The next week, using money from an ostensible sale of some land near Murom, Milei bought in the extra chernozem at Russka from the Grand Prince.
Fortune had smiled on him, indeed.
1263
How strange, how secret, are the ways of God.
In the spring of the next year, before the snows melted, Milei the boyar went to his estate at Russka.
From the front of his house, as he looked out, the first thing he saw was the rich land across the river. And now it was all his, stretching from the river out to the north of Dirty Place for several miles.
He had come early to the village because he had great plans for its improvement.
He had bought a number of slaves from the Moslem tax farmers. Some of them, admittedly, had been made slaves illegally for failing to pay enough taxes. But no one was likely to trouble about that here. And they were good Slavs, sound peasants, as well – just what he had always needed.
They were due to arrive at Russka in early summer.
There were settlers, too. He was going to let some of the new land and had managed to find three families, who had been ruined by the new taxes and were glad to get good new land on easy terms.
‘All in all, the Tatars have been good for me,’ he chuckled to himself.
On the first Sunday of April, the snow began to melt. Each day the sky was bright blue, the sun warm. Soon great banks of grey slush were forming beside little brown rivulets as the land began to appear. On the river, discoloured patches of brown and green could be seen where the ice was getting thin. On the Wednesday of that week, as he gazed out from the doorway, he could see little black bumps of rich earth peeping through the snow on the river’s eastern side.
And then, as he stepped over the threshold, Milei the boyar had an extraordinary sensation. It was as if someone had stabbed him in the heart.
He stopped and put his hand to his chest. Surely his heart was not giving out. He was not so old. He took a deep breath, but felt no pain: no difficulty in breathing. He looked at his hands for some tell-tale sign of blue in the fingertips, but there was none.
He walked out carefully, pulling his fur coat tightly about him, although the sun was warm. Nothing more happened. He walked round the village and went to see the steward. The fellow was about to cross the river, and so Milei decided to go with him. They went across in a little dug-out and got out onto the small jetty opposite.
Then something stranger still occurred. As Milei stepped on to the land of the east bank, his feet suddenly felt as if they were on fire. He took two more steps and cried out with pain.
‘What is it, lord?’ The old steward looked at him with astonishment.
Milei was staring down with horror. ‘My feet… when I stepped here… Do your feet hurt?’
‘No, lord.’
He tried to take another step, but the pain was so great he could not. ‘We’re going back,’ he mumbled; and the puzzled steward had to row him across the river again.
Greatly disconcerted, the boyar went back to his house. There he inspected his feet. They were just as normal.
Later that day, as he came out again and glanced across the river, the terrible pain struck him in the chest once more like a blow, so that his knees almost buckled and he had to catch the frame of the door to stop himself falling.
The same thing happened again the next day. And the next. He could not cross his own threshold; and he could not set foot on the land opposite the river.
Then he thought he understood.
‘It’s that damned Tatar,’ he murmured. ‘He’s returned to plague me.’
In fact, he was more accurate than he knew.
For it never occurred to him that one starless night the previous autumn, just after he had gone back to Murom, Purgas the Mordvinian had stolen by his empty house and, with consummate skill, ripped up the threshold outside and buried, in two feet of earth, the head of Peter the Tatar right under his doorway.
Even Yanka never knew her husband had done this.
But when he had finished, had it been possible to see his expression in the darkness, a look of strange, almost diabolical satisfaction would have been discerned on the Mordvinian’s face. ‘If they ever find this, it is you, boyar, they will accuse of murder,’ he whispered, ‘lover of my wife.’
He had always guessed. Now he and the boyar were even.
Yet, though Milei knew nothing of the presence of Peter, the excruciating pains grew worse. He could hardly bear to leave his house now. I could take over the steward’s house for the time being, he thought. But how could he explain that? I’ll say the ants or the mice have invaded mine. Yet it sounded a poor excuse. Besides, what was the satisfaction of being here when he could not even set foot on his best land? I shall have to leave Russka, he decided.
The next day, he called for his horse in the morning and, swinging himself up into the saddle, told the steward: ‘I’ll be back in the summer.’
Yet he had not gone half a mile from the village when his horse quite suddenly shied and threw him so that, landing on some roots, he thought for a moment he had broken his leg. That was nothing to his astonishment though, when the animal, looking to its left, gave a piercing whinny of fear, and bolted in the other direction.
He stared at the place which had so startled his horse. And there, amongst the trees, he saw it. It was a magnificent animaclass="underline" a stallion of unnatural size: a grey, with a black mane and a black stripe down its back. It came through the trees towards him and galloped straight across the path after his own mount. As it went by, its hoofs made no sound.
Slowly Milei picked himself up. He crossed himself. Then he limped back into the village. For now he understood.
As soon as he was back, he called the surprised steward to his house, and also the old priest from the little church.
‘I have decided,’ he told them, ‘to make a great gift to the glory of God. I am going to found a monastery on my old land across the river.’
‘What has brought about this decision?’ the priest asked. He had not considered Milei capable of such a selfless act.
‘I had a vision,’ the boyar replied drily, though with truth.
‘The Lord be praised,’ the old man cried. Truly, how strange and secret were the ways of God.
Milei nodded, then, apparently lost in meditation, he walked out through the door of his house to look at the land he had just given away.
He returned a moment later, smiling as if with relief, and at once took the priest across the river and conducted him round the site.
And so it was, in the year 1263, that the little monastery at Russka was founded.
It was dedicated to St Peter and St Paul.
One other event of significance occurred in that year.
In order to beg the Tatar Khan to be lenient with the rebellious tax-payers of Russia, the Great Prince Alexander Nevsky had set out across the steppe to visit the Horde.
‘He is not well,’ a visiting boyar from Vladimir told Milei. ‘If the Tatars don’t kill him, the long journey may.’
‘I hope not,’ Milei answered. ‘His policy may have been unpopular with the people, but it has been wise.’
‘It will be continued,’ the other assured him. ‘But he was very distressed to go at such a time. His youngest son is only three and he wanted to see him through until he was grown.’
‘Ah, yes, Daniel is the little boy, isn’t he?’ Milei knew nothing about this child beyond his name. ‘I wonder what his inheritance will be.’
‘They say,’ the boyar from Vladimir told him, ‘that Alexander has instructed his family to give him Moscow when he is older.’
‘Moscow! That miserable town!’