1636:The Kremlin games

Chapter 56

July 17, 1634

“Oh!” Judy the Younger Wendell heaved a great sigh. “She’s beautiful.”

The bride was beautiful. Brandy Bates wore a flowing, white, angora/wool gown with a Chinese silk veil. The veil was attached to a wreath of white roses mixed with baby’s breath and myrtle leaves. The leaves were said to bring good luck to the marriage. Brandy carried a bouquet of more white roses, baby’s breath, ivy and pale pink carnations.

“She’s probably melting in that wool,” Vicky Emerson muttered. “God knows, I am.”

The Barbie Consortium were bridesmaids at the wedding of the season. Wedding of the year, could be. And in spite of Vicky’s every effort, the skirts were long and the dresses modest. Not her favorite look.

“Shh!” Millicent hissed. “She’s almost here.”

The wedding was being held in the formal garden of the Residentz, the home and offices of Vladimir Gorchakov’s Russian delegation. Father Kotov had pushed for the wedding to be held at St. Vasili’s Russian Orthodox Church, but there were just too many people who needed to be invited. And most of them had shown up.

“Brandy is just gorgeous.” Tate Garrett, Vladimir’s chef, wiped her eyes.

“Prince also,” said Father Kotov’s wife Kseniya. Her English was so heavily accented it was barely comprehensible, but given that the woman had only been in Grantville for three months Tate was impressed she spoke any English at all. She herself had only learned a handful of Russian terms and was still incapable of following any sentence spoken in the language.

Kseniya was right about the prince, too. Vladimir had suffered the indignity of Grantville’s eclectic fashion mix-with Russian tradition thrown in-but somehow, magically, it had all come together in a cohesive whole. He wore a Russian style fur hat and cape and trousers that were so tight they might almost have been hosiery. The ceremony was nice, too… if a bit long and convoluted with the greater part of it in a language hardly anyone understood. The reception was more interesting.

The wedding cake Tate had worked on decorating for two days stood tall and gleaming in the center of a table, flanked by molded Russian Creams on each side. Every kitchen maid at the Residentz had learned to make mints whether she wanted to or not, because there were literally thousands of them. Tate blessed Vladimir several times for choosing an afternoon reception. She might have had a nervous breakdown if she’d had to do a formal dinner for all these dignitaries. Instead, they’d set up an informal buffet. People were circulating freely, murmuring to one another about various things.

Tate began to relax. It was going well.

“No, it’s not that simple,” Kseniya Kotova said. “The czar can’t make laws, not without the consent of the Assembly of the Land or at least the Boyar Duma. It’s not just that it would be unadvisable; he literally doesn’t have the authority to change the law on his own.”

Reverend Green waited for the translator to finish. Once he was done, Green frowned and spoke in English. “So if he wanted to end serfdom, for instance, the Duma would stop him?”

Most of the Russian delegation in Grantville was well-versed in English because England was Russia’s biggest trading partner in the early seventeenth century. But not all of them were-and, in any event, the English they knew was quite different from the version spoken by up-timers. So, they’d brought a number of translators with them.

Kseniya’s husband had been chosen as their priest partly because he was fluent in English. With his help, she’d grown fairly adept in the language, so she thought she’d understood what Green had said. But since the third person present in room, Colonel Leontii Shuvalov, was one of the Russians who spoke almost no English, she waited until the translator was finished just to be sure.

She then glanced over at Shuvalov. Kseniya was by now fully aware of the up-timers’ attitude toward serfdom, but this was not the place to discuss it. While she was still trying to figure out how to guide the conversation to a safer topic, the colonel spoke up. “It probably wouldn’t be the Boyar Duma, what you would call the royal council, that stopped him, but the Assembly of the Land. The ah, middle class I believe you call it. The great families have never been the ones pushing to limit the rights of departure.”

Again, they waited for the translator. Once he was done, the American priest-no, she thought he was called a pastor-looked surprised.

“I would have thought they would want it most.”

Kseniya understood that quite well. She waited for the translator to interpret for the colonel and then said: “Yes, I know you would. You up-timers tend to simplify things.” Kseniya was a bit annoyed at Reverend Green. “It isn’t a conflict between the evil lords and their suffering serfs. The great families can afford to… what is it you call it up-time… go head-hunting? Though, in the case of serfs, it’s more back-hunting.”

Reverend Green snorted.

“I’m not sure that Boyar Sheremetev would agree with you,” Colonel Shuvalov said.

“Of course not.” Kseniya regretted saying it as soon as it came out but the truth was she despised Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev though she had never met him. From all reports he was ill-tempered and not very good at dealing with the bureaus. Still, the news that the Smolensk war would have been a disaster had brought him back into politics. So she explained a bit more. “Russia lacks labor, and the weather conditions that make it the next thing to impossible to work the land for half the year don’t help. If the serfs were released from the land, the only people in Russia who could afford to hire the labor needed to run a farm would be the great families and the big monasteries.”

“Don’t forget the new innovations,” Colonel Shuvalov pointed out. “While there is truth in what you’re saying, there is less of that truth now than there was before the Ring of Fire.”

Kseniya hesitated. What she wanted to say was unsafe, more for her family than for her. But spending time in Grantville had made it harder to keep her mouth shut. “It takes time to put those innovations into production, Colonel. Can you afford to lower your-” A quick glance at Reverend Green. “-tenants’ rent?”

Colonel Shuvalov grinned at her. It was a surprisingly friendly grin. “Actually, yes. Though I will admit that it’s only because Boyar Sheremetev has been quite generous with my family.” Then the colonel turned back to Reverend Green and addressed him through the translator. “Kseniya’s father-in-law and I aren’t really in the same position, not quite. We are both Russian officers. He a captain, I a colonel, but the larger difference is that aside from the lands granted me by the czar, Boyar Sheremetev provides additional support. So my financial position is a bit better than his and less likely to be swamped by changing economic tides.”

“Speaking of the army, how are the negotiations with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth going?” Kseniya asked.

“Negotiations?” Reverend Green asked, after he got the translation. “What are you negotiating with the PLC?”

Now Colonel Shuvalov did look shocked. “Surely you knew! Poland and Russia are at war! We have been since the Truce of Deulino expired over a year ago. The negotiations are an attempt to prevent the shooting war from resuming.” Then he looked back at Kseniya. “Not well, when I left Russia. King Wladyslaw is insisting that he is the rightful czar.” He snorted. “And I believe the rightful king of Sweden, as well. Boyar Sheremetev is convinced that he, like we, has read the history of the other time Smolensk war. So he knows, probably, that it is unlikely that he can actually gain the throne. But considering the degree to which he trounced us in that other time, he seems to expect to receive the war indemnity without actually having to fight the war.”

“How likely is he to trounce you this time if it comes to a shooting war?” Reverend Green wanted to know.

“I wish I knew,” the colonel said. “The patriarch was sure that we would win before Prince Gorchakov sent his letter, and we might have been in a shooting war before now if Sigismund III had died this time around when he did in that other history. But he lasted six months more. Boyar Sheremetev was less convinced of our chances in a shooting war and remains so. At the same time, we have learned a lot from the Dacha and the Gun Shop. Even from those silly board games they are playing in the Moscow Kremlin now. Still, it will be better for all if we can reach a negotiated settlement.”

Which was, Kseniya knew, the stance of the Sheremetevs and their supporters. None of them had any way of knowing it, but just then a young lieutenant named Timofeivich was reporting to his general in a place called Rzhev.