Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [216]
Yet now that he had entered Russia Andrei was surprised to feel a faint sense of unease as he travelled north. It was something to which, at first, he could not put a name. Something oppressive.
The forest grew thicker and darker. Sometimes, in the forest, they encountered little settlements where the people produced potash. In these, the Cossacks noticed, the peasants looked healthy enough. But in the ordinary villages it was a different story.
‘This is the third year the winter has gone on too long,’ the people told them. ‘Even in a good year, we only have just enough. With these poor crops, another year and we’ll be starving.’
When Andrei looked at their villages and heard their sad story, there was one thing that puzzled him. ‘Your fields are huge,’ he exclaimed. ‘Surely you should have enough even in bad years.’ ‘No,’ they told him, ‘it’s not so.’ And only at the third such village did Andrei discover the reason.
‘You see, for every measure we sow, we only get three back at harvest,’ a peasant explained.
A yield of three to one. A miserable rate, unthinkable in the rich Ukraine.
‘Our land is poor,’ the man said sadly.
And badly cultivated, he could have added. For this three to one crop yield in north Russia was no more than farmers in western Europe had been getting in the Dark Ages, a thousand years before.
But if the poverty of these little villages struck Andrei, he was soon to see something very different.
The party was about fifty miles below the great eastward loop of the River Oka when they came to the old frontier line. Though not as impressive as the new Belgorod line, it was another sign of the formidable power of the Muscovite state. The stout wooden forts and palisades were still intact.
‘They stretch another hundred miles, all the way to Riazan,’ Burlay remarked.
In many places there was long-established open parkland in front of the line; but where there was not, huge swathes had been burned through the woodland so that the Tatar raiders would not have any cover.
And it was just past this great line that they came to the sprawling industrial town of Tula.
Andrei had never seen anything like it. It was a town, yet not a town. Everywhere there seemed to be long, stout houses, of wood or brick, filled with the sounds of men hammering. Half the buildings seemed to be smithies.
‘The whole place is like a giant armoury,’ he remarked.
And most impressive of all, there were the big, grim buildings with continually smoking chimneys which contained the blast furnaces.
These were the first blast furnaces that Russia had seen. Operated by the Dutch family of Vinius, they had been set up at Tula because of the ancient iron ore deposits in the region. Not only were the mighty furnaces here, but innumerable workshops where armaments were made.
‘They make more weapons here than anywhere except Moscow itself,’ Burlay remarked. ‘They say these Romanov Tsars are bringing in new foreigners all the time, because they’re the only ones who know how to operate these new machines.’
Cannons, muskets, pikes and swords: Andrei saw wagon-loads of them. As a soldier, he was impressed; but he found the huge, smoky place rather frightening, and was glad soon to be on his way to Moscow again.
They reached the capital a week later.
It had been a long, hard winter. The huge city of Moscow was still under snow, although the Lenten season had begun.
Over the vast, snowbound city, the skies were grey, heavy and monotonous. In the streets, where the snow had not been cleared, there was also greyness, as though at some point the clouds had let fall not flakes of snow, but a dismal settling of ice-dust and cinders in their place.
Yet the scene was not without colour. The roofs of the houses were white. Above, the domes of the churches were gold, silver, or brightly painted. Occasionally in the street one might encounter