CHAPTER I
“It was the will of God, Your Highness, that a great fire should visit Moscow in 1701, while the Tsar was at Voronesh building ships. In this fire the whole of the Tsar’s residence in the Kremlin was burnt: the wooden buildings, the inner parts of those built of stone; churches, together with their crosses, roofs, screens and the holy images themselves—all were ablaze. The belfry of the Great John Tower caught fire, and the bell, weighing 8,000 poods, fell to the ground and broke. So did that in the Cathedral of the Assumption and sundry other bells. And in places the earth itself was burning.”
Thus spake to the Tsarevitch Alexis the sacristan of the Annunciation Church, an old man of seventy.
Peter had gone abroad shortly after his illness on January 27, 1716; the Tsarevitch remained alone in Petersburg. Receiving no further intimation from Peter, he dallied with the alternative left him by his father, either to fit himself for the duties of the throne or to become a monk, and he continued to live from day to day “till God should order otherwise.” He had spent the winter in Petersburg; spring and summer in Roshdestveno; in the autumn he went to Moscow to see his relatives.
On September 10, the eve of his departure, he paid a visit to his old friend, the sacristan, husband of his wet nurse, and together they went to view the palace in the Kremlin, which had been destroyed by fire.
For a long time they wandered about the seemingly endless ruins, from hall to hall and terem to terem. What the flames had spared time was destroying. There were halls without doors, windows or floors, so that it was impossible to enter them; and in the walls huge gaps appeared, while the ceilings and roofs were crumbling. It was with difficulty Alexis could find the rooms in which he had spent his childhood.
He divined the unexpressed belief of Father John, that the fire, occurring in the same year in which the Tsar had begun to break down the old ways, was a sign of God’s wrath.
They entered a dilapidated private chapel, where Ivan the Terrible had prayed for the son he had slain.
A deep blue sky, such as only canopies ruins, peered through the rent in the ceiling. Iridescent cobwebs bridged the gap, and through them could be seen a cross which, snapped by the wind, was suspended by half-broken chains, and so threatening to fall at any moment. The wind had broken the mica windows, and crows flying in through the holes had built their nests in the ceilings and messed the screens. White streams of their droppings streaked the dark faces of the saints; one half of the holy gates was torn off; in the sanctuary at the foot of the altar stood a pool of water.
Father John told the Tsarevitch how the priest of the chapel, a centenarian, had long petitioned the Public Offices, Departments, and even the Tsar himself, that the structure should be repaired, because, owing to the age of the ceiling, the leakage had increased to a great extent, there was danger the Eucharist would be exposed to the elements. But nobody listened to him; he died of sorrow, and the chapel fell into ruins.
Crows, scared by their entrance, flew up with ominous cries; through the windows the wind moaned and sobbed. A spider ran to and fro in his web. Something started from the altar—apparently a bat—and began to circle round the head of the Tsarevitch. He felt terrified, and lamented the state into which the church had fallen; to his mind came the prophet’s words about “the abomination of desolation in the holy places.”
Passing the golden rails, along the front gallery of the grand staircase, they descended and entered the Granovitaia Palace, which had been less damaged than the others. But in place of the receptions to foreign ambassadors, or levées, originally held there, the palace was now used for the performance of new comedies and dialogues, and also for buffoon weddings. And to prevent the old interfering with the new, the existing writing on the walls had been covered with whitewash, and daubed over with a gay ochre pattern in the new “German style.”
In one of the lumber rooms on the ground floor Father John pointed out two stuffed lions. Alexis at once recognised them as the familiar objects of his childhood. During the reign of Tsar Alexis Michailovitch the lions were placed near the throne in the Kolomna Palace, where they bellowed, rolled their eyes, and opened their jaws like live beasts. Their brass bodies had been covered with sheepskins in lieu of lions’ skins. The mechanism, which had once produced the “leonine roaring” and moved their jaws and eyes, was secreted in a separate closet, where the bench with bellows and springs had been fitted up. The lions had probably been brought to the Kremlin for repairs, and forgotten here amid the lumber of the storehouse; the springs were broken, the bellows torn, the skins had fallen off; rotten bastwisp was protruding from their sides, and pitiful, indeed, now looked these sometime terrible playthings of former Russian autocrats—their muzzles expressing blank sheepishness.
In some of the halls, which had fallen into disuse, although they had escaped the rages of the flames, new departments had been installed. Thus in those facing the quay, formerly known as the “Obituary” and “Responsory,” the Treasury was now established. Under the terems the Senate Department. In the Commissariat the Salt Office, the Military Department, the Uniform and War Offices. In the old stable was now the Cloth and Ammunition Stores.
Each department had been installed, not only with its archives, officials, porters and petitioners, but also with its prisoners, who remained confined for years in the rooms on the ground floor. These newcomers swarmed and wriggled in the old palace like worms in a dead body, causing much foulness.
“All the dung and waste litter from privies, stables and prisoners,” explained Father John, “pollute the air, and expose to no small danger the Royal Treasury and costly plate, stored in the palace these many years; because from all that filth there rises a fetid air, which might harm the gold and silver vessels by tarnishing them. Would that the dirt were cleared away and the prisoners located elsewhere! Much have we begged and prayed, but no one heeds,” the old man concluded sorrowfully.
It was Sunday; the courts were empty. A heavy smell filled the air; on the walls were the greasy marks of the petitioners’ backs, while ink stains, ribald writings and drawings caught the eye everywhere. And above, from the old faded gilt frescoes, the faces of prophets, Church fathers and Russian saints remained to look down on the scene.
Within the precincts of the Kremlin, hard by the palaces and churches adjoining the Tainisky Gate, stood the tavern called “The Roller.” It was so named because of the steep and smooth descent of the Kremlin Hill at this place. The tavern, which had grown up like a toadstool, was frequented by the clerks and copyists. For many years it had flourished in secret, notwithstanding the orders “to exclude from the Kremlin the aforesaid tavern without delay, and that the income from the sale of liquor might not suffer to permit the opening of other taverns at discretion in more convenient and fitting places.”
The air was so close in one of the halls, the Tsarevitch hastened to open a window. From the “Roller,” crowded with customers, rose up a wild, almost bestial roaring, the noisy sound of dancing, music and drunken song, and the words of a notorious song, one sung by the princess-abbess at his father’s banquets:—
My mother bore me while she danced,
And christened me in the Tsar’s tavern,
And bathed me in the headiest wine.
To the Tsarevitch it seemed that “The Roller” was some dark yawning pit, whence, together with this song thus degrading motherhood, and the smell of drink, there was exhaled a stifling odour which filled the royal halls, causing sickness, dizziness and a sinking at the heart.
He lifted his eyes to the vaulted ceiling of the hall. On its surface were depicted “the heavenly bodies,” the lunar and solar circles, angels ministering to the stars, and other works of God. There was also a picture of Christ Emmanuel, enthroned on heavenly rainbows, with many-eyed wheels; in his left hand the golden chalice, in his right the staff; on his head a coigned crown, and on a gold field tinted with green, ran the inscription:—
“Pre-existent Word of the Father, Thou who art in the image of God, and through whom all things were made, grant peace to Thy churches, and victory to the faithful Tsar!”
But from below there came again the song:—
“My mother bore me while she danced,
And christened me in the Tsar’s tavern.”
The Tsarevitch read the inscription in the solar circle, “The sun knew the time of his setting ... and it was night.” These words flashed on his mind with a new significance. The ancient sun of the Muscovy kingdom knew the time of his setting in the dark Finnish bog, in the rotten autumnal mire; and it was night, not the black, but the terrible white Petersburg night. The ancient sun grew dim, the ancient gold crown and “Barma of Monomachus” were tarnished in the new but noxious air. And the abomination of desolation stood in the holy place.
As if to escape from some invisible pursuer he rushed from the palace, and, without looking back, fled along corridors, galleries and down the stairs, leaving Father John far behind, never stopping until he reached the square, where once more in the open he could breathe freely. Here the autumn air was pure and fresh, and the old white stones of the churches seemed pure and fresh also.
In the corner by the walls of the Annunciation Church stood a low bench, where Father John used often to sit, sunning himself.
On this bench the Tsarevitch dropped exhausted, while the old man went in to prepare for his night’s rest. The Tsarevitch remained alone. He felt terribly tired, as if he had journeyed a thousand miles. He could have wept, but no tears would come. His heart was burning, and his tears dried up, like water dropped on a glowing stone. The white walls were bathed in a peaceful evening light. The golden cupolas of the churches caught by the setting sun were ablaze, like living embers. The sky became lilac-hued, and as it darkened it resembled the colour of a faded violet; the white towers stood out like gigantic flowers with flaming crowns. The old clocks rang forth the hour—the rapid ding-dong of many smaller bells chiming in half-tones to the steady booming of the hour-bell—their confused medley of sounds producing a solemn, if somewhat harsh, church music. Meanwhile the modern Dutch clocks replied with melodious jingling and modern dance music, “after the manner of Amsterdam.”
And all these old and modern sounds brought back to the Tsarevitch’s mind his distant childhood. He closed his eyes, and his mind sank into drowsiness—into that dark domain where, betwixt sleep and waking, hover the shadows of the past. Visions floated before him, like motley shadows on a white wall when a sunbeam enters a dark room through a chink. One awe-inspiring image dominated them all—his father. And as a traveller, looking back at night from a summit, beholds in a flash of lightning all the road he has traversed, so the relentless light from that figure laid bare his whole life.