Of course, it was wrong. It was monstrous. In his radical days, in the salons of Catherine’s St Petersburg, Alexander would have conceded as much. Nowadays, it was well known, the Tsar himself considered the practice of serfdom utterly repugnant.
‘But he can’t change it, not yet. The gentry won’t let him,’ Alexander would correctly argue. ‘And in the meantime, I must provide for the family,’ he told himself. At least on the Bobrovo estate, serfs were seldom flogged and never killed.
In all this terrible dealing in souls, probably no practice was more common than the selling of men as military recruits. And it was not the landlords who usually bought these.
It was other serfs.
For the recruiting officer cared not one rap whence the soldier came. As long as he had a body for cannon fodder, it was enough. A rich serf like Suvorin, therefore, did not let his own son go to war. He simply went to the landowner and bought another fellow to go in his place.
So here he was, and the only question was, how much? Slowly Bobrov considered, while the Suvorins waited.
It was quite by chance that, at this moment, Tatiana and young Sergei should have entered the room. The landlord’s wife had run the estate long enough to guess what business the Suvorins must have called upon. She had always rather liked the stern couple. Perhaps it was her Baltic ancestry, but their businesslike ways appealed to her. She looked at her husband enquiringly. As for young Sergei, he just smiled at them cheerfully, as he did at everyone.
And why was it that their entry should have caused Bobrov to change his price? Was it a sudden memory of his humiliation at Sergei’s birth? Was it a sense of his failure at his career and his wife’s success at running the estate when he was in prison? Whatever the cause, instead of the five hundred roubles he had thought of asking for, he calmly announced: ‘The price is a thousand roubles.’
The two serfs gasped. He had struck home this time; he could see it in their faces. The amount, of course, was outrageous. The top rate being asked for substitutes, even by the greediest landlords, was about six hundred roubles at that time. But it was not unknown for landlords to charge even greater sums if they thought the purchaser might have the means.
‘Of course,’ he added coolly, ‘I could just decide to send Savva anyway.’ It was within his power. Then he watched as the two serfs looked at each other.
They had brought eight hundred roubles. To get another two hundred they would have to dig under the floorboards. It was all they had in the world.
‘I could bring such a sum tomorrow, Alexander Prokofievich,’ Suvorin said glumly.
‘Very well, I will send for one of the Riazan serfs to take Savva’s place.’ Alexander concealed his smile, but he felt a glow of triumph. It was not easy to run the estate better than his unfaithful wife, but he had discovered that milking the richer serfs was one way. And he had certainly got the better of Suvorin today. In his triumph over the serf, he scarcely gave young Savva more than a glance.
Savva looked at the Bobrovs. Tatiana he did not mind. She was fair and she was practical. He correctly saw, from the distant look on her face, that she had no part in this. But the rest of them, father and sons, he hated and despised. He might have admired them, although they oppressed him, if they were strong. But he knew that they were not. He glanced at Sergei. Somehow he looked different. His bright brown eyes were watching Savva with apparent amusement: was the boy laughing at him?
The young peasant knew little of the past. Back in Peter the Great’s time, his grandmother had told him, her own grandmother had escaped from fire when the villagers burned themselves in the church. Then she had returned here later. ‘We’ve been here as long as the Bobrovs,’ she used to say. But that was all he knew. Of his earlier ancestors, cheated by a Bobrov on St George’s Day in the faraway reign of Ivan the Terrible, he knew nothing. He had never heard of Peter the Tatar and his severed head. All that was lost, long forgotten, buried in the ground.
What Savva knew was that these Bobrovs were his enemies: he knew it in his soul. And as he looked at them now, he made a simple, irrevocable decision. He would be rid of them. It might take him many years; he would need to be cunning and to be strong; but he had strength and endurance.
Master versus serf: it would be a duel, perhaps to the death.
1812, October
Sombre blue-grey skies; dark trees. First refugees had come by, then troops, each followed by complete silence – as when, after a shot has been fired and its echo died away, one continues to listen intently and the silence seems so much greater because one hears nothing.
The Russians had fought; they had defended the fatherland; the serfs had been loyal. And was it not natural to fight when they saw before them not only the French, but their traditional enemies from the ancient days of Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible – the German Prussians and the Poles?
First there had been the day when news came of the huge but inconclusive Battle of Borodino; soon afterwards, that Napoleon had entered Moscow. And then, the fire.
It could be seen from over thirty miles away – that tower of fire and smoke that rose, for three days, like a vast pillar into the September sky to announce that Moscow itself was burned down and that the mighty conqueror had been robbed of his prize. Still the emperor of the French lurked in the charred city. What would he do next?
Russka had been busy. Troops had come streaming through as the Russian army prepared to shadow the foe along the great curve of the River Oka. A few days before, a whole regiment of infantry in their green coats and white leggings came swinging by. Then squadrons of cavalry.
It was one October morning, during these days, that Sergei and his sister Olga were sitting with nanny Arina and her baby girl by the fire in the nursery.
There had been fresh news, and fresh rumours, every day. Napoleon was still cooped up in the burnt and empty city of Moscow. Would he try to strike up at St Petersburg where the Tsar was fortifying the approaches? Would he try to pull back to Smolensk? If so, the crusty old veteran, General Kutuzov, and the main Russian army were waiting for him on the way. Or would he attempt to sit out the winter in Moscow?
How thrilling it all was. Sergei was so excited, so anxious to see Kutuzov, or even the French, that Alexander had laughingly told him: ‘You won’t be satisfied until Napoleon himself has paid a visit to Russka!’
‘If he comes, we’ll all fight, won’t we?’ he had anxiously asked. He would stand, side by side with his father, and protect his mother and sister to the end. Which had just caused Alexander Bobrov to laugh, and ruffle the boy’s hair. ‘I dare say we should, Seriozha,’ he had replied affectionately.
The last few days had been quiet, though. No troops came by. Russka was as silent as usual.
Sergei was a passionate little fellow. He not only loved his family, he was in love with them. His mother at forty-two had matured into a classic, rather Germanic beauty. She was unlike any other woman the boy had seen and, for some reason too wonderful to understand, she seemed to treat him with a special softness that gave him a secret pride. Then there was stern Alexis, away at the wars. He was tall and dark like their father. Sometimes Sergei was a little afraid of Alexis, who could be rather cold and aloof. But hadn’t he the right to be? He was an officer. A hero.
Here at home was Ilya. Some people laughed at his fair-haired brother because he did nothing and was so fat. But Sergei didn’t. ‘He’s read so much,’ he would say in wonderment. ‘He knows absolutely everything.’
And then there was his father. It had always seemed to Sergei that Alexander Bobrov was everything a nobleman should be. He would look splendid, like Alexis, in uniform. Yet he was cultivated like Ilya. He could be stern; yet, with that ineffable little Bobrov gesture of the hand, he could seem wonderfully gentle. He had suffered in prison for his beliefs. And, above all, he had that most desirable of all qualities in the eyes of the schoolboy: he was a man of the world. How lucky he was to have such a father.