Thunder at the Vesper Hour

"If you should do this wicked thing, you will have a wicked son; your states will become prey to terror and tears; rivers of blood will flow; the heads of the mighty will fall; your cities will be devoured by flames." - the Patriarch of Jerusalem to Grand Prince Vasily of Muscovy upon his second marriage, to Princess Elena Glinskaya, 1529.

Bah, what foolishness that ass of a hierarch babbled! A wicked son, indeed! Am I wicked? No more so than any other man who walks on damp Mother Earth, beneath the great sky of Almighty God..

And what if I was wicked? It matters not a whit. I am Autocrat of Russia! I could be wicked if I chose to be.

I would deserve to have some wickedness. My father murdered when I was 4, my mother poisoned when I was 8. And then the nobles, those damned skulking dogs, treating brother Yuri and I like wild beasts.

Mad. They say I am mad. Like dogs skulking in the darkness, they wander around the palace, speaking ever-so-softly about me. About my rages and tirades, about my intransigence, my unwillingness to let things go, to forgive old slights and wounds.

And why should I forgive? Why should I forget? Am I not the supreme autocrat? Am I not the Tsar? Do not the reins of government and church and even life itself rest in my hands?

Think on this, the things they did to me and to my half-witted brother. They starved us, left us in rags, humiliated and tormented us like wild beasts.

Oh the arrogance of the regents! They sent soldiers to murder the Metropolitan Archbishop as he attended on me. They threatened my best friend with exile to a monastery, and then death when he would not abandon me.

The insolence of the damnable boyars! Grentitsky lay back in a chair and propped his oafish feet on my father's bed! And they thought I would not remember? They thought I would not seek what was rightfully mine--revenge!

Ah, but such masterful teachers they were! Cruelty, intrigue, treachery, all this I learned at their hands. And I knew my power. I knew who I was. I only had to wait.

When my thirteenth birthday came, did they truly expect me NOT to claim my own? Haha, it was Grentitsky himself who came to call on me, and I had him seized and given to the kennel keepers. Do you know what they did? Ah, the memory is pleasant even after so many years.

They clubbed him and threw him to the dogs, at my command. Thus I took back my own.

Is that wicked, to revenge yourself on those who torment you, and claim your patrimony?

Do you know, all I truly wanted was to study. I wanted to know all things. I devoured tales of the heroes of antiquity. I would be another Augustus, another Constantine. Muscovy would be the New Rome, and all the world would come to us and bow down. It was I who told the council of boyars that I would be not just Grand Prince, but Tsar and Autocrat!

So I was crowned, and so I am. My reign has been glorious, and dark, and terrible. Do you know why?

Because of my sweet, darling Anastasia. Glorious because she became my wife. We stood on a red damask cloth trimmed in sable, and I drank the wine and threw the glass and crushed it with the heel of my boot. We went then on pilgrimage to Troitsky Monastery and spent the first week of Great Lent in prayer and fasting.

S'nami bog! Glory to God! The great and wonderful God! The thrice-damned and bastard God who thieved my family from me! Damn Him! That is why my reign has been dark!

Do you hear my sobs, God? Forgive me my passionate anger, Lord! But how should I be when you take my daughters, and Dmitry, my flesh, my first-born, dropped into the river by that ham-handed nurse, and You think I should not be bold to speak my anger to You?

And my dearest one, Anastasia taken from me after only thirteen years. Ah, but that was not Your fault, oh God. That was the boyars, the stinking, wretched, filthy nobles!

Damn the boyars! Puling nobles running to vileness and debauchery like a dog to its own vomit! Damn the boyars! Damn them all! Ya tvoyu mat'!

My revenge is why my reign is terrible.

Mad. That is what they say, those mewling toadies, when they think I cannot hear. But I do. I do hear, every word. My spies are legion. They listen everywhere and report back to me all the lies and insults the nobles direct at me, thinking I cannot hear.

I know what they say of me. That at her funeral I was so distraught that they had to support me. That I wasted away into dissipation and drinking, after she was gone. I know what they say. That I am suspicious of everyone, and that I imprison the nobility on a whim. But that does not change the fact that there are traitors everywhere, that they want me dead so they can steal the throne of Russia!

Ahhhhh, none of this would have happened had they not robbed me of my white heifer, my beloved wife!

Eh, what's that? Music? Yes, it is the vesper hour. "Now that we have come to the setting of the sun, and beheld the light of evening, we praise the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God..."

I love music, you know. The chords, ringing out, lifting the worshipper into the very heavens. I composed a hymn to the Virgin, to be sung on June 23rd when they brought her ikon to Muscovy.

"Wondrous is thy mercy, O Sovereign Lady, for when Christians implore Thee on their knees to deliver them from awful ruin, then invisibly dost Thou pray to Thy Son and by this holy image saved the people."

But she did not save me. She could not save me.

Aiiieeee! Alas, woe is me! I am a worm, and no man! I am the wicked son which the Patriarch foretold!

In my fits of rage, foaming at the mouth, I beat my Ivanushka with my leaden staff. All my contrition, my tears and pleading, embraces and kisses, could not save him!

God turned His back on me, the Virgin turned her face away.

Do You not see, O God? I meant no mortal harm to him when I gave him the blow, it was but a foolish dispute.

And now the comet like a cross in the sky, foretelling death.

So I have them carry me to the treasure chamber. They lay me on the great heaps of gold, and pearls, and jewels, scatter about me the vessels of gold and silver.

All these are God's wonderful gifts, secrets in nature and yet reveals them to a man's use and contemplation as friends to virtue and enemies to vice.

But I grew faint, and they carried me out again. Yet I revived enough to play chess with Godunov, the only trustworthy one among the lot of drooling savage dogs, just waiting for me to die.

But they will not forget me. They will not forget my revenge for their crimes.

Let them remember. I was Grozny.

Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, known to the West as "the Terrible" and to his own people as "Grozny--the Thunderer", died on March 17, 1584, a broken man. His bloody and tormented reign began with a prophecy of doom, and ended with his murder of his own son. In between were years of happiness, artistic revival, religious rebirth, savage barbarity, madness, and paranoia. He was succeeded by his sickly son Feodor, who died not long after, ending the dynasty of the Rurikid princes. They were succeeded by the Romanovs, who would also end in tragedy and blood.