With what joy, therefore, did he now welcome the Christian Tatar, and lead him to his house.
‘I’ll show you the whole place in the morning,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll be pleased.’
He told him about the trouble with the villagers.
‘Of course they know nothing about our business,’ he joked. ‘So they’re probably terrified to see you.’
Peter nodded slowly but did not smile.
‘There have been serious riots in Suzdal and other towns,’ the Tatar warned. ‘Murom is still quiet, and I’ve left strict instructions with the guards, but I must go back tomorrow in case there’s trouble. The Khan will be furious.’
‘Nevsky will sort it out. The Khan trusts him,’ Milei said confidently.
‘The Khan trusts no one, and no one is safe,’ Peter told him coldly.
His words sent a chill through the evening and made Milei more glad than ever that he had made family alliance with these harsh rulers.
For dinner they had fresh fish from the river, and sweetmeats, and mead. He did what he could to lighten the mood.
The next morning, they went out early and inspected the land. Milei showed him the rich chernozem on the eastern bank with pride. The Tatar walked all round the little village and saw that Milei had, indeed, offered him the best land.
‘It’s a good site for a monastery,’ he agreed. ‘I shall endow a small church and perhaps half a dozen monks to begin with. But it will grow.’
Milei nodded.
‘Does that mean you want to buy it?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Your price?’
Milei named it.
It sounded a little expensive, but not unreasonable. Milei was wise enough not to be obviously greedy.
‘Very well,’ Peter agreed. And to Milei’s delight he produced a bag of gold coins and paid him there and then.
‘Now it is mine,’ the Tatar said.
‘It is yours.’
Peter began to get on his horse.
‘Will you not stay?’
The Tatar shook his head.
‘With these troubles… I want to be back in Murom tomorrow.’
Milei nodded.
‘All the same,’ he said, hardly pausing to think about it, ‘I should draw up a deed for the property.’
It seemed such an obvious thing to say that he was completely taken aback by what came next.
‘A deed? What is that?’
Milei opened his mouth to speak, then kept silent.
The Tatar looked at him curiously.
‘A deed?’
Was it possible that this official did not know that in the land of Rus all property was held by deed?
Suddenly, it dawned on Milei that there was no particular reason why he should.
For the entire Mongol apparatus, thorough, merciless as it was, was also completely self-contained. They took their census – which no Russian ruler had ever done – they divided up the land by tens and hundreds, and they taxed. But there it ended. Their system of government was efficient, but it ran entirely parallel to the continuing pattern of Russian life. This intelligent Tatar, this Christian whose daughter had married a Russian, was still entirely a stranger in this country. He probably had no interest in being anything else. He knew nothing of Russian land transactions and law.
He had just paid for the land – but without a deed, it was not his.
I have to give him the land, Milei thought quickly. And if he ever finds out that I should have given him a deed… Yet, he hesitated. Was there something more to be squeezed from this transaction? He would have to think about it. When in doubt, delay.
‘Go back to Murom,’ he said with a warm smile. ‘We’ll talk business again when I return there.’
Peter started off.
‘Be firm with these damned people,’ Milei called after him, then turned back to the village, with his bag of gold.
In Dirty Place, too, there had nearly been a killing that morning.
Only Yanka had prevented it.
The two Moslem merchants had brought a dozen men and three large carts with them. They were not in the best of tempers when they arrived.
The Mongol administration had allowed them to collect what they could in return for a fixed amount they were to remit to the Khan. They had expected to make a profit but at present they were showing a loss.
Their visit to Russka the day before had been unsatisfactory. Milei the boyar had thought his presence had stopped the villagers attacking the tax gatherers. In fact, knowing his Tatar connections, the merchants had been careful to make quite reasonable demands at Russka. Now they needed to make up for their leniency.
The insignificant little community of free peasants at Dirty Place was somewhere to start.
‘We’ll fleece this village,’ they agreed as they approached.
And that, all morning, is what they did.
The hamlet had grown to fifteen households now and had the status of a volost – a commune. In recent years the volost had become modestly prosperous; and this was thanks to the man whom the households had elected as their elder: Purgas, the husband of Yanka.
Ever since they married, the modest carpenter whose freedom she had arranged had never ceased to surprise her. The first surprise had been after they had built their izba at Dirty Place and she had hung a little icon in the corner; for that very day he had quietly gone to the corner and hung a little chaplet of birch leaves just above it.
‘Why do you do that?’ she asked, puzzled. ‘That is what the pagans do.’
He had looked a little awkward for a moment and then confessed: ‘I am not a Christian.’
‘But we were married by a priest.’
It had been done in Novgorod just before they left.
He smiled gently.
‘It didn’t seem to matter.’
She had never thought to ask him if he was a Christian. Hadn’t they met in a church?
‘I followed you in,’ he confessed.
‘You should have told me,’ she said angrily.
‘I was afraid. I didn’t want to lose you,’ he mumbled.
She thought of her own deception of him. So they had both lied for fear of losing the other’s love. It was a bond.
‘You must become a Christian now,’ she told him. But to her surprise he refused.
‘Our children can be Christian, but leave me to my own ways,’ he said. ‘In Novgorod, I lived amongst the Christians long enough,’ he added with some feeling.
She understood. His escape back to the countryside with her was a return, for him, to his origins. And indeed, as she watched him find his place in the little community on the Black Lands, she saw a strange transformation occur.
At times, he seemed almost like a creature of the forest. He would stand, quite motionless, with his spear on the river bank and then, it seemed, idly dip it in the stream and come up with a fish where she, lying on the bank and staring down, had seen nothing. He would take dried fungi from a birch tree and rub it in his hands for only seconds before a little flame sprang, as it were, from the palms of his hands. He would find dried pine roots that would burn without crackling, and all manner of medicinal roots.
He got drunk rather easily, but always fell asleep then. The only cause of friction between them was when he insisted she allow him to eat hare, which was forbidden by the Church.
‘I worship the god Tchampas,’ he would say. ‘He is not as great as your god, but he resides in heaven and all the gods of the earth are under him.’
He loved the forest, and he loved the river, in a way that she realized she could not. He would touch a tree and to him it was a special being. She remembered how she had once felt about the silver birch tree, and how she had tried to assume its character. And he feels like that about everything, she mused. It was an ancient religion, this fetish cult of the northern forests, and she wisely did not try to dissuade him from it any more.