1636:The Kremlin games

Chapter 67

October 1635

Father Nikon walked down the hallway of the patriarch’s palace as though he had every right to be there. He didn’t. At least not officially. The person who occupied the patriarch’s seat would have said he didn’t, but he had God’s permission to be here, so he didn’t much care what Filaret thought. The monastery he was from wasn’t the one his papers said he was from, or he would have had guards escorting him everywhere. Father Nikon was here because Filaret feared the up-time wisdom and wanted to keep it all to himself. But God had provided that wisdom to the entire world and Filaret was serving the devil in attempting to restrict it.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtsevich and Father Nikon had discussed the matter several times and both the wealth and the new spiritual wisdom that God had sent from that other future had demonstrated that Filaret didn’t hold God’s favor. Control of the God-provided wealth of knowledge from the future didn’t belong in the hands of a man who was so stingy with its benefits.

Filaret was holding back the religious truth revealed by the up-timers. God had passed a great new miracle by bringing forth an entire new town from the future. Possessing new truths, practical as well as spiritual. But the false patriarch, Filaret, was suppressing the truth in order to maintain his personal power. He was rejecting the spiritual aspects of that new truth, considering only those dribbles that might seem useful to him at the moment.

So Father Nikon had been told. So Father Nikon believed.

He would remove the impediment and God’s Grace and the up-timer’s knowledge would flow into Holy Rus as a great flood of cleansing.

Here in the patriarch’s palace, priests’ robes were not the least bit uncommon. And three additional priests wouldn’t be noticed in any way, so long as they kept their six-shooters hidden. Father Nikon was proud of his. It would be the instrument of God’s will. There were privileges that went with devotion to God. Father Nikon was confident that he would receive them in this world or the next.

The door to the patriarch’s private quarters were guarded but that was expected. Father Nikon walked by them and then turned to face the guard as though just remembering something. The guard turned to look at him and Father Simon grabbed him by the throat and stuck a knife in his back. But the man didn’t die quietly. He jerked and tried to scream and banged a fist on the door to the patriarch’s rooms.

Filaret looked up when the pounding on the door began, annoyed. “What is that noise?” he grumbled. “Go out there and stop it.”

The guard, obeying his instructions, opened the door only to be flung back into the room as the door was slammed inward. Filaret stood, in shock, as the men rushed into the room.

Almost before Filaret consciously realized what was happening, he ducked behind his desk and started scrambling to get the drawer open. Filaret, too, had one of the Gun Shop’s six-shooters that had been introduced by Cass Lowry.

Filaret’s guardsman started to shout, then there was a loud bang. Filaret never reached his six-shooter. The men ran around his desk and three shots were fired.

The noise brought more guards, as Father Nikon had expected. What he hadn’t expected was the bullet that entered his heart. Because he’d been assured that, once the false patriarch was dead, he would be safe and protected.

Father Simon was killed next, then Father Petr joined him.

“What’s going on here?” Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev shouted. “Where is my cousin? We have an appointment.”

“The patriarch has been murdered.”

“How did you allow this to happen? Where are the assassins?”

“I don’t know, sir. The two guards that were here are dead. We had to kill the assassins. They were armed with up-time weapons. Could they have been sent by the Swede?”

“Oh, my God. My cousin! The patriarch and I disagreed on many things, but Russia is a poorer place without him. For now we must see to protecting the czar and the royal family. Come with me, Captain.”

Over the next few hours, Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev went about protecting the realm from the unknown threat. Just as he’d intended. He spirited Czar Mikhail and his family out of Moscow, and then called an emergency meeting of the Boyar Duma.

The rumors started spreading before the meeting started, for Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev had seeded the ground.

The primary rumor was that the czar and the patriarch had had a major argument over Czar Mikhail’s plan to allow all serfs who could afford to buy out of their bondage to the land to do so. In the course of that argument, it was said, Filaret had suffered a heart attack.

A secondary rumor was that Czar Mikhail had shot his father.

Another was that he collapsed, weeping hysterically, when he heard the news.

But, consistent among them all, was that without Filaret’s influence, the czar would allow the serfs to run free.

Moscow was packed with service nobility, whose estates would be left worthless by such an act.