The bearded man placed heavy tin mugs in the corners of an old map.
“Look here, boyar,” he said. “From Ustyug, we go along the Sukhona to the Dvina, and then the road to the north is smooth. If we leave here after Easter, then in about three weeks we will find ourselves on the White Sea.”
Mikhail Yakovlev, son of Saburov, walked along the heavy oak table. For the meeting of the helmsmen, the Ustyug governor had let the boyar into the court chamber. The bells of the newly built Assumption Cathedral began to ring and Mikhail crossed himself. An unexpectedly warm wind blew through the open door, and a breath of spring swept over the table.
“Easter is early this year,” Mikhail scratched his light beard. “But what if there’s still ice on the river?”
There was a noise at the table.
“In Moscow, perhaps, there is,” a fellow shouted, “because yours is a swamp and not a river. But on the Dvina, the current will not only knock a man off his feet—it’ll carry a boat to…”
He added a strong word.
Blackened-silver dishes and cups piled along the table edges. Finding his cup, Mikhail scooped up caviar with a spoon. The vodka burned his throat, and he chuckled.
“It’s good that the rivers here are powerful, because we’ll reach Kholmogory without a hitch.”
"If we don’t run into a merchant caravan," the same man objected. "They’ll all be coming to meet us early, after staying in Kholmogory. Only Russian boats spend the winter in Ustyug and all the Englishers are there.”
He waved northward, and Mikhail nodded.
“We don’t let them go further south.”
Merchant boats loaded with furs, resin, and hemp crowded along Sukhona banks, covered from the weather by wooden awnings. The breeze, though warm, was still deceptive. After vespers, turning mercy into anger, it nibbled at fingers and the tips of his ears. Remembering the local night frosts, Mikhail shuddered. In Moscow, the mild winter muddied the streets and after Yaroslavl had his convoy entered the real cold.
“So,” the boyar summed up, “in Kholmogory we switch to a sea boat and turn east.”
There was a whistle from the corner, coming from the elderly man.
“Nobody ever went eastwards beyond Mangazeya.”
“The Tzar’s order is to find a sea passage to the east,” the boyar replied. “It is done of good will. Whoever wishes to go with me is welcomed and no one will hold a grudge against whoever doesn’t. All that is needed for a boat is a dozen men.”
Saburov again paced the brightly painted wooden floor of the chamber. Boyar moved silently, like a cat, and only his fingers, clasped around the hilt of the dagger at the belt of his velvet caftan, betrayed his strength.
“Have you ever sailed, Mikhail Yakovlevich?” asked one of the helmsmen. “There are no seas in Moscow.”
A friendly guffaw rang out in the chamber, and the boyar also grinned, revealing strong teeth.
“Moscow is not the only place in the world. Have you heard about the war with the Swedes?”
“One can get confused with so many wars nowadays,” the oldest helmsman sighed. “The Englishers say that the son of their king, whose head they cut off ten years ago, now wants to be crowned.”
“He does,” Saburov confirmed. “They’re fighting for him in England and we fought the Swedes for Ladoga and the Neva. I was captured near Valko, and only returned to Moscow last year after a prisoner exchange. It was from the Swedes that I learned to sail.”
“Ladoga and the Neva are still under them,” continued the helmsmen. “We’re also fighting the Poles, aren’t we?”
“We do as always and we are neither here nor there with them,” Mikhail rolled up the map. “I’m staying in this chamber,” he pointed to the side door. “If anyone wants to go east, by the Tzar’s word, then come and speak with me.”
On the porch the smell of wet snow and stove smoke hit him in the face. The sun was slowly setting behind the Sukhona, and another merchant convoy was moving past the cathedral.
Breathing in his frozen hands, Mikhail shuddered at the sudden neigh of a nearby horse. A small figure on a bay stallion separated from the convoy. Hooves clattered across the square, and the rider reined in his horse right under Saburov’s nose. The teenager in the saddle wore a sheepskin coat and hat.
“Who is Boyar Saburov here?” the boy shouted.
“I am,” Saburov replied.
“On the Tzar’s business,” the teenager reached into his bosom. “Here is the charter.”
“And who are you?” Saburov tilted his head and the boy winked.
“Read it, and you’ll understand. See you soon, boyar.”
He rushed off and Saburov stood watching him. Turning sharply, he walked toward the noisy porch of the official tavern, where the merchants were already arguing at the hitching post. The convoy carts huddled together, and he heard an imperious voice.\
“Martyn! Martyn! The devil should take you, where have you gone?”
The young man, leading the bay stallion by the bridle, emerged from around the corner of the tavern.
“I was watering the horse,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’d start barking too, if he pines away. We haven’t stopped for fifty miles and what good is that?”
Saburov pulled a document, signed and sealed by the Tsar, from the pocket of his rich sable coat.
“Martyn Dmitrievich is a native Siberian and will help you,” Mikhail read. “He handles weapons and sails better than most.” The Tsar’s hand seemed to pause. “He is a brave and literate boy, but be careful not to let anyone offend him.”
“Who would offend him?” Saburov smiled. “He’s so sharp you shouldn't mess with him.”
The boy looked about sixteen. Mikhail Yakovlevich frowned, thinking of the Moscow boyars’ sons.
“He’s ten years younger than me,” Saburov realized. “He didn’t fight and is itching for some action.”
“Let’s settle up,” the boy’s firm voice reached him. “I was hired from Moscow to Ustyug, so it’s time to say goodbye.”
Grunting, the merchant reached for his purse. Silver flashed in the clear sunset light, and the boy, tying his horse, walked along the beaten path to the ice-bound Sukhona. Saburov caught up with him at the shore.
“So, you’re the Tsar’s envoy,” he said.
The young man’s greenish eyes sparkled with laughter, and he wrinkled his freckled nose.
“You’re the envoy, Mikhail Yakovlevich,” he said cheerfully. “I’m just the Tsar’s messenger.”
He extended his small hand to Saburov.
“He’s even shorter than me,” the boyar assessed.
“I am the son of the Yakutsk governor, Dmitry Andreevich Franzbekov,” said the young man, still smiling. “Martyn Dmitrievich.”
“I’ve already read that,” Saburov shook his hand. “Martyn Dmitrievich, why is the Tsar’s messenger traveling with a merchant convoy?”
The boy grinned, baring white teeth. Martyn Dmitrievich reminded Saburov of a nimble ermine.
“It’s more fun with a company,” he explained. “Nobody needs to know I’m the Tsar’s messenger. Besides, near Moscow, dashing fellows can get up to tricks in winter and the lonely rider is the best target.”
A German-made pistol stuck out of the embroidered belt of his sheepskin coat.
“You can shoot too?” the boyar asked and Martyn Dmitrievich laughed heartily.
“I was born in Siberia and I can hit a squirrel in the eye.”
“Well, well,” Saburov said. “Let’s move. I’ll tell you what’s going on with this expedition.”
The boy followed him toward the churches of the Cathedral Courtyard. Having climbed the narrow stairs to the attic of the house, Saburov opened the low carved door for Martyn Dmitrievich.
“These are not boyar’s chambers,” he grinned, “but they even laid a carpet for me.”
Saburov slept on a wide bench pushed up to the table. After clearing a place for Martyn Dmitrievich, the boyar threw his Polish kuntush onto a pot-bellied chest in the corner. In the coat pocket lay a smoking pipe carved from heather root by a Swedish craftsman, and an embroidered silk tobacco pouch, but Saburov was careful not to take them out in front of his new acquaintance.
The late Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich had banned the devil’s potion, as the priests called it, and the current Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich sent smokers into exile.
“Here’s some mead,” Saburov reached for the bottle on the table but stopped short.
Martyn Dmitrievich was already sitting with a pipe between his teeth. Striking the flint, the young man didn’t even bat an eyelid.
“Your window is open,” he said calmly. “All the smoke will soon evaporate.”
Pouring the mead into clay mugs, Saburov picked up his kuntush.
“I indulge in tobacco too,” he said, “but you know how they tear out nostrils for that.”
Martyn Dmitrievich blew out a cloud of gray smoke.
“Go to a tavern,” he advised. “Not even in the capital, but here in Ustyug. They’ve set up secret closets in the back rooms. Tobacco is cheap in the north, because the Englishers are nearby. Your pouch is beautiful,” he added. “Did your wife embroider it?”
Saburov remembered the finely crafted gold medallion hanging on a chain beside his cross. Over the last year, the blond lock inside had faded and thinned.
“My late wife,” he sighed. “Let’s get down to business, Martyn Dmitrievich.”
Unfolding the map, Saburov ordered himself not to stir up the past. Martyn Dmitrievich drained his mug of mead in one gulp and crunched an icy cucumber from a clay bowl.
“In the tavern, the helmsmen said you want to turn east after Kholmogory,” he noted, and Saburov nodded.
“Yes, by the Tzar’s command.”
Martyn Dmitrievich ruffled his short-cropped hair, which resembled red fluff. For a moment, the boy reminded Saburov of a sparrow.
“Your map, frankly, is not the best,” the young man said, taking up a piece of charcoal. “But that can be fixed.”
He drew deftly, and Saburov noticed the delicate ear of Martyn Dmitrievich, in which, judging by the hole, an earring had once hung. Despite the stove heating the room, the Siberian wrapped himself in a sheepskin coat.
“Wait,” the boyar stopped his hand with the charcoal. “So that’s why the Tzar wrote in his letter to keep an eye on you. This is unheard of —” Saburov stepped back from the table. “Take your bay and go home.”
A hot blush flared on her pale cheeks, and she flared her thin nostrils.
“What difference does it make to you if I’m Martyn or Marfa?” the girl threw back her head. “How will you speak with the natives in Siberia? Have you seen the rivers there? Have you been to gold-boiling Mangazeya, boyar? Or have you shot a white bear with this hand?”
She twirled her thin fingers with bitten nails in front of Saburov’s nose.
“My late father taught me German and Latin,” she added, “and I picked up English in Moscow. So, Mikhail Yakovlevich, are you going to argue with the Tzar’s will?”
Saburov sat down across from her. In the half-open window, the cranberry strip of sunset over the Sukhona glowed red.
“This is an unprecedented thing, Marfa Dmitrievna,” the boyar said honestly, “but we really do need a guide, and no one has ever gone farther east than Mangazeya.”
“That’s what you think in Moscow,” the girl winked at him, “but in Siberia we don’t ask your permission for every sneeze. So, Mikhail Yakovlevich —” her hand hovered over the map, “will we catch up with the sun in the east?”
Certainly, Marfa Dmitrievna,” Saburov answered and their palms closed over a white spot stretching beyond Mangazeya.
The End
Bio:
Nelly Shulman’s prose was published in numerous literary magazines and anthologies and she has authored three collections of short stories. She is a member of The Society of Authors (UK).