Russka (38 page)

For many years there had been three very ancient monks at the monastery: now only these two remained. Father Stephen was short, Father Joseph tall. Stephen was revered as a maker of icons; Joseph had no skills and some thought him simple-minded. But both were very gentle, with long white beards, and they loved each other.

For thirty-three years, however, Father Joseph had lived apart. Across the river now, in a small clearing some way beyond the springs, there was a group of three huts, which formed a hermitage, or
skete
. In recent generations, inspired by the so-called Hesychast tradition of the famous Mount Athos Monastery in Greece, many Russian monks had drawn apart for a life of intense contemplation. Some, like the blessed Sergius of the Trinity Monastery north of Moscow, had gone deep into the forest: ‘Going into the desert’ they called it. The
skete
at Russka was quite cut off. To reach the monastery the hermits had to walk about a mile to the river, then call for the ferryboat kept on the opposite bank. But they came in, each day, for Vespers.

Except Father Joseph. For a year, they had had to carry the old man. Now, however, he was too weak even to be moved. Death, everyone knew, could not be far off. Yet still each day, a thousand times, he whispered the Jesus prayer: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me.’

Vespers: the start of the day. Following the ancient Jewish custom the Orthodox Church began its day at sundown. The
evening psalm was sung. Throughout the Orthodox service, however long, everyone stood. Nor were any musical instruments allowed, but only the human voice. ‘Right Praising’, as the Slavs call worshipping. The singing was lovely: the whole church year arranged in sequences of eight tones, adapted from the idea of the eight musical modes of the ancient Greeks, so that the calendar presented an endless, subtle variation of sound, week by week. The Great Litany began, and after each supplication the monks intoned the refrain
Gospodi Pomily –
Lord have Mercy – which little phrase, repeated again and again, sounded like tiny waves breaking upon a shore.

Sebastian looked around him happily. The monastery had many treasures. Since the marriage of his forebear David to the Tatar girl, the boyar’s family, besides acquiring a rather Asiatic look, had been granted more land, including the local Black Land at Dirty Place. The peasants there, once free and now under his steward, had no love for the boyar, but the monastery had gained much. The boyar had given the monks their fine church, built of gleaming white limestone, with its fashionable pyramid roof of false pointed arches and its bulbous onion dome; also a tower with a splendid bell – still a rarity in that region; also a lovely icon of St Paul by the great master, Rublev. But nothing, surely, could be finer than the great screen of icons – the iconostasis – that Father Stephen had been painting for thirty years and which would be revealed tomorrow.

How splendid it was. Stretching across the eastern end of the church, dividing the sanctuary from the main body, its five tiers of icons reached almost to the roof. The Holy Family and the saints, the roof. The Last Supper, the Saviour, the Mother of God and the saints; Holy Days, prophets and patriarchs: all were depicted in gleaming colours and in gold. In the centre was the great double door, called the Holy or Royal door, on which were painted the Annunciation and the four Evangelists. And old Father Stephen had painted it all.

One part of the screen was still covered with a cloth. That night the old man was going to complete the last, small icon of the top tier. In the morning he, Sebastian, would fix it in place in time for the ceremony. Then the work would be complete: to the glory of God.

And the glory of Russia. For one thing was clear to Sebastian, it
was that now, in these last days before the world’s end, God intended Russia to be glorified.

How she had suffered. For two centuries now she had lain, dismembered, under the Tatar yoke. On every side she was threatened. To the south, Tatars swept across the steppe; to the east, the Tatar Khan – the Tsar, as the Russians called him – and his vassals the Volga Bulgars held their vast Asiatic dominion. And to the west, now, a huge new power had arisen: for in the vacuum left by the collapse of old Russia, the Baltic tribe of Lithuanians – first pagan, now Catholic – had swept across western Russia and taken the land even as far as ancient Kiev itself. Poor Russia: no wonder that even the icons of the Mother of God, in those times, have a special quality of sadness.

Yet Russia was slowly recovering – thanks to Moscow.

The rise of Moscow was astounding. It began when a clever ruler of the little principality married the Tatar Khan’s sister and became Grand Duke. As agents for the Khans, the Moscow princes slowly surpassed all their rivals – Riazan, the eastern city of Nizhni Novgorod, even powerful Tver – all now acknowledged her supremacy. Then, in 1380, blessed by the famous monk Sergius, Moscow had actually defeated a Tatar army at the great Battle of Kulikovo by the River Don. The metropolitan of the Orthodox Church resided at Moscow, too. And who knew, though the Tatars still raided the land and demanded tribute, one day Moscow might yet help Russia to break free.

When the last hymn, the Troparion, was finished, Sebastian escorted Father Stephen to his cell. The long Easter fast had weakened the old man and he looked very frail. Sebastian gazed at him fondly. By chance they were distant cousins, sharing an ancestor in Yanka the peasant woman. Chiefly, however, Sebastian felt full of gratitude. He had always been Stephen’s pupil. As a boy, the old man had explained the points of the Orthodox cross, with its two extra bars, the headrest and diagonal footrest, which distinguish it from the Catholic cross.

And now he had learned, thoroughly, the art of the icon: choosing the dry wood of alder or birch; planing the surface but leaving a rough border around the edge; attaching the linen; coating its surface with fish glue and alabaster; pricking the outline with a stylus; applying the gold leaf for the haloes; and then
painting layer after layer, binding each with egg yolk and brass, to give the icon its wonderful depth. Finally, days later, one added the coating of linseed oil mixed with amber which soaked through and gave the icon its divine warmth. For the icon was not a picture, but an object of veneration.

Once in his cell, Father Stephen dismissed Sebastian and sat at his work-table alone. He had one icon, of the patriarch Abraham, to complete – a last layer, which would transform the whole. It could go into the iconostasis for the service tomorrow: the coating would have to come later. He was a humble man. ‘Beside the simple beauty of the great Rublev,’ he would say, ‘my icons are nothing.’ But such as it was, the iconostasis was his. Now, gazing at the unfinished icon, he said a prayer.

It was strange, he often realized, that his screen would only stand for thirty-eight more years. For the Church had decided, after many calculations, that the Russian year 7000 – 1492 by the Western calendar – would be the End of the World. Sebastian, he supposed, would see it. But it was not for him to reason about such things. He must paint icons, to God’s glory, to the end.

He bowed his head. Then something happened.

It was hard for Sebastian to keep still. Despite his own humility, the whole monastery was in awe of Father Stephen’s accomplishment and the coming day would be a triumph. Sebastian could think of nothing else as he paced in the damp night air. Hours passed, but he did not dare disturb the old master. Nor, when Stephen failed to appear at the midnight service of Nocturne, did anyone think anything of it. For afterwards, through the little cell window, Sebastian could see Stephen before his table, his head occasionally moving to and fro, as he worked. As so the night grew deeper.

Father Stephen sat still and wrestled with his body. The stroke he had suffered after Vespers had only made him unconscious for a short while. But he could not speak and he could not move his right arm and he stared, helplessly, at the unfinished icon before him. Hours passed. He prayed. He prayed to the Virgin of the Intercession.

It was in the early hours of the morning that Sebastian awoke and went outside. The candle in Father Stephen’s cell was still
burning; and perhaps he might have approached if, looking over the monastery wall, he had not seen the strangest sight in the distance.

It seemed to be a little boat with a white sail, coming from the woods opposite, towards the river. He rubbed his eyes. Impossible. Then he saw that it was not a boat at all, but a man, moving with great speed. And next, wonder of wonder, the shining figure moved across the water. I’m bewitched! Sebastian was certain of it: for the figure suddenly floated, with apparent ease, over the monastery gate and went swiftly to Father Stephen’s cell. And then Sebastian saw that it was old Father Joseph. Trembling, he ran to his cell.

And he would, in the morning, have convinced himself that this whole business had been a dream, but for one curious circumstance. For while it so happened that both Father Stephen and Father Joseph had departed this world, from their separate abodes, at about dawn that day the icon, duly finished, was also found in the iconostasis, in its proper place.

Very slowly. Very slowly.

The oars’ lilting refrain on the water.

Mother Volga, mighty Volga: the ships were coming from the east up the river.

High in the endless autumn sky, pale clouds passed by from time to time, as the ships, like their shadows, crossed the sullen waters, and the sun dipped slowly to the distant shore. Mother Volga, mighty Volga: the ships were coming from the steppe to the homeland.

Sometimes they hoisted sails, more often they rowed. From the bank of the huge river their oars could not be heard; only the boatmen’s faint rhythmic singing echoed plaintively across the stream.

Mother Volga. Mighty Volga.

Boris did not know how many boats there were. Only a part of the army had been left behind as a garrison in the east. The main force was returning to the frontier city of Nizhni Novgorod; and they were returning in triumph. For the Russians had just conquered the mighty Tatar city of Kazan.

Kazan: it was many days behind them now, on its high hill by the Volga where that huge stream at last turned southwards across the distant steppe and desert to the Caspian Sea. Kazan: by the lands of the ancient Volga Bulgars; gateway to the empire once ruled by mighty Genghis Khan.

Now it was Russian.

From dawn each day the boats travelled, until their shadows grew so long that they joined each vessel with the one behind so that, instead of resembling a procession of dark swans in the distance, they seemed to turn into snakes, inching forward on waters turned to fire by the western sunset ahead; while on the bank, the last red light from the huge sky eerily caught the stands
of bare larch and birch so that it appeared as if whole armies with massed lances were waiting by the river bank to greet them.

Boris was sitting in a boat some way down the line. He was sixteen, of medium height with a frame that was still rather spare, a broad face with a hint of Turkish in it, dark blue eyes, dark brown hair and a wispy beard. Being a young cavalryman, he wore a quilted woollen coat, thick enough to stop most arrows. Over his shoulders he had draped a coat of fur, against the cold breeze on the river. Behind him was slung a short Turkish bow and at his feet lay an axe in a bearskin sheath.

He was of noble birth: his full name was Boris, son of David, surnamed Bobrov, and if asked where he came from he would answer that his estate lay by Russka.

No one paid any attention to him, but if they had bothered to do so, they would have observed a brooding, nervous excitement in his face, especially when he glanced at the first boat that was leading them back towards the west.

For in the first boat rode a twenty-two-year-old man: Tsar Ivan.

Ivan: Holy Tsar, Autocrat of all the Russias. No ruler before had taken such titles. And his capital was Moscow.

This was the state known to history as Muscovy, and it was already a tremendous power. One by one, in the process known as the Gathering, the mighty cities of northern Russia had fallen to Moscow and her armies. Tver, Riazan, Smolensk – even mighty Novgorod – had given up their ancient independence. And this new state was no federation: the Prince of Moscow was as great a despot as was once the Tatar Khan. Absolute obedience to the centre: this was the doctrine of the Moscow princes.

‘Only in this way,’ their supporters claimed, ‘will the state of Rus return to her ancient glory.’

There was still a long way to go. Even now, most of western Russia and the lands of ancient Kiev in the south, were still in the grip of mighty Lithuania. Further yet, across the Black Sea, a new Moslem power, the Ottoman Turks, had seized old Constantinople – henceforth called Istanbul – and their Ottoman Empire was expanding each generation. Catholics to the west, Moslems to the south. And to the east, the Tatars had regularly swept in from the steppes, over the Oka, past little Russka and even to the white walls of mighty Moscow itself.

It was not just that the Tatars looted and burned: it was the children they stole that made Boris hate them. He remembered how he himself as a boy had stood, quivering with fear and rage, inside the monastery walls as they came riding by, with huge panniers strapped to their horses, into which they tossed the wretched little boys and girls they caught. There were several lines of defence against them: the settlements of vassals – formerly hostile Tatars themselves – across the Oka; then there were little forts, wooden barriers and stout walled towns with garrisons. But no one had been able to control them.

Until this year, when they had found a master.

Boris smiled darkly. At his feet, with their hands manacled, lay two Tatars he had captured himself, and whom he was going to send down to his poor estate at Russka. That would teach the Tatars who was their lord.

Soon, he would get more. For this campaign was only the beginning. Kazan was the nearest of the Tatar Khanates. Far away to the south, by the Volga delta where once the Khazars ruled, lay another Tatar capital: Astrakhan. Astrakhan was weak. That would fall next.