Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [108]
‘Carpenters’ they still called them.
But she found nothing to laugh at in their carpentry now. She found it a little frightening.
The great cathedral in the centre of the citadel had been built to rival its namesake at Kiev: St Sophia.
Like the Kievan church, it had five aisles. But its walls, instead of soft glowing pink brick, in tiny lines, were made of large irregular stones. Its whole aspect was harsh and austere. Instead of Kiev’s thirteen shining cupolas, it had five large domes, plated with lead, that gave off a dull, dark gleam. Inside, instead of glittering mosaics with their mysterious, other-worldly Byzantine light, huge frescoes stared coolly down from the flat, soaring walls. The building expressed not transcendental mystery, but high, hard, unyielding northern power. For this place, it reminded the beholder, was Lord Novgorod the Great.
‘The painting here was done mostly by Novgorod artists, not Greeks,’ Milei explained to her. And when she admired the huge bronze gates of the west door, carved with rich biblical scenes, he told her: ‘We took them from the Swedes, but they were made in Germany, in Magdeburg.’
When they came out, she pointed to a huge wooden palace standing nearby.
‘Is that where the prince lives?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Milei told her. ‘The people of Novgorod won’t let the prince live in the city. He has to live in his own little fort, just to the north. That’s the archbishop’s palace you’re looking at. It’s the archbishop and the people’s veche who rule in Novgorod. The prince defends the place, and they won’t accept a prince they don’t like.’
She had always heard that the city of Novgorod was free, but she had not realized that such expressions of power as she saw all around her could belong to the people.
‘They are truly free then?’ she remarked with admiration.
‘They are truly obstinate,’ he replied curtly, and glancing down at her puzzled face remarked: ‘You’ll see.’
But if St Sophia’s side was impressive, it was nothing compared to the astonishment she felt when they crossed, on their second day, over the river.
From the citadel they passed under the huge Virgin Gate with its stone church over the arch and across the great wooden bridge. Below them lay the frozen River Volkhov that led southwards on the ancient trading route down to the Dniepr and Kiev, and flowed northwards to a huge lake called Ladoga, that was joined by the River Neva to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea.
And before them lay the market side.
‘There are two ends,’ Milei announced, as the sled went over the bridge, ‘the Slovensk and the Carpenters ends. And in the middle is the market. That’s where we’re going.’
She had never seen anything like it. Beside another impressive church spread a huge open area stretching to the river’s edge and the wharfs.
It was covered with snow, yet on the frozen surface were long lines of brightly coloured stalls, more than she could count.
‘There must be a thousand,’ she said.
‘Probably.’
Milei had business to conduct, so he left her to wander alone all morning. She was astonished by what she discovered.
For this was the ancient trading emporium of the north. There were all kinds of people there, even in winter: not only Slavs, but Germans, Swedes, and traders from the Baltic states of Lithuania and the lands of the Latvians. One stout man selling salted fish even told her that in his youth he had been with the herring fleets all the way to the western island of England.
One could buy anything.
There were all manner of foods: huge pots of honey, barrels of salt, and blubber oil. Fish there was in abundance, even in winter. There were barrels of eels, of herring and of cod. Bream and turbot, she soon learned, were popular. There were great piles of furs everywhere: bear, beaver, fox and even sable. There was bright pottery and acres, it seemed, of beautifully worked leather.
‘At the end of summer,’ a woman told her, ‘they bring in the cartloads of hops. Ah,’ she smiled,