Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [182]
The second event centred upon Daniel the monk. For in April 1570, still anxious to enrich the monastery, he hit upon a plan.
It concerned the oxhide that the Tsar had sent. It was so cunning, and so daring, that for centuries afterwards it would be known as ‘Daniel’s Ruse’.
When the abbot first heard of it, he went white with terror.
1571
Boris scowled, as well he might. The snow in the market place at Russka had long since been trampled and packed down until it was hard as stone. The few stalls in the market place that had opened out of habit were now being shut. No chink of sunlight had appeared in the cloud cover and none had been expected; and now the short day, like the stalls, was closing down.
He scowled because he saw Mikhail and his family. They were standing beside the remains of the single fire that had been lit in the centre of the market place. Mikhail did not answer his look, but stared at him without hope. What was there to hope for, after all?
There was a week to go before the beginning of Lent; yet what could the Lenten fast mean that year, when the harvest had failed for the third time running the summer before? That morning, in Dirty Place, he had seen a family eating ground birch bark. Bark from the trees – the peasant’s last resort when the grain was all gone. Few had supplies to last them through two failed harvests. None could get past three.
The monastery had helped feed the worst cases, but even its reserves were running low. There had been plague in some of the northern areas. Two of the families in Dirty Place had run away last year. There had been greater desertions in other villages.
‘The people are leaving the land,’ a fellow landlord had remarked to him, ‘and there’s nothing we can do.’
Where did they go? East, he supposed. East to the new lands by the Volga. But how many of them, he wondered, ever got there in the mighty, icy winter?
Mikhail and his cursed family. How they must hate him.
Since Karp had gone off with their horse, the family had not recovered. They had replaced the horse, and got through the second bad harvest; but they had had to dig into their money reserve to keep going. There was no more talk of buying their freedom. As for running away, like the others, he guessed that Mikhail had concluded he was safer with his young children near a monastery than trying to survive out in the great eastern wilds.
Now the peasant spoke to him.
‘Spare a kopek, Boris Davidov. At least for the bear.’
He noticed the bitter irony in the request. Let my children starve but take pity on the animal – that was the message.
‘Damn your bear,’ he said, and walked on.
The bear was as gaunt as the peasants now. It had never performed its tricks for Mikhail the way it had for Karp; in its raging hunger it would probably turn nasty. It stood there, haggard in its chains. Why on earth didn’t they kill it?
Boris turned to look up at the watchtower that rose, tall and grey, over the gateway. He had been going up there every day of late. For on top of all their troubles, word had come that an attack was expected from the Crimean Tatars from the south. So far, nothing had come, but Boris scanned the horizon anxiously, each day.
He had just come down from there now. Up in the high, pointed tent roof, gazing out through the eastern window at the huge, flat spaces, he had been alone with his thoughts. Out there, far away, lay the Volga and distant Kazan. Out there lay the huge eastern empire of the Tsar. Why, after their holy crusade, had the heartland been turned to icy stone, famine and dejection? As he stared out at the endless greyness, it had seemed to Boris that Russka was swallowed up and lost in the long half-night of winter. Nothing moved upon the landscape. The sky, though always overcast, was empty. The snow, which he usually thought of as a protection for the earth, now seemed to him like a coating of misery that had been hardened by the biting winter wind. Everything was grey. From his high place, he could