It was a week later that she first suspected she might be pregnant.
She did not tell him. She said nothing to anyone. In any case, there was no one to talk to. But what should she do? At first, she did not know. She walked around Novgorod each day, trying to make up her mind.
Looking for quiet places, away from the noisy bustle of the narrow streets, she visited the outlying monasteries, and the prince’s hunting grounds to the north of the city. She came to know the place quite well.
Yet the better she came to know Great Novgorod, the less she liked it. Even in the nearby Yuriev Monastery, where she had expected to discover a peaceful haven, she found a huge, square cathedral that was so high and harsh that it seemed almost cruel.
Similarly, when she entered the church of those gentlest of saints, Boris and Gleb, what she saw was a big, rich building, housing pompous oak coffins of the nobility at one end. An old woman told her: ‘This place was built by Sadko – the merchant in the song.’ And as she gazed round at the impressive interior the old woman added approvingly, ‘Yes, he was rich.’
Day by day, Yanka was discovering that this was all that mattered in Novgorod – how much money one had.
Not only when she went to the market, but at the inn or in the streets, whoever she talked to seemed to speak of their neighbours and to value them only by their wealth. To them, she realized, I am not a person. I am only a sum of money. And as the time passed, this harsh, unyielding world began to repel her. I don’t belong here, she confessed to herself. I have no wish to remain.
It was not easy, being obliged to make love to the boyar at nights, and going out into this harsh, mercantile world by day. The image of herself that she had once conceived – as a silver birch tree, withstanding wind and snow – no longer helped her. If she closed her eyes and thought of it at nights, it seemed puny and far away. By day she became depressed and listless; at night, full of self-loathing. There was no sanctuary.
Sometimes she would visit the lesser churches. There were many of these, in wood and stone. The smaller stone churches were especially beautiful to look at. The Novgorod architects not only favoured the placing of Greek crosses over the domes, as was often done in Russia now, but they liked to alter the shape of the old Byzantine dome. Instead of the broad old cupola, like an upturned saucer, they sometimes squeezed the top up into a point, so that it resembled a helmet. And more elaborate still, they might even give the sides of this helmet dome a slight bulge so that it looked like a large, shining onion.
They were miniature versions of the cathedrals, with a main chamber above and a smaller cellar below where services could be held when it was cold. Yet though they were of stone, many of these churches had been built by boyars and merchants just like those who had visited Milei that terrible evening. Instead of the high galleries where princes could look down upon the people, they contained on their upper floors little corner chapels where the family of the founding merchant could worship and where, often as not, the merchant’s dark bearded image stared out severely, yet smugly, from a fresco on the wall.
Perhaps it was her mood, but these places, too, soon filled her with repulsion.
And still she was pregnant with the boyar’s child. What was she to do?
She had no doubt he would provide for the child. But what would become of her? Where would she live? And would she ever get a husband? Though the married women in Slav villages might take part in the careless sex that sometimes followed the end of a drunken feast night, it was shame to any man to find his young wife not a virgin. If his neighbours knew, they would probably paint his door posts as a sign of contempt. An unmarried woman with a child stood few chances.
In any case, she hated Milei now, and the child was his.
To her own surprise, she found that often she had no feeling for it. The little life inside her belonged to him and to this big city. She was carrying this burden against her will. She wanted to be rid of it, turn her back on Novgorod, and flee to another world.
‘I do not want it,’ she often murmured. ‘I am not ready for this. And it ties me to him.’
Yet while she was full of this resentment, a part of her yearned to give life; and her instincts told her that the further she went into her pregnancy, the more terrible it would seem to lose the child.
Sometimes she did not know what she wanted. She either walked about listlessly, or sat alone, staring into space.
Milei, sensing her discomfiture with him, yet not troubling to find out the cause, sent for her less.
In January she finally decided: I will get rid of it.
But how? She knew that girls sometimes ended unwanted pregnancies by jumping off a gate. Somehow she had no wish to try that. So what to do? For two days she wandered around thinking that perhaps she would, thanks to some divine intervention, slip and fall on an icy street and have a miscarriage. She went and prayed before Novgorod’s most sacred icon – Our Lord of the Sign. But though the icon had once preserved the city against the men of Suzdal, it did nothing for her. At last, in despair, she began to search around the market place. Surely there must be someone there who would know how to do such things.
She found her one afternoon, in mid-January: a hard-faced old woman with a wart on one hand, who sold dried herbs at a little stall near the river.
When she explained what she needed the old woman seemed neither surprised nor shocked, but her small, brown eyes gave her a careful, cold look.
‘How many months?’
Yanka told her.
‘Very well. But it will cost you money.’
‘How much?’
The old woman was silent for a minute.
‘Two grivnas.’
She gasped. A small fortune.
The old woman looked at her, but showed no sign of giving anything away.
‘Well?’
‘Can you be sure…?’
‘You won’t have the child.’
‘And I…’
‘You’ll come to no harm.’
That afternoon, Yanka took the bale of silk that Milei had given her and sold it for two grivnas.
‘Come back this evening, at dusk,’ the old woman told her.
As the sun fell over the frozen marshes late that afternoon, she followed as the old woman shuffled along a path that led by the southern outskirts of the city. On their left were huts; on their right, the frozen river. The sun in the west was sinking, a distant red disk going down into the snows like a sigh; downstream the palisades across the river, caught in icy shadow, looked black as a raven before the red sky.
She led Yanka to a small izba at the end of a little lane. Beside the izba was a little outhouse. She opened the door of this, and motioned Yanka in. It contained various sacks, a table covered with little pots of strange-smelling herbs, and a single bench. It was cold.
‘Sit there and wait,’ the old woman said, then vanished.
When she reappeared, she was carrying a small tub which she placed in front of Yanka. Then she went away again.
Some time passed before she came back. This time she had a large pail of hot water which she poured into the tub. A cloud of steam arose. She brought two more pails, until the tub was half full.
Then, from the table, she took several of the wooden pots and began to pour their contents into the water, stirring with a long wooden spoon. A sharp, almost acrid smell began to fill the room. Yanka had never smelled such a thing before, and it made her eyes water.
‘What is it?’
‘Never mind. Now take off your boots, pull up your shift and put your feet in the tub,’ the old woman ordered.