Russka (33 page)

For if there was one thing she had looked forward to in Novgorod, it was the chance of seeing that city’s famous prince: Alexander.

He was an extraordinary man. At the very moment Russia was cowering before the Mongols in the east, this young prince, descended from Monomakh, had won stunning victories over
Russia’s foes from the west, smashing the Teutonic Knights in a battle on the ice, and halting the mighty Swedes, in an action by the River Neva that was to earn him his title – Alexander Nevsky. Yanka had already heard of this hero, even in faraway Russka; yet here, if she mentioned his name, people only shrugged. She could not understand it.

Since leaving the south, she had never heard anyone discuss the political situation and when, once or twice on the journey, she had asked Milei some naïve question, he had only laughed.

But all that changed the night that the boyar gave a feast.

It was for the men with whom he had been doing business, and she was allowed to remain in the room to serve. There were about a dozen of them – mostly large, bearded men in rich silk kaftans. Several wore huge sparkling precious stones; one was so fat it seemed astonishing to her that he could walk at all. Some were boyars, others wealthy merchants, and two, including a younger man with a thin, dark face, of the middling merchant class.

Only as she heard them talk did she realize the richness and size of Novgorod.

For they spoke of estates scores, even hundreds, of miles away in the forests and marshes of the north-east. They spoke of iron from the marshes, of great salt beds, of huge herds of reindeer that roamed by the tundra’s edge. She learned that for a month in summer, in these northern climes, there was no darkness but only a pale twilight, and that in midwinter, trappers roamed the wastes which scarcely grew light. A boyar of Novgorod might own whole tracts of land which he never even saw, and receive rents of furs from trappers who had travelled a hundred miles to their rendezvous and had never set eyes, in their lives, on a town of any kind.

Truly, this was the land of the mighty, the endless
taiga
.

But when she heard them speak of politics, she was truly astonished.

‘The question is, what are you going to do about the Tatars?’ Milei began. ‘Will you submit or will you fight them?’

There was a murmur round the room.

‘The situation is delicate,’ an elderly boyar remarked. ‘The present Grand Duke will not last.’

Yanka knew the last Grand Duke of Vladimir, the father of the great Prince Alexander of Novgorod, had died on his way back
from a visit of submission to Mongolia. Some said the Tatars had poisoned him. That year, his brother had succeeded him and confirmed his nephew Alexander as ruler of Novgorod. But this new Grand Duke was said to be weak.

‘The real power struggle,’ another said, ‘will be between Alexander and his younger brother Andrei.’

She had heard of his brother, but knew nothing about him.

‘That’s where we shall have to take sides,’ the old boyar nodded.

And then she heard the first astounding words.

‘To some of us,’ the thin-faced young merchant remarked, ‘they are both of them traitors.’

Traitors? Prince Alexander, the valiant conqueror of the Swedes and Germans a traitor? To her amazement, no one protested.

‘It’s true,’ the fat boyar said with a sigh, ‘that Alexander is not loved. People think he likes the Tatars too much.’

‘Is it true,’ Milei asked, ‘that at his battle with the German knights he used Tatar bowmen?’

‘It’s been said, but I believe it’s untrue,’ the fat boyar said. ‘But you must remember that not only do people dislike his friendship with the Tatars, but there are those in this city, and still more in our neighbour Pskov, who still would be happy to see the Germans ruling here.’

As he said these words, there was an awkward silence.

Since being in Novgorod, Yanka had heard that, at the very time when Prince Alexander had been defeating the Swedes and Germans, the leaders of the city of Pskov had actually taken the German side.

‘When Alexander came back to Novgorod, he hung the German sympathizers here, you know,’ the fat boyar explained to Milei, ‘so even if someone felt that way now, he might not say so.’

For a moment, the silence in the room grew very deep.

‘The rumour is,’ the young merchant went on quietly, ‘that young Prince Andrei secretly prefers the Catholic Germans and Swedes. So to us small merchants, it seems there isn’t an honest Russian prince to be found.’

Could this really be? Though Yanka, in her simplicity, understood that some princes might be stronger and braver than others, it had never occurred to her that they might be playing cynical games with the lands of Rus.

The discussion went on in this way for some time, the various members of the group giving their views on the likely, and most profitable, outcomes. Finally the fat boyar turned to Milei.

‘Well now, you’ve heard that none of us can agree: so what does the boyar from Murom say?’

They looked at him with interest as he paused, taking his time. Yanka, too, waited expectantly. What would her powerful protector say?

‘Firstly,’ he said at last, ‘I understand the Catholic camp. You’re close to Sweden, Poland, and the Hansa trading towns of Germany. They’re all Catholic, and fairly strong. In the same way, the Prince of Galicia down in the south-west thinks he can hold off the Tatars with help from the Pope. But the Catholic party is wrong. Why?’ He gazed round the room. ‘Because the Tatars are much stronger and the Pope and Catholic powers are unreliable. Every time the Prince of Galicia tries to assert himself, the Tatars crush him.’

There were some murmurs of agreement. What he said about Galicia was true.

‘Novgorod is mighty,’ he went on. ‘But beside the Tatars, Novgorod is puny. They’d crush your fortifications in days if they wanted to, as they did at Vladimir, Riazan, Kiev itself. You were lucky that they happened to turn back before reaching you.’

‘The Tatars will vanish like the Avars, the Huns, the Pechenegs and the Cumans,’ someone objected.

‘No, they won’t,’ Milei replied. ‘That is exactly the mistake half our Russian princes are making. They don’t like the truth so they won’t admit it. These Tatars are not like the Cumans. They’re an empire like none other the world has seen. And,’ he paused for a moment to make his point, ‘if you oppose them, they’ll crush you like a fly upon a gong.’

‘So,’ said the young merchant sadly, ‘you think Prince Alexander is right and we have to submit to these pagans?’

Milei looked at the thin young man with calm disgust. And now there came into his eyes a look of ancient, cynical cunning that Yanka had seen before, but never known enough to understand.

‘I think,’ he said very quietly, ‘that the Tatars are the best friends that we have.’

‘Exactly,’ the fat boyar broke out. ‘I saw at once, my friend, that you were an intelligent man.’

Yanka was aghast. What could he mean?

‘Of course Alexander is right,’ Milei continued. ‘We have no choice. Mark my words, in a few more years they will rule us all. But that is not the point. Who runs the caravans from the east with whom you trade? The Tatars. Who mints coins and who keeps the steppes free of Cumans? The Tatars. Where shall our sons find profitable service and plunder? With the Tatars, just as my Alan ancestors served the Khazars before the state of Rus existed.

‘And what is the alternative? The princes of Rus? The Grand Dukes who never lifted a finger to help Riazan or Murom when the Tatars came?

‘The Tatars are strong and they love the profits of trade. Therefore I will cooperate with them.’

Yanka was white.

Before her, at that moment, rose up the vision of her mother, falling before her eyes. Then the Tatar with the missing ear. Then her brother, disappearing across the darkening steppe.

So he was for the Tatars.

She had not known. How could she, a poor Slav peasant from a little village? She had not understood that, for more than a thousand years, Sarmatian, Khazar, Viking and Turk, the men of steppes, of rivers and of seas, the powerful wanderers on the earth, had seen the land and the people of Russia only as objects for their use, to be ruled for profit.

Several of the older men were nodding wisely.

It was fortunate that, standing quietly in a corner, virtually forgotten, she was too shocked even to speak.

But at that moment, she felt more utterly defiled by the nights she had spent with Milei than she ever had, even in the depths of her despair, by those spent with her father.

It was a week later that she first suspected she might be pregnant.

She did not tell him. She said nothing to anyone. In any case, there was no one to talk to. But what should she do? At first, she did not know. She walked around Novgorod each day, trying to make up her mind.

Looking for quiet places, away from the noisy bustle of the narrow streets, she visited the outlying monasteries, and the prince’s hunting grounds to the north of the city. She came to know the place quite well.

Yet the better she came to know Great Novgorod, the less she liked it. Even in the nearby Yuriev Monastery, where she had expected to discover a peaceful haven, she found a huge, square cathedral that was so high and harsh that it seemed almost cruel.

Similarly, when she entered the church of those gentlest of saints, Boris and Gleb, what she saw was a big, rich building, housing pompous oak coffins of the nobility at one end. An old woman told her: ‘This place was built by Sadko – the merchant in the song.’ And as she gazed round at the impressive interior the old woman added approvingly, ‘Yes, he was rich.’

Day by day, Yanka was discovering that this was all that mattered in Novgorod – how much money one had.

Not only when she went to the market, but at the inn or in the streets, whoever she talked to seemed to speak of their neighbours and to value them only by their wealth. To them, she realized, I am not a person. I am only a sum of money. And as the time passed, this harsh, unyielding world began to repel her. I don’t belong here, she confessed to herself. I have no wish to remain.

It was not easy, being obliged to make love to the boyar at nights, and going out into this harsh, mercantile world by day. The image of herself that she had once conceived – as a silver birch tree, withstanding wind and snow – no longer helped her. If she closed her eyes and thought of it at nights, it seemed puny and far away. By day she became depressed and listless; at night, full of self-loathing. There was no sanctuary.

Sometimes she would visit the lesser churches. There were many of these, in wood and stone. The smaller stone churches were especially beautiful to look at. The Novgorod architects not only favoured the placing of Greek crosses over the domes, as was often done in Russia now, but they liked to alter the shape of the old Byzantine dome. Instead of the broad old cupola, like an upturned saucer, they sometimes squeezed the top up into a point, so that it resembled a helmet. And more elaborate still, they might even give the sides of this helmet dome a slight bulge so that it looked like a large, shining onion.

They were miniature versions of the cathedrals, with a main chamber above and a smaller cellar below where services could be held when it was cold. Yet though they were of stone, many of these churches had been built by boyars and merchants just like those who had visited Milei that terrible evening. Instead of the
high galleries where princes could look down upon the people, they contained on their upper floors little corner chapels where the family of the founding merchant could worship and where, often as not, the merchant’s dark bearded image stared out severely, yet smugly, from a fresco on the wall.

Perhaps it was her mood, but these places, too, soon filled her with repulsion.

And still she was pregnant with the boyar’s child. What was she to do?

She had no doubt he would provide for the child. But what would become of her? Where would she live? And would she ever get a husband? Though the married women in Slav villages might take part in the careless sex that sometimes followed the end of a drunken feast night, it was shame to any man to find his young wife not a virgin. If his neighbours knew, they would probably paint his door posts as a sign of contempt. An unmarried woman with a child stood few chances.

In any case, she hated Milei now, and the child was his.

To her own surprise, she found that often she had no feeling for it. The little life inside her belonged to him and to this big city. She was carrying this burden against her will. She wanted to be rid of it, turn her back on Novgorod, and flee to another world.

‘I do not want it,’ she often murmured. ‘I am not ready for this. And it ties me to him.’

Yet while she was full of this resentment, a part of her yearned to give life; and her instincts told her that the further she went into her pregnancy, the more terrible it would seem to lose the child.

Sometimes she did not know what she wanted. She either walked about listlessly, or sat alone, staring into space.

Milei, sensing her discomfiture with him, yet not troubling to find out the cause, sent for her less.

In January she finally decided: I will get rid of it.

But how? She knew that girls sometimes ended unwanted pregnancies by jumping off a gate. Somehow she had no wish to try that. So what to do? For two days she wandered around thinking that perhaps she would, thanks to some divine intervention, slip and fall on an icy street and have a miscarriage. She went and prayed before Novgorod’s most sacred icon – Our Lord of the Sign. But though the icon had once preserved the city against the men of Suzdal, it did nothing for her. At last, in despair, she began
to search around the market place. Surely there must be someone there who would know how to do such things.

She found her one afternoon, in mid-January: a hard-faced old woman with a wart on one hand, who sold dried herbs at a little stall near the river.

When she explained what she needed the old woman seemed neither surprised nor shocked, but her small, brown eyes gave her a careful, cold look.