1636:The Kremlin games

Chapter 49

May 1634

“Princess?” Anya said. “What are these?” Anya held up some sheets of paper and Natasha looked at them.

“Oh. Those.” Natasha sat down next to Anya and said quietly, “You know the dies we made for the Gun Shop?”

Anya nodded.

“I had an extra set made and sent it to Murom. I’m having AK3’s made for my armsmen.”

“How many?”

“Not a lot. A couple of hundred. You know that we’d be last in line, with Andrei Korisov and Cass Lowry doing the distribution.”

“Have you seen the latest?” Pavel Egorovich Shirshov asked, handing a pamphlet to Ivan Mikhailovich Vinnikov.

The guard captain looked at the pamphlet and began to read silently.

“Out loud if you don’t mind,” Pavel Egorovich said testily. Though a skilled craftsman, he didn’t read.

Ivan Mikhailovich cast him an apologetic look and began to read out loud. “If we are to have a constitution it must ensure the rights of all Russian citizens…” He continued reading. It was an argument that without a section limiting government, the constitution would be just another way to tie the people down. The writer actually seemed to wonder if a constitution was a good idea at all. Then he went on to-purportedly-quote a conversation between members of the boyar class. A cousin and a younger son of one of the great families. They were reported to have said that the great families thought that a constitution would be a great thing if they got to write it. The conversation was supposed to have been overheard in a brothel.

“Any idea who wrote this?” Ivan asked, a bit nervously. This was the sort of thing that could get people in serious trouble.

Pavel shook his head. “A boy in Moscow was selling them on the street. Couldn’t have been more than ten or so.” That was happening more and more frequently. Scandals mixed with political opinion.

“I talked to one of them a bit a few days ago.” Pavel commuted back and forth between the Army’s dacha and the Kremlin every few days. “He sells his papers to make a bit of money. He buys them from a man he thinks is a bureau man, but it could be a merchant. There is apparently more than one man, and they don’t all meet in the same place.”

“It says here that this Patriarch Nikon caused it.” Colonel Pavel Kovezin stared at the broadsheet with distaste clearly showing on his face.

Machek Speshnev, who had brought this news to the colonel, nodded. A lieutenant in this regiment of Streltzi, Machek was a pious man. This information had struck a chord with him, as well as with many other members of the Palace Guard Regiments.

“I’m surprised this information became public, but it has. The question is, is there anything we can do about it?” Machek’s family would most definitely wind up as oppressed “Old Believers,” he was sure. “I don’t think I’d care to be sent up north, chasing, beating and killing priests.”

The very idea was repugnant.

A lot of information that was coming from the up-timer histories was repugnant. Inconceivable, a lot of it.

Colonel Kovezin stopped staring at the broadsheet. “How many people have seen this?”

“A lot of them,” Machek admitted. “The things have been being passed around all over the city. Along with the ones about killing rats, boiling water, not drinking so much…”

“This city is being buried in paper,” Colonel Kovezin said. Then he grinned. “We live in interesting times. Never mind this. I’m sure the patriarch is well aware of it and will make a pronouncement. Try to keep the men calm. Today is a big day for us and I want everyone’s attention kept on his duty.”

Machek grinned back. “Today is the day?”

“Yes. Today we receive our new rifles. Never mind the flurry of paper coming out of the Dacha. It’s not our problem.”