Tudor Adventurers by James Evans

Author:James Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Forty-One

Initially, before any other food was brought, Ivan ordered his serving staff to take a hunk of bread from him to each man present, as a gesture both of his nurturing attention and their submission. He started, no doubt, with his English guests – a means of commencing which, Chancellor was informed, was an ancient custom at the Muscovite court.

As each piece was bestowed the servant loudly proclaimed the bequest. To the English captain he pronounced, in Russian: ‘John [Ivan] Basilivich, Emperor of Russia and great Duke of Muscovy, doth reward thee, Richard Chancellor, with bread.’ The person honoured then promptly rose to acknowledge the gift, bowing in Ivan’s direction, before everybody else in the room stood likewise. Guardians sitting with the English at their table made sure that they were kept abreast of customs or rituals with which they were unfamiliar.

When all those seated had been served, a piece of bread was offered to the master of ceremonies, who ate it in front of the Tsar before bowing low in homage and retreating.

When the bread had been solemnly distributed, the Tsar’s Gentleman Usher entered the room followed by a large company of servants, all splendidly dressed in cloth of gold and wearing the traditional ‘colpecks’, as the tall Russian caps were known. These were not mere servants, of course, but relatively important members of the Tsar’s council, assigned to serve their lord, and honoured, rather than insulted, to do so (as indeed was often the case at the table of an English king or lord). There was not, as there was later, any simple division between diner and servant, with a substantial social gulf in between. Those serving were also offered bread, and later meat and drink, by the Tsar.

With them, as they entered the chamber, they carried an array of large dishes, steam spiralling thickly in the cold air, brought from the palace kitchens. The first plates contained the signature dish of any Kremlin banquet: young swan, which was formally presented to the Tsar before being taken to his official carver and his assistants to divide.1 The dark meat was presented first to the Tsar, and then to the attendant guests, on heavy golden platters which, like the cups provided, impressed Chancellor with their weight and design: ‘very rich’, he observed in appreciation, referring to the tableware rather than the flesh of the swan.

Men helped themselves directly from the platters, individual plates playing no part in sixteenth-century Muscovite dining.2 After the swan came numerous other dishes, in succession rather than at once, but all left on the tables until there was no space for more. There were baked meats of all kinds (little cooking being done over an open fire in Russia). There were also pies, and root vegetables cooked with onions and garlic. There must have been some 140 men serving at the banquet, Chancellor thought, and three times, he reckoned, they appeared reclothed in new and equally luxurious outfits.

Numerous toasts were made. The consumption of alcohol, as well as that of food, was prodigious.

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