The Muscovite — Alison Macleod

In this her fourth novel, Alison Macleod again examines a fact of history in a way that relates it to the world of today. With THE MUSCOVITE she takes us farther afield and shows us a little-known venture of English enterprise. During the 16th century the Russia company of London carried on a brisk and profitable trade, supplying arms and gunpowder to the armies of Ivan the Terrible. Jerome Horsey came to Russia as a young man, apprenticed to the company. He was to spend the next 18 years there, to rise rapidly to a position of authority within the company, to serve as Queen Elizabeth's ambassador, and to become a protege of the Czar. His years in Russia brought Horsey wealth and power but at the price of dangerous involvement with Ivan and with Boris Godunov. The Russians accused him of spying, and his fellow countrymen of intolerable pride, embezzlement and high treason. In England he was put on trial for his life. To supplement Horsey's own account of his adventures, an account mysteriously absent on certain points, Macleod has drawn on Russian, Dutch, and German sources to work out what might have happened. Her vivid reconstruction takes us to the court of Ivan the Terrible, as notorious for his orgies as for his cruelty. Across the blood-spattered marketplaces the English merchants move calmly in the direction of the highest profit. Jerome Horsey stands out as the man who aims for something higher, and thereby brings about a tragedy. THE MUSCOVITE is more than an exciting story of the past. It extends and illumines our knowledge of the present.