Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [117]
‘I’m sorry about the child,’ he murmured.
Then he was gone.
The day after they arrived at Dirty Place, it began to thaw.
1262
Milei the boyar waited.
Across the river, pale columns of dust rose from time to time, swirling across the field that had recently been harvested. The sky was a brilliant blue. There were a few thin, vaporous clouds in the high distance. Away over the forest, on the horizon, was a pinkish haze. It was very dry; there was a scent of wormwood; no discernible wind.
He was waiting for the Tatar.
Things had been tense all that year. At any moment, he had feared an explosion.
And this very morning, here in Russka, it had almost come. If he had not been there himself those two Moslem tax collectors would be dead, he was sure of it. Only when he had threatened the villagers that he would turn them off his land did they quieten down.
‘Not that they love me for it,’ he smiled grimly.
They were all in the big barn now, loading sacks of grain on to the tax collectors’ wagons. He still kept one ear cocked for any further sounds of trouble.
‘It’s certainly a pity these damned tax farmers are Moslem,’ he sighed.
He had been right about the Tatars: right in every respect. Everything had come to pass exactly as he had told those Novgorod merchants it would, a dozen years ago. The Tatars had taken over the north-east. True, the princes had been allowed to continue their rule; but the census and conscription had come; the northern lands were now divided up into myriads, thousands, hundreds and tens, just as the lands of Kiev had been. And there was nothing that anyone could do about it.
Even Novgorod had had to submit to being taxed: Lord Novgorod had been humbled too. Prince Alexander had ridden in with the Tatar tax collectors and helped take the Tatars’ tribute himself. He had crushed the local people when they resisted.
Milei smiled. What a cunning fellow this Alexander was! He had discovered how to get the Tatars on his side; he’d used them to push aside his uncle and his brother until, now, he was the greatest prince in all the Russian lands. He even wore an oriental helmet, given him by the Tatar Khan.
The Russian people might not like him, yet his policy was not only cunning, it was also wise. The Russians alone could not defeat the Tatars. ‘Look what happened to his brother Andrei,’ he would remind people who called Alexander a traitor. ‘He tried to fight the Tatars: so they smashed him and looted half the towns in Suzdalia.’ That had been ten years ago and it was still remembered.
And what if Russians looked for help from outside?
‘Consider, in that case, that fool the Prince of Galicia,’ he would urge. The prince in the south-west, who had been flirting with the Pope, had been even more foolish than Milei had predicted. First, he had received a crown from the primate. Then he had looked for allies. Who should he choose but those pagan Lithuanian tribes of the north, who were expanding into the western Russian lands to avoid the Teutonic Knights? The Lithuanian chief had, for a few years, become a Roman Catholic and together he and the Prince of Galicia had challenged the Tatars.
And the result of it all?
The Tatars thrashed Galicia and made them attack the Lithuanians. Then they made the Prince of Galicia take down all his fortifications. The western Catholic powers, as usual, did nothing; the Lithuanian king went back to being a pagan. And that summer, he had heard, the pagan Lithuanian had attacked Galicia, which was now quite defenceless.
‘Poor Galicia’s finished. If Alexander had tried anything like that,’ he always said, ‘the Tatars would have taken one half of his lands, and the Germans would have taken the other.’
Alexander was wise. But, oh, he was subtle, too!
Tatar policy was never to hurt the Church. And Alexander, who served the Tatars, had made the Metropolitan Cyril a close friend.
‘And bless me, now he’s got every priest and monk in the land on his side. The people hate Alexander, yet every time they go to church, they