Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [145]
Now Lev turned to Mikhail and put his arm round him.
‘I shouldn’t worry,’ he counselled. And then he spoke aloud the thought that only Mikhail, amongst the four of them, had failed to grasp. ‘Don’t you realize – if this fellow has his way,’ he indicated the monk beside him, ‘young lord Boris won’t have his estate much longer anyway.’
The gentle, joyful hiss of the sleds. They ran down the gleaming road of the frozen River Rus, between the lines of soft, snow-laden trees until, round a curve, the banks opened up to several broad, white meadows.
In the first sled rode Boris and Elena. In the second, the five Tatar slaves, Elena’s maid, and a huge quantity of baggage.
And now at last, there lay Russka before them, with the monastery below it. How quiet it was. Under a clear, light blue sky the wooden tent roof of the tower, glistening in the sun, reminded Boris of a tall sheaf of wheat or barley, tied just below the top, standing in a field after harvest. He squeezed Elena’s hand and sighed with pleasure at the familiar, childhood sensation of being enveloped in the peace of the Russian countryside.
The tower, it seemed to him, was like a token of summer and of fulfilment, hanging in the bright winter sky.
Elena, too, smiled. Thank God, she was thinking, that the place was not quite as small as she had feared. Perhaps there might be a few women here that she could talk to.
In no time they were gliding up the slope and round to the gate. As they entered the main square, she noticed the four men standing together near the centre. Seeing the sleds, they turned and bowed respectfully. It seemed to her that they were also observing her carefully. They appeared friendly enough. She pulled the furs up to cover her face as the sled came towards them; she noticed that one was a priest and one a monk.
It was impossible to see the expression on the face of Daniel the monk, because his thick black beard covered so much of it that one could really only make out the two small bright eyes that looked out watchfully at the world, and the top of what were obviously broad, pock-marked cheeks.
He was on the short side, stockily built, but with slightly rounded shoulders. His quiet, stooping manner suggested a submissiveness proper to his religious calling. He spoke rather quietly, yet there was something about his hard brown eyes, an occasional suddenness in his movements, that suggested a passionate nature either repressed or concealed.
He was watching the young couple intently.
Stephen the priest, observing both, felt sorry for Boris and Elena. He had liked Boris’s father, admired his long fight with sickness, and buried him with a sense of personal loss. He wished young Boris well.
As for Daniel the monk, Stephen did not approve of him.
‘People say that I love money,’ Lev had once remarked to him, ‘but I don’t come near that little monk.’
It was true. The merchant’s rapaciousness had bounds; there was the ordinary give and take of the market place in his dealings. But Daniel the monk, though he had nothing of his own, seemed to be obsessed with acquiring wealth: he wanted it for the monastery.
‘He is greedy for God,’ Stephen had sighed. ‘It’s a crime.’
The great battle between those who thought the Church should give up its riches, and those who thought it should keep them, had been fought for generations. Many churchmen believed the Church should revert to a life of poverty and simplicity – especially those followers of a saintly monk named Nil Sorsky, who lived in the simple communities in the forest hinterland beyond the northern loop of the Volga. This faction, encouraged by these stern Trans-Volga Elders, became known to history as the Non-Possessors; though most