spent drinking in the little taverns beneath the shadow of the kremlin.
But he certainly wouldn’t want his sisters to marry any of them.
*
The new list was drawn up, and it was just as Ivan feared. Sergey Stepanovich, Pavel Zhukovskiy, Nikolai Feodorov, all of them. Familiarity hadn’t really bred contempt for the young lordlings whose names were there; they were his friends, after all. But that same familiarity had given him an intimate acquaintance with the way high-spirited young men could behave in the company of their peers and a sufficient quantity of alcohol.
None of their various drunken vices were very dreadful, and most would receive no more from the Metropolitan Levon than an admonition and a wrinkling of his long patrician nose. Ivan, however, was discovering a fact that many brothers before him had learned about their gang of closest cronies. The sort of ribald antics which among a group of bachelors provokes only roars of laughter and deeper drinking, becomes less endearing when those same bold, raucous lads are among the men courting one’s sisters.
What was worst of all was to see the half-dozen boyar’s sons that he knew only as a bunch of drunken reprobates, acting with all the studied manners and gallantry of characters from an old and badly written romantic tale. Certainly courtly speeches and perfume in his beard seemed out of place on Sasha Levonovich. Ivan’s most recent memory of that dignified and currently sweet-smelling gentleman was of horrible oaths and a still more horrible stench, when after drinking a half-bottle of vodka Sasha had laid a wager that the ice on the tavern cesspit was thick enough to support his weight…
Ivan had only one advantage, and that was thanks to the season. There would be time for only one banquet during Maslenitsa , Butter Week, before Shrovetide came to an end and the Long Fast began. Khorlov’s Metropolitan Archbishop Levon Popovich had spent many years of ministry in the hard lands where, as a matter of simple caution, the old gods were still given respect. After much wasted effort in his zealous youth, he had discarded proselytizing in favour of pragmatism – but no matter how worthy its cause, he would never be persuaded to allow feasting during Lent.
Tsarevich Ivan knew the Archbishop’s intransigence would give him forty uninterrupted days in which to make sure certain facts were made known about certain names on the High Steward’s new list. In ordinary circumstances he knew he would really need no more than forty minutes, but he also knew, from wet and bitter-cold experience, that there was no such thing as an ordinary circumstance when a brother tries to influence his three sisters in their views of love and marriage.
Ivan wondered more than once, when the gloom and melancholy of the Rus stole over him, just how they would break the ice that covered the lake in winter so as to throw him in…
CHAPTER THREE
How the Tsarevnas found suitors who pleased them
Invitations to this banquet were sent out by rider where the roads permitted it, or by swift troyki up and down the frozen rivers. Tsar Aleksandr sent his messengers mostly along the Dnepr, but also as far north and south as the Dvina and Dnestr and as far east and west as the reaches of the Pripyat and the Upper Volga. More than anything else, it was those great distances across the face of Moist-Mother-Earth that meant there would be no more than one feast before Lent.
For all that, he made certain to invite the powerful as well as the eligible. Manguyu Temir of the Tatar Golden Horde was to be a guest, as were the Princes Oleg Vladislav and Aleksandr Yaroslavich, with careful seating arrangements to keep those worthies and their supporters well away from one another..
*
As the banquet began, Ivan wasn’t so concerned with the daintiness of the political machinations as he was with the presence of a mob of his very good friends, all scrubbed and scented and dressed in their
But he certainly wouldn’t want his sisters to marry any of them.
*
The new list was drawn up, and it was just as Ivan feared. Sergey Stepanovich, Pavel Zhukovskiy, Nikolai Feodorov, all of them. Familiarity hadn’t really bred contempt for the young lordlings whose names were there; they were his friends, after all. But that same familiarity had given him an intimate acquaintance with the way high-spirited young men could behave in the company of their peers and a sufficient quantity of alcohol.
None of their various drunken vices were very dreadful, and most would receive no more from the Metropolitan Levon than an admonition and a wrinkling of his long patrician nose. Ivan, however, was discovering a fact that many brothers before him had learned about their gang of closest cronies. The sort of ribald antics which among a group of bachelors provokes only roars of laughter and deeper drinking, becomes less endearing when those same bold, raucous lads are among the men courting one’s sisters.
What was worst of all was to see the half-dozen boyar’s sons that he knew only as a bunch of drunken reprobates, acting with all the studied manners and gallantry of characters from an old and badly written romantic tale. Certainly courtly speeches and perfume in his beard seemed out of place on Sasha Levonovich. Ivan’s most recent memory of that dignified and currently sweet-smelling gentleman was of horrible oaths and a still more horrible stench, when after drinking a half-bottle of vodka Sasha had laid a wager that the ice on the tavern cesspit was thick enough to support his weight…
Ivan had only one advantage, and that was thanks to the season. There would be time for only one banquet during Maslenitsa , Butter Week, before Shrovetide came to an end and the Long Fast began. Khorlov’s Metropolitan Archbishop Levon Popovich had spent many years of ministry in the hard lands where, as a matter of simple caution, the old gods were still given respect. After much wasted effort in his zealous youth, he had discarded proselytizing in favour of pragmatism – but no matter how worthy its cause, he would never be persuaded to allow feasting during Lent.
Tsarevich Ivan knew the Archbishop’s intransigence would give him forty uninterrupted days in which to make sure certain facts were made known about certain names on the High Steward’s new list. In ordinary circumstances he knew he would really need no more than forty minutes, but he also knew, from wet and bitter-cold experience, that there was no such thing as an ordinary circumstance when a brother tries to influence his three sisters in their views of love and marriage.
Ivan wondered more than once, when the gloom and melancholy of the Rus stole over him, just how they would break the ice that covered the lake in winter so as to throw him in…
CHAPTER THREE
How the Tsarevnas found suitors who pleased them
Invitations to this banquet were sent out by rider where the roads permitted it, or by swift troyki up and down the frozen rivers. Tsar Aleksandr sent his messengers mostly along the Dnepr, but also as far north and south as the Dvina and Dnestr and as far east and west as the reaches of the Pripyat and the Upper Volga. More than anything else, it was those great distances across the face of Moist-Mother-Earth that meant there would be no more than one feast before Lent.
For all that, he made certain to invite the powerful as well as the eligible. Manguyu Temir of the Tatar Golden Horde was to be a guest, as were the Princes Oleg Vladislav and Aleksandr Yaroslavich, with careful seating arrangements to keep those worthies and their supporters well away from one another..
*
As the banquet began, Ivan wasn’t so concerned with the daintiness of the political machinations as he was with the presence of a mob of his very good friends, all scrubbed and scented and dressed in their
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