The Last Crusaders: Ivan the Terrible Read Online Free PDF

vagabond, along with his faithful friend Hodge. But she ignored him entirely.
    ‘In addition you have a sharp eye and an agreeable style in prose. You were tutored in Cicero?’
    ‘My father was a great admirer of Tacitus. He said Cicero’s sentences were too long.’
    ‘Ah yes, perhaps your style is Tacitan. “They make a wasteland and they call it peace,”yes?’
    He bowed. Her Majesty was known to be a very fine scholar – and not chary of displaying her scholarship either.
    ‘And then in Muscovy itself – this delicate matter.’
    If we get there alive in our own skins, thought Nicholas sourly.
    Cecil coughed. Elizabeth let him go on.
    ‘The Grand Duke of Muscovy, Ivan by name’ – even Cecil hesitated – ‘has sent our beloved Queen a Proposal of Marriage.’
    Elizabeth touched a kerchief to her mouth in amusement. ‘Notwithstanding that he is married already.’
    A little like your own father, thought Nicholas. But silence now, traitorous thoughts.
    Cecil said, ‘What do you know of this Ivan yourself, as a travel­led, somewhat educated gentleman of England?’
    Nicholas racked his brains, found little but tall tales there. ‘Tales of a Grand Prince of the East,’ he murmured, ‘who moves about with a horde who live in tents, or hibernates like a bear in a far northern fastness of ice and snow, in a gold palace set with jewels.’
    ‘Ye-es,’ said Cecil. ‘Exaggerations to some degree, perhaps.’ His humour was drier than Arabian sand. ‘Nevertheless, this Proposal is in earnest, and this Muscovy is a great and rising power. This Caesar of Muscovy, Ivan – Caesar becomes Czar in their barbarous tongue – was a mere tribal chieftain only four decades ago. His kingdom no more than a huddle of wooden houses and churches on the River Moskva, deep in the heart of this great unknown land.’
    He waved his hand over Jenkinson’s map.
    ‘Now, suddenly, he has risen to rule from the icy wastes of the White Sea and the Baltic in the north, all the way down to the ­desert sands of the Caspian Sea in the south. He has twice conquered the Mohammedan hordes in great battle, these Tatars – warriors of Turkic custom, Turkic blood and Turkic ferocity. Kinsmen and of course powerful allies of the Ottomans. We believe the Tatars are descendants of Ghenghiz Khan, who terrorized all the world. The Russians call them the Golden Horde, their most ancient and bitter enemies.
    ‘Now Ivan has already taken the city of Kazan from the Khanate to the east, and the important port of Astrakhan on the Caspian. With Russia’s great, broad rivers flowing through flat lands without mountain passes, Czar Ivan rules over trade routes of unimaginable reach, from the Baltic to the shores of Persia across the Caspian Sea. From there lies a land route straight to India and China. He could sell German salt herrings to the Shah in Isfahan if he wanted, in straight exchange for Eastern silk and spices. Imagine the profit in that.’
    Nicholas’s eyes roved over the map, struggling to picture the scale of this vast empire risen so suddenly from obscurity.
    Cecil said, ‘He can only wax wealthier and more powerful still with such a kingdom.’
    ‘And become a greater threat to the Turks,’ said Elizabeth. ‘What are his intentions? Where will he turn next? If he turns against the Khanate of the Crimea, and conquers, he will then have access to the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean beyond. Then his reach will be beyond all other empires of the world.’
    ‘And so you see,’ said Cecil, his hands clasped as if in prayer, ‘negotiations regarding this Proposal of Marriage will have to be delicate. We are playing for time, but not refusing. You will take Ivan a fine oil portrait of Her Majesty, and other gifts.’
    ‘You are not …’ at last Nicholas could not help himself, and against all court etiquette he blurted out, ‘you are not going to accept his Proposal?’
    But Elizabeth only smiled tolerantly and said with