Russka (8 page)

The Alan paused. Why should he pause? There was no reason to do so. But since it would be a long journey, and since the boy his blood brother had captured was about to begin a new life, and since he wished to show some small act of kindness towards the little boy to reassure his watching mother, he moved close and drawing it out from his chest, hung a small amulet around the boy’s neck. It was a talisman of the magical bird Simrug, whose eyes point in different directions – one to the present, one to the future. Pleased with this gift, he nodded to the Scythian, and the two men wheeled their horses.

As they did so, Kiy’s face began to pucker up. He wrenched himself round, stared back round the Scythian’s unyielding arm.

‘Mama!’

Her body quivered. Every muscle she possessed wanted to move, to rush at the horseman. But she knew that if she did, he would strike her down. For some reason she herself did not understand, she knew that stillness and silence were her only hope.

‘Mama!’ A second time. They were thirty paces away now.

She did not move. Slowly the two men walked their horses into the long grasses, towards the east. Seventy paces. A hundred. She watched the small round face, its eyes very large, looking strangely pale above the dark horse that carried it away.

‘Mama!’

Still she gazed at the face intently. The tall feather grass was starting to obscure him.

The carts were moving now, lumbering after them, accompanied by the other horsemen. They did not even bother to glance at her, as she stood, watching them go.

She had been praying in her mind since the moment she had first seen them; and although her prayers had been to no avail, she continued to pray, nonetheless. She prayed to the god of the wind, whom she felt against her face. She prayed to the god of thunder and lightning, and to the sun god who even now beat down upon them both. She prayed to the god of cattle. She prayed to Moist Mother Earth, who lay everywhere, under their feet. She prayed to all the gods she knew. But the empty blue sky looked down upon her – and gave her nothing. It seemed metallic, hard as the horsemen’s eyes.

The wagons receded through the swaying grasses. After a time she could no longer see even a faint cloud of dust. And now it seemed to her that the blue sky itself was slowly receding from her. And though she continued to pray, after the manner of her people, she bowed her head in tacit acknowledgement – it was fate.

It was mounting a small hillock and looking back that the Alan saw her: a tiny figure in the distance, still standing there, watching after them.

And then he took pity on her. For by chance, that year, he too had lost his only son.

When the Scythian heard what his blood brother asked of him, his eyes shone.

‘Twice today, my brother,’ he replied, ‘you have said to me do not ask – when I desired to raid the village. But that you may know my love for you, ask anything of me and it shall be yours. For did we not put our sword points in the cup of blood together? Did I not swear by wind and scimitar to be yours in life and death?’ With an easy movement, he passed the little boy across to the Alan. ‘He is yours.’

Then he waited.

Had it not been against his honour, the Alan would have sighed. Instead, with a light smile, he answered: ‘My faithful brother, you have journeyed far with me to honour my grandfather, and you
have done all that I have asked, not only today but many times. Nor have you ever asked anything in return. Now, therefore, I beg you, ask a gift of me that I may show my love for you.’

He knew a gift was due; and he knew what it would be.

‘Brother of mine,’ replied the Scythian gravely, ‘I ask for Trajan.’

‘Then he is yours.’

It hurt, physically, when he said it. Yet even in his pain he felt a surge of pride: to give such a horse away – this, truly, was the mark of a noble man.

‘One last ride on him,’ the Alan said gaily. And without waiting, he wheeled Trajan about and with no more than a touch, and holding the little boy easily in his arms, put the horse at a gallop across the steppe.

And as Little Kiy looked about him in bewilderment, clinging instinctively to the splendid beast’s mane, the Alan said to him in the Slavic tongue: ‘See, little boy, you are returning to your village: but all your life you will be able to say – “I rode on Trajan, the noblest of all the horses of the radiant Alans”.’

The little boy had no idea that there were tears in the Alan’s eyes. All he knew was a thrill of joy, and of excitement greater than he had ever known before.

So it was that Lebed, staring hopelessly at the empty steppe, suddenly saw, as though it were the wind god himself, the flying form of Trajan racing over the ground towards her. Almost carelessly, and without a word, the Alan dropped the child at her feet, then turned and rode away into the shimmering steppe.

She hugged the child to her, in disbelief, while he clung to her.

And she scarcely took in the fact that, after a moment, he abruptly turned round in her arms, pointed to the disappearing figure on the pulsating steppe and cried out: ‘Let me go with them!’

Carrying the child in her arms, lest he be taken from her again, she hurried back to the woods.

Lebed did not return to the village at once. Instead, she went to a quiet place beside the river. Close by there was a sacred oak tree to which she gave thanks, and then, wishing only to be alone with her child, she sat in the shade and watched the little boy while he played by the water and then slept a while.

It was evening when they emerged together from the wood’s edge. The big field had been cleared, and was empty. Like two little clouds, they drifted slowly across the big open space.

The harvest was done. In one corner of the field, as was the custom, a sheaf of barley had been left standing – a gift to Volos the god of wealth. At the top of the field, a group of little girls were standing in a circle, playing a clapping game and laughing; and as they entered the village, the geese by the huts greeted them with their usual din.

The first person Lebed saw was her husband. His face lit up with joy as he lifted the little boy high into the air above his head, while her mother-in-law came out of the hut and gave her a curt nod.

‘I looked for you,’ he said. No doubt he had. Indeed, she knew, his warm heart might have driven him to search for them for days – except that there were so many other things he had to do.

‘I found him,’ she said simply. Then she told them about the horsemen, and they went to the village elder and made her tell it all again.

‘If they come another time,’ the elder said slowly, ‘we shall move north again.’ For the little community had come north to that place only five years before to avoid paying tribute to the horsemen of the steppe.

But that day there was nothing to be done except celebrate the ending of the harvest.

Already the young men and girls had gone out beside the field and were rolling and turning somersaults on the grass. In front of the elder’s hut, the women were putting the finishing touches to a small figure in the shape of an old man, made of barley. It had a long, curling beard which, just then, they were anointing with honey. This was the god of the field, whom they were about to take to the boundary where the field met the edge of the woods.

And it was only now, as the villagers were gathering, that Mal emerged from the doorway of his hut. He hesitated when he saw Lebed and the child, but the little boy ran up to him. ‘I saw the bear,’ he cried. ‘I saw him.’

And Mal blushed deep red, as Lebed pulled Kiy away.

As the villagers started to move out into the field, Lebed felt her husband at her side. She did not glance up into his face, as she knew he hoped she would, but she already knew the soft
expression it wore. His eyes were glowing with eagerness like a boy’s – she knew this, too, without looking. His long arms hung beside her and now one of them moved as his hand took her by the arm and gently squeezed. That was the signal – she knew it was coming.

She kept walking. Other women, she guessed, had noticed the little signal too. It was a strong arm, she thought, though rather bony, and by walking on, by not looking up, she could best conceal her lack of enthusiasm. He would come to her that night: that was all. She pushed the little boy in front of them so that their eyes could rest upon him, and this, as they entered the field, was their communion.

While the sun began its slow descent on to the trees, and the long shadows streamed across the cut field, the villagers began the songs and dances. In a circle now, led by her mother-in-law, the women who had been reaping sang:

‘Stubble of the summer grain
Give me back my strength again.
I reaped you and now I am weak,
But winter is long, winter is bleak:
Harvest field and summer grain
Give me back my strength again.’

The warm rays of the sinking sun caught the soft honey that trickled off the beard of the barley man, so that it shone.

By the side of the field, three old women, each a
babushka
too old now to dance or sing, watched them placidly. As she glanced at them, Lebed smiled to herself. She knew that she too would pass that way. They say that the god of the field shrinks to a tiny old man when the field is cut, she thought. Humans, too, shrink into the earth, dwelling underground like the ancestral
domovoi
. That was fate. Nature could not be mastered; man or woman could only accept seed time and harvest. And her individual destiny – this too, she knew, was not important. No, not even the loss of her child would be greatly noticed, whatever her pain. So many children were lost. Nobody counted them. But some survived; and the life of the village, of the
rod
, only this would continue, always, through the harsh, remorseless cycle of the seasons in the endless land.

When the song was done, she went over to Little Kiy. He was sitting on the ground, fingering the talisman the horseman had given him; his mind was not on her, but moving upon the open steppe. He scarcely looked up at her.

And now her husband was in front of her, hovering over the child, his face smiling, eager.

He too was necessary: at certain times, at certain seasons, she had need of him. Yet although she was his to command, although it was the men who ruled in the village, it was the women, she knew, who were strong and who endured. It was the women, like Moist Mother Earth herself, who protected the seed in the ground and who brought forth the harvest for the sun god and for a man with his plough.

He smiled.

‘Tonight.’

It was after dusk, when the splinters of resin wood that served as candles were lit, that the feasting began in the elder’s hut. The loving cup and its ladle, brimming with sparkling mead, was passed from hand to hand. And with each course of fish, millet bread, and meat, a dish was offered to the
domovoi
who it was assumed had emerged from his lair under the barn to join them.

When the food was eaten, the whole village continued to drink, and to dance. Kiy saw his mother take her red tambourine and dance before his father; and watched, fascinated, until in the heat his head finally fell forward on his chest and he slept.

Twice her husband touched her and murmured: ‘Come.’ Twice she shook her head and continued to dance. She too had drunk, though less heavily than the others, and now her body was suffused with warmth. Excited by her own dancing, she began to crave him; but still she danced and drank, to bring herself to the moment when she would truly want him.

Gradually, as men and women alike reeled drunkenly out into the night, Lebed too allowed her husband to put his arm round her waist and lead her out. All around, by the huts, towards the field, indiscriminate couplings were taking place: who knew, who would remember, who had lain with whom? Who would know whose child was whose, in any results of that general sexual encounter? It did not matter. By such careless means the life of the
rod
would go on.

They went down to the river, past long grasses where the
fireflies were shining in the darkness. Together they gazed at the river, that gleamed in the moonlight. To this little river, the villagers had given a name, taken from the horsemen of the steppe they feared. For as the Slavs knew well, some of the greatest of the Alans had described themselves, in their Iranian tongue, as
Rus
– meaning ‘light’, or ‘shining’. And so, since to a Slav ear this word had a pleasing feminine sound, well suited to a river, the villagers had called the little gleaming waterway
Rus –
the shining one.

It was a good name. And no doubt it would have pleased them still more had they known that this same Iranian name –
Rus
or
Rhos –
was also to be applied in these early ages to that mighty river far to the east that later times would call the Volga.

Rus
they called the river; and the hamlet beside it they called, similarly,
Russka
.

The night was quiet. The stream shone, moved, yet did not move. They lay down on the grass. High above in the starlit summer sky, pale clouds came from time to time, like horsemen in an unhurried procession, glowing softly in the reflection of a crescent moon that rode to the south – and who knew, out in the forest, what bear or fox, wolf or firebird might be moving through the shadows, or what horsemen camped by their fires upon the endless steppe?

But the only sound that Lebed heard was a whisper in the leaves, as the wind moved softly over the land.

In the year of Our Lord 1066, in the month of January, a terrible sign appeared in the heavens. It was seen all over Europe.

In the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England, threatened with William of Normandy’s invasion, it was recorded in the chronicles with gloomy expectation. In France, Germany and all round the shores of the Mediterranean it was seen. In eastern Europe, in the newly formed states of Poland and Hungary, the dreadful object dominated the nights. And beyond them, on the eastern borderland where forest meets steppe and the broad River Dniepr runs down to the temperate Black Sea, the great red comet hung, night after night, over the white and silent landscape; and men wondered what new evil was to befall the world.