Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [122]
‘The writing here seems Slav,’ he told her, ‘but what can this be?’ And he pointed to a strange, oriental-looking script. ‘I think I have seen it on an icon,’ he said.
It was Hebrew. For the coins came from Poland and bore inscriptions both in Slavic and in Hebrew, thanks to the ancient Khazar community there.
They hid them under the floor. Who knew when they might be needed?
Purgas was not only a hunter; he worked hard on their land, and it was not long before they were living well. She had nothing to complain of.
Only one thing about her husband irritated Yanka. It was the same habit of mind that the elder had told her about when she first came to Russka; but her Mordvinian husband seemed to have it to a greater degree. He would not plan for the future. ‘None but crows fly straight,’ he would remind her if she pushed him for some decision. To him, each season, each day, was there to be lived through, cautiously, as if it might be one’s last.
Once, after they had been arguing over some matter of this kind, he went off into the forest and returned several hours later with a deer he had killed. ‘If he made plans for next week,’ he gently told her, ‘they were in vain.’
‘But I’m not an animal,’ she protested impatiently. To which he only smiled and shrugged.
She loved him, all the same. He gave her three children and great happiness. The villagers respected him.
And at least once a year the steward of Milei the boyar approached them with more and more tempting offers from the boyar to come as his tenants to Russka. Which they always refused. ‘We’re Black People,’ she said simply. ‘We’re our own master here.’
As the years passed, she had grown stout. Her face had filled out. And she was content.
Yet even now, she could still be amazed by her husband. What, for instance, had come over him the previous evening?
For the night before, learning what had happened with the tax gatherers at Russka, the foolish men of the hamlet had wanted to ambush and kill them. And Purgas was in favour.
News of the trouble in the northern towns had come downriver a few days before. The free peasants of the hamlet were excited.
‘You’re mad,’ she told them. ‘Russka didn’t revolt.’
‘Because the boyar’s in league with the Tatars,’ one of the men said.
‘But they’ll come and kill us all.’
They didn’t believe her.
‘We’re not afraid,’ the young men claimed.
‘When I was a boy, beyond the Volga,’ Purgas remarked, ‘a young fellow wasn’t ready to marry until he’d killed a man. That was the custom among the real Mordvinians.’
‘You foolish pagan,’ she shouted. ‘You don’t understand.’
And she outlined to them the might, the incredible might of the empire on whose edge they lay.
‘They would destroy us all,’ she told them. ‘They would never give up.’
‘So,’ Purgas quietly said, ‘you’re on the boyar’s side now.’
She opened her mouth. Then closed it. What could she say? She remembered the evening at the inn and how Milei’s words had shocked her. In a way, they still did; yet now that she was older, now that she had seen the Tatars take over the north too, she had to admit he had been right. ‘Hide whatever you can,’ she told them, ‘pay up but make them think they’ve ruined you. Otherwise, we’ll be destroyed.’
Eventually, she won. Even Purgas promised to do as she asked. Then the preparations began.
That day, it had gone as she had predicted. The tax farmers had arrived soon after dawn, thinking to catch the hamlet unawares. They had quickly emptied half the grain store and taken most of the livestock they could find; but before dawn, Purgas and the men had hidden the rest in the marshes which the visitors did not know how to penetrate. By early morning, they were already preparing to move on.
While they took the grain, Yanka had gone for a walk. Without especially thinking where she was going, she drifted along the path towards Russka. Perhaps I’ll go and see Father, she thought.