Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [105]
‘Then,’ he told the steward, ‘I’m going to Novgorod on business. I shall return from there in the spring.’
He made no inspections this time, but contented himself with walking around and watching the villagers at work.
One of the activities he liked to watch was the threshing.
This took place on a space cleared beside the little kilns where the grain was dried by smoking.
The sheaves were threshed in two ways. Some were hit with sticks and flails: this was the men’s work. But the more delicate method, performed by the women, used a horizontal log, on two upright supports. By tapping the sheaf on the log, the grain was knocked out but the long straw was preserved for weaving and plaiting. The rye straw was especially long and soft, yet strong enough for rope making.
Milei often walked past and paused to watch. Though the women were at first a little frightened by the presence of this big, Turkish-looking lord with his hard eyes and yellow hair, they soon got used to him. He did not seem to be looking at anything in particular.
But Yanka soon sensed that he was. She could feel it.
She was always neatly dressed; but the second day he came by, he noticed that the smock she was wearing had one of her bird designs embroidered on the front, and that she had tied her belt just a fraction tighter than usual, so that as she bent and then raised her arm, he could clearly see the outline of her body.
Indeed, to Milei, worldly though he was, there was something magical in this little village scene, miles from anywhere, with this pretty, clean young creature working with the other women before him.
He had been away from home for a long time. He felt strong, but he knew he was getting older; and this girl was different.
He felt strangely refreshed, as though in this magical late summer season, in this place apart, it had been granted him for a few days to step outside the passing of the years.
He did not speak to her, nor she to him. But they were both aware of each other and of this thought which, as inevitable as the coming of the shadows, seemed to join them in the bright silence of the afternoon.
On the fourth day, in the early evening, as he was standing alone gazing out over the reddening field across the river, she came towards him, smiled, and passed on.
The day before he was due to leave, Milei the boyar received his rents.
They brought him sacks of grain and young pigs. Half the pigs were usually slaughtered before winter. They brought him lambs and baby goats. One family, who had elected to pay in money instead of kind, brought him a pile of the rabbit skins bearing an official stamp, that were the small currency of that time and place.
They brought him beaver skins that he could trade.
It was a haunting little scene, with peasants dragging forward pigs and cattle. The cattle still wore the wooden bells that were hung round their necks when they were put out to feed in the woods after harvest. A melancholy clinking filled the autumn air as they came before the lord and were marked for killing.
Milei, though he was pleased with the rents, felt a sadness at the thought that he was about to leave this place. At the end of the proceedings, when it was almost dusk, he rose and, signalling to the steward that he wished to be alone, left the hamlet for a last walk along the river’s edge.
The shadows were long; the trees seemed very tall in the silence.
He was surprised a little later, though not displeased, to find the girl in front of him on the path. Below them lay the still, glassy river. He saw that she wished to speak, and stopped.
This time, she looked straight at him with those strange, half-sad eyes.
‘Take me with you, lord.’
He gazed at her.
‘Where to?’
‘To Novgorod. Isn’t that where you are going?’
He nodded.
‘You don’t like it here?’ he asked quietly.
‘I must leave.’
He looked at her curiously. What was troubling her?
‘Is your father unkind?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not. What’s that to you?’ She took a deep breath. ‘Take me with you.’
‘You want