But above all, Russka was known for its icons. The monastery had a regular little workshop. There were no less than ten monks, working with assistants, producing a constant flow of icons which were sold in the Russka market. A number of artisans, brought in by the monastery, were housed in Russka where they turned out handicrafts, some religious, others not, for sale on the stalls. People came from Vladimir, and from Moscow itself, to buy.
Now Lev turned to Mikhail and put his arm round him.
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ he counselled. And then he spoke aloud the thought that only Mikhail, amongst the four of them, had failed to grasp. ‘Don’t you realize – if this fellow has his way,’ he indicated the monk beside him, ‘young lord Boris won’t have his estate much longer anyway.’
The gentle, joyful hiss of the sleds. They ran down the gleaming road of the frozen River Rus, between the lines of soft, snow-laden trees until, round a curve, the banks opened up to several broad, white meadows.
In the first sled rode Boris and Elena. In the second, the five Tatar slaves, Elena’s maid, and a huge quantity of baggage.
And now at last, there lay Russka before them, with the monastery below it. How quiet it was. Under a clear, light blue sky the wooden tent roof of the tower, glistening in the sun, reminded Boris of a tall sheaf of wheat or barley, tied just below the top, standing in a field after harvest. He squeezed Elena’s hand and sighed with pleasure at the familiar, childhood sensation of being enveloped in the peace of the Russian countryside.
The tower, it seemed to him, was like a token of summer and of fulfilment, hanging in the bright winter sky.
Elena, too, smiled. Thank God, she was thinking, that the place was not quite as small as she had feared. Perhaps there might be a few women here that she could talk to.
In no time they were gliding up the slope and round to the gate. As they entered the main square, she noticed the four men standing together near the centre. Seeing the sleds, they turned and bowed respectfully. It seemed to her that they were also observing her carefully. They appeared friendly enough. She pulled the furs up to cover her face as the sled came towards them; she noticed that one was a priest and one a monk.
It was impossible to see the expression on the face of Daniel the monk, because his thick black beard covered so much of it that one could really only make out the two small bright eyes that looked out watchfully at the world, and the top of what were obviously broad, pock-marked cheeks.
He was on the short side, stockily built, but with slightly rounded shoulders. His quiet, stooping manner suggested a submissiveness proper to his religious calling. He spoke rather quietly, yet there was something about his hard brown eyes, an occasional suddenness in his movements, that suggested a passionate nature either repressed or concealed.
He was watching the young couple intently.
Stephen the priest, observing both, felt sorry for Boris and Elena. He had liked Boris’s father, admired his long fight with sickness, and buried him with a sense of personal loss. He wished young Boris well.
As for Daniel the monk, Stephen did not approve of him.
‘People say that I love money,’ Lev had once remarked to him, ‘but I don’t come near that little monk.’
It was true. The merchant’s rapaciousness had bounds; there was the ordinary give and take of the market place in his dealings. But Daniel the monk, though he had nothing of his own, seemed to be obsessed with acquiring wealth: he wanted it for the monastery.
‘He is greedy for God,’ Stephen had sighed. ‘It’s a crime.’
The great battle between those who thought the Church should give up its riches, and those who thought it should keep them, had been fought for generations. Many churchmen believed the Church should revert to a life of poverty and simplicity – especially those followers of a saintly monk named Nil Sorsky, who lived in the simple communities in the forest hinterland beyond the northern loop of the Volga. This faction, encouraged by these stern Trans-Volga Elders, became known to history as the Non-Possessors; though most people in Russka, and many in the capital too, referred to them affectionately as the Non-Greedy.
But they lost. A little after 1500 the Church council, led by the formidable Abbot Joseph, declared that the Church’s lands and wealth gave her a power on earth that was wholly desirable. Those who thought otherwise were in danger of being called heretics.
Stephen the priest privately favoured poverty. His cousin Daniel, however, had shown such diligence in everything relating to business that the abbot of the Peter and Paul Monastery had made him the supervisor of the monastery’s activities in the little trading town. To hear Daniel talk about the fall of Kazan, you might have mistaken him for a merchant or a tax collector. ‘We can pick up some of the extra trade through Nizhni Novgorod and from the south,’ he would explain eagerly in his soft voice. ‘Silk, calico, frankincense, soap…’ He would tick them off on his fingers. ‘Perhaps we can even get some rhubarb too.’ For some reason this luxury was still imported from the east.
But above all, Daniel’s secret mission in life was to help the abbot enlarge the monastery’s lands.
He would probably succeed. For generations the Church had been the one section of the community which had continuously increased its landholdings. Two years before Tsar Ivan had tried to limit the scale of this growth by insisting that the monasteries and churches must have his permission before they accepted or bought any more land. But these rules were always hard to enforce. In the central regions of Muscovy, at this time, the Church owned about a third of the land.
There were two desirable estates close by. One was just to the north and east, a tract of land that had passed back into the hands of the Moscow princes. Perhaps Ivan would grant them this: for despite his recent attempts to limit them, he was still a huge giver of land to the Church himself. And then there was Dirty Place.
Boris’s father had held on to his estate, but would the young man with his wife and small dowry be able to? Daniel smiled. Probably not. They would either give the land to the monastery in return for a life tenancy: this was often done. Or they could sell it outright. Or they could get themselves ever deeper into debt until the monastery took the estate over. Boris would be well treated. His family’s long connection with the monastery would ensure that. He would live out his life with honour. The monks would pray, after his death, for this noble benefactor who gave his lands to the service of God. We’ll look after him,’ he would say.
There was only one problem the monk foresaw. Knowing the monastery’s intentions, the young man would try very hard to keep his independence, as his father had done. He would do everything he could to avoid borrowing money from the monastery. ‘Which is where you come in,’ Daniel had told Lev the merchant the day before. ‘When the young man wants to borrow, offer to lend to him and I’ll guarantee the loan,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll see that you don’t suffer by it.’
At which Lev had laughed, and his Tatar eyes had shown a flicker of amusement.
‘Ah, you monks…’ he had replied.
And now the young man was approaching.
Elena was surprised, as the sled crossed the square, to hear her husband mutter a curse. What a strange, moody fellow he was, this young man. But when she glanced at him, he gave her a rueful grin.