Russka

by Edward Rutherfurd

  And it was from White Russia, in 1654, that Andrei was returning that late summer’s day.

  It had been a strange year for the young Cossack. Bogdan and his council, after mistrustful negotiations, had finally joined the Ukraine to Muscovy with an agreement which gave them huge estates. The simple peasants of the Ukraine, needless to say, got nothing.

  In March, Andrei had returned to Moscow and attended the marriage of Nikita Bobrov to an heiress. And it was then that the Russian did his Cossack friend a great favour: he arranged for Andrei to join him when the Muscovite army went on campaign against the Poles.

  The war with Poland – which the Tsar’s annexation of the Ukraine had made inevitable – was part of a greater and longer process. The foreign officers Andrei noticed in Moscow were part of this general preparation. For this new war with Poland was really little more than an excuse for Russia to strike a still greater blow. As Nikita gleefully told his friend: ‘We’re going to attack White Russia.’

  The campaign was successful. In the south, the Cossacks of the Ukraine struck across the Dniepr; further north, the Russian army advanced westward from Moscow to the ancient city of Smolensk.

  Before it was over, Andrei had twice been addressed personally by the fair, blue-eyed Tsar; and when they returned to Moscow he was informed that Alexis had granted him a new estate as well.

  Andrei and his friend did not return to Moscow until July.

  Nikita had asked Andrei to remain in the capital in the new and much larger house which he and his wife now occupied, but on their return to the capital they learned that an outbreak of plague had begun. At first they hoped that it would die down; after a few days, however, Nikita came home with grim news. ‘The rumour is that they’re going to seal the royal family’s apartments in the Kremlin. The Tsaritsa and her household are leaving the city. I should get out, Andrei. Go and enjoy your new estate in Little Russia.’

  Andrei had taken his advice. And so it was that late in July he had left the city to return home.

  He decided to go by way of Russka.

  He had not been able to discover anything about the fate of Maryushka. Nikita, who had not been near the estate for a year, had an idea that the steward’s young wife might have had a child, but he was not sure. So it was with some curiosity that he rode out eastward towards Vladimir and then turned south.

  He was in a strange mood. Things had gone very well for him. He was becoming rich. Yet his friend’s marriage, and a few close brushes with death on campaign, had reminded him vividly that, even well into his twenties, he was still alone. This child, if it exists, will be all I have given to the world, he mused, as he made his way through the late summer countryside. Even if I cannot claim the child, I’d like to see it.

  He brought some presents with him.

  Often, he felt melancholy. Once, just past a village on the River Kliasma, he saw a raft moored in midstream. It had a single mast from the top of which hung a rope; and at the end of the rope, with a large iron hook under his rib-cage, hung the body of a man. Obviously he must be a robber of some kind, for this kind of death was the standard Muscovite punishment for river pirates. But as he drew closer Andrei saw from the man’s baggy trousers and long moustaches that he had been a Cossack. He had obviously hung there for a week already.

  A Cossack: a brother. Yet not, of course, a brother.

  ‘He was poor. I am rich.’

  For some reason even his own good fortune, compared to this fellow’s, filled Andrei with a sense of desolation.

  It was three days later that he came in sight of Russka.

  He was still half a mile from the little town when he met Elena. She was walking through the woods.

  She recognized him at once, but her stolid, sturdy face gave no sign of pleasure or even of interest at the meeting.

  After a brief greeting he asked: ‘Did Maryushka have a child?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘A girl.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘The baby is at the village. Maryushka – who knows?’ And Elena explained her daughter’s departure.

  He was appalled.

  ‘She just walked off?’

  ‘Into the forest. Or the steppe perhaps. She’ll be dead now.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he suggested.

  ‘Perhaps.’

  He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I must see the child.’

  ‘What for?’

  It was hard to say. But he knew he wanted to.

  ‘Stay away,’ the older woman said. ‘He knows about you – the steward. You can only make things worse for us, and the child, if he sees you.’ And reluctantly Andrei realized that she was probably right.

  He drew out a purse of money. He had brought it for Maryushka. There was also a little golden bracelet – rather fine – in which was set a large amethyst. ‘Give the little girl these, when she gets married.’

  Elena took them without comment. ‘Goodbye,’ she said bleakly.

  He paused, looking down at her, feeling awkward. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said finally.

  She glanced at him, but there was no hint of forgiveness in her eyes. Then she spat.

  ‘For what?’

  He was silent.

  ‘Leave now, Cossack,’ she said in a voice that was full, not of hatred, but of a dull contempt.

  Andrei returned her sullen gaze. For a second, that word – Cossack – and the way it was said, annoyed him. Am I to be despised by a Russian peasant, he thought irritably.

  It seemed that old Elena had read something of his thoughts, for now she decided to speak again. ‘Do you know, Mister Cossack, what the difference is between you and a Russian man?’ she asked quietly. ‘Just one thing: that you can ride away.’ She spat again. ‘The steward gets drunk and beats Maryushka. You get her pregnant and ride into the steppe. And we women, who suffer, we remain, like the earth. You trample us, yet without us you are nothing.’ Then she shrugged. ‘God made us want you. Our eyes make us despise you.’

  Andrei nodded. He understood. It was the eternal voice of Russian womanhood.

  Slowly he remounted, and without another word rode quietly away. He did not expect that he would ever see his daughter. Only when he was several miles away did he realize that he had forgotten to ask her name.

  Elena never told Arina about her father’s visit, though she carefully hid the money and the bracelet under the floor. Why cause trouble, she thought. If the steward gets to know about the money, he’ll want it. As for the Cossack – better Arina shouldn’t think about him. And, as the years went by, and she saw how plain the girl was, she thought: The poor child will never get married, anyway. What use has she for a dowry?

  And so she had given the money to her son, and he had used it to bribe the steward.

  1677

  Her life had been blameless. Of what, then, should Arina be afraid?

  She was twenty-three and had not married, nor even been close to it. She knew very well that she never would be. Womanhood had only made her plainer. The wart on her chin had grown larger. It was not absolutely disfiguring; she was not unsightly; but when one came near her, it was impossible to overlook it. This, she told herself, was God’s way, in His infinite wisdom, of ensuring that she would be always humble. She prayed each day. She made herself useful. She had no enemy in Russka or Dirty Place. Yet always there was a nagging fear in her mind. She was afraid that they would take her church away from her.

  This fear was not unreasonable. For she was one of the Raskolniki.

  The development of the religious Schism at Russka had been typical of many provincial settlements: which is to say, it had been slow.

  It had taken two years for the Patriarch’s new prayer books to reach the monastery. When they had, the abbot put them quietly away in his room and refused to acknowledge that he had even received them. The monks were never told about it.

  In many ways the abbot admired Nikon. Hadn’t the Patriarch stoo
d up for the dignity of the Church? Hadn’t he fought the Tsar when Alexis had tried to limit the gifts of property the Church might receive? Undoubtedly Nikon was a fine Russian churchman. But the abbot also had friends amongst the party who opposed the reforms and who objected to Nikon’s high-handed ways. He mistrusted the Ukrainian and other scholars whom Nikon brought in. He was jealous of their influence and considered them too Catholic – too Polish – for his taste.

  He preferred to stick to his old loyalties, both personal and liturgical. And so at the little Monastery of St Peter and St Paul, the monks had continued with the old service and made the sign of the cross with two fingers, and since few people from Moscow came there, no one was much the wiser.

  Except for some of the monks. For even in that backwater, it was not long before they came to learn of the new form of service, and asked the abbot what was to be done. Only after a year however, would he even show the new books to the more senior and trustworthy brethren. And having shown them, he ordered them to obey him in all things. When Nikita Bobrov or any churchman of significance visited the monastery, he used the new form of service. As soon as they were gone, he reverted. And so they continued until the time of the great Church council of 1666.

  Even in the little monastery at Russka, though, there could be no more dodging the issue after this. Reluctantly, the abbot followed the new rules, and the monks were ordered to do the same. Authority was authority. The council was acting with the Tsar. All must obey.

  Except at Dirty Place.

  Not that anyone knew. The abbot, if he guessed, said nothing. Nikita Bobrov who owned the village had no idea. The local peasants knew, but then, who ever talked to them?

  For the little community at Dirty Place was led by Silas the priest.

  He was a quiet fellow. His grandfather had been the son of the priest Stephen, who had been killed by Ivan the Terrible; but since that time, Silas was the first of the family to take up the priesthood again. His own father had been a modest trader in Russka.

  His thoughtful face and serious blue eyes resembled his ancestor’s but he was only of medium height, and an accident as a boy had given him a slight limp. Though he lacked any great physical presence, there was a quiet, rather passionate determination about him that gave Silas authority amongst the peasants.

  It was when he went to Nizhni Novgorod to study for the priesthood that he had come in contact with the priests who were to protest against the reforms. This was not surprising. Besides being a great trading centre, the old city at the meeting of the Volga and the Oka was still something of a frontier. Once past Nizhni Novgorod, one was in the vast wild emptiness of the north-eastern forests. Here were all manner of remote communities and hermits; here were the true, simple Russians, who made their houses in the forest with their axes and who struck every blow for the Lord.

  Near Nizhni Novgorod, also, had come the family of the great opponent of reform, the priest Avvakum; and it happened that, while serving as a deacon there, Silas had met a kinswoman of the fiery priest and married her.

  He was not a learned man. At Nizhni Novgorod they had taught him to read, but his objections to the reforms were not sophisticated, like those of the abbot. Indeed, apart from his wife’s connection with Avvakum, he would scarcely have been able to say who was right about many of the issues in the dispute between the priest and the Patriarch.

  Silas’s feeling of disquiet had deeper roots. It was instinctive. And it concerned the very core of the Russian Church, indeed of Russia itself. It was a feeling that Russia’s heart had been invaded, her soul perverted: and that this was the work of outsiders. ‘Why does the Tsar need so many foreigners?’ he would ask. ‘Why are our troops led by Germans? Why does the Tsar import craftsmen and let the boyars keep musical instruments in their houses?’

  And if at first he had been confused by the technical details of the Church dispute, by the time of the great Church council of 1666, Silas no longer had any doubt about what was wrong. ‘First they let Poles and Greeks tamper with the liturgy; now the foreigners have taken over,’ he exclaimed to his wife. And then, dropping his voice at the horror of the thing: ‘I’ve even heard that some of the new translations were done by Jews.’

  And to his little congregation at Dirty Place the priest would declare: ‘To us Russians, to simple Christians, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, only one thing is of importance. It is not worldly knowledge: for where shall worldly knowledge and foreign cunning lead us if not into greater sin? It is not subtle argument: for what can we humble people know, compared to the wisdom of God? It is love; it is devotion. It is the blessed quality, the sacred and burning ardour in each one of us to serve God faithfully, reverently, in the way shown us by Our Lord and by the Saints. That is all that matters.’ And here he used a word that was, and would long remain, close to the heart of every Russian: ‘We must live our lives with blagochestie.’

  Blagochestie: it meant piety, ardent devotion, loyalty, faithfulness. It was attached, always, to the Tsar in old Muscovy – the pious Tsar. And above all, for men like Silas, it meant faithfulness to the old ways, to sacred tradition. It meant the humble love and religious awe of the Russian peasant, against the proud, rational, legalistic western world towards which they sensed the authorities were trying to drag them. It meant the world of the icon, and the axe.

  In Dirty Place, therefore, Silas continued to use the old forms of the service: he said two Hallelujahs, and he made the sign of the cross with two fingers.

  It was dangerous. The authorities in Moscow were determined to be obeyed. Far in the north, when the abbot of the great Solovetsky Monastery by the White Sea had ordered his monks not to use the new liturgy and even told them not to pray for the Tsar, troops had besieged the obstinate rebels, and finally massacred them.

  No one knew how many other communities were secretly doing the same thing, but it seemed that the underground movement was growing. Some protesters were like Silas, purely religious; others complained at the Tsar’s high taxes and at their harsh living conditions. Whatever their reasons, the sense of sullen protest was growing and Moscow knew it. There was going to be trouble.

  So far, the little community at Dirty Place had received no official attention, but what if it did? What would Silas and his congregation do then? No one seemed to know but Arina had good reason to be worried.

  It was in the spring of that year, on a cool, damp day, that the stranger appeared at Russka.

  Like any traveller, he went to the monastery where the monks gave him food and shelter. Though he said that his name was Daniel, he seemed unwilling to explain anything more about himself, and when the monks asked him where he came from he answered only: ‘From Yaroslavl.’

  Which, when they reported it to the abbot, made him smile and remark: ‘He looks it. They have real Russians up there.’

  Yaroslavl was ancient. Like other north-eastern cities – Vladimir, Rostov, Suzdal – it dated back to Kievan times. It lay to the north, on the loop of the great River Volga, and beyond it was the vast taiga forest that stretched to the Arctic tundra. The symbol that the city bore on its shield was, appropriately, a bear carrying an axe.

  They were mighty men up in those parts: the same simple, determined men who had come down with their scythes and axes to drive the Poles out of Muscovy in the Time of Troubles.

  The stranger was such a fellow. He was huge, with a shaggy head, a massive, grizzled beard and a large nose which, with the passing of the years, had spread outwards so that it took up the middle of his bearded face like a large smudge. Often he sat, very still, staring before him, or holding out one of his huge hands to feed a bird. Gentle in all his gestures, it was also obvious that he was enormously strong.

  But what was he doing there? No one had any idea. He possessed a little money. He did not seem to be a runaway peasant. He carried with him a tiny icon, black with age, and a little book of psalms, from which it appeared he could read. Yet he said he was not a priest.


  On the third day of his stay in the monastery he became ill. A fever seized him and for a short time the monks thought he would die. But he recovered and soon he was to be seen wandering about the countryside nearby.

  A week after his first walk, he had a private conversation with the abbot. After this, the monks learned two things. The first was that, during his fever, a voice had commanded him to stay at Russka. The second was that he could paint icons, and had asked the abbot if he might take lodgings in the town and join the other painters there. To this the abbot had agreed.

  So it was that Daniel came to live at Russka.

  He was a good craftsman, but though he would paint parts of icons, under the directions of others, he would never paint the figures themselves, claiming that his skill was not sufficient. The icons in question, being run-of-the-mill copies for sale by the monastery, were by no means great works of art; but his modesty pleased the other painters.

  He kept himself to himself. Not only could he paint, but he was an excellent carpenter. He observed every fast strictly, and spent several hours each day praying and genuflecting. Following the Old Testament to the letter, he would not eat any of the forbidden meats, including veal, rabbit and hare.

  It was noticed also that on Sundays Daniel went to the little church at Dirty Place where Silas conducted the service. But since he went to the monastery too, no one thought much about it.

  In Dirty Place, the villagers soon got used to the strange, quiet fellow who used to appear amongst them. The men had nothing against him; the women decided they liked him because he was reputed to be hardworking, and they sensed something gentle, almost reverential, in his bearing towards them. He was a holy man of some kind, they decided. And one old woman remarked: ‘He’s a wanderer. One of these days you’ll turn round, and he’ll be gone.’ For it was surely true that there was something about him that was apart.