Russka (79 page)

How warm the church always seemed to Maryushka.

It was a simple, wooden building with a little octagonal tower over its centre. One came up a flight of wooden steps to the covered porch by the west door; though beneath this was an undercroft with a stove where they often gathered in the depth of winter.

Inside the church, though the wooden ceiling hid the tower itself from view, the room was high and light streamed in through the open windows. There was a little iconostasis of four tiers, although the top row, the prophets, was so close to the ceiling that it had to be set at an angle. All the painting had been done by local artists, some of it very crude; overall, it looked reddish, rather squashed and friendly.

It was a warm, late afternoon in early summer. The sun was gently lighting up the icons of the local saints beside the Royal Doors. In the shadows in the corners, candles had been lit before other, darker icons.

The whole village was there, standing together in the stillness, while little particles of dust danced in the long shafts of sunlight above. Sometimes, when the village was at prayer like this – the men with their long beards, the women with scarves tied over their heads – it seemed to her as though they were timeless: as though the present itself, having been foreshadowed, was also a memory, dreamlike in its quality.

This was her family: the people with whom – such was the will of God – she was to live and die. And for that very reason, she belonged to them and they to her in the gentle, warm intimacy of the little church.

Her father was conducting the service. Still, though she was nine, she saw him as a Patriarch – as unshakable, as timeless as one of the prophets on the iconostasis. He, like Silas, will die, she knew. Yet he will never die. He will be with me here, always. She stood beside her mother. As she sang the responses, how lovely, yet how sad her voice sounded.

They had just reached the Litany when Maryushka noticed the
two visitors quietly enter the little church. Other heads turned also.

She saw them bow, and make the sign of the cross with two fingers before standing reverently at the back.

Her father, too, had seen them. For an instant, as he began the prayers, she saw him hesitate. But then, looking up as though for guidance, he solemnly went on.

As he went through the prayers, she tried to concentrate. But she could not help looking back to see what the strangers were doing. Nothing, it seemed.

Was there something even more fervent than usual in Daniel’s prayers? Was there, on that quiet, late afternoon, some particular tinge of sadness, yet of warmth in her mother’s singing?

It was as Daniel raised his hand for the final benediction that the two men suddenly stepped forward.

‘Stop the service!’ one cried.

‘This is an affront to the Church and to the Tsar,’ announced the other.

Slowly, carefully, Daniel completed the benediction. Then, gazing down at them, he asked: ‘You have something to say to me?’

‘You make the sign of the cross with two fingers,’ the first called out.

Daniel said nothing.

‘Why have you not prayed for His Majesty, the Tsar?’ demanded the other.

Again, Daniel did not answer.

How fine he looks, Maryushka thought. Truly this is Elijah himself.

No one in the congregation moved.

‘We shall take you with us,’ the first said to Daniel.

‘I shall stay here.’

It was a simple statement. As the two men glanced round at the congregation they saw a dozen silent, bearded faces which told them they would not.

‘We’ll see how you like to argue with the Tsar’s troops,’ they said. ‘They will persuade you to pray for the Tsar.’

Daniel shook his head slowly.

‘The Tsar is Antichrist,’ he said simply.

The men gasped.

‘You dare to say so?’

Daniel looked at them steadily. The words had been spoken. It was inevitable, one day, that they must be. What choice did he have?

He continued to stare at them, silently.

‘Shall we deal with them, Father?’ It was a young man from the back. ‘We could drown them.’

Daniel turned his gaze towards him.

‘God forgive you for your angry thought,’ he said quietly. ‘Let them depart in peace.’

As Maryushka watched the two men leave, she could feel the little congregation fill with dread. They all turned back to Daniel, looking for guidance.

‘My children,’ he said, ‘we must continue to pray together, hopeful always of deliverance. But, we must also be prepared. For now, it may be, the time of suffering is at hand.’

It was an hour later that he wrote the letter which, it was agreed, the steward should carry to Moscow.

Nikita Bobrov was beside himself.

The news this wretched fellow brought was bad enough. But the letter! It was beyond his worst nightmares. He shook with anger.

‘What in the world is to become of the Bobrovs now?’ he cried. And suddenly, for the first time in years, the clever, mocking face of Peter Tolstoy rose up in his imagination. ‘So, you devil,’ Nikita shouted to the empty room, ‘you expect to see me humiliated a second time!’

The fact was that the young steward had panicked. Though he was a sympathizer of the
Raskolniki
, he was not made of such stern stuff as Daniel and his friends. Nor was he part of their community. When the two spies came he had been terrified. His first thought was to flee into the forest; but that he rejected as impractical.

It was just as he was wondering how to escape that Daniel came to see him with his letter.

‘Go to the Lady Eudokia with this,’ the old man ordered. ‘You are the steward. No one will hinder you if you leave quickly.’

It was all the bidding he needed. Long before dark, he was riding towards the capital. But when he got there – what should he say? What should he do?

The first thing to do was to open the letter. He did so carefully, read it slowly, and sealed it again. It was as he suspected. Daniel had given Eudokia a brief account of what had taken place, asked for help if she could give any, and if not, ended with an expression of their mutual faith.

And I’m part of it, he thought grimly. Lady or not, they’ll find out: she’ll die for it along with them, and so will I.

There was only one chance. Give the letter to Nikita himself.

Perhaps, somehow, he can hush it up, the steward thought. Anyway, he’s the only man who can protect me.

So it was that the distraught fellow had arrived at the house, and handed the letter to Nikita.

Nor was it surprising that Nikita should have been beside himself.

‘What can have possessed you?’ he shouted at his wife. ‘No one among us nobles has taken an interest in these accursed people for twenty years!’

‘It may not be the fashion but I did what was right,’ she answered stiffly.

‘Right! You think it right to refuse to pray for the Tsar and call him Antichrist? Can’t you see – it’s not just a question of religion: your carpenter isn’t merely one of the
Raskolniki
, he’s committed treason!’

‘Because of his faith.’

‘The Tsar isn’t interested in his faith. He’s interested in treason,’ Nikita yelled.

That was the point, Eudokia thought. That was exactly why so many Russians called him Antichrist.

‘Nor will the Tsar take kindly to our family being involved,’ Nikita pointed out. ‘If we didn’t know, the fact that some of our peasants were traitors might be overlooked. But,’ he waved the letter, ‘there is proof we are involved. I myself, and perhaps you, could be knouted. Our lands will very likely be taken away. Procopy’s career is probably finished. Whatever your views, I do not understand how you can do this to your family – a second time.’

And at this reference to her part in his own ruin, he thought he saw a trace of awkwardness in her manner.

‘Whatever we do,’ he concluded grimly, ‘we shall have to act fast.’

That evening a family conference was held between Nikita and his son, together with Andrei and Pavlo. As Nikita truly said, he needed any good advice he could get. And never, as he said afterwards, had he been more glad that the old Cossack had become such a canny fellow.

As a result of this meeting, two pairs of men rode out of Moscow that very night.

The first pair was Procopy and the steward. They set out for a distant Bobrov estate.

The second pair consisted of Andrei and his son. They rode quickly, taking with them spare horses.

They were making their way to Russka.

The abbot was not a bad man, but he had no intention of allowing such things to go on in a village beside his own monastery lands.

It would make him look ridiculous.

He guessed, moreover, that several of his own monks were secret sympathizers with these folk. The old abbot certainly must have been. Well, this would show them.

For himself, he had no sympathy whatever for the
Raskolniki
. He had been only six years old when the council condemned them. All he knew was that they took people only from the official Church.

‘They are an unnecessary thorn in our side,’ he told his monks.

He had been appalled, the previous year, by certain signs that Tsar Peter might tolerate the existence of these people. He’ll turn against them when he discovers how obstinate they are, he shrewdly guessed.

As for Daniel and his friends, when the abbot heard the report of the two inspectors he had sent for from Vladimir, he could only breathe a sigh of relief.

‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘they spoke treason.’

Now he could send for the troops.

In the village of Dirty Place, the people were resigned.

And with good reason.

For twenty years they had continued to break the law, while stories came through from distant communities every few years of how others had suffered martyrdom for their faith.

Now the troops were coming. It was their turn.

There would be no question of mercy. Every Russian knew that. The rebellious monks at the Solovietsky Monastery had been slaughtered to a man. Since then, not dozens but scores of communities had been butchered. Worse yet, the authorities would certainly want to take the ringleaders and torture them first.

It was therefore not surprising that, in the last few decades, many threatened communities had preferred, rather than fall into the hands of the authorities, to meet the inevitable end in their own fashion.

And so, in Dirty Place, they had gone to work at once. A day after the two strangers had come, the villagers had coated the roof of their church with pitch. Then they began to fill the undercroft with straw. More bales of straw were carried into the main church. At the same time, under Daniel’s careful direction, some of the men made doors that fitted inside the windows of the church, and chopped down the staircase that led to the main door. Then ladders were placed – five of them – below the windows and the main door. By the end of a single busy day everything was ready.

They were going to burn themselves.

It was a well-known practice, this ritual self-immolation, amongst the
Raskolniki
.

It had been done all over Russia, though especially in the north, and since the 1660s it is estimated that tens of thousands perished in this way by their own hands, sometimes in acts of wilful martyrdom, at other times to avoid a worse fate at the hands of the authorities.

The practice was to continue in Russia, sporadically, until at least 1860.

As Maryushka watched these preparations she hardly knew what she felt. She was nine years old. She knew what death was.

Yet what was it? Would there be pain? What did it mean, to cease to be? Did it mean darkness, nothingness – for ever? Her head reeled at the thought. What would it be like, this unconscious journey across a plain, without any ending?

Her parents would be with her – that was the thing. The thought was like a ray of sunlight, lightening and warming the frozen darkness. Her mother, her father: even here, at the
approach of death, she wanted, with all her heart, not to escape the flames but to be with them, her hands in theirs.

Love was stronger, surely, than death. Even if not, it was all that she had.

They stayed in the hamlet now, most of the time; and as the sun shone upon the little church, prepared to receive them, they waited, and prayed, and watched.

Andrei and Pavlo rode quickly. Two days passed. Three. They were drawing near.

In a way, Andrei was excited. This was certainly an adventure. He was glad, also, to be able to do his old friend a favour.

‘After all,’ he remarked to his son, ‘you and I have nothing to lose in this matter. But if we pull it off, then Bobrov will certainly be in our debt.’

It was strange that now, near the end of his life, he should be revisiting the scenes of his youth again, so unexpectedly and in such circumstances. Destiny seemed to be playing a curious game with him.

It was on the second day that he remarked casually to his son: ‘Do you know, I once had a child in the village we’re going to? A girl.’

‘God be praised, Father: did you really? What was her name?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What became of her?’

‘God knows. Perhaps she’s dead.’

‘Or one of these
Raskolniki
.’

‘Perhaps. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

‘Well, our task is clear enough anyway.’

‘Yes, it is.’

By now, they both assumed, the luckless steward who knew too much had been disposed of by Procopy Bobrov.

‘Kill him and throw him in a marsh somewhere,’ Andrei had advised. ‘No one will ever ask – but if they do, say he ran away.’

As for the mission to Russka, he had been adamant.

‘Neither of you Bobrovs must go near the place. You know nothing. We’ll take care of the whole thing for you.’

As long as they were right in thinking that the villagers did not know about Eudokia’s role, the plan should work.

It was very simple. The torturers must not get to Daniel and his family. There must be no confessions.

They were going to kill them.

It was already dusk and, at that season of the year in those northern regions, the nights were very short.