As she listened she was forced to a realization. She couldn’t save it. The industrial base that she had been working to build here wasn’t something she could defend from Sheremetev. Even the estates and lands that had been her family’s for generations would be lost, at least temporarily, and the knowledge of that loss almost ripped the heart out of her. At the same time, this was strangely liberating. The family lands were gone, the serfs and other workers who made those lands productive would not be owned by her family, no matter what she did. The only question was who would get them. When it finally came, the decision to free her serfs from their ties to the land was easy. Better they should belong to themselves than Sheremetev, much better.
“Very well,” Natasha said. “There is a proclamation I must make and legal documents that I need drawn up.”
When the nature of those legal documents was made clear to him, Pavel had a fit. He explained that Natasha was a spoiled little girl and that no man would be so foolish, not even her idiot of a brother who married a peasant. He was, in fact, so angry that his thoughts about the innovations, at least the nontechnical innovations came boiling out. That she was wasting her family’s heritage was clear. That the peasants that she showered useless and expensive gifts on would work harder with a touch of the lash instead. Natasha was tempted to give Pavel a touch of the lash, but she restrained herself. She needed to hear this. She especially needed to hear who else among her factors and agents felt this way.
So she listened meekly, like a school girl taking her deserved scolding. And Pavel, in his anger and desperation, poured out quite a bit she needed to know.
Then she had him arrested.
Another clerk was called and the proclamations were drawn up. All the serfs on all the Gorchakov lands had all their debts to the Gorchakov family forgiven. They were, if they chose to be, released from their bonds to the land and were asked to join Natasha in the east where they would build together a new land of free people. Those who chose to stay on her lands were welcome to do so, but should be warned that those who would likely seize her lands were less likely to respect her decrees in regards to the serf’s debts. Having had her documents written up, she took them off to be examined by the czar.
Meanwhile, the clerk who had taken down the documents took himself off to repeat their contents to anyone who would listen.
The czar, the czarina, and his ad hoc Duma of Bernie, Anya, Filip, Kiril, and Tim, listened to her plan with varying degrees of shock. Tim was flabbergasted and honestly thought it was a horrible idea. Not without reason. The serfs would run, some to the east following Natasha sure enough, but others into banditry among the Cossacks. And as word spread of what she had done, other serfs would run, hoping to hide among hers. The nation would collapse. Anarchy would rule and Russia would burn.
“Perhaps,” said Filip. “In fact, I suspect you’re quite right. But it won’t be better for waiting. Serfdom eats at Russia like a tape worm, sapping the nation’s strength and killing its greatness unborn. And the longer we wait before seizing freedom, the less we will know how to handle it when we finally gain it.”
He smiled, then. “If nothing else, Your Majesty, you can form a legitimate Cossack state.” Filip waved his hand toward the east. “Somewhere out there.”
Mikhail Romanov looked like he’d eaten something profoundly distasteful. Cossacks were outlaws, bandits, renegades.
On the other hand…
The czarina, it turned out, agreed with Natasha and Filip. So, that possible obstacle eliminated, the czar cosigned and endorsed her proclamation and did her one better. He invited all the Russians who would be free to join them in the east at the fortress at Ufa. Then, for almost the first time in his tenure as czar, Mikhail made a speech. In the speech he didn’t command, didn’t even implore, but simply offered. “Come with me to the east and freedom,” Mikhail said. “Come with me if you dare. Take every steam engine you can find and put it on anything that will float and follow me to Ufa. Help me build a Russia free of serfdom.”
It wasn’t a great speech. But it was the best Mikhail could do on the spur of the moment. Then they loaded up all the troops they could on the two steam barges that happened to be in town and headed for Bor.
Chapter 80
“We forgot to destroy the radio,” Anya said as the barge was steaming down the Oka toward the Volga and Bor.
“You can’t think of everything. It was pretty wild in Murom when we left. It was looking like war was going to break out between those who wanted to follow us and those who didn’t want to lose their homes and their businesses.”
“Besides, Sheremetev knows we didn’t try to go west, so he’ll be coming after us and there aren’t a lot of directions we can go on the river. If we ain’t going upriver, we’re going downriver.”
“Sir, sir! We need help!”
Captain Ivan Borisovich Lebedev struggled out of his drink-sodden daze, trying to understand what this idiot was talking about. “What? Let Tim handle it.”
“But he’s not here. He left with Czar Mikhail and all those people. And we’ve got fires in the city! There’s fighting.”
“Fighting about what? And why aren’t the Streltzi doing anything about it?”
“But the Streltzi are gone. Most of them.”
“Is anybody still here?”
“Well, you are.”
And that’s when it finally penetrated. Ivan Borisovich Lebedev was in charge. Really, honestly, in charge. The thing he had tried to avoid his entire life had come upon him. He needed instructions. There was no one here to give them. That’s when Ivan thought of the radio room.
Half an hour later, in the radio room, still hungover, with a half-dozen of what passed for the “leading figures” of Murom, all of them shouting at him to do something, Ivan told the radio man, “Just report to Moscow what has happened here.”
The key started tapping. The locals kept yapping. And Ivan’s head kept pounding.
“One at a time! You, what’s your complaint?” Ivan said to a short, balding man with a pot-belly.
“The servants raided my shop and ran off! I want my goods back. And my servants back! What are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to have you thrown in the cells if you don’t quiet down. Were these your servants?”
“I was renting them,” pot-belly said. “From the Gorchakov clan.”
“So these are some of the serfs that Princess Natalia… oh, my head… that Princess Natalia freed or whatever. What was all that about?”
An older man with graying hair said, “Yes, they were. About half the work force in this town were serfs of the Gorchakov clan that were shipped in from their estates to work in the various shops.”
“So, basically, they had a perfect right to leave,” Ivan pointed out.
“Of course not. We had a contract. The Gorchakov factor signed it.”
About this time there was an explosion outside. Ivan went to the window and looked out on a small town in flames. “We’ve got bigger problems than missing serfs.” He turned back to the radio operator. “What does Moscow have to say?”
The operator shrugged. “The message probably hasn’t even gotten there yet. It has to go through seven stations to get there.”
