Artamon Matveyev raised his palms and began to speak calmly, without threats. The tsarevich Ivan stood alive before the crowd, and everyone had seen the chief rumour disproved. In Peter's first life, even that had not been enough. He hoped that saving the Naryshkins, at least, would change what followed.
It did not.
Someone below shouted that Matveyev had bewitched the tsars. Another voice demanded that the traitors be handed over. Someone shoved the front rank, and the movement ran through the crowd faster than any order. The streltsy surged up the porch steps. Matveyev was dragged down.
Peter shouted for them to stop. His voice drowned in the roll of drums.
Matveyev fell onto the waiting pikes. The crowd recoiled for only a moment, and then every man saw that his neighbour had already become an accomplice. Retreat was more frightening than going on.
The Book opened by itself, but Peter could barely make out the line: "Account opened. Payer: Artamon Matveyev. Cause retained."
Debt rose at once, and Trust collapsed. Two men saved did not atone for what had happened. Peter had changed the list of victims, but he had removed neither the hunger, nor the lies in the schedules, nor the fear driving the streltsy onto the porch steps.
Matveyev was not the only one. After the first blood, people below began shouting out more names. One boyar was dragged from the antechamber, another found on someone else's information, and locks were already being broken in the storerooms. By then many of them feared not the Naryshkins but the trial to come tomorrow. They needed the mob to prevail, or by morning they themselves would be called murderers. The original rumour no longer mattered.
New names were shouted one after another, and Peter had no way to send an order outside. A messenger would be seized at the door. An order that nobody could carry out would merely show the crowd that the tsar was a powerless child. Peter knew whom they would come for next, but he could not lead everyone out of the palace one by one. While he tried to decide whom to send servants for, the next name was already being shouted below.
He was dragged inside. Natalya Kirillovna shielded her son with her body, though she was trembling harder than he was. Beyond the doors they argued over whom else to surrender. Ivan Naryshkin demanded that they gather the loyal servants and strike first. Afanasy Naryshkin silently watched the men who remained on the porch steps.
Peter listened to the drums and remembered how, years from now, he would make an entire country move at their signal: parades, regiments of the new order, ships under sail, victorious salutes. But now the drum roll drowned out his own voice.
Among those who had been pulled into the palace in time and locked behind the heavy door stood the sixteen-year-old son of a streltsy soldier. In his hands he clutched a rolled schedule as tightly as though paper could protect him from a sabre. He did not shout with the others or beg for protection. Peter beckoned him over.
The youth was called Fedot Lapin. He had not come to demand the Naryshkins' deaths. In the schedule, the pay line beside his father's name had been left blank. The regimental commander said the money had not yet arrived. The chancery scribe insisted it had already been issued. Fedot's father served, borrowed money for bread and heard a new version of the truth every month. At home his mother cut the last dried fish into five portions, while the chancery records said the family had been paid in full.
"What do you want?" Peter asked.
Fedot looked not at the junior tsar but at the door beyond which they were deciding whom else to give to the crowd.
"I want the blank line read aloud."
Fedot's request demanded more courage than a cry for blood. Once one line was read, the adjoining ones would have to be checked. Behind the scribe they would find the commander, and behind the commander the man who had taken the money. The crowd wanted someone guilty at once. The schedule demanded a long inquiry.
Peter ordered Luka Belyaev to bring the schedule used to report payments to the court. The line for Fedot's father had been filled in: the money had supposedly been issued. Fedot unrolled his sheet. It bore the same seal, but no sum.
Luka went pale. He had been ordered to copy out a convenient book after the first shout in the square. He could have blamed the senior scribe and saved himself. Instead Luka hid Fedot's sheet beneath his caftan, returned to the table and began a second copy. He had written the first in an even hand, setting down the total for his superiors. In the second he left room for the name of the man who had ordered the line changed. The pen trembled, but the name did not vanish.
One book was being prepared for the victors. In the other Luka preserved what the victors would certainly want forgotten.
Peter expected Might to rise after Luka's act, but the number did not change. A single hidden copy could perish with the scribe. It had not yet become a rule.
While Luka made the second copy, the palace bargained with the streltsy commanders. By evening some of them had agreed to lead their men away from the porch steps. The crowd withdrew, but the city did not settle. Every regiment had its own rumour, every commander his own list of enemies, every drum its own order.
Peter could not forget how his shout had drowned in someone else's drum roll. The next morning he asked for a small drum. He remembered the signals of a grown army, but a child's hands could not keep pace with his memory. His first roll came out hurried. Nobody turned their head.
The old drummer smirked and said the sovereign was summoning men as though he himself were fleeing a fire. Ivan Naryshkin demanded that the man be punished for his insolence.
Peter ordered him to repeat the criticism.
The old man set Peter's wrist, showed him how not to grip the stick and beat a simple assembly. Peter repeated it and made another mistake. Only on the third attempt did the sound fall into an even rhythm. He played until his palm reddened and the rhythm no longer depended on his anger. The drum would not accept a tsar's impatience. A beat struck too soon confused the ranks as surely as one struck too late.
He assembled six boys and two old servicemen in the courtyard. At first they moved only when they could see the tsar. Then Peter stood behind a wall and gave the same signal. The junior corporal heard it, repeated the command aloud, and the little formation wheeled without the tsar's face before them.
The Book added to Might: a small detachment had obeyed a signal without seeing the tsar.
The old drummer wiped the sticks on his sleeve and, for the first time, handed them to Peter as one handed over a tool. Before, he had given them to a child for amusement. Now he gave them to a man who had endured correction and won an answer from the ranks. The torn skin on Peter's palm burned, eight men in the courtyard had turned as one, and no line in the Book could make the victory more tangible.
Might had risen not because Peter had learnt to hold the sticks. Something else mattered: the corporal had heard the signal and, without prompting, achieved the same result.
Fedot risked staying beside the complete schedule. Luka continued the second copy. The old servicemen and the boys agreed to go through a single procedure for checking orders. Trust began to return, though it could no longer bring Matveyev back to life.
The next day Sophia Alexeyevna asked to be shown her younger brother's amusement. She listened to the drum, watched the orderly formation and did not smile once.
"I can see what you have learnt, Petrusha," Sophia said. "Now show me who has already learnt to obey you."
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