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

softened voice, ‘Of course we are not. But that is not why you are going.’
    He bowed out of her presence, greatly relieved. Only later did he reflect that he still wasn’t exactly sure why he was going. As a kind of freelance spy?
     
     

 
     
     
     
    5
     
    ‘Tell me the bad news,’ said Hodge, already dark of temper.
    ‘We’re commanded to go to Constantinople.’
    ‘Turkey!’
    ‘Just so. By royal command. So you can’t even say no.’
    Hodge’s scowl deepened still further.
    ‘It gets worse,’ said Nicholas.
    ‘How could it get worse?’
    ‘We then go on to Russia.’
    ‘Russia!’
    ‘The Caesar of all the Russias, Ivan, has proposed marriage to our Queen.’
    ‘The villain. And what are we supposed to do about it? I’m not marrying the bugger in her stead.’
    Nicholas slapped him on the shoulder and said cheerfully, ‘We’re going as emissaries, ambassadors, with gifts, and also as spies. With no experience, no support, and no escape if things go wrong.’
    ‘When things go wrong.’ Hodge raised his eyes to heaven. ‘Why us, O Lord, why us?’
    ‘And also, I think, to make friends with this Czar Ivan of Russia.’
    ‘How quaint.’
     
    They spent the afternoon at the duelling school in the Artillery Gardens north of the city, near Moorfields. Nicholas felt they should exercise their sword arms. ‘Just in case.’ The Italian master there said they were clumsy and out of practice, but by the end of two hours’ hard exercise he grudgingly admitted they had some skill.
    ‘You will need thees skill too,’ he said. ‘London full of bad men, bad men. Wild men. Terrible. Worse than Italy.’
    ‘What about Russia?’ said Nicholas.
     
    Things moved rapidly. Nicholas negotiated with his belligerent new mariner friend back at the Mermaid, who gave him word of a sea captain sailing for Spain with a load of Suffolk cloth in two days’ time. Smith and Stanley reappeared from their unknown lodgings and he told them Cecil knew where they were. Smith grunted, ‘We know where he is too.’
    ‘Russia?’ said Stanley. ‘Interesting.’
    They found the captain at Wapping Stairs, looked over the plump little merchantman going to Cadiz, agreed a price. Bought some provisions. Sent word to Cecil, had two precious crates loaded on board, one bound for the court of Constantinople, one for Muscovy.
    ‘This is unreal,’ said Hodge. ‘Pinch me.’
    ‘Business of State,’ said Nicholas. ‘Not ours to question it.’
    And a day after that they sailed down a gilded Thames at dawn into the rising sun. Nicholas looked back on the slowly awakening city, and pictured the green shires of England beyond. He had no idea when they would return, but it would not be by Michaelmas now, and he felt that familiar thrill and ache of traveller’s joy, traveller’s sorrow.
     
    Tacking down the Channel they passed the new St Catherine’s lighthouse on the Isle of Wight. Mercifully God sent them clear weather for rounding the dreaded Eddystone, sixteen miles off the Devon coast.
    ‘Sixteen miles out to sea,’ said Hodge wonderingly. ‘A huge mountain arising from the seabed miles below, its peak just breaking the waves. Beggars imagination.’
    Nicholas stared down into the black depths. If you took away all the sea it would stand a huge lonely mountain, higher than any in Wales or Scotland perhaps. Everywhere the fearful grandeur, the illimitable power of the Creator. There was no reckoning it.
     
    ‘Tell us what you know of Russia,’ said Nicholas. Already he dreamed of the place, he had seen woodcuts. Carriages on huge sledges, men in long fur coats and outlandish conical hats, monstrous bears …
    Stanley said, ‘Her River Volga makes our Thames look like a stream. As she nears the sea you cannot see one shore from the other.’
    ‘Travellers’ exaggeration,’ said Hodge scornfully.
    ‘Truth,’ said Stanley. ‘It was a while back now, nearly twenty years ago. We were very young knights