Russka Read online

  He took the path through the woods and continued along it to the glades where the women picked mushrooms. He pressed on, past the pool where, the villagers said, rusalki dwelt. It was a little way past the pool that he came to a crossroads. The right-hand track, he knew, led south to the prince’s estate. The left-hand track led northwards; but since it passed through a place where one of the villagers had been killed by a boar, few people took that route, thinking it unlucky.

  On impulse, however, the peasant decided to do so. That Ivanushka brought me luck, he considered. I’ve nothing to fear today.

  Some way to the north of Russka, the river made a large curve round a low and densely wooded hill. It was here that the villager had been killed. Thick undergrowth had formed round the base of the hill, much of it bramble and thorn. It was not an inviting spot, and he would not have paused had he not suddenly seen, a hundred yards ahead of him, a large fox slipping silently into the undergrowth.

  I wonder if he has a lair in there, Shchek thought. Fox fur was valuable. As quietly as he could, and suffering a number of scratches, he made his way through the undergrowth and began to climb the hill. And a few minutes later, having almost forgotten the fox, he was grinning with delight and astonishment.

  For the hill, so densely covered with oak and pine, and which no one ever visited, was a treasure house. It was crowded with beehives. He could smell the rich, thick smell of honey up in the trees everywhere. As he wandered around, he counted no less than twenty hives up in the branches; until finally he laughed aloud. ‘That Ivanushka has brought me more luck than he knew,’ he cried.

  He did not plan to tell anyone about it. For already he could see how to make use of it. I might even be able to get free one day, he mused.

  1075

  In the year 1075, few men in the land of Rus were considered as lucky as Igor the boyar.

  His master, Prince Vsevolod of Pereiaslav, showered gifts upon him. No one was held in more honour in that prince’s druzhina.

  The greatest nobles, now, had a new status: instead of the old blood-money of forty grivnas, their lives had been set at eighty. Even to insult them carried a fine of four times the value of a smerd.

  Igor had been granted this high status. More than that, so impressed was the Prince of Pereiaslav with his loyal servant, that the previous year, he had given Igor the lordship of extensive lands on the south-east border of the principality, including the little hamlet of Russka.

  These outright gifts of land were a new method of rewarding faithful retainers. Cheaper than gifts of money, in a state where land was plentiful, these land grants began the process whereby the term ‘boyar’, which originally meant a retainer or nobleman of the druzhina, came to signify ‘landowner’.

  Igor the boyar had reason to be happy. Yet behind his aloof and busy manner, there was a sadness. Seeing Igor and his greying wife together, a stranger might have thought that they shared a love of quietness. Yet in fact, they were quiet because each was afraid that almost anything either of them said might bring to the surface the sadness concealed in the other.

  Boris was dead. He had been killed in a skirmish at the edge of the steppe one winter day. As was the custom, they had brought his body back on a sled.

  Igor would never forget that day. It was snowing, and as they pulled the sled up the slope to the city gates, the snow flurries had slapped, softly, across his face so that at times he could scarcely see the sled. He had prayed in front of the icon for long hours at that period, and sought the comfort of Father Luke.

  But the loss of Boris was a wound that could heal.

  Not so the loss of Ivanushka.

  Where was he? A month after he had left for Constantinople, they had heard from Zhydovyn the Khazar that he had been seen at Russka. But where had he gone after that? Word came from the Russian merchants in Constantinople: he had never arrived there. A year of silence followed; then a rumour that he had been seen in Kiev; vague reports came also from Smolensk, Chernigov, even distant Novgorod. He had been seen gambling; he had been seen drinking; he had been seen begging. There were few reports, however, and none of them very reliable.

  And from Ivanushka, for three years, came not a word to his parents to let them know if he was alive or dead.

  ‘He is searching for something,’ his mother said, after the sighting in Kiev had been reported.

  ‘He is ashamed,’ Igor concluded sadly.

  ‘Yet even so,’ Sviatopolk remarked, ‘he cannot love any of us, to behave like this.’

  And as the third year passed, and no word came, even his mother began to believe Ivanushka did not love her.

  The jetty was crowded. Above, a long path of dry earth made an untidy diagonal gash across the tall ramparts of Pereiaslav. In the faint sun, the ramparts, where they were not dirty brown, had a pale green covering of tired autumnal grass. The summer had passed. There was an air of lassitude about the place. The broad river, too, looked brown and dreary, stretching away like a monotonous echo under an iron sky. At the end of the jetty, a stout boat was about to cast off – an event which would have attracted no special attention but for a little incident concerning a young man.

  He was a strange figure. His whole person appeared to be filthy. The brown cloak wrapped round him and the peasant’s bast shoes he wore had almost disintegrated.

  He was sitting with an air of sullen helplessness on a small barrel by the end of the jetty, while the master of a stout boat was yelling at him.

  ‘Well, are you coming or not?’

  It seemed he nodded.

  ‘Devil take it! Then get in, man!’

  Again the young fellow assented. But he did not move.

  ‘I’m casting off, you fool,’ the master shouted in an access of fury. ‘Do you want to see Tzargrad or rot in Pereiaslav?’

  When there was still no movement: ‘You promised me the fare. I could have had another passenger. Give me my money!’

  For a second, it really seemed the passenger would rise; but he did not. With a curse the older man gave the order, and the stout boat with its single mast and bank of oarsmen pulled out into the broad, sluggish river and headed south.

  And still Ivanushka did not move.

  How long he had wandered. In the first year, several times, he had started to go south. At least, he had found merchants who were prepared to take him, and got as far as inspecting their boats. But each time, some invisible force had pulled him back. Just as surface tension holds a light object one pulls from the water, so a subterranean force seemed to make it impossible for Ivanushka to break free from his native soil and set out upon the great river that would carry him towards the religious life. It was almost, sometimes, like a physical force, a huge weight of inertia dragging at his back.

  As his money had been eaten into, he had started to gamble.

  If I win, he reasoned, it means that God wants me to go to the monastery. But if I lose all my journey money, then obviously He doesn’t. It seemed a good argument, and he did not have to gamble long before he lost.

  It was not that Ivanushka consciously turned away from God, but rather that he hoped, by these devious means, to slide towards Him comfortably. As time went on, however, he had sunk into lethargy, punctuated by increasingly frequent bouts of drinking. He wandered from city to city, unable to go south or to return home. In the second year he began to steal.

  They were only small amounts; and strangely enough, he even persuaded himself that he was not really stealing. After all, he told himself, if I take from the rich man, what does it matter? And besides, did not Our Lord Himself let His disciples pick the ears of corn in the fields? Often, before stealing, he would work himself up into a kind of angry scorn. He would tell himself that he was a man close to God while those from whom he stole were contemptible, lovers of money who should be punished. And after stealing, and buying food and drink, he would wander through the countryside for days with that slight elation from a half-empty stomach that he took to be a state
of grace.

  The winters were very hard. Even stealing had not helped him: one could not live in the open. He had travelled from church to monastery as an izgoi, picking up what charity he could. Several times he had nearly frozen.

  Once, he had seen his father. He had been wandering through the woods near Chernigov one spring day, when suddenly he heard the sound of approaching hoofs, and a cavalcade had swept into sight.

  He had hidden behind an oak tree as they had come by, a big party of noblemen with their retainers. He had seen young Prince Vladimir amongst them, and almost beside him his father and brother Sviatopolk. Igor was carrying a hawk on his wrist. He wore a hat made of sable, and was listening with a cool sardonic expression while the young prince, laughing, told him some story.

  And to his astonishment, Ivanushka had been afraid, as terrified as any peasant might have been. Yet more than that: ashamed. Dear God, he prayed, do not let them see me. For was not he, the failure, now an outcast from this glittering world, with his gnawing hunger and his filthy rags to prove it? The thought of their embarrassment, of their disgust, were they to recognize him, was more than he could face. How tall, how hard, and how terrifyingly magnificent they looked. That world is closed to me now, he thought.

  Yet he could not take his eyes from them.

  It was as they had almost passed that he saw something else that made him gasp aloud. For riding together at the rear of this hunting party were two young women: one a young lady, the other little more than a girl.

  They were sumptuously dressed. They rode well, with gracious ease. And both were fair-haired and blue-eyed – fairer than any women he had ever seen before. And it suddenly seemed to him, as he crouched behind his tree, that he had seen a vision not of the royal court, but of heaven itself. They are like two angels, he murmured, and wondered where they could possibly have come from.

  Moments later the vision faded and the sounds died away. But the memory of the two girls remained with him, hauntingly, to remind him as the months passed: You are just an animal of the forest now.

  It was that spring, when by chance he found himself near Russka, that Ivanushka had finally made one last attempt to recover himself. I can’t go on like this, he had decided. I can either end it all, or go to the monastery. The thought of death frightened him. And no monastic rule, he considered, could be worse than this life I lead.

  Only one problem remained. He no longer had any money.

  It had been a warm spring morning when Zhydovyn had glanced out from the warehouse in Russka to see, loitering opposite, the shabby figure of the wanderer. Russka was very quiet that day. The little fort, unguarded at present, was almost empty.

  The Khazar had recognized him almost at once, but being a cautious man, he gave no sign; it was midday before the wanderer ambled, a little stiffly, towards him.

  ‘You know who I am?’

  The voice was quiet, yet there seemed to be a hint of abruptness, even scorn, in it.

  ‘Yes, Ivan Igorevich.’

  The Khazar did not move or make any gesture at all. Ivanushka nodded slowly, as if considering something far away.

  ‘You were good to me once.’

  Zhydovyn did not reply.

  ‘Could I have some food?’

  ‘Of course.’ Zhydovyn smiled. ‘Come inside.’ He wondered how he could keep the young man there. If he tried to seize Ivanushka himself, he wasn’t sure of holding him; but by mid-afternoon, two of his men were due back at the warehouse. With their help he could secure the youth, then ship him back to his parents in Pereiaslav. Leaving Ivanushka in the warehouse, he went into the yard behind where his quarters were and a few minutes later returned with a bowl of kvass and a wooden plate of millet cakes.

  But Ivanushka had disappeared.

  It was foolish of the Khazar not to remember that Ivanushka knew where he hid his money. There had not been a great amount, but enough to get him downriver and even to Constantinople. At least I shall see the place, Ivanushka thought.

  He was sorry to steal from the Khazar, even in a good cause. Yet it isn’t really stealing, he told himself, because he can just recover the money from my father. I dare say Father would even be glad to know that I’ve finally gone. For as he made his way through the woods, Ivanushka had no doubt that it was to the monasteries of the Greeks that he was at last going.

  As for Zhydovyn, he had cursed himself for his stupidity then wondered what to tell Ivanushka’s parents. After thinking it over for a long time, he had decided to tell them nothing. For what could he have said, that would not give them pain?

  And now, sitting alone on the jetty, Ivanushka stared blankly at the water. He knew the boat had been his last chance of reaching the imperial city before winter set in.

  He had wanted to go. At least, he had thought he had. But during the summer, something new and terrible had occurred within him: he had lost his will.

  Often, recently, he had found that he could do nothing except sit, helplessly, staring in front of him for hours on end. And when he did move from place to place, he was like a man in a dream.

  The money he had stolen was more than half spent. Indeed, this morning he had found he had only eight silver grivnas left – just enough for his journey. And he had dragged himself to the jetty today, fully intending with the last of this money to get on the ship. But, to his own despair, he had found he could not move.

  And now it is over, he thought. There was, it seemed to him, no other course left open to him in his abject failure. I shall walk along the river, and end it all, he decided.

  It was just then that he became aware of a noise behind him from a row of slaves sitting on the ground, waiting to be led to the market place for sale. He looked up without interest. One of them seemed to be excited about something. He shrugged and stared at the water again.

  ‘Ivan. Ivan Igorevich!’

  He turned.

  Shchek had been staring at him for some time. Now he was sure. He was so excited he even forgot that his hands were tied. It was the boyar’s son. The one they called the fool.

  ‘Ivan Igorevich,’ he cried again. And now, it seemed, the strange young man had vaguely recognized him.

  Shchek’s position was grim. He was about to be sold. Worse yet, one of the other prisoners had just whispered the awful news: ‘The merchants are looking for men to row the boats.’ They all knew what that meant: backbreaking work on the river; carrying the boats past the rapids; perhaps even a dangerous sea journey. And like as not they might be sold again as slaves in the markets of the Greeks. Anything could happen to a slave.

  One thing was sure: he would never see Russka again.

  Under Russian law, Shchek should not have been there. A zakup working off his debt could not be sold like an ordinary slave. But the rules were often broken, and the authorities had long since turned a blind eye.

  In his own case, he should have seen it coming. For two months now, it had been clear that the elder at the prince’s nearby village had taken a liking to Shchek’s wife, and she to him. Yet the treachery had been done so suddenly that it had caught him offguard.

  Just a week ago, early in the morning, the elder had appeared with some merchants and literally dragged him from his bed. ‘Here’s a zakup,’ the elder had told them roughly. ‘You can have him.’ And before he could do anything about it, Shchek had found himself skimming down the river towards Pereiaslav. There was nothing he could do: five of the other slaves on the jetty were debtors like himself.

  And yet – here was the irony – given time he could have paid off the debt and been free again. Even in a mere ten years.

  It was the honey from the beehives in the forest that was his secret. Ever since his discovery of this hidden treasure, he had been discreetly making use of it – selling a honeycomb or two to any passing merchant, or even taking some into Pereiaslav. He had to be very careful, for he had no right to those trees. But by selling a little at a time he had already been able to put by the sum of two si
lver grivnas.

  He had even made more hollows for the bees. The hidden wood had become a treasure house; and although he could not profit directly from this extra labour, his secret seemed to give him a purpose in life. It became almost an obsession. He felt himself to be the guardian of the place. And he had kept his secret well. From time to time he had fostered rumours: that he had seen a witch along the path that led there, or snakes. The reputation of the wood remained evil and no one went there.

  So it was with irony that he had been brooding: I lived beside great riches. Yet they lie useless and I am poor. He supposed it must be fate.

  And now here was that curious young nobleman, walking slowly towards him. ‘I am Shchek,’ he cried. ‘Remember me?’

  How poor Ivanushka looked, and how sickly. Despite his own miserable condition, the peasant felt sorry for him. And for want of anything better to do, while the strange young man stood vacantly in front of him, Shchek told him his story.

  When he had finished, Ivanushka stared at the ground for a moment. ‘How strange,’ he murmured. ‘I too have nothing.’

  ‘Well, good luck to you anyway,’ Shchek said with a grin. For some reason he felt affectionate towards this nobleman in tatters. ‘Remember Shchek in your prayers.’

  ‘Ah, my prayers.’ The young fellow seemed lost in thought.

  ‘Tell me again,’ he said at last, ‘how much you owe.’

  ‘Today, I owe the prince seven silver grivnas.’

  ‘And that would make you free?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Slowly Ivanushka removed the leather bag that hung from his belt, and attached it to Shchek’s.

  ‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s eight grivnas. And I have no use for it.’

  And before the astonished peasant could say a word, he moved away. After all, Ivanushka thought, this peasant may as well have it, since I am about to depart this world.

  The decurion in charge of the slaves was not a bad fellow, and when he returned a few moments later from the booth where he was drinking, he was genuinely delighted by Shchek’s good fortune. He knew Shchek was a zakup and had felt sorry for the man’s bad luck.