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.
She took their children over to Russka to the wooden church there, and he did not object. This made her happy.
Her father had taken another wife. She was glad. Shortly after they had arrived at Dirty Place he had come to see them and, taking her aside, had pressed into her hand the bag of silver coins he had brought with him from the south. ‘I don’t think Kiy is ever coming back,’ he said. ‘So it’s all for you.’ She understood it was his way of making amends, and since then they had been friends.
She had showed the coins to Purgas and he had inspected them carefully. Some, he told her, came from Constantinople and were very old. Some were Russian, from the time of Monomakh. But some puzzled him.
‘The writing here seems Slav,’ he told her, ‘but what can this be?’ And he pointed to a strange, oriental-looking script. ‘I think I have seen it on an icon,’ he said.
It was Hebrew. For the coins came from Poland and bore inscriptions both in Slavic and in Hebrew, thanks to the ancient Khazar community there.
They hid them under the floor. Who knew when they might be needed?
Purgas was not only a hunter; he worked hard on their land, and it was not long before they were living well. She had nothing to complain of.
Only one thing about her husband irritated Yanka. It was the same habit of mind that the elder had told her about when she first came to Russka; but her Mordvinian husband seemed to have it to a greater degree. He would not plan for the future. ‘None but crows fly straight,’ he would remind her if she pushed him for some decision. To him, each season, each day, was there to be lived through, cautiously, as if it might be one’s last.
Once, after they had been arguing over some matter of this kind, he went off into the forest and returned several hours later with a deer he had killed. ‘If he made plans for next week,’ he gently told her, ‘they were in vain.’
‘But I’m not an animal,’ she protested impatiently. To which he only smiled and shrugged.
She loved him, all the same. He gave her three children and great happiness. The villagers respected him.
And at least once a year the steward of Milei the boyar approached them with more and more tempting offers from the boyar to come as his tenants to Russka. Which they always refused. ‘We’re Black People,’ she said simply. ‘We’re our own master here.’
As the years passed, she had grown stout. Her face had filled out. And she was content.
Yet even now, she could still be amazed by her husband. What, for instance, had come over him the previous evening?
For the night before, learning what had happened with the tax gatherers at Russka, the foolish men of the hamlet had wanted to ambush and kill them. And Purgas was in favour.
News of the trouble in the northern towns had come downriver a few days before. The free peasants of the hamlet were excited.
‘You’re mad,’ she told them. ‘Russka didn’t revolt.’
‘Because the boyar’s in league with the Tatars,’ one of the men said.
‘But they’ll come and kill us all.’
They didn’t believe her.
‘We’re not afraid,’ the young men claimed.
‘When I was a boy, beyond the Volga,’ Purgas remarked, ‘a young fellow wasn’t ready to marry until he’d killed a man. That was the custom among the real Mordvinians.’
‘You foolish pagan,’ she shouted. ‘You don’t understand.’
And she outlined to them the might, the incredible might of the empire on whose edge they lay.
‘They would destroy us all,’ she told them. ‘They would never give up.’
‘So,’ Purgas quietly said, ‘you’re on the boyar’s side now.’
She opened her mouth. Then closed it. What could she say? She remembered the evening at the inn and how Milei’s words had shocked her. In a way, they still did; yet now that she was older, now that she had seen the Tatars take over the north too, she had to admit he had been right. ‘Hide whatever you can,’ she told them, ‘pay up but make them think they’ve ruined you. Otherwise, we’ll be destroyed.’
Eventually, she won. Even Purgas promised to do as she asked. Then the preparations began.
That day, it had gone as she had predicted. The tax farmers had arrived soon after dawn, thinking to catch the hamlet unawares. They had quickly emptied half the grain store and taken most of the livestock they could find; but before dawn, Purgas and the men had hidde
n the rest in the marshes which the visitors did not know how to penetrate. By early morning, they were already preparing to move on.
While they took the grain, Yanka had gone for a walk. Without especially thinking where she was going, she drifted along the path towards Russka. Perhaps I’ll go and see Father, she thought.
Though it was still early, the sun was already getting warm. The path took her by a small opening in the trees where there were some little mounds, old Viatichi tombs, and a pleasant view towards Russka. It was very quiet. And it was just as she came to this place that she stopped, transfixed.
Surely it must be a vision.
Peter the Tatar was pleased with his day. The setting for the monastery was just what he wanted. It was time he made his peace with God. ‘A man without religion has no peace,’ the official in Rostov had urged him. It was true.
The Khan at Sarai, after all, was now a Moslem. Why, even the new Great Khan himself had abandoned the old sky worship and shaman cults of Genghis. And the new supreme head, Kubla Khan, had taken the Buddhist religion of the Chinese he ruled.
That all men should bow before the Great Khan, Peter had no doubt. But with the passing of the years, and the shameful power struggles and intrigues amongst the Golden Kin for the greatest offices, Peter’s bright passion for the empires of men had dimmed. Even the childhood memory of Genghis himself, the ruler of the world at his royal hunt, now seemed more like a memory of a bygone world and less like a vision of heaven.
There was one God in heaven, one lord upon earth.
Perhaps, he considered, if I had been more successful, if Batu Khan had not died and I had become a general, I might yet hunger for earthly things.
His career was over, though. He would keep his position, but go no higher. He accepted it. Thanks to his sister, while Batu and her son lived, he had done well and had amassed a splendid fortune.
He missed the steppe. Often, just before sleeping, he would think of its huge open spaces, and the swaying grasses.
Two years before, he had gone across the steppe to Sarai. It was there, from some Alans, that he had bought the magnificent grey stallion he now rode, with the black mane and stripe down its back. It was bred below the Caucasus Mountains, of the noble breed they called hoarfrost.
‘But that, I think, may be the last time I shall see Sarai,’ he said sadly to his wife. An instinct told him he would pass the rest of his days in Russia.
He had paused at the edge of the woods for a last look back at his new acquisition, dismounting and walking over to the highest of the little mounds by the path there, for a better view.
His face softened as he gazed at the place.
Idly, he brushed away a fly that had decided to settle on the place where his ear had once been. Then he frowned.
Something was bothering his horse.
Afterwards, she could never explain to herself how it was that the madness had seized her: for madness it certainly was, even to think of such a thing.
And yet, it was as if she could not have done anything else. She had always sworn she would. Though she had had many other things to think about in recent years, deep down that promise to herself had remained, and hardened into a certainty. One day, she knew, I shall see him, and my chance will come.
Now, quite suddenly, there he was, standing on a mound not fifteen paces from her. Even from behind, she recognized him – the Tatar with the missing ear!
He was alone. She looked up and down the path. No one was coming.
What brought him here? She supposed he must have come to see the tax gatherers, who were about to leave. Whatever the reason, providence had given him to her, alone and unguarded. Madness it was; but she knew, with absolute clarity, that she would never have another chance like this again.
Before her, her mother’s face suddenly appeared.
She crept forward. His horse was standing by a tree. On its back was a bow, and a quiver of arrows. Carefully she reached up, took the bow and a single arrow, laying the arrow across the bow and feeling the pull. How hard it was. She could hardly bend it. Her heart was pounding, but she began to move towards him.
The horse stirred and snorted angrily.
And now the Tatar turned.
It was him. There was the scar, running to the missing ear. She remembered his face as if she had seen him only yesterday. He looked amazed and began to raise his hand. He had no idea who she was.
She took a deep breath and pulled on the bow. She pulled with all her strength, her face puckering up as though in acute pain. He was coming towards her. She pulled, then released.
‘Ah.’
It was her own outburst of breath that she heard. Then she heard his cry.
He was still coming towards her. His hand was flailing wildly. She began to back away towards his horse. He was on his knees now. The arrow was sticking through him, in the middle of his stomach.
What was that noise? He was hissing something at her. She was trembling violently.
He stayed where he was, his hands on the arrow, tugging at it. Then she saw his face go very white, and he fell sideways. And now the thought came to her. It came with huge force, like a soundless thunderclap of fear in a nightmare: what could she possibly do now?
She looked around her again, and realized with sickening terror that someone was approaching along the path. If they will only kill me, and not my family, she prayed, as she waited, trembling, to face them.
It was Purgas. He took in everything with one glance, then gazed at her in astonishment.
She pointed to the Tatar, and Purgas examined him.
‘He’s not yet dead,’ he said calmly. Then, quietly, he undid his belt and throttled the Tatar.
For a few seconds, for the last time, Mengu, now called Peter, saw before him, and thought he smelt, the waving grasses of the steppe.
‘I thought you told us not to kill the Tatars,’ Purgas said with a soft chuckle, as he looked up at Yanka. ‘You knew him?’
She nodded.
‘Was this the one …?’
He knew a Tatar had killed her mother, but she had almost forgotten that she had told him a Tatar raped her as well. Whichever he meant, she nodded.
He looked around.
‘We can’t leave him here,’ he remarked.
‘They’ll kill us,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t think so. The tax gatherers have gone. That’s why I was going over to Russka. There’s no one to know.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘First,’ he said sadly, ‘we’ll have to kill this horse. And that,’ he glanced down at the dead man with disgust, ‘is a pity.’
Yanka never admired her husband’s skill more than on that day.
He seemed to know exactly what to do, and he moved with such speed.
First he placed the Tatar on the splendid horse. Then, speaking softly to the animal and calming it, he led the way deep into the marshes. There, in a deserted and hidden spot he dug a trench; and then, tethering the horse firmly so that its head was over the trench, he neatly slit open its windpipe. Completely taken by surprise, the horse started violently, tried to break away, and then crashed to its knees. When Purgas had gathered all the blood in the trench, he slit the Tatar’s throat too, and carefully drained the body.
An hour later, he had deftly cut up both horse and man into manageable pieces and these he began to burn on a fire. He also burned all the Tatar’s equipment except his cloak and lasso.
By noon, there was nothing left but a heap of burned bones, the skull of the Tatar, which for some reason he had not burned, and a heap of ashes which he pushed back into the trench as he filled it in. When he had done, and scattered debris on the ground, even if someone had ever found the place, they would never have known that he had dug there.
‘Now,’ he told her, ‘we need a tree. And I know of one quite near.’
About two hundred yards away he showed her a mighty oak. He pointed to a place, high up in its trunk, where there was a hole.
‘There use
d to be a bee-hive up there once,’ he told her. ‘I found it last year. It’s empty now, but below it there’s a deep hole hidden in the trunk. Now help me bring the bones here.’
Carrying them in the heavy cloak, in several journeys they brought the bones to the foot of the tree.
‘Now hand me the lasso,’ he said. And moments later he was high up in the branches by the opening in the tree. Letting down the rope he told her to tie the cloak to it, and one bundle at a time he dropped them down into the hollow. In half an hour they had vanished.
Then he burned the cloak and the lasso and scattered the ashes.
‘The Tatars will look in the river and in the ground,’ he said. ‘But they’ll never look up in the trees.’
‘But what about his head?’ she asked, pointing to the familiar face with its missing ear which was lying on the ground and gazing blankly up at her.
He smiled.
‘I have another plan for that.’
It was two more weeks before Milei the boyar returned from Russka to Murom. When he got there, he found the city much disturbed. There had been numerous refusals to pay taxes in the villages; several of the Moslem tax farmers had been attacked. The Tatar authorities were furious and retribution was expected. The Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky was said to be preparing to travel to the Khan to ask for leniency. Times were black.
And Peter the Baskak had disappeared.
Indeed, the very day Milei arrived a centurion came to ask him when he had last seen him.
‘He was on his way directly to Murom,’ he assured the soldier.
The investigation that followed was thorough. All the villages between Russka and Murom were visited and questioned. Since Russka was the place he was last seen, a search was made and the river downstream was dragged; but nothing was found. By late autumn, suspicion finally centred on a village near the Oka where there had been rioting; but there was no proof that Peter had even been there. It seemed that he had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
It was on the fourth day after his return that Milei told his great lie.