Peter asked the Book for the quickest way to obtain Alexei's confession by morning.
The question was perfectly framed. It called for neither truth, nor independent evidence, nor the son's survival after he answered. Only a confession and a deadline.
The Book proposed torture.
Deprive the body of sleep, air and support, and resistance would weaken faster than any examination of documents could achieve. Immediate coercion would be at its greatest; Alexei Petrovich would pay the price; Debt would pass the limit of collection. Whether the confession would be true, the Book did not know.
Peter remembered just such a room from his first life. Then, too, he had wanted not the truth but an end to uncertainty. The investigators had given him the words he needed. His son had died, but the doubts remained.
"Remove the irons and straps," he ordered.
Romodanovsky did not move. "By morning they will have agreed their testimony."
"Let them. Then we shall know the price of morning."
Peter forbade torture in Alexei's case. Then he added a general rule, so that saving his son would not remain a family exception: words spoken after pain could not count as evidence in themselves. Investigators were required to check letters, dates, meetings, money and actions.
An attendant took the first strap down from the wall. Its iron buckle struck the edge of the table. Alexei flinched and at once tried to hide it. Peter understood: the order had abolished the torture, but not the fear of a man who had expected it all night.
The Book closed. There was no longer a quick and final answer.
By morning two witnesses had indeed changed their testimony. One remembered a conversation he had not heard. The other withdrew his earlier words after learning that he would not be broken. The investigators now had to distinguish fear of Alexei, fear of Peter and what a man had actually seen or done.
Luka Belyaev brought three sealed packets. He had been told to keep only the intercepted letter and set aside the drafts, the intermediary's notes and the list of Menshikov's exemptions as irrelevant. He had preserved everything.
The first packet proved Alexei's guilt. The son knew that he was secretly gathering supporters and had continued the correspondence after Luka's warning.
The second showed the limits of his guilt. In every reply Alexei insisted on preserving the fleet, the artillery, the Baltic route and the right to serve by merit rather than birth. He had no intention of destroying the state and drove away anyone who proposed it.
The third linked the correspondence to Catherine's verbal exemption and Menshikov's network. The path to the son had been opened not by a single conspiracy, but by the now familiar habit of hiding a useful man behind a powerful name.
"Remove the second packet and he becomes the enemy of everything you built," Luka said. "Remove the first and he becomes innocent. Either would be a lie."
Peter ordered all three packets entered into the indictment.
After that, a closed family hearing became impossible. The letters concerned the heir, the army, the towns and the order of service. Peter opened the proceedings to the Senate, army and naval commanders, representatives of the Church, the colleges in operation and the town magistracies. The courtiers called it a humiliation of supreme authority. Peter replied that the secret death of an heir would humiliate it more, but leave no witnesses.
Fedot Lapin entered first and laid his father's schedule before the council. The blank line for pay had outlived Stepan, his execution and the resettlement in Astrakhan. Beside it lay the decision of the town council: a second copy had survived, though orders had been given to hide the first.
Fedot did not ask them to acquit Alexei. He showed that in Stepan's case one piece of testimony obtained under torture had had to be discarded. The remaining letter, witnesses and action had still led to a death sentence.
"The ban on torture did not save my father," he said. "But without it, you would never have known exactly why he was killed."
After those words, the council could no longer debate a confession alone. It had to establish which of Alexei's actions could be proved without pain or threats.
Trofim Zhuravlyov entered second.
He brought the sheet bearing the terms of surrender. The paper had dried in ripples, the red seal had run, and half a sodden fastening was folded inside it. The boundary by the white post could still be read on the sheet.
Trofim described how the investigation under the old order had continued in defiance of the new terms of surrender and destroyed Gavrila. Then he looked at Alexei.
"My brother accepted your boundary. Your silence about the old list did not protect him."
Alexei replied that he had not known how far the investigation would go.
"Because you left your father the right to decide that afterwards."
Trofim did not ask them to acquit Alexei either. He wanted something else: that neither Peter nor his son should be able to widen the circle of the guilty in secret after sentence had been passed. Otherwise every promise would once again have its white post, beyond which those promised safety by day would be taken at night.
Luka spoke third. Before the council he laid out the blank schedule, the Astrakhan petition, the Don agreement, the Pruth report and Alexei's letters. In every case, the written record either preserved the name of the man who had made the decision or allowed that man to hide.
Eudoxia Lopukhina was called next.
She entered in the nun's habit she had once refused to choose. The hall held people accustomed to regarding her former marriage as a closed matter. Eudoxia did not argue about love or demand the return of her stolen life.
She told them how Peter had called the taking of vows a spiritual necessity after he failed to obtain his wife's consent. He had treated her refusal as an obstacle and used the vows to remove her from the family and the dispute over the succession.
"If a sovereign can declare a family matter a necessity of state on his word alone, any son can be found guilty before he is tried," she said.
Peter did not interrupt. He publicly acknowledged that she had been forced to take the vows and that no sentence upon Alexei could use the consequences of that coercion as evidence of his mother's guilt.
Eudoxia did not forgive him. Her testimony did not require forgiveness.
Catherine entered last among the personal witnesses. In her hand she held a written record of the request she had previously made aloud. Catherine named the relative, the period of protection and admitted that she had asked Peter to exempt him from the general investigation.
Luka registered the request retrospectively only as an admission of the breach, not as lawful authorisation. Catherine's relative lost his protected post pending investigation. Everyone who had managed to hide behind her name was to be investigated with him.
Catherine could have called it the price of family love. Instead she said, "I did to the rule what I was afraid I might one day see done against my children."
She accepted the loss she had previously asked to pass on to someone else.
After the five witnesses, Alexei himself rose.
He admitted the secret contacts, the intermediaries and his desire for protection from his father's anger. He admitted that he had selected moderate men on his own authority and left no common record of their meeting. He refused to treat a good end as justification.
But he named the source of his mistake.
"I grew up in a state where everything rests on fear of one man. I decided to gather people who feared not you, but my future name. But the order did not change. I merely put myself in your place."
The hall fell silent.
Alexei continued. When everything was decided by the sovereign's personal anger, people tried to direct that anger at their enemies or shelter from it behind someone else's back. Some invoked verbal instructions, others a powerful name, while still others gathered secret protectors. He had done the same.
Peter could have taken these words for an excuse. But his son was right, and Peter separated his merit from his guilt.
"Alexei Petrovich created the supply system that helped us win at Poltava and escape the Pruth. I concealed his work. Alexei Petrovich entered into secret contacts and assumed the right to select protectors without a general examination. That is his guilt. The first line does not erase the second. The second does not give me the right to steal the first."
Peter's military supporters agreed to limit his power for a time. Alexei's subordinates handed over every record, though some harmed their superior. The investigators continued the case without torture. The Senate, the representatives of the Church and the magistracies agreed to judge only the charges openly presented.
Might temporarily fell: at the height of the crisis Peter could no longer decide everything alone. Trust rose by sixteen points. Debt fell by five because torture had been forbidden, the documents preserved and the trial opened. It brought none of the dead back to life.
The Book gave Might as seventy, Trust as forty-eight, Debt as ninety-two.
The council had to decide Alexei's fate. Before the vote, one senator asked a question that had not appeared in the original articles:
"If the sovereign dislikes our decision, may he dismiss us and deliver another?"
The trial of the heir ended with the question of who had the right to judge the sovereign.
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