But all that changed the night that the boyar gave a feast.
It was for the men with whom he had been doing business, and she was allowed to remain in the room to serve. There were about a dozen of them – mostly large, bearded men in rich silk kaftans. Several wore huge sparkling precious stones; one was so fat it seemed astonishing to her that he could walk at all. Some were boyars, others wealthy merchants, and two, including a younger man with a thin, dark face, of the middling merchant class.
Only as she heard them talk did she realize the richness and size of Novgorod.
For they spoke of estates scores, even hundreds, of miles away in the forests and marshes of the north-east. They spoke of iron from the marshes, of great salt beds, of huge herds of reindeer that roamed by the tundra’s edge. She learned that for a month in summer, in these northern climes, there was no darkness but only a pale twilight, and that in midwinter, trappers roamed the wastes which scarcely grew light. A boyar of Novgorod might own whole tracts of land which he never even saw, and receive rents of furs from trappers who had travelled a hundred miles to their rendezvous and had never set eyes, in their lives, on a town of any kind.
Truly, this was the land of the mighty, the endless taiga.
But when she heard them speak of politics, she was truly astonished.
‘The question is, what are you going to do about the Tatars?’ Milei began. ‘Will you submit or will you fight them?’
There was a murmur round the room.
‘The situation is delicate,’ an elderly boyar remarked. ‘The present Grand Duke will not last.’
Yanka knew the last Grand Duke of Vladimir, the father of the great Prince Alexander of Novgorod, had died on his way back from a visit of submission to Mongolia. Some said the Tatars had poisoned him. That year, his brother had succeeded him and confirmed his nephew Alexander as ruler of Novgorod. But this new Grand Duke was said to be weak.
‘The real power struggle,’ another said, ‘will be between Alexander and his younger brother Andrei.’
She had heard of his brother, but knew nothing about him.
‘That’s where we shall have to take sides,’ the old boyar nodded.
And then she heard the first astounding words.
‘To some of us,’ the thin-faced young merchant remarked, ‘they are both of them traitors.’
Traitors? Prince Alexander, the valiant conqueror of the Swedes and Germans a traitor? To her amazement, no one protested.
‘It’s true,’ the fat boyar said with a sigh, ‘that Alexander is not loved. People think he likes the Tatars too much.’
‘Is it true,’ Milei asked, ‘that at his battle with the German knights he used Tatar bowmen?’
‘It’s been said, but I believe it’s untrue,’ the fat boyar said. ‘But you must remember that not only do people dislike his friendship with the Tatars, but there are those in this city, and still more in our neighbour Pskov, who still would be happy to see the Germans ruling here.’
As he said these words, there was an awkward silence.
Since being in Novgorod, Yanka had heard that, at the very time when Prince Alexander had been defeating the Swedes and Germans, the leaders of the city of Pskov had actually taken the German side.
‘When Alexander came back to Novgorod, he hung the German sympathizers here, you know,’ the fat boyar explained to Milei, ‘so even if someone felt that way now, he might not say so.’
For a moment, the silence in the room grew very deep.
‘The rumour is,’ the young merchant went on quietly, ‘that young Prince Andrei secretly prefers the Catholic Germans and Swedes. So to us small merchants, it seems there isn’t an honest Russian prince to be found.’
Could this really be? Though Yanka, in her simplicity, understood that some princes might be stronger and braver than others, it had never occurred to her that they might be playing cynical games with the lands of Rus.
The discussion went on in this way for some time, the various members of the group giving their views on the likely, and most profitable, outcomes. Finally the fat boyar turned to Milei.
‘Well now, you’ve heard that none of us can agree: so what does the boyar from Murom say?’
They looked at him with interest as he paused, taking his time. Yanka, too, waited expectantly. What would her powerful protector say?
‘Firstly,’ he said at last, ‘I understand the Catholic camp. You’re close to Sweden, Poland, and the Hansa trading towns of Germany. They’re all Catholic, and fairly strong. In the same way, the Prince of Galicia down in the south-west thinks he can hold off the Tatars with help from the Pope. But the Catholic party is wrong. Why?’ He gazed round the room. ‘Because the Tatars are much stronger and the Pope and Catholic powers are unreliable. Every time the Prince of Galicia tries to assert himself, the Tatars crush him.’
There were some murmurs of agreement. What he said about Galicia was true.
‘Novgorod is mighty,’ he went on. ‘But beside the Tatars, Novgorod is puny. They’d crush your fortifications in days if they wanted to, as they did at Vladimir, Riazan, Kiev itself. You were lucky that they happened to turn back before reaching you.’
‘The Tatars will vanish like the Avars, the Huns, the Pechenegs and the Cumans,’ someone objected.
‘No, they won’t,’ Milei replied. ‘That is exactly the mistake half our Russian princes are making. They don’t like the truth so they won’t admit it. These Tatars are not like the Cumans. They’re an empire like none other the world has seen. And,’ he paused for a moment to make his point, ‘if you oppose them, they’ll crush you like a fly upon a gong.’
‘So,’ said the young merchant sadly, ‘you think Prince Alexander is right and we have to submit to these pagans?’
Milei looked at the thin young man with calm disgust. And now there came into his eyes a look of ancient, cynical cunning that Yanka had seen before, but never known enough to understand.
‘I think,’ he said very quietly, ‘that the Tatars are the best friends that we have.’
‘Exactly,’ the fat boyar broke out. ‘I saw at once, my friend, that you were an intelligent man.’
Yanka was aghast. What could he mean?
‘Of course Alexander is right,’ Milei continued. ‘We have no choice. Mark my words, in a few more years they will rule us all. But that is not the point. Who runs the caravans from the east with whom you trade? The Tatars. Who mints coins and who keeps the steppes free of Cumans? The Tatars. Where shall our sons find profitable service and plunder? With the Tatars, just as my Alan ancestors served the Khazars before the state of Rus existed.
‘And what is the alternative? The princes of Rus? The Grand Dukes who never lifted a finger to help Riazan or Murom when the Tatars came?
‘The Tatars are strong and they love the profits of trade. Therefore I will cooperate with them.’
Yanka was white.
Before her, at that moment, rose up the vision of her mother, falling before her eyes. Then the Tatar with the missing ear. Then her brother, disappearing across the darkening steppe.
So he was for the Tatars.
She had not known. How could she, a poor Slav peasant from a little village? She had not understood that, for more than a thousand years, Sarmatian, Khazar, Viking and Turk, the men of steppes, of rivers and of seas, the powerful wanderers on the earth, had seen the land and the people of Russia only as objects for their use, to be ruled for profit.
Several of the older men were nodding wisely.
It was fortunate that, standing quietly in a corner, virtually forgotten, she was too shocked even to speak.
But at that moment, she felt more utterly defiled by the nights she had spent with Milei than she ever had, even in the depths of her despair, by those spent with her father.