CHAPTER III
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 Finally, he read to him a decree, unpublished as yet, but proclaimed later on at the establishment of the Ecclesiastical College, the Holy Synod:—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 the real face. 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.”
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 the Te 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 was forced 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 in the 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?’”