Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [128]
Sebastian looked around him happily. The monastery had many treasures. Since the marriage of his forebear David to the Tatar girl, the boyar’s family, besides acquiring a rather Asiatic look, had been granted more land, including the local Black Land at Dirty Place. The peasants there, once free and now under his steward, had no love for the boyar, but the monastery had gained much. The boyar had given the monks their fine church, built of gleaming white limestone, with its fashionable pyramid roof of false pointed arches and its bulbous onion dome; also a tower with a splendid bell – still a rarity in that region; also a lovely icon of St Paul by the great master, Rublev. But nothing, surely, could be finer than the great screen of icons – the iconostasis – that Father Stephen had been painting for thirty years and which would be revealed tomorrow.
How splendid it was. Stretching across the eastern end of the church, dividing the sanctuary from the main body, its five tiers of icons reached almost to the roof. The Holy Family and the saints, the roof. The Last Supper, the Saviour, the Mother of God and the saints; Holy Days, prophets and patriarchs: all were depicted in gleaming colours and in gold. In the centre was the great double door, called the Holy or Royal door, on which were painted the Annunciation and the four Evangelists. And old Father Stephen had painted it all.
One part of the screen was still covered with a cloth. That night the old man was going to complete the last, small icon of the top tier. In the morning he, Sebastian, would fix it in place in time for the ceremony. Then the work would be complete: to the glory of God.
And the glory of Russia. For one thing was clear to Sebastian, it was that now, in these last days before the world’s end, God intended Russia to be glorified.
How she had suffered. For two centuries now she had lain, dismembered, under the Tatar yoke. On every side she was threatened. To the south, Tatars swept across the steppe; to the east, the Tatar Khan – the Tsar, as the Russians called him – and his vassals the Volga Bulgars held their vast Asiatic dominion. And to the west, now, a huge new power had arisen: for in the vacuum left by the collapse of old Russia, the Baltic tribe of Lithuanians – first pagan, now Catholic – had swept across western Russia and taken the land even as far as ancient Kiev itself. Poor Russia: no wonder that even the icons of the Mother of God, in those times, have a special quality of sadness.
Yet Russia was slowly recovering – thanks to Moscow.
The rise of Moscow was astounding. It began when a clever ruler of the little principality married the Tatar Khan’s sister and became Grand Duke. As agents for the Khans, the Moscow princes slowly surpassed all their rivals – Riazan, the eastern city of Nizhni Novgorod, even powerful Tver – all now acknowledged her supremacy. Then, in 1380, blessed by the famous monk Sergius, Moscow had actually defeated a Tatar army at the great Battle of Kulikovo by the River Don. The metropolitan of the Orthodox Church resided at Moscow, too. And who knew, though the Tatars still raided the land and demanded tribute, one day Moscow might yet help Russia to break free.
When the last hymn, the Troparion, was finished, Sebastian escorted Father Stephen to his cell. The long Easter fast had weakened the old man and he looked very frail. Sebastian gazed at him fondly. By chance they were distant cousins, sharing an ancestor