His companion was a strange fellow. He was huge, also wore a top-knot, like a Zaporozhian, but his coat and black sheepskin suggested he had come from somewhere near the Caucasus region. He also wore a huge, brown beard, like a Muscovite.
‘My father ran away to the Don and he kept his beard, so why shouldn’t I keep mine?’ he had explained to Andrei who had admired its length. ‘It’s a sign of respect,’ he added, quite seriously.
Stepan was thirty. He was immensely strong and there was no one in the whole camp who could out-wrestle him, but like many large men, he was gentle. Only in battle did he work himself up into a kind of transcendental rage that made even brave men scatter before him. For all this strength, however, he had the mind of a child. He was also immensely superstitious. The other Cossacks called him, affectionately, the Ox.
It was strange that the graceful young man from the Dniepr and this naïve giant from the Don should have become close friends, but each admired qualities in the other and they shared their secrets unreservedly.
Though the ethos of the camp was strictly military – women were only a useless distraction when the Cossacks went on their raids – Stepan had long ago confided in Andrei that when this business was over, he intended to give up his wandering life and get married.
‘I’m not like you though,’ he said, gazing at Andrei’s fine clothes. ‘I’ve got nothing except the clothes I stand up in.’ Indeed, his heavy blue coat was badly frayed at the edges and in several places the gold braid was coming off.
‘If the Poles take our farm, I shan’t have anything either,’ Andrei had confessed. ‘But don’t worry, old Ox. I’ll get the farm back and you can go home with a wagon-load of plunder. Tell me, though,’ he asked curiously, ‘who’s the girl you’re going to marry?’
Stepan smiled.
‘The one.’
‘What one?’
‘The only one, of course. The one fate has reserved for me.’
‘You haven’t met her?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Do you know anything about her?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So she might be a Tatar, or a Georgian, a Mordvinian, or,’ he laughed, ‘a Polish lady?’
Stepan nodded and smiled.
‘Any of those.’
‘You don’t mind which?’
‘How can I mind? It’s not for me to choose. I keep my mind blank. I form no picture. I just wait.’
Andrei smiled.
‘You sound just like one of the priests at the seminary. He told me that’s how he tries to pray.’
‘Ah, that’s right,’ Stepan said earnestly, ‘that’s just it. That’s how we should lead all of our lives.’
‘I dare say you’re right,’ Andrei replied. ‘But tell me – this magical girl – how will you recognize her when you see her?’
‘I shall know.’
‘God will tell you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dear old Ox, how I love you,’ Andrei had said, suddenly embracing him.
Today, however, as they walked through the camp, there was a very different subject on their minds. At any moment they would be off, striking into the heart of the Ukraine. Moreover, as Andrei had discovered during the winter months in camp, the rebellion this time was no minor revolt. Since the Poles had put down the last Cossack uprising, some fifteen years before, the apparent peace of the Ukraine concealed a seething resentment. Only when he got to the camp and met scores of others like himself did Andrei realize that the kind of treatment his father had received was commonplace. In the western parts, nearer Poland, conditions were even worse and most of the population had already been reduced to utter serfdom. About half the small estates in the Ukraine were now in the hands of Jewish leaseholders.
And the current preparations for an uprising were due to a man rather like his own father, though richer and better educated, whose estate had not only been illegally seized by a Polish subprefect, but whose ten-year-old son had been beaten to death for protesting. His name, ever since revered in the history of the Ukraine, was Bogdan Khmelnitsky; and though writers since often refer to him, for simplicity, as Bogdan, the Cossacks at the time called him Khmel.
It was Khmel who had come down to the Zaporozhians to ask for help. It was he who, for months, had been sending secret agents to villages all over the Ukraine. And it was Khmel – understanding very well the strength and disposition of the Polish forces, and seeing the weaknesses of the fearless but rather disorganized Cossack cavalry – who had undertaken the most brilliant stroke of all. That February he had crossed the steppe to Bakhchisarai, the headquarters of the Tatar Khan of the Crimea, and by a ruse had convinced him that the Poles were planning to attack him. That was why, this very day, news had come that no less than four thousand of the devastating Tatar cavalry would reach the Zaporozhian camp the next day.
The combined force would strike into the heart of the Ukraine and, as it did so, the entire country was going to rise.
‘We’ll teach those Poles a lesson,’ Andrei predicted. ‘And then the farm will be ours.’
Even with such a force, it was a daring plan. The armies the Poles could muster were still much larger, and well trained. But even if the Cossacks succeeded, the question remained – what next? What would they demand? What were they fighting for?
Hardly anyone seemed to know. The Polish oppression would have to end, of course. Then men like his father would be restored to wealth and honour. There would be a lot of booty for everyone, naturally: there always was after a big Cossack expedition. But beyond that, Andrei confessed to himself, he had no clear idea.
Strangely, it was simple-minded Stepan who not only had considered the matter but had a detailed answer.
‘You must have a free Cossack state,’ he told Andrei, ‘with equality for all and to every man an equal vote. Just like the Don Cossacks. No rich men, no poor men; no landlords and serfs; no best men and lesser men. We’re all equal brothers on the Don.’
And although Andrei knew that this view of the Don Cossack state was a little romanticized, he also knew that this communistic democracy was widely favoured by the poorer Cossacks everywhere.
How noble it sounded. A brotherhood of man.
‘Of course,’ the Ox added, ‘we’ll kick out all the Catholics and Jews first: you can’t have a brotherhood of man with them. But then everything will be all right.’
Andrei supposed so. Yet he was not sure. Didn’t he want to get richer? Didn’t he want to become a gentleman and own estates, with ambitious Anna at his side?
His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden roar from the edge of the camp. That was the signal. Usually they beat the kettledrums to summon an assembly, but with so many present they were using cannon.
In the space of a few minutes, thousands of men had gathered at the meeting place where the Cossacks’ little wooden church now looked like a carnival float being carried by the crowd.
To loud cries of approval, the head of the camp – the Ataman – now led out Bogdan to address them.
He was a big, bluff fellow with a rather coarse, bearded face. He looked like the heavy Cossack squire he was. But when roused he had an unexpected gift for oratory. Now, in a few short sentences, he recounted to them once again his woes, and the disgraceful treatment he had received from the Poles. Everyone knew the tale well, but they wanted to hear it again: it was a question of form, and he did not let them down.
‘Is this, brothers, how brave Cossacks should be treated?’ he bellowed.