“Madam Sheremetev.”
“Because . . .”
“She said that if she sends a bad report about me, the czar would change his mind about letting you marry me. And you told me he said yes already. So which is it, dammit?”
“Yes, the czar gave his consent,” Vladimir said, suddenly even more worried. “But a bad report—if it is bad enough—might cause him to reconsider. That is, I agree, what Madam Sheremetev strongly implies at every opportunity.”
“Does the old bat actually have that kind of power over us?”
“Probably not. But she does want you to believe that.”
“What can we do?”
“It’s the way they are, the Sheremetevs. Obviously, she wants something else. Some kind of procedure, some kind of machine, something her family can make money and power off of.”
“Well, do we bribe her? Or just blow her off? We better decide something quick. She said, not quite in so many words, that she’s going to send her report pretty soon.”
Vladimir knew this was pretty standard procedure for the Sheremetev family and confirmed that she was likely to write such a letter. He wasn’t all that worried about it actually convincing the czar to cancel the wedding. After all, Brandy was friends with the czarina, which equated to having a pretty good friend at court. “If there is something you can think of to give her, go ahead.”
After some consideration, Brandy decided to try giving the old bat photography, or at least to point her in that direction. Brandy had a talk with Father Gavril, the Orthodox priest sent to Grantville, and they determined that photographs didn’t count as prohibited drawings any more than icons did, but for a different reason. Photographs were in effect drawn by God—His light painting the image rather than the corrupt hand of man. Brandy put together a packet and gave it to Madam Sheremetev who sent it off to Moscow and was almost nice to Brandy for a week or so before she started asking for something else.
By the time the ice would start forming on the Oka River in the fall of 1634, the Sheremetev family would be making photographs on their estates and arguing that they didn’t owe any duties on them because they had gotten them directly from Grantville not from the Dacha.
By that same time, of course, Natasha already had a steam engine factory, a celluloid/cellophane/rayon factory, a wood pulp-based paper mill, a shop making capacitors and half a dozen other projects up and running. Each managed by a member of the Streltzi class who was becoming effectively a deti boyar of the Gorchakov family.
* * *
Brandy would never be more glad to see the back of anyone as she would be to see the backs of the dragon ladies when they headed back to Russia.
Brandy was plenty busy with her correspondence and her work with Vladimir.
As the wedding approached, Brandy got a letter from Natasha describing the Sheremetev’s machinations with the photography.
Having established that because the Sheremetev clan got the photographic process directly from Grantville instead of from us, Natasha wrote, they are now claiming that they got everything from the Fresno scrapers to steam engines directly from Grantville and not from the Dacha.
Cass Lowry is still working in the gun shop, Natasha’s letter continued, and has made friends among Sheremetev’s supporters. I find myself wishing that he was either a little less useful or a lot less obnoxious. He seems to think that he was literally adopted into the clan, not just that he’s become one of their supporters. The idiot. The Sheremetevs are just using him. Apparently, Cass was given a harem and quite a bit of money and lands. For which Sheremetev gets his own Bernie, though not one who seems to work as well as the real Bernie does with us down-timers.
Chapter 49
May 1634
“Princess?” Anya said. “What are these?” Anya held up some sheets of paper and Natasha looked at them.
“Oh. Those.” Natasha sat down next to Anya and said quietly, “You know the dies we made for the Gun Shop?”
Anya nodded.
“I had an extra set made and sent it to Murom. I’m having AK3’s made for my armsmen.”
“How many?”
“Not a lot. A couple of hundred. You know that we’d be last in line, with Andrei Korisov and Cass Lowry doing the distribution.”
* * *
“Have you seen the latest?” Pavel Egorovich Shirshov asked, handing a pamphlet to Ivan Mikhailovich Vinnikov.
The guard captain looked at the pamphlet and began to read silently.
“Out loud if you don’t mind,” Pavel Egorovich said testily. Though a skilled craftsman, he didn’t read.
Ivan Mikhailovich cast him an apologetic look and began to read out loud. “If we are to have a constitution it must ensure the rights of all Russian citizens . . .” He continued reading. It was an argument that without a section limiting government, the constitution would be just another way to tie the people down. The writer actually seemed to wonder if a constitution was a good idea at all. Then he went on to—purportedly—quote a conversation between members of the boyar class. A cousin and a younger son of one of the great families. They were reported to have said that the great families thought that a constitution would be a great thing if they got to write it. The conversation was supposed to have been overheard in a brothel.