the way he’d been since the Ring of Fire, Bernie never had much trouble getting laid.
The big attraction was simply that it would be a big change. Bernie wasn’t given to what he considered excessive introspection, but he’d have to be a complete dimwit not to understand that if he didn’t do something to turn his life around-and dramatically, at that-he’d just keep sliding down into a pit. If he stayed here he’d probably drink himself to death in the next few years.
Still, much as he had come to like Vladimir, it was Boris that he would be going to Russia with and he wasn’t at all sure that he trusted the short, bearded, fireplug of a man. So he consulted a lawyer and insisted on a contract of employment. Bernie knew the contract might not be enforceable once he got to Russia, but what the hell. He figured it was better than nothing.
Bernie went to the national library and looked up Russia. That led him to look up Cossacks and Poland. And it occurred to Bernie that Russia was a very dangerous place. In a way, that made it easier for him to decide to go. The risk, in its way, was as appealing as anything else. Risk was usually coupled with opportunity. In Russia, however it turned out, he might actually be able to do something important. Here, he was just pissing his life away.
Chapter 5
It was on a cold blustery November morning in 1631 that Bernie, Boris, and some gear loaded onto the small hovercraft that would take them down the frozen Saale River to the Elbe. The hovercraft would have to make three trips to get their gear and the rest of the party to the Elbe. And each trip would take a day.
Four days later Boris had hired a barge and a small company of guards to take them down the Elbe to Hamburg. Germany was still a war zone, after all. He had also made arrangements with an innkeeper in Barby on the Elbe to forward mail going each way to Grantville and Hamburg. Boris was setting up a secure mail route from Grantville to Moscow and back. From Barby it was two weeks to Hamburg. In Hamburg, Boris renewed his acquaintance with a merchant who had been sending broadsheets from Hamburg to Moscow for years. And informed him that if things worked out he would be shipping a lot more both ways and his recompense would likewise increase. From Hamburg to Lubeck was two and a half freezing, wet days in wagons. And Bernie was seriously wishing he had never agreed to come.
The Baltic coaster that carried them from Lubeck to the Swedish stronghold of Nyenschantz, near what in the original timeline would have become St. Petersburg, was, if anything, less comfortable and more crowded than the wagons. They didn’t actually visit Nyenschantz. Boris was in no hurry to bring Bernie’s presence to the attention of the Swedes. Instead, they stopped at an inn in the town of Nyen, across the river from the stronghold. Boris sent a courier on ahead while he organized the sleigh trip to Moscow.
Part Two
Chapter 6
January 1632
“Home,” Boris sighed, then waved at the red brick walls of the Kremlin that stood sixty feet tall and dominated the mostly wooden city of Moscow.
Bernie Zeppi, after the long trip, didn’t care if it was home or not and certainly didn’t care about the view. He just wanted in out of the cold. The Russian winter had stopped both Napoleon and Hitler in Bernie’s old timeline. In the new one, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, it had almost killed Bernie. He looked out from not-quite-frozen eyeballs under completely-frozen eyebrows, at a snow-covered town. A big town, granted, but it was made of log cabins, not the concrete buildings Bernie remembered from pictures of twentieth-century Russia. What surprised Bernie was that the log-cabin Moscow that was before him looked even dirtier and less inviting than the concrete monstrosities of the Soviet Union looked in the pictures he’d seen. “Where do we go first?”
Boris pointed toward a street. “My townhouse first, then I must make a report and get instructions.”
Boris burst into the house roaring something in Russian. Bernie thought it might be “I’m home” or “we’re here” or something like that. But Bernie’s Russian was still very poor. A short plump woman responded with “ Da something,” in a tone that said she was less than impressed. Boris deflated and gave the woman a kiss on the cheek.
Bernie, not understanding what was going on, looked around. It was a moderate-sized room with a few very small windows. One corner had several of the religious paintings that were called icons, and the other had about the biggest stove he’d ever seen.
Then Bernie was introduced to Mrs. Boris whose name turned out to be Mariya. There was more Russian, including the words “Natalia Gorchakovna,” which Bernie knew was the name of Vladimir’s sister. So Boris was probably telling Mrs. Boris about the plans. Bernie was to stay with Boris and his family for the next day or so while introductions were to be made.
Mariya spoke a little English with the weird Russian-Shakespeare combination accent that Boris and Vladimir had, but even stronger on the Russian part. Even that little was more than Bernie was expecting. There were, it turned out, English merchants living in Moscow and in other places in Russia. Also English mercenaries hired to modernize the Russian army. At least, that was the impression Bernie got from Mariya’s accented comments. Honestly, most of it flowed by him without delivering much in the way of meaning.
They got him seated, then switched to Russian while Bernie sat and thawed a bit.
Boris looked at Mariya, feasting his eyes. “Vasilii said I was to report directly to the patriarch. Otherwise I would have taken the outlander to the Gorchakov townhouse. Vladimir, I wrote you about him, has arranged for his sister to house him rather than putting him up with the other outlanders.”
“Is that wise?” Mariya asked as a servant busied himself at the stove. “The bureaus are in an uproar.” At Boris’ curious look, she explained. “They didn’t want to believe that the miracle was real. They especially didn’t want to believe that God would leave us on our own in the Time of Troubles, then give the Germanies a miracle in their need. The monasteries especially disliked that part.” Then she snorted a laugh. “I wasn’t pleased by the implications myself. Even with the letters and books you sent. It seemed, still seems, as though God cares more for Germany than Russia. So there are factions that were arguing that it was a fraud right up until Vasilii arrived to say you were on your way. Some still are.”
Boris shook his head. “I didn’t want to believe it either, but after the reports we’ve sent, I would have thought-” At his wife’s look, he hesitated. “I guess it is an unbelievable story. But you can’t not believe after you’ve seen the glass-smooth cliffs of the ring wall.”
“Is it really that special?” Mariya sounded a bit wistful. Unlike Boris, she had never been out of Russia. “I got your letters but.. ”
“Yes and no.” Boris tilted his hand back and forth. “In some ways it is the most miraculous thing you could imagine and in others quite mundane.” He shook his head. “Enough of that for now. I will tell you all about it later. Now I need to know what is going on in the bureaus.” So they discussed the different factions that were shifting around the miracle in Germany. The fraud faction, the work of the devil faction, the God’s will faction. Which bureau chiefs were leaning which way. How the great families were lining up. The most common reaction was “wait and see,” then “how can my family benefit or be harmed,” followed closely by “how will it affect my bureau?” All of which was flavored with the question: What’s wrong with us that God would leave us to cold harsh winter and give the Ring of Fire to the Germanies?
