Russka (11 page)

How pale her broad brow was; how elegantly her hand rested on the carved lion on the arm of the chair, her long fingers with their golden rings gracefully pointing downwards. How sweet her face was, how kind. Yet, as she gazed at him, it seemed somehow sad. Why was she sad?

His two brothers were there as well. They were both dressed in gowns, with rich belts and handsome sable collars: Sviatopolk, with his pale and lovely Polish bride, and Boris. He tried to love them equally; but though he admired them both, he could not help being a little afraid of Sviatopolk. People said Sviatopolk was the image of his father: yet was he? For while Igor often had a distant and reserved look in his eyes, there was something in Sviatopolk’s face that was secretly angry, bitter. Why should that be? And though both brothers would occasionally cuff him, when Sviatopolk hit him, it always hurt just a fraction more than he had expected.

On his father’s instructions, Ivanushka wore only a simple linen shirt and trousers – the long shirt hanging outside and held in with a belt. Somewhat against his mother’s will, he had been allowed to keep on his favourite green boots. But his face and hands had been thoroughly scrubbed in the big copper basin that stood on the washstand.

Igor, too, was similarly dressed, his shirt only distinguishable from that of a peasant by the fineness of the embroidery at the edges. ‘For rich ornament is not fitting, up there,’ he would say severely. Ivanushka’s eyes were shining. He had been too excited to eat more than a little bread and oatmeal porridge called
kasha
. Now, kissing his mother and his brother, he ran out and moments later, mounted on his pony, felt the cool, damp morning air on his cheek as he clattered into the street.

It was muddy. The houses of the nobles were mostly large wooden structures on one or two floors, with tall wooden roofs like tents and outbuildings behind. Each was in the middle of a small plot of ground enclosed by a stake fence; and these plots were, at present, so sodden from the melted snow and spring rain that
planks had been laid on the path from the outer gate to the stables. The street outside was boarded in some places too, but where it was not, the horses’ hoofs almost disappeared into the mud.

Ivanushka, on his grey pony, rode respectfully behind his father. The nobleman was a splendid figure: a simple black cloak hung from his shoulders over his white shirt, and Ivanushka stared at his proud, straight back with boundless admiration. The jet-black horse that Igor rode was his finest. The ancient imperial name it bore had undergone a slight modification in its passage across the generations into Slavic: it was called Troyan.

The simple folk that father and son passed put their right hand on their heart and bowed from the waist; even the robed priests inclined their heads respectfully. For Igor was a
muzh –
a nobleman. The blood-money to be paid if he was killed was forty silver
grivnas
, whereas killing a free peasant, a
smerd
, cost a fine of only five.

Even the names of the ruling class were often different. The princes, and a few of their greatest retainers, frequently bore the ‘royal’ names that ended in
slav
, meaning praise; or
mir
, world. Such, for instance, were the great Vladimir and his son Yaroslav. For the nobility, Scandinavian names like Riurik or Oleg were still quite often used. Even Igor’s wife, though of noble Slav family, bore the name Olga, the Russian version of the nordic Helga. A peasant, on the other hand, would probably bear some simple old slavic name like Ilya, or Shchek, or Mal.

But it was a special form of address that marked out the noble beyond doubt. For while a peasant might be plain Ilya, a noble also added his father’s name, his patronymic. Thus young Ivan was called Ivan, son of Igor: Ivan Igorevich. And the three brothers might be referred to as ‘sons of Igor’ – the Igorevichi. For Igor was not only a noble: he was a valued member of the
druzhina
of the Prince of Kiev himself.

There were many princes in the land of Rus. Each of the trading cities on the great river routes had a prince as its protector, and all of them were descendants of the norseman named Oleg who had taken Kiev from the Khazars two centuries before. At the moment, the greatest cities in the vast river-trading empire were in the hands of the sons of the last prince of Kiev, the mighty Yaroslav the Wise. The sons of Yaroslav had organized the succession by rote – the eldest brother taking the greatest city,
Kiev, and the rest taking the lesser cities by order of seniority, and owing obedience to the eldest. Thus while Igor’s master was now the senior, or Grand Prince of Kiev, the city of Chernigov, to the north, was in the hands of his younger brother Svyatoslav; careful Vsevolod, younger still, held smaller Pereiaslav in the south. If one of the brothers died, he was succeeded not by his son but by his next brother, so that all the younger brothers in the pecking order would move up to a greater city.

Igor served the Prince of Kiev himself. Indeed, he was almost in the inner council. Ivanushka’s brothers, too, were already in the outer
druzhina
, although Boris was still only a page; and it thrilled Ivanushka to think that soon he too would follow them.

‘Dismount!’ His father’s curt voice cut into the boy’s reverie and he started. They had only gone a few hundred yards, but Igor had already swung out of his saddle and was striding away; and as Ivanushka looked up, he saw why. They had reached the cathedral. He sighed. He dreaded the cathedral.

The walled citadel of Yaroslav the Wise contained many fine buildings. Besides the handsome wooden houses of the nobles, there were monasteries, churches, schools, and a splendid gateway – the Golden Gate – built in stone. This gateway was especially fine because on top of it, soaring up into the sky, stood the little golden-domed Church of the Annunciation. But nowhere in all the lands of Rus was there anything as magnificent as the great cathedral that rose before him now. For just as his father, the Blessed Vladimir, had built his great Church of the Tithes in the old citadel, so Yaroslav had begun his own huge cathedral in the new one.

He called it St Sophia: what other name would do, when everyone knew that the greatest church in the Eastern Roman Empire, the seat of the Patriarch in Constantinople, bore that sacred name? St Sophia, the Holy Wisdom of the Greeks.

For though this new northern nation might proudly declare, ‘We are the Rus,’ it was the civilization of the Greeks that they copied. The senior priests were mostly Greek. Even the one Slav, the mighty preacher who had headed the Russian Church a decade ago, had taken the Greek name of Hilarion. When noble children were baptized, they took a second, Christian name to complement the Slav or Scandinavian names they mostly bore. Thus a Yaroslav or a Boris would also carry a Christian name like
Andrei, Dimitri, Alexander or Constantine. And all these names were Greek.

How huge the cathedral was. It was built of red granite, laid in long thin strips and fixed with almost equal layers of pink cement. It rose up a massive, rather square, red and pink block, a holy fortress designed to impress upon all the people the might of the newly adopted Christian God. Upon its centre sat a great burnished dome, in the shape of a flattened helmet – like that of the church in Constantinople – and around it were grouped twelve smaller domes. ‘They stand for Our Lord and the twelve disciples,’ Igor had told his son. The cathedral was almost finished. Only a small scaffolding on one side showed where work was still being done on the outside staircases. With a shiver Ivanushka stepped inside.

If the outside was like a fortress, the high, broad, gloomy spaces within seemed as vast as the universe. In the manner of the great churches of the Roman Empire, it proceeded from west to east in a broad line of five naves – a wide central nave, with two more on each side. At the eastern end were five semi-circular apses. At the western end, high above the floor, were galleries where the princes and their courtiers gathered to pray, looking down upon the people. And at the centre of the church, under the huge dome, was the great airy space where the priests in their shining vestments stood before the congregation and heaven met the earth.

But it was not the high dome, nor the five naves, nor the massive columns that dominated the cavernous interior. It was the mosaics.

They made Ivanushka tremble. From floor to distant ceiling they covered the walls. The Blessed Virgin with hands outstretched in the eastern attitude of prayer; the Fathers of the Church; the Annunciation; the Eucharist: in blues and browns, in reds and greens, against the background of shining gold, these awesome, august figures stared down upon the world. Enormous, pale, oval faces with dark hair and huge, black eyes gazed mournfully yet impersonally from their golden setting upon the little people in the passing world. And highest of all, the Pantokrator, creator of the world, gazed from the central dome, his large Greek eyes seeing all, seeing nothing – knowing all men yet unknowable, beyond all earthly wisdom.

Earth met heaven in the church; hundreds of candles flickered in the gloom; and upon the walls the golden mosaics glowed, their great and terrible light shining in the darkness of the world.

Some priests were chanting.

‘
Gospodi pomily
.’ Lord have mercy. They sang in Church Slavonic – a nasal version of the spoken tongue that was both understandable but mysterious, hieratic.

Igor lit a candle and stood, in silent prayer, before an icon by one of the heavy pillars, while Ivanushka looked about him.

Everyone knew the story of the Blessed Vladimir’s conversion: how he had sent out to the three great religions – Islam, Judaism and Christianity – and how his ambassadors, having visited Constantinople, reported to him that in the Christian church of the Greek, ‘We did not know whether we were on earth or in heaven.’

In such cathedrals as this, the emperors of Constantinople – and now the princes of Kiev who copied them – brought the visible heavens to earth and reminded their people that they, the rulers who prayed in the galleries above, were regents for the eternal Godhead whose golden universe was present, though unknowable, amongst them.

Igor, part oriental, found peace in the contemplation of this absolute, unknowable authority. Ivanushka, half Slav, instinctively shrank from such a God; he yearned for a warmer, softer deity. And this was why, in the great church, he shivered as though from cold.

A few minutes later, he was glad to be out of the church and riding towards the gate, beyond which lay the track through the woods to the monastery, and his destiny.

At last they were at the monastery gates.

Their ride along the path from the citadel had been so delightful it had filled Ivanushka with joy. After passing through the scattered huts of the lesser folk outside the city walls, the track had led southwards, up to the little promontory of Berestovo, now a suburb, where St Vladimir himself had kept an extra residence. Over the treetops on the left, one could see the river shining far below, and past that, on the other side of the broad expanse of floodwater, the woods stretched across the flat plain into the distance. The oak and beech coming into leaf spread over the
landscape like a soft, light green mist under the washed blue sky. Nothing disturbed the gentle sounds of the birds in the stillness of the spring morning, as Ivanushka rode happily behind his father towards the wide south-western promontory, two miles from the citadel, where the monks lived.

And still Ivanushka had no idea why he was really there.

Igor was silent, deep in thought. Was he doing the right thing? Even for a boyar as devout and austere as he, this morning’s expedition was an extraordinary step. For Igor’s idea was that Ivanushka might enter the religious life.

It had cost him dear. No boyar normally wanted his son to be a monk or even a priest. The life of poverty seemed like a reproach; and those of noble blood who chose the religious life did so, almost always, against their family’s wishes. True, a boyar like Igor might spend many hours in prayer each day; a prince, on his deathbed, might take the tonsure of a monk; but for a young man to bury himself and take vows of poverty – that was another matter.

It was just after the appearance of the red star that the idea had taken shape in his mind. ‘I do not say Ivanushka’s a fool,’ he had said to his wife, ‘but he is a dreamer. That night I found him gazing at the star – if I hadn’t fetched him in he’d have frozen to death. The boy should be a monk.’ Igor had worked so hard to make himself a man of affairs, a warrior and member of the
druzhina
: he knew what was required. ‘And I cannot see Ivanushka succeeding,’ he admitted sadly.

‘You are too impatient with him,’ Olga had replied.

Was he impatient? Perhaps. But what father can tolerate the weaknesses of the one who was – though Igor would never admit it – his favourite son? And did a tiny voice, deep inside him, say: ‘The boy is like you, as you might have been.’

So it was that, as the weeks passed and no opportunities seemed to present themselves for the boy, he wondered: Perhaps, though it is not my desire, God means to claim this son for His own service. And then, since it was his nature, he began to make plans for this undesirable outcome.

These included a long talk with Father Luke, to whom he confided all these thoughts. Indeed, he might slightly have exaggerated Ivanushka’s interest in the religious life. He had begged the old monk to take a look at the dreamy boy and to encourage him if he showed any signs of vocation. For if Father
Luke himself suggests it, he reasoned, that will greatly influence the boy.

He had only told his wife the day before, and when he did, Olga’s face had gone white. ‘No! I beg you, don’t push the boy away,’ she had pleaded.

‘Of course not,’ he had answered. ‘He will only go to a monastery if he wishes.’

‘But you mean to encourage him.’

‘I shall show him the monastery, that is all.’

Olga’s face had remained distraught. She, too, knew her youngest son. Who knew what might seize the boy’s imagination? He might easily take it into his head to become a monk. And then she would lose him for ever.