The fingers of Nagul, Okhlop, and Ziabel reach into the pack of Rodina. I take out my flint-fire with cold blue flame and let them light up.
“It looks like you’re all hooked on this devilish weed. Do you know that tobacco is damned forever by the seven saintly stones?”
“We know, Komiaga.” Nagul grins, taking a toke on his cigarette.
“You’re smoking Satan’s incense, oprichniks. The devil taught people to smoke tobacco so they would praise him with incense. Every cigarette is incense to the glory of the foul fiend.”
“But one defrocked monk told me, ‘He who does tobacco smoke / is sure to be Christ’s bloke,’” Okhlop objects.
“And the Cossack lieutenant in our regiment always said, ‘Smoked meat keeps longer.’” Posokha sighs as he takes a cigarette.
“You numbskulls, you blockheads! Our Majesty doesn’t smoke,” I tell them. “Batya quit, too. We have to watch the cleanliness of our lungs, too. And our tongues.”
They smoke silently, listening.
The door opens and the rest of the lot stagger out with the noble’s wife. She’s naked, unconscious, wrapped in a sheepskin coat. For us, tumbling a woman is a special kind of work.
“Is she alive?”
“They rarely die from it!” Pogoda smiles. “It’s not the rack, after all.”
I take her senseless hand. There’s a pulse.
“All right, then. Drop the woman off at her family’s.”
“You got it.”
They take her out. It’s time to finish up. The oprichniks keep glancing at the house: it’s wealthy, full of goods. But since the mansion is to be demolished by order of His Majesty, no stealing is allowed. It’s the law. All the goods go to His Majesty’s red rooster.
I nod to Ziabel; he’s our guy for fire.
“Take over!”
He takes his Rebroff out of the holster and puts a bottle-shaped attachment on the barrel. We move away from the house. Ziabel aims at the window and shoots. The windowpane splinters and shatters. We move farther away from the house. We stand in a half-circle, take our daggers out of their scabbards, raise them up, lower them, and aim them at the house.
“Woe to this house!”
“Woe to this house!”
“Woe to this house!”
There’s an explosion. The flames are thick, belching out the windows. Shards of glass, frames, and grates fall on the snow. The mansion has been taken. His Majesty’s red rooster has come to call.
“Well done!” Batya’s face appears in the frosty air, in a rainbow frame. “Let the Streltsy go, and get yourselves to prayer in Uspensky!”
All’s well that ends well. When work is done—we pray in the sun.
We exit, avoiding the hanging corpse. On the other side of the gates the Streltsy are pushing back reporters. They stand there with their cameras, champing at the bit to take pictures of the fire. Now they’re allowed in. Since the News Decree, after that memorable November, it’s all right. I wave to the lieutenant. The cameras focus on the fire, on the hanging nobleman. In every house, in every news bubble, Russian Orthodox people will know and see the power of His Majesty and the state.
As His Majesty says:
“Law and order—resurrected from the Gray Ashes, that’s what Holy Rus stands on and will always stand on.”
It’s the sacred truth!
In Uspensky Cathedral, as always, the atmosphere is murky, muggy, and majestic. Candles burn, the icons’ gold casings shine, the censer smokes in the hand of narrow-shouldered Father Juvenale, his delicate voice echoes; the bass voice of the fat, black-bearded deacon booms from the choir steps. We stand in crowded rows—all the oprichniks of Moscow. Batya is here, and Yerokha, his right hand, and Mosol, his left hand. And we’re all native Muscovites, including me. We’re the backbone. We also have the young ones. His Majesty is the only one absent. On Mondays he usually graces us with his presence—he comes to pray with us. But today our sun isn’t here. His Majesty, our head of state, is completely immersed in state affairs. Or he might be in the Church of the Deposition of the Robe of the Virgin Mary, his domestic temple, praying for Sacred Russia. His Majesty’s will is law and mystery. And thank God.
It’s a normal day today, Monday. The usual service. The Epiphany has passed, sleighs have been ridden along the Moscow River, the cross has been lowered in an ice hole. Under a silver gazebo, twined ’round with spruce boughs, infants have been baptized, we ourselves have taken a dip in the icy water, fired the cannons, bowed to His Majesty and Her Highness, feasted in the Granite Chamber with the Kremlin entourage and the Inner Circle. Now there are no holidays until Candlemas, just plain workdays. There are jobs to do.
“And God will be resurrected and His enemies shall be in ruins…” reads Father Juvenale.
We cross ourselves and bow. I pray to my favorite icon, the Savior of the Ardent Eye; I tremble before the fury of our Savior’s eyes. Formidable is our Savior, immovable in His Judgment. I gather strength for battle from His stern gaze, I fortify my spirit, train my nature. I amass hatred for our enemies. I sharpen my mind and reason.
Yes, all God’s and His Majesty’s enemies shall be scattered.
“Grant victory over all who oppose us…”
There are plenty of opponents, that’s true. As soon as Russia rose from the Gray Ashes, as soon as she became aware of herself, as soon as His Majesty, Father Nikolai Platonovich, laid the foundation stone of the Western Wall sixteen years ago, as soon as we began to fence ourselves off from the foreign without and the demon within—opponents began to crawl out of the cracks like noxious centipedes. A truly great idea breeds great resistance. Our state has always had enemies inside and out, but the battle was never so intense as during the period of Holy Russia’s Revival. More than one head rolled on the block at Lobnoe Mesto during those sixteen years, more than one train carried our foes and their families beyond the Urals, more than one red rooster crowed at dawn in a noble’s mansion, more than one general farted on the rack in the Secret Department, more than one denunciation was dropped in the Work and Word! box at Lubianka, more than one moneychanger had his mouth stuffed with the bills of his ill-gotten gains, more than one clerk was dunked in boiling water, more than one foreign envoy was escorted out of Moscow by three shameful yellow Mercedovs, more than one reporter was pushed from the tower at Ostankino with goose feathers up his ass, more than one hackneyed rabble-rouser of a writer was drowned in the Moscow River, more than one nobleman’s widow was dropped off at her parents’ home, naked and unconscious, wrapped in a sheepskin…
Each time I stand in Uspensky Cathedral with a candle in my hand, I think secret, treasonous thoughts on one subject: What if we didn’t exist? Would His Majesty be able to manage on his own? Would the Streltsy, the Secret Department, and the Kremlin regiment be enough?
And I whisper to myself, softly, beneath the singing of the choir:
“No.”
Our repast in the White Chamber is quite ordinary today.
We sit at long, bare, oak tables. The servants bring us kvass made from bread crumbs, day-old cabbage soup, rye bread, beef boiled with onion, and buckwheat porridge. We eat, discuss our plans quietly. Our silent bells sway back and forth. Each wing of the oprichnina has its own plans: some are busy in the Secret Department today; some in the Mind Chamber; some in the Ambassadorial; some in the Trade Department. Right now I have three affairs going.
The first: deal with the clowns and minstrels, and approve the new performance for the holiday concert.
The second: snuff out the star.