Eric Flint - 1636:The Kremlin games

The first radio message Sheremetev received was semi-incoherent. It talked about Princess Natalia coming back to Murom with Czar Mikhail, freeing all the serfs in Russia, and Murom burning. It made no sense. Sheremetev sent the radio man back to the radio room to call for clarification.

The clarification, when it came, wasn’t very clear at all. So Sheremetev sent his own message.

PRINCESS NATALIA GORCHAKOV IS A TRAITOR TO THE BOYAR DUMA AND THE CZAR IS BEING HELD BY HER UNDER A SPELL. SHE AND HER UP-TIMER ARE TO BE SHOT ON SIGHT. THE CZAR IS TO BE TAKEN INTO CUSTODY FOR HIS OWN SAFETY.

Having sent off that message, Sheremetev called in the new patriarch to endorse the fact that the czar was under a spell.

The greatly enlarged group that had left Murom on two riverboats were in ignorance of these orders till they were halfway from Murom to the confluence of the Volga and the Oka rivers. But one of their boats had a radio on it and it picked up the clackity-clack of the message being sent from one riverside station to the next.

After some discussion, they decided to stop at the next station.

They marched up to the station which was in a village on the side of the Oka river. The telegraph crew were a family of the service nobility, but the very lowest end. The village had five families and maybe twenty-five people. It supported itself by fishing and farming. The telegraph crew received the rents from the village and a small salary, which they used to support themselves. The mother, the father and the eldest daughter, as well as three of the serfs in the village, could operate the spark gap transmitter. A small steam engine ran the generator that charged the battery. When it broke down-which it did frequently-they made do with a foot-pedal.

Whether they would have attempted to arrest the czar had they been in a position to, who knows? They were in no position to arrest anyone. There were four old-fashioned guns in the whole village. Instead, the czar had them send both ways along the chain his own orders. First was a repeat of Princess Natalia’s proclamation of forgiveness of debt for the serfs tied to her family’s lands and his offer of freedom for any serf that chose to join him in Ufa.

“But what about my serfs?” complained the father, in dress not dissimilar to one of his serfs. “How is my family to live without the rents?”

“And yet the work of the station is done as much by your serfs as by you,” Anya said. The messages went out, and with a further message. Sheremetev was not to be obeyed. Czar Mikhail revoked his authority and ordered his arrest.

“That’s actually more than I have the authority to do without the concurrence of the Boyar Duma and the Assembly of the Land, so I don’t really expect those orders to be obeyed. But they ought to muddy the waters.” And they did. The telegraph stations responded on the basis of personal choice. Some passed Sheremetev’s messages and not the czar’s, some passed the czar’s and not Sheremetev’s, some passed both, and a few passed neither.

The telegraph operators talked about what was going on. Most of them had been trained at the Dacha and most of them were of the upper end of the Streltzi class or the lower end of the service nobility. They were free, not serfs. Not tied to the land, but they worked for a living. Their pay was a farming village or an income, depending on where the station was located. Most of them had moved to the place they now occupied because they had been assigned to it.

Unanimity was noticeable by its absence.

Sheremetev was still furious over the news that the czar was with Princess Natalia and still discussing what it would cost to have the patriarch endorse his claim that Czar Mikhail was under a spell when a new telegraph message arrived.

BY ORDER OF CZAR MIKHAIL, FEDOR IVANOVICH SHEREMETEV IS TO BE PLACED UNDER ARREST FOR TREASON AND KIDNAPPING OF CZAR MIKHAIL AND HIS ROYAL FAMILY. HE IS ALSO SUSPECTED IN THE DEATH OF PATRARCH FILARET. CZAR MIKHAIL INVITES ALL FREEDOM LOVING RUSSIANS TO JOIN HIM AT UFA WHERE NEW LANDS WILL BE GRANTED. SERFS WILL BE RELEASED FROM THEIR BONDS TO THE LAND AND THE FREEING OF HOLY MOTHER RUSSIA WILL BEGIN.

Sheremetev threw the message across the room and the new patriarch picked it up to read, while the boyar read the rest of the messages.

BY ORDER OF PRINCESS NATALIA GORCHAKOVNA THE DEBT OF ALL SERFS ON ALL GORCHAKOV LANDS IS HEREBY FORGIVEN. ALL MY PEOPLE ARE INVITED TO JOIN ME AND CZAR MIKHAL IN UFA WHERE A NEW FREE RUSSIA IS BEING BORN. I DO NOT REQUIRE THIS OF YOU WHO OWE ALLIEGANCE TO ME BUT OFFER IT TO YOU.

This message Sheremetev handed to Patriarch Joseph. “These two, oh …” Sheremetev paused, looking for a word vile enough to describe the two messages, then gave it up and simply said, “documents spell the end of order in Russia. They are the death knell of our way of life. You must support me in this, Patriarch.”

“Of course, Director-General. However…”

Sheremetev listened as Joseph laid out the nature of the bribe he would demand in exchange for his support.

The word was already out. Dmitri Mamstriukovich Cherakasky, one of Filaret’s long-time friends who had only abandoned the war party since the Ring of Fire, came storming into Sheremetev’s office in the Kremlin, slamming open the door. Sheremetev would have been expecting him if he had thought about the copies of the dispatches that had gone to other members of the Boyar Duma, but he hadn’t.

“So the czar didn’t willingly retire to the hunting lodge but was held there.” Cherakasky sneered. “I suspected that, but decided to give you your chance because war with Poland would have been a disaster, however well we did in Rzhev. But having him and his family, you-you bumbling fool-kidnapped him, then lost him. You’re finished, Sheremetev. I’m going to the Boyar Duma and you’ll…”

Bang!

The sound of the pistol was loud in the closed room. Sheremetev swung the pistol to point at Patriarch Joseph. “Forget the bribe. You’ll support me or you’ll be where he is now.”

The guards rushed in and then stood there looking back and forth between Sheremetev and his gun, and Cherakasky bleeding out from a sucking chest wound on the floor, and Patriarch Joseph, who stood stunned.

“Petrov, who of these are trustworthy?” Sheremetev spoke quickly, waving his gun at the other guards. The problem was that most of the Boyar Duma ’s guards owed their primary loyalty to the various boyars of the Duma, not to Sheremetev.

Petrov didn’t hesitate that Sheremetev noticed. Instead he simply drew his own pistol and pointed it at the official section leader. “I’ll need your weapon, Sergeant. You’ll get it back after things are settled.” He then gave quick, concise orders for two other men to take the weapons of the other three men in the detail. All the while explaining that it would be better for the disarmed men if they were in no position to interfere. “No one can blame you for what happens after you’re locked up, fellows.”

After the guards had been restrained, Sheremetev gave orders to the rest. Three boyars were to be arrested. “Patriarch Joseph and I have a few things to talk over.”

As Sheremetev was cleaning his own house in Moscow, the riverboats were carrying the czar, Natasha and Bernie to Bor.

In Bor, Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov, commanding the dirigible Czarina Evdokia, got the message first and immediately ordered the arrest of his second-in-command. He privately rather liked Nick, but Nick was on the wrong side. He also ordered the arrest of the station commander of the Bor Streltzi, who had also been a Gorchakov appointee. A man, as it happened, who outranked him, according to the new order of ranks that had been introduced since the arrival of the up-timers. But the new ranks didn’t mean all that much yet, when compared to the traditions of Russia. What mattered was who you owed your allegiance to. Captain Ruslan Andreyivich Shuvalov owed his to the Sheremetev family, which meant the czar was on the wrong side, too. He prepared the dirigible for flight so he could provide tracking information and force the czar back into the hands of the Boyar Duma where he belonged.