Boris Godunov

     THE HEAVY CROWN (TRILOGY)

  BOOK ONE: BORIS GODUNOV

  PART ONE: THE WOLF CUB

  Chapter 1. The Rotten Seed

*Kostroma Uyezd, the Godunov estate. October 1560.*

Autumn that year was not merely rainy—it was rotten. The sky seemed to have descended upon the tops of the fir trees like gray, wet felt, and the world beneath it was suffocating. The roads had turned into black, squelching mush in which cart wheels sank up to the hubs, and the air smelled of decaying leaves, wet dog, and hopelessness.

The Godunov manor, matching the weather, huddled close to the ground. The master’s house, once hewn from sturdy pine, had now darkened and settled on one side, like an old man suffering from back pain. The porch, eaten away by beetles, creaked piteously under every step, and the fence surrounding the yard resembled a palisade of rotten teeth rather than a defense against wicked men.

On the bottom step of this porch sat a boy.
He was eight years old, but in his gaze, fixed on a gray puddle in the middle of the yard, there was no childish carelessness. Boris sat motionless, wrapping his arms around his knees. He wore a small *kaftan* of decent but elbow-worn cloth—remade from his father’s—and boots.

The boots were his torment and his pride. Sewn by a local saddler, they were sturdy, but Boris’s feet grew faster than the family’s wealth. His big toe pressed against the hard toe cap, and every step responded with a dull, aching pain. But Boris did not complain. He knew: new boots would come only by Christmas, and only if father sold the grain. And the grain this year was bad—small, beaten by early frosts.

He endured. Endurance was the first lesson he had learned in this house. Enduring the cramping. Enduring the boredom. Enduring the smell of sour cabbage that had soaked into the walls. Enduring his father’s fear.

His father, Fyodor Ivanovich Godunov, sat nearby on a bench under the canopy. In his hands—knotted, with fingernails black from ingrained earth—was an old horse harness. The leather straps had dried out and cracked, and Fyodor Ivanovich was trying to revive them by rubbing in goose fat. He did this with concentration but fussily, every now and then raising his head and casting a glance over the empty yard, as if expecting misfortune to emerge from the gray fog at any moment.

"Father," Boris called quietly, not taking his eyes off the puddle where a goose feather floated.

Fyodor Ivanovich started. The awl in his hand jerked and pricked his finger.
"What do you want? Sit still, don't fidget. You'll wear out your boots."

"Father, is it true that the Tsar in Moscow drinks from golden goblets?"

His father spat on the ground.
"They lie," he grumbled. "Gold is a soft, heavy metal. It’s for beauty. They drink from silver or from glass from overseas."

"And why do we have no silver?"

Fyodor Ivanovich set aside the harness. He wiped his greasy hands on an apron of coarse canvas and sighed heavily.
"Because we, Borya, are in disgrace. Our lineage is old, from Kostroma, but forgotten. The Rurikids pushed us out with their elbows. We are the bone on which the meat of the state holds. And no one gilds a bone. They gnaw it."

He reached into his bosom and pulled out a scroll rolled into a tube. The parchment was old and yellowed.
"Come here."
Boris stood up, trying not to wince from the pain in his toes, and sat down next to him.
"See?" his father’s finger slid to the base of a drawn tree. "This is Murza Chet. Our ancestor. He came from the Golden Horde. He was a noble man. And from him came great families—the Saburovs, the Velyaminovs... And us, the Godunovs. This land is ours. Noble land."

"Then why does Prince Vyazemsky, who lives in the neighboring volost, never invite us to feasts?" asked Boris, asking the question that had tormented him for a month. "And why doesn't he doff his cap when we meet?"

Fyodor Ivanovich rolled up the scroll, as if hiding shame.
"Because Vyazemsky is a Rurikid. The blood of the first princes flows in his veins. White bone. To him, we are low-born. In Moscow, son, they don't value ancestors, but a place near the throne. And our place for now is in the entryway. Stand in the vestibule, wait until you are called."

Boris looked at the gray veil of rain. A cold wave was rising in his childish soul. He didn't like the word "entryway."
"And what if I don't want to stand in the entryway?" he asked quietly. "What if I want to enter the upper room? Without asking?"

Fyodor Ivanovich froze. In his eyes, Boris saw fright mixed with superstitious terror. His father grabbed him by the shoulder, squeezing his fingers painfully.
"What are you saying, you pup?! In Moscow, heads are chopped off for 'without asking'! Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich... is stern. He fells ancient oaks, and chips fly. And we are grass. Grass can survive a storm only if it presses itself to the ground. Understood? Don't stick out. Be quiet."

"Like you?" slipped out of Boris.

Fyodor Ivanovich let go of his son’s shoulder. His face turned gray.
"Yes," he said in a extinguished voice. "Like me. I am alive, Borya. And you are alive. Survival is also an art, son. The hardest one."

Boris didn't answer. He looked at the puddle again.
*I will not be grass. I will grow up and chop down this forest.*

And at that moment, the silence of the autumn day was torn by the sound of hooves.
The gates flew open from a kick. A rider on a black horse flew into the yard. He was dressed all in black. Black kaftan, black hat. And tied to his saddle were a dog's head and a broom.
An *Oprichnik*.

The rider reined in his horse in the middle of the yard, splashing mud on Fyodor Ivanovich, who was already on his knees, touching his forehead to the ground.
"Who here is Fyodor Godunov?!" the oprichnik barked.
"I... it is I, father..." his father babbled. "Do not destroy me..."

The oprichnik noticed the boy on the porch, sneered, and threw a packet with a wax seal into the mud.
"Here, eat! The Sovereign is merciful!" he shouted, and galloped away, leaving behind the smell of sweat and terror.

Boris watched his father’s back as he crawled in the slurry toward the packet. And he swore to himself: *Never. I will never kneel in the mud. I would rather be the one sitting in the saddle.*

  Chapter 2. The Maw

**Moscow. February 1565.**

Moscow didn't open its gates—it swallowed you whole.

After the silence and vastness of the Kostroma forests, this city crashed down on twelve-year-old Boris like a rockfall. As soon as their carts passed the outpost at the Sretensky Gates, the world narrowed, densified, and stank.
Here the air was not transparent, like at home, but greasy, heavy, tangible. You could cut it with a knife, and soot would remain on the blade. It smelled of thousands of chimneys smoking day and night, of rotting hay, horse manure, spoiled fish from the Neglinnaya River, and human sweat. But through this symphony of stench, another smell broke through—thin, sour, alarming. The smell of fear.

They rode along Varvarka Street. The street swarmed with people like an anthill poked with a stick. Carts creaked, horses neighed, merchants yelled praising hare pies, beggars howled displaying rotting ulcers.

Fyodor Ivanovich, hunched in the saddle of his quiet mare, tried to appear smaller. He pulled his head into his shoulders, turning into a gray lump on the horse's back. His eyes, usually calm, now darted about, feeling out everyone they met: Is it an oprichnik? A drunk strelets? A wicked man?
Father was grass caught under a cart wheel—he was already bending, expecting the crunch.

Boris rode behind on a piebald horse. His feet no longer hurt—the new boots had broken in—but something ached inside, under his ribs. He did not bend. He greedily drank in this chaos.

To the right, behind a high palisade of blackened logs, rose the boyar terems. They looked like fairytale ships sailing out of the mud: carved window frames, roofs covered with ploughshare tiles like scales, high porches. There, behind mica windows, flowed a life Boris could only guess at: the life of people who didn't count kopecks, ate on silver, and didn't bow to everyone they met.

A carriage upholstered in red cloth rumbled past. On the door flashed a coat of arms—a lion tearing a snake. Boris stared. He imagined himself inside: on soft cushions, in warmth, looking at this dirty world through colored glass.

"Don't look!" hissed his father, jerking the reins so hard his horse shied. "Lower your eyes, you fool!"

"Why, father?" Boris didn't turn away, only squinted slightly.

"In Moscow, a direct gaze is insolence!" whispered Fyodor Ivanovich, turning pale. "And insolence here is death. If they see you staring, they’ll flog you in the stables. Or drag you to the Secret Order. Look at the mane!"

Boris obediently lowered his lashes, but continued to watch from beneath them.
He saw the guards at the Kitay-gorod gates lazily, possessively, strike a merchant who lingered with his cart with the shaft of a halberd. The merchant fell face down in the mud, scattering turnips, and the guards laughed, kicking him with their boots. No one intervened. The crowd flowed around the fallen man like water flows around a stone.

Suddenly the hum of the crowd changed. It didn't go quiet, but became different—low, guttural. People shied away toward the walls of houses, pressing into fences, falling to their knees right in the liquid mud.
The Riders were coming down the street.
Three of them. In black kaftans, in hats with sable trim pulled low over their eyes. Hanging from their saddles were those same dog heads, already a familiar nightmare for all of Rus'.
They rode at a walk, not looking around. They didn't need to shout "Make way!". The very aura of death emanating from them parted the crowd better than any shout.

Boris watched them with wide eyes. He noticed one of the oprichniki, young, with a thin scar across his cheek, lazily lash a woman with his whip because she hadn't moved her basket off the road in time. The whip slashed her headscarf, blood spurted. The woman didn't even cry out—she clamped her hand over her mouth and collapsed into the mud, bowing to her offender.

*There are no people here,* realized Boris, and this thought was cold and clear as ice. *Here there are predators and there is meat. Father is meat. That woman is meat. And these three are wolves.*
He looked at his hands gripping the reins. His fingers were thin, childish.
*I don't want to be meat. I must become a wolf. Even if I have to wear someone else's skin.*

Their new house in Kulishki, which they reached by evening, turned out to be wretched.
It was a cramped five-walled hut, bought by his father with their last money. The logs of the lower crowns were rotten, the roof sagged in places, and inside it smelled of mice, dampness, and old rags.
But for Boris, this didn't matter. What mattered was who met them.

Irina stood on the porch.
She had turned eight. During the years she lived in Moscow with a distant aunt while father served in Kostroma, she had grown and changed.
She was thin, almost transparent, like a candle. A pale face, huge dark eyes in which there was always, even when she smiled, a kind of moist, quiet plea.

She was the complete opposite of Boris. If he was compressed like a spring ready to uncoil and strike, she was fluid and humble like water.

"Borya!" she rushed to him as soon as he jumped off the horse.
She hugged him, and Boris buried his nose in her shoulder. She didn't smell of Moscow fumes, manure, or fear. She smelled of dried herbs, wax, and incense. The smell of a church.

"You arrived... Glory to the Theotokos," she whispered, stroking his head like a little boy's. "I read three akathists while I waited. Kept looking out the window..."

"We're alive, sister," Boris clumsily patted her on the back. He felt awkward from this tenderness—he had unlearned it living with his eternally frightened father. But at the same time, warmth spread inside him.
Irina was the only place in the world where he could take off his armor. Where he could stop being the Wolf Cub.

In the evening, when the bustle of unloading was over and father, having drunk a ladle of mash from the road, fell asleep on the bench, snoring heavily and flinching in his sleep, they sat by the splinter light.
The house was quiet, only mice scratched behind the stove and the splinter crackled, dropping sparks into a trough of water.
Irina was sorting through scraps of fabric—she didn't know how to sew seriously yet. Boris sat opposite and sharpened a small knife on a whetstone—just to occupy his hands.

"It's scary here, Borya," she said quietly, not raising her eyes. Her voice was like the rustle of dry leaves.

Boris looked up.
"Why scary? The city is big. Lots of people."

"Lots of people..." she shook her head. "But no Humans. In churches they pray loudly, beat their foreheads on the floor, but everyone's eyes are empty. Glassy. As if God left this place, boarded up the doors and left, and only icons and fear remain."

"God is everywhere, Ira," he answered with his father's words, which he had heard a thousand times but in which he himself almost no longer believed.

"No, not everywhere. Yesterday on Red Square..." she faltered. Her hands trembled. "Yesterday they executed Prince Gorbaty-Shuisky there. They said he was an old man, took Kazan... And they executed him alive. And his son, Pyotr, too."

She raised eyes full of horror to her brother.

"And do you know what is most terrible? Not the executioners. Executioners are doing a job. What's terrible is that the people stood and watched. Thousands of people. And no one crossed themselves. No one cried. Children sat on their fathers' shoulders, pointing fingers. Women husked seeds. They watched a man's head being chopped off as if it were... a buffoon's show. Are these people, Borya?"

Boris set aside the knife. The whetstone lay on the table with a dull thud.
He remembered the woman struck by the whip, and how she bowed. He remembered the merchant in the mud.

"They are spectators, sister," he said harshly. His voice roughened, sounded older than his years. "In Moscow, everyone is a spectator. They stand in the pit and watch who is brought out to the scaffold today. And they rejoice that it's not them."

"And us?" Irina leaned forward, and the light of the splinter reflected in her eyes with trembling highlights. "Will we watch too? Or will they... bring us out?"

Boris looked at his sleeping father. He snored and muttered something pitiful in his sleep.
Father was a spectator who dreamed of hiding under the bench.
But Boris didn't want to be under the bench.

"We will act so that they do not bring us out onto the stage," he said. "And we will not be spectators. We will be the ones who decide when to lower the curtain."

Irina shuddered, as if from cold.
"You speak frighteningly, brother. Like... like them."

"I speak like one who wants to survive," he covered her cold palm with his. "You pray, Ira. Pray for both of us. You are better at it. You are light. And I... I will think. I will gnaw this earth, but we will survive. I promise."

That night Boris couldn't sleep for a long time. He lay on the sleeping bunk, listening to the noise of the big city, which didn't subside even in the dark. Somewhere guards shouted, somewhere dogs howled, somewhere drunken voices yelled songs.
Moscow was digesting its victims.
He thought about his sister's words. "God left."
*Maybe,* he thought, staring into the darkness. *But if God left, it means the throne is vacant. And while it is empty, monsters sit on it.*
He closed his eyes and imagined himself in a carriage with red cloth. Not a spectator. And not a victim.

Outside the window, dawn was breaking—a gray, murky, Moscow dawn, promising a new day of struggle for life.

  Chapter 3. First Lessons

**Moscow. The Ambassadorial Prikaz. September 1566.**

If Moscow was a maw, then the Kremlin Prikazes (offices) were its guts—tangled, dark, eternally digesting human fates.

Fyodor Ivanovich brought his fourteen-year-old son to the Ambassadorial Prikaz early in the morning, when fog still hung over the Moscow River. They came to ask. Not for bread, not for money—for a place. Father hoped to place Boris "in learning" with the clerks so that the boy would learn to scratch with a quill, rewrite charters and, perhaps, make something of himself.

It was stuffy in the reception chamber. Low vaults pressed on the shoulders, mica windows let in almost no light, and the air was thick with the smell of cheap wax, ink galls, and the sweat of dozens of petitioners.
People stood along the walls, clutching hats in their hands. Everyone was here: ruined nobles, merchants seeking tax farming, widows, defrocked priests. They all waited for the diak (clerk) Andrei Shchelkalov as sinners wait for the Last Judgment—with fear and hope.

Boris stood next to his father by the stove. He was hot in his new kaftan, but he didn't unbutton the collar. He watched.
His attention was drawn not to the petitioners, but to those sitting on a bench in the red corner (honorary corner).

There, sprawling possessively, sat two teenagers.
They were Boris's age—about fourteen—but looked like creatures of a different breed. One wore a blue velvet kaftan with silver buttons, the other a small fur coat covered with scarlet cloth, despite the stuffiness. Their boots, made of soft Morocco leather, shone like lollipops.

"Look, Vaska," the one in blue, reddish, with a scatter of freckles on his nose, poked a finger toward an old petitioner standing by the door. "That serf's beard is like a washcloth!"

"And he stinks!" the second one responded lazily.
Boris shifted his gaze to him.
The boy in the scarlet coat was ugly: a narrow face, thin, bloodless lips, and eyes—watery, cold, with heavy eyelids. He looked at the crowd of petitioners not with anger, but with squeamish indifference, the way one looks at cockroaches.

"Hey, peasant!" he shouted to the old man. "Did you sleep in manure? Why do you stink in the sovereign's chambers?"

The old man, a petty nobleman with a deep scar across his entire cheek—clearly received in battle, not on a stove—flinched. He squeezed his hat so that his knuckles turned white, but remained silent. He only lowered his gray head further. He dared not answer the young lordling.

The boys guffawed. Their laughter, ringing and empty, reflected off the vaults, and no one in the chamber dared to rebuke them.

Boris felt a cold wave rising inside him. Not pity for the old man—no, he was learning to strangle pity—but anger at injustice. At the fact that these two, who had done nothing in life but be born, could trample on gray heads.

He stepped forward. Father tugged at his sleeve, his eyes round with fear, but Boris gently pulled free.

"What are you staring at, lackey?" the boy in the scarlet coat noticed his gaze. "Or do you want to laugh too?"

Boris walked closer. He was dressed cleanly, but poorly. Against the background of velvet and Morocco leather, he looked like a sparrow before peacocks. But he looked straight ahead.

"Laughing at the old is a sin," he said quietly. His voice did not tremble. "And laughing at warriors is stupidity. Today you are in velvet, but tomorrow the Tatars will come—who will protect you? This old man? Or your Morocco leather?"

Silence hung in the chamber. The scribes stopped scratching with their quills. The old man raised his head, looking at his defender with amazement.

The boy in the scarlet coat stood up slowly. He was a head shorter than Boris, but there was so much arrogance in his posture that he seemed taller.

"Who are you?" he hissed, and his thin lips twisted in a sneer. "Do you even know who you are speaking to, serf? I am Prince Shuisky. Vasily Ivanovich. A Rurikid!"

This word—Rurikid—dropped into the silence like a cobblestone.
The Shuyskys. An ancient lineage. Descendants of tsars. Those who stood by the throne when the ancestors of the Godunovs were still herding horses in the steppe.

Fyodor Ivanovich jumped up to his son, pale as a sheet. He grabbed Boris by the shoulders, forcing his head down.
"Forgive him, Prince! Forgive him for Christ's sake! He's a fool of mine, from the village... He knows not what he does! Do not destroy us!"

Vasily Shuisky looked at the bent father, then at Boris, who had still not lowered his eyes. In the princeling's watery eyes flickered something resembling interest—like a vivisectionist finding an unusual frog.

"Yokel..." he drawled. "Get out. Or I'll order the serfs to flog you in the stables. So you know your place."

Boris didn't answer. He watched. He memorized every feature of this face. The thin nose. The heavy eyelids. The weak chin.
He was not memorizing an enemy. He was memorizing a Lesson.
*Blood gives the right to be rude,* he thought. *But blood does not give intelligence. You are empty, Prince. You are just a name.*

"Let's go, father," he said to his father, straightening up. "The Prince... feels stuffy."

They walked away to a far corner. Father was trembling, wiping sweat from his forehead, and whispering prayers, interspersing them with curses addressed to his son. But Boris stood calmly.
At that moment he understood: he would never be friends with the likes of Shuisky. He would rule them. Or destroy them.

---

Boris was given a place. Not by patronage, but for his handwriting—clear, beautiful, "statutory."
The school at the Ambassadorial Prikaz was a strange place. Here they taught not so much Latin and Greek as the art of silence.

In the classroom, which smelled of old paper and rat droppings, sat three dozen boys. Children of diaks, clerks, impoverished nobles. It was an incubator for future cogs of the state machine.
The teacher, a stern monk Varlaam with a beard black as pitch, taught them harshly. For a blot—a ruler across the fingers. For chatter—birch rods. For a stupid question—kneeling on dried peas.

"Speech is silver, silence is gold," mumbled Varlaam, pacing between the rows. "A scribe must be mute as a fish and memorable as a stone. What you heard in the office—forget. What you saw—you didn't see. Understood, lads?"

"Understood, father!" the students answered in chorus.

Boris learned greedily. He grasped literacy faster than anyone, but his main subject was people.
During breaks, when other boys played knucklebone or bragged about their fathers' ranks, Boris sat aside. He listened.
He knew which of the students stole pies. He knew whose father drank and beat his wife. He knew which of the diaks took bribes in borzoi puppies.
He collected these crumbs of other people's secrets like a miser knight collects gold. He understood: a secret is a weapon.

One day, in November, the classroom door flew open from a boot kick.
Varlaam, who was reading a sermon on humility, cut himself off and turned so white he looked like a corpse.
A Man entered the class.

He was short, broad-shouldered, with a face like a baked apple and eyes the color of faded steel. He was in a simple kaftan, without gold or furs, but such a wave of heavy, crushing, animal power emanated from him that the air in the room thickened.

It was Malyuta Skuratov. Grigory Lukyanovich.
The Executioner. The Tsar's right hand. The man whose name was used to frighten children from Novgorod to Kazan.

The class stood up. Quietly, without command. One could only hear a fly buzzing, beating against the mica window.

Malyuta walked between the rows. He walked slowly, looking into the boys' faces. Some he discarded with a glance immediately, like a defective coin. On others, he lingered.
This was an inspection. This is how puppies are chosen for the Tsar's kennel—those who will gnaw the wolf, not whine.

He stopped near Boris's desk.
Boris stood straight, arms down at his sides. His heart pounded somewhere in his throat, but his face remained stony.
Malyuta looked at him. In his steel eyes there was neither anger nor interest—only cold assessment.

"Who are you?" the voice was quiet, creaky, like an ungreased hinge.

"Boris Godunov," the boy answered. "Son of Fyodor."

"Godunov..." Malyuta chewed his lips. "Heard of you. Your uncle, Dmitry, spins around the court. Quick fellow. And you, it seems, are here?"

"Here."

"The teacher says you write well. And stay silent a lot."

"The tongue is given to man to hide his thoughts, Grigory Lukyanovich."

Malyuta chuckled. The corners of his lips twitched—it was a smile, terrifying, like a crack in a wall.

"Look at you... A philosopher. Tell me, lad," he leaned closer, and Boris smelled iron and old blood that had soaked into this man's skin. "What is the main virtue of a servant of the sovereign?"

The class froze. Everyone knew the correct answer. It was written in the copybooks. "Loyalty." "Honesty." "Fear of God."

Boris looked straight into the executioner's eyes.
He realized: if he said "loyalty," Malyuta would walk past. He didn't need parrots. He needed...
He needed people like himself.

"The ability to hear what is not said," Boris answered quietly. "And to forget what is seen."

Malyuta froze. He looked at the teenager for a long minute. Something changed in his gaze. A spark appeared there.

"You're not simple, Kostroma boy," he croaked. "Oh, not simple. A wolf's grip."

He straightened up and turned to Varlaam, who was still standing neither alive nor dead by the board.

"This one—to me," Malyuta tossed, pointing at Boris with his thumb. "On Sundays. Let him come to the house. Teach my Mashka literacy. And gain some wit."

He turned and walked out, treading heavily with iron-shod boots. The door creaked, closing behind him.

The class exhaled.
The boys looked at Boris. In their looks was a mixture of horror and envy. He had just received an invitation to the most terrifying house in Moscow.
He had received a mark.
"Wolf cub," Malyuta had said.

Boris sat on the bench. His knees were trembling, but he hid his hands under the table so no one would see.
He remembered Shuisky's gaze. Squeamish, empty.
And he remembered Malyuta's gaze. Assessing, heavy.

*I have chosen,* he thought. *I will not be a Rurikid. I will be the one whom the Rurikids fear.*

  Chapter 4. The Wolf's Bride

**Moscow, Bersenevskaya Embankment. Winter 1569.**

Skuratov's house stood on the bank of the Moscow River, opposite the Kremlin. It looked not like a dwelling, but like a fortress: a high palisade, wrought-iron gates, vicious dogs on chains choking with barking at the sight of a stranger.
Here even the snow seemed grayer than in the rest of the city.

Boris was seventeen. He was no longer a frightened student. He wore a sturdy kaftan, and his beard had already begun to break through in black fuzz. Uncle Dmitry had obtained a position for him as a solicitor (*stryapchy*), but his real service took place here, in this house.

They let him through immediately.
"Ah, Godunov," smirked a guard with a pockmarked face. "Go in. The young mistress is waiting."

Inside the house, it was unexpectedly quiet. And rich.
Carpets on the floors muffled steps. Icons in the corners shone with gold settings, but the faces of the saints seemed strict, condemning. It smelled of wax, incense, and... something else. Sweetish. Cloying.
Boris already knew this smell. This is how dried blood smells when they've tried to wash it off, but it has soaked into the floorboards.

Maria Skuratova was waiting for him in the *svetlica* (upper room).
She was sixteen. She sat by the window, in an expensive summer garment embroidered with pearls. On her knees lay a book—large, bound in leather.
Boris expected to see a capricious boyar's daughter. Or a terrified mouse living in a monster's house.

But when she turned, he saw Malyuta's eyes.
The same steel, cold, intelligent eyes, only on a young, pale face. She was not beautiful—features too sharp, nose too thin—but there was power in her. The kind that made the air tremble.

"Are you Godunov?" she asked without rising. Her voice was low, calm.

"I am."

"Father says you are smart." She swept her gaze over him from head to toe. "But by appearance—a calf. Kind eyes."

"A calf is easier to feed than a wolf," countered Boris, remaining by the door. "And the hide stays intact."

She laughed. The laugh was unexpected—short, dry, but not malicious.

"Sit down, calf." She pointed to the bench opposite. "We will study the history of Rome. Do you know Latin?"

"A little. Varlaam taught me."

"Varlaam is a fool. He teaches prayers. But one must study actions."

She opened the book. It was Tacitus. *The Annals*.
"Read. About Tiberius."

Boris began to read, stumbling over complex phrases. Maria corrected him. She knew Latin better than any clerk.
An hour passed. Then another.
They didn't talk about grammar. They talked about power.

"Do you know how Caesar died?" she asked suddenly, slamming the book shut.

"He was killed in the senate. Conspirators. Brutus."

"Correct. But why?"

"Because they wanted freedom. A Republic."

"Nonsense," Maria stood up and walked to the window. Outside the glass snow was falling, hiding the Kremlin in a white shroud. "They killed him not for freedom. They killed him because he was trusting. He thought his greatness protected him from the knife. He thought that if he forgave enemies, they would become friends."

She turned to Boris.

"My father teaches me differently. Do you want to know what?"

"I do."

"That you must always expect the knife. Especially from those you feed from your hand. There are no friends, Boris. There are fellow travelers. And there are enemies pretending to be fellow travelers."

"And love?" slipped out of him. He remembered Irina.

Maria looked at him with pity.

"Love is the most dangerous thing. Love makes you weak. You expose your neck. If you want to survive here, in this house, in this city..." she walked up to him closely. "You must become lighter than air. Throw away everything superfluous. Conscience. Pity. Fear. Keep only the goal."

"And what is our goal?"

"To survive. And to become those who hold the knife, not those who expose their back."

At that moment the door opened. Malyuta stood on the threshold.
He was in a home kaftan, steamy after the bathhouse. Steam rolled off him.
He looked at his daughter, then at Boris.

"I see you get along," he grumbled. "That is good. Wolves need to stick to the pack. And sheep... sheep are needed for shearing."

He tossed an apple onto the table. Red, juicy.
"Eat. Grow. Times are hungry now."

That evening, returning home through dark streets, Boris felt a hundred years older.
He walked past churches but did not cross himself.
He thought about Caesar. And about the knife.
And about the fact that Maria Skuratova's eyes were the most beautiful and the most terrifying he had seen in his life.

  Chapter 5. The Exam

**Moscow. February 1570.**

Winter that year was such that birds froze in mid-flight, falling into snowdrifts as icy lumps hard as stones. Moscow looked like a white coffin upholstered in frost brocade. Smoke from thousands of chimneys rose in pillars, not daring to dissipate in the frozen air, and the creak of snow under boots sounded in the night silence like a rifle shot.

Boris was eighteen.
He had stretched out, broadened in the shoulders, but his gaze remained the same—attentive, slightly from under his brows, the gaze of a man accustomed to waiting for a blow. He had been welcomed in Malyuta’s house for three years now. He carried papers, transcribed denunciations, learned not to wince at the smell of hot iron and burnt skin that permeated his future father-in-law's clothes.
He had seen much. He saw people dragged into torture chambers. He saw them come out as broken dolls.
But he was still "clean." His hands were in ink, but not in blood.

That evening he was summoned to the chancellery of the Oprichny Court.
The small room was heated hotly. The tiled stove hummed, devouring firewood. Malyuta Skuratov sat at a table piled with scrolls, warming his knotted, gouty fingers on a clay bowl of hot *sbiten*.

In the corner, in the thick shadow cast by a candle, stood Bogdan Belsky. Malyuta's nephew. A beautiful, evil youth with the eyes of a mad dog. He hated Boris with that pure, sincere hatred that blood relatives feel toward a lucky adoptee. He was sharpening a dagger on a whetstone—*shhh, shhh, shhh*. This sound grated on the nerves like scratching glass.

"Come in, Godunov," Malyuta didn't raise his head. "Close the door. There's a draft."

Boris closed the heavy, felt-upholstered door. The noise of the yard was cut off. Only the hum of the stove and the scraping of the stone in the corner remained.

"There is a matter," Malyuta set aside the bowl. "A test. It's time for you, Boris, to move from solicitor to oprichnik for real. To be bound by blood. Or back to the manure, to your daddy. You've grown out of short pants."

Boris was silent. His heart slammed against his ribs—hollowly, painfully. He knew this tone. In this tone, they don't ask to copy a paper. In this tone, they send to death. Or for death.

"Do you know the clerk Bessonov? Ivan Vasilyevich?"

"I know him," Boris's voice was even, though his mouth went dry. "He serves in the Razryadny Prikaz. A friend of my father. Used to visit our house, brought gingerbread for Irina."

"A friend..." Malyuta sneered, looking into the candle flame. "A good word. Bessonov is a man, they say, honest. Doesn't take bribes. Goes to church regularly. Keeps the fasts."

Malyuta fell silent. Belsky in the corner stopped sharpening the knife and chuckled predatorily.

"But his tongue, Borya, is long. And stupid. Yesterday in the tavern 'By the Yauza', drunk as a pig, he blabbered too much. Said the sovereign wastes the treasury on the Livonian War in vain, and the people swell from hunger. And that the oprichnina is a devilish obsession, and we will all burn in hell."

Boris felt his palms go cold. Bessonov. Ivan Vasilyevich. A kind, slightly absurd old man with eternal dandruff on the collar of his old fur coat. He really loved to drink and philosophize. He taught little Borya to mend goose quills. "Look, Borenka, the cut must be slanted so the ink flows like a tear..."

"Arrest him?" asked Boris.

"Arrest..." Malyuta mimicked, grimacing. "Look how fast you are. We can arrest anyone. But Bessonov is cunning. He has kin—the Shuyskys. Distant, seventh water on jelly, but kin. If we officially take him to the dungeon, a noise will rise. The Shuyskys will start screaming: 'Skuratov destroys honest people! The Oprichnina is lawless!'. The Sovereign doesn't need noise right now. The Sovereign is tired."

Malyuta finally raised his eyes. They were empty and cold, like that winter sky outside the window.

"He must disappear. Quietly. Street-style. Robbers, wicked men... Aren't there plenty of rabble roaming Moscow at night? Who asks of them?"

He rummaged under the papers and pulled out a knife.
Not a combat dagger, not an oprichnik cleaver. A simple, narrow knife with a bone handle, the kind used to cut meat in the kitchen. Or people in an alleyway.
He threw it on the table. The knife clattered, spun, and froze, pointing its tip at Boris.

"Today he leaves service late. Stayed up over papers. He'll go through the Varvarka crossroads, through the alleyways. You will meet him. You know him, he trusts you. You'll walk up, say hello..."

"Grigory Lukyanovich..." Boris tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but the lump wouldn't pass. "I am not a killer. I am trained in literacy, I..."

"Not yet," agreed Malyuta. "But not one of ours either. You, Borya, are standing in the doorway right now. Neither there nor here. And a draft is a dangerous thing, you can catch a chill. Fatal."

He nodded at Belsky.
"Choose, Godunov. Either you take this knife and become a Wolf. Or Bogdan visits your father tomorrow. Fyodor Ivanovich also, you know, has a long tongue sometimes. And finding a shortage in the Grain Prikaz is easy as spitting."

Checkmate.
The chess game he sat down to play five years ago was over.
Boris looked at the knife. Then at Belsky, who grinned in anticipation, playing with his dagger. Then he imagined his father—little, frightened Fyodor Ivanovich, being dragged to the rack. Imagined Irina left alone.

There was no choice. Or rather, there was a choice, but it was scarier than death. Become a murderer—or become an orphan and a beggar.

He stepped to the table. His hand, alien, living its own life, reached for the knife. Fingers closed on the bone handle. The knife was warm—it had lain by the stove. This warmth seemed disgusting to Boris, as if he had touched living flesh.

"I will do it," he said. His own voice seemed to him the voice of an old man.

"Do it," nodded Malyuta, returning to papers. "And do it cleanly. Bogdan will watch. From afar."

---

In the evening, Varvarka died out.
A blizzard, rising after sunset, swept through the alleys, covering tracks, hiding sins, turning Moscow into a white labyrinth. There were no lanterns. Only rare icons on house gates glowed with lamps, snatching pieces of log walls from the darkness.

Boris stood in a deep gateway not far from the Varvarka crossroads. He wrapped himself in a sheepskin coat, but the cold chilled him to the bone. His teeth chattered, and he clenched his jaws until it hurt to quell this treacherous trembling.
The knife lay in his right sleeve, resting its cold blade against his wrist.

He prayed. For the first time in many years, he prayed sincerely.
*Lord, make it so he doesn't come. Let him get sick. Let him stay the night at the office. Let the Shuyskys take him away. Lord, divert this!*

But God that night was busy with other matters. Or, as Irina said, he had left Moscow, boarding up the doors.

At the end of the alley, footsteps were heard. Crunch-crunch. Crunch-crunch. Heavy, shuffling steps of a tired man.
A figure emerged from the snowy veil.
Bessonov.
He walked hunched over, clutching a leather bag with papers to his chest. The old fur coat, lined with worn fox fur, was too big for him. The wind tousled his gray beard, clogging his eyes with snow.

Boris stopped breathing.
*Go away,* he screamed mentally. *Turn back. Run!*

But Bessonov walked straight toward him.
When he came abreast of the gateway, Boris stepped out. A shadow separated from the wall.
The clerk started and recoiled, clutching the bag tighter.
"Who is there?!" he shouted fearfully. "I have no money! Let me go, wicked man!"

Boris stepped into a strip of moonlight.
"It is I, Ivan Vasilyevich. Boris."

Bessonov froze. He adjusted his hat, squinting with dim eyes.
"Borya?" incredible relief sounded in his voice. "Lord, you scared me... Why are you here, in such cold? Waiting for your father? Or did something happen?"

He smiled. A kind, homely smile that made everything inside Boris turn over. Snow stuck in his beard, making him look like a Christmas grandfather.

"No..." Boris took a step forward. His legs were cottony, as if not his own. "I am waiting for you, Ivan Vasilyevich. Wanted to walk you home. Times are unrestful."

"And that's the truth!" the clerk trustingly walked closer, right up to him. "Oh, what times, Borenka... Wolves prowl, eat people. Thank you. You are a kind lad. You'll go far. Not like the current ones..."

He reached into his coat pocket.
"And I'm carrying a treat for Irinushka. Printed gingerbread, from Tula. She loves sweets... Here, give it to her."

He held out the gingerbread wrapped in a rag.
And at that moment he opened up.
He stood before Boris—old, defenseless, with gingerbread in his hand. A friend. A human.

*Strike!* barked Malyuta's voice in his head.
*Don't dare!* screamed Irina's voice.
*If you don't strike—they kill father. They kill you. Throw you in the manure,* hissed the cold, calculating voice of reason. The very reason he had trained for years.

Boris looked at the gingerbread. Then into the old man's eyes.
And understood that if he didn't strike now, he would die himself. Not physically—his future would die. His "red carriage." His dream of becoming an Owner.

He squeezed his eyes shut. For a split second.
The right hand slipped out of the sleeve. The bone handle lay in the palm.
The blow was clumsy, convulsive, from below upwards.
The knife went in softly, as if into butter, piercing the old coat and flesh. Under the left shoulder blade.

Bessonov gasped. He didn't scream—he just exhaled loudly, with a whistle, breathing out air along with steam.
The gingerbread fell from his hand into the snow.
He swayed, grabbing Boris's shoulder with his free hand, as if seeking support.

"Borya?.." he whispered with just his lips.

There was no curse in this whisper. No malice. There was only childish, impossible, infinite surprise.
"Why?.."

He didn't believe it. Even dying, with a knife in his lung, he didn't believe that the boy he taught to mend quills could kill him.

Boris stood, feeling the body of the old man grow heavy, hanging on his arm. He felt something hot and sticky flowing down the knife handle.
He wanted to jerk his hand away, drop everything and run.
But he stood. He looked into the eyes of his dying friend and saw the light fade in them. Saw surprise replaced by emptiness.

Bessonov settled into a snowdrift. He coughed, and blood, black in the moonlight, splashed onto the white snow.

"Forgive me..." whispered Boris with just his lips.

A figure separated from the shadow of the neighboring house. Belsky. He had been watching all this time.
He approached silently, like a cat.
"Crooked," Bogdan spat, looking at the wheezing old man. "Should have been in the heart. Or the throat. But you hit the lung. He'll take a long time to go, he'll suffer. Unprofessional, Godunov."

He bent down. A dagger flashed in his hand. One quick, businesslike movement—from ear to ear. The wheezing cut off.
Bessonov went quiet.

"Learn, rookie," Belsky wiped the dagger on the hem of the murdered man's coat. "Well, why are you standing there? Pick up the gingerbread. Shouldn't waste good goods."

He kicked the gingerbread with his boot toward Boris.
"Now you are bound. By blood. And by a secret. Welcome to the family, wolf cub."

Belsky turned and disappeared into the blizzard as quickly as he had appeared.
Boris was left alone. With the corpse.
He looked at his hands. There was no blood—it had soaked into the mitten and the handle of the knife, which remained sticking out of the clerk's back.

He slowly bent down and picked up the gingerbread.
The rag was wet with snow.
Boris shoved the gingerbread into his bosom. He felt its cold through his shirt. A cold that now settled in his chest forever.

He walked away along Varvarka, not looking back.
That night he didn't cry. He couldn't cry.
He simply knew that somewhere back there, in the snowdrift, remained lying not only the clerk Bessonov. His soul remained there.
And what was walking home to Irina now was an empty shell. A vessel.
Ready to be filled.

  Chapter 6. A Feast During the Plague

**Moscow. Winter 1571.**

The wedding of Boris Godunov and Maria Skuratova was supposed to be a celebration. But in Alexandrov Sloboda, a celebration differed from a funeral only in the amount of wine.
The Sloboda met guests not with bell ringing, but with wolf howling. High walls, moats filled with black water, and churches whose domes burned gold against the leaden sky, but the crosses on them seemed not a blessing, but a threat.

Here Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich played at being an abbot.
The feasting hall was huge, with low vaults painted with scenes of the Last Judgment. Long tables groaned with food. Roasted swans in feathers, boar heads with gilded tusks, sturgeons an arshin long, mountains of pies. Wine and mead flowed like a river from silver jugs.
But the guests...

Boris sat at the head of the table next to Maria and felt cold sweat running down his back. He wore a brocade kaftan embroidered with pearls—a gift from the Tsar—but it felt like a shroud to him.
Around them sat "faithful servants." Oprichniki. Princes who had forgotten their honor, and baseborn executioners raised to the throne.
Bogdan Belsky, already drunk, was gnawing on a swan wing, grease running down his chin.

The racket was unimaginable. Drunken laughter, clinking of goblets, greasy jokes interspersed with quotes from the Psalter.
It was a feast in the underworld.

Maria sat straight as a string.
She was pale, but calm. In a heavy wedding headdress, strung with pearls, she looked like an idol. She didn't eat or drink. Her eyes, those same steel eyes of Malyuta, slid over the faces of the guests with cold contempt.

"Smile," she whispered without turning her head, when Boris convulsively gripped the edge of the tablecloth. "Don't show fear. He is watching."

He.
In the center of the hall, on a dais led to by three steps upholstered in red cloth, stood a black armchair with a high back.
In it sat Ivan Vasilyevich.

He was only forty-one, but he looked like an old man. Years of debauchery, repentance, and murder had dried him out. His face was like parchment tightly stretched over a skull. A sparse beard in clumps, a hooked nose like a vulture's beak, and deep, black pits of eye sockets.

He was dressed in a simple monastic cassock, but on the fingers of his bony hands sparkled rings worth a small principality.
He didn't drink. Didn't eat. Before him stood only a goblet of water.
He observed.

Suddenly the Tsar raised his staff—heavy, with a sharp steel tip.
He struck the floor with it.
The knock was dull, but it drowned out all the noise of the feast.

The hall instantly went quiet. The drunken laughter broke off as if cut by a knife.
The silence became ringing, dense. One could only hear the heavy, whistling breathing of the Tsar.

Ivan Vasilyevich slowly, with difficulty, leaning on the staff, stood up.
He took a step. Another. He was descending to the newlyweds.
Every strike of the staff on the floor echoed in Boris's temples.

The Tsar came up close.
He smelled not of wine or food. He smelled of sickness. Rotten teeth, an old, unwashed body, medicinal ointments with mercury, and the heavy, sweet smell of incense. The smell of decay.

Boris and Maria stood, bowing low.

"Godunov..." the Tsar's voice was quiet, rustling like dry grass. "Getting married, then? To Malyuta's daughter?"

"Yes, exactly, Great Sovereign," answered Boris, not daring to raise his eyes.

"A good deed." Ivan reached out his hand. His fingers, cold and dry as branches, touched Maria's cheek. He ran them over her skin, touched the pearl pendants. The gesture was possessive, unpleasant, as if he were feeling a horse. "Good breed. Wolfish. Malyuta is a faithful dog. Doesn't fear blood. And you, girl, don't be afraid. Blood—it... cleanses."

Maria didn't recoil. She withstood this touch, looking the Tsar straight in the bridge of his nose.

The Tsar sneered, baring black stumps of teeth, and shifted his gaze to Boris.
He leaned down to his very ear. His hot, fetid breath burned his neck.

"Do you know why I love you, Boriska?" he whispered.

"For loyalty, Sovereign?" squeezed out Boris.

"No. There are many faithful ones. Look at them, dogs, sitting there wagging their tails." The Tsar nodded at the hushed hall. "But I love you because you are... empty."

Boris froze.

"There is no clan pride in you," Ivan continued to whisper, and every word was driven into the brain like a nail. "No boyar arrogance. The Shuyskys, the Mstislavskys—they are full of themselves. Their ancestors, their honor... Ptui! But you are a vessel. A clay pot. What I fill you with—that is what you will be. If I fill you with gold—you will be golden. If I fill you with shit—you will stink. You are mine. Entirely. Understood?"

The Tsar pulled back. Mad sparks danced in his eyes.
He suddenly burst out laughing—soundlessly, shaking all over—and barked to the whole hall:

"BITTER!" (*Kiss!*)

The hall exploded.
"Bitter! Bitter! Glory to the Sovereign! Glory to the young ones!" yelled the oprichniki, jumping from their seats, banging goblets. They yelled to drown out their own fear.

Boris turned to Maria.
Her face was white as chalk. Her lips—pressed into a thin line.
He kissed her. Her lips were cold and dry, like a corpse's.
And out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tsar Ivan, pleased with the effect produced, hobbling back to his black throne, tapping his staff.

---

Later, when the endless feast ended and they were finally released to the bedchamber, Boris sank onto a chest, exhausted.
It was hot in the room. Candles burned, casting long shadows. The noise of the feast reached here muffled, like the roar of a distant battle.

Maria stood by the mirror. She tore off the pearls—sharply, angrily, so that threads broke, and pearls rolled across the floor with dry clicks.

"Did you hear?" asked Boris. His voice was hoarse. He poured himself wine with a trembling hand and drank it in one gulp.

"I heard," she turned to him. There was no more calm in her eyes. There was fury. Cold, white fury. "He spoke the truth."

"Truth?" Boris threw the goblet into the corner. "That I am a pot? A vessel for shit?! That I am nobody?!"

"No. That you are a vessel."

She walked up to him. Her hair fell over her shoulders, her face burned. She was terrifying and beautiful in this anger.

"He is right, Boris. You are empty. You have no past, like the Shuyskys. No stupid rules of theirs, their honor that drags to the bottom. You are a clean sheet."

She put her hands on his shoulders, digging her fingers in painfully.

"But he was mistaken in one thing. The old madman thinks that he will be the one filling you."

"Who then?"

"You yourself. And I."

She brought her face close to his. Her eyes widened.

"The Terrible one will die soon, Boris. Look at him. He is rotting alive. He smells of death. But we... we are young. We are alive. We are hungry."

"And what should we do?" asked Boris. He felt her strength, her confidence flowing into him, filling that very emptiness.

"Wait. And prepare. When he croaks, these dogs in the hall," she nodded at the door, "will tear each other's throats out. The Shuyskys, the Belskys... they will devour each other. And we... we will take everything."

"Everything—is what?"

"Power. Real power. Not the kind given as a handout from the table, dipped in mud. But the kind that is taken. By oneself."

Boris looked at his hands. On his right hand, the blood of Clerk Bessonov still seemed to appear.
He was "empty." He killed his father's friend for the sake of this feast. He married the daughter of the executioner. He kissed the hand of a madman who called him a pot of shit.
He paid the price. The full price.
Now he had to collect the goods.

"Yes," he said quietly. And in that word there was more steel than in all the swords of the oprichniki. "We will take everything."

He stood up and blew out the candle.
Darkness covered them, but there was no more fear. There was only a plan.

  Chapter 7. The Staff

**Alexandrov Sloboda. November 9, 1581.**

That day in the Sloboda smelled not of burning, but of the first, clean snow and misfortune.
Boris stood in the entryway of the Tsar's chambers, listening. Behind the heavy oak doors, a conversation was going on. At first quiet, like the cooing of two bears, then—louder, angrier, breaking into a roar.

There were two of them: Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich and Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich.
Father and Son.
Two predators in one cage.

Tsarevich Ivan was twenty-seven. He was a copy of his father in his youth: tall, stately, with the same burning, mad eyes, but not yet dried out by vice. He was the dynasty's only hope. Strong. Cruel. Smart.
He wrote music, like his father. He loved to torture, like his father.
And he hated the Godunovs.

"Dogs!" came the furious cry of the Tsarevich from behind the door. "You have surrounded yourself with dogs, father! Your Godunov is a Tatar muzzle! And the Shuyskys are traitors! Give me an army! I will march on Pskov! I will drive out the Poles!"

"Silence!" barked the Tsar. His voice, usually creaky, now thundered like a Jericho trumpet. "Eggs don't teach the chicken! You, puppy, wanted power? Thought to shear me, your father, into a monk?!"

A crash. As if a table was overturned. The sound of breaking crockery.

Boris shrank. He knew: when the Tsar is in such anger, it is better to be a thousand versts away. But he couldn't leave. He was the *kravchy* (cupbearer), he had to wait.
Nearby, on a bench, sat Fyodor. The younger son.
Fyodor was not listening to the screams. He fingered prayer beads, moving his lips in soundless prayer. His face, puffy, with soft, womanish features, was calm. He was in another world—where bells ring and angels sing.

"Fedya," whispered Boris, leaning toward his brother-in-law. "Leave. There will be trouble."

Fyodor raised clear, empty eyes to him.
"Everything is God's will, Boris. If father is angry—it means it is necessary. The Tsar's anger is God's anger."

Suddenly the door flew open.
On the threshold stood Elena Sheremeteva, the wife of Tsarevich Ivan. She was bareheaded, in just her undergarment, though drafts roamed the chambers. Her face was flooded with tears.
She ran out, clamping her hand over her mouth so as not to scream.

"Harlot!" the Tsar's voice chased after her. "To come out to your father in such a state?! Shameless!"

Tsarevich Ivan leaped out after her. His face was purple, veins on his neck bulged.
"Don't you dare!" he yelled, turning back into the doorway. "Don't you dare touch my wife! You exiled your wives to monasteries, but don't touch mine!"

He stepped back into the chamber.
Boris realized: the irreparable was about to happen.
Forgetting fear, forgetting that "one cannot enter without asking," he rushed to the doors.

The picture he saw cut into his memory forever.
Tsar Ivan stood in the middle of the wrecked upper room. His face was white, terrifying. Eyes bulging from their orbits. In his hand, he gripped his famous staff—heavy, iron-bound, with a sharp tip.
Tsarevich Ivan advanced on him, fists clenched.

"You are a tyrant!" shouted the son. "You ruined Russia! You..."

The Tsar swung the staff.
It was not an executioner's swing. It was the swing of a madman brushing off a ghost.
The iron tip described an arc.

Boris lunged forward.
"Sovereign! No!"

He managed to put up his arm. The blow **shattered** the bone, the arm hung like a whip, and Boris gasped from pain. But the staff, merely glancing off his forearm, continued its path.
And with a sickening, wet crunch, it slammed into the Tsarevich's temple.

The Tsarevich collapsed.

"Healer!!!" howled the Tsar, falling to his knees before his son.

Boris, cradling his broken arm and biting his lips so as not to scream, looked at the dying heir. He knew: the dynasty was severed.
In the doorway stood quiet Fyodor. Now—the only heir.

The Tsar's staff, which killed the son, opened for him, the baseborn Godunov, the door to the throne.
The Wolf Cub had grown up. Now he had to become the Pack Leader.


  PART TWO. THE REGENT

  Chapter 8. The Living Corpse

**Moscow. 1582–1584.**

The agony of the Tsarevich lasted eleven days.
For eleven days Tsar Ivan did not rise from his knees, beat his head against the floor, howled, repented, promised God he would go to a monastery, give up the crown, if only his son would live.
God did not hear. Or He heard, but answered: "No."
On November 19, the Tsarevich died.

From that day on, Ivan the Terrible died, although his body continued to breathe for another two years.
He turned into a living corpse. He stopped washing. He became overgrown with hair. He smelled of rot a mile away. He would fall into a rage, ordering the execution of innocent servants, then cry for hours, fingering the toys of his murdered son.

Power in the state lay in the mud. The boyars, sensing the predator's weakness, began to squabble. The Shuyskys, the Mstislavskys, the Belskys—everyone pulled the blanket onto themselves.
Only one person did not participate in the squabbling.
Boris Godunov.

He did something else. He built a cocoon around Fyodor.
Fyodor was now the official heir. The boyars looked at him with horror: "How will this holy fool rule? He can't string two words together! The Tatars will come—he'll bring out an icon to them instead of a sword!"

Boris heard these conversations. And smiled into his beard.
He needed exactly such a Tsar.

"Fedya," he told his brother-in-law, sitting with him in the upper room while Irina read the Scripture aloud to them. "Do not be afraid. The Tsardom is not only the sword. It is prayer. You will pray for Russia. And for swinging the sword... we will find someone."

"Is it true, Borya?" Fyodor looked at him with hope. "I don't want to fight. I want the bells to ring. I want it to be quiet."

"It will be quiet, Sovereign. I promise."

Boris became Fyodor's shadow. His nanny. His guard. He cut off superfluous people from the heir. He checked his food. He slept by his door.
Maria, watching this, said:
"You are like a brooding hen with a chick. Watch out, don't overplay it. The chick might grow up and peck."

"This one won't peck," answered Boris. "He has no beak."

Meanwhile, Boris strengthened his positions in the Duma. He didn't ask for trouble like Belsky. He didn't boast of his lineage like Shuisky.
He was a "man of action."
While the boyars argued about seats at the table, Boris checked the treasury. While the voivodes counted precedence, Boris checked the cannons.
He was becoming indispensable. The *diaks* (clerks)—Shchelkalov and others, those on whom the bureaucracy rested—quickly realized: if you want to resolve a matter, don't go to the Tsar (he is mad), nor to Shuisky (he is proud), but to Godunov. Godunov will resolve it.

By 1584, Boris was effectively ruling the country. But he did it so quietly that no one noticed the reins passing into his hands.

In January 1584, a comet appeared over Moscow.
A huge, tailed star hung in the sky like a bloody saber.
Tsar Ivan, seeing it, said:
"This is for me."

He began to prepare for death.
But even in the face of eternity, he remained a player. He wrote a will. He created a Guardianship Council for Fyodor.
Included were the most noble: Prince Ivan Mstislavsky, Prince Ivan Shuisky, Nikita Romanov (Fyodor's uncle), and... Bogdan Belsky.
Godunov was not on the list of guardians.

When the clerk read the list, Boris turned pale.
It was a blow. Did the Tsar not trust him? Or, conversely, was he protecting him from the envy of the boyars?
Or was this the Terrible's last joke?

That evening Boris came to Maria blacker than a thundercloud.
"I am not in the Council. I am nobody. When the old man dies, the Shuyskys will devour me in a week. Exile me. or strangle me."

Maria sat by the window, embroidering pearls on velvet. She didn't even break her rhythm.
"You are not on the list on paper," she said calmly. "But you are on the list in Fyodor's heart."

"Fyodor is a rag! The guardians will lock him in the terem and rule in his name!"

"Fyodor is a rag," agreed Maria. "But this rag has soaked up your scent. He won't be able to breathe without you and Irina. The guardians will fight among themselves. Belsky hates the Shuyskys. Romanov is sick. Mstislavsky is old. They are spiders in a jar. And you..."

She raised her terrifying, intelligent eyes to him.
"You must become the jar. The one that holds them. Let them gnaw at each other. But you stand next to Fyodor. And when they weaken, you will shake them out."

"How?"

"You will see. The death of a Tsar is chaos. And in chaos, it is not the strongest who wins. The fastest wins."

She turned out to be right.
On March 18, 1584, the Endgame arrived.
The comet faded. The Tsar sat down to play chess.
And Boris was ready.

  Chapter 9. Endgame

**Moscow. March 18, 1584.**

The Tsar's bedchamber smelled not of incense, as it should at the deathbed of an Orthodox sovereign. It smelled of steamed herbs, mercury with which the healers tried to burn out the "French disease," and a body rotting alive. The windows were tightly draped with heavy velvet curtains that let in no bright March light. Time here had stopped, thickened into a sticky, stifling twilight in which dust motes swam.

Ivan Vasilyevich was dying long and terribly.
His body, once mighty, capable of bending horseshoes, was now swollen, filled with dropsy. His skin had become like yellow parchment, under which black, spoiled blood rolled. He no longer screamed or called for oprichniki to punish traitors. He simply wheezed, staring at the painted ceiling with cloudy, unseeing eyes in which froze the terror of what awaited him There.

But his mind—that terrible mechanism eaten away by suspicions but still sharp—continued to work.

"Chess..." he rustled. His lips barely moved.

Boris, standing at the head of the bed, shuddered. He hadn't slept for three days. His eyelids were red, inflamed like a rabbit's, and his hands trembled from tension. Nearby, like a shadow, froze Bogdan Belsky—aged, with gray in his beard, looking like a chain dog that senses the master is leaving and doesn't know whom to bite now.

"Bring them..." repeated the Tsar, and notes of his former iron will cut through his voice.

Belsky darted to the table, brought a board with ivory pieces. He set them up right on the blanket, on the dying man's heaving chest.
The Tsar raised his hand with difficulty. Fingers ringed with heavy gemstones trembled, but he groped for a white pawn and made a move.

"Play, Boriska..." the Terrible tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace of pain, baring black stumps of teeth. "The last game. If you win—it's your happiness. If you lose—I take you with me."

Boris sat on the edge of the bed.
**His right arm, broken by the Tsar's staff two years ago, ached at the bad weather—a sure sign of trouble. He massaged the old scar on his forearm and reached for the pieces with his left hand.**
It was torture. Sophisticated, in the spirit of Ivan. Playing with death on the belly of a monster.
He moved a knight.
The Tsar responded with a bishop. His moves were precise, angry. He played not for the sake of the game. He played to prove: *I am still here. I am still the Tsar.*

"Afraid?" asked Ivan, breathing heavily. The whistle in his chest resembled the sound of blacksmith bellows. "Correct. Be afraid. Fear is the only thing that holds the realm together. Love passes. Fear is eternal."

Boris was silent. He looked at the board. He saw the trap. The Tsar was preparing a mate in three moves.
He had to yield. Comfort the dying man with a victory. Let him leave triumphant.
That is how the old Boris would have acted—"grass," "sheep," "servant."

But Boris remembered Maria. Remembered her words: "He will not be the one filling you. You yourself."
And he remembered Clerk Bessonov lying in the snow.
He had paid too high a price to yield. Even to the Tsar.

Boris raised his hand. He took the black queen (*ferz*).
The move was unexpected. Daring. Impudent.
He blocked the Tsar's attack and aimed at the white king himself.

"Check, Sovereign," he said quietly.

Ivan Vasilyevich froze. His hand with a piece hovered in the air. He slowly turned his head to Boris. In his cloudy eyes, surprise flashed for a second—the way an old wolf looks at a young pack leader who suddenly bares his fangs and tears out his throat.

"Look at you..." he wheezed. "Learned... Grew teeth..."

And suddenly his hand unclenched.
The white king fell from his fingers, rolled across the blanket, bounced, and fell to the floor with a dull thud.
The Tsar's body arched. A sound like a raven's cry tore from his throat. His eyes rolled back, exposing yellow whites with red veins. His fingers curled, scratching the brocade of the blanket.

And silence fell.
So dense that Boris heard his own heart beating. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Belsky fell to his knees, howled, scratching his face, tearing his beard.
"Oh, father! Oh, provider! To whom have you abandoned us?!"

But Boris sat motionless.
He looked at the overturned pieces.
The game was over. The King died.
Now he would move the pieces.

They were already banging on the door. Heavy fist blows shook the oak panels.
There, behind the door, stood the boyars. The Mstislavskys, the Shuyskys, the Vorotynskys. They had waited for this moment for years. They stood there like a pack of jackals smelling carrion, ready to burst in and tear power to pieces.

Boris stood up.
He walked to the Venetian glass mirror hanging on the wall in a gilded frame.
From the mirror, a man of thirty-two looked back at him. He had a black beard, a high forehead, and eyes... The eyes were different.
There was no more fear in them. There was cold calculation.
From the mirror, the "wolf cub" did not look back. Nor the servant.
The Regent looked back.

He adjusted the collar of his kaftan. Pulled down the hem.
He walked to the doors and yanked them wide open.

In the corridor stood a crowd in golden kaftans. Faces were tense, greedy.
In front of everyone stood Vasily Shuisky. The very Fox. His watery eyes darted, assessing the situation, looking for confirmation.

Boris stepped across the threshold. He towered over them.
"The Sovereign has passed away," he said. His voice was hard, like the strike of a hammer on an anvil. There was no grief in it. It was a statement of fact. "Long live Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich!"

And first, not letting anyone come to their senses, not letting Shuisky open his mouth, he bowed from the waist.
Not to the dead man. But to the empty throne that now belonged to the blessed Fyodor.
And that meant—to him.

The crowd of boyars froze. They understood.
Power had not fallen into the mud. Power was caught in flight. And the hand that intercepted it was made of iron.

"Long live Tsar Fyodor!" shouted Mstislavsky first, realizing which way the wind blew.
"Long live!" the others picked up.

Shuisky remained silent longer than anyone. He looked at Boris with hatred and... respect. He realized he had lost this round.
But the game was just beginning.

  Chapter 10. Bell Ringing

**Moscow. May 1586.**

Moscow woke not from the rooster's crow, but from ringing.
Every morning, as soon as the sun gilded the domes of the cathedrals, the bronze on the Ivan the Great Bell Tower came alive. The ringing floated over the city—thick, crimson, iridescent. It spread over the river, tangled in the alleys of Kitay-gorod, flew into the windows of boyar terems and smoky chimneyless huts.

The Tsar himself was ringing.
Fyodor Ioannovich, Autocrat of all Russia, climbed the bell tower at the crack of dawn. There, at a dizzying height where the wind tore at the hem of his brocade cloak, he was happy.
He grabbed the ropes with chubby, weak hands and pulled them with surprising strength. His face, usually pale and puffy, with the eternal half-smile of a holy fool, was transformed. It shone.
Fyodor was not just ringing. He was talking to God. In a language that required no lying words.

Below, on Cathedral Square, stood Boris.
He craned his neck, squinting from the sun, and watched the small figure up above.
Around Boris, clerks with papers, voivodes with reports, ambassadors awaiting audiences were already crowding. The state machine required lubrication, decisions, executions, and mercies.
But Boris waited until the Tsar finished ringing.

"Blessed one..." someone whispered behind his back. It seemed to be Prince Mstislavsky. "A bell-ringer on the throne. A disgrace."

Boris turned slowly. The gaze of his heavy, dark eyes bored into the Prince's bridge. Mstislavsky choked and looked away, pretending to adjust his collar.
*A disgrace, you say?* thought Boris. *This disgrace is my armor. While he rings, you cannot tear out each other's throats.*

The ringing died down. Fyodor, breathless, wet with sweat, but shining, came down.
"Did you hear, Borya?" he shouted from the porch, spreading his arms. "Did you hear how the 'Swan' sang today? Pure as an angel! The Lord rejoices!"

"He rejoices, Sovereign," Boris bowed, handing the Tsar a cloth to wipe his face. "The ringing was noble. Heard all over Moscow."

"And I want to order a blagovest bell!" Fyodor grabbed Boris by the sleeve, looking into his eyes with childish trust. "A big one, a thousand poods! So it can be heard all the way to Kiev! Can we, Borya? Is there enough money?"

Boris sighed inwardly. The treasury was empty after the Livonian War. The streltsy had to be paid, fortresses on the defense line repaired, gunpowder bought.
But to refuse Fyodor a bell meant breaking his heart.

"There is enough, Sovereign. We will cast it."

Fyodor clapped his hands.
"That is glorious! Let's go to Irina, tell her! She will be happy!"

---

Irina Godunova, now Tsaritsa Alexandra (in monasticism, but still in the world for now), met them in her chambers.
She sat by the window, embroidering a shroud for the relics of a wonderworker with gold. Years in the Kremlin had changed her. She had become stricter, more majestic. Power had placed upon her face the seal of that special, sorrowful beauty found in women bearing a heavy cross.
But her eyes remained the same—anxious and loving.

"Irinushka!" Fyodor rushed to her, kissing her hands. "Boris promised a new bell! The biggest one!"

Irina smiled, stroking her husband's head like a child's.
"That is good, Fedya. It will ring for the glory of God."

Boris sat on a bench at a distance. He saw this idyll—the blessed Tsar and his holy wife. It was beautiful. And it was terrifying.
Because this idyll had one fatal flaw.
The cradle in the corner of the chamber was empty.
The Tsar had no children.
The Rurikid dynasty, which had ruled for seven centuries, hung by a thread. And Irina held this thread.

"Boris," Irina raised her eyes to her brother. The smile vanished. "The Shuyskys came again."

Fyodor, hearing the name, shrank and stopped smiling. He was afraid of the Shuyskys. Afraid of their loud voices, their smell of old furs and arrogance.

"Who exactly?" asked Boris, and his voice became hard.

"Vasily Ivanovich. And Metropolitan Dionisy with him."

"Dionisy?" Boris tensed. The Metropolitan was a creature of the Shuyskys. If the church interfered, matters were bad. "What did they say?"

"They spoke of sin," said Irina quietly. "That barrenness is God's punishment. That a fig tree bearing no fruit is cut down."

"They want a divorce," Fyodor said suddenly. His voice trembled, but in it sounded an unexpected, frightened clarity. "They want me to chase you away, Arinushka. To a monastery."

He grabbed his wife's hand, clinging so tight his fingers turned white.
"I won't give you up! I won't let you go!"

Boris stood up and paced the chamber.
Shuisky's plan was brilliant and simple. Strike not at Boris (Boris has streltsy and cannons), but at Irina.
If Fyodor divorces, Godunov ceases to be the Tsar's brother-in-law. He becomes just an upstart boyar. And then they will devour him in a day.

"They composed a petition," continued Irina. "'For the sake of saving the Tsar's root.' The boyars signed. The merchants signed. They say they will present it to the Sovereign tomorrow."

"Saviors..." hissed Boris. "Wolf tribe. They don't need an heir. They need power."

He walked up to Fyodor.
"Listen to me, Sovereign. Tomorrow they will come. They will press. They will threaten with hellfire. They will say you are destroying Russia by not giving an heir."

Fyodor curled into a ball, covering his ears with his hands.
"I don't want to listen! Borya, chase them away!"

"I cannot chase them away, Sovereign. They are the Duma. They have the right to speak. But you... you have the right not to listen."

"How?"

Boris looked at his sister. Irina was pale, but not crying. She nodded to her brother. She understood.

"You have a weapon, Fedya, that they do not," said Boris. "Love. They think a Tsar must sacrifice everything for duty. Show them that a Tsar is a human being."

---

The next day, the Palace of Facets hummed like a disturbed hive.
The boyars stood as a solid wall. Gold of kaftans, sables of coats, gray beards. Power. Tradition.
In front stood Vasily Shuisky. The Fox. He didn't look at the throne. He looked at the floor, demonstrating humility, but in his hands, he held a scroll. The petition.
Next to him stood Metropolitan Dionisy in a white cowl, leaning on a staff.

The doors opened.
Fyodor entered. He was in full royal regalia—in Monomakh's Cap, in heavy shoulder mantles. He walked, swaying under the weight of gold.
Boris walked beside him. He supported the Tsar by the elbow.

Fyodor sat on the throne. He seemed small and lost amidst this splendor.
Shuisky stepped forward.

"Great Sovereign," he began, and his voice was oily, insinuating. " The Russian land grieves. Your people grieve. We have no consolation, no hope for the future. The royal tree is drying up..."

He unrolled the scroll.
"We pray to you, Sovereign! For the sake of saving the realm! Accept a sacrifice, heavy but necessary. Bless Tsaritsa Irina for the angelic tonsure. And take for yourself a new wife, fruitful, so that the vine of Rurik may flourish!"

"Amen," hollowly supported the Metropolitan.

The boyars fell to their knees.
"We pray, Sovereign! Do not destroy the kingdom!"

Fyodor pressed into the back of the throne. His eyes filled with tears. He looked at these bowed backs, at these greedy napes. They demanded he betray the only person he loved.

Boris stood nearby, at the foot of the throne. He was silent. He couldn't intervene. This was the Tsar's business.
*Come on, Fedya,* he mentally implored. *Don't be grass. Be stone.*

Fyodor slowly stood up. Monomakh's Cap slid to the side.
He looked at Shuisky. Then at the Metropolitan.
And suddenly his face distorted. It was not a grimace of fear. It was a grimace of pain and anger—that very anger that lived in his father, Ivan the Terrible, but which Fyodor hid behind prayers.

"A sacrifice?!" he shouted. His voice broke into a squeal. "Me as a sacrifice?! Irina as a sacrifice?!"

He ran down the steps of the throne, tangling in the hems of his clothes. Ran up to Shuisky.
"You!" he poked a finger into the Prince's chest. "Do you want an heir? Or do you want power?!"

Shuisky recoiled. He didn't expect this. He thought to see a crying fool, but saw a rabid child.

"I married her before God!" screamed Fyodor, and spittle flew from his lips. "God united us! And you... you want to separate us?! Herods! Dogs!"

He tore Monomakh's Cap from his head and threw it on the floor. The Cap rolled, jingling with gold pendants, and hit Shuisky's boot.
The hall gasped. It was sacrilege.

"Take it!" wailed the Tsar. "Take the Cap! Take the throne! Take everything! But I won't give Irina! I will go with her! To a monastery! To a cell! But with her!"

He fell to his knees, covered his face with his hands, and sobbed. Loudly, uncontrollably, like an offended child.

Dead silence hung in the chamber.
The boyars exchanged glances. Shuisky stood pale, looking at the Cap lying on the floor.
The plan collapsed.
They could pressure the Tsar with duty. But they couldn't pressure a Tsar who was ready to renounce the throne for a woman. If Fyodor left, turmoil would begin. Chaos. And they feared chaos more than Godunov.

Boris slowly walked up to the sobbing Tsar. He picked up the Cap, blew a speck of dust from it.
Then he turned to the boyars.
His gaze was heavy as a tombstone.

"Did you hear the Sovereign's will?" he asked quietly. "Or need I repeat it?"

Shuisky met his eyes. In the Fox's eyes flashed hatred—and admission of defeat.
"We heard," said the Prince hollowly. "The Sovereign's will is law."

He bowed—not to the Tsar, but to empty space—and backed away to the doors. The others trailed after him.
Metropolitan Dionisy remained standing, confusedly fingering his staff. He realized his career was over.

Boris helped Fyodor stand up. He put the Cap back on the Tsar's head.
"It's over, Sovereign. It's over. They left."

Fyodor sobbed, smearing tears over his cheeks.
"Did they really leave, Borya? Won't they take Arina?"

"They won't take her. While I am alive—they won't take her."

---

In the evening, when Fyodor fell asleep having taken a calming decoction, Boris sat by the fireplace in his chambers.
He looked at the fire.
He had won. Shuisky was defeated. Tomorrow heads would roll: the Metropolitan would be defrocked, the instigators exiled. Power was in his hands again. Stronger than before.

But there was no joy.
There was fatigue.
He understood: today the country was saved not by his mind, not by his cunning. The country was saved by the hysteria of a holy fool.
All the might of the state, all these cannons, orders, fortresses—everything hung on one thin thread. On the love of a fool for a barren woman.

*A thread,* thought Boris, looking at the coals. *A thin, silken thread. If it breaks...*
He didn't finish the thought.
There was a knock at the door.
A messenger came from Uglich. With a report about Tsarevich Dmitry.
"He is growing," wrote Clerk Bityagovsky. "Spiteful. Builds snowmen and calls them by your name, Sovereign..."

Boris threw the letter into the fire. The paper flared up, curling into black ash.
The shadow of Uglich lay upon the room.
The war with the living was won. The war with those who should have died was approaching.

  Chapter 11. The Unspoken

**Moscow. May 1591.**

It was stifling in the Ruler's cabinet, although the windows facing the Kremlin garden were thrown wide open.
May that year was early, violent. Lilacs bloomed so furiously that their sweet, cloying scent filled the rooms, mixing with the smell of dust, old parchment, and candle soot. This smell intoxicated, caused a headache.

Boris sat at a table piled with scrolls. He twirled a goose quill in his fingers, breaking the stiff shaft. *Snap. Snap.* Small fragments fell onto the cloth of the tablecloth.
Opposite him stood Diak Mikhail Bityagovsky.

Bityagovsky was a man hard to remember. Of average height, with a face wiped smooth like a river pebble. Watery eyes, a quiet, even voice. The ideal bureaucrat. The ideal tool. He never asked superfluous questions, but always understood the essence of an order before it was voiced.
He was going to Uglich. Officially—"to supervise the household of the widow Tsaritsa Maria Nagaya and Tsarevich Dmitry." Unofficially...
The unofficial part did not exist yet. It hung in the air, thickening like a storm cloud.

"So, Mikhail," Boris set aside the mutilated quill and took a new one. He didn't look at the clerk. He looked at his hands. "How is the... situation there? I am informed that the Nagoys are restless."

"Restless, Sovereign," responded Bityagovsky. (He already called Boris Sovereign, though he wore no Cap. It was flattery, but flattery that had become truth). "Widow Maria harbors malice. She says money is short. The court is cramped for her. Writes letters to monasteries, complains of oppression. She waits."

"Waits for what?"

"For the Tsarevich to come into power."

Boris raised his eyes.
"And the Tsarevich? How is he?"

Bityagovsky was silent for a second, choosing words.
"Growing, Boris Fyodorovich. He is eight. Strong in body. But in temper..." The clerk sighed. "Violent. Just like his late father. Tortures cats, throws them from the bell tower. Chops chickens with a saber."

"Chickens?"

"And not only. They built snowmen in winter. So he chopped their heads off with a wooden saber and chanted: 'This is Boyar Mstislavsky. This is Diak Shchelkalov. And this...'"

"Finish it," said Boris quietly.

"'And this is Godunov.'"

Silence hung in the cabinet. Outside the window, in the garden, sparrows chirped, unaware of politics. Somewhere far away cart wheels rattled.
Boris slowly stood up and walked to the window.

Below, in the terem courtyard, his son Fyodor was playing.
A small, dark-haired, serious boy. He didn't chop heads. He sat on his haunches and built a fortress of sand and pebbles. Nearby sat Ksenia, reading a book.
Peace and tranquility.
The idyll Boris had built for seven years, brick by brick.

If Dmitry returns to Moscow...
Boris imagined it. Imagined the eyes of that other boy—mad, bloodshot eyes of the Terrible. Imagined how that boy, coming into power, would come into this courtyard.
The sand fortress would be trampled. Fyodor... Ksenia... Irina...
The executioner's block awaited them all. Or a monastery prison. Or an "accidental" illness.
Because the Terribles do not forgive. They take revenge. Even for what you are not guilty of.

Boris felt the heavy, cold stone turn over again in his chest, on the left. Fear for his children. The strongest fear in the world, which justifies everything.

"Lack of supervision you have there, Mikhail," he said quietly, not turning around. His voice was hollow, as if from a barrel. "Lack of supervision."

"We try, Boris Fyodorovich. We don't take our eyes off him. But..."

"But what?"

"The boy is sick. He has the 'falling sickness.' Epilepsy. Writhes in seizures, foam from the mouth, gnashes his teeth. The healers say—bad blood strikes the head."

"See. Sick." Boris turned to the clerk. The Ruler's face was gray, impenetrable as a mask. "And with the falling sickness, you know yourself, anything can happen. Knives, sharp corners, stones... Are there few dangers for a sick child running around without supervision?"

Bityagovsky didn't lower his eyes. He looked straight into Boris's face.
In this look, understanding occurred. Without words. Without receipts. Without seals.
Two bureaucrats were discussing "household issues."

The word "kill" was not spoken.
If someone had been eavesdropping, they would have heard nothing criminal. The Ruler cares for the health of the Tsar's nephew. Warns of dangers.
But in the air soaked with lilacs, another word sounded.
Permission.

"I understood, Sovereign," Bityagovsky's voice became slightly lower, slightly firmer. "We will... guard him. Like the apple of our eye. But everything is God's will. Man is mortal. And a sick man is mortal suddenly."

"Exactly. Suddenly."

Boris walked to the table. Opened a chest. Took out a heavy velvet pouch, tightly stuffed with gold.
He didn't hand it to the clerk. He just put it on the edge of the table.
Like payment for work not yet done, but already paid for.

"This is for household expenses, Mikhail. Widow Maria complained that money is short? Here, let them not be in need. Hire people. Reliable people. So there is order."

Bityagovsky took the pouch. Hid it in his bosom.
"There will be order, Boris Fyodorovich. Do not trouble yourself."

"And remember," Boris looked out the window again, at his son planting a twig-flag on the sand tower. "Moscow waits not for news. Moscow waits for peace. So the state doesn't shake. So there is no turmoil. Do you understand me?"

"Understood."

The door closed silently behind the clerk.
Boris remained alone.


He clutched his chest, gasping for air.

*I didn't order it,* flashed through his head. *I didn't say "kill." I said "guard." I sent money.*
It was the truth. Juridical truth.
But there was another truth.

*Guilty,* whispered Irina's voice in his head. A quiet, crying voice.
*Won,* said Maria Skuratova's voice firmly.
*You are a vessel,* mumbled the ghost of Ivan the Terrible from the corner. *And now you are full. Of blood.*

Boris walked to the table, took a pitcher of water, and greedily, straight from the rim, began to drink. Water ran down his chin, dripped onto the precious kaftan, but he couldn't quench his thirst. There was a taste of copper in his mouth. The taste of the coin placed on the eyes of a dead man.

He wiped his lips with his sleeve.
"For the sake of Fyodor," he said aloud to the empty room. "For the sake of my son."

But the room was silent. And the lilacs outside the window now smelled not of spring, but of a funeral.

  Chapter 12. "Tytychka"

**Uglich. May 15, 1591. Noon.**

The day was ringing, dazzling, cruel in its beauty.
The sun stood at its zenith, flooding Uglich with molten gold. The sky was such a piercing, deep blue color that it hurt to look at it. Not a cloud. Not a shadow.
The world seemed like paradise from which sin had been expelled.

In the inner courtyard of the princely chambers, overgrown with young, emerald grass, Tsarevich Dmitry was playing "tytychka."

He was eight years old. He was strong beyond his years, broad-shouldered, with a heavy jaw and his father's eyes—dark, burning, in which a spark of rage always smoldered. He was dressed in a rich little kaftan embroidered with gold, but on his feet were simple Morocco leather boots, scuffed at the toes from running.
In his hand, he gripped a *svayka*—a heavy iron nail with a ring at the end. Or a knife? In the game, it didn't matter. What mattered was sticking the iron into the earth.

"Here!" Dmitry threw the knife with a swing into the circle outlined by a twig. The blade went into the black earth up to the handle. "Take that!"
"Mitenka, be careful!" clucked the nanny Vasilisa Volokhova from the porch. She was husking seeds, spitting the shells at her feet. "You'll hurt yourself! What will I tell your mother?"

"Don't order me!" snapped the Tsarevich, yanking out the knife. The earth sprayed in clumps. "I am the Tsar! When I grow up, I'll order your tongue cut out so you don't croak!"

Vasilisa crossed herself.
"Bite your tongue, child. Just like your father, Lord forgive..."

Around the Tsarevich circled boys—"zhiltsy," children of bedkeepers and clerks, assigned to him for amusement. They feared him. Playing with Dmitry was like playing with a tiger cub: fun until he unsheathes his claws.
Among them were Petrushka Kolobov and Vazhenka Tuchkov. And there was Danilka Bityagovsky, the son of the diak.

Danilka stood slightly aside, pale, biting his lips. He didn't want to play.
His father had told him strange words this morning: "Walk, son. Watch. And if something starts—run home. And don't get in the way of adults."
What would start? Danilka didn't know. But the air trembled with tension, like before a thunderstorm, though the sky was clear.

"Hey, Danilka!" shouted the Tsarevich. "Why are you standing like an idol? Get in the circle! Your turn!"
"I don't want to, Sovereign Tsarevich. My head hurts."

"Head hurts?" Dmitry narrowed his eyes maliciously. "And if I chop it off, will it stop hurting?"

He laughed. The laugh was ringing, but a clank was audible in it.
The Tsarevich swung the knife again.
At that moment his face suddenly distorted strangely. The smile turned into a grin. His eyes rolled back so only whites remained. The hand with the knife jerked, but didn't throw the weapon, instead convulsively gripping it, pressing it to his chest.

The Falling Sickness.
"The Black Infirmity," as the servants whispered.
The boy's body arched. He wheezed, pink foam came from his throat. He began to topple onto his side like a felled tree.

"Hold him!" screamed Nanny Vasilisa frantically, dropping the bag of seeds. "A seizure! Nikita! Osip!"

Two men standing by the porch rushed to the boy. Nikita Kachalov and Danilo Bityagovsky (the elder, the diak's nephew). They were supposed to hold him so he wouldn't smash his head on stones.
They bent over the body writhing in convulsions.
Little Danilka, standing three steps away, saw their backs.

What happened in the next seconds, no one saw exactly.
The sun blinded eyes. Dust raised by feet hung in a pillar.
There was commotion. The nanny's scream. The boy's wheezing. The heavy breathing of men.

And suddenly, through this noise, cut a sound that froze the blood of everyone in the courtyard.
It was not a cry of pain. It was the sound made when slaughtering livestock. A gurgling, wet wheeze of a torn throat.

Nanny Vasilisa, running closer, saw a blade flash in a hand... Whose? The Tsarevich's? Or Kachalov's?
Blood spurted like a fountain. Bright, hot, unthinkably red on the green grass. It hit in a stream, flooding the Tsarevich's face, his gold kaftan, the men's hands.

Dmitry twitched one last time and went quiet.
His widely opened, glassy eyes looked straight into that flawless blue sky.
And nearby, in the grass, lay the knife. The same one, for the game. Or another?
Blood bubbled on the blade.

For a second the courtyard was silent. Only the buzzing of a fly landing on Kachalov's wet sleeve was audible.

And then a howl rang out.
Tsaritsa Maria Nagaya ran out onto the porch. She was bareheaded, in just a shirt, disheveled, terrifying. She saw her son. Saw the blood. Saw Bityagovsky and Kachalov standing over the body with bloody hands.

"THEY KILLED HIM!!!" this scream was like a thunderclap. "Killed him! Godunov's dogs! The Bityagovskys! Hold them! Tear them apart!"

She rushed to the body, fell into her son's blood, hugging the dead boy.
"People! Orthodox Christians! They killed the Tsarevich!"

Suddenly, as if by signal, a bell struck. The alarm.
The bell-ringer on the Spassky tower, priest Fedot nicknamed "Cucumber," seeing the running and blood from above, struck the clapper with all his might, tearing his hands.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The anxious, ragged rhythm of the alarm floated over Uglich.

The city woke up.
The courtyard gates flew open. The crowd—townspeople, streltsy, peasants with pitchforks and axes—flooded inside.
"Death to the murderers!"
"For the Tsarevich!"

Mikhail Bityagovsky, the diak, ran out onto the porch of his hut at the noise. He didn't understand yet what had happened. He thought—fire.
"What is the noise?" he shouted.

The crowd saw him.
"Here he is! Herod! Soul-destroyer!"
"Beat him!"

The diak understood everything. He saw the eyes of the crowd. White with rage, eyes of a beast thirsting for blood.
He tried to run. He rushed to the bell tower, hoping to lock himself in there.
But they caught him.
They knocked him off his feet. Beat him with whatever was at hand—sticks, stones, boots.
Little Danilka, hiding in a crack under the porch, saw his father lifted on pitchforks. Saw his head smashed with a cobblestone.

The courtyard turned into a slaughterhouse.
They killed Nikita Kachalov. Killed Danilo Bityagovsky. Killed even Nanny Vasilisa—they smashed her head with a log because she "didn't protect him."
Corpses were dragged through the mud, thrown at the feet of the mad Tsaritsa Maria.

"Here they are, Mother! Here are your offenders!"
The Tsaritsa, covered in her son's blood, stood over the corpses. She laughed and cried simultaneously.
"A dog's death to dogs!" she screamed, pointing a finger at the dead diak. "Send Godunov greetings in hell!"

And the sun continued to shine.
It indifferently illuminated the dead boy, and the torn murderers, and the crowd, terrifying in its jubilation and anger.
History made its move.
A piece was removed from the board.
The game ended. The Time of Troubles began.

  Chapter 13. The Experts Investigate

**Moscow. May 1591.**

The news of the Tsarevich's death flew to Moscow not on postal horses. It flew faster than the wind, passed by whispers, frightened glances, the ringing of bells.
Two days later it struck the Kremlin.

Boris sat at a meeting of the Boyar Duma. They discussed boring things: grain supplies to Arkhangelsk, hemp prices, complaints of the Stroganov merchants. The chamber smelled of wax and old fur coats. Boyars dozed, flies lazily crawled on charters.
The door flew open without a knock.
On the threshold stood a messenger. Dirty, in a kaftan splattered with mud, with a face gray from dust and fatigue. He swayed.
Duma Diak Andrei Shchelkalov stood to meet him, frowning:
"Who are you? Why without announcement?"

The messenger didn't answer. He walked, swaying, to the table, fell to his knees and held out a scroll. His hand trembled so much the scroll danced in the air.
Shchelkalov took the paper. Unrolled it. Ran his eyes over it.
And suddenly turned so terribly pale that Boris, sitting at the head of the table, went cold inside.

"What is it?" asked Boris. His voice sounded unnaturally loud in the silence.

"Uglich..." whispered Shchelkalov with just his lips. He raised eyes full of horror to Boris. "Tsarevich Dmitry... passed away. And Diak Bityagovsky is killed. A riot."

The silence that hung in the chamber was heavier than a tombstone.
The boyars woke up. Sleep flew off them instantly. They exchanged glances, and understanding flashed in their eyes.
*Died? The boy? A healthy boy?*
All gazes—dozens of pairs of eyes—slowly, as if on command, turned to Boris.

Boris felt these gazes with his skin. They burned.
In them read one thing: *We know. You did this. Herod.*
The stone turned over in his chest again. Not enough air. Boris stood up slowly, leaning his fists on the table so as not to fall. His legs were cottony.
He had to play surprise. Or grief.
But his face turned to stone. Muscles cramped.

"How... passed away?" he squeezed out. "From what?"

"They write... stabbed himself," Shchelkalov's voice trembled. "In a seizure. But the people don't believe. The people beat the diaks. They shout—murder."

A whisper went through the rows of boyars.
"Stabbed himself? Himself? Look, what a wonder..."
"Fresh is the legend..."
"The blood of an infant cries out..."

Someone from the back rows—it seemed to be Prince Golitsyn—asked loudly, defiantly:
"And whom shall we send to investigate this... miracle, Boris Fyodorovich? Your people? To bury the truth deeper?"

It was a challenge. Open.
If Boris sent his diaks, no one would believe him. They would say—covering up the killers. The riot would spread to Moscow. They would tear him apart right on the porch of the Palace of Facets.
He had to send someone whom they would believe. An enemy.
Someone who would dig the earth to find evidence against Godunov.

Boris swept his gaze over the hall. He looked for the most dangerous one. The most cunning.
And he met the eyes of Vasily Shuisky.
The Fox sat with his hands on his knees, barely smiling. He understood everything. He enjoyed the moment.
*Here he is, my executioner,* thought Boris. *Or my savior.*

"Prince Vasily Ivanovich," said Boris loudly. "You will go."

Shuisky raised an eyebrow.
"I, Sovereign?"

"You. You are a noble man, honest. A Rurikid. Your word will be trusted. Go to Uglich. Figure out how the Tsarevich died. Whether killed by villains or... by God's allowance. And who is guilty of the riot."

It was a risk bordering on suicide. Boris voluntarily put his head in the lion's mouth.
Shuisky stood up slowly. He bowed—low, respectfully. But devils danced in his eyes.
"I will figure it out, Boris Fyodorovich. I will drag the whole truth into the light. Do not trouble yourself. Not a single drop of blood will be hidden."

---

**Uglich. Three days later.**

Shuisky did not like corpses. But even more, he did not like stupidity.
And in Uglich, stupidity bloomed in full color.
The bodies of the Bityagovskys and Kachalov still lay in the yard, covered in flies. They were not removed "for the investigation." The stench was terrible.
Tsaritsa Maria Nagaya, crazed with grief, sat in the terem and howled, cursing Godunov.

Shuisky walked around the yard, squeamishly pursing his lips. He looked. He listened.
He questioned witnesses.
Nanny Vasilisa (who miraculously survived, though her head was smashed) he interrogated personally.
"Well, old woman, speak. Did you see a knife in Kachalov's hand?"
"I didn't see, Father-Prince!" sobbed the woman. "There was dust! Commotion! Only saw Mitenka fall, and blood came! And the Tsaritsa screams: 'Killed!'."

Shuisky nodded.
He questioned the boys who played with the Tsarevich. They, stuttering with fear, insisted on one thing: "He did it himself! Himself! Fell on the knife! Poke—and into the throat!"
Shuisky believed them. Children cannot lie so smoothly.
Means, an accident. Falling sickness. Suicide by negligence.

It was the Truth.
Shuisky stood by the body of the Tsarevich, which had already been washed and laid in the cathedral. The boy lay calm, beautiful, with a sewn-up throat.
*Here it is, the Truth,* thought Shuisky, looking at Dmitry's waxen face. *He killed himself. Godunov is innocent.*

If he told this Truth in Moscow, Boris would sit on the throne.
And if he told a Lie? If he said: "Yes, this is murder. I found evidence"?
Then the people would sweep Godunov away. The Shuyskys would come to power.
It would seem the choice was obvious. Destroy the enemy.

But Shuisky was the Fox. He looked two steps ahead.
If Godunov is killed now, chaos begins. The Nagoys will take revenge. The Romanovs will climb onto the throne. The Mstislavskys will raise the streltsy.
Russia will drown in blood. And the Shuyskys... The Shuyskys might not hold power in this fight.
*A bad peace is better than a good quarrel,* thought the Prince. *And even better—to have a Tsar on a leash.*

He didn't need Godunov's head on a pike. He needed Godunov-the-Debtor.
Eternal debtor.

Shuisky walked out of the cathedral. A crowd of Uglich peasants stood on the porch. They waited for the verdict. Waited for the Prince to say: "At 'em, Godunov!".
Shuisky unrolled a scroll.
"Listen, people!" his voice was ringing and firm. "The investigation is finished. By God's judgment and human understanding, it is established: Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich fell into the falling sickness. And in unconsciousness, playing knives, he stabbed himself in the throat. This death is God's allowance, not evil intent!"

The crowd gasped.
"How himself?! And the diaks?!"
"And the diaks were killed by you in vain!" barked Shuisky. "For vigilantism and riot—you will answer! To Siberia you go, to build the city of Pelym! And Tsaritsa Maria—to be tonsured a nun, for lack of supervision and sedition!"

He made a choice. He saved Boris.
And he knew the price of this salvation.

---

**Moscow. June 1591.**

Shuisky returned to Moscow a victor.
The Boyar Duma was packed. Everyone waited. Boris's life hung by a thin thread held in the hands of this short, stooped man with cunning eyes.

Shuisky walked to the middle of the chamber. He looked at Boris.
Boris sat in his place, pale as a sheet. His hands gripped the armrests of the chair so that it seemed the wood would crack.
Boris's gaze was a plea. A mute, humiliating plea.

Shuisky smiled with just his eyes.
"We established for certain..." he began, drawling the words. "That Tsarevich Dmitry died from negligence and illness. Self-slaughter it was. The Sovereign's servants are innocent."

The hall exhaled. Some with disappointment (Boris's enemies), some with relief (his supporters).
Boris closed his eyes. He took a deep breath, as if surfacing from depth.

In the evening, when the Duma dispersed, Boris summoned Shuisky to his cabinet.
They remained alone.
Candles burned on the table. Outside the window bloomed those same lilacs, but now they smelled not of death, but of life.

"Sit, Prince," said Boris. His voice still trembled.

Shuisky sat, not waiting for an invitation. Possessively.
"Thank you, Vasily Ivanovich," said Boris quietly. "You... you saved the state from turmoil. I won't forget this."

"I told the truth," Shuisky chuckled, looking at the candle fire. "And truth, Boris Fyodorovich, is so... flexible. Like a willow switch. Wherever you turn it—there it grows. Today it is one thing. Tomorrow it can be another."

Boris tensed.
"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Sovereign," Shuisky raised his watery, terrifying eyes to him, "that the people love fairytales. Today I told them a fairytale about a sick boy with a knife. They believed. But if tomorrow... if tomorrow someone says the boy was killed... Or that the boy was saved... They will believe that too."

"Saved?" Boris went cold. "But you saw the body yourself!"

"I saw the body," nodded Shuisky. "But the dead don't speak. And the living... The living say what is profitable for them."

He stood up.
"What do you want?" asked Boris. "Gold? Lands? Rank of Koniushey? Take it. I will give everything."

"I need nothing," Shuisky waved it off. "For now. I have everything. Just remember, Boris Fyodorovich. The throne under you stands not on four legs. It stands on my word. One word of mine—and 'suicide' becomes 'murder.' One word of mine—and a dead boy can come to life."

He walked to the door.
"Live with this, Sovereign. Rule. Build your fortresses. But remember: the key to your power lies in my pocket."

Shuisky left, quietly closing the door behind him.
Boris remained alone.
He walked to the icons, wanted to cross himself. But his hand didn't rise. It seemed heavy, leaden. Alien.
He was alive. He was acquitted. He was in power.
But the collar the Terrible spoke of had clicked shut. And the leash was in the hands of the Fox.

Somewhere far away, beyond the Kremlin walls, a bell struck. Hollowly, anxiously.
It was not an alarm. It was a funeral toll.

  Chapter 14. The Empty Throne

**Moscow. January 7, 1598.**

The death of the last Tsar of the Rurikid line was quiet, like the burning out of a wax candle.
Fyodor Ioannovich did not suffer like his father. He simply faded. In the last days, he didn't even recognize the boyars, only smiled at someone invisible in the corners of the chamber and whispered the names of angels.

Boris did not leave his bedside. He held the Tsar's cooling hand in his and listened as an epoch left through this hand along with the warmth. Seven centuries of history.
Seven centuries when the descendants of the Varangian ruled the country. And now—the end. No children, no brothers. Emptiness.

"Borya..." rustled Fyodor, opening his eyes. In them was clear, pre-death purity. "I am going to Arinushka." (Irina sat nearby, but Fyodor spoke of her as if they had already met in heaven).
"Don't go, Sovereign," said Boris quietly. "To whom are you abandoning us?"

"To God," smiled Fyodor. "And to you. You... you will handle it. You are strong. And I am tired."

He sighed—lightly, like a child in sleep—and went quiet.
Silence hung in the chamber.
Irina, sitting at the foot of the bed, didn't scream. She stood up, walked to her husband, and closed his eyes.
"It is done," she said.

Boris stood up. He looked at the boyars crowding at the doors. Mstislavsky, Shuisky, Romanovs. They stood hanging their heads, but their eyes were already darting, seeking advantage.
"The Tsar is dead!" proclaimed Boris. "We swear allegiance to Tsaritsa Irina!"

It was his first move.
The boyars were confused. Irina? A woman on the throne? But they dared not refuse at her husband's coffin.
"We kiss the cross to Sovereign Lady Irina Fyodorovna!" the hall hummed.

But Irina raised her hand.
"No," her voice was hard as steel. "I will not take it. It is not a woman's business to rule a tsardom. I am going to a monastery. To God. And you... choose yourselves."

It was a thunderclap.
Abdication.
The throne was empty.

---

**Novodevichy Monastery. February 1598.**

Moscow seethed.
A month without a Tsar. A month of fear.
The boyars squabbled in the Duma. The Shuyskys shouted that the most noble (themselves) should be chosen. The Romanovs suggested drawing lots.
The people, frightened by rumors of the arrival of Poles, demanded a "strong hand."

And the "strong hand" locked himself in a cell of the Novodevichy Monastery.
Boris went after his sister. He didn't appear in the Kremlin. He prayed.
It was a brilliant game. He knew: if he reached for the Cap himself, they would call him a usurper. The Cap must be brought to him. And they must beg him to take it.

Irina's cell was cramped, smelling of incense and dried apples.
Boris sat by the window, looking at the snowy field in front of the monastery.
There, on the field, stood a crowd. Thousands of people.
They were driven there by Boris's loyal people—bailiffs, centurions, agents of the investigation. They were given money. They were ordered to shout.

"Do you hear?" asked Boris without turning around.
Irina, now Nun Alexandra, in a black cowl, sat on a bench with prayer beads.
"I hear, brother. They shout your name."

"They are afraid, Ira. Afraid of chaos."
"They are afraid of you," said his sister quietly. "You drove them into a corner with your humility. It is a cruel game, Boris. You torture the country with uncertainty."

"I am testing its loyalty."
"Loyalty is not tested by hunger for power. Go to them. Take what you already took in your heart a long time ago."

There was a knock at the door.
Patriarch Job entered. He was red from frost and excitement. Behind him tumbled in the boyars—those very proud princes. Shuisky was among them, pale, with a bitten lip.

The Patriarch fell to his knees before Boris.
"Boris Fyodorovich! Father! Do not destroy us! The land is orphaned! Tatars on the border, Poles sharpen swords! Take the Tsardom! We pray by Christ God!"

The boyars, grunting, also lowered themselves to their knees. Shuisky knelt last. Slowly. Looking Boris in the eyes with hatred.

Boris stood up. He swept his gaze over the kneeling nobility.
He remembered how his father groveled in the mud before an oprichnik.
Now the Rurikids groveled before him.

"A heavy sin you offer me," he said loudly so that even those in the corridor could hear. "Monomakh's Cap is beyond my strength. I am a simple servant."

"We have no other Tsar!" wailed the Patriarch, and the crowd outside the monastery walls picked up this wail. "Bo-ris! Bo-ris!"

Boris looked at Irina.
His sister nodded. There were tears in her eyes. She blessed him for the cross he had built for himself.

Boris turned to the Patriarch.
"Be it as you say," he said humbly. "If the voice of the people is the voice of God, I dare not contradict. I will accept the crown. But know: I take it not for my glory, but for the protection of the poor and wretched."

He raised Shuisky from his knees. Took him by the shoulders.
"Stand up, Prince Vasily. Now we are all servants of Russia."

Shuisky stood up. His lips twitched in a sneer that only Boris noticed.
*The performance is over, actor,* read in his eyes. *Curtain. Applause. But remember: in the intermission, I can saw through the legs of your throne.*

Boris stepped out onto the cell porch.
The crowd saw him and roared. Hats flew into the sky.
Boris crossed himself.
The throne was no longer empty.
Ascending it was the first Tsar chosen not by blood, but by cunning.

  PART THREE. THE ANTICHRIST

  Chapter 15. Monomakh

**Moscow. September 3, 1598.**

The day of the coronation turned out to be not merely sunny—it was frantic. It was as if the sky itself decided to play along with the new ruler, scattering the clouds and cranking the heat to the limit.
The sun roasted from the very morning, melting wax on the banners, forcing the brocade of the vestments to burn with fire. Moscow, decorated with carpets, spruce branches, and ribbons, hummed like a huge, disturbed hive into which honey had been poured.

From the Red Porch of the Palace of Facets to the Assumption Cathedral itself, red cloth was spread. Bright, bloody, it cut the eye against the gray stone of the square. Along the cloth, a living wall, stood streltsy in parade kaftans, with bardiches polished to a shine. And behind their backs swayed a sea of heads.
The People.
The very people who just last winter, standing under the monastery walls, begged Boris to take the tsardom. Now they came to look at their chosen one.

"Boris! Boris! Father!" floated over the square.

Boris Fyodorovich Godunov stood on the porch.
He wore the "Great Robe"—the royal attire of heavy gold brocade, embroidered with pearls and rubies. It weighed two poods, no less. Under this shell, his body instantly covered in sweat, his shirt stuck to his back.
But Boris's face was dry and pale, like a man walking to the block, not to the throne.

He looked at the crowd.
He saw not people. He saw mouths. Thousands of open, screaming mouths.
In this roar, there was none of that sincere, puppy-like joy with which they once greeted the blessed Fyodor. Then, the people rejoiced from the soul. Now, the people rejoiced for pay.
Boris knew: all over Moscow since morning, barrels of wine and mead were rolled out. Money was distributed to beggars. In every church, prayer services were held "for the health of Sovereign Boris," and priests were ordered to mention his name in every litany.

*I bought them,* he thought coldly, looking over the heads at the golden domes. *I bought their love, as one buys grain at the market. Expensively. With overpayment. But with a guarantee. As long as there is wine—there will be love.*

He took the first step.
The weight of the royal robes pressed him to the ground. Every step came with difficulty, as if he walked not on cloth, but through a quagmire.
Maria walked beside him.
She was terrifying and magnificent in her triumph. She wore so many jewels that she sparkled like an icon in a setting. Her face, usually pale, now burned with a blush. Her eyes, those very eyes of Malyuta, shone with a cold, victorious fire.
She walked not as a wife. She walked as a co-ruler. As one who finally took what was hers by right of strength.

Following them were the children. Ksenia—a beauty, dark-browed, stately, already a bride. And Fyodor—the heir, a smart boy with the eyes of a frightened fawn, who looked with horror at the roaring crowd.
And somewhere in the shadows, behind the backs of the boyars, walked Nun Alexandra—the former Tsaritsa Irina. In a black cowl, with head bowed. She was the only one here who did not rejoice. She walked as if to her brother's wake, knowing that today he finally dies as a man and is born as a Tsar.

The procession moved slowly toward the cathedral.
The boyars—Mstislavskys, Shuyskys, Vorotynskys—bowed from the waist, sweeping the cloth with their beards. Those who just yesterday called him an "upstart" and a "Tatar muzzle" today bent into three folds.
Boris saw their backs. He knew the price of these bows.
Fear. And profit.

It was gloomy and stifling in the Assumption Cathedral. The air was stagnant, soaked in incense and the breath of hundreds of people. Candles crackled, dropping hot wax onto the floor.
By the altar stood Patriarch Job. Old, hunched, in a golden mitre, he looked like an ancient idol covered in brocade.

Boris approached the ambo. He lowered himself to his knees. The velvet cushion under his knees was soft, but the stone beneath it was felt all the same.
The choir burst into "Many Years!". The voices of the choristers flew up to the dome, reflected off the frescoes, and crashed down in a waterfall of sound.

The Patriarch lifted Monomakh's Cap.
In the semi-darkness of the cathedral, it gleamed dully with gold and dark sable fur. An ancient crown. A sacred object. A symbol of power passed from father to son for centuries.
From Rurik—to Vladimir. From Vladimir—to Ivan. From Ivan—to Fyodor.
And now—to him. To Godunov. To a man without clan or tribe.

"The servant of God Boris is crowned for the Tsardom of Moscow and All Rus'!" the Patriarch's voice trembled with age and emotion.

Boris bowed his head.
He had waited for this moment all his life. He walked to it through humiliations in the entryways, through fear in Malyuta's house, through the blood of Clerk Bessonov, through silent consent to murder in Uglich.
He thought he would feel triumph. Flight.

The Cap descended onto his head.
And he felt... heaviness.
Not the physical heaviness of gold and fur. Different.
As if not a cap, but a tombstone lay on his shoulders. Cold, slippery, smelling of damp earth.
The Cap squeezed his temples. Like a hoop.
*A choke collar,* Ivan the Terrible's mocking voice sounded in his head. *With spikes inward. Put it on—you won't take it off.*

Boris gritted his teeth so as not to groan. He forced himself to straighten up.
"Axios!" proclaimed the Patriarch.
"Axios!" exhaled the cathedral.
"Axios!" came from the square, picked up by thousands of throats.

Boris rose from his knees. Now he was the Tsar.
He turned to the people standing in the temple.
In the first row, among the noblest boyars, stood Vasily Shuisky.
The Fox bowed lower than anyone, almost touching the floor with his hand.
But when Boris passed by, Shuisky raised his eyes for a second.
In this look, there was neither servility nor fear. There was knowledge.
*I know who you are,* said his watery eyes. *You are my debtor. Wear this cap while I allow it. While I remain silent about the dead boy.*

Boris walked past, gripping the scepter in his right hand so hard that his knuckles turned white. The scepter seemed hot, like a red-hot rod.

He stepped out onto the cathedral porch.
The sun struck his eyes. The crowd on the square howled, seeing the Tsar in the crown. Hats flew into the air.
Boris raised his hand, calling for silence.
The hum died down.
He had to say the Word. A Word that would be remembered. A Word that would justify everything—the blood, the lies, and the bribery.

"God is my witness!" his voice, amplified by the echo of the square, sounded powerful and firm. "No one in my kingdom shall be destitute or orphaned! I will be a father to everyone! I will share my last shirt with my people!"

He tore at the collar of the "Great Robe," baring his neck. Gold buttons sprayed in all directions, hitting the stones.
"I swear!"

The crowd gasped. Women sobbed. Men crossed themselves.
"Father! Provider! A holy man!"

Boris stood looking at this sea of tears and delight.
He knew he would not give away the shirt.
He would give away his soul.
Because the shirt he had already given away. He sold it to the devil the moment he accepted Shuisky's help.

Maria stood nearby. She took his arm—hard, authoritatively, as a mistress takes the reins.
"Smile," she whispered without unclenching her lips. "You are the Tsar."

Boris stretched his lips into a smile.
But inside, under the heavy brocade, under the gold and pearls, he was cold. As cold as if he were standing again in that gateway on Varvarka, clutching a knife in his sleeve.
Monomakh's Cap pressed on his brain.
It had already begun its work—breaking the neck.

  Chapter 16. The Golden Age

**Moscow. 1600.**

And the Golden Age arrived.
Later, years later, old men who survived the Time of Troubles would recall this time as a fairy tale. As a short, blinding Indian summer before an eternal winter.

Boris ruled not as a warrior-tsar dreaming of the glory of Alexander the Great. He ruled as a thrifty, strict owner. Like a merchant who took over a ruined shop with debts and decided to turn it into a prosperous trading house.
He swept the litter out of the hut, fixed the leaking roof, and set the table.

In the Kremlin, the light in the windows of the sovereign's cabinet did not go out until the third roosters. Boris worked eighteen hours a day. He personally checked estimates, felt the cloth brought by the English, recounted cannons on the walls. He wanted to be everywhere. He wanted to fill every corner of the huge country with himself, to crowd out the memory of the Rurikids and of blood.

"Your Majesty," Diak Vasily Shchelkalov of the Ambassadorial Prikaz unrolled a map. "Architect Fyodor Kon has arrived from Smolensk. He reports: the wall is growing. The world has not seen such a fortress. Thirty-eight towers! A necklace for all of Rus'!"

Boris approached the map. He ran his finger along the western border.
"Smolensk is our gate, Vasily. The Poles sleep and dream of how to break it down. The wall must be not just strong. It must be eternal. Spare no money. Bring stone from all over the country. Pay the masters in gold, but ensure every brick lies as if cast."

"The people grumble, Sovereign. It is hard to haul stone."

"They will grumble and stop," cut off Boris. "But when the enemy comes, they will be saved behind these walls. I build not for myself. I build for their grandchildren."

He built everywhere.
Moscow changed before one's eyes. Instead of wooden, rotten walls, the White City rose—a ring of white stone girding the trading quarter. Stone shops grew in Kitay-gorod. Overseas clocks with chimes appeared on the Kremlin towers, and now Moscow lived not by the sun, but by precise time.
In the south, in the Wild Fields, new fortress cities stood up: Tsarev-Borisov, Saratov, Samara. The Russian border stepped into the steppe, pushing back Tatar raids.

But Boris built not only walls. He tried to build people.

"The Germans write," reported another clerk, "that they are ready to accept our youths for learning. In L;beck and in London."

The boyars in the Duma, hearing this, made noise, shaking their beards.
"Heresy!" shouted Prince Mstislavsky. "One must not send Orthodox children to Latins and Lutherans! They will spoil them! They will forget the true faith, start smoking tobacco, shaving beards!"

Boris struck the floor with his staff.
"Silence!" His voice was cold and hard. "We sit in the forest, boyars. We pray to stumps while Europe builds ships and prints books. Do you want the Swedes to beat us like children again? Or do you want us to have our own healers, our own engineers, our own ore experts?"

"Our grandfathers lived this way..." grumbled Shuisky.

"Grandfathers lived in darkness!" barked Boris. "But I want light. Send eighteen noble children. The best ones. Give money. Give books. Let them learn. They are our future."

He believed in this. He sincerely believed that it was possible to remake this country. That it was possible to wash it clean of centuries-old dirt, teach it to live by the law, read books, and not steal.
He threw open the doors to foreigners. English merchants received the right to trade duty-free. Music played in the German Quarter, and Dutch doctors treated Muscovites with powders, not incantations.

In the evenings, when the hum of the city subsided, Boris came to the nursery.
It was his only sanctuary.
Ksenia had grown into a beauty—dark-browed, stately, intelligent. She didn't sit in the terem at embroidery frames like other boyar daughters. She read. She knew Polish and Latin. Boris sought the very best groom for her—a prince. He brought the Swedish Prince Gustav to Moscow, but he turned out to be a drunkard and a brawler. Boris kicked him out.
"It's nothing, Ksyusha," he stroked his daughter's head. "We'll find another. We'll call for the Danish prince. You are worthy of a crown."

And Fyodor... Fyodor was his pride.
The heir was a copy of his father, only softer, more intellectual. He didn't like hunting and dog baiting. He loved to draw.
On a huge table in his room lay the first map of Russia, which he drew himself under his father's guidance.

"Look, father," Fyodor showed, poking at the map with an ink-stained finger. "Here, on the Volga, we can build locks. And here, in Siberia, they found ore. If we build a road..."

Boris looked at his son and felt the ice in his chest thawing.
"You will build it, Fedya. You will build everything. I will leave you such a country—you will gaze in wonder. Stone. Rich. Well-fed. No one will dare say that the Godunovs are temporary rulers. We are here forever."

Boris did everything so the people would forget Uglich.
He was merciful. He forbade executions without trial. He distributed alms to thousands of beggars. Widows and orphans knew: if you reach the Tsar, he will help. He will give money, give a hut, give protection from an evil voivode.
"Kind Tsar!" they shouted after him. "Holy Tsar!"

And Boris almost believed it.
Almost.
But at night...
At night, the past came.

He woke up in a cold sweat because his throat went dry. He didn't dream of blood. He didn't dream of a knife.
He dreamed of laughter. Thin, childish laughter that sounded from every corner of his new, stone, luxurious palace.
"Tytychka!" rang in his ears. "Hit!"

Boris jumped up, threw on a robe, and went wandering through the corridors.
The guards shied away from him, seeing the pale face of the Tsar with a candle in his hand.
He went to Maria.
She was not asleep. She sat by the window, looking at the dark, sleeping city they had conquered.

"Did you hear?" he asked, sitting at her feet and laying his head on her knees.
"I hear only the wind," she answered harshly, running her fingers through his graying hair. "Sleep, Boris. The dead do not laugh. The dead rot in the ground."

"But what if he is alive?"
"Who?"
"Fear. It lives in me. I build walls, I build cities, I feed this people... I want to buy my way out, Masha. I want God to see: I am a good Tsar. I have atoned for the sin."

Maria took his face in her palms. Her hands smelled of expensive perfumes, but under this scent, Boris still felt the smell of Bessonov's blood and the Terrible's incense.
"God judges winners, Boris. And we won. Fear is alive while you feed it with your conscience. Don't feed it. You are the Tsar. You gave people bread and peace. They worship you."

"They worship while they are full," whispered Boris. "But if the bread runs out? If God does not accept my payment?"

She was silent.
Outside the window, dawn was breaking. The sky was gray, heavy. The air smelled of dampness.
The summer of 1601 began strangely.
Birds didn't sing.
And from the north, contrary to the calendar, blew an icy wind carrying the smell of disaster.

The Golden Age was ending.
Hunger stood on the threshold.

  Chapter 17. The Wrath of God

**Russia. Summer 1601.**

It began not with thunder and lightning, not with fiery signs in the sky.
It began with silence and dampness.

Spring that year was early, harmonious. Peasants rejoiced going out to the plow. The earth steamed, black, fat, ready to give birth. Winter crops rose like a wall, promising a harvest such as hadn't been seen in ten years.
"God is merciful," said the old men, crossing themselves at the sun. "Tsar Boris is lucky."

And then, in the middle of May, the sky clouded over.
At first, they were light, gray clouds, like dirty sheep's wool. Then they thickened, blackened, filled with lead, and descended so low to the ground that it seemed—touch the dome of a church, and it would pour.
And it poured.

The rain set in—tedious, fine, cold. It didn't make noise, didn't rumble with storms. It just fell. Day after day. Week after week.
The sun disappeared. The world became gray.
At first, people waited for it to clear up. Then they began to pray. Then—to fear.

Fields sown with rye and oats turned into swamps. Water stood in the furrows, not soaking into the ground. Grain thrown into the soil didn't sprout—it rotted. It suffocated without sun, covered with mold.
Winter crops, which had recently delighted the eye with emerald greenery, lay down, beaten by water, and began to blacken.

"Rotting, Father-Sovereign," reported messengers from the provinces to Boris. "Everything is rotting. Roots are steaming. There will be no bread."
Boris stood by the window in his Kremlin cabinet and looked at the wet, gray veil hiding Moscow.
"Pray," he ordered. "Serve prayer services in all temples. Ask for clear weather."

They prayed. Bells rang. Religious processions splashed through the mud, carrying icons under the rain, and the faces of saints got wet as if crying along with the people.
But the sky was deaf. It seemed to have gone blind and deaf.
Rain poured for ten weeks straight.
Ten weeks without a single ray of sun.

And then, in August, on the Feast of the Assumption, happened something that even hundred-year-old elders did not remember.
In the evening, the rain stopped. The sky cleared, and stars appeared—bright, prickly, winter stars.
Frost struck.
In the middle of summer, on the wet, slushy earth, on the still green grass, snow fell.

In the morning, people came out of their huts and didn't believe their eyes.
The world was white.
Snow lay on roofs, on fields, on trees that hadn't yet shed their leaves. Birds, frozen in flight, lay on the roads as black lumps.
But most terrible were the fields.
Rye, the kind that miraculously survived under the rains, now stood glassy, ringing with ice. The ears were empty. The frost killed everything that the water hadn't managed to kill.

Men went out into the field, broke icy stalks, and howled. They didn't cry—they howled like beasts. Women fell to their knees right in the snow.
This was not a crop failure. This was Death.
Hunger. The kind with a capital letter. Biblical.

By September, old stocks of bread ran out. The new harvest was not gathered.
The price of rye jumped tenfold. By October—fifty-fold. By winter—a hundred-fold.
A quarter of rye, which used to cost half a ruble, now cost three rubles. Then five. Then they gave a soul for it.

Boris rushed about the palace like a wounded bear.
"Open the granaries!" he screamed, spraying saliva. "The Tsar's barns! Distribute bread! For free! To everyone!"
"Sovereign," the treasurers objected timidly, "if we give to everyone, the treasury will be empty by spring. And the new harvest... God knows if there will be one."
"Spit on the treasury!" roared Boris. "People are dying! I promised to share my shirt! Here it is, the shirt! Tear it!"

He ordered the state reserves opened.
He thought he would save the people.
But he was mistaken.
News that in Moscow "the Tsar gives bread for free" flew across the country instantly.
And Russia moved on Moscow.
Thousands, tens of thousands of hungry, ragged people left their villages and crawled toward the capital. The roads turned black with refugees. They walked carrying children who no longer cried, but only whined quietly.

Moscow choked.
The city turned into a giant, fetid flophouse. People lived on streets, in cemeteries, in gateways.
There wasn't enough of the Tsar's bread for everyone. The crush at the granaries was terrible—hundreds were crushed to death.
And those who didn't get bread began to eat other things.
First, they ate the pigeons. Then cats and dogs.
Then children began to disappear.

Boris learned about this from Shuisky.
The Fox came to his cabinet in winter, when the frost outside crackled so that logs burst.
"Sovereign," said Shuisky without bowing. "On the Smolensk road, they found a cart. In it—barrels of salted meat."
"So what?" Boris sat clutching his head.
"The thing is, Sovereign, that it is not pork. It is human flesh. They are butchering people. And selling them. Meat pies at the market—better not ask who the filling is."

Boris raised his eyes to him. There was horror in them.
"Cannibalism? In an Orthodox country?"
"Hunger knows no faith, Boris Fyodorovich. Hunger knows only the belly."

Boris stood up. He walked to the icons.
"For what?" he whispered. "Lord, for what?! I built temples! I gave them peace! I wanted good! Why do You punish them for my sins?!"

Shuisky stood behind his back.
"Or maybe not for yours, Sovereign?" he said quietly. "Maybe the earth does not accept the grain? People say: bread does not grow on the blood of an infant."

Boris turned sharply.
"Silence!"
"I remain silent. But the people speak. They whisper in corners: 'This is for Uglich. This is for Tsarevich Dmitry. While Herod is on the throne—the sun will not rise'."

Shuisky sneered.
"You wanted to be the father of the people, Boris? You became one. But now the people look at you not as a father, but as a curse. You gave them a Golden Age. And now you give them a Glass Age. Of ice."

Boris grabbed a heavy candlestick. He wanted to strike. Smash this cunning, bald head.
Shuisky didn't even move. He knew: Boris wouldn't strike. Boris was broken.

Boris lowered his hand. The candlestick stood on the table with a thud.
"Get out," wheezed the Tsar.
Shuisky bowed and left.

Boris remained alone.
He walked to the window. Moscow lay under the snow—black, extinct, terrifying.
Smoke didn't rise from chimneys—there was nothing to heat with.
Only crows circled over the squares where uncollected corpses lay.
God turned away from Boris.
The Golden Age ended. The agony began.

  Chapter 18. The Shadow

**Moscow. October 1603.**

The hunger receded.
In the third year, the earth, as if satiated with human flesh, began to give birth again. The harvest of 1603 was abundant. Bread became cheaper. The dead were removed from the streets, buried in huge mass graves called "skudelnitsy." The smell of decay weathered away, replaced by the smell of freshly baked bread and autumn leaves.

It would seem, live and rejoice. Tsar Boris prayed for forgiveness. God changed anger to mercy.
But something changed forever in people's eyes.
They ate the Tsar's bread but did not bow. They looked from under their brows. They knew: the Tsar is fake. A real Tsar would not have allowed such a plague.

Boris felt this change.
He had aged. His black beard turned gray, deep shadows lay under his eyes. He became suspicious. He saw conspiracies everywhere. He dispersed boyar circles, exiled the Romanovs (main competitors) to a pit, tonsured them as monks.
*I pulled out the weeds,* he thought, sitting at night in his cabinet. *Now the field is clean.*

But trouble came not from the field. It came from the forest. From the side where the sun set. From Poland.

That evening, the head of the Ambassadorial Prikaz Afanasy Vlasyev entered the Tsar's room without announcement. His face was whiter than paper. In his hands, he held a letter.

"Sovereign..." Vlasyev's voice trembled. "Bad news from the Lithuanian borderlands."
"Tatars?" Boris didn't raise his head from the papers.
"Worse."

Vlasyev put the letter on the table. His hand twitched.
"Our spies write from Krakow. A man... appeared there. In Prince Adam Wisniowiecki's courtyard. Serves as a kennel keeper, but says himself... says that he is of royal root."

Boris froze. His heart skipped a beat.
"Who?" he asked quietly.

"Says that he is Tsarevich Dmitry. Son of Ivan Vasilyevich."

Boris slowly raised his eyes.
"Dmitry is dead," he said firmly, as if driving a nail. "He lies in the Archangel Cathedral. I saw the coffin myself. Shuisky saw it. The whole world knows."

"They know, Sovereign. But this one... he tells that he was saved. That instead of him, they stabbed another boy, a priest's son. And his faithful doctor saved him and took him to Poland."

Boris laughed. It was a short, barking laugh, more like a cough.
"Fairytales! Ravings of a madman! Some serf, a runaway monk, decided to amuse the lords! Who is he? Did you find out?"

"We found out," Vlasyev lowered his voice. "Similar in description to Grishka Otrepyev. A monk from the Chudov Monastery. The one who ran away a year ago. He was a scribe, a bookman. Dabbled in devilry."

"Grishka..." Boris remembered. There was such a one. Scurrying, red-haired, with insolent eyes. Served the Romanovs, then took vows. "Defrocked monk! Thief! Catch him! Bring him to Moscow in a cage! I will tear out his tongue with red-hot iron!"

"Can't reach him, Sovereign. He is with the Wisniowieckis. And the Wisniowieckis are magnates. They have their own castles, their own troops. And King Sigismund... the King accepted him."

Boris jumped up. The chair fell with a crash.
"Accepted?! The King accepted a runaway monk?!"
"Not a monk, Sovereign. The King accepted the Tsarevich. They say he kissed his hand. And promised help. An army. To return the 'lawful throne'."

Boris walked to the window.
Behind the glass, in the autumn darkness, burned the lights of Moscow. His Moscow. The city he saved, rebuilt, fed.
And now a Shadow was coming to this city.
Not an army. Not a Khan. The shadow of a dead boy, which suddenly gained flesh, a voice, and Polish sabers.

"This is Shuisky," whispered Boris. "This is his work. He said: 'The dead do not speak, but the living say what is profitable.' He brought this jinx."

He turned to Vlasyev.
"Write decrees. To all voivodes, all elders. Announce: the thief Grishka Otrepyev is a heretic and warlock. Anathema. Whoever shelters him—death. Whoever spreads the rumor—cut out the tongue."

"We will do it, Sovereign. But..."
"But what?!"
"The people, Sovereign. The rumor has already passed. They whisper in the bazaars. Women cry with joy: 'Our red sun, Mitenka, is alive! Saved from Herod!'."

Boris felt his legs buckle. He grabbed the windowsill.
There it is.
Scarier than Polish cannons. Scarier than hunger.
Faith.
The people wanted Dmitry to be alive. The people wanted a miracle. Because the people hated Boris.
They didn't care who this Grishka was. Let him be the devil himself with horns. The main thing—he is "lawful." He is "one of us." And Boris is an "upstart."

"Out," wheezed the Tsar. "Everyone out."

When the door closed, Boris approached the mirror.
From the depth of the glass, an old man looked at him. Eyes inflamed, beard disheveled.
"You lost," he said to his reflection. "You won against the living. But you cannot win against a ghost."

He remembered Uglich. The sun. The dust. Blood on the grass.
"Killed!" screamed Tsaritsa Maria.
He didn't give the order then. He simply remained silent.
And now that silence returned. It endowed the dead boy with strength capable of crushing the walls Boris had built all his life.

In the corner of the room, a shadow moved.
Boris flinched.
"Who is there?!"

No one. Only the flickering of the candle flame.
But Boris knew: he was no longer alone.
In this room, in this palace, in this country, there were now two Tsars.
One—on the throne, tired, sick, hated.
The other—in Poland, young, daring, loved.
And this second one was already saddling his horse.

Boris sat in the armchair. He felt his heart beating unevenly, skipping.
Thump... thump-thump... thump...
The clock on the Spassky Tower struck midnight.
The final act of the tragedy had begun.

  Epilogue. The Reckoning

**Moscow. April 13, 1605.**

On this day Boris was cheerful. For the first time in long months of anguish and fear, he felt a surge of strength.
In the morning news came from the south: voivodes Basmanov and Golitsyn were holding the defense near Kromy. The Impostor was stuck. His motley army—Poles, Cossacks, runaway serfs—was marking time, losing zeal.
*We will fight them off,* thought Boris, looking at the spring, bright sun flooding the Palace of Facets. *Strength is on our side. God will not allow a thief to sit on the throne.*

He threw a feast. Not for the boyars—for foreign ambassadors.
Tables groaned with food. Wine in golden goblets sparkled like liquid ruby. Boris ate with appetite, joked, raised toasts to the health of the Danish prince whom he intended as a groom for Ksenia.
He seemed like his old self—a mighty, confident lion.

"The Sovereign is in power," whispered Vasily Shuisky into Mstislavsky's ear. "Look how flushed he is. He will outlive us all yet."
Mstislavsky nodded, but fatigue read in his eyes. They were all tired of this eternal tension, of this endless struggle with a ghost.

After dinner, Boris went up to the tower—the highest turret of the palace, offering a view of all Moscow.
He loved to be here. To look at the city he built. At the stone ring of walls, at the domes of cathedrals, at the smoke from thousands of chimneys.
"My Moscow," he whispered, leaning his hands on the windowsill. "My city. I will give it to no one."

Suddenly something burst in his chest.
There was no pain. There was a blow. As if someone invisible, huge, punched him from the inside, straight in the heart.
Air vanished.
Boris gasped for air, but couldn't breathe in. His throat was seized by an iron hoop. That very "collar" Ivan the Terrible spoke of.

He swayed. His legs became cottony.
"Healer..." he wanted to shout, but only a wheeze tore from his throat. "Kh-h-h..."

He crashed to the floor. Heavily, as a felled oak falls.
Guards outside the door heard the crash of the fall. Ran in. Saw the Tsar lying face down, scratching the parquet with his nails.
"Sovereign! Father!"

They lifted him, carried him to the bedchamber.
Commotion began. Healers ran with cups and leeches. Patriarch Job, crying, read prayers.
But Boris didn't hear them.
He was in darkness. In red, pulsating darkness where there were no sounds except the beating of his own heart.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
The beating slowed.

In this darkness, he suddenly saw light. Bright, cutting the eyes.
He saw his palace. But not now, but... later?
He saw the door to Fyodor and Maria's room.
The door was being broken down with axes. Chips flew in all directions.
People burst into the room. Not Poles. Not Tatars.
Their own. Russians. Boyar children. Golitsyn. Mosalsky. Sherefedinov.
Those who yesterday drank to his health. Those who swore loyalty.

Boris wanted to shout: "Don't dare! That is my son! That is the Tsaritsa!". But he was a mute ghost.

He saw Prince Golitsyn grab Fyodor. Strong, smart Fyodor, who could have become a great Tsar. The boy fought back. He was strong, he knocked one off his feet, but there were four of them.
They pinned him to the bed. Piled on in a heap.
Boris saw the rope. A simple, hemp rope.
He saw his son's eyes. Bulging, full of horror and misunderstanding.
*For what, papa?*

"No!!!" screamed Boris soundlessly in his agony.

And then he saw Maria.
Proud, iron Maria, daughter of Malyuta.
She didn't scream. She stood pale, shielding Ksenia.
"Herods," she threw in their faces. "Be damned."
They struck her. Knocked her down.
Boris saw the rope tighten around her neck. That very neck he kissed, seeking solace from his nightmares.

And he saw Ksenia.
They didn't kill her. They prepared worse for her.
Her, the Tsar's daughter, a beauty, they dragged by the hair. Where? To the Impostor. For the amusement of the defrocked monk. To be the concubine of a thief.

The images replaced each other like flashes of lightning.
There, the bodies of Fyodor and Maria are carried out onto the porch.
There, the crowd—the same one that shouted "Hosanna!" to him—now roars: "The Godunovs poisoned themselves! Themselves! A dog's death to dogs!"
There, the bodies are thrown into cheap coffins.
There, him, Boris, being dug up from the grave in the Archangel Cathedral. Thrown out of the tomb of Tsars. Dragged to the seedy churchyard of the Varsonofyevsky Monastery, like a vagabond.

"Here is your payment," a voice sounded from the darkness.
It was not the voice of the Terrible. And not the voice of Shuisky.
It was the voice of Clerk Bessonov.
"You wanted power for the sake of children? You destroyed the children for the sake of power. The circle has closed, Boris. The house built on blood has collapsed."

Boris opened his eyes.
For the last time.
Faces leaned over him. The Patriarch. Healers. Shuisky. Basmanov.
Shuisky watched attentively, fox-like. He waited.
Boris gathered his last strength. He wanted to say: "Protect Fyodor!". Wanted to order: "Kill Shuisky!".
But his tongue, swollen, disobedient, did not obey.

He could only wheeze one word.
"The Schema..."

They tonsured him right there, dying. Named him Bogolep.
A funny name. "Bogolep" (God-pleasing). Befitting a holy elder, not a predator.

When the monastic cowl touched his forehead, Boris felt the pain let go.
The darkness became soft.
He again saw that sunny day in Uglich. The green grass. And the boy with a small knife.
The boy smiled and beckoned him with his hand.
"Come to us, Uncle Borya. We will finish playing."

Boris took a step forward.
The heart thumped for the last time. Loudly. Like the lid of a coffin slamming shut.
And stopped.

It became quiet in the chamber.
The healer held a mirror to the Tsar's lips. The surface remained clear.
"He has departed," said the healer quietly.

Vasily Shuisky straightened up. He crossed himself—broadly, devoutly. And then looked at the frightened, tear-stained Fyodor standing in the corner.
"The Tsar is dead," proclaimed Shuisky. His voice was solemn, but steel already rang in it. "Long live Tsar Fyodor Borisovich!"

The boyars bowed.
But Fyodor, looking at his dead father, knew: this was not a greeting. It was a sentence.
Outside the window, the sun was setting. Night was descending on Moscow.
The night of the Time of Troubles, which would last seven years and burn this country to the ground so that it could be born anew.
Without the Godunovs.

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