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Jesuits. That roused his suspicions, and he was a suspicious man; it was not at all what he had hoped for. Jesuits. He shook his head.
    “Is something the matter? Have you had bad news?” It was his cousin Galina speaking. She had come into the room like a shadow, standing away from him, her widow’s veils masking her features. Her deferential manner, intended to placate him, served only to aggravate.
    “Nothing to concern you,” said Anastasi, finding her presence an intrusion. She was tiresome but necessary, which encouraged him to treat her harshly.
    “You looked angry,” Galina observed, making no move to approach him. “I apologize if I have given offense.”
    “Not directly, no. But I have important work. I am not to be disturbed.” He knew he was being brusque but made no apology for it. Cousin Galina was his dependent and as such she was required to take whatever he meted out to her.
    She bowed to him, not quite as obsequiously as the carpenter had, but as self-deprecatingly. “I regret annoying you; I will be with Father Iliya, for confession,” she said, and started out of the room, her heavy fur slippers whispering on the bare floor.
    “Yes. Get on with it.” He made a gesture as if to wave away an annoying insect. Jesuits. They would not be trustworthy. Doubtless they would want to destroy the Orthodox Church. Jesuits went nowhere they did not intend to convert the people. It had been a mistake for Moscovy to attempt a reunion with Rome, as it had not so long ago. Now the Jesuits would use that to gain a foothold here. He picked up one of the dispatches, written in Greek, and went over it for the fifth time. He read carefully, examining each word thoughtfully, looking for hidden meanings or alternate translations of the phrases that might shed more light on what he was being told.
    He had fretted himself through the papers for more than an hour when a visitor was announced: “There is a man seeking to speak with you,” said the servant who guarded the doors.
    “Who is he?” asked Anastasi, setting the dispatches and reports aside; his attention had been flagging for the last quarter hour and this interruption could be a welcome change from his anxiety.
    “He is from Jerusalem,” said the house guardian, meaning from the Orthodox Church, which had centered in that city since Constantinople had fallen to the powers of Islam. “He says to tell you his name is Stavros Nikodemios, a Hydriot.”
    “A Hydriot,” said Anastasi with authority, as if he understood what that meant: he had never heard of the island of Hydra. He stood up. “Bring me a basin and a cloth.”
    The house guardian ducked his head and went about his task. Only when he had provided the Duke with these things did he return to the entry to escort the visitor to Anastasi.
    “Welcome to my house, Hydriot,” said Anastasi Shuisky, touching the hands of the foreigner between his own. “Let me offer hospitality to you.” He turned to the basin and ritually washed his hands, drying them with care on the cloth his house guard had provided, as was proper protection when admitting foreigners to the house.
    The Greek visitor nodded, unsurprised at this behavior. “Thank you for receiving me, Duke,” he said in passable Russian. “It has been a very difficult journey. We nearly had to wait out the winter in Kursk. If our mission were not so urgent we would surely have done so.” He held out a letter. “From Yuri Kostroma. It will tell you why I am here.”
    Anastasi took the letter and read it, his face deliberately blank. His cousin informed him that Nikodemios had very useful information from Jerusalem and the Patriarch. He implied that there could be support gained from the center of the Orthodox Church and suggested that at this time such an alliance would protect Holy Russia. He stated his own growing concerns about the state of the Czar’s health. He urged Anastasi to hear Nikodemios out before making up his mind about what