Life for both father and daughter had been miserable after that. His woman had left him. Several times, to drown his own bitterness, he had got drunk and foolishly frightened the girl. Meanwhile, Yanka had gone into a strange decline. During the winter she had grown progressively thinner, eating little, speaking less. And by the spring, when she showed no signs of improving, her father had confessed: ‘I don’t know what to do.’
It was a family from the next village who had announced their intention of leaving. ‘We’re going north,’ they told him. ‘There are endless lands up in the northern taiga,’ they explained, ‘going right across the Volga, where men are free, without a master. We’ll escape up there.’
These were the so-called Black Lands. In fact, they were the prince’s land for which the settler paid him a small rent; but the further north and east one went, the more settlers became frontiersmen, recognizing no authority. Such freedoms were exciting, even though the life could be hard. ‘Come with us,’ they suggested. The father of the family had once been north as a young man. ‘I know the way,’ he claimed.
‘And if we get caught?’
The fellow had shrugged. ‘I’ll take the risk,’ he said.
The great river journey they had undertaken was very simple. They were slowly ascending the great Russian R. First up the Dniepr; then cutting across eastward until, after their brief overland journey, they had joined a small river that took them to the underside of the huge northern loop – the sluggish River Oka. For once at the Oka, they were in the Grand Duke’s lands where the Tatar patrols did not bother to come.
How pleasant it was, at last, to drift along the River Oka. Fish were plentiful. Forgetting her grief in this great adventure, Yanka had started to eat again. One day they even caught a noble sturgeon. As they went north and east, they saw signs of a gradual change in vegetation. There were fewer broad-leaved trees, more firs and larches. Their guide also pointed out another important feature to them. ‘We’re getting into the country of the old Finnish tribes now,’ he explained, ‘like the Mordvinians. And the names of places are Finnish too.’ The Oka River itself was an example. The cities of Riazan and Murom likewise. And one day, passing a modest river that joined them from the left, their friend remarked: ‘That river’s got a primitive Finnish name too: it’s the Moskva.’
‘Anything up there?’ Yanka’s father asked.
‘A small town called Moscow. Nothing much.’
Yanka’s father had considered carefully what they should do. He was attracted by the idea of these distant free lands of which the others spoke. But he was cautious too. Life could be very hard for a settler. He had with him a quantity of money, which he kept carefully hidden. He could start up anywhere. But I might be able to get more out of a landlord who needs a tenant, he thought.
So he had formed a simple plan. ‘When we get to Murom,’ he decided, ‘I’ll look for the boyar Milei. Perhaps he’ll help us. But if he won’t or he’s dead, maybe we’ll try the north.’
And so, that August, Yanka and her father went along the Oka.
The boyar Milei was a large man with a family of five. He was very proud of his physical strength. He was also cunning.
When the news had come upriver, eight years before, of the Mongol attack on Riazan, he had not waited to be summoned to battle. ‘The Grand Duke of Vladimir will order us to join him if he gives battle,’ he remarked shrewdly, ‘but he’ll do nothing for us if these raiders come to Murom.’
In this assessment of the relationship between the Grand Duke and the princes of the minor city of Murom he was entirely correct.
The little principality of Murom lay at the eastern edge of the loop of the Russian R. West of it lay the rest of the great loop – the wide lands of Suzdalia, ruled by the Grand Duke of Vladimir.
Once, Murom had been a major city, greater than Riazan. But in the last century, Riazan had become richer, and Suzdalia had become mighty; and now the princes of Murom did the bidding of the Grand Duke without question. So, of course, should Milei the boyar. Unless it did not suit him. Faced with this new threat, therefore, Milei had discreetly withdrawn, with his entire family, for a visit to the most remote and obscure of all his estates, where he had wisely remained until the following year.
The estate in question was isolated indeed.
Across the great loop of the Russian R, and dividing it horizontally in half, there runs eastwards a pleasant minor river called the Kliasma. It was upon this river, a little to the east of the loop’s centre, that Monomakh had set up the present capital of Vladimir. Other fine cities like Suzdal, Rostov or Tver, all lay in the northern half of the loop. The southern half of the loop, however, until one came to the cities on the Oka – Riazan and Murom – contained very little except hamlet, forest and marsh. It was here, in the southern half of the loop between the Kliasma and Oka Rivers, that the boyar Milei owned an estate. From this place a stream obligingly ran northwards up to the Kliasma, not far from Vladimir. It was also possible, some miles away, to pick up other streams, that led south to the sluggish Oka.
The boyar Milei’s grandfather who had been given the place had decided he did not like its barbarous Finnish name; and so he had renamed both the little stream that ran northwards and the settlement beside it. He named them after an estate he was fond of, in the south: the stream he called the Rus, and the village, Russka.
There were many such names that were carried like this from the south into the north.
It was not a bad place, and the winter that the boyar Milei spent there had convinced him that it had more possibilities than he had supposed. ‘Indeed,’ he told his wife, ‘from what I’ve discovered at Russka, we could make it highly profitable. All we need is more people.’ But then, finding enough peasants was the perennial problem of the Russian landlord.
The next spring, he returned to Murom to find his house outside the city walls burned down, but the large cache of coins he had hidden deep under the floor still quite safe. For the time being there had been plenty to do, for the Mongol invasion left much to repair. But the little village of Russka was often in his mind.
‘We must attend to it when we have time,’ he often remarked.
And so, late in the summer of 1246, he was surprised and delighted to find before him two peasants from his estate in the south.
Since the Mongol invasion, he had found it harder than ever to get enough peasants to work his land. So far he had only managed to add three families of Mordvinians to the settlement at Russka. ‘And two of those are drunk most of the time,’ his steward told him mournfully.
Now, as Yanka looked up at this tall, powerful man with his fair beard, only half grey, and his broad Turkish face, she saw nothing but friendliness. His hard blue eyes beamed. ‘I have the very place for you,’ he announced. ‘The Russka of the north.’
‘I’ve no money,’ her father lied.
The boyar gazed at him, not deceived for a second. ‘It’s more profit to me to give you land and have you work it than get no return at all,’ he replied. ‘You can build yourself a house – the villagers will help you. And my steward will take you there and set you up with everything else you need. You’ll repay me over time.’
He questioned them about their journey, and when he heard they had come with another family, with two strong sons, he at once made an offer to them too.
But they refused. ‘The offer’s good,’ their travelling companion told Yanka’s father, ‘but I don’t want a landlord. Come with us,’ he urged instead.
‘No,’ her father was shaking his head. ‘We prefer to remain. Good luck to you though.’