It was a resourceful argument, but it made no difference to Natalya. She wrote to Peter, begging him to remember his promise to remain on shore and urging him to return to Moscow.
She even enclosed a letter from his three-year-old son, Alexis, endorsing her plea. Peter replied several times that she must not worry: "If you are grieved, what pleasure have I? I beg you make my wretched self happy by not grieving about me" and "You have deigned to write to me ... to say that I should write to you oftener. Even now I write by every post and my only fault is that I do not come myself."
In fact, Peter had no intention of quitting Archangel until the expected fleet of Dutch merchantmen arrived from Amsterdam. Meanwhile, his days passed joyfully. From the window of his house on Moiseev Island he could see ships arriving and departing on the river. Eagerly, he boarded and inspected every ship in port, questioning the captains for hours, climbing the masts to study the rigging and examining the construction of the hulls. The Dutch and English captains lavished hospitality on the youthful monarch, inviting him to drink and dine with them on board. They talked of the wonders of Amsterdam, the great shipbuilding center of Zaandam, the courage of Dutch seamen and soldiers in resisting the ambitions of Louis XIV of France. Soon, Holland became Peter's passion, and he walked the streets of Archangel dressed in the costume of a Dutch sea captain. He sat in taverns smoking a clay pipe and emptying bottle after bottle with grizzled Dutch captains who had sailed with the legendary admirals Tromp and de Ruyter, and with Lefort and his comrades he attended endless dinners and dances at the houses of foreign merchants. And he also found time to work at forge and lathe. It was during this visit that he began turning the elaborate ivory chandelier made from walrus tusks that now hangs in the Peter Gallery of the Hermitage. He went frequently to the Church of the Prophet Elijah, and worshippers learned to accept the sight of the Tsar reading the epistle or standing and singing with the choir. He liked the Archbishop of Kholmogory, Afanasy, and enjoyed talking to him after his midday dinner.
Even as the summer was ending, Peter had decided to return to Archangel the following year, but there were things he wanted to change. It depressed him that, except for his own small yacht, there was in this Russian port no Russian ship manned by Russian seamen. With his own hands, he laid the keel of a vessel larger than the little St. Peter, and commanded that it be finished during the winter. In addition, wanting a truly ocean-going Western ship, he asked Lefort and Vinius to order a Dutch-built frigate from Nicholas Witsen, Burgomaster of Amsterdam.
In mid-September, the Dutch merchant convoy arrived. Peter welcomed it and at the same time said goodbye to Archangel with a huge celebration organized by Lefort. There were banquets lasting a week, balls and salvos of artillery from the forts and the ships at anchor. The return to Moscow was slow. The barges were moving upriver now, dragged not by animals but by men pulling ropes along the shore. While the watermen strained and the barges moved slowly, the passengers got out and walked along at the edge of the forest, sometimes shooting wild ducks and pigeons for their dinner. Whenever the flotilla passed a village, the priest and peasants came to the royal barge to present fish, gooseberries, chickens and fresh eggs. Sometimes, standing on the barges at night, the travelers would see a wolf on the bank. By the time they reached Moscow in mid-October, the first snow had fallen in Archangel. The harbor was closed for winter.
That same winter, after his return to Moscow, Peter suffered a heavy blow. On February 4, 1694, after an illness of only two days, his mother, the Tsaritsa Natalya, died at forty-two. Natalya had not been well since her month-long visit to Peter's regatta at Lake Pleschev in 1693. In the winter, she was dangerously stricken. Peter was at a banquet when he received a message that his mother was failing; he jumped up and hurried to her bedchamber. He had spoken with her and received her last blessing when the Patriarch appeared and began to berate him for ' coming in the Western clothes which Peter now customarily wore; it was disrespectful and insulting to the Tsaritsa, the Patriarch declared. Furious, Peter replied that a patriarch, as head of the church, should have weightier matters to attend to than the business of tailors. Not wanting to continue the argument, Peter stormed out. He was at his house in Preobrazhenskoe when the news came that his mother was dead.
Natalya's death plunged Peter into grief. For several days, he could not speak without bursting into tears. Gordon went to Preobrazhenskoe to find Peter "exceeding melancholy and dejected." The Tsaritsa's funeral was a magnificent state pageant, but Peter refused to attend. Only after her burial did he come to her grave to pray, alone. To Fedor Apraxin in Archangel he wrote:
I dumbly tell my grief and my last sorrow about which neither my hand nor my heart can write in detail without remembering what the Apostle Paul says about not grieving for such things, and the voice of Edras, "Call me again the day that is past." I forget all this as much as possible, as being above my reasoning and mind, for thus it has pleased the Almighty God, and all things are according to the will of their Creator. Amen. Therefore, like Noah, resting awhile from my grief, and leaving aside that which can never return, I write about the living.
The rest of the letter went on to give instructions about the ship being built at Archangel, clothing for the sailors and other practical matters. At twenty-two, life moves swiftly and wounds heal quickly. Within five days, Peter appeared at Lefort's house. There were no ladies, no music, no dancing and no fireworks, but Peter did begin to talk about the world.
Within the family, Natalya's place in Peter's affections was taken by his younger sister, Natalya, a cheerful girl who, without understanding all of her brother's objectives, always supported him wholeheartedly. She belonged to his generation, and she was curious about everything that came from abroad. Nevertheless, with the Tsaritsa's death, all the strong members of Peter's family were gone: his father and mother dead, his half-sister Sophia locked into a convent. His wife, Eudoxia, was there, but he seemed utterly oblivious to her feelings or even her existence. Gone with the Tsaritsa were the last bonds of restraint on Peter's actions. He had loved his mother and tried to please her, but increasingly he had been impatient. In recent years, her constant effort to restrict his movements and curtail his desire for novelty and contact with foreigners had weighed upon him. Now, he was free to live as he wished. For Natalya's life, although influenced by her years in Matveev's Westernized house, had remained essentially that of a Muscovite woman of the older type. Her passing was the breaking of the last powerful link which had bound Peter to the traditions of the past. It was only Natalya who had kept Peter in touch with Kremlin ritual; after her death, he quickly ceased to take part in it. Two and a half months after Natalya's death, Peter appeared with Ivan in the great court Easter procession, but this was the last time he participated in Kremlin ceremonies. After that, no one possessed the strength to force him to do what he was not inclined to do.
In the spring of 1694, Peter returned to Archangel. This time, twenty-two barges were needed to carry the 300 people of Peter's suite down the river. The barges also carried twenty-four cannon for the ships, 1,000 muskets, many barrels of powder and even more barrels of beer. In high spirits at the thought of going to sea again, Peter promoted several of his older comrades to high naval-ranks: Fedor Romodanovsky was made an admiral, Ivan Buturlin a vice admiral and Patrick Gordon a rear admiral. None except Gordon had ever been on a boat, and Gordon's nautical experience had been as a passenger on ships crossing the English Channel. Peter himself took the title of skipper, intending to captain the Dutch frigate ordered from Witsen.