Russka (20 page)

In the early summer, Prince Vladimir went west to help the Poles in a campaign against the Czechs, staying some four months in Bohemia and taking Sviatopolk with him. Reports of his elder brother’s valour came back to Ivanushka at Pereiaslav, and although he was proud of Sviatopolk, he could not help being a little sad. ‘I fear, in the girl’s eyes, I must cut a sorry figure beside him,’ he admitted to his mother.

He saw little of the girl during these months. She spent most of her time with her mistress, who was now pregnant.

But the work at Russka continued apace.

All through the summer, lord and peasant tended the precious honey forest. It consisted now of a thousand trees: one hundred oak and nine hundred pine. There were well over a hundred swarms and Shchek kept the hives occupied at a rate of roughly one in seven.

He had also built a stout store house in Russka for the beeswax.

Shchek now had two men to help him guard the place, for word of it had reached as far as Pereiaslav and, as the peasant assured Ivanushka: ‘If we don’t protect it, people will come and rob it.’

Already, Ivanushka was sure the forest would easily give him the required income. But what of the girl herself? Would he win her?

The truth was, he had no idea.

He had managed on various occasions at court to snatch a few words with her, and he thought – no, he was sure from her look – that she liked him. But he had to confess, there were many suitors, including Sviatopolk, who were far better matches than he was.

‘And you’re sure you want her?’ Shchek asked curiously. The ways of these nobles often seemed strange to him.

‘Oh, yes.’ He was sure.

Why was he sure? He did not know. Was it just her magical appearance? No, it was far more than that. There was a kindness in the sparkling blue eyes; there was something in the way she walked behind the princess, something indefinable, that told him she had suffered. And this was very attractive to him. He thought he could imagine her life: an orphan, left to wander with a dispossessed princess; a proud girl who had nevertheless had to learn the humility which is forced on those who are dependent. In their brief talks he had sensed in her an understanding of life and its difficulties that he had seldom seen in the proud but protected daughters of the boyars.

‘Yes, she’s the one,’ he nodded.

The harvest was good that year, the production of honey an outstanding success. Ivanushka’s income was assured. In the autumn, he managed to speak to the Saxon girl several more times. But as the Christmas season approached, he had no idea where he stood with her.

When the great day came therefore four suitors appeared before Vladimir Monomakh for the hand of the Saxon girl. Two were the sons of Igor.

The whole court had been astonished at the good fortune of Ivanushka.

‘While his brother fights, the sly young fellow gathers honey,’ some cruel wit observed.

But the fact was, he had fulfilled the prince’s conditions.

Yet more astonishing was the fact that Emma, having politely thanked all four men for the honour they did her, whispered to the prince that she chose Ivanushka.

‘As you wish,’ he replied, but felt obliged, out of loyalty to Sviatopolk, to add: ‘His elder brother is one of my best men, you know, whereas they say Ivanushka’s a fool.’

‘I know,’ she answered. ‘But,’ she smiled, ‘it seems to me he has a warm heart.’

So it was that the very next day Ivanushka, the son of Igor, and Emma, the daughter of a Saxon English noble, were married.

There was a splendid feast given by Vladimir where they were served roast cockerel; and a merry company then showered them with hops as they retired. And if Sviatopolk had any further designs against his brother, he hid them behind a mask of dignity.

While these small events, of such importance to Ivanushka, were taking place, the attention of everyone else at court was directed towards the political arena.

On December 27, the Prince of Kiev died, and Vsevolod of Pereiaslav himself took over Kiev.

‘It’s a great move for your father,’ everyone told Ivanushka. ‘Igor is a great boyar of the Grand Prince of Kiev now.’

For Vladimir Monomakh these events meant that he became master of Pereiaslav in place of his father, so that Sviatopolk and Ivanushka now had a richer master too. And the joy of the court was completed by the birth to the Saxon princess of a baby son.

Yet for Ivanushka these important events seemed of small significance.

He was married. He had discovered, in the depth of winter, a joy far greater than he had ever known – so much so that at times, as he looked across at the wonderful, pale form at his side, he could scarcely believe that such a source of continuous joy was not stolen. Yet the weeks passed and, far from being taken away from him, this joy was only increased. So it was that at last Ivanushka found, not merely happiness, but the sense of wholeness that, sometimes hardly aware of what he was doing, he had so long sought.

‘When I was a boy,’ he told Emma, ‘I wanted to ride to the great River Don. But now I’d rather be here with you. You are all I want.

She smiled, yet asked him: ‘Are you sure, Ivanushka? Am I alone really enough?’

He had stared at her, surprised. Of course she was.

In March she had told him she was pregnant.

‘Now what more could I want?’ he asked her playfully.

A few days later he went to Russka.

It was early in the morning, three days after he arrived there, that Ivanushka came out of the fort soon after the sun had risen above the trees, and sat on a bare stone gazing across the landscape to the south.

How silent it was. The sky above was pale blue, so crystalline that one might, it seemed to Ivanushka, have soared unimpeded into the clear air and touched the edge of heaven. The snowy landscape extended as far as the eye could see, the darker lines of the trees stretching until they seemed to become one with the snow of the endless steppe beyond.

The edges of the frozen river had recently begun to melt. Everything was melting. Only a little at a time, softly, so that you could scarcely hear it; yet inexorably. The more one listened, the more one became aware of the faint popping, the whispering of the whole countryside melting.

And as the sun acted upon the snow and ice, so, Ivanushka could almost feel, were underground forces similarly at work. The whole gigantic continent – the world itself as far as he knew – was softly melting, snow, earth and air, an eternal process caught, for a moment, in this shining stasis.

And everything, it suddenly appeared to Ivanushka, everything was necessary. The rich black earth – so rich that the peasants scarcely needed to plough it; the fortress with its stout wooden walls; the subterranean world where the monks like Father Luke had chosen to live, and certainly to die: why it should be so was beyond him, but it was all necessary. And so, I see, was the winding path of my own confused life, he thought. That too was necessary. Father Luke had perhaps seen it all, years ago, when he had said that each mortal finds his own way to God.

How soft the world was, how shining. How he loved, not only his wife, but all things. Even myself, unworthy that I am. I can even love myself – because I too am part of this Creation, he pondered; this being, he perceived, his Epiphany.

Dark clouds passed silently over the empty land. Slowly the mighty army made its way past the forest’s edge, past the lonely
wooden walls that joined the line of little forts, staring at the emptiness beyond, and emerged on to the open steppe, where it fanned out. As the spring sun struck through the clouds, in powerful stanchions, it caught sections of the horde so that, here and there, patches of the line dully glittered.

The army spread for about three miles across the steppe. Seen from above, as the clouds temporarily passed away and the afternoon sun fell bleakly upon it, the army looked like the shadow of a vast bird with outstretched wings, moving quietly across the grasses.

On the ground, the huge movement of chain mail and weaponry filled the air with a clinking sound, as though the whole steppe were echoing with a million, metallic cicadas.

Sviatopolk’s face was dark. Now and then, the light fell upon him and one could see his eyes, hard and clear, fixed upon the horizon. But his mind still dwelt in the shadows.

Though he was in the Prince of Kiev’s
druzhina
, he rode alone. Now and then, though no one noticed it, his black eyes turned to glance at his brother, riding some distance away. But each time they did so, they flicked quickly away again, as though pursued by fear or guilt. Guilt makes a proud man dangerous.

It was the year 1111, and one of the greatest expeditions ever mounted was setting off from the land of Rus towards the east. It was led by the Prince of Kiev, with his cousins the Prince of Chernigov and the great Vladimir Monomakh, Prince of Pereiaslav; and its object was to destroy the Cumans.

The huge force had waited only for the start of the warm weather, when the ground was firm. With long swords and scimitars, curved bows and long spears, fur caps and chain mail, they rode and marched. Preceded by gongs and trumpets, wooden pipes and kettledrums, singers, dancers and priests carrying icons, this huge Eurasian horde made its awesome way from golden Kiev, eastward towards the endless steppe.

Sviatopolk surveyed the men around him. It was a typical Russian army, containing all kinds of men. On his right, two young men, both of the
druzhina
and pure norse – though one had married a Cuman. On his left, a German mercenary and a Polish knight. Sviatopolk respected the Poles: they obeyed the Pope in Rome – that was a fault, he supposed – but they were independent and proud. And what fine brocade the fellow wore.

Just behind him marched a large party of Slav foot soldiers. He glanced at them with contempt. Brave fellows, lively, wonderfully obstinate; he did not even know why he despised them, except that it was his habit.

Ahead of him rode seven Alan horsemen. Beside them, a company of Volga Bulgars – strange fellows, distant descendants of the terrible Huns, with oriental faces and lank black hair. They were Moslems nowadays, and had gladly come from their trading stronghold on the Volga to help crush the troublesome pagan raiders of the steppe.

‘If I were a Cuman, though, I know whom I should fear the most,’ he remarked to his page. ‘The Black Caps.’

For a long time the princes of Rus had encouraged settlements of steppe warriors along their southern borders, to act as a buffer against the Cumans. But this group was special. These Turks had formed their own military cadre; they even had a garrison in Kiev now; they hated the Cumans and they had an iron discipline. They rode with their bows and lances, on black horses, wearing black caps, their faces hard and cruel. Sviatopolk admired their bitterness and their determination. They were strong.

Again, he glanced at his brother Ivan, riding with Monomakh.

Ivan was in his fifties now, a little stout and ruddy-faced but still fit. Why was it, Sviatopolk wondered, that where other men’s eyes gave away their lives – looking shifty, cunning, proud or simply weary – Ivanushka’s blue eyes were still as clear and open as they had been when he was young? It wasn’t stupidity. For the man they had once called Ivanushka the Fool was now known as Ivan the Wise. And he’s rich, too, damn him, Sviatopolk thought. He has all the luck.

They seldom saw each other now. Twenty years before, when the old Prince of Kiev had died and another of the periodic relocations of the princes had taken place, Sviatopolk had left Monomakh and joined the Prince of Kiev. He had thought the pickings would be better. Ivanushka had remained with Monomakh at Pereiaslav.

Now they were together again, in the same army.

And only one of us, Sviatopolk secretly swore, will return alive.

‘So at last,’ Ivanushka had told his sons, ‘I am to ride to the great River Don.’ It was strange that only now, in the fifty-seventh year
of his life, had God granted this childhood desire. Yet God had given him so much.

The estate at Russka had made him rich. Although Cuman raids had several times destroyed the village, the bee-forest lay undisturbed. And he had other estates, too.

For the land of Rus was still expanding. While the princes traded and fought in the south, they had continued to colonize the huge uncharted regions of the north-east, pushing into the hinterland where the primitive Finnish tribes had always dwelt – into the deep forests by the headwaters of the mighty Volga. The Rus had many settlements there, from substantial cities like Tver, Suzdal, Riazan and Murom, all the way down to little fortified hamlets like the village of Moscow.

The Prince of Pereiaslav controlled the part of this region around Rostov and Suzdal, and it was in this hinterland that he had given Ivan a second big estate.

Though the soil was poor compared to the black earth of the south, the forest of the north-east was rich in furs, wax and honey. Above all, it was far away from the raiders of the southern steppe. ‘Remember,’ Ivanushka would say to his three sons, ‘your ancestors were the radiant Alans who rode the steppe, but our wealth now lies in the forest which protects us.’ God had been good to him. He had also given him a perfect master in Vladimir Monomakh.

Who could fail to love Monomakh? For, by any standards, the half Greek prince was remarkable. It was not only that he was brave in battle, and daring in the chase; he was also a truly humble Christian. For decades, all Monomakh’s energies had gone into trying to preserve the unity of the royal house. Time and again he had called together conferences of the feuding princes and begged them: ‘Let us forgive each other. Let us hold the land together and unite against the Cumans, who would rather see us divided.’

One day, Ivanushka prayed, his turn will come to rule in Kiev.

Monomakh’s city of Pereiaslav was a fine place now. Twenty years before, its bishop had built a huge stone wall around it. The place boasted several more brick churches and even a bath house of stone, so that Ivan could say proudly: ‘There’s nothing else like that bath house unless you go to Tzargrad.’