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in the Orthodox calendar. Wheeled into church in a rolling cradle along a path sprinkled with holy water, the child was held over the font by Fedor Naryshkin, the Tsaritsa's eldest brother, and christened by Alexis' private confessor. The following day, a royal banquet was offered to delegations of boyars, merchants and other citizens of Moscow who thronged to the Kremlin with congratulatory gifts. The tables were decorated with enormous blocks of sugar sculpted into larger-than-life statues of eagles, swans and other birds. There was even an intricate sugar model of the Kremlin, with figures of tiny people coming and going. In her private apartments above the banqueting halls, the Tsaritsa Natalya gave a separate reception to the wives and daughters of the boyars, handing plates of sweets to her guests on their departure.
    Soon afterward, the subject of all this celebration, surrounded by his own small, private household staff, was moved into his suite of rooms. He had a governess, a wet nurse—"a good and clean woman with sweet and healthy milk"—and a staff of dwarfs especially trained to act as servants and playmates to the royal children. When Peter was two, he and his retinue, now grown to include fourteen attending gentlewomen, moved into a grander Kremlin apartment—the walls hung with deep red fabrics, the furniture upholstered in crimson and embroidered with threads of gold and bright blue. Peter's clothes—miniature caftans, shirts, vests, stockings and caps—were cut from silk, satin and velvet, embroidered with silver and gold, buttoned and tasseled with sewn clusters of pearls and emeralds.
    A doting mother, a proud father and a pleased Matveev competed to lavish gifts on the child, and Peter's nursery soon overflowed with elaborate models and toys. In one corner stood a carved wooden horse with a leather saddle studded with silver nails and a bridle decorated with emeralds. On a table near the window rested an illuminated picture book, painstakingly made for him by six icon painters. Music boxes and a small, elegant clavichord with copper strings were brought from Germany. But Peter's favorite toys and his earliest games were military. He liked to bang on cymbals and drums. Toy soldiers and forts, model pikes, swords, arquebuses and pistols spread across his tables and chairs and floor. Next to his bed, Peter kept his most precious toy, given to him by Matveev, who had bought it from a foreigner: a model of a boat.
    Intelligent, active and noisy, Peter grew rapidly. Most children walk at around one year; Peter walked at seven months. His father liked taking this healthy little Tsarevich with him on excursions around Moscow and to the royal villas outside the capital. Sometimes he went to Preobrazhenskoe, the informal retreat where Matveev had built a summer theater; this quiet place on the banks of the Yauza River beyond the German Suburb was Natalya's favorite. But more often he was taken to the architectural marvel of Alexis' reign, the huge palace at Kolomenskoe.
    This immense building, constructed entirely of wood, was regarded by Russian contemporaries as the Eighth Wonder of the World. Standing on a bluff overlooking a bend in the Moscow River, it was an exotic jumble of shingled onion domes, tent roofs, steep pyramidal towers, horseshoe arches, vestibules, latticed stairways, balconies and porches, arcades, courtyards and gateways. A separate three-storied building, with two peaked towers, served as the private apartment of Peter and his half-brother Ivan. Although from the outside it seemed a crazy quilt of old Russian architecture, the palace had many modern features. There were baths not only for members of the family, but also for the servants (the palace of Versailles, constructed at roughly the same time, was built without either baths or toilets). The wooden walls of the Kolomenskoe palace were pierced by 3,000 mica-paned windows, and light streamed in on 270 rooms decorated in modern, secular