Russka (66 page)

Pitiful the service gentry might be, individually. But taken all together they were a large and formidable force. It was they who kept order in the country; they who could, when need arose, raise troops in every village in the vast, ungainly land. In short, as the rest of Europe entered the modern age, in the backward land of Muscovy there remained an essentially feudal state of petty landed retainers and a Holy Tsar.

It had been the riots of 1648, when the administration had briefly lost control of Moscow, which had reminded Alexis that he should ensure the loyalty of this service class. And he had done so brilliantly.

In 1649, the famous Russian law code known as the
Ulozhenie
was proclaimed. Amongst its provisions it stated that no peasant
might leave his master’s land for another; and that there was no time limit for the recapture of runaway peasants by their owners. It also stated for good measure that the lower orders in the towns were likewise unfree to move.

To most of the peasants in Dirty Place, these provisions made no difference to their daily lives. They greeted the news, as it filtered down to them, with an apathetic shrug.

But Maryushka did not. Her sharper intelligence perceived the law for what it was. She saw that now there was nothing to prevent the landlord owning his peasants like chattels.

And she was right. As history was to show, with this great law code, the road to the final subjugation of the Russian peasant had been quietly opened. For over two centuries, longer than the actual subjugation to the Mongols, most Russians would be born to be serfs.

‘Do you understand?’ Maryushka demanded. ‘Your young friend Bobrov owns me like a slave. He can probably even sell me. If I run away, he can get me back as long as I live.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘You Ukrainians revolt against the Poles. Then you want to become part of Russia, which is worse! You’d be better off under the Turkish Sultan!’

It was a thought which had recently occurred to Andrei too. But he could only answer: ‘The Sultan is not Orthodox.’

Surely that was the point; at least, he hoped it was.

Then, as if to resolve his doubts, came Palm Sunday.

The morning was overcast, but with only a thin film of grey cloud, which was seamed with glimmering gold and silver fissures from the bright spring sky that was hidden above.

Nikita had suggested Andrei should accompany him, so that they could go into the Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin afterwards; accordingly they had set off together, followed respectfully by Maryushka and her mother, for the citadel; but when they arrived at Red Square the crowds were so thick that they had to stop some way from the Kremlin walls.

As they waited, Andrei glanced at the older woman and then at Nikita. Did either of them guess about his relationship with Maryushka? He supposed not.

They did not have long to wait.

The ceremony of Palm Sunday in the Holy State of Muscovy
was, at that time, an extraordinary affair. Setting out from before the towering, exotic mass of St Basil’s Cathedral, the long procession of boyars, officials and priests moved towards the little tribune near the middle of Red Square, where the choir of boys was singing hymns. Sombre, rich, magnificent, the greatest men wore huge chains of gold around their necks, tall hats, and coats of ermine or black fox. Splendid embroidered robes adorned the boyars, heavy enough, it seemed, to crush lesser men. And how imposing the bearded Muscovite priests looked, in their glittering vestments covered with gold and gemstones; they had become still more gorgeous in recent years by adopting oriental headgear. The bulbous, jewelled mitres of the bishops, like so many church domes, caught the dull glow from the broken sky and glimmered with an eerie magnificence.

On a wagon pulled by four horses was a tree, hung with fruit, to symbolize the day; on each side, the
streltsy
guards, ranged in open formation across the square, now sank to their knees and bowed their foreheads to the ground. And last of all, to re-enact for the people the entry of Christ into Jerusalem on that great day, came the Tsar himself, walking humbly on foot and leading a donkey upon which sat the tall figure of the Patriarch.

At the little platform the procession paused. The Tsar spoke a few words. Then it moved on, across Red Square and into the Kremlin through the great Gate of the Saviour. The Tsar was going to the Cathedral to pray.

Surely, Andrei thought, this must be the ideal state: the land where the Church and monarch were as one. How was it the Russians liked to style their ruler? ‘Most Pious and Orthodox, the most Gentle Tsar.’ Wasn’t that what he had just seen?

He and Nikita went into the Kremlin. There was too much of a crush to get into the Assumption Cathedral itself but they waited outside in the hope of seeing something more.

Their patience was rewarded. At the end of the service, with the bells pealing, he saw not only Tsar Alexis but the sweet-faced Tsaritsa too emerge from the Cathedral uncovered.

‘The Patriarch insists that she show herself to the people on these great occasions,’ Nikita whispered, as they both bowed low.

Yes, Andrei thought, all is well. I have seen Holy Russia.

It had been a memorable day.

It was also the end, at least for a while, of his affair. He had not
especially thought about it, but when, later that day, he encountered Maryushka again at Nikita’s lodgings, and she suggested she should come to him the next day, he shook his head.

‘Not in Holy Week,’ he said. It was one thing to sin, but during this, the most sacred week of the year, he simply felt he could not; and he was a little surprised that even her wayward and rebellious spirit could wish for such a thing.

She shrugged, a little sadly, but said nothing.

Holy Week passed quietly. Feeling guilty after his previous sins, Andrei fasted strictly.

On one day he, Burlay and the other Cossacks rode out to look at the Tsar’s country residence at nearby Kolomenskoye. Sited by the Moskva River it was a curious jumble of buildings – some wooden, others of brick, covered with white stucco. Its tent roofs, onion domes and towers flanked by ascending pyramids of
kokoshniki
suggested a silent, powerful peacefulness like an Indian temple.

They returned to the city feeling refreshed.

By the end of the long and lovely Easter Vigil in the Kremlin at the end of the week, Andrei felt both weak in the knees and elated. The next morning, he saw the Tsar ceremonially give the brightly painted Easter eggs to the great men and soldiers at the Kremlin. Then he went to Nikita’s lodgings for the feast that marks the end of Lenten fasting.

It was a happy occasion.
Blinis
, honey cakes, gingerbread, all manner of foods had been procured. Maryushka and her mother, both a little pale after their vigil the night before, served the collection of friends Nikita had invited. Appropriately, the sky had cleared to a pale blue that morning and this Easter Day Andrei felt suddenly as if he had been made anew.

Yet as his head began to swim pleasantly with the
kvass
and mead and vodka he was offered, and a delightful warmth began to fill his stomach, his pious thoughts of the preceding week soon began to fade into the background, and looking across the room at Maryushka he thought happily: Soon I’ll make love to her again.

The week after Easter is known, in the Russian Orthodox Church, as Bright Week.

And it was on the Tuesday that the Cossacks were at last received in person by Patriarch Nikon at his palace.

Only now, seeing him at close quarters and without his mitre, did Andrei realize the dominating presence of this legendary figure.

The Patriarch stood an astounding six foot six inches. Years of prayer and rigorous fasting had left their unmistakable mark on his face which, like his tall body, was gaunt but commanding. His eyes were not unkind, but piercing.

He treated the Cossacks in a friendly but businesslike manner.

‘Though the Metropolitan of Kiev properly comes under the Patriarch at Constantinople,’ he said, ‘Holy Russia can and should give him its protection. This I am determined to do. And as for the Church in Moscow, it is backward. I welcome our brothers from Kiev who have so much that we need.’ He looked at them severely. ‘This is the dawning of a new age – an age of renewed and purified Orthodoxy, led by a pious Russia. You Cossacks will have a splendid role in the defence of our Orthodox state. You may rely upon me, therefore,’ he concluded, ‘to support your application for the Tsar’s protection. Indeed,’ he smiled, ‘I think you may be sure that your mission here will succeed.’

It was not only the ringing words – it was the tone of them, the force of the man, which commanded, uplifted. And as he left, Andrei suddenly felt that he was no longer just a rebel against Poland, but the servant of a mighty cause.

Maryushka’s husband arrived the next day.

Andrei saw her briefly at Nikita’s lodgings, but it was only possible to talk for a few moments. She told him she was to return to Russka with her husband in three days.

‘So I shan’t see you again,’ she said quietly. Then she was gone.

He was surprised by the effect this news had on him. A strange melancholy seemed to invade his whole spirit, a sense of loss rather like a foreboding. Yet why should that be? If he were truthful with himself, the ending of an affair usually left him with a sort of elation – a sense, however mingled with regret, of freedom, of pastures new, and, it had to be said, the pleasant, self-satisfied feeling of a conquest completed.

Yet this time it was different. He felt a cold sadness he had not known before – and he realized soon that it was not because she
had meant so much more to him than any of the many others, but that this time, he was afraid for her.

It’s not just the steward and what he’ll do to her, he realized. It’s something in herself.

Without fully understanding it, he was looking at the inner fate of a woman who wished to protest in an endless land where all must submit.

He did not want to lose sight of her. It was absurd.

A partial reprieve, at least, was suggested the next morning when Burlay, the leader of the mission, announced that their work was nearly completed and that they would soon be returning home.

‘How soon?’ Andrei asked.

‘About a week,’ he was told.

‘Then I have a request to make,’ he said.

‘Very well,’ Burlay said when he had heard it. ‘As long as the landowner there has no objection. You can follow on as you please.’

And so it was that Andrei made preparations to accompany Maryushka to northern Russka.

Nikita Bobrov was amused when Andrei told him of his desire to visit the estate and explained his own connection with the place.

‘My dear friend,’ he laughed. ‘Do you mean your own grandfather ran away from the Bobrov estate?’

‘I think so,’ Andrei admitted.

‘What a pity he didn’t leave later. If he’d been in a more recent census, I could probably claim you back!’

‘A grandson?’

‘Well, not in practice I dare say. But,’ he grinned, ‘have you ever seen the
Ulozhenie
?’

The law about which Maryushka had complained. Andrei confessed that he had not.

‘Well then, I’ll show you.’

Some twelve hundred copies of the great law code of 1649 had been printed – a huge figure for that time – and Nikita Bobrov had one of them.

It was a remarkable document, written not in stilted chancery language but in plain, vernacular Russian, so that it would be readily understandable to all.

‘Here we are,’ Nikita showed him. ‘Chapter Eleven.’

And now, for the first time, Andrei truly understood what it meant to be a Russian peasant.

There were thirty-four clauses dealing with peasants. They covered every imaginable circumstance. Not only was there no time limit whatever on when a lord could claim a runaway back – if he married, the lord could claim his wife back; if he had children, the lord could claim them, their wives, and their children too.

It was forbidden for a lord to kill a peasant – if he did so with premeditation. But if he did so in a fit of anger, it was not a serious offence. If, in a fit of anger, he killed the peasant of another lord, he must replace him.

Andrei asked to look at other chapters. They covered everything, from blasphemy to forgery, from monastery lands – whose growth was now limited – to illegal taverns.

One thing in particular struck him. It was the mention, time and again, of the knout.

‘There’s plenty of flogging in Muscovy,’ he remarked.

‘Only peasants can be flogged,’ Nikita quickly assured him.

There were in fact one hundred and forty-one offences in the twenty-five chapters of the law code which carried punishment by the knout. More severe offences carried the death penalty. But since fifty lashes with the knout was usually fatal, the code could in practice be even more brutal than it looked.

As he read this stern, dark law code, Andrei realized with some shame that, though he had been here some time, and had received many hints, he had failed to look carefully beneath the surface of Muscovite life. More than ever, now, he understood the sense of oppression and claustrophobia that had assailed him ever since he passed the huge Belgorod fortress line across the steppe. And as he thought of the sunny, open lands of the Ukraine, of the unruly Cossack farmers, and of the free cities of Kiev and Pereiaslav who still governed themselves under western laws, he could only shake his head.

‘If the Tsar wants to take the Ukraine under his wing,’ he remarked thoughtfully, ‘he will have to sign a contract to guarantee our people better rights than these.’

But now it was Nikita who shook his head.

‘We know the Ukraine has other customs, which will be respected,’ he assured Andrei. ‘But surely you understand, if the
Tsar accepts you under his protection, he does not sign contracts with you. That is beneath his sovereign dignity. You must trust in his kindness and understanding.’

‘The King of Poland signed contracts with us,’ Andrei protested.

‘The King of Poland is only an elected monarch.’ Nikita smiled with faint contempt.