The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible Read Online Free PDF Page A

like garden of pleasant birds …”’
    ‘She’s been out East too long,’ he muttered.
    Her Majesty heard him and smiled. ‘You are merchants, but also our ambassadors. We wish to know all about this Sultana Safiye – her new Turkish name. You know what Safiye means in Turkish?’
    Nicholas struggled to remember.
    Elizabeth smiled a thin smile. ‘It means The Pure. Very amusing. So you will have an audience with this Pure Whore, charm her, do whatever you need. You have good looks, modesty and courtliness. Our agent there tells us she has information useful to us. She is now a Mohammedan convert – for the furtherance of her career – but was born a Christian. You will cement our alliance – for though the religion of Islam is assuredly the enemy of Christendom, yet we both in England and the Ottoman Empire have an enemy in Rome. Perhaps this makes us unlikely temporary allies, of a sort.’
    Politics was always complicated, compromised. And how on earth could Smith and Stanley be going on this mission too?
    She read his thoughts. ‘Your friends – from Malta – are at much greater risk than you are. But that is their affair. We have their assurance that their Order, at least, feels no special duty to fight against fellow Christians, or assassinate Protestant rulers.’
    ‘I believe this is true,’ said Nicholas.
    ‘Then comes a more delicate mission,’ said Elizabeth. ‘You will sail on over the Pontine Sea to Russia, and up to the Grand Duchy of Muscovy.’
    The Black Sea is flooding north, through summer meadows. ‘Russia?’
    ‘Just so. Increasingly a great and powerful enemy of the Ottomans.’
    ‘So – our enemy?’
    Her thin smile. ‘Not so naive, Master Ingoldsby. Very much our friends, and esteemed trading partners. Christian, but not of Rome. And, potentially, very, very wealthy. How on earth could this combination make them our enemies?’
    He felt quite lost. Bowed again, for good measure.
    ‘The journey up to Muscovy alone will, I am sure, be … interesting. You will have to pass through Tatar lands, and vast, lawless plains ruled by mounted bandits called the Cossacks. But I am sure you will cope admirably, and again you will gather all information useful to us. We already have the good maps and the reports of our loyal servant Anthony Jenkinson, Captain-General of the Russia Company. Here. See.’
    She indicated and a steward unrolled a magnificent illustrated map: a work of cartographic art. In the bottom left was the image of a memorial stone that read, Russiae, Moscoviae et Tartariae Descriptio.
    It showed a country of many rivers and exotic creatures. In the far north was a land, Samoyeda, where Jenkinson had pictured men in furs kneeling down before stone idols or squares of hide suspended from long poles. Beyond the last city to the east was an empty land called Sibir. There was a Cassac, and Colmack, and Kirgessi praying to trees, and from some of the trees were hanging corpses.
    There were camels and conical tents among the Tumen, wild leaping horsemen at Astrakhan and in the Crimea, a great river called the Don, known to the Greeks as the Tanais, and the Neper, or anciently, Borysthenes … It was a lot to take in. And towards the north was a small city on a small river, called Moskva.
    ‘In Russian,’ said Cecil, ‘Moskva means dark or troubled waters.’
    ‘But Master Jenkinson is a merchant to his soul,’ snapped the Queen. ‘Much fanciful illustration, and reports of crops and timber and beeswax, less about armies and fortifications, in which your eye is more experienced.’
    ‘Truly, Majesty, I was only ever a soldier by accident—’
    He was going to remind her that he really was only a yeoman farmer, even if he had inherited a baronetcy from his father; that he had only gone to Malta as a naive, vainglorious boy, imagining himself on some noble crusade in his father’s name, had only become caught up in the battles of Cyprus and Lepanto as little more than a