Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [140]
But for Dimitri, it was certainly a sacrifice. The possession of three good-looking daughters was an asset to a noble like him. They were kept in seclusion in the women’s quarters upstairs and could be used to make marriages that would benefit the family. Though young Boris was acceptable by his birth, that was all; and so the dowry that Dimitri gave his youngest daughter Elena was very modest and caused Boris sadly to realize a simple truth. ‘The richer you are, the more people think they ought to give you,’ he sighed.
As for his feelings about Elena, Boris was both excited and uncertain. His father had arranged the betrothal long before, and it was only when he had come to Moscow before leaving for the Kazan campaign that he had met her.
He would never forget it. He had entered the big wooden house late one morning. They had offered him bread and salt and, in the proper manner, he had gone to the icons in the red corner, bowed three times and murmured, ‘Lord have mercy.’ It was as he crossed himself from right to left and turned that the girl and her father had entered the room.
Dimitri was short, fat and bald. He wore a dazzling blue and gold kaftan. His face was broad and narrow-eyed, revealing the existence of a Tatar princess in his family some generations before, of which he was very proud. His beard was full, and red, and reached luxuriantly down his swelling belly over which it was carefully brushed outward like a fan.
Elena was at his side. She was wearing a long embroidered dress of pinkish red. Her hair was golden and plaited in a single braid down her back. On her head was a modest diadem, and over her face a veil.
With a faint grunt of satisfaction, Dimitri whipped off the veil and Boris found himself staring at his future wife.
She was not like her father at all. Her eyes were blue and soft: Boris noticed that at once. They were set rather far apart and were, perhaps, somewhat almond in shape; but that was the only hint that she might be related to this short, cruel-looking man. Her nose was narrow, yet slightly and nervously flared above her broad, rather full mouth. She seemed pale and tense. The muscles in her neck were standing out as she looked up at him.
She is afraid I may not like her, he saw at once, and this made him feel tender and protective. She does not realize that she is beautiful, he also shrewdly observed. That, too, was good.
And best of all, as he stared at her thoughtfully, he realized something else: he wanted her. He wanted her with the simple, definitive passion which says: She will be mine to order as I please, and I can make her beautiful.
‘I had a fine offer for her the other day,’ Dimitri told him frankly, ‘but I had kissed the cross on this with your father and there’s an end to it.’
Boris gazed at her. Yes, she was lovely. He started to smile.
And it was then that the little incident had taken place that caused him, on his wedding day, to be uncertain. It was nothing really. He told himself it meant nothing at all. Elena had looked down at the floor. Yet what was the expression that had flitted across her rather anxious face? Was it disappointment? Or could it conceivably have been disgust? He had looked carefully but been unable to see. Surely if she had utterly disliked him she would have said so to her father? He would not have held Dimitri to his oath in such a circumstance. Or was she remaining silent out of a sense of duty?
In the few meetings they had had since, he had tried to suggest to her that if she was unhappy in any way she should tell him, but she had modestly assured him that she was not.
All was well, he told himself, as the party came near Dimitri Ivanov’s house. All would be well.
And surely, he thought, as they stood together before the priests, surely this was meant to be.
The Russian marriage service was long. The tall tapers, decorated with