Chapter 3: On the road
Goritsky Monastery
July 1636
Sofia Gorchakovna got off the steamboat and looked around. Sister Sofia, that is, she thought. And she was in the company of Sister Elena, Dimitry Cherakasky's widow. Elena was dealing not just with the prospect of being forced to take holy orders, but also the death of her husband.
They were escorted by a small contingent of oprichniki under the command of a seventeen-year-old lieutenant, Vasilii Golitsyn. The boy had been polite enough. Sofia looked at the stiff little snot with the wisps of beard and the silver dog head collar tab and said, "Remember. Tell your grandfather I said he is being foolish."
The boy didn't sigh, not quite. Instead, he waved Elena and Sofia to the carriage that would take them to the monastery. Convent, as the westerners would call it. Goritsky Monastery was halfway to Archangelsk from Moscow as the crow or dirigible flew, and considerably more than halfway as the steam boat floated. It was in the hinterlands and a good place to put inconvenient upper-class women of all sorts.
Sofia looked over at Elena. The woman had been taken from her home the day after her husband's death, shipped to the dacha where Sofia had been picked up, then shipped by steamboat downriver to the Volga and then upriver to the monastery. Over a thousand miles and twelve days. The shock had worn off and all that was left was the fury. Fury at Dimitry for getting his fool self killed, fury at Sheremetev for killing him, fury at Mikhail Romanov for not staying in the hunting lodge, fury at just about everyone.
Vasilii Golitsyn had caught the brunt of that fury. There had been times that Sofia suspected that he was going to react with violence, but he hadn't.
Now Elena sniffed at him as she climbed into the carriage. It wasn't a long ride. They could see the walls of the monastery from the docks. Sofia wondered as she climbed into the carriage, What is going to happen to me now?
She looked at the monastery and next to it saw a wooden framework she recognized. It was a radio tower. Sofia remembered the chain of radio stations that stretched up to the Swedish territory in the Baltic had a link here. It was also a link in the chain of radio stations that went to the port of Archangelsk.
* * *
Several hours later, Sofia was seated in a private room. This was a prison in all but name, but it was a prison for the daughters of great houses, not for peasants. And there was always the possibility that the political winds would change and this year's prisoner would be next year's boss, so you didn't want them pissed at you.
Sofia and Elena had been treated with respect. And gotten the latest news. Czar Mikhail was in Ufa and had sent a message to the king of Sweden. They got that from the radio station in Swedish territory. Aside from that, the news was still very confused. Sofia decided that the rest could wait. She was tired.
Ufa
July 1636
The steamboats arrived late. Aside from a very small amount of gear on the Czarina Evdokia, Czar Mikhail's party had been having to work with whatever the locals had on hand. Five years after Bernie had brought plans for the Fresno scraper to Russia, they hadn't reached Ufa. There were no roads in Ufa. There were trails, gaps between buildings And aside from Filip Pavlovich Tupikov, Bernie, and a couple of others who had arrived by way of airship, there was no one who knew how to make a scraper or even how to use one. Worse, Ufa had proven to have even less privacy than the dirigible. People had seen the Czarina Evdokia in the sky and headed for Ufa to see what was going on. Hunters and trappers, farmers and delegations, crowded every building in the town. And Bernie and Natasha were just too busy to go riding off in the country. Not that Natasha's guards would allow her to go off alone, even if there was time. She might get et by a bar or somthin', Bernie told Filip. And then had to explain the reference.
"What took so long?" Bernie asked with frustration in his voice.
"We had a breakdown. And besides, with your damn dodge we were overloaded," complained Maxim Andreevich. "It overstressed the engine."
"Oh, bull crap. Even I know more about steam than that. What broke?" For the next few minutes, as the two steamboats were tied up and the unloading began, Bernie and Maxim Andreevich argued companionably about steam engines and torque versus horsepower. Filip Pavlovich came down from the Ufa kremlin and started asking about equipment and personnel.
"General Tim insisted that he and the troops could march," Maxim Andreevich explained. "The techies at Bor had to have their hydrogen generators and their—" He stopped and waved his hands. "They wanted to bring the frigging curtains on their windows."
Bernie wasn't as upset by that as the steamship captain. They need that gear.
* * *
Olga reached the docks in time to hear Bernie and Filip talking with this new man and tried to understand what she was seeing. There were bales and boxes, and iron and steel parts, copper tubes and even glass. It was a fortune in goods that simply could not be had here. Stanislav Ivanovich, her husband, was drinking less. He was still drinking, but it was more beer and less vodka, at least. And now there were all these new people with all this equipment and she didn't know where she was going to put them or all these things.
She looked over what was coming off the boats, and she started to notice something. She walked over to where the three men were still talking. "Did you bring anything useful?"
The three men looked at her.
"What do you mean?"
"Axes, saws, hammers, hand drills, looms, spindles, needles, pins? Platters, cups? Food?"
She got blank looks. "Crazy people," she shouted. Then she turned and stalked away. She had to find Anya, someone with some sense.
* * *
Anya was in the tax warehouse, going over the records. On Czarina Evdokia's instructions—and against her better judgment—Olga had explained her methods of recording the furs and their quality to Anya and Anya had been translating the records into writing for the last several days.
"They didn't bring anything useful."
"What? Who?" Then Olga saw realization on Anya's face. "You mean on the steamboats?"
Olga nodded.
"It's all useful, but you may have a point about immediate utility. What do you need?"
"Everything. Axes, ham…"
Anya held up her hands. "Wait a minute." She turned to the table she had been working at, and gathered up a notebook, a pen, and a bottle of ink. "Come sit down and we will make a list."
Before Olga had gotten more than started Anya was asking, "Why do you need that? What's this for?" and Olga found herself explaining, "We're going to need food and housing for all these new people."
For the rest of the day Olga and Anya talked.
* * *
"We're going to have to send the riverboats after supplies," Anya told Princess Natasha and Czarina Evdokia.
"Is that safe?" asked the czarina.
"I don't know, but it's necessary. I have been worrying about it since I started on the books here and talking with Olga clarified things for me. There's not enough reserve, not nearly enough for the sort of influx of people we are expecting, much less hoping for. If we don't get more food and basic equipment, we are going to freeze to death this winter…if we don't starve first.
"And we especially don't have enough to rebuild Ufa as a modern city, the way the czar and Bernie want to."
July 1636, on the road northwest of Moscow
Elena Utkin was in need of some religious comfort, so she headed for Father Yulian's wagon. Only to notice that it was rocking. Just a bit, in that certain way. Furious, she pulled open the door. Only to find Izabella astride the priest and in such a state of undress that the pregnancy was visible, if barely. She gasped. "Izabella!"
"We're busy, Mama. Wait your turn," Izabella said.
With a shout of rage, Elena reached for her daughter, pulled her away from Yulian, and shoved her to the floor, slapping her face as she fell. Then she turned toward Yulian and slapped him as well. "You rotten bastard!"
"Now, Elena, you need to control yourself. This isn't the way a mother should treat her daughter. You're distraught. You need to calm down." Yulian reached for her.
Elena slapped him again. "Keep your hands off me, you faithless peasant! And keep them off my daughter too!"
"You don't control me!" Izabella hollered, her hand holding her face where her mother had slapped her. "And you're the last one to be calling anyone faithless."
By now, the shouting had called the rest of the wagon train to the priest's wagon and there was a crowd displaying a mixture of emotions. Quite a bit of amusement, because Father Yulian's habits were more something not discussed than something not known. Especially in regard to his relationship with Elena and her daughter. There was even some jealousy showing on the part of some of the women. And there was a tiny bit of worry on Stefan's part.
* * *
Stefan was riding a borrowed horse, scouting the route through the lightly wooded plains to the north of Moscow. Once this had been forests, but now it was a mix of field, pasture, and woodland, much of it abandoned as the land wore out or the peasants to farm it became unavailable. Stefan didn't know this; he just saw the results. Peasant villages left to weather, fields left unplowed, feral goats, pigs, even sheep. The land had been over-farmed, worn out, then abandoned, and then slowly recovered as nature took it back. There were forests and fields interspersed and abandoned paths, where a village's produce had flowed to market before the village was abandoned. Stefan was on one of those. It was about six feet wide and twisty, but he thought they could run a wagon along it, if they were careful. Right up to here, where a four-inch-wide, twenty-feet-tall tree had decided that the middle of the road was the perfect place to grow. Stefan got down and examined the tree. It was going to have to be chopped down but that was the least of it. Once it was chopped down, it was going to have to be chopped up, because the limbs were interwoven with the limbs of trees on either side of the road.
He remounted and rode around the tree and continued on. There might be more such blockages. As it happened, there weren't, and he eventually turned his horse back the way he had come.
* * *
"I need four men with axes to cut down a tree about three miles up the road, but after that it's clear to a crossroads and an abandoned village about five miles further."
"That would be old Geonsk," Yulian guessed.
Stefan shrugged. "Maybe. But no one has lived there in a long time and probably no one will see us." One good thing about the amount of forest they were passing through—unless someone was right on top of them, they were safe from observation. On the downside, things like the tree they were going to have to chop down to make the road passable and fresh wagon ruts meant that they would be easy to track.
Balakhna, A town on the Volga
Lieutenant Nikita Ivanovich Utkin sat at the table with the other lieutenants of his unit. He slapped down a broadsheet. "All the peasants in Russia are running mad."
"Not all of them," corrected Alexander Nikolayevich Volkov judiciously, examining the broadsheet. "No more than a third, I would guess."
"You can laugh. You have that new farming equipment. You don't need serfs."
"That's not entirely true. My family doesn't need as many serfs to farm a given amount of land, but we still need serfs."
"So you don't care if half your serfs run off? It's just fewer mouths to feed."
"Not at all, my friend. I am just of a more philosophical bent. We'll get them back, at least most of them. That's what we're here for, after all. To catch the runaways before they get to—" Alexander paused, then continued, leaving off "czar." "—Mikhail." It was a touchy subject, whether Mikhail was actually still the czar.
"Maybe. But I'm worried about Ruzuka. Mother and Izabella are there all alone. And you know that the Poles and the Swedes are going to take advantage of this."
"Maybe not. They seem fully occupied with killing each other for the moment," Pavel put in.
"And since when has a magnate of Lithuania cared about the rest of the PLC? Ruzuka is only two hundred thirty miles from Smolensk," Nikita said.
"That's a long way through Russian forests. Don't get yourself in an uproar," Pavel said.
"And what about the runaways? You know they turn into Cossacks the moment they get out of sight of the village they are tied to. Bandits and murderers, that's all a peasant is. Only restrained by the whip and the noose," Nikita said.
"That's what we're here for," Alexander repeated. He didn't mind tweeting Nikita Ivanovich, but he didn't want to say anything that would get him or his family in trouble with the Sheremetev faction. Not since it had become clear that they were coming out on top in the power struggle that had happened after Czar Mikhail had sent his radio message. They were in enough trouble for being what Bernie Zeppi called "early adopters." They had two family members actually at the Dacha and they had been there for the last three years.
It had only been ten days since the czar had captured the airship, and no one knew which side most of the service nobility were going to come down on. In the meantime, the Sheremetev faction—which included the regiment's colonel and Nikita Ivanovich—had been ordered to turn back the escaping serfs.
So far it was mostly individuals or ad hoc groups. A single serf or a family would run. There was no practical way to drag them individually back to the farms they were supposed to be working. If they were to try, the regiment would be turned into individual soldiers, each escorting an individual serf back home. Instead, they were to terrorize them and run them back.
Alexander wasn't sure it would work. He wasn't even totally sure he wanted it to, because Alexander wasn't yet sure where he was going to come down.
On the road northeast of Moscow
July 1636
"She's not going to cooperate," Vera said flatly, some days after the incident at Father Yulian's wagon.
Stefan lifted an eyebrow. "Did you expect her to?"
"Everyone knows what Father Yulian is," Vera said. "Expecting him to keep it in his cassock is like expecting sunshine at midnight." She sighed. "Granted, the fact that Elena caught him with Izabella rather than one of the village women was probably upsetting, but really…after all, Izabella was willing enough to share."
Stefan just shook his head. The whole situation was both funny and tragic. But mostly, it was dangerous for the villagers. "We need her. We need her to stand out in front and tell people that we are where we're supposed to be."
"We can use Izabella," Vera insisted, but Stefan heard the doubt in her voice.
"Perhaps. But you know it would be better with Elena. Talk to her again, would you?"
"I told you, she's not going to cooperate." But at his look, she nodded. "It won't work, but I'll talk to her again."
* * *
Three days later, they arrived at a small village that had gotten considerably smaller since the stories about Czar Mikhail. "It's been horrible, miss," the village headman said, wringing his hat. "Half the farmers have run off and I don't know how we are going to get the harvest in."
It probably won't matter, Izabella thought. The village, Rogozhi, was part of the pay of the Slavenitsky family, who were deti boyars, clients of the Gorchakovs. So there was a good chance there wasn't going to be anyone to collect the rents for a while. Then she had second thoughts. If this was happening all over, there were going to be a lot of crops not harvested. And that meant famine. So far, they had done all right, between hunting, gathering, and trading. They had enough to eat, but she didn't have any idea what was going to happen when they got to the east. She commiserated with the headman and got permission for them to camp next to the village for the night. Her mother was in their wagon, with Vera watching her. Rogozhi was a little village that had moved a couple of times and merged with another village called Bogorodsk, and then separated again. Now there was argument about which village got which name. Nothing unusual. There were a lot of villages, and they lived and died and were reborn and renamed all the time.
They left early the next morning, and reached the Klyazma River that evening. Across the river was the village of Vokhna.
Leaving the wagons and most of the people in the forest, Stefan and Father Yulian rode up to the river to find out about the availability of boats, because it would do them no good to decide to use them if they couldn't find any. They rode up to the edge of the river and waved to get attention. It wasn't much of a river, more a creek, and looking over it, there were clumps of grass in the creek. After looking around a bit, they pulled up their feet and rode across the creek, which came almost to the bellies of the little Russian steppe ponies they were riding.
"What brings you here?" asked a man in a cassock, as they rode up the opposite bank.
"We're looking for boats to travel downriver," Father Yulian said forthrightly.
"We don't have any for sale, I'm afraid. We do a little fishing and a shallow draft boat can get you to the next village sometimes, but you're going to have to go downriver a good distance before you can travel on it."
They had dinner in the village and got the news, then went back across the river and rejoined the wagon train.
* * *
"Good morning." Stefan snuggled closer to Vera and moved a hand around to cup a breast. She snuggled closer.
"Hello in the wagons," came a voice that Stefan didn't recognize.
"You'd better find out what that's about," Vera told him and Stefan groaned.
Stefan tried to snuggle up again and Vera elbowed him in the ribs. It didn't hurt. Stefan was a big man and Vera was not a big woman, but it did make it clear that the opportunity was gone.
Still complaining, Stefan crawled out of the bed built into the wagon, and went to see what was going on. There was, about twenty yards from their camp, a farm wagon piled with boxes and barrels and two men, four women, and five children.
Father Yulian was out of his wagon too, and Elena Utkin was peeking out the curtained window of the wagon she shared with her daughter.
"What can we do for you?" Father Yulian asked as more people came out to look at the strangers. "Don't I recognize you from Rogozhi?"
One of the men nodded. "I'm Maxim Ivanovich, and this is my wife, Anna. We want to come with you."
"Is that legal?" Father Yulian asked, not sounding condemning, just curious.
"Czar Mikhail's proclamation says it is. Besides, our village is pomestie for the Slavenitsky family and Colonel Nikita Slavenitsky is the commander of the airship. So we are almost obligated to go."
Stefan almost wanted to smile, even if these people had ruined his morning.
"You should be ashamed!" Elena Utkin came storming out of her wagon. "You are tied to the land, not to Nikita Slavenitsky, and you know it. You get back to your village before I have you whipped."
Their guests were starting to look frightened.
"Oh, Mother, shut up!" Izabella came into the center of the camp, and Stefan didn't see which wagon she was coming from. By now, Vera was out of the wagon and the children were peeking out of the windows. In fact, just about everyone in camp was watching. "You know perfectly well that Papa will kill you if he catches us. We're all heading for Ufa and it's pretty clear that—Ah, what was your name again?"
"Maxim, Lady," said the man differentially. Running or not, they weren't prepared to beard a noble in her lair.
"Maxim and his family and, who are you?" She looked at the others.
"I'm Oleg." He pointed at one of the women. "This is my wife, Eva, and her sisters, Klara and Kseniya."
"Maxim, Oleg and their families want to go with us. And I for one think that if they can pull their own wagon they should be allowed to."
That set the pattern. They were joined by at least one or two people at every village they had contact with. People who hadn't been willing to run on their own, but wanted to go if they had some sort of protection.
The wagon train followed the river down a few miles before crossing it and heading east again. None of them knew the way to Ufa in any detail, so it was a case of scouting each day and looking for paths that could take the wagons.
Goritsky Monastery
July, 1636
Sofia Gorchakovna waved at Marta. Marta had been her maid for years and was—or had been—a serf of the Gorchakov family. Between Natasha and Czar Mikhail, she was now free. But she was in her fifties and was comfortable with Sofia. She made her own way to the monastery to take up her duties, and she was now being paid. Marta came over with the tea service.
"What does Lev tell you?"
Marta looked over at Sister Elena and hesitated, but at Sofia's nod she spoke quietly, giving Sofia a rundown of the recent events in Russia. Lev was a Dacha-trained radioman, and he had strong sympathies for the Gorchakov clan. That wasn't at all uncommon. Almost all of the radiotelegraph operators had been trained at the Dacha and most of them had sympathies for the clan. That had come as something of a boon to the ladies of Goritsky Monastery. It gave them better access to the radio.
Sofia listened to the reports and watched Elena nodding at the interesting bits.
* * *
After dinner, Elena went back to her room. She then sent a note to Ludmila, who had ended up here after a rather torrid affair with a groundskeeper offended her husband. The groundskeeper, with her help, had escaped execution and run off to be a Cossack. Ludmila was a smart woman with a good grasp of the politics of Russia and little respect for them. A network was developing here in the monastery, not exactly secret, but certainly private. Women who knew Russian politics analyzing the events of the day, and trying to make predictions about what it all meant.