Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [210]
‘Where are they?’ he asked.
‘The old man’s gone off with his sons to your Cossack camp,’ their neighbour told him. ‘His wife’s gone to her sister in another village near Pereiaslav.’
‘And Anna?’
‘Anna?’ The man looked surprised. ‘Why, didn’t you know? She’s gone. The Pole took her. Stanislaus. Came by here just after the men left, stayed a few days then off he went and took her with him. Stole her at dawn.’
Andrei could scarcely believe it. First the arrogant Pole had tried to take his farm and humiliate his father. Then he had abducted his girl.
‘Where did they go?’
‘Who knows? They’re probably in Poland by now,’ the man said.
Thoughtfully Andrei returned to the fort. It seemed he had lost his bride.
But I’ll find her, he vowed. As for Stanislaus, there could be only one solution.
If anything could take his mind off his loss, it was the extraordinary thing that had happened to his friend. For if Andrei had lost a bride, it seemed that Stepan had found one.
And whoever could have imagined that, of all the possibilities, his choice would have fallen on the Jewish girl! Despite his own troubles, Andrei almost burst out laughing.
‘But she’s Jewish, my old Ox,’ he protested as they sat together by a little fire inside the fort.
‘She’ll convert,’ Stepan said.
‘Does she say so?’
‘I know she will.’
‘But why this girl?’
‘I don’t know why,’ the strange fellow confessed. ‘I just know that it’s so.’
‘You just saw her and … it was fate.’
‘Yes. That’s it.’
He seemed to be in a kind of daze. Even when they spoke, his eyes had a faraway look and Andrei was not sure if his friend was truly with him.
‘Oh dear, poor old Ox,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do with her? You can’t take her on campaign.’
Stepan nodded his large head slowly.
‘I know. I’ve been thinking about that. I’ll find a priest to marry us. Then I’m going home to the Don with her.’
‘You’re deserting me?’
‘The time has come,’ Stepan said solemnly.
‘You’d better talk to her.’
‘Yes.’ The huge fellow got up slowly. ‘We must talk.’ And with that he walked slowly over to the place where the girl was sitting in the shadows. Quietly he led her to the fire and made her sit by him. Andrei, curious though he was, left them alone. Then, very softly, Stepan began to talk to her.
For some time, from a distance, Andrei watched them. The other Cossacks glanced at them too. What a strange fellow the bearded giant was, to be sure!
The girl seemed to be saying little, watching Stepan with her large, thoughtful eyes, interjecting a word here and there as if to prompt him. There she was, a fifteen-year-old who had seen her own father hacked to death just a few hours before, and now she was sitting with this strange Cossack who had taken it into his head to marry her. And, Andrei thought, it was as if she were the teacher and he the child; for something in her composed, tragic young face made her look older than him – older than any of them, perhaps.
At last, Andrei went to sleep. But several times, that short summer night, he awoke to see them still sitting there, quietly conversing by the glowing embers of the little fire.
What was Stepan saying to her? Who knew what strange jumble of thoughts might be coming from that solemn head. Was he trying to convert her? Was he, perhaps, telling her about the lands past the Don which were his home? Was he telling her his life story, or God knew what tales of magic and superstition with which his simple head was full? Perhaps he was describing the endless, scented steppe, or his belief that all men should be equal brothers. Whatever it was, it was clear to Andrei that his friend, believing that this Jewish girl was his fate incarnate, had chosen that night to pour out his whole soul.
And the girl was listening, always listening.
She probably knows more about that fellow than some wives learn in a lifetime, he thought with a smile, the third time he went to sleep.
It was just as the sky was beginning to lighten that he half awoke, to