Free Prince Ivan by Peter Morwood Page A

were doing in the search for heirs, alliances and dowries. And thanks to you, they saw nothing impressive!”
    “Then if they’re still within the walls,” said Ivan coldly, “we should find them, learn where they came from, and send their heads back to whoever sent them. Smoked and salted, of course,” he added as an afterthought. “Making the point we won’t be spied on is one thing, but we don’t want to cause needless offence.”
    “Of course not.” Tsar Aleksandr listened to this outrageous suggestion, looked at his son, and realized with a very small shiver that Ivan meant every word. Whether the boy felt out of sorts after being chastised or showed an indication of something deeper, the Tsar didn’t know; but he made a mental note to keep an eye open from now on. Even the best sons sometimes grew impatient…
    “The notion has already been considered,” he said. “And it’s not without a certain appeal. Unfortunately, it would be no more than one of the actions the Great Princes hope I might take. They’ve had far too much interest in Khorlov for far too long, less with an eye to marriage and alliance than conquest and annexation. Yuriy and the Mikhaylovichi may be high and mighty rulers, but they’re not so high or mighty that they’ll miss whatever chance they find to acquire yet more land. A provocation like sending people’s pickled heads about the country would justify their sending an army against me, and anyway, my son, this Tsardom has never been large enough to back up such grandiose gestures with the level of force they need. Not even with the support of the Golden Horde.”
    “You surely don’t want an alliance with them?”
    “Of course not!” The Tsar sounded faintly disgusted at the very thought. “But Yuriy of Kiev and Boris Mikhaylovich won’t know that. One more reason for leaving their spies alive: to report back what they saw here. And one of the things they’ll have to report is the sight of Manguyu Temir, eating his meat in my hall like a Christian, and well enough dressed that he must have done it to honour a new ally.”
    “One of Strel’tsin’s plots,” said Ivan softly.
    “It is. Why?”
    “No reason. I was simply curious to know if I’d guessed right. It has the High Steward’s touch about it.” Ivan wondered to himself about the brief, broken conversation he’d had with Dmitriy Vasil’yevich. There had been the ‘personages of importance’, who had, as far as he knew, failed to appear at the feast. And he began to wonder what advantages might be gained by such a highly placed minister if his pretence of friendship with the Ilkhan of the Horde was more than just pretence…
    *
    Lent came, and was endured as a holy festival must be until it became Paskha , the joyful time of Easter. The Great Fast became the Great Feast and special foods were prepared: tall kulich cakes full of dried fruit and nuts, paskha tvorog enriched with cream and formed in a mould that left the sign of the cross impressed in its sides, and lambs carved from fresh butter.
    There were more banquets, attended by more suitors. None of the banquets were as large or impressive as the very first one, which was just as well because they were if anything even less successful. Tsar Aleksandr Andreyevich was spending considerable quantities of silver only to find himself and his realm exactly where they’d been before all of this began, with one vital and unpleasant difference. Not only did he still have four unmarried children, but now the Tsardom was in debt.
    It no longer required spies from Novgorod and Kiev; the Great Princes of those cities had come in person to Khorlov, self-invited guests to one of the banquets, and had seen matters for themselves. It was only too clear that support for Khorlov and for Tsar Aleksandr was lukewarm at best among his neighbours, that his rumoured alliance with the Khan of the Golden Horde was indeed no more than a rumour, and that any territorial