‘Thank God,’ he said, ‘they spoke treason.’
Now he could send for the troops.
In the village of Dirty Place, the people were resigned.
And with good reason.
For twenty years they had continued to break the law, while stories came through from distant communities every few years of how others had suffered martyrdom for their faith.
Now the troops were coming. It was their turn.
There would be no question of mercy. Every Russian knew that. The rebellious monks at the Solovietsky Monastery had been slaughtered to a man. Since then, not dozens but scores of communities had been butchered. Worse yet, the authorities would certainly want to take the ringleaders and torture them first.
It was therefore not surprising that, in the last few decades, many threatened communities had preferred, rather than fall into the hands of the authorities, to meet the inevitable end in their own fashion.
And so, in Dirty Place, they had gone to work at once. A day after the two strangers had come, the villagers had coated the roof of their church with pitch. Then they began to fill the undercroft with straw. More bales of straw were carried into the main church. At the same time, under Daniel’s careful direction, some of the men made doors that fitted inside the windows of the church, and chopped down the staircase that led to the main door. Then ladders were placed – five of them – below the windows and the main door. By the end of a single busy day everything was ready.
They were going to burn themselves.
It was a well-known practice, this ritual self-immolation, amongst the Raskolniki.
It had been done all over Russia, though especially in the north, and since the 1660s it is estimated that tens of thousands perished in this way by their own hands, sometimes in acts of wilful martyrdom, at other times to avoid a worse fate at the hands of the authorities.
The practice was to continue in Russia, sporadically, until at least 1860.
As Maryushka watched these preparations she hardly knew what she felt. She was nine years old. She knew what death was.
Yet what was it? Would there be pain? What did it mean, to cease to be? Did it mean darkness, nothingness – for ever? Her head reeled at the thought. What would it be like, this unconscious journey across a plain, without any ending?
Her parents would be with her – that was the thing. The thought was like a ray of sunlight, lightening and warming the frozen darkness. Her mother, her father: even here, at the approach of death, she wanted, with all her heart, not to escape the flames but to be with them, her hands in theirs.
Love was stronger, surely, than death. Even if not, it was all that she had.
They stayed in the hamlet now, most of the time; and as the sun shone upon the little church, prepared to receive them, they waited, and prayed, and watched.
Andrei and Pavlo rode quickly. Two days passed. Three. They were drawing near.
In a way, Andrei was excited. This was certainly an adventure. He was glad, also, to be able to do his old friend a favour.
‘After all,’ he remarked to his son, ‘you and I have nothing to lose in this matter. But if we pull it off, then Bobrov will certainly be in our debt.’
It was strange that now, near the end of his life, he should be revisiting the scenes of his youth again, so unexpectedly and in such circumstances. Destiny seemed to be playing a curious game with him.
It was on the second day that he remarked casually to his son: ‘Do you know, I once had a child in the village we’re going to? A girl.’
‘God be praised, Father: did you really? What was her name?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What became of her?’
‘God knows. Perhaps she’s dead.’
‘Or one of these Raskolniki.’
‘Perhaps. There’s nothing I can do about it.’
‘Well, our task is clear enough anyway.’
‘Yes, it is.’
By now, they both assumed, the luckless steward who knew too much had been disposed of by Procopy Bobrov.
‘Kill him and throw him in a marsh somewhere,’ Andrei had advised. ‘No one will ever ask – but if they do, say he ran away.’
As for the mission to Russka, he had been adamant.
‘Neither of you Bobrovs must go near the place. You know nothing. We’ll take care of the whole thing for you.’
As long as they were right in thinking that the villagers did not know about Eudokia’s role, the plan should work.
It was very simple. The torturers must not get to Daniel and his family. There must be no confessions.
They were going to kill them.
It was already dusk and, at that season of the year in those northern regions, the nights were very short.
The sky was overcast. The air was sultry, with a threat of thunder, as the hamlet prepared to sleep.
But little Maryushka could not sleep.
Each night, she slipped out to stand by the river in the darkness, eagerly drinking in what might be her last free minutes. As usual now, she stood near the village, gazing northwards.
Despite the sultry atmosphere, the clouds were thinning. Here and there, as if to light her upon her journey, strips of stars were appearing in the night sky.
It was what the Russians call a ‘sparrow night’. On the horizon, soundless flashes of lightning appeared, like distant white flames, flickering as though to suggest that, vast as the land was, all the great plain on such a night might still be drawn together in a huge intimacy – from the arctic wastes to the warm steppe – to witness this tremulous show.
How beautiful it is, she thought. And it occurred to her that perhaps the earth was bidding her farewell.
An hour passed. Still she did not sleep. Then another. Another still.
And then a boat came slipping swiftly downstream from Russka. A boy was paddling frantically.
‘They’re coming,’ he cried. ‘Soldiers.’
And she turned and ran.
Andrei and Pavlo were lost. The old Cossack was sure that Russka lay somewhere down this little river, but in the many years since he had been there, he had forgotten just where.
It was well into the evening when they had finally given up and made their camp for the night.
The two men were astonished then to be suddenly woken, an hour before dawn, by the sound of voices and tramping feet nearby.
They were good Cossacks. In a flash both men were up and armed. Andrei was with the horses, keeping them quiet. Pavlo was watching, listening.
The sounds were from across the river. They were soldiers marching through the shadows. In the faint light from the stars, Pavlo saw the outline of bayonets. Two people, the officers presumably, were talking in low tones: in the stillness, their voices carried easily across the river.
‘I did this before once, up by Yaroslavl,’ he heard the officer say. ‘Catch them at dawn, that’s the thing. We’ll have the whole village in our hands before they even know we’re there.’
The tramping feet went on. Pavlo estimated there were forty or fifty men. He waited until they were past.
There was not a moment to lose. The village must be closer than they thought.
Quickly the two men saddled their horses and started downstream.
‘We’ll go down the river on this side and get ahead of them before we cross,’ Andrei said.
It was not easy to make much speed in the darkness. The troops had already got past the little town of Russka when the two Cossacks reached it. As they did so, they noticed the boy who had seen the troops pass sliding down the stream in his little boat.
Daniel moved from house to house, waking the villagers.