Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [132]
For the rule of the autocratic princes gave hope to obscure families like the Bobrovs. While the Moscow rulers had set out to break the power of the mighty clans, they had advanced men of lesser family, like the great Morozovs and Pleshcheevs, to enormous fortune. Indeed in Russia the gentry, men like Boris Bobrov, instead of opposing autocrats, as they did in much of western Europe, welcomed them as providing their way to fortune past the princes and magnates.
Two years before, Ivan had chosen a thousand best men – ‘sons of boyars’ as the gentry were called, or even humbler fellows – and ordered that they be given estates near Moscow so that they should be close at hand. Boris, to his chagrin, had been just too young to be selected, for service began when you were fifteen; but he had been glad to see that not all those chosen had actually been found estates nearby. And Russka, though a minor place, was not so very far from the centre.
The estate I have is nearer Moscow than some of the thousand, he reminded himself with satisfaction. I’ll not be left behind for long.
These were the thoughts that filled the mind of Boris Bobrov as he moved up the river, and went over, again and again, his meeting with the Tsar.
The camp had been still asleep, the boats drawn up in long lines upon the bank, shadow merging into shadow in the silence before dawn. Nothing moved upon the water; the sky was empty. Not even the few birds of the night, it seemed, chose to infringe any longer upon the vast peace of the slowly fading stars.
Boris had stood by the river bank. Before him, the nearby water seemed black although, far out into the huge river, a swathe of silvery greyness across its surface gave a hint of the pale starlight above. He gazed towards the eastern horizon scanning it for the first signs of the dawn, but as yet there was nothing to see.
He had awoken early and got up at once. It was cold and there was a slight dampness in the air. Pulling on a fur coat, he moved quietly out of his tent into the darkness and began to walk towards the river.
He nearly always had a particular sensation at this hour. First, beginning in the pit of his stomach, began a sense of melancholia. In the silence, under the unending darkness of the sky, he experienced an extraordinary feeling of desolation. It was as if he had stepped from the close womb of sleep into another womb – that of the universe itself which, perhaps, had no end: so that he was at the same time for ever trapped, yet utterly alone.
He came down to the water, to the boats by the bank, the long line of shadows. Before him lay the river, vast, soundlessly proceeding on its way.
His melancholy was bittersweet. It was like a conversation in which no words were spoken aloud. It was as if he had said: ‘Very well. I accept that I am eternally alone – I shall wander for ever on the empty roads of the night.’
And yet, even in making this sad submission to the universe, even as he moved into this region beyond tears, rather like the relief after weeping, he felt a warmth in his stomach that spread with a tingling sensation. It was a secretion, deep inside him, of tremendous joy and even of love, that made itself known to him only in these silent times before the dawn.
As he stood in the shadows, his mind had turned to his parents.
Boris could only just remember his mother – a gentle presence who had faded from his life. She had died when he was five. For him, therefore, family meant his father.
It was a year since he had died, but for as long as Boris could remember, he had been a tragic figure, disabled by terrible wounds he had received fighting the Tatars soon after Boris was born. For ten years he had been a widower. Once, one could see, he had possessed a big, burly frame, but the blue eyes in his broad, rather Turkish face were sunken, with dark hollows under them. His broad chest showed the