Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [10]
These were her people. They might call her a Mordvinian, but she was part of them. This was the community: the rod as the folk in the south called it, or the mir further north. They held their land and village in common – only a man’s household possessions were his own; and the voice of the elder was law.
Now her mother-in-law was calling to the women, encouraging them with the soft, caressing names.
‘Come, my daughters, my swans,’ she called, ‘let us reap.’ Even to Lebed she cried softly: ‘Come, my Little Swan.’
In a way, Lebed loved even her. ‘Eat what is cooked, listen to what is said,’ the older woman would tell her sternly. Yet apart from her outbursts of rage, she could sometimes be kindly.
Lebed glanced across the field. Beyond, a few hundred yards away, her husband and the men were loading hay on to carts in the meadow. Her brother was there too. By the side of the field, three of the oldest women were quietly resting. She looked for Kiy. He had been sitting with the old women a little earlier, but perhaps he had gone to watch the men.
‘The golden sun is in the sky
Moist Mother Earth will never be dry.’
The women sang and swung their sickles, stooping once more, as though in prayer to the greatest goddess who fed them all: Moist Mother Earth.
The great goddess of the Slavs took her finest form in that region. For the hamlet lay on the edge of the best of all the bands of soil on the great plain: the black earth.
There was nothing else like it on the Eurasian plain.
Up in the north, under the tundra, the soil was a peaty gley, poor for cultivation; next, under the forests, lay the sandy podzol soils – grey under the northern deciduous forests, brown as one came to the broad-leaved forests further south. In these soils, too, the yields were relatively poor. But as one came towards the steppe belt, a very different soil appeared. This was the black earth, the chernozem – glistening, soft, thick, rich as honey. And it stretched, for hundreds upon hundreds of miles, from the western coasts of the Black Sea, eastwards across the plain, past the great River Volga and far into Siberia. The Slavs who lived at the forest’s edge had only to clear a field and then crop it continually: on that rich black soil, they might raise crops for many years before the soil was exhausted, and then they would leave the field to grass over and clear another. It was a primitive and wasteful form of agriculture, but on the chernozem, a village could survive in this way for a long time without having to move to fresh soil. Besides, what need was there to worry – were not the forest and the plain both endless?
It was as the women paused between songs that she saw Mal strolling towards them. His face was red and covered with sweat.
‘Here comes Lazy-bones, looking for more work,’ one of the women cried mischievously. Even her mother-in-law laughed, and Lebed couldn’t help smiling. It was obvious from the slightly guilty look on his face that he had sneaked away on some pretext for a rest. She was only surprised that her son had not come with him.
‘Where’s Little Kiy?’ she asked.
‘Don’t know. Haven’t seen him all morning.’
She frowned. Where could the boy be? She turned and called to her mother-in-law.
‘May I go and find Little Kiy? He’s gone off somewhere.’
The large woman scarcely paused as she looked impassively at Lebed and her good-for-nothing brother. Then she shook her head. There was work to be done.
‘Go and ask the old women where he went,’ she said to Mal quietly.