Russka: The Novel of Russia

  ‘What do you mean? The Tsar can’t abolish the Patriarch. He isn’t God.’

  But Nikita only shook his head. ‘You don’t know him,’ he said quietly.

  Yet if these matters depressed him, the news of the war, at least, was very encouraging. After some false starts, Peter had succeeded in getting his first foothold on the Baltic. He had not yet managed to hold any of the great Baltic ports like Reval or Riga; but the previous year he had got back a fort up by Lake Ladoga, by the entrance to the River Neva where, centuries before, the legendary Alexander Nevsky had driven back old Russia’s enemies. ‘There’s only one more fort up there – it’s where the Neva runs into the sea,’ Nikita explained. ‘Once he has that, he’s got access to the sea. Not much of one,’ he added with a smile, ‘but enough for him to claim a victory!’

  A week later the news came. It was brought by Procopy. ‘He’s got the fort. There’s been a battle on the River Neva with a Swedish flotilla: he won that too. The Tsar’s got his foothold in the north.’

  He had indeed. It was a desolate, marshy place: the name Neva, in Finnish, meant ‘marsh’. There was really nothing there but a fort. However, the River Neva led to Lake Ladoga, and from there one could penetrate the huge river system of north Russia. Compared to Reval or Riga further south along the Baltic coast, it was nothing much.

  But in 1703, it was what Peter had. And he was delighted. He awarded himself and his favourite Menshikov the Order of St Andrew, which he had recently instituted. He let it be known that he would enter Moscow in triumph in June. And he immediately set to work to build a new and stronger fort at the place, having a stout log house built for himself on the river bank near its foundations.

  ‘So what are we to call this new fort of the Tsar’s?’ Nikita asked.

  ‘The Peter and Paul Fortress,’ Procopy replied. ‘When I left,’ he added, ‘he was talking of building a town up there too. You know how he gets these sudden ideas.’

  ‘A town? Up there in the marshes?’

  ‘I know. It doesn’t make much sense. Perhaps he’ll change his mind.’

  ‘And what does he want to call it?’ Nikita demanded.

  Procopy grinned.

  ‘St Petersburg, I believe.’

  And it was just while they were digesting this preposterous idea that a messenger arrived with news that drove all thought of Peter’s little victory from Nikita’s mind.

  It was his steward from Russka.

  And it seemed that the whole place had gone completely mad.

  All along, perhaps, Daniel had known that it would come to this.

  He had known it in his heart three years before, when old Silas the priest had died. That had been in the summer, just six months after his own return from Moscow.

  It was remarkable, really, that the little community had been able to continue for so long, even up to then. It could not have done so without friends.

  In the first place, there was the abbot. Daniel had always strongly suspected, but only in his last few months did old Silas positively tell him, that the abbot was a sympathizer.

  ‘He knows what we do and says nothing. That is why nobody bothers us,’ Silas explained.

  The other danger might have been the Bobrov steward: but he was one of the Raskolniki himself and attended their secret services.

  The third, and equally important friend, was Eudokia Bobrov.

  Her interest in the community had to be secret. Only Silas, Daniel and his family knew, and they all agreed that there could be no other way. The villagers themselves did not know. Had Nikita himself ever guessed, needless to say, he would have clamped down at once. But if ever an icon, a prayer book, some candles were needed, mysteriously Silas or Daniel had always found the money and the needed articles had appeared.

  ‘We remember you in our prayers, good lady,’ Daniel had told her.

  The monastery was lax but conformed. If once the Bobrovs had been suspected under the old regime, under Peter they were trusted. Russka was rather a backwater anyway. So for nearly two decades, while many Raskolniki left the centre of Russia for the frontier lands, and while there might be trouble at Nizhni Novgorod or on die Don, the authorities had just assumed that Russka was quiet. As for Dirty Place – who had even heard of it?

  In the early spring of 1703, Silas had told Daniel he was dying.

  ‘I shall go this summer. You must take over.’

  ‘I too am old,’ Daniel protested.

  ‘You are the only one who can lead them,’ Silas replied.

  ‘Yet how shall I be ordained a priest?’ Daniel asked.

  For this was now, and would always remain, the central problem of the Raskolniki.

  They were the true Church yet outside the Church. No bishops had joined them and so there was, technically, no one to ordain priests. As the last of the original priests in the movement – men like Silas, who had been ordained before the Schism – died out, how were they to be replaced?

  Some Raskolniki were prepared, if they could find one, to take on a disaffected priest from the new Church, as long as he underwent a ritual purification. Others used the old method, which the Church now frowned on, of electing their own parish priest. In the old days, such a man was submitted to the bishop for ordination. Now, without bishops, he remained an elder, recognized by his congregation alone.

  Officially, therefore, when Silas died, it was decided that the congregation at Dirty Place should go to the church at Russka – though a priest from the monastery would go to the little church in the hamlet from time to time to hold a service in the proper manner.

  Unoffically, however, having carefully washed and purified the little church whenever the priest from the monastery had come there, the Raskolniki of Dirty Place, led now by Daniel, continued their own services in secret.

  At the end of the year there came another crisis. The steward died.

  What if Bobrov should send a new man who was not of their persuasion?

  Immediately Daniel wrote a letter and Nikita was rather puzzled, a few days later, when Eudokia said to him: ‘Let me choose a new steward for Dirty Place. I know the estate far better than you.’

  Since he had many other things on his mind, Nikita had agreed and rather forgotten about the matter; while at Christmas Daniel had been delighted to welcome the new young steward in the little church at Dirty Place.

  But the greatest threat to their safety still remained.

  It is sometimes thought that Peter was liberal over matters of religion. And up to a point this is true. A year before, in 1702, he had not only authorized Protestants to worship freely but his laws had proclaimed the principle of religious toleration – certainly something no Tsar before would ever have dreamed of.

  That same year, encountering a whole area full of Raskolniki up in the north, he had told them they might worship as they pleased so long as they produced a certain quantity of iron for his war effort. As time went on, though, Peter often fulminated against them and their old-fashioned ways; he also, rather contemptuously, issued laws which allowed Raskolniki to practise – but made them pay double taxes and wear a distinguishing yellow badge on their coats.

  It was freedom – though of a rather poor kind; but some found they could live by it.

  Yet for many Raskolniki, Peter had done nothing at all. For the one thing that he still absolutely demanded of all men, was the one thing they could not give: total loyalty and obedience to the Tsar and his new, secularized state. How could they obey him when they were coming to see him as the Antichrist himself?

  Above all there was one unchanging requirement to which they could not yield.

  ‘We cannot, in conscience, pray for the health of the Tsar,’ Daniel declared. ‘That is impossible. If we do that, then we deny all that we believe in.’

  Maryushka was with some other Russka children, fishing in the river on the monastery side, the morning that the abbot died.

  They knew that something must have happened when they saw the m
onks hurrying about at the gate, calling the lay brothers in from the fields. A few moments later, the church bell started to ring.

  That the abbot would die one day was to be expected. He was very old. But in fact he had dropped quite suddenly, in the monastery library, hence the confusion. Curious as always, the children had run to the monastery gates. At first the monks ignored them. But a lay brother soon told them; and immediately Maryushka ran off to tell her father.

  And when she saw the look that Daniel gave Arina, she understood that this death meant something very serious indeed.

  Yet at first, Maryushka thought she liked the new abbot. He was a pleasant-looking man in his fifties, with a round face and very pale blue eyes, who would stop to talk to children in Russka.

  But he was an outsider. The death of the old abbot had caused a visitation from the authorities. They had not been impressed with what they saw; the election of a new abbot was stopped and the monks, to their great annoyance, had had this new man imposed upon them from Vladimir.

  He had arrived in early May. Two weeks later, he had become suspicious of what was going on at Dirty Place. A week after that, two strangers arrived at the monastery, and were closeted with him for some time.

  How warm the church always seemed to Maryushka.

  It was a simple, wooden building with a little octagonal tower over its centre. One came up a flight of wooden steps to the covered porch by the west door; though beneath this was an undercroft with a stove where they often gathered in the depth of winter.

  Inside the church, though the wooden ceiling hid the tower itself from view, the room was high and light streamed in through the open windows. There was a little iconostasis of four tiers, although the top row, the prophets, was so close to the ceiling that it had to be set at an angle. All the painting had been done by local artists, some of it very crude; overall, it looked reddish, rather squashed and friendly.

  It was a warm, late afternoon in early summer. The sun was gently lighting up the icons of the local saints beside the Royal Doors. In the shadows in the corners, candles had been lit before other, darker icons.

  The whole village was there, standing together in the stillness, while little particles of dust danced in the long shafts of sunlight above. Sometimes, when the village was at prayer like this – the men with their long beards, the women with scarves tied over their heads – it seemed to her as though they were timeless: as though the present itself, having been foreshadowed, was also a memory, dreamlike in its quality.

  This was her family: the people with whom – such was the will of God – she was to live and die. And for that very reason, she belonged to them and they to her in the gentle, warm intimacy of the little church.

  Her father was conducting the service. Still, though she was nine, she saw him as a Patriarch – as unshakable, as timeless as one of the prophets on the iconostasis. He, like Silas, will die, she knew. Yet he will never die. He will be with me here, always. She stood beside her mother. As she sang the responses, how lovely, yet how sad her voice sounded.

  They had just reached the Litany when Maryushka noticed the two visitors quietly enter the little church. Other heads turned also.

  She saw them bow, and make the sign of the cross with two fingers before standing reverently at the back.

  Her father, too, had seen them. For an instant, as he began the prayers, she saw him hesitate. But then, looking up as though for guidance, he solemnly went on.

  As he went through the prayers, she tried to concentrate. But she could not help looking back to see what the strangers were doing. Nothing, it seemed.

  Was there something even more fervent than usual in Daniel’s prayers? Was there, on that quiet, late afternoon, some particular tinge of sadness, yet of warmth in her mother’s singing?

  It was as Daniel raised his hand for the final benediction that the two men suddenly stepped forward.

  ‘Stop the service!’ one cried.

  ‘This is an affront to the Church and to the Tsar,’ announced the other.

  Slowly, carefully, Daniel completed the benediction. Then, gazing down at them, he asked: ‘You have something to say to me?’

  ‘You make the sign of the cross with two fingers,’ the first called out.

  Daniel said nothing.

  ‘Why have you not prayed for His Majesty, the Tsar?’ demanded the other.

  Again, Daniel did not answer.

  How fine he looks, Maryushka thought. Truly this is Elijah himself.

  No one in the congregation moved.

  ‘We shall take you with us,’ the first said to Daniel.

  ‘I shall stay here.’

  It was a simple statement. As the two men glanced round at the congregation they saw a dozen silent, bearded faces which told them they would not.

  ‘We’ll see how you like to argue with the Tsar’s troops,’ they said. ‘They will persuade you to pray for the Tsar.’

  Daniel shook his head slowly.

  ‘The Tsar is Antichrist,’ he said simply.

  The men gasped.

  ‘You dare to say so?’

  Daniel looked at them steadily. The words had been spoken. It was inevitable, one day, that they must be. What choice did he have?

  He continued to stare at them, silently.

  ‘Shall we deal with them, Father?’ It was a young man from the back. ‘We could drown them.’

  Daniel turned his gaze towards him.

  ‘God forgive you for your angry thought,’ he said quietly. ‘Let them depart in peace.’

  As Maryushka watched the two men leave, she could feel the little congregation fill with dread. They all turned back to Daniel, looking for guidance.

  ‘My children,’ he said, ‘we must continue to pray together, hopeful always of deliverance. But, we must also be prepared. For now, it may be, the time of suffering is at hand.’

  It was an hour later that he wrote the letter which, it was agreed, the steward should carry to Moscow.

  Nikita Bobrov was beside himself.

  The news this wretched fellow brought was bad enough. But the letter! It was beyond his worst nightmares. He shook with anger.

  ‘What in the world is to become of the Bobrovs now?’ he cried. And suddenly, for the first time in years, the clever, mocking face of Peter Tolstoy rose up in his imagination. ‘So, you devil,’ Nikita shouted to the empty room, ‘you expect to see me humiliated a second time!’

  The fact was that the young steward had panicked. Though he was a sympathizer of the Raskolniki, he was not made of such stern stuff as Daniel and his friends. Nor was he part of their community. When the two spies came he had been terrified. His first thought was to flee into the forest; but that he rejected as impractical.

  It was just as he was wondering how to escape that Daniel came to see him with his letter.

  ‘Go to the Lady Eudokia with this,’ the old man ordered. ‘You are the steward. No one will hinder you if you leave quickly.’

  It was all the bidding he needed. Long before dark, he was riding towards the capital. But when he got there – what should he say? What should he do?

  The first thing to do was to open the letter. He did so carefully, read it slowly, and sealed it again. It was as he suspected. Daniel had given Eudokia a brief account of what had taken place, asked for help if she could give any, and if not, ended with an expression of their mutual faith.

  And I’m part of it, he thought grimly. Lady or not, they’ll find out: she’ll die for it along with them, and so will I.

  There was only one chance. Give the letter to Nikita himself.

  Perhaps, somehow, he can hush it up, the steward thought. Anyway, he’s the only man who can protect me.

  So it was that the distraught fellow had arrived at the house, and handed the letter to Nikita.

  Nor was it surprising that Nikita should have been beside himself.

  ‘What can have possessed you?’ he shouted at his wife. ‘No one among us nobles has taken an
interest in these accursed people for twenty years!’

  ‘It may not be the fashion but I did what was right,’ she answered stiffly.

  ‘Right! You think it right to refuse to pray for the Tsar and call him Antichrist? Can’t you see – it’s not just a question of religion: your carpenter isn’t merely one of the Raskolniki, he’s committed treason!’

  ‘Because of his faith.’

  ‘The Tsar isn’t interested in his faith. He’s interested in treason,’ Nikita yelled.

  That was the point, Eudokia thought. That was exactly why so many Russians called him Antichrist.

  ‘Nor will the Tsar take kindly to our family being involved,’ Nikita pointed out. ‘If we didn’t know, the fact that some of our peasants were traitors might be overlooked. But,’ he waved the letter, ‘there is proof we are involved. I myself, and perhaps you, could be knouted. Our lands will very likely be taken away. Procopy’s career is probably finished. Whatever your views, I do not understand how you can do this to your family – a second time.’

  And at this reference to her part in his own ruin, he thought he saw a trace of awkwardness in her manner.

  ‘Whatever we do,’ he concluded grimly, ‘we shall have to act fast.’

  That evening a family conference was held between Nikita and his son, together with Andrei and Pavlo. As Nikita truly said, he needed any good advice he could get. And never, as he said afterwards, had he been more glad that the old Cossack had become such a canny fellow.

  As a result of this meeting, two pairs of men rode out of Moscow that very night.

  The first pair was Procopy and the steward. They set out for a distant Bobrov estate.

  The second pair consisted of Andrei and his son. They rode quickly, taking with them spare horses.

  They were making their way to Russka.

  The abbot was not a bad man, but he had no intention of allowing such things to go on in a village beside his own monastery lands.