Poland. Boris wondered which the director-general had in mind. Probably both.
Meanwhile the industrial base along the Volga was producing more and more goods. Mostly simple stuff. The stuff that didn’t need that much infrastructure. But it was surprising how much fell into that category, when it wasn’t competing with established products.
“And our factory?” Boris waited for his son to find the figures, then said, “Excellent. Absolutely excellent.”
Freeze drying is expensive and time consuming when compared to canning… if you already have the infrastructure for a canning industry. It’s much less so when it’s competing against small-scale canning and down- time preservation methods. Once you had the foods freeze-dried, they were lightweight and stayed good for a long time. Which made them highly prized, both by the military and the civilian population. Boris’ family and some partners from the Grantville Section had put together a small freeze-drying plant near the family’s lands and added a lot of gardening. Carrots, onions, peas, cabbage, beets, even berries, were all being diced up and freeze-dried, then sealed in waxed paper pouches and stored in crates. Quite a bit of it was sold to the army and more in Moscow. Aside from the extra income, it meant that they had fresh (or the next thing to it) fruits and vegetables even in late winter and early spring. Which did good things for the health of his family and his serfs.
The new farming equipment meant that he needed a lot less labor in the fields most of the time, which had given the serfs time for the gardening. Boris, with his connection to the Dacha and the information from Grantville and the Ring of Fire, was running a year or more ahead of his neighbors, which meant that his family was doing a lot better than others of the same rank. Which was a good thing because there was considerable inflation of paper money, and silver was increasingly hard to come by. A paper ruble was-by law-worth the same as a silver ruble, but-in fact-worth less. How much less? No one knew. Gresham’s Law was working at full force in Russia where the ruble was legally the same whether silver or paper, but not in Grantville where American dollars weren’t tied to silver. Boris was, of course, paid in paper rubles-so the farm income was especially important.
Boris went back to his paperwork, wondering how things were going at the Dacha.
Chapter 67
October 1635
Father Nikon walked down the hallway of the patriarch’s palace as though he had every right to be there. He didn’t. At least not officially. The person who occupied the patriarch’s seat would have said he didn’t, but he had God’s permission to be here, so he didn’t much care what Filaret thought. The monastery he was from wasn’t the one his papers said he was from, or he would have had guards escorting him everywhere. Father Nikon was here because Filaret feared the up-time wisdom and wanted to keep it all to himself. But God had provided that wisdom to the entire world and Filaret was serving the devil in attempting to restrict it.
Archbishop Joseph Kurtsevich and Father Nikon had discussed the matter several times and both the wealth and the new spiritual wisdom that God had sent from that other future had demonstrated that Filaret didn’t hold God’s favor. Control of the God-provided wealth of knowledge from the future didn’t belong in the hands of a man who was so stingy with its benefits.
Filaret was holding back the religious truth revealed by the up-timers. God had passed a great new miracle by bringing forth an entire new town from the future. Possessing new truths, practical as well as spiritual. But the false patriarch, Filaret, was suppressing the truth in order to maintain his personal power. He was rejecting the spiritual aspects of that new truth, considering only those dribbles that might seem useful to him at the moment.
So Father Nikon had been told. So Father Nikon believed.
He would remove the impediment and God’s Grace and the up-timer’s knowledge would flow into Holy Rus as a great flood of cleansing.
Here in the patriarch’s palace, priests’ robes were not the least bit uncommon. And three additional priests wouldn’t be noticed in any way, so long as they kept their six-shooters hidden. Father Nikon was proud of his. It would be the instrument of God’s will. There were privileges that went with devotion to God. Father Nikon was confident that he would receive them in this world or the next.
The door to the patriarch’s private quarters were guarded but that was expected. Father Nikon walked by them and then turned to face the guard as though just remembering something. The guard turned to look at him and Father Simon grabbed him by the throat and stuck a knife in his back. But the man didn’t die quietly. He jerked and tried to scream and banged a fist on the door to the patriarch’s rooms.
Filaret looked up when the pounding on the door began, annoyed. “What is that noise?” he grumbled. “Go out there and stop it.”
The guard, obeying his instructions, opened the door only to be flung back into the room as the door was slammed inward. Filaret stood, in shock, as the men rushed into the room.
Almost before Filaret consciously realized what was happening, he ducked behind his desk and started scrambling to get the drawer open. Filaret, too, had one of the Gun Shop’s six-shooters that had been introduced by Cass Lowry.
Filaret’s guardsman started to shout, then there was a loud bang. Filaret never reached his six-shooter. The men ran around his desk and three shots were fired.
The noise brought more guards, as Father Nikon had expected. What he hadn’t expected was the bullet that entered his heart. Because he’d been assured that, once the false patriarch was dead, he would be safe and protected.
Father Simon was killed next, then Father Petr joined him.
“What’s going on here?” Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev shouted. “Where is my cousin? We have an appointment.”
“The patriarch has been murdered.”
“How did you allow this to happen? Where are the assassins?”
“I don’t know, sir. The two guards that were here are dead. We had to kill the assassins. They were armed with up-time weapons. Could they have been sent by the Swede?”
“Oh, my God. My cousin! The patriarch and I disagreed on many things, but Russia is a poorer place without him. For now we must see to protecting the czar and the royal family. Come with me, Captain.”
Over the next few hours, Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev went about protecting the realm from the unknown threat. Just as he’d intended. He spirited Czar Mikhail and his family out of Moscow, and then called an emergency meeting of the Boyar Duma.
The rumors started spreading before the meeting started, for Fedor Ivanovich Sheremetev had seeded the ground.
The primary rumor was that the czar and the patriarch had had a major argument over Czar Mikhail’s plan to allow all serfs who could afford to buy out of their bondage to the land to do so. In the course of that argument, it was said, Filaret had suffered a heart attack.
A secondary rumor was that Czar Mikhail had shot his father.
Another was that he collapsed, weeping hysterically, when he heard the news.
But, consistent among them all, was that without Filaret’s influence, the czar would allow the serfs to run free.
Moscow was packed with service nobility, whose estates would be left worthless by such an act.
Chapter 68
“Back,” Boris said softly. “Get back.”
