BORIS AND HIS FELLOW-OFFICERS.
The young Tsar was himself surprised, as he sat alone at his evening
meal, to find how very heavily the loss of poor Boris weighed upon him.
He had scarcely realized how closely the young hunter had wound himself
already around his heart--a heart which, in spite of its hardness and
waywardness, was capable of forming the warmest attachments. Peter was
all through his life on the look-out for men who were after his own
ideal, and upon whom he could rely for assistance in carrying out the
vast schemes and plans for the good of his people, and the development
and aggrandizement of his country, with which his brain was filled from
the first. Such a man Peter thought he had found in Boris--one upon
whose absolute faithfulness he could rely, and whose courage, as he had
seen already more than once, was equal to any emergency. He felt that
he could have trained Boris to be the ideal man for his purposes, to be
employed far or near with equal confidence, and in any capacity that
seemed good to his employer; and instead, here was the poor fellow gone
already, a martyr to his devotion to himself! "Why are there not more
of my poor Russians like this one?" thought the young Tsar; "and where
am I to lay my hand upon such another--even _one_?" It certainly was
most unfortunate and deplorable; so no wonder the Tsar's servants found
their master in his most dangerous mood, and left him, as soon as might
be, to himself.
Peter ate his cabbage-soup, and sighed as he ate. Why had he not
anticipated the sudden action of Boris, and sternly forbidden him to
sacrifice himself--ah, why indeed? Peter was not accustomed to personal
devotion of this sort. He had not come across a Boris before this one,
or he might have guessed what the brave fellow would do, and could
have pulled him back into the carriage at the last moment. He would
rather have fed those thrice-accursed gray brutes upon the whole of his
retinue than that they should have feasted upon that brave heart. Poor
Bear-Hunter! he had killed his last bear. What a fight there must have
been at the very last before he permitted the skulking brutes to crowd
around and pull him down!
Wrapped in these sad reflections, Peter sat before his neglected bowl
of soup, when of a sudden the door opened, and the apparition of the
very subject of his dismal reflections stood before him. Bootless,
dishevelled, and with his clothes, what was left of them, blood-stained
and in rags, was it the ghost of Boris as he had appeared at his last
moment on earth? Peter was not superstitious, wonderfully little so for
a Russian, but for a full minute he gazed in doubt and uncertainty upon
the apparition before him. Then he burst into one of his very loudest
guffaws.
"Boris!" he cried. "Yes! it is certainly Boris. Come here, my brother.
I was already mourning you for dead. How did you escape those accursed
gray brutes? Here is a hunter indeed! Come here, my brother." Peter
kissed his friend upon both cheeks; then administered a pat on the back
which might have felled an ox, laughed aloud once more, and poured into
a tumbler an immense draught of strong vodka. "There," he said, "sit
down and drink that, my tsar of hunters, and tell me all about it."
"There's little to tell your Majesty," said Boris, taking a big sip
at the spirits. "God was very merciful to me; and as the wolves rushed
in and dragged the poor horse down, which they did almost immediately
after I left you, I grabbed at the branch of a pine and hauled myself
up out of their reach just in time--not quite in time to save my boots,
in fact; for two active fellows jumped up and pulled them both off
my legs. I hope they choked the brutes! Afterwards I settled myself
comfortably in the branches of the tree, and threw fir-cones at them
while they pulled poor Vaiska the horse to pieces and fought over his
carcass. In five minutes there was not as much of Vaiska left as would
make a meal for a sparrow. When they had eaten Vaiska, they sat around
my tree, watching me and hoping that I should soon let go and fall
into their jaws. I howled at them in their own language instead, and
they howled back at me. What I said seemed greatly to excite them, for
they ran round the tree, and jumped up at me, and licked their lips.
I climbed down to a point just above that which they could reach by
leaping, and there I reclined at my ease and slashed at them with my
knife as long as they were inclined for the game. When they grew tired
of it, they sat round the tree licking their chops and looking up
at me, and we exchanged complimentary remarks at intervals in their
language.
"After a while the rumble and jingle of the carriages of your Majesty's
retinue was heard approaching. The wolves pricked up their ears to
listen. They made as though they would go back to the road at first, in
the hope of picking up more horse-flesh--greedy brutes! as if Vaiska
was not enough for them--but thought better of it, there was so much
noise and rattle; and as the carriages came nearer and nearer, they
grew more and more anxious, until at length, with a final chorus of
abuse levelled at me as I sat up in my perch, they one after the other
retired into the wood. Then I came down and ran for the village; and
here I am, alive to serve your Majesty for many a long year, I trust."
"Glad am I to see you, my prince of hunters," said the Tsar earnestly.
"But what of your wounds--is there anything serious? You look as though
you had been half-way down their throats; you must have had a nasty
gash somewhere to have got all that blood on you. Call the surgeon and
let him see to it. I can't afford to lose so much of your good blood,
my Boris; Russia has not too much of the right quality."
Boris laughed, and glanced at his saturated shirt and waistcoat. "It's
all wolf's blood," he said, "and I wish there were more of it; I
haven't a scratch." And this was the simple truth.
So ended happily an adventure which came near to depriving Russia of
her greatest son and me of a hero.
Two days after this the Tsar with his following reached the capital,
and Boris was given a commission in one of the Streltsi regiments,
while retaining his place at the side of his master as body-attendant.
In the ranks of the Streltsi our hunter soon learned the simple drill
which the soldiers of the Russia of that day had to acquire. The
Streltsi were at this time practically the only regular regiments of
the country, though they were not destined to remain so long under
the progressive rule of their present enlightened Tsar. Being the one
armed power in the state, and having on several occasions successfully
taken advantage of their position, the Streltsi had been loaded with
privileges wrung from rulers and statesmen who were afraid of them,
and their present position was most enviable. The men were allowed to
marry, and to live at their private homes; to carry on any business or
trade they pleased by way of adding to the substantial incomes which
they already enjoyed at the expense of the state; and, in a word, to
do very much as they liked as long as they attended the easy drills
and parades which the regulations enjoined. Hence Boris had plenty of
time to spare from his military duties to devote to attendance upon his
beloved master.
Peter had a double object in placing Boris in a Streltsi regiment.
He was anxious that the hunter should learn all that there was to
be learned in so poor a military school of the life and duties of
the soldier; but chiefly because he had good reason to mistrust the
Streltsi as a body, and it suited his purpose to distribute a few of
his more enlightened and devoted adherents among the various regiments,
in order that he might rest assured that in case of disaffection among
the troops he would hear of it at the first whisper. Peter had not
forgotten a certain horrible scene of violence enacted before his
eyes by these very regiments in the days of his early childhood, when
the entire corps had revolted, and, in presence of himself and his
young co-Tsar, had massacred their chiefs and others in the square of
the palace of the Kremlin. It is probable that, young as he had been
at that time, Peter never forgave the Streltsi for that terrible
experience, and that his distrust of them as a danger to the state
dated from that day. Growing as time went on, his hatred of them
culminated in the horrors attending their ultimate extermination, to
which brief reference will be made at a later stage of this narrative.
Meanwhile Boris hastened to acquire all that he could pick up of
military knowledge. He did not like this city life, accustomed as he
was to the free and healthy open-air existence of the old Dubinka days,
neither did he like his fellows in the Streltsi regiment to which he
had been appointed; but it was enough for our faithful hunter to know
that it was the Tsar's desire that he should associate with these men:
so long as he could render service to his beloved master, Boris was
content. Nor, in truth, was Boris popular with his comrades. It was
well known that the new-comer was the _protégé_ and favourite of the
Tsar, and he was distrusted on this account; for the conscience of the
regiment was not altogether void of offence towards the young head of
the realm, and it was more than suspected that Peter had on that very
account placed Boris as a kind of spy upon their inner counsels.
The reason for the dislike entertained by the Streltsi for their
Tsar was this:--The elder brother of Peter, Ivan, was still alive
and physically in good health; but, as is well known, though he had
acted at one time as co-Tsar with Peter, Ivan was quite incapable, by
reason of the weakness of his intellect, of taking any real part in
the government of the country, and Peter, by his own brother's earnest
wish, as well as by the expressed desire of the nation, had assumed the
sole authority over the destinies of the country. The Streltsi, full of
their own importance as the actual backbone of the state, and on this
account "busy-bodies" to a man, were never perfectly satisfied with
this state of affairs, and evinced at all times a nervous anxiety as to
their duty in the matter. Ivan, they considered, was the real Tsar or
Cæsar, successor to the Byzantine and Roman Cæsars, and therefore the
lord, by divine right, of Holy Russia. It mattered little that he was
incompetent and unwilling to govern; that was regrettable, no doubt,
but it did not justify another, either Peter or any one else, sitting
in his place and holding a sceptre which did not belong to him. The
Streltsi were probably perfectly honest in their opinions. They had
nothing to gain by a revolution; their position was assured, and a
very good position it was. It was the feeling of responsibility which
weighed upon them, and filled them with a restless sense that they
ought by rights to interfere.
Peter, acute as he was, undoubtedly realized the exact state of
affairs, and was well aware that a constant danger of trouble with his
Streltsi regiments stood in the way of the many reforms and projects
with which his active brain teemed at all times; and it is probable
that he was on the look-out even now for a plausible excuse to rid
himself of an incubus which he felt was inconsistent with his own ideas
of the fitness of things and with the spirit of the times. Boris was
therefore, more or less, that very thing which the regiment believed
him to be--namely, a spy upon their actions and intentions.
The hunter was far too simple-minded to comprehend that this was his
position. As a matter of fact, unlettered peasant as he was, he knew
little of the history of the last few years. He was aware, indeed,
of the existence of Ivan, but he had no suspicion whatever of the
good faith of his companions towards the Tsar; all of which became,
moreover, so apparent to his fellow Streltsi, that they soon learned
to look indulgently upon "simple Boris," as he was called, as one who
was too much a fool to be a dangerous spy. Hence, though never openly
airing their views before their latest recruit, the young officers of
the regiment gradually began to disregard the presence of Boris, and
to indulge in hints and innuendoes referring to the matter which they
had at heart, even though Boris was in the room and sharing in the
conversation.
Now Boris, as is the case with many others, was by no means such a
fool as he looked. He heard references to matters which he did not
understand, and which he knew he was not intended to understand.
He observed frequently that parties of officers seated dining at
the eating-houses frequented by the regiment would glance at him as
he entered the room and moderate their loud tones to a whisper. He
overheard such sentences as--"The priests count for much, and they are
with us!" or again, "Who is to persuade the Grand Duke that his brother
is a mere usurper?" And once Boris thought he caught the Tsar's name,
as he entered the room, received with groans, and striding to the table
with flushed face, asked whose name the company had received with these
manifestations of dislike; whereupon the Streltsi officers had laughed
aloud, and replied that they had spoken of a dog which had stolen a
bone that didn't belong to it.
The simple-minded Boris laughed also, and said, "What dog?"
Whereat the company roared with laughter, and the major replied with
streaming eyes,--
"Oh, a big dog I saw up at the Kremlin, that found a little dog with
a nice bone, and bow-wowed at him till the little dog thought he had
better let it go with a good grace. We all thought this so mean of the
big dog that we hooted him and drank his health backwards!"
Afterwards Boris recalled this and other curious sayings of his
companions, and revolved them in his mind as he lay at the Tsar's door
at night.