Little as the Poles might think of the Orthodox Church, in the last twenty years it had made great strides. Under an ambitious young churchman, a Moldavian noble by birth, called Peter Mogila, who had come first to the Monastery of the Caves and then become Metropolitan at Kiev, an academy and numerous schools had been set up. Though they imitated the Jesuit Schools of the Poles, they were strictly Orthodox – Ostap would never have sent Andrei otherwise. The new movement set up printing presses too, and already literacy was becoming widespread.
To Anna, therefore, young Andrei was the nearest thing she had come across to a gentleman. He could read and write. He spoke a little Latin and Polish. His father’s farm was a fair size. And he was undeniably handsome.
It was not long before people were whispering: ‘He’s the one’, or ‘A fine couple’, and she found that she had no objection.
For above all, she sensed that within Andrei’s charm and youthful exuberance lay the one quality she admired above all others – the one thing that truly attracted her.
‘He has ambition,’ she remarked to her father.
This had not meant much to the Cossack; but she had taken care to let young Andrei know where she stood before the harvest was begun.
‘Most Cossacks are fools, Andrei,’ she remarked bluntly. ‘They dream about fighting and they drink themselves stupid. But a few are wiser and they rise. Some of them even enter the gentry. Do you agree?’
He had nodded. He understood her.
And he would already have suggested that his father approach hers to arrange a marriage, but for one thing.
First let me go on campaign, he thought. I will see a little of the world before I marry.
But now he was to leave. He looked at her.
She was wearing only a linen shift, which had loosened as she hurriedly got up. Not only could he see her pale form; to his delight he suddenly realized that he could see her breast, almost all of it. It was not large but rather high and narrow; through the gauze-like linen he could see the dark tip of it. His heart pounded.
She realized what he was staring at, but did not even deign to rearrange her dress. Her pride was her protection. ‘Look if you dare,’ her body seemed to say.
In a few whispered words he told her that he was leaving. He told her they were going to fight the Poles. He almost told her about the loss of the farm, but suddenly felt embarrassed and ashamed, and did not mention it.
She’ll find out soon enough, he thought gloomily.
He could not tell what she thought of the news of his departure.
‘When I get back, I shall marry you,’ he said boldly.
‘Will you indeed!’
‘You like me, don’t you?’
She laughed lightly.
‘Perhaps. Perhaps there are other handsome men too.’
‘Such as? Who’s better than me?’
She cast about in her mind, wondering how to taunt him.
‘There’s Stanislaus the Pole,’ she said with a playful smile. ‘He’s a handsome man. And rich.’
For a second he gasped, but then remembered she did not know about today’s episode.
‘He’s a Pole,’ he said grimly.
She wondered why he suddenly looked so downcast.
‘Maybe I will, maybe I won’t,’ she said. ‘Maybe you won’t come back. Then what would I do?’
‘I’ll come back. If I come back, you’ll marry me?’ he suddenly said, realizing belatedly she had just given him an opening.
‘Maybe.’
‘Let me in.’
‘Not until we’re married.’
‘Try me out. Make sure you like me.’
‘I’ll take it on trust.’
‘And if I die, I’ll never have made love to you. Let me at least – just once – take that with me to the grave.’
She burst out laughing.
‘You can die thinking about it!’
‘Perhaps I will,’ he said unhappily.
‘Perhaps.’
‘A kiss at least.’
‘A kiss then.’
Now they kissed; and it seemed to Andrei that while they kissed the moon must have moved across half the glittering stars in the night.
When he looked back, a little later, she had closed the shutters.
1648
All around, that April day, the huge camp was bustling with activity. In the warmth of early spring, the ground itself seemed to be steaming.
New contingents had been arriving every day; the number in the camp had swollen to some eight thousand men.
Only Cossacks came here. No one interfered with the well-defended island below the Dniepr rapids. Once, a dozen years before, the Poles had built a stout fortress a little way upriver, in the hope of intimidating the unruly Zaporozhians. They had called the fortress Kodak. The Cossacks had sacked it within months.
The island was full. The usual brushwood and log cabins, some covered with horsehide, others with turf, had been supplemented by every kind of temporary shelter. The latest arrivals had been putting up felt tents on the opposite bank. There were corrals of horses and baggage wagons everywhere.
This was the Cossack host. It contained all manner of men. There were fellows of Tatar blood, Turkish tribesmen from the east, Mordvinians from beyond the Oka River, renegade Poles and runaway peasants from Muscovy; there were farmers, small landowners, even noblemen from the Ukraine. Rich and poor, this colourful collection made up the huge fraternity of the host. There was not a woman in the place.
The Ukrainians, who now counted themselves as part of the Zaporozhian host, mostly wore the loose, baggy trousers and broad cummerbunds that the Zaporozhians had originally copied from the Tatars of the steppe. Then there were their brothers, the Don Cossacks, who had come in large parties to join them and brought with them other Cossacks from even further away, across the Don by the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. They looked more like Georgians and Circassians, with open coats, slanting pockets and heavy braiding. They wore black sheepskins and, when they rode, enveloped themselves in their huge capes, called burkas, which they used for sleeping blankets as well. There were even Cossacks from Siberia and the Urals, who favoured red shirts and high, Muscovite hats trimmed with fur.
There was tension in the air. At any moment, everybody knew, they would be off; but since this was the Cossack camp, where things must be done democratically, no one could assume anything until the meeting had been held and the vote taken.
Meanwhile, on every side, the Cossacks were passing the time and relieving the tension in the usual ways. Many were drinking. Once they set off, however, drinking would be forbidden, on pain of death. Here and there a Cossack was playing an eight-stringed lute and humming to himself some endless ballad about the great exploits of the past. In one place a group of energetic young fellows had got one of the older men to give them a tune on a balalaika while another joined in on an instrument rather like a small set of bagpipes: they were dancing wildly, squatting down, kicking their legs out, then leaping up high into the air.
And in the midst of all this commotion, a splendid young Zaporozhian Cossack and his companion were striding through the middle of the camp.
If old Ostap could have seen Andrei at this moment, how proud he would have been.
Over his wide, baggy trousers he wore a fine satin kaftan. His cummerbund was made of silk, his boots of red morocco. Usually he wore a tall sheepskin hat, but at present he was uncovered, revealing a head that had been carefully shaved except for a patch in the middle which had been gathered into a top-knot. At his side was a splendid, curved sword.
As soon as he had arrived the previous autumn, Andrei had undertaken the first initiation of a Zaporozhian, and taken a boat through the treacherous Dniepr rapids. He was itching to go on campaign so that he could be accepted as a full Cossack. But already, not just in his appearance but in his whole manner, there was a new toughness that, joined to his youthful elegance, made him stand out from the rest.