Russka: The Novel of Russia

  1566

  October. A cold, dank, windswept day at the little town of Russka; the vaporous clouds so low that sometimes their skirts seem almost to touch the tent roof of the watchtower.

  A single figure is approaching, riding slowly up to the gates. His horse is black; on the front of its saddle are two little emblems: a dog’s head, because the rider is watchful, and a broom, because he will sweep away his master’s enemies.

  The rider, too, is dressed in black. He looks carelessly from side to side, because he is master of all in this region. A monk by the monastery gates, seeing him, ducks out of sight nervously. Even the abbot is awkward in his presence. In the town, and in nearby Dirty Place, they are terrified of him.

  It is over a year since he took his vows. They were biblical in tone, for he swore to love his master more than mother or father, son or daughter. He also swore to inform, instantly, upon anyone he suspects of disloyalty to his master, the Tsar.

  The figure in black is powerful, and feared. It is true, as his wife knows, that he is not happy. But it has never occurred to him to be so.

  It is his wife, now, that this grim figure has come to visit: for this is his home. His name is Boris Bobrov.

  For at last Ivan had struck at all his enemies. The blow was devastating and took them completely by surprise.

  In December 1564, without a word of explanation, he had left the city of Moscow with a huge baggage train and by St Nicholas’s Day had turned up at a fortified hunting lodge known as Alexandrovskaya Sloboda some forty miles north-east of the capital. No one knew what this evacuation meant.

  Then in January, word came: he had abdicated.

  Was it just a ruse?

  ‘In my opinion,’ Elena’s father told her, ‘the Tsar hasn’t been quite right in the head since Anastasia died. He’s decided the boyars poisoned her and he wants to get back at them. All the same,’ he added grimly, ‘there’s a kind of cunning in this business.’

  There was. The boyars, fearing the people, had to ask him back. And when he came, it was on his own terms.

  They were astounding. No ruler, perhaps, in all the world, had ever done such a thing. For after receiving a solemn oath from the boyars and the Church that he was free to rule exactly as he pleased and punish whom he would, Tsar Ivan split his realm in two. The greater part he left to be ruled in his name by boyars he trusted. But the smaller part he turned into a vast private estate, under his personal rule and peopled by his own handpicked servants.

  This personal fief he called, with dark irony, the Oprichnina – which meant the widow’s portion, the land a widow received for her upkeep after the husband died. His servitors were called Oprichniki; they formed a closed order, like the old Livonian and Teutonic orders of German knights, and they dressed in black.

  It was a state within a state. It was a police state. The Oprichniki could only be tried by their own courts – in effect, they were above the law. Part of Moscow was included; so was Suzdal and pockets of land above the Oka and south-west of Moscow. Most of the Oprichnina, however, lay up in the north, in the huge forest lands that spread above the loop of the Volga up to the distant northern port where the English mariners had landed. It was away from the old princely towns, a land of icebound monasteries, furs, huge salt beds, and rich northern traders. The mighty Stroganov family, those former peasants turned merchant princes, immediately petitioned the Tsar to be included in his state within a state.

  And only those loyal to Ivan might live there. At every estate, the Tsar’s inquisitors held court. If the landlord were loyal, he might remain; but if he had any connection with a magnate or one of the many princely families, he would almost certainly be thrown out, and given a poorer estate, if he were lucky, outside the Oprichnina instead.

  In this manner, the Oprichniki could be given the vacant estates for their upkeep, which they held, naturally, as service pomestie.

  The town of Russka was included in the Oprichnina; and so it was that inquisitors had come to interview the young landlord of Dirty Place.

  It was exactly what Boris wanted.

  ‘I serve the Tsar,’ he told them, ‘in all his wars. Let me, I beg you, be one of the Oprichniki. What could I desire more?’ And as he saw them make a note of this he added: ‘The Tsar himself may remember me. Let him know that he spoke with me, at dawn one morning, when we were returning from Kazan.’

  At this the inquisitor smiled grimly.

  ‘If that is so, Boris Davidov, the Tsar will remember you. The Tsar forgets nothing.’

  They continued to examine him carefully. They found no fault with his family. Though old, it boasted no great connections that might make it suspect. But there was one problem.

  ‘What of your wife’s family?’ they now asked him. ‘Your father-in-law has friends in quarters whose loyalty we are not sure of. What can you tell us about him?’

  And now Boris considered carefully. He did not, however, have to consider for long.

  ‘What,’ he asked quietly, ‘would you like to know?’

  A week later Boris was summoned to Moscow and after a brief interview was told he could keep the estate on service tenure and that he was accepted into the Oprichniki.

  ‘The Tsar remembered you,’ they said.

  Soon afterwards, though she did not know why, Elena heard that her father was deeply worried.

  The wind had dropped and the afternoon was already drawing to its close when Boris was served his meal.

  As soon as he sat down, the old serving man placed before him a plate of rye bread and a little jug of vodka. Staring straight in front of him, Boris steadily poured himself three small cups, throwing back his head as he downed each at a single draught. Elena said nothing. To her it seemed a rather vulgar habit which, no doubt, he had picked up from the other Oprichniki.

  He ate, for the most part, in silence. Elena sat at the other side of the heavy table and picked lightly at a few vegetables. It appeared that neither quite had the courage to start the conversation.

  It was not surprising. For the matter they would have to discuss was, if the rumours from Moscow were true, too terrible to speak about.

  The silence continued. Occasionally Boris, a little guardedly, allowed his eyes to rest on her, as though he were mulling over some abstract calculation of which she might, or might not, be a part. Once he turned to her and quietly asked after the health of Lev the merchant. On hearing that he was well he nodded his head, but said nothing. Lev was in charge of the collection of local taxes now and was therefore a fellow servant of the Oprichnina with Boris. They acted together in all official matters.

  ‘And our daughter?’ she asked him at length.

  The girl had been given in marriage to a young noble at the start of the year; he did not live within the Oprichnina, but he was modestly well-off and Boris had satisfied himself of the family’s loyalty. Elena suspected that he had been glad to get the girl – who was only twelve – out of his house and into that of her in-laws. Though he was always kind to his daughter, Elena knew that Boris had never really accepted her existence in place of the son he should have had.

  ‘She is well,’ he answered briefly. ‘I spoke to her father-in-law.’ It was not much; but she did not pursue the subject. From time to time, Boris glanced at her.

  Elena seldom went to Moscow now. Despite the fact that her family were there, she did not care to, nor did Boris encourage her to do so.

  Since the Oprichnina began, the atmosphere in the capital had been tense and often frightening. Right from the start there had been disappearances and word of executions. From the old princely cities came news of wholesale confiscations, great princes and magnates losing all their lands and being sent to miserable little farms on the distant frontiers of Kazan. ‘The whole business is disgusting,’ Elena’s father told her on one of her few visits to the city. ‘Half the people being executed have done nothing at all.’ She had heard that, the other day, one brave fellow called Gorbachev, following his fat
her to the block, had picked up his father’s head and told the people watching: ‘I thank God we both die innocent.’

  ‘You know what’s most frightening?’ her father had continued. ‘People think he’s kicking these people out to make room for his henchmen, these cursed Oprichniki! Forgive me, I know your Boris is one. But look carefully and you’ll see that’s not what he’s doing. Most of these confiscations haven’t been in Oprichnina lands at all. The Oprichnina is full of his supporters. He’s actually destroying the opposition outside; then he’ll turn these black-shirts loose upon all the rest of us. It’s a plot to destroy us all.’

  She had found the Oprichniki terrifying. Some were nobles and gentry but many were little more than peasants. ‘Some are even foreigners – just common mercenaries,’ her mother exclaimed in disgust. ‘They have no ties, nothing.’

  Indeed, in their black uniforms and cloaks they looked to Elena like some strangely vicious order of monks.

  There was something else her father told her, too.

  ‘Do you know what the latest orders from the Tsar have been? That if any foreigner asks about what’s happening, we are to deny that the Oprichnina exists. Can you imagine it? I was in a magnate’s house the other day, and an envoy from Lithuania was there. “What about this Oprichnina?” he asks our host. “Never heard of it,” says he. “But the Tsar’s holed up in a fort outside the city,” the fellow protests. “And what about those fellows in black shirts?” “Oh,” says the magnate, “that’s just a summer residence, and those are some of his servants, a sort of new regiment.” There were thirty of us in that room and none of us knew which way to look. But we all kept mum, of course.’

  That spring there had been a reprieve for a few of the exiles. But two Metropolitans had resigned, or been forced out, because they couldn’t stomach this new terror state.

  And now had come this latest, appalling news.

  As he looked at Elena, Boris tried to analyze what he saw. She was still the same girl he had married: quiet, a little nervous, anxious to please, yet at the same time capable of taking refuge from him in the web of family and women’s relationships from which he felt himself excluded. But there was something else now: suffering had given her a certain quiet dignity, a self-sufficiency that sometimes made him admire her and sometimes made him angry. Was her dignity a reproach to him; was it, even, a sign of scorn?

  Only when Boris had finished eating, only when to delay the question any longer would have been absurd, did she finally ask, very quietly: ‘So what really happened in Moscow?’

  What indeed? It had been Ivan’s own idea to call the great council of the people – the Zemsky Sobor. And to Boris and everyone else, it had seemed a good idea. Not of course that it was representative in any true sense. They had just collected together nearly four hundred of the gentry, clergy and some leading merchants into an assembly. But even so, that such a body existed at all was a remarkable concession to the people.

  For the war in the north had not been successful. Russia needed those Baltic towns, the Poles were opposing them, and the Tsar needed money. The idea of the Zemsky Sobor was to get approval for the war, and the tough new taxes needed, and to show the enemy that the whole country was behind it. The great assembly had met that July. They had agreed to all the Tsar proposed.

  There was just one problem. The impertinent assemblymen, supported by the new Metropolitan, petitioned Ivan to give up the Oprichnina. The Tsar was furious. And then …

  Elena watched her husband thoughtfully. It seemed to her that he hesitated. Did he feel guilty? Was he uncomfortable inside his protective skin?

  ‘They were traitors. The Tsar treated them like traitors,’ he said gruffly. ‘There are still many traitors, many Kurbskys to be rooted out.’

  Ah yes, she thought: Kurbsky. Of all the things that had turned the mind of Ivan on its present, dark path, perhaps nothing – at least since the death of Anastasia – was more important than the desertion of Prince Kurbsky. For in 1564 this commander, who had been one of those Boris had followed to Kazan, had suddenly defected to Lithuania.

  It was not that Kurbsky was so important in military terms: he wasn’t. But he had been a friend of Ivan’s since childhood. It was a desertion that had struck him to the heart.

  Historians have since studied a lengthy correspondence between Tsar Ivan and this exiled prince. It has been the centrepiece of several biographies. Recent scholarship reveals that this correspondence, like that other great classic of early Russian Literature, The Lay of Igor’s Host, may be a later forgery; but forgery or not, it is significant that the terror of Ivan began only months after the departure of this minor prince.

  ‘Is it true that the Tsar locked up the whole assembly?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘Only for six days.’

  ‘How many were executed?’

  ‘Only three.’

  ‘In public?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Then in front of all the people he had the tongues of all the others cut out?’

  ‘No. Fifty of them were beaten, that’s all. And quite right too.’

  ‘They had their tongues cut out?’

  ‘No. Only some of them.’ He paused, his face still giving nothing away. ‘There was a plot, you know. They had plotted treason.’

  ‘Was it proved?’

  ‘There was a plot. That’s all.’ He got up from the table. ‘There’ll be no more assemblies, I can tell you that,’ he added with a short, awkward laugh.

  Elena did not ask any more. She did not ask if he had taken part. She did not want to know. What could she say? What could she do? Slowly, a little tentatively, she went over to him and put her arm around him in the hope that, perhaps, her love might cure his evil. But he knew that her love included forgiveness, and, being unable to submit to that, turned silently away. Only by the just perceptible hunching of his shoulders did she know that he was protecting himself from her. If only she could help him, and help herself in this darkening night. Indeed, she secretly decided in her inner heart, she would even sacrifice herself to save what she saw – how could she not? – as his lost soul. But saving a soul, perhaps, took more skill than she had.

  That night, when they were lying together, she tried to give herself. Yet he, like an animal that has tasted blood, wanted no other diet. How could she abandon herself to the simple, wild passion, the exercise, as she saw it, of a cat in the night, when it was just this animal in him that she feared? And how could he, seeking escape, seeking a companion who could match her strength to his, how could he find solace in her love which came with a prayer?

  He slept fitfully. She, having given herself but knowing instinctively that it was not enough, pretended to sleep.

  He moved about. At dawn she saw him gazing through the parchment that covered the window, at the grey light of dawn.

  He turned and, seeing her awake, knowing her to have been long awake, remarked: ‘I go back to Moscow tomorrow.’

  Should she beg him to stay? She did not know. Besides, a feeling of failure, of lassitude, began to overtake her.

  ‘Stephen the priest’s wife is sick,’ she remarked dully. ‘I forgot to tell you.’

  Whenever Mikhail the peasant surveyed his family, he knew that his plan was right. His eldest son was married now, and living at the other end of the village: he was not worried about him.

  He also had another son and a daughter living, both under ten.

  And then there was Karp: there was the problem.

  ‘Turning twenty and not yet married,’ he would comment ruefully. ‘What am I to do with him?’

  ‘More to the point, what are half the husbands in the region going to do to him?’ the old steward had remarked.

  He was undeniably attractive to women. Slim, dark-haired, athletic, it was not only that he moved with such ease and grace, that he rode a plough horse and made it seem like a charger; it was not even his bold, rather smoky brown eyes that scanned any crowd for a pretty face. It wa
s something inside him, something wild and free that did not belong in the confines of the village. Many women experienced a little frisson when they saw him. A few girls in Russka had allowed themselves to be seduced. Several more of the married women had secretly made themselves available. It delighted him first to conquer, then to search out, which he did neatly and deftly, what would give pleasure.

  In a way, worried as he was, Mikhail was not sorry to have Karp in the house, for he was certainly a help. Despite the difficult conditions and the extra labour he had had to give Boris, the peasant and his son had managed to produce good profits from their grain.

  There was also one other, quite unexpected source of income which had come their way.

  It had come three years before when Mikhail had found, in the forest nearby, a little bear cub whose mother had been killed by some hunters. Seeing the poor creature, only a few weeks old, he had not the heart to leave it or kill it, and to the amusement of the village had brought it home. His wife had been furious. ‘Am I supposed to feed it?’ she cried.

  But to his surprise, Karp had been delighted. He had an extraordinary way with animals; by the time the bear was eighteen months old, Karp had taught it to do a little dance and to perform several tricks. He would happily unchain the animal to let it perform better.

  Often he could earn a few coins for the bear’s performances in the little Russka market. Twice, already, he had gone up the river all the way to Vladimir and returned with several dengi.

  ‘He won’t make our fortune,’ Karp had remarked, ‘but he pays for his keep, with a tidy profit besides.’

  By this and other means, very secretly so as not to arouse jealousy or suspicion, Mikhail had been putting by money. His aim was simple.

  ‘I’ll make enough to buy myself out from the lord Boris. And I’ll leave some over so that Ivanko can follow us in a year or two if he wants,’ he told his family.

  For things in Russka were going to get worse. His cousin Lev, who collected the taxes locally, admitted as much to him. ‘The Tsar would like to tax the rest of Muscovy and let the Oprichnina lands off,’ the merchant said. ‘But the fact is, he needs money desperately. It’s going to be hard.’ No doubt Boris would squeeze him further too. It was time to leave.