Yanka would have liked to enter the capital city of Vladimir, which was not far away, and see the famous icon of Our Lady. She had heard that it had been painted by the Evangelist St Luke himself. But Milei shook his head, and the little party turned westwards. They rode along the Kliasma for ten days until they were just north of the small town of Moscow. Then they struck north-west.
The rains caught them just as they reached another minor city, Tver, that lay below the gentle Valdai Hills, on the banks of the upper reaches of the Volga. It was a small town, rather like its neighbour Moscow. They found an inn there and waited for ten days. Then the snows came.
A week later, sitting in a large and comfortable sled now, Yanka began the last, and magical, part of her journey.
Some days there were icy winds and blizzards. But on others, the sun shone over a sparkling northern scene.
How softly and easily the sled had raced down the slope by Tver and across the frozen Volga. They travelled swiftly across the snow, sometimes following rivers, sometimes plunging into dark woods, and following endless tracks between the trees.
West of Moscow, she had noticed, the woods had become mainly broad-leaved again, like those of the south. But as they went further west and north, the tall firs of the taiga appeared together with these trees.
Then, late in November, the countryside began to change. It opened out into huge flat spaces with mixed woods broken up into coppices and small stands. Often she realized that they were gliding over ice rather than earth, and that there was frozen marsh underneath. The ridges were very low. It felt as if they were approaching the sea.
Milei was in high good humour. He began to sing the song of Sadko, the merchant of Novgorod, smiling to himself as they sped over the flat, open land. Then, one afternoon, he pointed.
‘Lord Novgorod the Great.’
From a distance, it was not so impressive, because the citadel only rose a score of feet above the river. But as they approached, she began to realize the remarkable size of the place.
‘It’s huge,’ she said.
He laughed.
‘Just wait till we get there.’
The mighty city of Novgorod lay on the slow-moving River Volkhov, just north of the great Lake Ilmen. It consisted of two halves, one each side of the river, surrounded by tremendous wooden palisades and joined by an enormous wooden bridge. In the middle of the western half, and raised above it, stood a stout citadel with thick, blank stone walls.
They came in from the east, clattered through the eastern quarter and across the bridge.
Yanka cried out in wonder.
The bridge was massive. Sailing boats could go under it.
‘There’s not another like it in all the lands of Rus,’ Milei remarked.
The bridge led them straight under a huge gateway. Immediately before them towered a stern-looking cathedral. They turned right and passed through the northern quarters of the city until they finally came to rest at a large wooden structure which was an inn.
And already Yanka was gasping.
For all the streets were paved with wood.
The early part of her stay in Novgorod was happy.
Milei was busy, but although she was there, ostensibly, as his servant, he often let her walk along behind him and, from time to time, curtly pointed out the sights.
The western side, containing the citadel, was called the St Sophia side, because of the stern-looking cathedral she had seen. It contained three quarters, called ends: the most northerly, on the edge of which they were staying, was the Leatherworkers end; then came the Zagorod end, where the rich boyars had their houses. Then came the Potters end.
There were fine wooden houses everywhere, wooden churches, it seemed, by the hundred, and even stone churches by the dozen.
How solid and strong everything seemed. The streets were not very wide – mostly about ten feet. They were made of big logs, split end to end and laid, the flat side up, across the framework of poles, like rails, that ran along under the street. At one place, where they were repairing the street, she saw that underneath lay layers – she could not see how many – of older wooden pavings.
‘So the streets of Novgorod are slowly rising,’ she said to Milei.
‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘You’ll notice that you have to take a step down, now, into some of the older stone buildings.’
Every street was enclosed by fences – not like the modest fences she knew at Russka, but thick, solid wooden walls, almost like small palisades, that seemed to say: ‘Bump into a fence in Novgorod if you like, but you’ll get hurt.’
When she was a girl, in the south, the people from Kiev or Pereiaslav were always a little contemptuous of the distant people of Novgorod.
‘Carpenters’ they still called them.
But she found nothing to laugh at in their carpentry now. She found it a little frightening.
The great cathedral in the centre of the citadel had been built to rival its namesake at Kiev: St Sophia.
Like the Kievan church, it had five aisles. But its walls, instead of soft glowing pink brick, in tiny lines, were made of large irregular stones. Its whole aspect was harsh and austere. Instead of Kiev’s thirteen shining cupolas, it had five large domes, plated with lead, that gave off a dull, dark gleam. Inside, instead of glittering mosaics with their mysterious, other-worldly Byzantine light, huge frescoes stared coolly down from the flat, soaring walls. The building expressed not transcendental mystery, but high, hard, unyielding northern power. For this place, it reminded the beholder, was Lord Novgorod the Great.
‘The painting here was done mostly by Novgorod artists, not Greeks,’ Milei explained to her. And when she admired the huge bronze gates of the west door, carved with rich biblical scenes, he told her: ‘We took them from the Swedes, but they were made in Germany, in Magdeburg.’
When they came out, she pointed to a huge wooden palace standing nearby.
‘Is that where the prince lives?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Milei told her. ‘The people of Novgorod won’t let the prince live in the city. He has to live in his own little fort, just to the north. That’s the archbishop’s palace you’re looking at. It’s the archbishop and the people’s veche who rule in Novgorod. The prince defends the place, and they won’t accept a prince they don’t like.’
She had always heard that the city of Novgorod was free, but she had not realized that such expressions of power as she saw all around her could belong to the people.
‘They are truly free then?’ she remarked with admiration.
‘They are truly obstinate,’ he replied curtly, and glancing down at her puzzled face remarked: ‘You’ll see.’
But if St Sophia’s side was impressive, it was nothing compared to the astonishment she felt when they crossed, on their second day, over the river.
From the citadel they passed under the huge Virgin Gate with its stone church over the arch and across the great wooden bridge. Below them lay the frozen River Volkhov that led southwards on the ancient trading route down to the Dniepr and Kiev, and flowed northwards to a huge lake called Ladoga, that was joined by the River Neva to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea.
And before them lay the market side.
‘There are two ends,’ Milei announced, as the sled went over the bridge, ‘the Slovensk and the Carpenters ends. And in the middle is the market. That’s where we’re going.’
She had never seen anything like it. Beside another impressive church spread a huge open area stretching to the river’s edge and the wharfs.
It was covered with snow, yet on the frozen surface were long lines of brightly coloured stalls, more than she could count.
‘There must be a thousand,’ she said.
‘Probably.’