The English engineer William Perry, generously awarded the Russian Tsar Peter for his zeal in constructing locks on the Voronezh River, calls his brother Bertrand to Russia in a letter to fulfill the new tsar’s plan - to create a solid ship passage between the Don and the Eye. Big gateway and canal works are coming up, for the projection of which William promised the king to call on his brother, because "he was tired, and his heart was dry, and his mind was going dead."
In the spring of 1709, Bertrand Perry sailed to St. Petersburg. He is thirty-fourth, but a gloomy, mournful face and gray whiskey make him forty-five. In the port of Bertrandu, the ambassador of the Russian sovereign and the consul of the English king meet. Resting after a long journey in the allotted rest near the sea arsenal, under the alarming howl of a storm outside the window, Bertrand recalls his native New Kestle and his twenty-year-old bride Mary. Before breaking up, Mary told Bertrand that she needed a husband "as a wanderer Iskander, as a racing Tamerlan or indomitable Attilla." To be worthy of such a wife, and Bertrand came to this harsh land. But can Mary wait for him for many years? With such thoughts, Bertrand falls asleep in a stiff rest.
Week Bertrand gets acquainted with survey documents compiled by knowledgeable people: French engineer Trousson and Polish technician Tsitskevsky. Based on this research, he works for six months on the project and work plans, fascinated by the great plan of Peter. In July, the documents were reported to the Tsar, who approves them and gives Bertrand a reward of one thousand five hundred rubles in silver and establishes a salary henceforth of one thousand rubles each month. In addition, Bertrand was given the rights of a general with subordination only to the tsar and the commander in chief, and the governors and governors were ordered to give the chief engineer complete reassurance - everything that he does not require. Giving Bertrand all rights, Tsar Peter reminds us that he knows how not only to give thanks, but also to punish the adversaries of the tsar’s will.
Bertrand, together with five German engineers and ten scribes, sets off for the city of Epifan, in the middle of future work. Departure is overshadowed by a letter from Newcastle. Mary accuses him of cruelty - for the sake of gold, he sailed to a distant land and ruined her love. And she chose another - Thomas, and already the child is worried under her heart. Without remembering reason, Bertrand Perry reads the letter three times in a row and clenches his pipe with his teeth so that blood flows from his gums. “It's over, friends ... The blood is over, and the gums will heal. Let's go to Epifan! ” - mastering himself, he says to fellow travelers.
They ride along the Embassy Road for a long time - through Moscow, through echoing spaces with a rich and restrained nature, and a headwind blows grief from Bertrand's chest.The work begins right away, only in it does Bertrand emanate with the energy of his soul - and the companions call him the convict commander. In autumn Peter arrives in Epifan and remains dissatisfied with the fact that work is going on slowly. Indeed, no matter how hardened Perry, the men took refuge from duty, and the local evil authorities profited from requisitions and beginnings from the treasury. Peter conducts an inquiry, the governor is whipped and exiled to Moscow for an additional investigation, where he dies.
Upon Peter's departure, he finds another misfortune for Epiphany work. Not only the Baltic masters and German technicians get sick and die, but they also run along secret roads to their homeland, and without them, peasants do not go out for service in whole villages. In fear of the death penalty, she orders Bertrand Perry not to let foreigners go anywhere on the way back, but this also does not help to truncate the perceived evil.
Bertrand realizes that in vain he began such an assault on work. It was necessary to allow the people to get used to work, and now the fear of "overpowering" has settled in people ... The new governor intercepts the petitions to the tsar and explains to Bertrand that the local people are a guardian and a naughty person and strives only to denounce and not work. Bertrand feels that the new governor is no better than the previous one. He sends Peter a report describing the entire history of the work. The king declares the Epiphanian voivodeship in a state of war, sends a new governor, but also threatens Bertrand Perry with reprisal for his negligent work: "That you are British, you will not be pleased."
Bertrand also receives a letter from Mary.She writes that her first-born died, that her husband became completely alien, and that she remembers Bertrand, understanding the courage and modesty of his nature. Bertrand doesn't answer Mary.
Spring is unloaded, and the riverbeds are not filled with water to the desired level. It turns out that the year when the surveys were carried out was unusually plentiful in water, and for the usual year the calculations were incorrect. To pump water into the canals, Bertrand gives the order to expand the discovered underwater well on Ivan Lake. But during the work, the water-containing clay layer is destroyed, and the water decreases even more.
Bertrand's heart is hardening. He lost his homeland, Mary, hoping to find reassurance in his work, but here he is overtaken by a ruthless blow of fate. He knows that he will not get out alive from these open spaces and will not see his native Newcastle anymore. But the work continues.
A year later, a commission headed by the same Truzson arrives to test the locks and canals, according to the research of which a project of work was done. The water launched through the canals rises so slightly that in other places the raft cannot pass, not like a ship. “That there would be little water, all the women in Epifani already knew a year ago, therefore, all the inhabitants looked at work as a royal game and a foreign venture ...” The commission concludes: it is unnecessary to consider costs and labor.
Perry is not trying to prove his innocence. He wanders in the steppes, and in the evenings reads English love stories. The German engineers flee, fleeing royal punishment. Two months later, Peter sends a courier with the message: Bertrand Perry, as a state criminal, is driven to Moscow with pedestrians with guards. The road is so far away that Perry forgets where he is being taken, and wants to be brought and killed as soon as possible.
Bertrand sits in the Kremlin’s tower prison and watches through a narrow window as stars burn in the sky in their height and lawlessness. He wakes up from the people standing above him. This is a clerk reading a sentence, and a huge executioner-sadist without an ax. For more than an hour, grinding and sniffling, the executioner comes out fiercely over the dying life of Bertrand Perry. Smelling a perfume, a letter from England, which arrives in Epifany in the name of a dead man, the governor Saltykov lays from sin for the goddess - to the eternal settlement of spiders.
