CHAPTER VI
That very day the Tsarevitch was again led to the torture. After he had received fifteen blows with the knout he was taken down from the strappado, as Blumentrost declared that the Tsarevitch was in a fainting condition and would die under any further infliction of the knout.
In the night his condition became so much worse that the officer on guard in alarm ran to inform the commandant of the fortress that the Tsarevitch was dying, and that a priest ought to be summoned lest he should pass away without the last rites of the Church. The commandant at once despatched the priest of the garrison, Father Matthew. The latter at first resisted and entreated the commandant:—
“Excuse me this office, your Honour! I am but a novice in such matters as these. It is dreadful to touch anything wherein the Tsar is concerned. Once in the trap there will be no means of getting out of it again. I have a wife and children. Have mercy on me!”
The commandant promised to take all the responsibility upon himself, and Father Matthew went with a heavy heart, sorely against his own inclination.
The Tsarevitch lay unconscious; his mind was wandering, he did not recognise anybody.
Suddenly he opened his eyes and stared at Father Matthew.
“Who are you?”
“The priest of the garrison, Father Matthew. I have been sent to receive your confession.”
“To receive my confession? Why do you bear a calf’s head on your shoulder?—— and shaggy hair upon that moon face of yours, and horns upon your forehead?”
Father Matthew remained silent, his eyes fixed on the ground.
“Do you desire to confess, my lord Tsarevitch,” he asked at last with a timid hope that the Tsarevitch would refuse.
“Are you acquainted, Father, with the Tsar’s ukase, by which all treason or seditious plot, of which confession has been made to a priest, has to be revealed to the secret chancery?”
“I know it, your Highness.”
“And should I reveal to you something of this kind in my confession would you betray me?”
“How could I help it? we are no longer masters of our actions. I have a wife and children.” murmured Father Matthew, with the despairing thought, “this is a good beginning!”
“Away, get away from me, blockhead!” exclaimed the Tsarevitch in a fury. “You slave of the Russian Tsar! Sold, sold, all of you, down to the last man! You were once eagles, you have become as oxen bowed under the yoke! You have delivered the Church over to Antichrist! I will die unconfessed, and I will receive no sacrament from your hands. You viper’s brood! You incarnations of Satan!”
Father Matthew recoiled in horror. His hands trembled so violently that he almost dropped the vessel which contained the Host.
The Tsarevitch glanced at it and repeated the words of the Raskolnik monk:—
“Do you know what your Lamb can be likened unto? It can be likened unto a dead dog which has been cast into the streets of the city. If you receive the Host you will die. Your Eucharist has the same effect as arsenic or sublimate: it permeates bone and marrow, the very soul itself! Afterwards you will lie and groan in the Gehenna of fire, like Cain the fratricide, the hardened sinner—— You would like to poison me, but I will not give you the chance!”
Father Matthew fled from the room.
The black were-wolf leapt upon the neck of Alexis, and began to strangle him, and to pluck at his heart with its claws.
“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” he moaned in mortal anguish.
All at once he felt that near his bed, on the spot occupied a moment ago by Father Matthew, another person was now seated. He opened his eyes to see.
He beheld a small white-haired old man, whose head was inclined in such a way as to make it impossible for Alexis to discern his features. The old man partly resembled Father John, the Sacristan of the Church of the Annunciation at Moscow, and in some way also the centenarian beekeeper, whom Alexis had once met in the depth of the Novgorod woods, who used to spend his days among the hives, basking in the sun, his hair white as snow, and bearing ever about himself the scent of honey and wax. His name, too, was John.
“Are you Father John, or the old greybeard?” asked the Tsarevitch.
“I am John, yes John,” said the old man kindly with a gentle smile, and his voice was low and murmuring like the humming of bees or the sound of distant chimes. The Tsarevitch felt awed and yet soothed by this voice. He tried to see the old man’s face but could not.
“Fear not, fear not, my child!” continued the voice in yet sweeter and lower tones. “The Lord hath sent me to you! He will Himself soon be here!”
The old man raised his head and thereupon the Tsarevitch saw a face full of the grace of celestial youth, and recognised John, the Son of Thunder.
“Christ is risen, Aliósha!”
“Truly, he is risen!” answered the Tsarevitch, and a great and strange radiance of joy filled his soul as on that night in Trinity church during the celebration of the Easter Matins.
John seemed to hold the sun in his hands: it was the chalice containing the Body and Blood of Christ.
“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!”
He it was who administered the communion to the Tsarevitch. The sun became light within him, and he felt there was neither grief nor fear, neither pain nor death, but only eternal life, eternal Light—the Christ.
Who was that healing ministrant, that John, the Son of Thunder, that little white-haired old man, of a countenance so full of peace?
He will appear again in this book, He will appear to another sufferer, who amongst the poor folk of this great Russian people, was seeking in lowly life, what Alexis the Tsarevitch was seeking near the throne.