Even in his nervousness, Nikita could not help a smile at this delicious understatement. The local administration was a bribe-ridden shambles.
‘Consequently,’ the prince went on, ‘we must place huge reliance on the governors. They’re all we have. And unfortunately, even the slightest shadow upon a candidate, in certain circles, makes an appointment impossible.’ He paused. ‘You’ll also know that one of the most urgent tasks at present is for each governor to help the Church stamp out these heretics, these Raskolniki. The Regent Sophia is adamant …’ He waited a moment to give Nikita time to reflect.
‘There are rumours – whether or not they are unfounded, I hardly need to tell you, my dear friend, is perfectly irrelevant – there are rumours in certain high quarters which suggest that,’ he let the words fall gently, ‘were you to prosecute the Raskolniki, you might possibly find yourself embarrassed. I’m sure you understand.’ He paused again, then gave Nikita a smile. ‘Do not despair, Nikita Mikhailovich, you may rise again tomorrow. And I myself might fall. But today, I can’t help you.’
Nikita swallowed. His throat felt very dry.
‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I shall always be ready to serve,’ Nikita said with what dignity he could muster.
Golitsyn was silent.
‘You may of course prefer to reside in Moscow,’ he said after a few seconds, ‘but you should feel free to visit your estates if you wish.’
So it was truly over. They didn’t want him in Moscow. For a second – he could not help it – he felt tears in his eyes; but he managed to blink them back.
‘Come, my dear fellow, let me escort you to the door,’ Golitsyn said kindly.
Only as they went back across the room did Nikita look up and realize that about thirty people were watching; at the same moment, he noticed that in one corner, with calm, expressionless faces, two of the Miloslavskys were also quietly watching. And beside them stood Peter Tolstoy.
Then he understood that it had been a public execution.
So it was that the distinguished ancestor of Russia’s great novelist dealt with Nikita Bobrov.
It was only human nature that, in the days which followed, it was not his known enemy but kindly Golitsyn whom Nikita came to resent. So he executed me to please Tolstoy and the Miloslavskys, he brooded. But then, that man would do anything for power. And in his mind he conjured up, in some detail, what he supposed might be the relations between Golitsyn and the Regent Sophia, dwelling in particular upon her known imperfections, and some others he imagined for himself.
Nikita was finished; his career was over. What should he do now? Above all, how could he advance the family interests – what should be done about Procopy?
He was a pleasant youth. He looked remarkably like his father, with the same broad forehead and black hair; he was somewhat given to enthusiasms – perhaps too much so. But his excitement was infectious and gave him great charm. It would be tragic if the cloud over the family should prevent him having a fine career.
To Nikita’s great surprise, it was Eudokia who supplied the answer. ‘We’ll get nothing from Princess Sophia,’ she argued. ‘So our only hope is to gamble on the next reign. Let Procopy go and serve the boy. Let him serve young Peter.’
Peter? Who knew anything about the boy? Would he ever be allowed to come to power by Sophia and the scheming Miloslavskys?
‘He’s our only chance,’ Eudokia repeated. ‘Just leave the whole business to me.’ And rather to Nikita’s surprise, it was not long before she was summoned to see the boy Tsar’s mother, and returned with an invitation for Nikita to pay young Peter a visit.
He was to go, not to the Kremlin, but to a little village just outside the capital, called Preobrazhenskoe.
It was two months later, as the leaves were beginning to fall, that Nikita Bobrov and Eudokia came to Russka.
Procopy had been successfully placed in Peter’s household. No one wanted Nikita in Moscow. So he had decided to visit his estates.
He found his house in the town needed repair, and sent for men at once. He visited the monastery and gave the monks some more money to say masses for his father. He carefully inspected Dirty Place. And Eudokia, as was her way in the country, took care to inspect everything too. It was in this way that she discovered, as she put it, ‘just the man’ to undertake the more elaborate carpentry needed in the house.
‘He’s an icon painter,’ she explained, ‘but a wonderful carpenter too. You must meet him, Nikita. His name is Daniel. His wife’s a treasure too.’
Nikita met them. The fellow was huge; the woman of no interest. Yet Eudokia was always talking to them. Indeed, after a couple of weeks, she seemed to think the sun shone out of their eyes. Personally, he couldn’t think what she saw in them.
Silence – some believe – gives a man power. So it seemed to be with Daniel. For though he said little, and asked for no consideration at all, the people of Russka looked up to him.
Not that they knew him. Even now, after seven years, he was still a mystery. Yet, like some huge old oak tree in the forest, his whole presence suggested permanence, and a comforting stability which seemed to come from the earth itself.
He even looked like a tree, his wife thought fondly. In the winter months, he would wrap himself in a thick, dark gown that reached to his ankles and which looked like a monk’s habit. On his head he would wear a high, conical cloth hat, trimmed with fur so that his wife, glancing up at the old watchtower with its high, tent roof, would say: ‘Why do we need a watchtower with my husband here?’
At other times, emerging sedately from the swirling snow, he would look like some ancient winter god, coming from the endless greyness of the forest.
In his presence she always had a sense of perfect peace. She knew him as well as it is possible to know another being; she knew that, at the core of this mighty oak, resided a man of huge wisdom. When they slept together she experienced frequently, not only that oceanic feeling within herself but also the sense that, like all truly simple people, he possessed a life without end.
Yet she knew nothing of his past. She knew only that, for some reason he would never explain, he had not been married before; and that, thanks be to God, he had changed his mind.
She also knew that sometimes, in private, Daniel was deeply troubled.
He had not planned to marry when he came to Russka. I am too unworthy, he told himself. How can I ask another to share my life when I am confused and so steeped in sin? Nor would he have stayed, if it had not been for Silas.
It was not only that Silas made the sign of the cross with two fingers. The priest seemed instinctively to understand his troubled soul. ‘Remember,’ he would quietly admonish him, ‘we are here to suffer; but we are forbidden to despair. If you are troubled by the world, still more are you called to rejoice in the Risen Lord.’
And gradually, in the little wooden church, as he looked around at the simple villagers and as he felt that intense, emotional warmth which is the hallmark of the Russian Church, Daniel found, for the first time in years, that he had no further urge to move on. For wherever I wander, it can only be the same, he considered. What else could there be, after all, but the warmth of the little village community, huddled together, naked before the Lord, in the endless Russian plain?
It was one Sunday after he had been there two years that old Silas had quietly come up to him and said: ‘It is time, I think, that you married.’
Greatly as he revered the priest, he had wanted to contradict him. ‘I am too old – I’m over fifty,’ he protested. ‘And I am unworthy.’
But Silas had been firm. ‘Not so. It is not for you to decide you are unworthy.’
‘But … I had not thought. Whom should I marry? And who would have me?’
Silas had smiled. ‘If, as I believe, it is the Lord’s will, you will know.’ And seeing Daniel for once look utterly confused, he had continued: ‘You should marry one who is beautiful – not unto men,
but unto God. You should marry one by whom God is rightly praised.’ He smiled again. ‘You will be guided.’
That week, and the next, Daniel had considered the matter. He felt uncertain, yet also a little excited. He thought of all the women in Russka and Dirty Place, but came to no conclusion.
It was on the third Sunday, as he stood in the little wooden church at Dirty Place, that he found his attention caught by one person in particular. Why had his head slowly turned that way? Why, because she was singing, of course: she was singing with a voice of extraordinary beauty. And then, looking at her poor, plain face with its unsightly wart – a pale face that would have been almost ugly but for the lovely expression of rapt, religious attention that it wore – he saw what the priest had meant.
He spoke to her uncle and her old grandmother immediately after the service.
And so it was that, to old Elena’s astonishment, and at the unheard of age of twenty-five, Arina was married to Daniel.
On her wedding day, Elena solemnly gave her granddaughter a golden bracelet set with a large amethyst. She did not say where it came from. Then she, with all the rest of the family, escorted Arina to Daniel’s little house in Russka.
Both husband and wife had been astonished at their own happiness. They were each of them so surprised to be married at all; neither had any vanity; they could only try, rather humbly, to give happiness to the other, and as a result their love progressed with extraordinary speed.
For Daniel, the sight of this plain woman, who had never dared to hope for love, moved him profoundly. The natural tenderness which his feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness had always held back, now suddenly found expression. There was nothing to prevent it: the priest had told him it was his duty to love.
He was tender, and determined to succeed. He studied her, observing her secret doubts and need for reassurance until, with a sense of delight, he saw that like a tree after winter she was quivering into life.
Like many Russians, they called each other not by their first names but in the ancient manner, by their patronymics. At first, this had led to a small discussion. ‘For,’ as Arina confessed with a blush, ‘my real father was a Cossack and I do not know his name; but my supposed father was called Ivan.’ His father, he had told her, was called Peter; and so, since the full form of patronymic was now in general use, he was, to her, always Petrovich; while she was Ivanovna.
If only Daniel could have felt that his personal joy was a harbinger of better days to come.
He had wandered so many years, all over Russia, troubled by his sinful past, seeking peace yet never finding it. He had sought out holy men. But it was only during his time in Yaroslavl that he had truly found them. For it was there, in the wild Black Lands beyond the Volga, that he had met the stern Trans-Volga hermits and their followers. These were the true Russian believers, these austere and godly men who lived in the forests. In the manner of ancient Israelites, they felt their daily lives were close to God. Some were prophets. They shunned the evil world they saw around them. Like Avvakum and the other Raskolniki they were shocked at the changes in the Church, and with even more certainty than Avvakum they declared that these signs of wickedness meant the coming of the Antichrist himself.
‘Prepare with prayer and fasting,’ they advised, ‘for the end of days is nigh.’
Sometimes, having found such happiness at Russka, Daniel had wondered if perhaps the hermits over the Volga had been mistaken. By chance, after many years of the harshest winters, the climate in north Russia had become milder the year after his marriage: the cold season had been shorter, the crops better. Might it be a hopeful sign? But when, after four years of marriage, his wife had failed to become pregnant he sadly concluded: It is probably a sign that, for the faithful, the world is becoming too wicked a place for children to live in.
In 1684, if any confirmation were needed of the wickedness of the world, the blow fell.
An edict from the Regent Sophia outlawed the Raskolniki. Suspected schismatics could be tortured and anyone sheltering them would lose their property. For obstinate offenders the penalty was death. On the day that news of this terrible edict had reached Russka, Silas had come to Daniel’s house near the market square and spent an hour talking with him urgently. When he emerged, he was looking grim.
Arina had remained outside while the two men talked and did not venture back until some time later. But when she did, she found Daniel so deep in prayer that he was unaware of her presence. She had never seen him so agitated before. With tears in his eyes, he was prostrating himself before the blackened little icon in the corner, knocking his forehead on the floor and murmuring: ‘Lord have mercy. Let this cup pass from me.’ And feeling that she was intruding, Arina had begun to back out of the room.
It was just as she was doing so, however, that her husband said something else, that seemed to her very strange. For suddenly, staring up at the icon with a look of desperation he cried out: ‘Yet who am I, Lord, to ask for mercy – If who have murdered, not once but many times?’
Arina gazed at him. What could he mean? Surely the words were not to be taken literally, for it was hard to imagine her husband hurting a fly, let alone committing a murder. What, then, was in his mind? And it struck her, with a greater force than ever before, how little she still knew about the life of this man whom she unreservedly loved. And being ignorant, she thought, how can I help him now, in his hour of need?
When they were alone that evening, Daniel told her about Silas’s visit. Faced with the terrible new threat of the edict, even the old priest had been uncertain what to do. ‘He honoured me by asking my advice,’ Daniel gravely told her.
‘And what did you tell him, Petrovich?’
‘For my sins, I advised him to go on.’ He looked at her with troubled eyes. ‘If we continue, even in secret, it may bring great misfortune upon us – upon you too, Ivanovna,’ he confessed.
She bowed her head. Whatever suffering might lie ahead, she knew that she only desired to share it with him.
‘It is all I have – this faith,’ Daniel suddenly burst out. ‘I have wandered all my life in search of truth, Ivanovna. I cannot turn back now.’
And it was then, because the moment seemed right, that Arina begged him: ‘Will you not tell your wife something of your past life, Petrovich?’
It was a strange tale he had to tell: a story of solitary wanderings that seemed to have taken him all over Russia. He told her about the elders he had met at Yaroslavl. ‘And before that, for a time, I was a lay brother in a monastery. That is when I learned to read.’
And now Arina told him what she had overheard that day and gently asked him: ‘What did you mean, Petrovich, when you said that you had murdered?’
To which, to her surprise, he sadly answered: ‘Yes, it is true. I have killed.’
For several moments after this confession he was silent, then he slowly continued, ‘You see, Ivanovna, even when I was a child, I had a passion for justice. Indeed, I would be so offended by anything that, to my childish eyes, seemed unjust that I would even pretend to be a fool, not to understand what was going on – so that often the other boys thought me simple in the head.’ He smiled regretfully. ‘Nowadays, of course, I know that justice belongs only to God, and that goodness can only be found in prayer. But when I was young, I believed there could be true justice in the government of men: and when I did not find it, I became angry.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I fought. I joined Stenka Razin.’
‘You were in his rebellion?’
He nodded. ‘And we killed, Ivanovna. In the name of justice we killed not only soldiers and wicked officials, but God knows how many innocents too. At the time I thought it right: now I can only throw myself at God’s feet and beg for mercy.’
‘You were a Cossack then?’
‘I was. A fighting Cossack. I fought with Bogdan too. I thought nothing of killing in those days.’ He paused. ‘Later, I wanted so much to break with my evi
l past that – as though I had taken holy orders – I changed my name to Daniel.’
‘What was it before?’
‘Stepan.’ He smiled gently. ‘Though since my brother Cossacks thought me big and simple, they gave me another name. They used to call me the Ox.’
1698
Procopy Bobrov was an enthusiast. He was thirty-one yet, to his mother at least, he sometimes seemed like a child. Often she would say: ‘It was the worst thing I ever did in my life, to send him to Preobrazhenskoe.’ And when the nice, sensible wife she had chosen for him complained that he shamefully neglected her, Eudokia could only sigh sympathetically and remark: ‘I’ll do what I can, my dear. But it’s that accursed Peter who makes him so.’
For this was how, in private, she referred to the Tsar.
Preobrazhenskoe was a pleasant spot – a modest wooden hunting lodge with large stables, only three miles from Moscow’s walls and close by that other satellite of the city, the German quarter. All around stretched broad meadows, dotted with silver birches; further away lay a white-walled church whose blue dome looked rather cheerful against the paler blue of the sky. And it was there that the sixteen-year-old Procopy Bobrov had made the acquaintance of a striking twelve-year-old boy, already as tall as he was.
The women’s network of Eudokia’s family had worked only too well. The young Tsar’s Naryshkin mother had been only too grateful to greet a friend for her son from a sound old family like the Bobrovs. For her state was pitiable: except when he was needed for some ceremonial appearance, the boy Peter was ignored; their allowance was so small she had even had to beg the Patriarch for extra funds; and fearing for their safety, she was glad enough to keep out of sight at Preobrazhenskoe.
‘There is nothing – nothing! – good that one can say about Peter,’ Eudokia would cry contemptuously. ‘He’s nothing but,’ she’d search for words, ‘a German lout!’ If only she had never sent Procopy to Preobrazhenskoe. That was where the trouble had begun. The boy’s mother was at fault. He had not been properly supervised, allowed to run wild, mix with all sorts of company. He ate like a peasant – even Procopy admitted that. And he was forever playing soldiers with his friends. Including Procopy, thanks to her folly.
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