Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [178]
Yet, though the family was all packed up and ready to leave, they had not departed. For a week now, they had sat in the little hut and waited. Each day, either Mikhail or Karp would go into Russka, and each day would glumly return.
It was Karp’s turn that day. He came sadly along the path.
‘Well?’
Karp shook his head.
‘Nothing. No sign.’ He suddenly kicked the door violently, but though it made him jump, Mikhail did not reprove him. ‘Cursed swindlers!’ the young man cried.
‘Perhaps another day,’ his mother said, without conviction.
‘Perhaps,’ Mikhail said.
But he knew it was hopeless. He had been cheated.
The rules of departure from Boris’s estate were simple. The peasant must be free of debt and, a week on either side of St George’s Day, he might inform his lord that he wished to leave and pay his exit fees. That was all.
But there was one small catch. The lord, or his steward, must be there to receive the request to depart, and the necessary moneys.
A few days before the allotted time, Boris and his wife had abruptly departed for Moscow, and the house in Russka had been shut up. Mikhail had at once gone into Russka to seek out the steward, and had returned pale with shock.
For the old fellow and his wife had mysteriously disappeared too.
They had never left the town before; no one knew they were going, nor where they might be. Their house was empty.
Even then he had scarcely been able to believe it. He had heard stories of such trickery, to be sure, but here in Russka, beside a monastery, could such things be?
They could. As the days passed, there was no sign of the steward.
‘But don’t think they’ve all left the area,’ Karp said furiously. ‘That steward’s about somewhere, he’s hiding nearby. And if we try to leave without paying our dues, he’ll appear out of nowhere with half a dozen men. You see if he doesn’t. He’s waiting to follow us and arrest us as runaways. Then he and our cursed landlord will take more from us than ever. I’ll bet you we’re being watched right now.’
He was exactly correct. The only thing that neither Mikhail nor Karp guessed was that it was their cousin Daniel the monk who was behind it all.
For Daniel, the whole thing had been a simple matter.
After the Tsar’s terrifying message, it was clear that the monastery, and he in particular, would need friends wherever they could find them. The obvious first choice was the Tsar’s servitor Boris.
It had not taken the cunning monk long to discover that Mikhail was quietly paying off his debts. Early that morning he had sought out Boris himself and discreetly warned him that his best peasant was planning to leave. He had also reminded him of how he could prevent him.
Boris had been duly grateful.
‘I am always your lord’s friend,’ Daniel had said, and though Boris was not deceived by that, he nonetheless concluded that the heavily bearded monk might be useful to him.
‘Very well,’ he had remarked. ‘Keep me informed of anything else I should know.’
So St George’s Day passed. And the next day. And the next.
On the seventh day after, when he woke up a little after dawn, Mikhail was shocked, but not altogether surprised, to find that Karp and the horse had gone. On the table lay a little pile of money.
Three days later a man from a village five miles down the river arrived at the door with a message.
‘Karp passed through our village the other morning. He has gone. He said he left money for the horse. He’s sorry it wasn’t more.’
Mikhail nodded.
‘Did he say where he was going?’
‘Yes. Into the wild field.’
Mikhail sighed. It was what he had suspected. Perhaps it was where, after all, his son belonged.
The wild field: the open steppe: the land where, in recent decades, other wayward young fellows like Karp had gone to join those bands of half-brigands, half-warriors who had nowadays taken to calling themselves Cossacks.
Yes, he belonged in the wild field. They would never see him again.
‘He said please to look after the bear,’ the fellow concluded.
It was later that day that another, chilling piece of news reached Russka.
Tsar Ivan