Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [125]
‘The Tatars will look in the river and in the ground,’ he said. ‘But they’ll never look up in the trees.’
‘But what about his head?’ she asked, pointing to the familiar face with its missing ear which was lying on the ground and gazing blankly up at her.
He smiled.
‘I have another plan for that.’
It was two more weeks before Milei the boyar returned from Russka to Murom. When he got there, he found the city much disturbed. There had been numerous refusals to pay taxes in the villages; several of the Moslem tax farmers had been attacked. The Tatar authorities were furious and retribution was expected. The Grand Duke Alexander Nevsky was said to be preparing to travel to the Khan to ask for leniency. Times were black.
And Peter the Baskak had disappeared.
Indeed, the very day Milei arrived a centurion came to ask him when he had last seen him.
‘He was on his way directly to Murom,’ he assured the soldier.
The investigation that followed was thorough. All the villages between Russka and Murom were visited and questioned. Since Russka was the place he was last seen, a search was made and the river downstream was dragged; but nothing was found. By late autumn, suspicion finally centred on a village near the Oka where there had been rioting; but there was no proof that Peter had even been there. It seemed that he had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
It was on the fourth day after his return that Milei told his great lie.
He had been thinking about it ever since he reached Murom. Indeed he guessed that, sooner or later, suspicion might even fall on him for the Tatar’s death. But since he could prove that he had spent his time innocently at the village, he felt bold enough to take a chance.
And he could not resist it.
So when Peter’s son came to him and politely requested to know whether his father had bought the land from him for the monastery, Milei shook his head.
‘Alas, no. He did not like the place. A pity,’ he added, his eyes staring blandly at the young man. ‘I should have been glad if he had.’
‘So he gave you no money?’
Milei shook his head.
‘None.’
They could prove nothing. If ever they found the Tatar’s body, they could scarcely expect to find any money left on him. And, by that stroke of incredible good fortune, there were no deeds to the land for anyone to find!
Peter’s son had left. Short of calling him a liar, there was nothing the young Tatar could say.
The next week, using money from an ostensible sale of some land near Murom, Milei bought in the extra chernozem at Russka from the Grand Prince.
Fortune had smiled on him, indeed.
1263
How strange, how secret, are the ways of God.
In the spring of the next year, before the snows melted, Milei the boyar went to his estate at Russka.
From the front of his house, as he looked out, the first thing he saw was the rich land across the river. And now it was all his, stretching from the river out to the north of Dirty Place for several miles.
He had come early to the village because he had great plans for its improvement.
He had bought a number of slaves from the Moslem tax farmers. Some of them, admittedly, had been made slaves illegally for failing to pay enough taxes. But no one was likely to trouble about that here. And they were good Slavs, sound peasants, as well – just what he had always needed.
They were due to arrive at Russka in early summer.
There were settlers, too. He was going to let some of the new land and had managed to find three families, who had been ruined by the new taxes and were glad to get good new land on easy terms.
‘All in all, the Tatars have been good for me,’ he chuckled to himself.
On the first Sunday of April, the snow began to melt. Each day the sky was bright blue, the sun warm. Soon great banks of grey slush were forming beside little brown rivulets as the land began to appear. On the river, discoloured patches of brown and green could be seen where the ice was getting thin. On the Wednesday of that week, as he gazed out from the doorway, he could see