Mazeppa interrupted me with a laugh.
‘Come, Chelminsky,’ he exclaimed, ‘you make progress! Do not move too fast! No, the Tsar knows not that we have met. She herself—well, she smiles sweetly and talks shyly—there it ends to-day. But there will be a to-morrow. A Hetman is a Hetman and the brother of kings. A Hetman of Cossacks might do worse for his people than marry a daughter of the Tsar, and—who knows?—the Tsar might do worse for his than choose such a son-in-law!’
CHAPTER VI
I had begun, as I say, to understand and to know Mazeppa, and the first fruit of my better knowledge was the determination to be very cautious in my dealings with him, for in spite of his seeming goodwill towards me I began almost unconsciously to distrust him. It was not long before I became persuaded of this, in Mazeppa, that he did nothing and said nothing without careful intent. Which being so, thought I, his friendship towards me cannot be disinterested, and its reason must be discovered.
Thus, after much consideration, I came at length to the conclusion that Mazeppa intended to use me. I was a pawn in his political schemes, to be employed in the accomplishment of his ends. But I must have position and power to be of use to him, and at present I had none. Then I thought of his words: ‘We will rise in the world side by side,’ and the idea came to me that Mazeppa fixed certain hopes upon my career as a soldier. He intended that I should have influence among the soldier population, and that that influence should be employed by me, when the time came, for his advantage.
‘Well,’ thought I, ‘I am willing to rise; but whether my influence, if I have it, shall be used to your advantage or my own, friend Mazeppa, shall depend!’
And indeed both Mazeppa and I—perhaps specially recommended to Samoilovitch by the Tsar himself, as to which I knew nothing—prospered amazingly at the Court of the Hetman. Mazeppa, as secretary to Samoilovitch, soon gained his confidence and became very quickly a power—a force more felt than seen and realised, but none the less a force. As for myself, I too was in much favour with the Hetman, and rose rapidly as a soldier of his army.
The Tsar Alexis died, and in a very short while his son Feodor died also, and now Mazeppa was sent to Moscow, at his own suggestion, in order to see how the land lay in the matter of the Romanof succession. I accompanied him by order of the Hetman, who bade me keep an eye upon Mazeppa and report all that he said and did.
I received this order with surprise. Did the Hetman, then, distrust his peesar?
We found Moscow in a turmoil, arriving—as it chanced—on the very day when the Streltsi those hereditary regiments of turbulent busybodies which Ivan the Terrible had raised and armed, marched in revolt upon the palace within the Kremlin, in order to right certain imaginary wrongs.