In many ways the abbot admired Nikon. Hadn’t the Patriarch stood up for the dignity of the Church? Hadn’t he fought the Tsar when Alexis had tried to limit the gifts of property the Church might receive? Undoubtedly Nikon was a fine Russian churchman. But the abbot also had friends amongst the party who opposed the reforms and who objected to Nikon’s high-handed ways. He mistrusted the Ukrainian and other scholars whom Nikon brought in. He was jealous of their influence and considered them too Catholic – too Polish – for his taste.
He preferred to stick to his old loyalties, both personal and liturgical. And so at the little Monastery of St Peter and St Paul, the monks had continued with the old service and made the sign of the cross with two fingers, and since few people from Moscow came there, no one was much the wiser.
Except for some of the monks. For even in that backwater, it was not long before they came to learn of the new form of service, and asked the abbot what was to be done. Only after a year however, would he even show the new books to the more senior and trustworthy brethren. And having shown them, he ordered them to obey him in all things. When Nikita Bobrov or any churchman of significance visited the monastery, he used the new form of service. As soon as they were gone, he reverted. And so they continued until the time of the great Church council of 1666.
Even in the little monastery at Russka, though, there could be no more dodging the issue after this. Reluctantly, the abbot followed the new rules, and the monks were ordered to do the same. Authority was authority. The council was acting with the Tsar. All must obey.
Except at Dirty Place.
Not that anyone knew. The abbot, if he guessed, said nothing. Nikita Bobrov who owned the village had no idea. The local peasants knew, but then, who ever talked to them?
For the little community at Dirty Place was led by Silas the priest.
He was a quiet fellow. His grandfather had been the son of the priest Stephen, who had been killed by Ivan the Terrible; but since that time, Silas was the first of the family to take up the priesthood again. His own father had been a modest trader in Russka.
His thoughtful face and serious blue eyes resembled his ancestor’s but he was only of medium height, and an accident as a boy had given him a slight limp. Though he lacked any great physical presence, there was a quiet, rather passionate determination about him that gave Silas authority amongst the peasants.
It was when he went to Nizhni Novgorod to study for the priesthood that he had come in contact with the priests who were to protest against the reforms. This was not surprising. Besides being a great trading centre, the old city at the meeting of the Volga and the Oka was still something of a frontier. Once past Nizhni Novgorod, one was in the vast wild emptiness of the north-eastern forests. Here were all manner of remote communities and hermits; here were the true, simple Russians, who made their houses in the forest with their axes and who struck every blow for the Lord.
Near Nizhni Novgorod, also, had come the family of the great opponent of reform, the priest Avvakum; and it happened that, while serving as a deacon there, Silas had met a kinswoman of the fiery priest and married her.
He was not a learned man. At Nizhni Novgorod they had taught him to read, but his objections to the reforms were not sophisticated, like those of the abbot. Indeed, apart from his wife’s connection with Avvakum, he would scarcely have been able to say who was right about many of the issues in the dispute between the priest and the Patriarch.
Silas’s feeling of disquiet had deeper roots. It was instinctive. And it concerned the very core of the Russian Church, indeed of Russia itself. It was a feeling that Russia’s heart had been invaded, her soul perverted: and that this was the work of outsiders. ‘Why does the Tsar need so many foreigners?’ he would ask. ‘Why are our troops led by Germans? Why does the Tsar import craftsmen and let the boyars keep musical instruments in their houses?’
And if at first he had been confused by the technical details of the Church dispute, by the time of the great Church council of 1666, Silas no longer had any doubt about what was wrong. ‘First they let Poles and Greeks tamper with the liturgy; now the foreigners have taken over,’ he exclaimed to his wife. And then, dropping his voice at the horror of the thing: ‘I’ve even heard that some of the new translations were done by Jews.’
And to his little congregation at Dirty Place the priest would declare: ‘To us Russians, to simple Christians, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, only one thing is of importance. It is not worldly knowledge: for where shall worldly knowledge and foreign cunning lead us if not into greater sin? It is not subtle argument: for what can we humble people know, compared to the wisdom of God? It is love; it is devotion. It is the blessed quality, the sacred and burning ardour in each one of us to serve God faithfully, reverently, in the way shown us by Our Lord and by the Saints. That is all that matters.’ And here he used a word that was, and would long remain, close to the heart of every Russian: ‘We must live our lives with blagochestie.’
Blagochestie: it meant piety, ardent devotion, loyalty, faithfulness. It was attached, always, to the Tsar in old Muscovy – the pious Tsar. And above all, for men like Silas, it meant faithfulness to the old ways, to sacred tradition. It meant the humble love and religious awe of the Russian peasant, against the proud, rational, legalistic western world towards which they sensed the authorities were trying to drag them. It meant the world of the icon, and the axe.
In Dirty Place, therefore, Silas continued to use the old forms of the service: he said two Hallelujahs, and he made the sign of the cross with two fingers.
It was dangerous. The authorities in Moscow were determined to be obeyed. Far in the north, when the abbot of the great Solovetsky Monastery by the White Sea had ordered his monks not to use the new liturgy and even told them not to pray for the Tsar, troops had besieged the obstinate rebels, and finally massacred them.
No one knew how many other communities were secretly doing the same thing, but it seemed that the underground movement was growing. Some protesters were like Silas, purely religious; others complained at the Tsar’s high taxes and at their harsh living conditions. Whatever their reasons, the sense of sullen protest was growing and Moscow knew it. There was going to be trouble.
So far, the little community at Dirty Place had received no official attention, but what if it did? What would Silas and his congregation do then? No one seemed to know but Arina had good reason to be worried.
It was in the spring of that year, on a cool, damp day, that the stranger appeared at Russka.
Like any traveller, he went to the monastery where the monks gave him food and shelter. Though he said that his name was Daniel, he seemed unwilling to explain anything more about himself, and when the monks asked him where he came from he answered only: ‘From Yaroslavl.’
Which, when they reported it to the abbot, made him smile and remark: ‘He looks it. They have real Russians up there.’
Yaroslavl was ancient. Like other north-eastern cities – Vladimir, Rostov, Suzdal – it dated back to Kievan times. It lay to the north, on the loop of the great River Volga, and beyond it was the vast taiga forest that stretched to the Arctic tundra. The symbol that the city bore on its shield was, appropriately, a bear carrying an axe.
They were mighty men up in those parts: the same simple, determined men who had come down with their scythes and axes to drive the Poles out of Muscovy in the Time of Troubles.
The stranger was such a fellow. He was huge, with a shaggy head, a massive, grizzled beard and a large nose which, with the passing of the years, had spread outwards so that it took up the middle of his bearded face like a large smudge. Often he sat, very still, staring before him, or holding out one of his huge hands to feed a bird. Gentle in all his gestures, it was also obvious that he was enormously strong.