On the red staircase

My original errand in Moscow was a diplomatic one; it had been my good fortune to be selected as the confidential agent of the French government, empowered to look into and secure certain conditions of the treaty with Russia made by Richelieu many years before. My father, who was a cousin of the Duc de Bouillon and of the Vicomte de Turenne, had been a trusted friend of Cardinal Mazarin, and was commended to King Louis XIV. by the dying cardinal. The king had held my father in high esteem, and at his death received me into his favor. I was a soldier by instinct and profession, and had served with both Turenne and the Prince de Condé, being with the latter at the bloody battle of Seneffe, where the four squadrons of the king’s household stood under fire for eight hours without a movement, save to close our ranks as men fell. I followed Turenne in his campaign in the Palatinate, and was with him at the time of his death before the village of Salzbach. The year before I was sent to Moscow, I rendered a service at the surrender of Strasburg which won the good opinion of Louvois, who was then towering above the king’s other ministers. I was in command of one of the squadrons posted to guard the passage over the Rhine, and it was through my vigilance that the messengers from the burgesses were captured on their way to ask aid from the emperor. Both Louis and Louvois believed that their success was, in a measure, due to my zeal and activity; and from that hour my fortune was assured, and I was promoted from one post of confidence to another. Although diplomacy was not my natural vocation, I was pleased at the novelty of a mission to Moscow; and becoming well acquainted at court, I lingered on, after the successful accomplishment of my mission. I saw the intrigues preceding the late czar’s death, and learned a great deal about the undercurrent at the palace. I was regarded as a disinterested spectator, having friends on both sides. My rank as an agent of the French government gave me many privileges from which others were excluded. It was on my intimacy with court intrigue that I based my hope of rescuing Zénaïde from her murderous uncle; and it was probably my unique position that won for me Von Gaden’s confidence.

On the day of the Czar Feodor’s funeral, I was early at the palace, and found it the scene of great confusion. The anterooms were crowded with the dignitaries of the imperial household and with the boyars. The funeral cortége was to proceed to the Cathedral of the Ascension for the obsequies; and I saw, at once, that there was some unusual excitement, especially among the Miloslavskys and their faction. As I crossed the anterooms beyond the banqueting hall, I passed Ramodanofsky, who was in a window recess in deep converse with Viatscheslav Naryshkin and the Streltsi colonel whom I had seen at his house. For the first time, I encountered a keen glance from the old boyar; it was evident to me that I had suddenly become an object of interest to him, and yet I was at loss to explain the reason, being confident that my visit to his house was unknown to him. I passed on, and at the opposite door, I came upon Ivan Miloslavsky, a cousin of the Czarevitch Ivan’s mother, the Princess Marie Illinitchna Miloslavsky, the first wife of Alexis the Debonair.

Ivan Michaelovitch Miloslavsky was the most able of that family, except his second cousin, the Czarevna Sophia Alexeievna. I had now a desire to cultivate the good graces of this faction, for I felt that the tide might turn at any hour in favor of the elder branch of the imperial family. So it was that my salutation was cordial, and I was well pleased at Miloslavsky’s ready response; he turned and walked with me, and it was thus that I passed again before Ramodanofsky and his friends, and observed that the three worthies ceased talking, to watch us as we walked the length of the room, Miloslavsky leaning on my arm, and talking confidentially. After we were out of earshot, I ventured to make an inquiry.

“Can your excellency tell me anything of the boyar in the window yonder?” I asked.

“It is Vladimir Sergheievitch Ramodanofsky,” replied Miloslavsky, with a note of scorn in his voice; “an old villain, and an adherent of the Naryshkins.”

“I have heard unfavorable reports of him,” I said, feeling my way with caution.

“Nothing you have heard could be worse than the truth, I fancy,” replied Ivan, indifferently. “Some day he will be called to his account; meanwhile, he is enjoying his little hour of prosperity.”

“And who is the officer with him?” I inquired, pushing my advantage.

Miloslavsky glanced back and shrugged his shoulders.

“Another rascal, Colonel Pzykof, and he is likely to be called to an early reckoning,” he added, a peculiar smile curving his full lips,—a smile which suggested to me at once the triumph of some secret scheme.

“The funeral procession is forming now,” he continued, quickening his step, “and they will be disturbed by an unusual occurrence.”

“I saw that there was some interest awake,” I said. “What is the new development?”

Miloslavsky smiled again.

“The Czarevna Sophia goes in the procession,” he said quietly.

I started, knowing that this was contrary to every usage of the Russian court, and that the Byzantine custom compelled the imperial princesses to remain behind a canopy. Miloslavsky saw my surprise.

“It is an innovation,” he said; “but Sophia Alexeievna is overcome with grief for her brother; and, after all, why should not a sister stand beside her brother’s corpse?”

He seemed to challenge me to express an opinion.

“I am surprised only because I know that your customs are so arbitrary,” I replied, smoothly. “In France, it would seem most natural for the czarevna to follow her brother’s body to the grave.”

“Yet it has been the cause of much dispute,” said Miloslavsky, bitterly, “and the Czarina Natalia is opposed to it. Naturally enough she does not grieve much that the elder brother has passed away from her son’s path to the throne,” he added in an undertone.

I was discreetly silent. We had passed through the anterooms out on to the Red Staircase, and stood looking down upon the crowd. It reminded me of the election of Peter, only that this was a silent throng, impressed, no doubt, by the presence of death. The procession was forming, and everywhere the black garb of mourning seemed to swallow up the light. The Russian dress of that day was a strange contrast to the French. The men wore robes and sleeves as long as those of the women, and a man’s high cap was not unlike a woman’s head-gear. It was seventeen years afterwards that Peter the Great inaugurated a change of fashion by cutting off the sleeves of the boyars, with his own hands, at a supper given by the Boyar Sheremétief. Verily, I have lived to see great changes in Russia since that day, when I stood looking down upon the Red Place, thronged with black-robed figures, and upon the bier of the Czar Feodor. It was the darkest hour in that period of history, and just before the dawn of a new reign; the star of the house of Romanof was in the ascendant, but its light was not yet diffused.

It was a dull day; the sky was heavy, and the Kremlin wore its most gloomy aspect; even the red pavement of the square was almost obscured by the mass of people, and the voices of the multitude were hushed as the deep notes of the great cathedral bells tolled solemnly, on every hand, the mournful dirge of Russia’s mightiest, laid in the dust to share at last the common fate of his humblest subject,—for how great a leveller is Death!

Miloslavsky and I were parted when we took our places in the dreary procession, and the slow march to the cathedral was begun. Every eye was turned on the Czarevna Sophia Alexeievna, who walked beside the bier of the late czar. I saw that the Miloslavskys were playing for high stakes, for the unusual presence of one of the princesses and her manifest grief were producing a strange effect upon the vast crowd surging about the cortége. It seemed a long time before we stood at last within the great cathedral, which was draped in black until it looked like a huge sarcophagus, and the multitude, swayed by a new and deep emotion, packed the immense edifice and filled the square without. It was a scene of strange solemnity. Before the altar stood the bier, covered with the imperial pall, and the tall tapers around it made a blaze of light almost dazzling in its contrast to the gloom of the rest of the great interior, except here and there, where a ray of light was caught and reflected from the gold upon the pillars. By the dead czar stood the patriarch and the archbishops in their rich robes, chanting the service, while the multitude knelt in the silence beyond. Every word that the priests chanted sounded clearly in that intense quiet, and the awful solemnity of death brooded over us. A dead man, but for that hour, czar of all the Russias still! It seemed to my imagination that some secret emotion possessed the kneeling crowd, that every breath was drawn with some new resolution, that even the atmosphere was surcharged with foreboding. The blaze of gold and silver upon the high altar flashed in the light of a hundred tapers, and every line in the patriarch’s face was magnified in that clear blaze; but beyond the circle of the tapers, not even the daylight seemed to penetrate to where we knelt in the shadow, and the low chant of the clergy rose and fell and sobbed in its monotonous refrain.

Suddenly, in the midst of that solemn ceremony, we heard a woman’s voice raised in lamentation. I think that every man in that great multitude caught his breath to listen, and every eye was fixed on that circle of flame about the pall, as the Czarevna Sophia rose and stretched out her hands in passionate supplication to Heaven. Her words were incoherent, but we heard her voice, and we saw her as she flung herself down beside the bier, clutching it in an agony of grief.

Was she acting? I asked myself the question even while I felt a scorn of myself for being contemptuous in my judgment of a stricken woman; for truly, in losing her elder brother, she had lost her chief stay and hope. Yet I knew the great Sophia too well to be wholly sure that her emotion was entirely without thought of its effect upon the people; I knew her to be an astute politician and an adroit manager. Yet it was a pathetic scene,—the strong woman’s abandon in her grief and despair. The effect upon the multitude was at once apparent; there was a murmur through the crowd, low but deep. And it was then that the Czarina Natalia took that step which caused so much unfavorable comment. Taking the little Czar Peter by the hand, she left the cathedral, and in a few moments, by some mysterious agency, the news spread through the crowd; and in that hour the czarina lost more prestige than she was likely to regain for many a long day. The sharp contrast between the agony of Sophia’s grief, and the absence of reverence for the dead in the czarina’s conduct was too strikingly presented to the people. The excuse that Natalia pleaded, that the child Peter was weary with the long service, was insufficient, for the Miloslavskys were only too eager to fan the flame of popular resentment against the young czar’s mother.

It was when we were at last leaving the cathedral, pressed and hemmed in by the crowd, that I was pushed almost against the Boyar Ramodanofsky. As I glanced at him, I saw a curious look come over his face; his features seemed to freeze with sudden horror, and his eyes fixed themselves in a stare. Following the direction of his glance, I saw in the crowd the tall figure of my acquaintance of election day, Peter Lykof. He was apparently looking at the boyar, and there was a smile on his lips; and was it the scar that so distorted it, and made it horrible, mocking, revengeful? I watched them in keen surprise, until the people surged between, and I saw Lykof no more. Ramodanofsky walked before me like a man in a dream, and I kept him in sight as long as it was possible; but presently, in the press and confusion, I lost him also. Later, I heard that he had been taken suddenly ill, and leaving the procession, had been driven home. All the way along I looked eagerly for another sign of Lykof, but my vigilance was not rewarded with success.

Meanwhile, the funeral cortége took its slow course, returning across the Grand Square of the Kremlin, and once more the figure of the bereaved czarevna absorbed all attention, and she continued to give way to her grief. We had almost reached the centre of the Red Place when she made her appeal to the people. It was the climax of the scene, and took the opposing faction completely by surprise. Pausing, and facing the vast multitude, she stretched out her hands to them with an eloquent gesture; in a moment there was a profound silence, and her voice was distinctly heard at a long distance:—

“Our brother, the Czar Feodor, has departed from this life,” she said. “His enemies have poisoned him. Be merciful unto us orphans, for we are desolate. Our brother Ivan has not been elected czar, and we have no one to protect us. We are innocent; but if you and the boyars wish to be rid of us, let us go to other lands, where we can have the protection of Christian kings.”