Russka (67 page)

‘Cossacks,’ Andrei said carefully, ‘are not slaves.’

‘And our Most Pious, Orthodox and Most Gentle Tsar is appointed by God to do with us all as he wishes,’ Nikita replied firmly. ‘You must remember,’ he went on, with a trace of condescension, ‘that the Tsar is the heir of St Vladimir, of Monomakh, and of Ivan the Terrible.’ He smiled a little grimly. ‘Ivan, I can assure you, knew how to command obedience. He had one of my own ancestors roasted in a frying pan.’

It was curious, Andrei thought, how these Russians seemed to take pride in the cruelty of their rulers, even when it was directed against themselves. He had several times heard Muscovites speak admiringly of the terrors of Ivan: they seemed almost to long for his return.

How different from the Cossack way. The Cossack warrior gave his
Hetman
power of life and death over everyone during a campaign, but woe betide him if he tried to exercise any authority in time of peace!

This little altercation had produced a slight tension between the two men. Nikita broke it with a laugh.

‘Well, my Cossack, you are welcome to visit my poor estate. I’ve told my steward to put you in my house and look after you. I’m only sorry I can’t come with you myself.’ He paused. ‘By the way,’ he gave him a sidelong glance, ‘I know I can rely upon you not to subvert any of my peasants to your Cossack ways – of either sex.’

So, he knew. Andrei looked at the floor awkwardly. But as they parted he reflected that, in Muscovy, one could never be sure what people knew, and what they did not.

Russka.

He supposed it was what he had expected.

Spring had come to the little town and its monastery. As they approached the place, the woods opened out to large open fields; their long, gentle undulations of raw turf, dark earth and long
slivers of greying snow seemed to be an echo of the endless spaces beyond. At Russka itself, the ice had cleared from the centre of the stream. At the edges, the women still knelt on boards by holes in the ice, washing their clothes in sight of the monastery’s pale walls.

On the trees, even before the last traces of ice had melted from the ground around them, little green buds were already opening staunchly under the hard, bright blue sky. Just outside the walls of Russka, a cattle pen was already a little sea of mud.

It had been a strange journey. Maryushka and the steward travelled in a light, two-wheeled cart while Andrei rode. Despite the surrounding dampness, the tracks through the woods were fairly passable and they made good speed. At nights they rested in the villages or hamlets along the way.

The steward was sullen. Now and then, as if to prove that he was really an interesting fellow, he would engage Andrei in conversation. But Andrei politely discouraged him and remained aloof. To Maryushka he was similarly distant, so that the steward more than once growled to his wife: ‘A cold fellow, that.’

Sometimes Andrei would trot on ahead of them; or he might hang back and watch their two heads from behind, Maryushka’s held rather still, the steward’s bobbing forward constantly as though he were nodding off to sleep. But more often he would walk his horse beside them, glancing across from time to time at Maryushka, who would always be looking, dully, straight ahead. How pale she was.

Twice, however, when her husband had taken the horses down to one of the nearby streams to drink, she had moved swiftly over to Andrei and whispered: ‘Now, quickly. Take me now.’

And in the damp chill of the forest, for a few minutes, they had continued their urgent, surreptitious lovemaking before resuming their places, apparently distant from each other.

When they reached Russka, Andrei was to stay at Nikita’s house near the church while the steward returned to Dirty Place. As they approached the town Maryushka remarked to her husband: ‘I don’t want to wait on that damned Cossack.’

‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ he answered gruffly. ‘The master said I was to look after him so that’s that. He’ll be gone in two days,’ he added, by way of encouragement.

And she had sullenly obeyed.

The two days in Russka had been even more memorable than the journey.

Firstly, there had been the village of Dirty Place, where the steward had obligingly taken him.

It was a small village, no different from any number of damp little hamlets he had seen on the way. Were there still relations of his there? No one seemed to know anything about his grandfather, who had fled eighty years before, until one old woman was able to tell him that, yes, she had heard that one young man had disappeared into the wild field a few years before she was born. The grandson of that family lived at one end of the hamlet. And so it was that Andrei found himself confronted with a sturdy, pleasant-faced fellow with a thick shock of wavy black hair. He and four children lived in one of the stout huts. They welcomed Andrei when they heard his story, looked with admiration at his fine clothes, and through this sturdy peasant he learned that he was, in some way or other, distantly related to many of the village folk including even Maryushka’s mother.

‘And you are free – you have your own farm? You are not a serf?’ his cousin asked in wonder.

It almost hurt Andrei to admit it and to see the look of friendly envy on the man’s face.

He enjoyed his visit to the monastery rather more. The monks and the artisans of Russka still made icons, but in recent generations they had made no attempt to produce their own style, preferring to copy the work of others.

‘Here,’ one of the monks said proudly, as he showed Andrei a beautiful miniature icon, done in bright colours and lavishly decorated with gold, ‘is a Mother-of-God in the style of the Stroganov masters. And here,’ he showed his guest a large, imposing icon of Christ, the Ruler of the World, ‘is a fine one in the present Moscow manner. This is for one of the Tsar’s own churches.’

He thanked the monks for their kindness and gave a suitable donation before he left.

The last forty-eight hours had been difficult. There was the danger of discovery, for a start.

Not that he was afraid for himself. He was a Cossack after all. But there was a wildness, a desperation in Maryushka that made
him afraid, more than ever, that she might do something foolish that could harm her.

She was cunning though. She complained grumpily to the neighbours and townspeople at having to clean and cook for the Cossack. She would be seen going irritably about her work while he was out, and she even made it appear that she left the house as much as possible when he was there.

Yet on both days she had slipped quietly into his bed in the early morning, and had already managed, on four other occasions, to make brief but passionate love to him when they could not be seen.

Several times, though, she had come close to him and whispered: ‘Take me away with you. Take me to the Ukraine.’

It was impossible.

‘You’ve a husband,’ he reminded her.

‘I hate him.’

‘And I’m going on campaign.’

Did she love him or was he a means of escape? He did not know. He did not really care either. For the fact was, even if running off with Maryushka were possible, he did not want her.

Yet she did not give up. She would ask, wait a few hours, then gently ask again.

‘Take me away, my Cossack. Take me with you. You needn’t keep me. I’ll go away and not trouble you. Just take me away from this place. Don’t leave me here.’

It was a litany he quickly came to dread.

And then, the second afternoon, just when he expected it to begin again, she turned to him with apparent calm and asked: ‘Have you any money, Cossack?’

‘A little. Why?’

She looked at him in a matter-of-fact way, then pursed her lips.

‘Because I think I’m going to have a baby.’

‘You’re pregnant?’

‘I’m not sure but … maybe. My time never came.’

‘And it’s mine?’

‘Of course.’

He looked at the floor.

‘I know you won’t take me away.’ Her voice was flat, monotonous and far sadder than he had heard it before. ‘A Cossack can do anything, but you don’t want me. Anyway, it was just a dream.’

He said nothing.

‘But if you have some money,’ she said, ‘you can give me that.’

‘Perhaps you’re not pregnant,’ he suggested hopefully.

‘Perhaps.’

Could it be a ploy? He did not think so.

‘But do you want to have it?’

‘Better yours than his.’

‘Won’t he know?’

She shrugged.

‘We’ll see,’ she replied.

He had a considerable amount of coins with him, some Polish, some Russian. He took out all the Russian and gave it to her.

‘Thank you.’ She paused. ‘You can still keep the money and take me with you,’ she said with a sad, wry smile.

‘No.’

Neither of them spoke for a little time, but he was aware of her long fingers opening and closing over the little leather pouch of coins, kneading them. He knew that she was silently crying now, but did not move to her side, fearing it would make her worse.

When she spoke again, through her tears, it was in a soft voice that was little more than a moan.

‘You don’t know, do you, Cossack? You don’t know what it is to be alone.’

‘I am often alone.’ He said it, he supposed, not to justify himself but to comfort her.

She shook her head.

‘You’re alone with hope. You may be killed, but you’re on an adventure. You’re free, Cossack – free as a bird over the steppe. But I’m alone with nothing – don’t you see? Just the sky; just the earth. There’s no way out. It’s so terrible, don’t you see, to know that. To know you’re alone, for ever …’

He thought of her mother, the village of Dirty Place, and of her child.

‘You’re not alone,’ he said.

She did not reply.

‘I’m going,’ she said finally. ‘When do you leave?’

‘At dawn.’

She nodded, then smiled weakly.

‘Remember me.’

She had a bright red scarf which she placed, in the manner of all Russian women, over her head before departing.

The sky was clear, a wonderful pale blue, as he rode southwards from the little town of Russka in the early morning.

Two miles below the town there was a huge meadow that had been made by the monastery a few decades before.

And it was as he skirted this that he saw her, standing on one side of it, wearing her red scarf. For a moment he thought of riding over to see her, but he decided not to. It was better that way.

Some time later, he looked back.

She was still there, a tiny patch of redness in a huge expanse of green; a lonely figure on an endless plain. She watched him until he was out of sight.

Andrei rode south. Soon he would see the steppe again, and thatched cottages, and swaying fields of wheat.

What a strange and contradictory land this Muscovy was. Now that he was leaving it, his spirits seemed to lighten, as though a door to a dark room were being opened.

His mind drifted back to earlier days – to Anna. And then, suddenly, he thought of his old friend Stepan the Ox. He did not suppose he would see him again.

Freedom, that was the thing. Life was good. He was a dark and handsome fellow, there was no doubt about it. He felt his moustache – a true Cossack one.

His wide Cossack trousers flapped as the sun rose in the east and a little breeze got up.

Many times before in Russian history it had been thought that the end of days was approaching. But it was only in the second half of the seventeenth century that the new and ominous development began which convinced many that, this time, surely, the Apocalypse and the coming of the Antichrist must truly be at hand.

In order to understand Russia, it is important to remember that, while events in the centre may sometimes move quickly, and new ideas be introduced there, in the vast land itself, things change only very slowly. There is thus, almost always, a huge gap between what is said and what is done. And often confusing for the historian is that even the reaction of the endless hinterland to events at the centre may be so delayed that it becomes like an echo, returning long after the original sound has been forgotten and the person who made it has departed.

While historians may argue about the origins of the cataclysm that was to mark the end of old Muscovy, there is no doubt that for many Muscovites, it began in the year 1653.

It began with the Church reforms of the mighty Patriarch Nikon. And, most visibly, it concerned the way that the Russians made the sign of the cross.

If this seems strange, it must be explained that the Russian Orthodox was unlike other Orthodox Churches. Over the centuries, isolated from the rest of Christendom, it had developed its own spirit and its own practices which, as Patriarch Nikon had correctly seen, were out of line with the Orthodox mainstream. At certain points in their service, Russians sang two Hallelujahs instead of three; they used a different number of Communion loaves and made too many genuflections. They misspelt the name of Jesus in their texts, along with sundry other errors. And of all these differences, none was more obvious than their manner of making the sign of the cross.

The Orthodox did not make the sign of the cross in the manner of the Catholics. Instead of touching their forehead, chest and
then crossing their hand from left to right on the chest, as did the Romans, the Orthodox with great care and solemnity touched first their forehead, then the middle of their chest, and then swung their hands first to the right and then to the left breast – in the opposite way, that is, to the western churches.

Further yet, however, the Russian Orthodox in crossing himself, or making the sign of benediction, held his fingers in a special way. For instead of closing the thumb against the fourth finger and raising the other three, the Russian would place his thumb against the fourth and little finger, raising only two fingers, the index and third.

This was the famous two-fingered sign – ‘the single hand’ as they often called it – which the Russians believed to be the pure and ancient practice. And it was this, together with his textual and liturgical corrections, that the Patriarch Nikon had set out, back in 1653, to change.