Voyage to Muscovy by Ann Swinfen

Author:Ann Swinfen [Swinfen, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780993237232
Google: mvILjwEACAAJ
Amazon: B019A2TDQU
Publisher: Shakenoak Press
Published: 2015-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Call servants to breakefast by day starre appere,

A snatch and to worke, fellowes tarrie not here.

Let huswife be carver, let pottage be heate,

A messe to eche one, with a morsell of meate.

No more tittle tattle,

Go serve your cattle.

What tacke in a pudding, saith greedie gut wringer,

give such ye wote what, ere a pudding he finger.

Let servants once served, thy cattle go serve,

lest often ill serving make cattle to sterve.

That made more sense. I could picture that hasty farmhouse breakfast, with no idle chatter, and was smiling over the farm servants being hustled through it and chased off to tend the cattle, when the door was thrust open and one of the servants hurried in. He looked pale and frightened.

‘What’s to do, man?’ I said, starting from my chair in alarm.

‘Oh, Dr Alvarez!’ He was shaking. It must be serious.

‘Aye, out with it!’ I set down Thomas Tusser and strode across the room to him.

‘A man has ridden in from Uglich, sir. You are sent for, by the Tsarina Maria Nagaya. That is, we are not meant to call her the Tsarina.’

This made almost less sense than Thomas Tusser.

‘I am sent for? Why am I sent for?’

He gulped and drew a deep breath.

‘The Tsarina was the late Tsar Ivan’s last wife. His fifth wife, I think, or was it his seventh? I misremember. Their peculiar church here does not recognise marriages after the third as being legal, but Tsar claimed it was legal and he had every right to have as many wives as he chose, as long as he had them one at a time. I think he murdered some of them.’

He gave me a conspiratorial grin. ‘Not like our Henry, eh, sir? He used the law to rid himself of the ones he tired of.’

‘Better not say that back in England,’ I said grimly. ‘Start again. This Maria Nagaya who was or was not a lawful wife of Ivan the Terrible is somewhere called – did you say Uglich? Is there a place called Uglich?’

‘There is, sir. About seventy miles from here. That’s nearby as the Russes reckon.’

‘She has sent for me? Is she in need of me as a physician?’

‘Aye, that’s it, sir. Only not for herself. For her son. The Tsarevich Dmitri Ivanovich.’

Suddenly it made sense. This was the younger half brother of the ruling Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich. But I had expected to find him with the court in Moscow. Not out here in the remote countryside of northern Muscovy.

‘I understand now who the child is, but why is he not in Moscow?’

Another voice came from the doorway.

‘He was sent away into exile with his mother and her brothers a long time ago. The present Tsar’s wife is childless, and likely to remain so. The Tsar Fyodor – he’s a poor weakling.’

It was Pyotr taking up the story. He had come in unnoticed behind the servant.

‘Uglich is the boy’s own manor,’ he went on. ‘His appanage city, as it is called. Godunov had them all exiled there

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