VII: THE SUMMONS
IT was on a Friday, scarcely three days after Kurakin saw the golden pear in Maître le Bastien’s hands that a summons came from the palace. The goldsmith had been modelling in wax a very beautiful little image of the Virgin of Kazan, intending to cast it in gold with precious stones for the little Czar Peter. He was at work on it in the forenoon while I sat watching him, for lack of something better to do, for he had not yet mended the bracelet for the princess, though I had importuned him to do so; I think he delayed only to vex me, for he would shake his head, with a sly twinkle in his eye, when I asked him for the trinket.
The windows were open, and opposite the sun shone on Kurakin’s roof. All the morning there had been the dull boom of distant drums, for there was some new excitement in the quarters of the Streltsi; and there were strange rumours afloat that the blind Czarevitch Ivan was ill of a poison, but outwardly the city was calm, the calm that comes before the tempest, for it was already past the middle of May, and no one, perhaps, but Sophia Alexeievna herself knew the devil’s broth that was boiling under our feet.
A breath of chill air blew in from the north andlifted the grey curls on Maître le Bastien’s broad forehead. He set the little image on the table an viewed it complacently.
“It is well,” he said, and looked at me smiling, expecting approval.
But I was not heeding him; my ear had caught the clang of the outer door, the skurry of feet on the stairs, and the next moment Michaud opened the door, breathless, and before he could enter, one of the court chamberlains pushed in. A big man with a long grey beard and a portly front, swelling with his own importance, and in his long, gorgeously embroidered caftan and high cap, he looked like some Eastern eunuch. Maître le Bastien was inclined to treat him civilly enough, but he took a high tone.
“Your presence is required immediately at the palace, master goldsmith,” he said, in a deep tone, rolling out the sonorous Russ like a big bass drum; “my orders are not to return without your person.”
Le Bastien, ever cautious, looked startled and perplexed.
“By whose authority?” he asked, gravely polite.
The chamberlain stared, stupidly as an ox, blowing out his cheeks angrily.
“By the order of her serene highness the Czarevna Sophia Alexeievna,” he said, “and it behoves you to make haste, my master.”
“I have ever been ready to serve her highness,”said Maître le Bastien, in an aggrieved tone; “these peremptory orders are uncalled for, monsieur.”
A flash of intuition illumined the situation for me, and I determined not to desert him.
“I will accompany you,” I said to him, in French, “and carry the image yonder—as an excuse for my presence. It may be well to have a witness.”
His brow cleared and he thanked me hastily, the chamberlain scowling meanwhile, for he could not follow our French, and could only reiterate his orders to us to make haste. There seemed indeed no reasonable way to evade him, nor cause for it, for neither of us had done anything to merit the displeasure of the all-powerful princess, and therefore we prepared to accompany the portly old gentleman back to the Kremlin. But when we got to the door and found that he had a guard there of five or six of the Streltsi, we began to fear that we were under arrest, and said as much to each other in French, yet we could not anticipate any legitimate reason for it, and were forced to put as good a face on the matter as we could, trailing along in the chamberlain’s wake, with a file of savage-looking soldiers on either hand. True to my character of apprentice, I carried the little waxen image of our Lady of Kazan, and Maître le Bastien, being empty-handed, plucked nervously, first at his short velvet cloak and then at his lace cravat. I never saw the good man so distraughtover what seemed, at most, a small matter. Meanwhile, our silent companions eyed us askance, as the Russian always eyes the foreigner, and finding little reason to converse, we fell silent, and there was only the tramp of our feet as we traversed the streets. In this quarter they were deserted, but once or twice a woman peeped cautiously out of an upper window at us, or a group of children skurried out of our way like so many rabbits. It was broad sunshine, and as we drew near the sacred picture of Saint Basil, on the wall, I saw the pigeons nestling and cooing on its canopy. There was a huge lamp, which burned perpetually, suspended before the shrine, under the protecting roof of the canopy, and the gaunt figure and dusky face of the saint looked grimly down upon us. Before it knelt a moujik, in a long sheepskin caftan, his legs bound up in cloths, and his feet in bast shoes; he was kneeling on the flint pavement praying, with the devout indifference to the world which is common to the Russian peasant. And as the chamberlain and his six tried friends drew near they also humbly saluted the sacred picture and passed it with bared heads, for these fellows were, like their humble countryman, very zealous in their religion, and held the Pope of Rome in as little reverence as did our brethren beyond the Loire.
Some excitement in the outskirts of the town had drawn off the people from the Kremlin, for when wecrossed the Red Place it was nearly vacant, and only a crowd of dwarfs peeped at us as we ascended the Red Staircase and entered the palace. We left our six ruffians in the guard-room and, conducted by our fat friend, the chamberlain, we were led up the back stairs to a gallery of theterem, where we were left to wait, at a safe distance from the private apartments of the women. I remember to this day seeing a dark-eyed, curly-headed boy of nine, cross the gallery with an attendant and stop to stare at us with frank curiosity. A large child for his years, with a bold port and keen eye. It was the little Czar Peter, and it was said that he was ever eager to learn new lessons, and to see strangers. While we waited, neither Maître le Bastien nor I cared to talk, but once he turned to me.
“I fear that this concerns that trinket of yours,” he said very low, with an anxious eye.
“So I think,” I replied and smiled.
My life in Moscow had been flat, stale, and unprofitable, and the thought of danger was ever a sweet taste in my mouth.
The goldsmith looked troubled. He was a man whose life lay in pleasant places, and he could not contemplate the thought of intrigue and violence with my complacence. He shifted his position uneasily and fell to watching the door through which the fat man had vanished. Meanwhile I had deposited mywax model on a window ledge and, walking about the room, stopped to examine a painting that hung on the wall at one side. It was a picture of Saint Olga on a loose piece of canvas, and would scarcely have held my eye long if I had not noticed a curious flutter and movement to it, as if it was swayed by a current of air, and lifting the end I suddenly discovered that it concealed a narrow slit in the wall, un œil-de-boeuf, through which I could look down into the room below. Nor was the room vacant; one glance interested me so much that I silently signalled to Maître le Bastien to come, too, and behold my discovery. It was a good-sized apartment, and in the centre of it stood a woman, short, stout, singularly striking in appearance, and before her were grouped seven or eight fierce-looking soldiers of the guard, Streltsi; some knelt at her feet; all were eager and attentive, and she was addressing them, her voice rising and falling, with a thrill of eloquence, and her expression and gestures were as eloquent, though we could not hear what she said. I glanced a question at Le Bastien, and he nodded.
“Sophia is meddling with the Streltsi,” he said, very low and disconsolately. “’Tis as I thought,—as most people have feared,—there’s not a Naryshkin fit to match her, unless it is the Chancellor Matveief, and even he——” The goldsmith shook his head dolefully. “There is a Russian proverb,” he said,“that ‘a woman’s hair is long, but her understanding short,’ but the saints defend me from a manœuvring woman!”
His ejaculation was so pious and so heartfelt that I laughed and dropped the canvas, just in time, too, for our friend the chamberlain came waddling in again to inform us that her imperial and serene highness would see us in five minutes. He proceeded, therefore, to conduct us, by what seemed to me an entirely new route, to her presence, I wondering all the while if she would receive us and the Streltsi together. But my speculations on that point were soon satisfied, for when we entered the ante-room we passed her friends coming out, fierce-eyed and keen-set as a party of wolves, and when the chamberlain opened the door of the room we had looked down upon, and bowed low at the threshold, we found the czarevna quite alone, and seated in a great carved chair at the further end of the apartment. The official announced the name of Maître le Bastien, goldsmith of Paris, with great solemnity, and then, closing the door upon us, left us to face the daughter of the czars.