Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [156]
He had come to Moscow to visit a distant relation, a learned monk, and before leaving the city he had requested a brief audience, as he rather elaborately put it, with the young lord.
The matter was very confidential. It concerned the peasant Mikhail.
Boris was slightly surprised, but told him to go on.
‘Might I ask, Boris Davidov, that you will not mention this conversation to anyone at the monastery?’ the priest asked.
‘I suppose so.’ What was the fellow up to?
Then, very simply, Stephen outlined poor Mikhail’s dilemma. He did not tell Boris that the peasant had actually been encouraged to sabotage the work on the estate, but he did explain: ‘The monastery may well be tempted to take him from you. They would gain a good worker, and you would lose your best peasant – which in turn would make it harder for you to keep up the estate.’
‘He can’t leave,’ Boris snapped. ‘I know very well he can’t afford the fees.’
Under the law, a tenant wishing to depart upon St George’s Day not only had to clear any debts he had to his landlord, but had also to pay an exit fee from the house he had occupied. The rates for this were stiff – more than half a rouble – that was more than the value of Mikhail’s entire yearly crop, and Boris was quite right in thinking he could not pay it.
‘He can’t afford it, but the monastery can,’ Stephen quietly reminded him.
So that was it. An underhand way of stealing another man’s peasants was to pay their exit fees for them. Would Daniel the monk do such a thing to him, a Bobrov? Probably.
‘So what are you suggesting, that I should remit some of my peasant’s service?’
‘A little, Boris Davidov. Just enough to help Mikhail make ends meet. He’s a good peasant, and I can tell you, he has no wish to leave you.’
‘And why are you telling me this?’ Boris demanded.
Stephen paused. What could he say? Could he tell the young man that, like many churchmen, he disapproved of the monastery’s growing wealth? Could he tell Boris that he felt sorry for him and his rather helpless young wife? Could he tell him that, as things were, he was worried that Mikhail’s sons, if they did not eat enough, might be tempted towards a life of crime when they were older, or towards some foolish act? He could not.
‘I am only a priest, an onlooker,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘Let us say it is my good deed for the day.’
‘I shall bear what you have said in mind,’ Boris answered non-committally, ‘and I thank you for your concern and the trouble you have taken.’
With this they parted, the priest believing that he had done both the peasant and his lord a Christian service.
After he had gone, Boris paced about the room, going over the conversation carefully until he was sure he had got it straight in his mind.
What kind of fool did they think he was? Did that tall priest think he had not noticed the little smile of cunning on his lips? On the face of it, he had come to help, but Boris had learned better than to believe that. He thought of Tsar Ivan, betrayed by all. He thought of the four cousins, standing together on the day he had arrived with Elena at Russka. He thought of his wife, too, who sometimes shrank from him in bed. No, they were none of them to be trusted, none. ‘I must stand alone,’ he murmured, ‘and I must be cleverer, more ruthlessly cunning, even than they.’
What was the priest up to then? Why, he was baiting a trap: an obvious trap too, damn him. For if he reduced Mikhail’s service, who would benefit? The peasant, of course – Stephen’s cousin. And what would be the effect? To leave him, Boris, short of money: so that he would have to borrow more and bring himself a step closer to losing the estate to the monastery.
‘They just want to ruin me,’ he muttered.
The cunning priest. Only one thing he had said might be true. It was possible that the monastery, if it couldn’t get the estate yet, might try to steal Mikhail.
How, he wondered, could he prevent that?
All that month he considered the matter; yet surprisingly, of all people, it was the curious priest Philip, with his bobbing head and his passion