under the weight, and sank at his father’s feet.
“Forgive, forgive!—— She is my mother; she bore me!”
Peter bent over him, raised his fist above his son’s head and swore. Alexis stretched out his hands as if to ward off a mortal blow.
He raised his eyes and saw bending over him again, as in the momentary metamorphosis of a were-wolf, transformedagain; only now instead of the familiar loved one, the other strange terrifying face, like a death-mask, the face of the beast, remained before him.
He gave a faint cry and covered his face with his hands.
Peter turned round to go out. But Alexis, hearing his father move towards the door, hurried after him on his knees, like a dog, which, though beaten, still begs for pardon. He clung to his feet, embraced and held on to them.
“Don’t go away, don’t—rather kill me.”
Peter tried to push him away and free himself. But Alexis held on, clinging tighter and tighter.
The touch of these hands, which convulsively gripped and held him back, sent an icy, cold shudder of disgust through Peter, such as he felt towards spiders, cockroaches, and other creeping vermin.
“Away, away, away, or else I’ll kill you!” he cried in fury, mingled with terror.
At last with a desperate effort he shook him off, spurning Alexis on the face with his foot. The Tsarevitch with a hollow groan fell to the ground, like one dead. Peter ran out of the room, as if escaping from some monster.
When he passed the dignitaries who were awaiting him in the hall, they saw in his face that something terrible had happened.
He called to them shortly: “To the Church!” And he went out.
Some followed after him; others, Tolstoi and Shafiroff among them, hurried to the Secret Chamber of Replies.
The Tsarevitch continued to lie with his face to the ground, as lifeless. They began to lift him, trying to bring him back to consciousness. His joints would not straighten out; contracted by convulsions they had become rigid. Yet it was not a swoon. His breathing was rapid, his eyes open.
At last they succeeded in putting him on his feet. They wanted to lead him into the adjacent room and lay him on a bench. He looked around him with a troubled, blank gaze and murmured, trying to recall what had happened, “What is it, what is it?”
“Don’t be afraid,” Tolstoi said to calm him, “youswooned, fell, and probably hurt yourself; it will soon pass. Here is some water, drink it, and the doctor will be here presently.”
“What is it? what is it?” Alexis repeated mechanically.
“Had we not better inform the Tsar?” whispered Tolstoi to Shafiroff.
The Tsarevitch heard him; he turned round, and his pale face suddenly grew livid. A fit of trembling seized him, and he started tearing the collar of his shirt as though he were choking, while he began to cry and laugh so wildly that all were frightened.
“What Tsar? Fools, fools, don’t you see anything? That is not he, that is neither the Tsar nor my father. He is a drummer, an accursed Jew, an impostor, a pretender. Gregory Otriópieff—a were-wolf! Ram a pike down his throat and that will finish him!”
The Court Physician, Areskin, hurried into the room. Tolstoi, unseen by the Tsarevitch, pointed to him, then touched his own forehead, as much as to say, “The Tsarevitch is going out of his mind.”
Areskin placed Alexis in an arm-chair, felt his pulse, made him smell ether, take some soothing medicine, and was just going to bleed him, when in came a messenger who stated that the Tsar was waiting in the Church and desired the Tsarevitch to come at once.
“Go and say that his Highness is ill,” began Tolstoi.
“There is no need,” interrupted Alexis, awaking as from a deep slumber. “No need. I will go presently. Only give me a moment’s rest and a little wine.”
They handed him some Tokay. He drank it eagerly, Areskin put a towel on his head soaked with vinegar and cold water. They left him alone and went aside, conferring on what had better be done.
After a few minutes he said:—
“I feel better. Let us go.”
They helped him to get up, and supported him as he walked.
The fresh air revived him while crossing from the palace to the Church; but when passing through the crowd everybody noticed his pallor.
On the platform in front of the open gates of the iconostasis, which permitted a view of the altar, Fédor Prokopovitch, the newly appointed Bishop of Pskoff, fully robed, was awaiting Alexis with Crucifix and Gospels. The Tsar stood beside him.
Alexis went up to the platform, took from Shafiroff a sheet of paper and began to read in a weak, scarcely audible voice, but the crowd was so hushed that every word was clearly heard.
“I, the undersigned, promise on the holy Gospels, that I, having forfeited my inheritance of the Russian throne on account of my sins against my father and sovereign, therefore acknowledge it to be just, and swear by the Almighty and Triune God and His judgment to submit to this my father’s will without fail, and never to seek the succession, nor accept it under any pretext whatever. I acknowledge my brother Peter to be the legitimate heir. Upon which I kiss the Holy Cross and sign with mine own hand.”
He kissed the cross and signed the abdication.
At the same time the manifesto was being read to all the people.
Peter sent an “Interrogatory” to Alexis by Tolstoi. The Tsarevitch was expected to answer in writing. Tolstoi advised him to conceal nothing, as the Tsar apparently knew everything, and required from his son only the confirmation.
“Who told my father?” asked Alexis.
Tolstoi at first would not reply. Finally, he read to him a decree, unpublished as yet, but proclaimed later on at the establishment of the Ecclesiastical College, the Holy Synod:—
“If any one confesses to his priest a wicked and unrepented design against the honour and welfare of the Tsar, or worse still, treason or revolt, the confessor is obliged to report the same at once to the secret Chancery. This declaration does not violate the confession, and the confessor does not break the laws of the Gospel, but conforms to Christ’s teaching: ‘Tell thy brother his fault, and if he will not hear thee, tell it unto the Church.’ If our Lord ordains the offence of a brother to be thus divulged, how much more does the rule apply to a mischievous plot against the Tsar?”
Having listened to the ukase, the Tsarevitch left the table—he had been supping alone with Tolstoi—and as before, during the fit in the Secret Chamber, his pale face suddenly grew flushed. He cast a look at Tolstoi which alarmed the latter and made him fear another attack. But it passed off this time. The Tsarevitch grew calm and fell into a reverie.
For several days he remained in this pensive mood. When people talked to him he looked vacantly at them, without appearing to understand. He had grown still thinner; “he hardly seemed alive,” as Tolstoi said.
Nevertheless, he wrote precise answers to the questions,and confirmed all he had said in confession, though he felt that it was useless, and that his father would believe nothing.
Alexis saw that Father Varlaam had broken the secrecy of the confession. The words of St. Demetrius of Rostoff came to his mind.
“Should any sovereign or civil tribunal order, under threats of death and torture, the priest to reveal the sin of his penitent, the priest ought rather to die a martyr than break the seal of confession.”
He also remembered the words of an old Raskolnik with whom he once had talked in the depths of the thick forests near Novgorod, where, by his father’s order, he was felling pines.
“God’s blessing rests no longer on the churches, priests, sacraments, readings, hymns, icons nor on any other thing—it has all been taken back to heaven. He who fears God does not go to church. Do you know what your sacrificial lamb is like? Mark my words: it is like a dead dog thrown into the streets of the city. He who partakes of the communion dies, poor wretch. Your Host is as deadly as arsenic or corrosive sublimate; it instantly penetrates to the very bone and marrow, to the very soul, after which, rest in the flames of hell, and moan there like Cain, the lost one.”
These words, meaningless enough at the time, now acquired extraordinary meaning. What if it were true that the abomination of desolation had come into the holy place, that the Church had forsaken Christ and that Antichrist were now reigning?
But who was Antichrist? Here the delirium began.
His father’s image seemed double; as in a momentary metamorphosis of a were-wolf the Tsarevitch saw two faces—the kind, beloved face of his father, and the strange, terrible, mask-face—the face of the Beast. Yet the thing most terrifying was that he could not definitely say which of the two was therealface. Does his father change into the Beast? or the Beast into his father? Such horror seized him that he feared madness.
Meanwhile the trial had begun in the torture chambers at Preobrazhensky Palace.
On the 4th of February, the day after the reading of the manifesto, orders were sent to Petersburg and Sousdal that all those whom the Tsarevitch had named should be brought at once to Moscow.
Alexander Kikin, Ivan Afanássieff, Alexis’ valet, his teacher, Viasemski, and many others were arrested in Petersburg.
On the journey to Moscow, Kikin tried to strangle himself with his chains, but was prevented. The inquiry wrung from him the name of Prince Basil Dolgorúki, as being Alexis’ chief adviser.
“I was fetched from Petersburg without a word of warning,” related Prince Basil afterwards, “and brought in iron fetters to Moscow; this caused me great despair. I was taken to Preobrazhensky, given into strict custody, and then brought before his Majesty; I was in great fear, realizing that the words written by the Tsarevitch about me implied in the eyes of the Tsar that I had committed a great crime.”
His relative, Prince James, interceded on his behalf.
“Be merciful, Sovereign,” he wrote to the Tsar. “Do not let our old age be dishonoured, do not let us go down to the grave with the name of malefactors, which not only stains our glory but also destroys our life. Therefore, again I implore mercy! mercy! O most merciful Sovereign!”
But a shadow of suspicion fell on Prince James himself. Kikin revealed that James Dolgorúki had advised Alexis not to join his father at Copenhagen. Peter did not touch the old man, yet so severe was his threat that Prince James thought it necessary to remind the Tsar of his former faithful services, “for which now I hear impalement will be my reward,” he concluded bitterly.
Again Peter felt his terrible loneliness. If even “the righteous” Prince James was a traitor, whom could he trust? Captain Gregory Skorniakoff Pissareff brought from Sousdal the ex-Tsarina Eudoxia—now “Sister Helen.” She wrote to the Tsar on her way.
“Most merciful Sovereign,—“Many years ago, I do not exactly remember when,according to my promise I took the veil at the Sousdal nunnery, under the name of Sister Helen. After taking the veil I wore the habit for six months, but no longer wishing to remain a nun I gave up the sisterhood, left off the habit, and lived concealed at the monastery under the guise of a nun, but was really a woman of the world. My secret was detected by Gregory Pissareff. I now trust to your Majesty’s humanity and pity. At your feet I seek mercy and crave pardon and forgiveness for my misdeeds, that I be not put to death like a criminal. I promise to resume the habit and remain in the nunnery until my death. I will pray for you, Sire,“Your Majesty’s lowliest servant,“Your former wife,Eudoxia.”
“Most merciful Sovereign,—
“Many years ago, I do not exactly remember when,according to my promise I took the veil at the Sousdal nunnery, under the name of Sister Helen. After taking the veil I wore the habit for six months, but no longer wishing to remain a nun I gave up the sisterhood, left off the habit, and lived concealed at the monastery under the guise of a nun, but was really a woman of the world. My secret was detected by Gregory Pissareff. I now trust to your Majesty’s humanity and pity. At your feet I seek mercy and crave pardon and forgiveness for my misdeeds, that I be not put to death like a criminal. I promise to resume the habit and remain in the nunnery until my death. I will pray for you, Sire,
“Your Majesty’s lowliest servant,
“Your former wife,Eudoxia.”
The woman treasurer of the convent reported:—
“We dared not ask the Tsaritsa, ‘Why have you cast off the nun’s garb?’ She said several times, ‘The Tsar has taken everything that belonged to us. You know how the Tsar avenged himself on the Streltsy on account of his mother; now my own son is no longer a child!’ When Major Stephen Gleboff was on recruiting duty at Sousdal the Tsaritsa admitted him to her cell. They used to talk together while I was sent off to cut out garments, or they begged me to chant theTe Deum. When Gleboff showed himself insolent, I used to say to him: ‘Who are you, to make so bold? Things are known.’ The Tsaritsa got angry with me for that, ‘Who in the devil’s name asked you to meddle? You also are now a spy.’ And others said to me, ‘Why have you angered the Tsaritsa?’ Stephen visited her by night. A porter and the dwarf Agatha used to tell me, ‘Gleboff passes us, but we dare not budge.’
“The nun Kaptelina confessed that Gleboff frequently visited the Tsaritsa (Sister Helen) and kissed her. I used to leave the room. I carried Gleboff’s love letters.”
Gleboff’s statement was short.
“I fell in love with the ex-Tsaritsa and we lived in sin together.”
For the rest Gleboff steadily denied everything. They tortured him frightfully; he was flogged, burnt, frozen, his ribs were broken, his body torn with pincers. He wasforced to sit on a board studded with nails, walk along wooden spikes till his feet festered. He withstood all pains and neither denounced anyone, nor admitted anything more.
The ex-Tsaritsa made the following deposition:
“On February 21, I, the nun Helen, have been brought to the General Court and have been confronted with Stephen Gleboff. I declare that I am guilty of having lived in adultery with him. Written by mine own hand, Helen.”
This confession Peter intended to publish later in a manifesto.
The Tsaritsa further confessed:—
“I cast off the nun’s garb because the Bishop Dositheus prophesied, he spoke of voices coming from icons and of many visions, that God’s wrath would come upon us, and trouble spread among the people; how the Tsar would soon die, and that I, the Tsaritsa, would reign henceforth with my son.”
Dositheus was arrested, and degraded in the council from his office of Bishop; he was named “Demid the unfrocked.”
“I alone have been punished,” Dositheus addressed the council, “look and see what is in all hearts; carry your ears into the midst of the people, hear what is said.”
He was impaled and questioned in the torture chamber.
“Why did you desire his Majesty’s death?”
“I wished for it in order that Tsarevitch Alexis might come to the throne; that people might breathe more freely, and that Petersburg might disappear,” answered Demid.
He denounced the Tsaritsa’s brother, Abraham Lopoukhin: the latter was also arrested and tortured at the same time with Demid. Lopoukhin received fifteen, Demid nineteen blows with the knout; both confessed that they wished for the Tsar’s death and the accession of Alexis. Demid also denounced Tsarevna Marya, the Tsar’s sister.
“The Tsarevna was wont to say, ‘After the Tsar’s death I will gladly help the Tsarevitch with all my strength to serve the people, and govern the country.’ She too it was who said, ‘How can you bishops tolerate the Tsar’s having married again during the lifetime of his first wife; he ought to take back the former Tsaritsa and live with her, or else he ought to die!’ When he, Demid, came to see her after having sworn his oath of allegiance to the young Peter inthe Church, she said to him, ‘It is wrong of the Tsar to put aside his eldest son and carry everything over to his youngest son, who is only two years old, while the other is a grown man.’”
The Tsarevna denied these things, but they confronted her in the question chamber with Demid; there she confessed all.
The inquiry lasted more than a month. Peter was almost always present at the interrogation, watched the executioners, at times even himself helped in the work. But in spite of all his efforts he did not find what he sought, the real thing, “the root of the revolt.” In the statements of the Tsarevitch and in those of all the other witnesses there was nothing but words, tales, gossipings, the ravings of madmen and fools, the grumblings of old idiots in the corners of convents. Sometimes he felt that after all he would have done better to have passed it over contemptuously, and pardon every one. But he could not stay things now, and he foresaw that he would be brought to the murder of his son.
During all this time the Tsarevitch was strictly guarded in the Palace of Preobrazhensky not far from the General Courts and the prisons. Day and night he heard, or thought he heard, the cries of the tortured. He was constantly being confronted with some prisoner. More horrible than all was the meeting with his mother. The Tsarevitch had heard that the Tsar had flogged her with his own hands.
Nearly every evening Alexis was stupefied with drink. The Court doctor Areskin told him he would end in delirium tremens. But when he stopped drinking he fell into such a melancholy that he hastened to drown his senses afresh. Areskin warned the Tsar of the danger Alexis ran. Peter replied.
“Let him perish, it’s the best thing he can do! A dog should have a dog’s death!”
Besides, of late brandy no longer brought forgetfulness to the Tsarevitch; it only replaced the tragic reality by nightmares more horrible still. Not only his sleep but his waking hours were full of visions. He lived a double life, in which dreams and reality mingled and became indistinguishable.
One time he dreamt that his father was flogging his mother in the torture chamber: he hears the hiss of the knout and the horrible dull sound of the blows on the bare flesh; he sees the dark violet stripes on the pale body; he replies to the cries of his mother by a still more terrible cry, and falls unconscious.
Or else he feels ready to avenge his mother, himself, and all those who have suffered. He awakes in bed at night, takes a razor from under his pillow, and in his nightshirt prowls through the dark corridors of the Palace. He steps over an orderly who sleeps on the threshold, enters his father’s room, leans over him, feels for his throat and cuts it. He feels that the blood runs cold as from a dead body. Frightened he breaks off and hurries away without looking back.
Another time he hears the words of Scripture concerning Judas, “He went out and hanged himself.” He slips out into a closet under the staircase where all kinds of rubbish are stored, mounts on an old three-legged chair which he props up with a box, fastens a rope used for a lantern to a hook in the ceiling, makes a running noose, puts it round his neck, and before pushing the chair away tries to cross himself; he cannot do it, his hand refuses to move.
Suddenly, he can’t tell whence, a large black cat jumps to his feet, rubs, purrs, arches his back and standing up on his hind legs, puts his forepaws on Alexis’ shoulders. It is no longer a cat but a gigantesque animal. And the Tsarevitch recognises in the animal’s face, a human face, wide jaw bones, protruding eyes, rough moustache. He tries to escape from his embrace, but the animal, throwing him down, plays with him like a mouse; now gripping, now releasing, now caressing, now scratching. Suddenly he fastens his claws into Alexis’ heart. He recognises him of whom it is said, “They worshipped the Beast saying, ‘Who is like unto the Beast, who is able to make war with him?’”
On Sunday, March 2, the service in the Church of the Assumption was conducted by the newly appointed Bishop of Pskoff, Feofan Prokopovitch.
Only the nobility and officials were admitted.
Near one of the four huge pillars, covered with frescoes of dark faces on dim gold, which support the dome, under the canopy where the ancient Tsars of Muscovy had prayed, stood Peter. Near him was Alexis.
The Tsarevitch looked at Feofan, and to his mind came all he had heard about him.
Feofan had taken the place of Theodosius, who had grown old and latterly more inclined to melancholy. It was Feofan who had devised the decree which ordered that crimes revealed in confession should be reported. He also had compiled the Ecclesiastical Statute which was to guide the institution of the Holy Synod.
The Tsarevitch eyed the new Bishop with curiosity; he was a Tcherkass by birth, a Little Russian, about thirty years old, ruddy, with a shining face, glossy black beard, and large glossy moustaches; he looked very much like a huge beetle. When he laughed his whiskers moved like the horns of a beetle. From this smile alone it could be guessed that he enjoyed the coarse Latin jokes, the jests of Poggio, no less than the greasy galoushas (small dumplings) of his native place; and sharp dialectic as much as good brandy.
Notwithstanding his clerical dignity, a kind of intense merriment, bordering on intoxication, trembled and flitted almost imperceptibly across his face. He was drunk with his own intelligence, this red-cheeked Silenus in a bishop’s robe. “O head, my head, that hast been drunk withknowledge, where wilt thou rest now?” he used to say in his moments of candour.
And the Tsarevitch wondered with what is called in the Book of Revelation “a great wonder,” at the idea that this mendicant, this runaway “Uniate,” or advocate of the Union of the Greek and Roman Churches, who had taken Roman vows, this pupil first of Jesuits, then of Protestants, and then of Atheistic philosophers, maybe an atheist himself, was compiling the Spiritual ordinance on which depended the fate of the Russian Church.
When the archdeacon of the Cathedral had pronounced the usual anathema against all heretics and apostates, from Arius down to Gregory Otriópieff and Mazeppa, the bishop mounted on the ambo and gave a discourse on the power and honour of the Tsar.
The oration set forth what was to be the corner-stone of the Holy Synod: the Sovereign as the head of the Church.
“The teacher of nations, the Apostle Paul, proclaims that ‘there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.’ Truly these are wonderful words! I am almost tempted to say that Paul was sent by the Emperors themselves, so assiduously does he exhort, repeating again and again, ‘Power comes from God, from God alone.’ I beseech every one to consider, what more could a faithful minister of the Tsar say? Let us add, as a crown to this exhortation, the names and titles befitting those who have the highest power, which are a fairer endowment to Tsar than purple and diadems. What titles? what names are these? Autocrats are termed gods and Christs. Because of the power given by God, they are called gods, that is representatives of God on earth. Their other name is Christ, which means ‘anointed,’ because of that ancient ceremony when the Tsars are anointed with oil. Paul further says, ‘Servants, obey your Masters as ye obey Christ!’ Hence the Apostle made the masters equal to Christ. But what is most astonishing and clothes this truth with adamantine armour—it cannot be overlooked: the Scriptures demand obedience, not only to good lords but also to those who are wicked, faithless and godless. Everybody knows the words. ‘Fear God, honour the king. Servants, besubject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle but also to the froward.’ And David the prophet, himself a king, calls Saul, though impious and rejected by God, ‘the anointed of the Lord.’ He says, ‘Seeing he is the anointed of the Lord.’ But you will say, Whatever Saul may have been, nevertheless he was anointed king by God’s special order, and therefore found worthy of that honour. Good; but tell me who was Cyrus of Persia, who Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon? Yet God Himself, by the prophets, calls them ‘His anointed,’ or, according to David, ‘Christs of the Lord.’ Who was Nero, the Roman Emperor? Yet the Apostle Peter exhorts obedience even to this cruel persecutor of the Christians, as to the anointed, ‘The Lord’s Christ.’ One doubtful point remains: are all men bound by this obedience to sovereigns? are not some exempt from it, especially the clergy and monks? This is a thorn, or rather a fang—the fang of the serpent. This is the Papal idea! The clergy has a separate rank among the people, but not a separate kingdom. Every one to his own business; the military, civil officers, doctors, merchants, the different artisans, all have their duties; so also pastors and all clergy have their own appointed duty, to serve God; but at the same time they are subject to the rulers and powers. In the old Jewish Church the Levites were in all things subject to the king of Israel. If this were so in the Old Testament why should it not be the same in the New? The law about authority is unchangeable and eternal, and has existed since the world began.”
Then came the conclusion:—
“All ye people of Russia, not only laity, but clergy, must honour your Autocrat, the most pious Peter Alexeyevitch, as your head, father of your country, and Christ of the Lord!”
The last words he uttered in a sonorous voice, looking straight at the Tsar, and raising his hand towards the vaulted roof, where a dark painting of the face of Christ stood out on a dim golden background.
The Tsarevitch, listening to his convenient doctrine, wondered with a great wonder.
Since all Tsars, even the impious, are “Christs of God,” so also presumably would be the last and the greatest ofthem, he who will come, the Tsar of the world—the Antichrist?
A blasphemy had been uttered! by a prelate of the Orthodox Church in the oldest cathedral of Moscow, in the presence of Tsar and people; yet the earth had not opened to engulph the blasphemer; no fire from heaven had fallen upon him!
Everything remained calm; above the slanting sheaves of sunbeams, above the azure clouds of incense, the face of Christ in the centre of the dome seemed to ascend to the skies, inaccessible, remote.
The Tsarevitch glanced at his father. He was quite calm and listened with pious attention.
Encouraged by this attention, Feofan concluded solemnly:
“Rejoice, O Russia, be proud and thankful! Let all thy cities and frontiers be glad, for on thy horizon, like a radiant sun, rises the flame of the Tsar’s son, the three-year-old infant, Peter Petrovitch, the heir designed by God. May he live happily, may he reign prosperously, Peter the Second, Peter the Blessed! Amen.”
When Feofan had ended, a voice, weak but clear, came out of the crowd:—
“Lord, save, keep and bestow thy grace upon the only true heir to the Russian throne, the most pious Tsarevitch, Alexis Petrovitch.”
The crowd shuddered as one man, and remained motionless, terror-struck. Then it began to grow noisy and restless.
“Who is it? who is it?”
“A madman, no doubt!”
“One possessed!”
“What are the guards about! How has he got in!”
“He ought to be arrested at once, else he will escape; it will be impossible to find him in the crowd.”
At the far end of the Church, where nothing had been either seen or heard, the wildest rumours were spreading.
“A revolt, a revolt!”
“Fire! the altar has caught fire!”
“A man with a knife has been arrested; he wanted to murder the Tsar!”
The alarm increased.
Without paying any attention to what was going on, Peter approached the prelate, kissed the crucifix, and, returning to his place, ordered the speaker of these “frantic words” to be brought before him.
Captain Skorniakoff-Pissareff and two sergeants led before the Tsar a small, frail old man.
The old man handed a paper to the Tsar; it was a printed copy of the oath of allegiance to the new heir.
At the bottom, on the space left for the signature, something was written in a compact, florid clerk’s handwriting.
Peter glanced at the paper, then at the old man and asked:
“Who are you?”
“Larion Dokoukin, late clerk in the arsenal.”
The Tsarevitch, who stood close by, at once recognised him; it was the same Dokoukin whom he had met at Petersburg in the spring of 1715 at St. Simon’s Church, and who had been to his house the day of the Venus Festival in the Summer Garden.
He had remained the same common clerk, one of those who are termed “inky souls,” pettifoggers, hard, fossilized, dull and colourless, like the papers over which he had pored in his office for thirty years, at the end of which he had been dismissed for accepting bribes. And in his eyes there gleamed, just as three years ago, his fixed idea.
Dokoukin in his turn glanced stealthily at Alexis. The expression which flitted across the man’s hard features, reminded the Tsarevitch of their interview; how Dokoukin had begged him “zealously to work for the Christian Faith,” how he had wept, embraced his knees and called him, “Russia’s hope.”
“Do you refuse to swear allegiance?” said Peter calmly, as if surprised.
Dokoukin, looking straight at the Tsar, in the same low clear voice, which could be heard all over the Church, repeated by heart what he had written on the printed paper.
“I neither recognise the Tsarevitch Peter to be the legitimate heir, nor will I swear allegiance to him on the holy Gospels or by kissing the crucifix, on account of the unmerited dispossession and expulsion from the Russianthrone of the only legitimate heir, Lord Alexis Petrovitch! May God keep him! Though the Tsar’s wrath should smite me for this, I cannot otherwise, may the will of my God and Lord Jesus Christ be done. Amen, Amen, Amen!”
Peter looked at him with yet greater amazement. And the whole building, crowded with the dignitaries of this world, listened in dead silence.
“Do you know that such disobedience to our will means death!”
“I know it, Sovereign; I came with the view of suffering for Christ’s sake,” replied Dokoukin simply.
“You are brave, old man! Let us see, however, what you will say when you are at the gallows!”
Dokoukin crossed himself silently and deliberately.
“Did you hear,” continued the Tsar, “what the bishop has said just now about subjection to the higher powers? There is no power but from God!”
“I heard it, Lord; ‘The powers that be are ordained by God, and what is not of God, is no power.’ But it is not befitting to call impious Tsars and Antichrists, ‘the anointed of the Lord,’ and he who says it ought to have his tongue torn out!”
“Do you consider me Antichrist?” asked Peter, with a tinge of sadness and a smile which was almost kind. “Speak the truth!”
The old man looked down at first, but the next moment he raised his head and looked straight at the Tsar.
“I believe thee to be the most pious, orthodox Tsar, Autocrat of all the Russias, the Lord’s anointed,” he declared in a firm voice.
“If so, you should do as we wish and hold your tongue.”
“Lord Tsar, your Majesty, hold my tongue, even if I would, it were impossible; I burn inwardly like a flame; my conscience urges me on, I cannot bear it. If we remained silent the stones would cry out.”
He fell at the Tsar’s feet.
“Lord Peter Alexeyevitch, little Father, listen to us miserable folk! We dare not change or alter anything, but in the same way as thy parents, forefathers and the holy patriarchs worked out their salvation, we too want to be saved, and to reach the heavenly Jerusalem. Inthe name of God, seek the truth; in the name of Jesus seek the truth! For the sake of thy own salvation seek the truth! Pacify the Holy Church, thy mother. Judge us without wrath and anger! Show mercy unto thy people, show mercy to the Tsarevitch!”
At first Peter listened attentively and even with curiosity, as though trying to understand.
But after a while he turned away, in weariness shrugging his shoulders:—
“Enough! Enough! It is impossible to hear all you have to say, old man. No doubt I have hanged too few of you fools. What are you aiming at? What do you want? Do you imagine I revere God’s Church and believe in Christ my Saviour less than you do? And who set you slaves to judge between Tsar and God? How dare you!”
Dokoukin rose and lifted his eyes up to the dark face in the vaulted roof of the Church. A ray of sunshine surrounded as with an aureola his blanched head.
“How do we dare, Tsar?” he exclaimed in a loud voice. “Listen, your Majesty. It is said in the Holy Scriptures, ‘What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him? For Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet.’
“Thus it is that God has ordained man to be lord of himself, self-ruling; ordainer and arbiter of his own actions. He is to beself-controlled! What hastthoumade of him?”
Slowly, as though with an effort, Peter averted his eyes from Dokoukin. On leaving he turned to Tolstoi, who stood close at hand, saying:—
“Take him to the prison and keep him under strict watch until the inquiry.”
The old man was seized; he struggled, crying that he had still more to say. He was bound and carried off.
“O secret martyrs! fear not! neither despair!” he continued to shout, looking at Alexis. “Bear patiently yet a little while, for the Lord’s sake. He is coming, He will not be slow. Even so! Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.”
The Tsarevitch, pale and trembling, stood listening and gazing at the scene.
“That man is, as I should be!” said he to himself, now only understanding the whole of his past life. Something was changed, transformed within his soul; what till now had been a weight became wings. Well knew he that he should fall back into weakness, melancholy, despair, but he also knew that he should forget no more what he had just for the first time fully understood.
He, too, like Dokoukin, raised his eyes to the dark image in the dome. And it seemed to him, in the slanting rays of the sun, and the blue clouds of the incense, the gigantic Face was moving, no longer receding from the earth as before, but descending, coming down nearer from heaven; the Lord Himself was approaching at last.
With joy akin to fearfulness he repeated, “Even so! Come, Lord Jesus! Amen.”
The Moscow inquiry ended on March 15. The verdict of the Tsar and ministers, given in the supreme court of Preobrazhensky, sealed the fate of the culprits.
The ex-Tsaritsa, Sister Helen, was to be sent to Old Ládoga and there shut up in a convent, the Tsarevna Marya to Schlusselbourg; both to be rigorously confined and closely watched. Abraham Lapoukhin was taken to the Peter and Paul fortress at Petersburg to await a fresh inquiry. The others were to suffer death.
The executions began that same morning on the Red Square. The iron pikes, on which had remained for twenty years the heads of the Streltsy, decapitated in 1698, were cleaned and made ready to receive other heads.
Stephen Gleboff, the Tsaritsa’s lover, was impaled. He was seated on a small board. The iron spike issued from his skull. To prevent his freezing, and to prolong his tortures as much as possible, he was given a fur coat and cap. There priests watched him day and night, in the hope that he would reveal some secret before his death. One of them reported: “From the moment that Stephen was impaled, he confessed nothing to us; all he did was to ask the arch-monk Marcellus to give him the communion secretly; and while receiving it he gave up the ghost, on March 16, eight hours after midnight, during the second watch.”
Demid, the unfrocked Bishop of Rostoff, was broken on the wheel. It was said that the secretary, to whom the execution had been entrusted, made a mistake. Instead of having the bishop beheaded and his body burnt, he had him broken on the wheel.
Kikin suffered the same death. He was tortured slowly, at intervals; his legs and arms were broken one after the other; his torture lasted for more than twenty-four hours.His agony was increased by the fact that he had been roped so tightly to the wheel that he could not move in the least: he cried and moaned, praying to be finished off. It is reported that the Tsar, passing by on horseback, stooped down towards him and said:
“Alexander, you are an intelligent man. How came it that you dared to take part in such an affair?”
“Intelligence loves space, and you, you stifle it!” Kikin is supposed to have answered.
The third to suffer on the wheel was the ex-Tsaritsa’s confessor, Theodore Poustinni, who had been an intermediary between her and Gleboff.
Those who escaped death, had their noses and tongues slit, or nostrils torn off. Several, who had only heard about the Tsaritsa’s seclusion and had seen her in secular dress, were pitilessly flogged!
On the Square a white stone pillar was erected six feet high, flanked with iron spikes; the heads of the victims were stuck on these spikes. The pillar was crowned by a large flat slab, bodies were laid on it, among them Gleboff’s, surrounded as it were by his accomplices.
The Tsarevitch was forced to be present at all these executions.
Larion Dokoukin was the last to be broken on the wheel. When roped to it, he declared he had something to communicate to the Tsar. He was unbound and taken to Preobrazhensky. When the Tsar came up to him, he was already in delirium, muttering something about the coming Christ. Then for a moment he seemed to recover consciousness, looked steadfastly at the Tsar, and said:—
“If you put your son to death, his blood will fall on you and on all your descendants, from father to son, to the last of the Tsars. Have pity on your son! have pity on Russia!”
Peter said nothing, left him, and ordered his head to be cut off.
On the day after the executions, the eve of Peter’s departure for Petersburg, a midnight orgie of the “Most Drunken Convocation” was to be held at Preobrazhensky.
In these bloody days, just as during the Streltsy executions and all the blackest days of his life, Peter more zealouslythan ever gave himself up to buffoonery, as if trying to deafen himself with the sound of laughter.
A new Kniaz-Pope Peter Ivanovitch Bourtourline, “Metropolitan of St. Petersburg,” had been recently elected in place of the late Nikíta Zotoff. The election of the “Priest, Imitator of Bacchus,” had taken place at Petersburg, his consecration at Moscow, on the very eve of the Tsarevitch’s arrival. Now at Preobrazhensky the enrobing of the newly elected pope was to take place in mitre and cassock, burlesques of the patriarchal robes.
The Tsar found time during the legal inquiry to draw up the entire programme for this ribald ceremony.
The midnight orgie or “service” took place in a large wooden hall, hung with red cloth, illuminated with wax tapers, close to the court of judgment and the torture chamber. The long narrow tables were arranged in the shape of a horse-shoe. In the centre was a raised platform with steps on which were seated the chief cardinals, priests, and other members of the convocation. A throne, surmounted by a velvet canopy, was built of casks, and decorated from top to bottom with bottles and glasses.
When all were assembled the sacristan and the cardinal archdeacon—no other than the Tsar himself—solemnly brought in the new pope. Before him were borne two huge flasks of “very strong wine,” one gilt, the other silvered, and two dishes, one with cucumbers, the other with cabbage, finally, an obsceneicon, the naked Bacchus. The Kniaz-Pope, bowing thrice to the prince-caesar and to the cardinals, offered to his Majesty the flasks and the dishes.
The Archimage questioned the pope.
“Why have you come, and what do you require from our Intemperance?”
“To be arrayed in the robes of our father Bacchus,” answered the pope.
“How do you keep the laws of Bacchus, and what are your merits in that respect?”
“O, Most Drunken Father! On rising, while yet dark, before the break of dawn, sometimes even about midnight, I drink two, three bumpers of wine, and during the day I employ myself in the same way, and fill my bellywith various drinks, like a barrel. So it happens that the trembling of my hand and the darkness which fills my eyes prevents me from finding my mouth when I try to eat. This is what I do, and this is what I promise to teach to those entrusted to me. And all those who think differently and wage war against drink I will as strangers utterly deny and anathematize. Amen!”
The Archimage proclaimed:—
“May the drunkenness of Bacchus, which passeth all understanding, in complete lack of steadiness, uprightness, and sanity be with thee all the days of thy life!”
The cardinals led the pope on to the platform, and arrayed him in vestments; burlesque imitations of the cassocks, omophorium, stole, and epigonation, embroidered with dice, cards, bottles, pipes and nude figures of Venus and Bacchus. Instead of a panagia, clay flasks with bells were hung round the neck, the book-cask, containing flasks of various kinds of vodka, and a cross of pipes were handed to him. He was anointed on the head and round the eyes with strong wine.
“So may your head go round and circles dance in various shapes before your eyes henceforth unto the end of your life.”
Both his hands and the four fingers which held the bumper were then anointed.
“So may your hands tremble all the days of your life.”
In conclusion the Archimage set a tin mitre on his head.
“May this crown of the mistiness of Bacchus ever remain on your head! I a drunkard crown this toper:—