The handsome barrel burst on the third shot.
The trial was conducted behind an earthwork. Peter inspected the casting himself, ran his palm over the smooth metal and gave permission for the acceptance mark to be stamped. The first shot struck true. After the second, the gun crew began to smile. On the third, the breech split open as though cleaved with an axe. A fragment buried itself in the wattle fence where a gunner had been standing a moment before.
Nobody died only because the senior gunner had sent the men behind the fence beforehand.
Nikita Demidov waited for the metal to cool, then laid two pieces beside Peter. One came from the burst barrel, the other from an old blank rejected by a founder. From the outside they looked almost identical. Across the fracture in the tsar's barrel ran a dark, porous band.
"The ore does not know when the sovereign needs his cannon," Demidov said. "And an order does not make the charcoal any drier."
Peter could have objected that the first flaw had been noticed at Narva. But at Narva he had merely found the question. Now before him stood the furnace, the ore, the water, the charcoal burners, the carters, the founders and a man who stood to profit by concealing weak metal until he had been paid.
The supplier proposed a quicker method. He undertook to provide the required number of barrels if his own men were allowed to certify their quality. Ivan Naryshkin vouched for the deadline. Beneath his signature stood the word "exception": military necessity allowed them to dispense with an independent inspector.
Peter asked who would have answered for the burst cannon.
The supplier blamed the founder, the founder blamed the charcoal burner, and the charcoal burner had left without even being paid. Ivan called the incident a rare defect that could not be placed above the entire war.
Peter then ordered that not only the finished barrel but every smelting be tested before casting.
Every works now cast a small bar from each smelting. It was broken before the metal went into a cannon. Its prescribed thickness was checked not by the owner's man but by an inspector from another chancery. The acceptance mark was stamped beside the names of the master smelter and the man responsible for rejecting flawed metal. If the bar was concealed or replaced, the entire batch remained in the yard, however many cannon the army required.
The first man appointed to reject flawed metal was the founder whom the supplier had tried to blame. Before witnesses, he refused to accept his master's metal. In response, his pay was withheld and his family was turned out of their works lodging.
Peter restored the founder's lodging and pay, but he could not personally protect every inspector from the owner and his steward. Without such protection, the right to reject bad metal remained dangerous.
Several months later, identical test bars were broken at another works, then at a third. Different founders kept to the same calibre, and two gun crews exchanged shot and were able to fire from each other's stocks. After that, the Book increased Might.
The new rules improved the metal, but demanded more charcoal, ore, roads and workers. The works book showed how many pairs of hands were lacking if the deadline was to be met. Only one thing could not be learnt: how many winters a family could survive without the worker who had been taken away.
Trofim Zhuravlyov received a new assignment. His work at the shipyard was over, but vessels were needed to transport the metal. The paper gave his name, post and the number of carts required. Once again, there was no date for his return.
Trofim laid the old tally stick beside it. The pay once promised had finally been issued, and the right to stop work on a dangerous seam now existed. But the state had learnt to evade its own promise: it did not extend the previous labour, but began a new one each time.
Luka Belyaev brought the works, wharves and military orders together in a single book. A missing barrel could now be traced back to its smelting. The same book showed which sloboda still had horses and where a worker had already completed one term of compulsory service.
Twelve-year-old Alexei Petrovich found a family entered three times: the father was listed among the charcoal burners, the eldest son was transporting ore, and the household was required to provide a cart for the army.
"All three entries are correct," he said.
Luka answered, "That is what makes them dangerous."
Peter corrected this case, but production already stretched across several provinces. To search out every family in person, he would have had to abandon the war and become the sole scribe of his own realm.
In 1702, soon after this review of the schedules, Russian forces took Marienburg. Among the adult captives they registered a woman named Marta Skavronska.
Peter saw her in Menshikov's service yard. She was carrying a stack of clean linen and stopped when she noticed the two men by the door. She was eighteen, and her eyes were the same ones Peter remembered closed with exhaustion after the Pruth campaign, but the look in them was entirely different: wary, not the one he knew.
Menshikov smiled as though he had found a rarity before anyone else.
"Take her. She'll be useful in the household," he told Peter.
That was how Menshikov offered horses, posts, jewels and people capable of settling a matter quickly. By accepting the gift, a man became indebted before anything had even been entered in a record.
Peter almost called her Catherine, but Marta looked at him without recognition.
In his first life, everything after this meeting had merged in his memory with the thought of home. But the woman before him now was a captive seeing him for the first time. One nod to Menshikov would be enough, and she would be handed over to Peter along with the linen and the rest of the household goods.
Peter did not nod.
"People cannot be handed over on a spoken word," he said.
Menshikov shrugged. "Then write it down."
Marta set the linen on the table.
"And where will they write down my word?"
As she spoke, Marta looked at Peter.
The scribe muttered that there was no separate line for a refusal. Peter swung towards him, planted his fingers on the edge of the table and had already drawn breath to shout.
Marta took a smooth, warm stone from her apron pocket and placed it beneath his palm.
"The table hasn't done anything," she said.
Peter stared. Menshikov snorted. Even the scribe stopped trying to draw his head down between his shoulders.
"Why do you carry a stone?"
"The whole stove won't fit."
Only when he touched the warm stone did Peter notice how hard he was pressing his palm against the table. He relaxed his fingers, kept his voice down and ordered a new line to be opened. Marta took back the stone after the scribe had dipped his pen.
Peter ordered all adult captives entered in a common book: name, upkeep, assigned work and the date of the next review. A transfer to a private household required their answer before a scribe. This did not give a captive the freedom to leave Russian custody, but it separated captivity under the state from a private gift.
When Marta was asked whether she would go into Menshikov's household or Peter's, she answered, "No."
The scribe froze. Menshikov looked at Peter. Peter forced himself not to offer a better answer on her behalf.
The refusal was entered.
Marta did not thank him. She chose to remain in the common service yard until the next review and demanded to be told how long she was required to work for her upkeep. Then she asked whether part of her pay could be set aside to search for relatives lost in Livonia. She meant to find her own people and no longer depend on whose household they might one day be entered into.
The Book did not open. Peter had refused to accept the woman as a gift, but he was still looking at her as though she were his wife from another life. From that look, Marta understood before he did that the woman he saw before him was not her.
The following year, the first piles of a new city began to be driven into the banks of the Neva. The water ate away at the shore, the wind tore at their clothes, and logs sank into the mud. Peter saw a fortress, a harbour and a route to the Baltic. The workers saw wet bread, distant homes and the next cartload of stone.
The Book increased Might for the harbour and the steady flow of supplies, then named those who had paid: the families at the works, the carpenters transferred from elsewhere, the men labouring on the Neva. Trust fell. Workers for the new city were found more quickly than their complaints could reach the sovereign. Debt rose.
Two years later, Luka brought a complaint from Astrakhan. The sheet bore an incoming number. No line with that number appeared in the chancery book.
The state could already trace a piece of iron from ore to cannon. A man's complaint vanished between two desks.
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