He was of above average build and he was riding a black horse. It was hard to tell what he was wearing for he was wrapped in a large brown cloak that looked none too clean. His face was large, rather broad at the cheekbones, and his whole bearing exuded a sense of power. But it was his eyes which riveted Ivanushka’s attention.
One was indeed hooded with a caul of skin; yet the effect was not monstrous, as Ivanushka had expected. The face did not look as if it had been twisted, or burnt; instead, one side had a strange stillness, a sort of blank detachment from the world such as one sometimes sees with the blind. But the other side of the face was alive, intelligent, ambitious, with a piercing blue eye that took in everything.
It was a fascinating face, half handsome, half tragic. And the good eye, he suddenly realized, was resting upon him.
‘Quickly, this way.’ The groom pulled him insistently to one side. ‘They mustn’t know who you are.’
Ivanushka let himself be dragged away. The half-blind prince and his escort clattered by. And as the werewolf passed, Ivanushka had a strange sense that the prince, like some creature with magic powers, had both noticed and identified him.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked.
‘You’ll see.’ And the groom led him hurriedly towards the podol.
The house of Zhydovyn the Khazar, though not as large as Igor’s, was a stout wooden affair on two storeys, with a steep wooden roof, two large rooms at the front and a courtyard behind. It stood just outside the Khazar Gate near the wall of Yaroslav’s citadel. ‘They will look after you here for a few days,’ the groom explained to him, ‘until it’s safe to smuggle you out of the city.’
Already bands of men were searching for the families of the druzhina who had fled.
‘What will they do if they find me?’ Ivanushka asked.
‘Lock you up.’
‘Nothing worse?’
The groom gave him a strange look. ‘Don’t ever go to prison,’ he said slowly. ‘Once you’re in prison…’ He made a gesture as if dropping a key. ‘But don’t worry now,’ he added more cheerfully. ‘Zhydovyn will take care of you.’ A moment later he was gone.
Ivanushka enjoyed being with the Khazar and his family. Zhydovyn’s wife was a dark, stout woman who seemed almost as massive as her husband. There were four children, younger than he, and Ivanushka spent much of his day playing with them indoors. ‘For it’s not safe for you to be seen outside yet,’ the Khazar warned him.
Sometimes Ivanushka would tell them a fairy story. And once, to the Khazar’s amusement, his children helped Ivanushka to read a story from the Old Testament in Hebrew: which he then pretended to translate, since he knew it by heart in Slavic.
It was on the third day that the crisis broke. It began early in the morning, when Zhydovyn came hurrying into the house and announced to the family: ‘The Prince of Kiev has gone to Poland. He’s asking the king for help.’
Ivanushka looked up in surprise. ‘Does that mean my father has gone to Poland too?’
‘I assume he has.’
Ivanushka was silent. Poland lay far to the west. Was his family really to pass away into those distant lands? Suddenly he felt very deserted.
‘Do you think the Poles will invade?’ Zhydovyn’s wife asked anxiously.
‘Probably.’ The Khazar grimaced. ‘The Polish king and Izyaslav are cousins, you know.’ Then his eyes travelled back to Ivanushka. ‘There’s another problem as well.’ He paused. ‘There’s a rumour that someone in the Khazar quarter is hiding a child of one of the druzhina. And in case things get rough with Izyaslav and the Poles,’ he hesitated momentarily, ‘they’re looking for hostages. They’re searching the citadel now.’
The room seemed to have become very quiet. Ivanushka felt their eyes upon him. Clearly his presence there was becoming increasingly inconvenient to them. He started to grow pale, with an awkward embarrassment, and glancing up at the expressive face of Zhydovyn’s wife, he saw at once that if he were a threat to her comfortable existence, she would as soon be rid of him.
Yet it was she who, after a pause, remarked slowly: ‘He doesn’t look like a Khazar. But perhaps we can do something.’ Then she gazed at Ivanushka, and laughed softly.
So it was that, later that day, a new figure appeared in the household of the Khazar.
His hair, carefully dyed, was black. Juices had somewhat darkened his skin. He wore a black kaftan and a little Turkish skull cap. He even, with more coaching from Zhydovyn and his wife, mumbled a few words of Turkish.
‘He is your cousin David from Tmutarakan,’ her mother told the other children.
And the next day, it was this quiet, studious figure whom the werewolf prince’s guards saw sitting with the children when they entered the house and confronted the Khazar’s wife.
‘They say one of the Igorevichi remains in Kiev,’ they announced, ‘and your husband has dealings with Igor.’
‘My husband has dealings with many people.’
‘We shall search the house,’ the decurion leading the little troop said abruptly.
‘Please do.’
While they did so, the decurion remained in the room with her. ‘Who is that?’ he suddenly demanded, pointing at Ivanushka.
‘A young cousin from Tmutarakan,’ she replied coolly.
He stared at the Khazar boy.
‘David, come here,’ she ordered in Turkish.
But as Ivanushka rose, the decurion turned away impatiently. ‘Never mind,’ he snapped. A few moments later they were gone.
And so, in the year 1068, Ivanushka waited to face an uncertain world.
1071
It was spring and in the little village of Russka all was quiet.
The Rus river had overflowed its banks so that below the settlement it was impossible at present to say what was marsh and what field.
On the eastern bank, the village consisted of two short, muddy streets with a third, longer one running at right angles across them. The huts were made of various combinations of wood, clay and wattle. Some of them had roofs of turf, some of thatch. Around this cluster of huts was a wooden palisade, but one that seemed designed more to keep in animals than repel any serious invader. On the north side of the village stood a small orchard of cherry and apple trees.
Just below the village, on a piece of land where the floodwater was shallow, small stakes stuck out of the water. This was the area where vegetables were grown, richly flooded each spring.
Cabbages, peas, onions and turnips would all appear here in due course. Garlic too was grown and later in the year, pumpkins.
On the western, forest side of the river, however, where the banks were higher, a new feature had appeared. Here, where the bank rose to its highest point of some thirty feet above the river, it had been further heightened by a rampart, with a stout wall of oak on top. This fortification, enclosing nearly two acres, had been constructed some fifty years before. It contained, besides some long, low quarters for troops, and stables, two large storehouses for the use of merchants, and a small wooden church. This was the fort. It belonged, as did most of that land, to the Prince of Pereiaslav.
There was one other feature of the village. About fifty yards from the entrance, on a pleasant spot overlooking the river, was the graveyard, where the ashes of the dead were laid in the ground. Beside this spot stood two stone pillars, each about seven feet high and carved so that each appeared to be wearing a tall, rounded hat with a big fur brim. These were the chief gods of the village: Volos god of wealth, and Perun the thunder god. For despite the attempts of the prince’s priests, out in the countryside many a village like Russka still quietly continued the old pagan ways. Even the village elder had two wives.