In an old barn they found an English boat that had lain unused for many years. The planks had dried and warped, the iron was covered with rust, but the vessel could still be put back on the water. In his first life, this boat had awakened Peter's passion for the sea. In his second, Peter wanted to discover what his memories were worth without a ready-made fleet and experienced craftsmen at hand.
Franz Timmerman gave him a measuring line and told him to record the length, breadth and draught. Peter replied irritably that he had already sailed ships, built a fleet and knew how to distribute the men.
Timmerman did not argue with a future he could know nothing about. He merely asked how much water the hull would take on under such a load.
Peter estimated a figure by eye.
Timmerman made him walk the length of the hull and measure everything again. The line sagged, the marks failed to agree, and the wet timber changed size. Peter blamed the instrument. Timmerman then gave the same line to an apprentice. The boy secured the ends, repeated the measurement and obtained the same result both times.
The Book did not open. Peter had not yet done anything; he had merely argued with a measurement.
Carsten Brandt, an old shipwright, suggested testing the boat on the water. They loaded it with stones, barrels and sacks to stand in for cargo. Peter positioned the men himself. At first the hull ran steadily through the calm water, then it listed. One sack shifted, then another, and the boat heeled over so quickly that the witnesses barely had time to jump clear.
Peter was in the water before anyone else. He surfaced furious, soaked and ready to blame the man who had failed to secure the cargo properly. Brandt silently pointed to the marks: the weight had been placed exactly where the sovereign had ordered.
The Book opened and repeated the obvious: "Weight distributed incorrectly."
Might did not change.
Peter could handle the boat himself. He had a better feel for the helm, the wind and the motion of the hull than most men. But the moment someone else carried out one of his mistaken orders, the knowledge of his former life became merely another way to drown the crew.
For the next trial Peter appointed a helmsman and gave him the right to countermand a royal order if the vessel was in danger. The men exchanged glances. The right sounded splendid until the first disagreement.
The first disagreement came at a turn, when Peter ordered them to hold the sail longer in the hope of making faster progress. The helmsman saw a gust coming and ordered part of the canvas taken in. Ivan Naryshkin, watching from the bank, shouted that the sovereign's order had been disobeyed.
Peter felt the familiar rage as well, but then the wind struck the rigging. With less sail the boat merely rocked; under full sail it would have heeled over again.
Peter made the crew repeat the course without his hand on the helm, while Brandt deliberately altered part of the load. The helmsman measured the draught, shifted the barrels and took the boat through the turn. Nobody appealed to the sovereign for permission.
The Book added to Might. Brandt stepped away from the helm and left the helmsman the whole stern to himself. To the crew, that meant more than royal praise: the old master had entrusted the man with the vessel.
Thus, for the first time, a royal order was countermanded under a rule Peter himself had established. Now he had to make such objections work beyond a training boat.
On the bank, Ivan Naryshkin asked whether every helmsman would now use the wind as an excuse not to carry out inconvenient orders. Peter did not answer at once. The right to object could indeed become the right to shirk. The helmsman was therefore required, once the danger had passed, to demonstrate the draught, the wind and the position of the cargo. If there was no evidence, he was to be punished. If there was, the man who had tried to silence him was to be punished instead.
Brandt approved the rule only after Peter allowed it to be applied to himself. Until then, the sovereign's words remained a promise for which a subordinate might have to answer with his own neck.
That evening, after the trial of the boat, Peter went to the German Quarter. Anna Mons was waiting for him there. He remembered their former affair and could repeat it as easily as a familiar turn in the boat. But he was married, while the woman he remembered as his wife did not yet know his name.
Peter told Anna what he could: his marriage was not over, he promised her no future, and she was under no obligation to wait for him. He said nothing about his first life.
Anna did not look away. "Then don't call me the time before another woman," she said.
She made her own decision to stay that evening. The Book did not open: not every private wound moved the scales of the state. The Book's silence did not make Eudoxia free or Peter honest.
Years passed. Ship plans took the place of the boat, mock exercises became real service, and a childhood game drew close to war. Azov stood in the south. Peter remembered his first attempt to take the fortress in every humiliating detail, and believed that memory had already paid for the victory to come.
Peter knew where to place the batteries. He remembered which walls were weaker and how, without a fleet, the Turks would continue supplying the fortress by water. He therefore ordered the vessels, wagon trains and artillery prepared well in advance.
On paper, it all added up.
Ivan Naryshkin brought in suppliers from his own circle and vouched for every one of them personally. At council this sounded like strength: the sovereign's kinsman pledged his own name for the horses, timber and powder. On the road, personal guarantees began to take the place of written records. One contractor invoked Ivan, another one of Ivan's men, while a third insisted that his deadline had been extended verbally. Nobody could show who exactly had altered the order.
But while they were still on the march, it became clear that personal guarantees were no substitute for a single system of accounts. Horses died before they could be relieved, while cannonballs lay where there were no guns of the right calibre. Timber for the vessels was stranded farther up the river. The contractors reported that everything was ready because they were afraid to give the true date to a tsar who had already fixed the day of the assault.
The people along the wagon route paid for that haste. Drivers slept beneath the wheels because they were driven on without relief. One cart broke an axle; beside it lay cannonballs that eight men no longer had the strength to lift. In a roadside village, women demanded that their horses be returned before the grain harvest. The officer in charge promised they would be paid after the victory, though he had not recorded a single name.
The Book opened to brief entries: livelihood lost, time taken, payer unnamed. Peter closed it so as not to lose momentum. The entries did not disappear.
Peter arrived at the battery and recognised the familiar stretch of wall. In his first life they had fired from here too late and without accuracy. Now he checked the line himself, corrected the angle and ordered them to fire.
Meanwhile, a narrow Ottoman caique passed along the river with a scrap of red cloth on its yard. The following night the same sign appeared on another vessel. A captured boatman named the man who changed the passage times and each time checked where the Russian batteries were aiming at the old channel. His name was Yusuf Agha. Until then, Azov had possessed a garrison. Now the resistance had a face.
The gun crew hesitated. The charge lacked powder of the required quality. The senior gunner wanted to report that everything was in order, but a young gunner admitted that some of the sacks had grown damp on the road.
Peter could have ordered them to fire for show. Instead he took off his kaftan and went to the gun as an ordinary gunner. He weighed the charge, cleaned the barrel, listened to corrections and waited until every man could repeat the procedure.
The first ball fell short, but the second struck the wall. The earth shuddered, and the men shouted with delight. The senior gunner silently cleared a place for Peter at the gun and, for the first time, called him a bombardier. Only then did the Book confirm his qualification.
Peter smiled. Until evening, the crew made room for him at the gun, shared their water and argued with him as a bombardier. Their recognition meant more to him than the line in the Book.
But one good battery was not enough. While the crew congratulated the new bombardier, Yusuf Agha chose another hour and delivered men, powder and food to the defenders. A red scrap of cloth rose again on the mast of the second caique. The Russians fired more accurately, but without the delayed wagon trains and unfinished vessels they could not close the river.
At the council of war, Peter identified the weak point in the wall and demanded another assault. The commander of the wagon train replied that by morning they would have only enough powder left to cover a retreat. The battery commander said nothing, afraid to lend his support to bad news. The young gunner who had admitted the charge was damp once again told the truth first.
Peter almost ordered them to continue. He knew that in his other life he had retreated and returned a year later with a fleet. But memory supplied the outcome, not the cost of one extra day. Another assault might give him a gallant attempt and take away the men he needed for the second siege.
Peter ordered the powder preserved and the exhausted units withdrawn. No signal of victory sounded, but for the first time defeat was named before it could be hidden in a dispatch.
Might rose by only one point. Debt increased because of the supplies taken and the men who had been given no date for their return.
Peter had correctly chosen the weak point in the wall, but the first Azov campaign had not failed at the fortress. It had failed on the road along which his own wagon train never arrived.
Open in the reader