Russka

by Edward Rutherfurd

  For Yanka, her father and their companions were doing a very dangerous thing: they were trying to escape from the Tatars.

  The Tatars. Even now, most Russians did not really understand the nature of the empire of which they had just become a part. Failing to perceive the absolute importance of the Mongol elite from their distant eastern homeland, the Russians confused them with the subject Turks who fought under them, and therefore gave the Horde a Turkish name which was to remain in use throughout history: the Tatars.

  The estimate of the Mongol war council had been exactly right. Russia had fallen in three years. The great army that had passed through the village of Russka had swept on to destroy Pereiaslav utterly; within a twelve month, Chernigov had fallen and golden Kiev was a ghost town.

  The ancient state of Rus was finished.

  For convenience, the Mongols divided it in two. The southern half – the territories around Kiev and the southern steppe – were placed under direct Mongol rule. The north – the lands in the great loop of the Russian R, and in the deep forests beyond – were left under the nominal control of the Russian royal house, with the proviso that the princes ruled, henceforth, only as the representatives of the Great Khan. They were there to keep the people quiet and collect the Khan’s tribute. That was all.

  Some chronicles of the time – and many Russians too – liked to pretend that the Tatars were just another, if impressive, group of steppe raiders whom, for the moment, the Grand Duke had to buy off.

  The reality was very different. The Grand Duke was summoned eastwards, even as far as Mongolia, to receive his badge of office – the yarlyk. He ruled only at the Khan’s pleasure. ‘Remember, you belong to us now,’ all princes were told. No disobedience was tolerated. When a bold prince from the southwest refused to bow to an idol of the Great Khan, he was executed on the spot. This imposition of rule was immediate and total. Indeed, the only reason why the Russian princes were allowed to exist at all was because the Mongols, unimpressed with the wealth of the northern forests – puny indeed compared to the rich caravans and cities of Asia – had reckoned that the Grand Duke’s territories were not worth the cost of direct administration.

  It is likely, had the Mongols not paused for the elections in the orient of a new Great Khan, that all Europe might have fallen at this point too. But the new Khan decided instead to consolidate his western empire: a new capital, Sarai, was built on the southern Volga and his army commanders were told: ‘Wait.’

  And in this matter, too, the Mongols displayed their excellent understanding. For there was one other relevant fact which they had quickly understood.

  Russia was Orthodox; the west Catholic.

  Back in the days of Monomakh, the split between Rome and the Eastern Church had been one of liturgical niceties. But since then, the gulf had widened. Questions of authority were involved. Was the Patriarch of Constantinople – or his fellow patriarchs in the east – prepared to submit to the Pope’s authority? Had the Eastern – Orthodox – Church showed a proper interest in the Pope’s Crusades? Feelings ran high. When the Russians sent frantic appeals to their fellow Christians in the west for help against the heathen Mongols, they were met with silence. Indeed, the west watched with satisfaction while the Orthodox were being punished for their mistake. Worse yet, not only did the Catholic Swedes start to attack them in the north, but a pair of crusading orders – the Livonian and Teutonic Knights – whose headquarters were up by the Baltic Sea, started with the Pope’s approval to raid the lands of Novgorod. ‘Let the heathens smash them,’ said the Catholic west, ‘and we’ll gobble up the pieces.’ So it was that the Russians concluded, more firmly than ever: ‘Never trust the west.’ And the Mongol leadership cleverly calculated: ‘Take Russia first. The west can wait. Russia belongs to Asia now.’

  Yanka’s father was not a bad-looking man.

  He was just above average height, and fair, though his beard was thin and the crown of his head was covered by only a few strands of hair. His features were small and regular, while the upper part of his face seemed rather bony. His pale blue eyes were generally kindly, though they sometimes looked at people as if he were counting something. He was, in a nondescript way, quite pleasant-looking. Occasionally, he drank too much.

  Sometimes he would punish her with a beating if she had misbehaved; this was always in the evening, and at such times he could be stern and frightening. But he was less severe, she knew, than the other fathers in the village.

  He himself supposed that in earlier years he had taken less notice of her than he had of Kiy, his son. But the terrible events since the Tatar invasion had changed all that; and now, as they continued on their journey, he realized that he had undertaken it chiefly for her sake.

  For if they did not leave, he had thought that she would die.

  At first, after the terrible destruction, a strange silence had fallen upon the village. News of the fall of the cities of Pereiaslav and Kiev came; then nothing. From the boyar in the north, not a word. Perhaps he was dead. Meanwhile, in the shattered village, seed time and harvest came. Yanka’s father took up with a stout, dark-haired woman, though he did not marry her; and she taught Yanka to embroider. Kiy became a dexterous woodcarver. And then, the previous year, the blow had fallen.

  On an autumn day a small Tatar troop led by an official from the newly created governor of the region, the Baskak, marched briskly into the village. All the people were lined up and counted – a thing that had never been known before. ‘This is the census,’ the official said. ‘The Baskak numbers every head.’ Then the men were divided into groups often. ‘Each ten is a tax unit and is fully responsible for maintaining its full complement,’ they were told. ‘Nobody may leave.’ A peasant who foolishly tried to argue was immediately whipped. They also discovered that the village was to have a new significance.

  The imperial post service, the yam, connected every part of the Great Khan’s empire. His messengers, and selected merchants, could use it. There was a station every twenty-five miles, where mares and sheep were kept to supply kumiss and meat. Also a quantity of spare horses. For when the Khan sent a messenger, the man wore bells to warn the station of his approach so that a fresh horse would be ready, on to which he could leap, never pausing in his journey. The Baskak had decided that the ruined fort would do very well for a yam. An official stationed there would oversee the village too. ‘Which means,’ a villager whispered, ‘that we shall all be slaves.’

  But it was the final action of the official which had destroyed Yanka. For suddenly, turning to the village elder he had demanded: ‘Who are the best woodcarvers here?’ And being given five names he had called them out. The youngest was Kiy, aged fifteen. ‘We’ll take the boy,’ the Mongol snapped. For the Great Khan had asked for artisans to be sent to him. And for long afterwards, that evening, as the party travelled away across the steppe, Yanka had gazed after the distant figures who began to look like tiny shadows that might sink, at any time, into the reddening sea.

  Life for both father and daughter had been miserable after that. His woman had left him. Several times, to drown his own bitterness, he had got drunk and foolishly frightened the girl. Meanwhile, Yanka had gone into a strange decline. During the winter she had grown progressively thinner, eating little, speaking less. And by the spring, when she showed no signs of improving, her father had confessed: ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  It was a family from the next village who had announced their intention of leaving. ‘We’re going north,’ they told him. ‘There are endless lands up in the northern taiga,’ they explained, ‘going right across the Volga, where men are free, without a master. We’ll escape up there.’

  These were the so-called Black Lands. In fact, they were the prince’s land for which the settler paid him a small rent; but the further north and east one went, the more settlers became frontiersmen, recognizing no authority. Such freedoms were exciting, even though the life could be hard. ‘Come with us,’ they suggested. The fath
er of the family had once been north as a young man. ‘I know the way,’ he claimed.

  ‘And if we get caught?’

  The fellow had shrugged. ‘I’ll take the risk,’ he said.

  The great river journey they had undertaken was very simple. They were slowly ascending the great Russian R. First up the Dniepr; then cutting across eastward until, after their brief overland journey, they had joined a small river that took them to the underside of the huge northern loop – the sluggish River Oka. For once at the Oka, they were in the Grand Duke’s lands where the Tatar patrols did not bother to come.

  How pleasant it was, at last, to drift along the River Oka. Fish were plentiful. Forgetting her grief in this great adventure, Yanka had started to eat again. One day they even caught a noble sturgeon. As they went north and east, they saw signs of a gradual change in vegetation. There were fewer broad-leaved trees, more firs and larches. Their guide also pointed out another important feature to them. ‘We’re getting into the country of the old Finnish tribes now,’ he explained, ‘like the Mordvinians. And the names of places are Finnish too.’ The Oka River itself was an example. The cities of Riazan and Murom likewise. And one day, passing a modest river that joined them from the left, their friend remarked: ‘That river’s got a primitive Finnish name too: it’s the Moskva.’

  ‘Anything up there?’ Yanka’s father asked.

  ‘A small town called Moscow. Nothing much.’

  Yanka’s father had considered carefully what they should do. He was attracted by the idea of these distant free lands of which the others spoke. But he was cautious too. Life could be very hard for a settler. He had with him a quantity of money, which he kept carefully hidden. He could start up anywhere. But I might be able to get more out of a landlord who needs a tenant, he thought.

  So he had formed a simple plan. ‘When we get to Murom,’ he decided, ‘I’ll look for the boyar Milei. Perhaps he’ll help us. But if he won’t or he’s dead, maybe we’ll try the north.’

  And so, that August, Yanka and her father went along the Oka.

  The boyar Milei was a large man with a family of five. He was very proud of his physical strength. He was also cunning.

  When the news had come upriver, eight years before, of the Mongol attack on Riazan, he had not waited to be summoned to battle. ‘The Grand Duke of Vladimir will order us to join him if he gives battle,’ he remarked shrewdly, ‘but he’ll do nothing for us if these raiders come to Murom.’

  In this assessment of the relationship between the Grand Duke and the princes of the minor city of Murom he was entirely correct.

  The little principality of Murom lay at the eastern edge of the loop of the Russian R. West of it lay the rest of the great loop – the wide lands of Suzdalia, ruled by the Grand Duke of Vladimir.

  Once, Murom had been a major city, greater than Riazan. But in the last century, Riazan had become richer, and Suzdalia had become mighty; and now the princes of Murom did the bidding of the Grand Duke without question. So, of course, should Milei the boyar. Unless it did not suit him. Faced with this new threat, therefore, Milei had discreetly withdrawn, with his entire family, for a visit to the most remote and obscure of all his estates, where he had wisely remained until the following year.

  The estate in question was isolated indeed.

  Across the great loop of the Russian R, and dividing it horizontally in half, there runs eastwards a pleasant minor river called the Kliasma. It was upon this river, a little to the east of the loop’s centre, that Monomakh had set up the present capital of Vladimir. Other fine cities like Suzdal, Rostov or Tver, all lay in the northern half of the loop. The southern half of the loop, however, until one came to the cities on the Oka – Riazan and Murom – contained very little except hamlet, forest and marsh. It was here, in the southern half of the loop between the Kliasma and Oka Rivers, that the boyar Milei owned an estate. From this place a stream obligingly ran northwards up to the Kliasma, not far from Vladimir. It was also possible, some miles away, to pick up other streams, that led south to the sluggish Oka.

  The boyar Milei’s grandfather who had been given the place had decided he did not like its barbarous Finnish name; and so he had renamed both the little stream that ran northwards and the settlement beside it. He named them after an estate he was fond of, in the south: the stream he called the Rus, and the village, Russka.

  There were many such names that were carried like this from the south into the north.

  It was not a bad place, and the winter that the boyar Milei spent there had convinced him that it had more possibilities than he had supposed. ‘Indeed,’ he told his wife, ‘from what I’ve discovered at Russka, we could make it highly profitable. All we need is more people.’ But then, finding enough peasants was the perennial problem of the Russian landlord.

  The next spring, he returned to Murom to find his house outside the city walls burned down, but the large cache of coins he had hidden deep under the floor still quite safe. For the time being there had been plenty to do, for the Mongol invasion left much to repair. But the little village of Russka was often in his mind.

  ‘We must attend to it when we have time,’ he often remarked.

  And so, late in the summer of 1246, he was surprised and delighted to find before him two peasants from his estate in the south.

  Since the Mongol invasion, he had found it harder than ever to get enough peasants to work his land. So far he had only managed to add three families of Mordvinians to the settlement at Russka. ‘And two of those are drunk most of the time,’ his steward told him mournfully.

  Now, as Yanka looked up at this tall, powerful man with his fair beard, only half grey, and his broad Turkish face, she saw nothing but friendliness. His hard blue eyes beamed. ‘I have the very place for you,’ he announced. ‘The Russka of the north.’

  ‘I’ve no money,’ her father lied.

  The boyar gazed at him, not deceived for a second. ‘It’s more profit to me to give you land and have you work it than get no return at all,’ he replied. ‘You can build yourself a house – the villagers will help you. And my steward will take you there and set you up with everything else you need. You’ll repay me over time.’

  He questioned them about their journey, and when he heard they had come with another family, with two strong sons, he at once made an offer to them too.

  But they refused. ‘The offer’s good,’ their travelling companion told Yanka’s father, ‘but I don’t want a landlord. Come with us,’ he urged instead.

  ‘No,’ her father was shaking his head. ‘We prefer to remain. Good luck to you though.’

  The next day, their companions were on their way. ‘God knows what they’ll do up by the Volga,’ her father growled. ‘We’re safer in the village.’ Then he turned away.

  Russka.

  This northern Russka was a very different place from the village in the south that she had left.

  Its only similarity was that, like most Russian villages, it lay beside a river: that was all.

  At the site chosen for the settlement, the river made a large, S-shaped curve. The western bank here was about fifty feet higher than the eastern, so that the curve formed a promontory on the west side, and left a large, sheltered space on the eastern bank just below it. This sheltered area had been made into a meadow.

  There had once been a settlement in this meadow; but over time it had been moved for greater safety to the promontory where there now stood a dozen wooden huts with a strengthened fence around them. On the western side the land stretched away, almost flat. A few vegetable plots had been scraped bare near the fence, and two poor fields could be seen through a thin screen of trees.

  There was no church.

  The northern Russka.

  The nearest village lay three miles away, to the south-east. This, too, was on the little River Rus. Just behind this village lay a low, wooded ridge. But below the ridge, down by the river, the land was marshy, and so when the Slav settlers had first come
upon it they had called it Dirty Place – which remained its name thereafter. Past Dirty Place it was another seven miles to any village.

  At first sight, it seemed to Yanka that the forest was all fir. But a walk around showed her that this was not the case. There were, in fact, a huge variety of trees: larch and birch, lime, oak, pine, and many others. Back along the Oka, around Riazan, she had even seen orchards of apple and even cherry trees. But she did not notice any here. The vegetable patches were not very impressive either. They grew peas and cucumbers mainly, as far as she could discover. And she observed something else: their horses were all tiny.

  The houses were made of wood – huge, solid logs from base to roof: there were none of the clay walls and thatched roofs she had known in the south.

  But, above all, the people were different. ‘They are so quiet,’ she whispered to her father, the first morning as they walked around the place. ‘You’d think they were frozen.’

  There was a mix of people in the village. Before the boyar’s family acquired it, the inhabitants had been mostly Slavs of the Viatichi tribe. ‘Pagan animals’ she had always heard these Viatichi called, for they were amongst the most backward of the Slav tribes. There were six Viatichi families now. As well as these, there were three families who had moved up from the south a generation ago, and finally the three families of Mordvinians, with their high Finnish cheekbones and almond eyes, brought in by the boyar.

  Different as these all were, to Yanka they seemed all the same in this one, crucial respect. For whereas the Slav villagers she knew in the south were expansive, argumentative, and full of droll humour, these people of the north were quiet, undemonstrative and seemed to be slow. In the south, one sat in the sun and talked. Here, people went quietly into the warmth of their huts.

  They were not unfriendly though. On the steward’s orders, half a dozen of the men appeared with axes by midday. ‘We’ll build you a hut,’ they announced, and showed them a site at the southern end of the hamlet.