‘I did not hear you come in.’
‘I know.’
Had she made love to him? He looked for some tell-tale sign: a faint glow about her, perhaps; some disarrangement in her dress or in the room. He could not see anything.
He stared at her.
‘You love him.’
He said it very quietly, not as a question but as a statement – as though it were something they were both quite agreed upon. Then he watched her.
She blushed deeply now, swallowed hard, looked miserably confused.
‘No. Not as a man. As a priest.’
‘Is he not a man?’
‘Of course. He is a fine man. A pious man,’ she protested.
‘Who makes love to you.’
‘No. Never.’
He stared at her. Did he believe her?
‘Liar.’
‘Never!’
She had said never. She could have used other words. She might have denied that she even wished it. But she had said: ‘Never.’ That meant she had desired it. As to whether she had or not… who knew? His reason told him she probably had not, but he was too proud to trust her, in case he was deceived.
Had he not wanted her to be unfaithful so that he could divorce her? Suddenly all that was forgotten as he looked at this modest, rather ordinary woman he had married, and who had committed these crimes against his pride.
She was pale now. She was trembling, afraid.
‘Never! You insult me.’
Very well. It might be so. But then he saw in her eyes, a little look that he had never seen before: a flash of contempt, of anger.
He would show her. He stepped forward suddenly, swung his hand and struck her with the open palm across the face. Her head jerked violently; she cried out, gasped. Turned back to him in rage and terror. He struck her with the other hand.
‘Bully!’ she screamed suddenly. ‘Murderer.’
It was enough.
He struck her. Again and again. Then he raped her.
He left for Moscow the next morning.
In September 1569 Tsar Ivan’s second wife died. The next month his cousin Prince Vladimir, still a possible successor to the throne, was accused of conspiracy and made to drink poison. The unlucky prince’s family were then killed, including his elderly mother, who lived in a convent.
But these events were followed by something far more terrible. For late in the year Ivan discovered another conspiracy: the cities of Novgorod and Pskov were planning to break away.
There may, in fact, have been some truth in it. To this day, the details are not quite clear. These once independent centres, near to the Baltic ports, may well have been tempted to escape the increasing taxation and tyranny of Muscovy by joining the newly united and formidable Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania. They had always been closer to the busy Baltic shores than to the slow, deep heartland of Moscow.
Whatever the facts of the case, at the end of 1569, and accompanied by a large force of Oprichniki, Ivan the Terrible set out in great secrecy for Novgorod. He did not want the city to know he was coming. Even the commander of the advance guard did not know where they were going. Any passing traveller they met was immediately killed, so that no news of the advance would travel.
In January Novgorod was punished.
Exactly how many died in the torture, burning and executions that followed is not clear. They certainly numbered thousands. The city of Novgorod, so valuable to Russia over the previous centuries, was so utterly devastated that it never recovered. Having already killed most of its more important citizens on the road, Ivan only executed forty people at Pskov and burned a few priests at the stake. Then he returned to Alexandrovskaya Sloboda.
It was just after this that two small events of interest took place at Russka.
The first was the birth to Elena of a baby son. Boris had still not returned from the Novgorod campaign and so she and Stephen the priest had to choose a name. They chose Feodor, and so Stephen baptized him. That same day, the priest sent a letter to Boris to let him know what he had done.
The second event centred upon Daniel the monk. For in April 1570, still anxious to enrich the monastery, he hit upon a plan.
It concerned the oxhide that the Tsar had sent. It was so cunning, and so daring, that for centuries afterwards it would be known as ‘Daniel’s Ruse’.
When the abbot first heard of it, he went white with terror.
1571
Boris scowled, as well he might. The snow in the market place at Russka had long since been trampled and packed down until it was hard as stone. The few stalls in the market place that had opened out of habit were now being shut. No chink of sunlight had appeared in the cloud cover and none had been expected; and now the short day, like the stalls, was closing down.
He scowled because he saw Mikhail and his family. They were standing beside the remains of the single fire that had been lit in the centre of the market place. Mikhail did not answer his look, but stared at him without hope. What was there to hope for, after all?
There was a week to go before the beginning of Lent; yet what could the Lenten fast mean that year, when the harvest had failed for the third time running the summer before? That morning, in Dirty Place, he had seen a family eating ground birch bark. Bark from the trees – the peasant’s last resort when the grain was all gone. Few had supplies to last them through two failed harvests. None could get past three.
The monastery had helped feed the worst cases, but even its reserves were running low. There had been plague in some of the northern areas. Two of the families in Dirty Place had run away last year. There had been greater desertions in other villages.
‘The people are leaving the land,’ a fellow landlord had remarked to him, ‘and there’s nothing we can do.’
Where did they go? East, he supposed. East to the new lands by the Volga. But how many of them, he wondered, ever got there in the mighty, icy winter?
Mikhail and his cursed family. How they must hate him.
Since Karp had gone off with their horse, the family had not recovered. They had replaced the horse, and got through the second bad harvest; but they had had to dig into their money reserve to keep going. There was no more talk of buying their freedom. As for running away, like the others, he guessed that Mikhail had concluded he was safer with his young children near a monastery than trying to survive out in the great eastern wilds.
Now the peasant spoke to him.
‘Spare a kopek, Boris Davidov. At least for the bear.’
He noticed the bitter irony in the request. Let my children starve but take pity on the animal – that was the message.
‘Damn your bear,’ he said, and walked on.
The bear was as gaunt as the peasants now. It had never performed its tricks for Mikhail the way it had for Karp; in its raging hunger it would probably turn nasty. It stood there, haggard in its chains. Why on earth didn’t they kill it?
Boris turned to look up at the watchtower that rose, tall and grey, over the gateway. He had been going up there every day of late. For on top of all their troubles, word had come that an attack was expected from the Crimean Tatars from the south. So far, nothing had come, but Boris scanned the horizon anxiously, each day.
He had just come down from there now. Up in the high, pointed tent roof, gazing out through the eastern window at the huge, flat spaces, he had been alone with his thoughts. Out there, far away, lay the Volga and distant Kazan. Out there lay the huge eastern empire of the Tsar. Why, after their holy crusade, had the heartland been turned to icy stone, famine and dejection? As he stared out at the endless greyness, it had seemed to Boris that Russka was swallowed up and lost in the long half-night of winter. Nothing moved upon the landscape. The sky, though always overcast, was empty. The snow, which he usually thought of as a protection for the earth, now seemed to him like a coating of misery that had been hardened by the biting winter wind. Everything was grey. From his high place, he could make out the big field at Dirty Place which that day looked like a large, unmarked grave.