Yet this time it was different. He felt a cold sadness he had not known before – and he realized soon that it was not because she had meant so much more to him than any of the many others, but that this time, he was afraid for her.
It’s not just the steward and what he’ll do to her, he realized. It’s something in herself.
Without fully understanding it, he was looking at the inner fate of a woman who wished to protest in an endless land where all must submit.
He did not want to lose sight of her. It was absurd.
A partial reprieve, at least, was suggested the next morning when Burlay, the leader of the mission, announced that their work was nearly completed and that they would soon be returning home.
‘How soon?’ Andrei asked.
‘About a week,’ he was told.
‘Then I have a request to make,’ he said.
‘Very well,’ Burlay said when he had heard it. ‘As long as the landowner there has no objection. You can follow on as you please.’
And so it was that Andrei made preparations to accompany Maryushka to northern Russka.
Nikita Bobrov was amused when Andrei told him of his desire to visit the estate and explained his own connection with the place.
‘My dear friend,’ he laughed. ‘Do you mean your own grandfather ran away from the Bobrov estate?’
‘I think so,’ Andrei admitted.
‘What a pity he didn’t leave later. If he’d been in a more recent census, I could probably claim you back!’
‘A grandson?’
‘Well, not in practice I dare say. But,’ he grinned, ‘have you ever seen the Ulozhenie?’
The law about which Maryushka had complained. Andrei confessed that he had not.
‘Well then, I’ll show you.’
Some twelve hundred copies of the great law code of 1649 had been printed – a huge figure for that time – and Nikita Bobrov had one of them.
It was a remarkable document, written not in stilted chancery language but in plain, vernacular Russian, so that it would be readily understandable to all.
‘Here we are,’ Nikita showed him. ‘Chapter Eleven.’
And now, for the first time, Andrei truly understood what it meant to be a Russian peasant.
There were thirty-four clauses dealing with peasants. They covered every imaginable circumstance. Not only was there no time limit whatever on when a lord could claim a runaway back – if he married, the lord could claim his wife back; if he had children, the lord could claim them, their wives, and their children too.
It was forbidden for a lord to kill a peasant – if he did so with premeditation. But if he did so in a fit of anger, it was not a serious offence. If, in a fit of anger, he killed the peasant of another lord, he must replace him.
Andrei asked to look at other chapters. They covered everything, from blasphemy to forgery, from monastery lands – whose growth was now limited – to illegal taverns.
One thing in particular struck him. It was the mention, time and again, of the knout.
‘There’s plenty of flogging in Muscovy,’ he remarked.
‘Only peasants can be flogged,’ Nikita quickly assured him.
There were in fact one hundred and forty-one offences in the twenty-five chapters of the law code which carried punishment by the knout. More severe offences carried the death penalty. But since fifty lashes with the knout was usually fatal, the code could in practice be even more brutal than it looked.
As he read this stern, dark law code, Andrei realized with some shame that, though he had been here some time, and had received many hints, he had failed to look carefully beneath the surface of Muscovite life. More than ever, now, he understood the sense of oppression and claustrophobia that had assailed him ever since he passed the huge Belgorod fortress line across the steppe. And as he thought of the sunny, open lands of the Ukraine, of the unruly Cossack farmers, and of the free cities of Kiev and Pereiaslav who still governed themselves under western laws, he could only shake his head.
‘If the Tsar wants to take the Ukraine under his wing,’ he remarked thoughtfully, ‘he will have to sign a contract to guarantee our people better rights than these.’
But now it was Nikita who shook his head.
‘We know the Ukraine has other customs, which will be respected,’ he assured Andrei. ‘But surely you understand, if the Tsar accepts you under his protection, he does not sign contracts with you. That is beneath his sovereign dignity. You must trust in his kindness and understanding.’
‘The King of Poland signed contracts with us,’ Andrei protested.
‘The King of Poland is only an elected monarch.’ Nikita smiled with faint contempt.
‘Cossacks,’ Andrei said carefully, ‘are not slaves.’
‘And our Most Pious, Orthodox and Most Gentle Tsar is appointed by God to do with us all as he wishes,’ Nikita replied firmly. ‘You must remember,’ he went on, with a trace of condescension, ‘that the Tsar is the heir of St Vladimir, of Monomakh, and of Ivan the Terrible.’ He smiled a little grimly. ‘Ivan, I can assure you, knew how to command obedience. He had one of my own ancestors roasted in a frying pan.’
It was curious, Andrei thought, how these Russians seemed to take pride in the cruelty of their rulers, even when it was directed against themselves. He had several times heard Muscovites speak admiringly of the terrors of Ivan: they seemed almost to long for his return.
How different from the Cossack way. The Cossack warrior gave his Hetman power of life and death over everyone during a campaign, but woe betide him if he tried to exercise any authority in time of peace!
This little altercation had produced a slight tension between the two men. Nikita broke it with a laugh.
‘Well, my Cossack, you are welcome to visit my poor estate. I’ve told my steward to put you in my house and look after you. I’m only sorry I can’t come with you myself.’ He paused. ‘By the way,’ he gave him a sidelong glance, ‘I know I can rely upon you not to subvert any of my peasants to your Cossack ways – of either sex.’
So, he knew. Andrei looked at the floor awkwardly. But as they parted he reflected that, in Muscovy, one could never be sure what people knew, and what they did not.
Russka.
He supposed it was what he had expected.
Spring had come to the little town and its monastery. As they approached the place, the woods opened out to large open fields; their long, gentle undulations of raw turf, dark earth and long slivers of greying snow seemed to be an echo of the endless spaces beyond. At Russka itself, the ice had cleared from the centre of the stream. At the edges, the women still knelt on boards by holes in the ice, washing their clothes in sight of the monastery’s pale walls.
On the trees, even before the last traces of ice had melted from the ground around them, little green buds were already opening staunchly under the hard, bright blue sky. Just outside the walls of Russka, a cattle pen was already a little sea of mud.
It had been a strange journey. Maryushka and the steward travelled in a light, two-wheeled cart while Andrei rode. Despite the surrounding dampness, the tracks through the woods were fairly passable and they made good speed. At nights they rested in the villages or hamlets along the way.
The steward was sullen. Now and then, as if to prove that he was really an interesting fellow, he would engage Andrei in conversation. But Andrei politely discouraged him and remained aloof. To Maryushka he was similarly distant, so that the steward more than once growled to his wife: ‘A cold fellow, that.’