Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [106]
‘I want to go with you.’
There was something desperate about her. He had not observed it before, and if he had been a young man, he might have found it a little frightening. She was like a rusalka, haunting him from a river. Yet all the same, she seemed quite self-possessed.
He thought of her body.
‘What would your father say?’
She shrugged.
So that was it. He thought he guessed. He looked at her calmly, with a new frankness.
‘And what would you do for me, if I took you with me?’
She stared back at him, with equal calmness.
‘Whatever you want.’
It was her only chance. He did not know that, if he refused, she had decided to kill herself.
‘Very well,’ he said.
He turned to go back. The river below was a pale ribbon of light; the woods were already dark.
It was a long journey – nearly four hundred miles north-west to the lands by the Baltic Sea. Yet as soon as she left Russka with the boyar and his retinue of half a dozen men, she felt a sense of excitement.
It was also, for a time, uncomfortable. For the boyar had sent the boats downriver again and told her they were to ride to Novgorod.
‘You can ride, can’t you?’
She could ride the farm horses, of course, but it would not occur to a peasant to undertake a long journey except by boat. By the end of the first day in the saddle she was sore. By the third, she was in agony. Milei thought this amusing.
‘Anyone would think I’d beaten and raped you,’ he remarked jocularly.
He was a large and powerful figure; and when he rode his tall and splendid horses, he looked larger and more impressive still. He wore a fur-trimmed coat and hat, which had a diamond in it. His big, high-cheeked face, his hard eyes set wide apart, his rich fair beard, all seemed to proclaim: ‘I am power itself, untouchable by mere peasants, for whom I care nothing.’
And with a trace of pride she watched him as they rode and murmured to herself: ‘This is my boyar.’
He had wasted no time. He had made love to her the first night after they had left the village.
But though, for a moment, she had been a little alarmed by the size of this powerful man whose tent she was sharing, he was surprisingly gentle with her.
He made love skilfully. She hoped she pleased him.
He was kindly as well. A few questions had before long drawn from her the whole story of her recent months with her father, and the boyar was comforting.
‘Of course you want to get away,’ he told her gently. ‘But don’t think too badly of him, or of yourself. In these small villages, miles from anywhere, I can promise you these things are not uncommon.’
Her father, to her surprise, had not raised great objections to her leaving. Strictly, since they were free peasants, Milei could not order her father to give her up. But when the powerful boyar had summoned the peasant to him and informed him of his decision, he gave him such a piercing look that her father went scarlet.
He did not altogether lose his presence of mind though.
‘The girl is of great help to me, lord,’ he said carefully. ‘I shall be a poorer man without her.’
Milei had understood.
‘How much poorer?’
‘My land is very bad. And you see I am a good workman. Let me have some of the chernozem.’
Milei considered. He supposed the fellow would work it well.
‘Very well. Five chets. You’ll pay a fair rent. Talk to the steward.’
And he had waved him away.
When Yanka had parted from him, there had been tears in his eyes. She saw him for what he was, and felt sorry for him.
They rode up to the Kliasma River.
Yanka would have liked to enter the capital city of Vladimir, which was not far away, and see the famous icon of Our Lady. She had heard that it had been painted by the Evangelist St Luke himself. But Milei shook his head, and the little party turned westwards. They rode along the Kliasma for ten days until they were just north of the small town of Moscow. Then they struck north-west.
The rains caught them just as they reached another minor city, Tver, that lay below the gentle Valdai Hills, on the banks of the upper reaches of the Volga.