Russka (24 page)

There was a faint hum in the crowd. They were clearly uncertain whether to believe him. The man with the pike narrowed his eyes. It seemed to Ivanushka he was about to thrust the pike at him. Then, from somewhere, came a voice: ‘It’s true. I’ve seen him. He’s Monomakh’s man.’

The man with the pike turned to the speaker, then back to the noble. It seemed to Ivanushka that there was a trace of disappointment on his face.

But now, like a tide, he felt the wave of hatred from the crowd
receding. ‘Welcome, Monomakh’s man,’ the fellow with the pike said grimly. ‘What are these Jews to you?’

‘They are under my protection. And Monomakh’s,’ Ivanushka added. ‘They have done no harm.’

The fellow shrugged.

‘Perhaps.’ Then, suddenly, seeing that this was the moment to strengthen his temporary street-leadership, he turned round upon the crowd and bellowed: ‘For Monomakh! Let’s find some more Jews to kill.’

And within moments, he had led them away.

Ivanushka went in. He found the old Khazar alone except for two women servants. He stayed with him until late afternoon, when the city was quieter. Only then did he proceed to his brother’s house.

It was as he had feared. They had reached the tall wooden house in mid-afternoon. As far as he could judge, Sviatopolk had made no attempt to run. Supposing the boyar to be far more successful than he was, the furious crowd had killed him, ransacked the house, and burned it down.

Ivanushka found the charred remains of his brother’s body, said a prayer, and then in the failing light, returned to seek shelter as he had once before at the Khazar’s house.

How strange it was, after so many years, to find himself in that house again, sitting alone in the candlelight with old Zhydovyn.

The Khazar had recovered from the attack now. And Ivanushka, though saddened by Sviatopolk’s death, found that he did not feel unduly melancholy.

They ate together quietly, saying little; but he could see that the old man, still brooding over what had happened that day, was longing to say something. And so it did not surprise him when, at the end of the meal, the old man suddenly remarked sharply: ‘Of course, none of this would have happened if the country was properly governed.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ivanushka asked respectfully.

‘Your princes of Rus,’ the Khazar replied scornfully, ‘those fools. None of them knows how to organize an empire. They have no proper laws, no system.’

‘We have laws.’

Zhydovyn shrugged.

‘Rudimentary laws of the Slavs and norsemen. Your church laws are better, I admit, but they are Greek and Roman, from Constantinople. Yet who runs your administration, such as it is? Khazars and Greeks half the time. Why are your people revolting now? Because your princes either break the law or don’t enforce it – or just have no laws to prevent them oppressing the people.’

‘It is true we have been badly ruled.’

‘Because you have no system within which to work. Your princes fight amongst each other all the time, weakening the state, because they can’t devise a workable system of succession.’

‘But, Zhydovyn,’ he protested, ‘is it not true that the succession of brother by brother is derived not from the Varangian norsemen but from the Turks? Did we not take this, too, from you Khazars?’

‘Perhaps. But your rulers of Rus are incapable of order. You can’t deny it. The royal house is in chaos.’

What the old man said rang true. Yet Ivanushka was reluctant to agree. For despite his disgust at the people that day, with their foolish, anti-Semitic rallying cries, he could not help himself thinking: How wrong they are, these Jews. How far behind us, with their endless trust in laws and systems.

He sighed, then said aloud: ‘The law is not everything, you know.’

Zhydovyn gazed at him. ‘It’s all we have,’ he replied bluntly.

Ivanushka shook his head. How could he explain? That was not the way to think.

No. There was a better way. A Christian way.

He could not, perhaps, find the words himself, but that did not matter. For had they not already been said, better than he could hope to express them, in the most famous sermon ever given in the Russian Church?

It had been preached just before his birth, yet so well recorded that he had learned sections of it as a child. The sermon had been given by the great Slav churchman, Hilarion, in memory of St Vladimir. He had called it:
On Law and Grace
. And its message was very simple. The Jews had given mankind God’s law. But then had come the Son of God, with a greater truth – the rule of grace, of God’s direct love, which is greater than earthly rules and regulations. This was the wonderful message which the new Church of the Slavs would demonstrate to the vast world of forest and steppe.

How could he tell old Zhydovyn this? He could not. The Jews would never accept it.

Yet had not his own journey through life been a pilgrimage in search of grace? Had not he – Ivanushka the Fool – discovered God’s love without a textbook of laws?

He had no wish for a world of systems. It was not in his nature. The solution, with God’s grace, must surely be something simpler.

‘All we need,’ he told the Khazar, ‘is a wise and godly man, a true prince, a strong ruler.’

It was a medieval phantom that was to be the curse of most of Russian history.

‘Thank God,’ he went on, ‘that we have Monomakh.’

Before parting, however, as a token of affection, Ivanushka gave the old man a little gift: it was the little metal disk he wore around his neck on a chain, and which bore the trident
tamga
of his clan.

‘Take it,’ he said, ‘to remind you that we saved each other’s lives.’

It was a few days later that, by the grace of God, the princes bowed to the
veche
, and that, thanks to a revolution, there began the rule of one of the greatest monarchs Russia ever had: Vladimir Monomakh.

Ivanushka’s joy was even further increased when, that very autumn, the little church at Russka, with what seemed like miraculous speed, was completed.

He would often make the journey down to the village, staying days at a time, pretending to inspect the estate but in fact just enjoying the astonishing peace of the place.

Above all, at the end of the day, he liked to look at his little masterpiece. How gently it glowed in the evening light, its pink surface warmed by the departing rays of the sun.

He would sit contentedly gazing at the brave little building on its platform of grass above the river, with the dark woods behind, as the sun slowly went down.

Was there a sense of threat, of melancholy over the golden Byzantine dome as it caught the last flashes of light at sunset? No. He had faith. Nothing, it seemed to him, would now disturb the tranquillity of the little house of God, before the forest and above the river.

All nature seemed at peace in the vast, Russian silence.

And how strange it was, he sometimes thought, that when he stood on the bank by the church and gazed out at the vast sky over the endless steppe, the sky itself, no matter which way the clouds were passing, seemed like a great river to be motionless, yet retreating, always retreating.

And often, even on summer days, a slight wind from the east came softly over the land.

The horseman’s broad Mongolian face was weatherbeaten to an ochre brown.

His beard and moustaches were thin, rather stringy, and black.

Since it was winter, he was covered with thick furs although, hidden beneath were underclothes of the finest Chinese silk. He wore felt socks, and over them heavy leather boots. On his head was a fur cap.

He was, in fact, twenty-five, but wind and weather, war and the hard living on the open steppe had made his age seem indeterminate.

Tied to his belt was a leather drinking pouch containing the fomented mare’s milk –
kumiss –
that his people loved. Attached to his saddle was another pouch, containing dried meat. For as a Mongol warrior, he always travelled with all the bare essentials that he needed.

These also included his wife: together with a baby, she rode with the huge camel train that carried the baggage behind.

There was only one physical characteristic that distinguished this warrior from other men. Four years before, a spear had just missed his left eye but made a gash from his high cheekbone, across the side of his head, and taken off his ear, leaving only a jagged stump. ‘I was lucky,’ he had remarked, and thought little more about it.

His name was Mengu.

Slowly the vast army rode across the frozen steppe. As usual, it was drawn up in five large contingents of roughly equal size: two – a vanguard and a rearguard – on each wing; and in the centre, a single division.

Mengu was on the right wing. Behind him rode the hundred men he led. They were light horsemen, each carrying two bows and two quivers with which they could shoot at the gallop. The bows were fearsome – very large, composite, with a pull of over
one hundred and sixty pounds – more powerful, that is, than the famous English longbow. They had a destructive range of up to three hundred yards. Like all his men, Mengu had first learned to draw a bow when he was three.

To his left moved a party of heavy cavalry who carried sabres and lances, a battle axe or mace, according to preference, and a lasso.

Mengu himself rode a coal-black horse – a fact which at once marked him out as belonging to the black brigade of the elite imperial guard. With the great herd of spare horses behind went his four remounts, all black.

He was glad his wife and firstborn son were with him. He wanted them to see his triumph. For this was his first command.

The Mongol army, and the empire that grew from it, was modelled on the decimal system. The lowest command was ten men. Then a hundred. The senior men commanded a thousand, and the generals led the myriads, the ten thousands. Mengu commanded a hundred. ‘But by the end of the campaign,’ he promised his wife, ‘I’ll have a thousand.’ And by the time the rest of the western lands were conquered, the lands which merchants had told him stretched to the end of the plain, he might even lead a myriad, a ten thousand.

Promotion: how he desired it. But one had to be careful.

For although all men were equal in the service of the Great Khan, and promotion was on merit, the most important things were judgement and tact. The old proverb of the Asian steppe said it all: ‘If you know too much they’ll hang you, and if you’re too modest, they’ll walk all over you.’

It also helped to belong to a successful clan. ‘And I am,’ he mused, using the Mongol phrase, ‘of the same bone as two generals already.’ That had helped him get into the imperial guard.

There was another factor, however, which he thought might advance him even more.

In the beauty contests which the Great Khan regularly held, to which all the prominent Mongols sent their daughters, his sister had been singled out. ‘A moon-like girl,’ the Great Khan himself had remarked: this was a high term of praise. She had been allotted, as a senior concubine, to Batu Khan himself. Several times he had seen her by the khan’s tent.

She will find a way to bring me to his notice, he thought confidently. And his hard, impassive face looked towards the horizon with satisfaction.

Soon, Mengu knew, they would reach the edge of the forest.

In the twelve-year animal calendar of the Mongols, there were two years to go until the year of the Rat. By the end of that year, the land of Rus would be conquered. This he knew as certainly as that the sun would rise and the stars shine.

For the Mongols were going to conquer the world.

It was Genghis Khan who had told them so. Genghis Khan, by birth the leader of a noble clan, who in 1206 – only thirty years before – had united all the Mongol clans under him and taken, from the ancient Turkish empires of the Asian plain, the title of Kagan or Khan. Genghis: also called the Dalai – the all-powerful.

Others before had borne this title, but none had ever built an empire as the Mongols were to do.

From their homeland in the pasture lands above the Gobi Desert, these warriors born to the saddle and the bow struck southwards across the Great Wall into China, and westwards against the Turkish, and now Moslem, states of Central Asia and Persia. These were not defenceless states, but powerful. The fighting was tremendous. But Genghis crushed them. In a few years the northern city of Peking had fallen; by 1220, most of Persia was his; and then, like all the conquerors from the east, the Mongols came to cross the crescent of mountains and ride down into the great, open north Eurasian plain.

It was the aim of every Asian empire to control the rich caravan routes to the west. To do so was very profitable. But it was the aim of Genghis Khan not only to do this, but to set up a state to rule the entire world. It was not only his mission but his duty.

‘Tengri, the god of the Great Blue Sky, has granted me to rule all who live in felt tents,’ he declared. But if this meant merely the nomad dwellers on the plains, he took it to mean the world. And like the Chinese emperors he conquered, he claimed a mandate from heaven.

His object – which popular history, with some reason, often forgets – was universal peace. The rules of this new world order were all set forth by Genghis in his code – the great
Yasa –
a copy
of which was kept, like the Covenant, sacred and hidden from the eyes of the people at each of the Mongol capitals.

‘All men are equal,’ declared the
Yasa
, ‘and all, on their merits, shall serve the great Khan.’ It was a formula that other empires, like the Chinese, had used. ‘The old and the poor shall also be protected,’ the
Yasa
ordered. And indeed, in the empire of Genghis Khan, there was a kind of welfare state.

Wiser than many despots, he also allowed freedom of religion. ‘You may worship as you please,’ the conquered were told, ‘but in your prayers, you must also pray for the Great Khan.’ And all this was bound together with the simple formula: ‘There is one God in heaven, and one lord upon the earth – the Great Khan.’

In 1227 Genghis died. Like the falcon that was the
tamga
of the clan, he had flown up into the heavens, many believed. But his empire did not falter. For centuries the Khans would be elected from the large number of his direct descendants, the state clan.