Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [204]
‘If the Poles take our farm, I shan’t have anything either,’ Andrei had confessed. ‘But don’t worry, old Ox. I’ll get the farm back and you can go home with a wagon-load of plunder. Tell me, though,’ he asked curiously, ‘who’s the girl you’re going to marry?’
Stepan smiled.
‘The one.’
‘What one?’
‘The only one, of course. The one fate has reserved for me.’
‘You haven’t met her?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Do you know anything about her?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So she might be a Tatar, or a Georgian, a Mordvinian, or,’ he laughed, ‘a Polish lady?’
Stepan nodded and smiled.
‘Any of those.’
‘You don’t mind which?’
‘How can I mind? It’s not for me to choose. I keep my mind blank. I form no picture. I just wait.’
Andrei smiled.
‘You sound just like one of the priests at the seminary. He told me that’s how he tries to pray.’
‘Ah, that’s right,’ Stepan said earnestly, ‘that’s just it. That’s how we should lead all of our lives.’
‘I dare say you’re right,’ Andrei replied. ‘But tell me – this magical girl – how will you recognize her when you see her?’
‘I shall know.’
‘God will tell you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Dear old Ox, how I love you,’ Andrei had said, suddenly embracing him.
Today, however, as they walked through the camp, there was a very different subject on their minds. At any moment they would be off, striking into the heart of the Ukraine. Moreover, as Andrei had discovered during the winter months in camp, the rebellion this time was no minor revolt. Since the Poles had put down the last Cossack uprising, some fifteen years before, the apparent peace of the Ukraine concealed a seething resentment. Only when he got to the camp and met scores of others like himself did Andrei realize that the kind of treatment his father had received was commonplace. In the western parts, nearer Poland, conditions were even worse and most of the population had already been reduced to utter serfdom. About half the small estates in the Ukraine were now in the hands of Jewish leaseholders.
And the current preparations for an uprising were due to a man rather like his own father, though richer and better educated, whose estate had not only been illegally seized by a Polish subprefect, but whose ten-year-old son had been beaten to death for protesting. His name, ever since revered in the history of the Ukraine, was Bogdan Khmelnitsky; and though writers since often refer to him, for simplicity, as Bogdan, the Cossacks at the time called him Khmel.
It was Khmel who had come down to the Zaporozhians to ask for help. It was he who, for months, had been sending secret agents to villages all over the Ukraine. And it was Khmel – understanding very well the strength and disposition of the Polish forces, and seeing the weaknesses of the fearless but rather disorganized Cossack cavalry – who had undertaken the most brilliant stroke of all. That February he had crossed the steppe to Bakhchisarai, the headquarters of the Tatar Khan of the Crimea, and by a ruse had convinced him that the Poles were planning to attack him. That was why, this very day, news had come that no less than four thousand of the devastating Tatar cavalry would reach the Zaporozhian camp the next day.
The combined force would strike into the heart of the Ukraine and, as it did so, the entire country was going to rise.
‘We’ll teach those Poles a lesson,’ Andrei predicted. ‘And then the farm will be ours.’
Even with such a force, it was a daring plan. The armies the Poles could muster were still much larger, and well trained. But even if the Cossacks succeeded, the question remained – what next? What would they demand? What were they fighting for?
Hardly anyone seemed to know. The Polish oppression would have to end, of course. Then men like his father would be restored to wealth and honour. There would be a lot of booty for everyone, naturally: there always was after a big Cossack expedition. But beyond that, Andrei confessed to himself, he had no clear idea.
Strangely, it was simple-minded Stepan who not only had considered the matter but had a detailed answer.
‘You must have