Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [222]
‘What about the foreign merchants?’ Andrei asked. ‘I’ve noticed a great many.’
Nikita shrugged.
‘They’re all heretics. Patriarch Nikon has known how to deal with them, I must say. The reason you notice them is that the Patriarch made them all wear their own national dress, even if they’ve been here a generation or more. That way they can’t conceal themselves. You know they’re not allowed to live in the city any more?’
Andrei had heard of the so-called German quarter – the contemptuous Russian words actually meant ‘Dumb people’s quarter’ – outside the city, but had not realized that it was a sort of ghetto.
‘That was Nikon too,’ Nikita said approvingly.
‘I don’t see any Jews.’
‘No. The Tsar won’t have them.’
‘That’s good,’ the Cossack said.
‘There’s only one other kind of foreigner that’s banned – at least from the capital.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘The English, of course.’
‘The English?’ The young Cossack from the south did not know a great deal about this distant nation. ‘Are they terrible heretics?’
‘Worse. Didn’t you know?’ Nikita involuntarily lowered his voice even to speak of the horror. ‘They cut off the head of their own King, Charles I, not four years ago.’
Andrei looked at him. As a Cossack, he supposed that it was a terrible thing to kill a king though it did not seem so very terrible to him, so long as the king wasn’t Orthodox.
But the effect upon Nikita, even of mentioning this awful deed, was quite extraordinary. His face puckered up into an expression of utter contempt and loathing.
‘They killed their own annointed King,’ he repeated. And then he said something which stayed in Andrei’s mind for a long time afterwards. ‘They are worse than the Poles. Thank God we know that we are the Tsar’s slaves.’
Several times before Andrei had noticed this manner of speaking. The common people would call themselves the Tsar’s orphans, and the official service classes seemed positively proud to call themselves his slaves. So far he had assumed it was a figure of speech; but watching his new friend Nikita now, he was not so sure. It was strange.
It was just after leaving that he caught sight of the younger woman. He had glanced back at the house and seen her face, quite clearly, at an open window.
It belonged to a girl about his own age: a pretty face, lightly freckled, with regular features. He could just see the top part of her body. It was obviously slim. Definitely a handsome girl.
She was watching him. He smiled at her. She smiled back, then, quickly turning her head, ducked back inside the window.
He frowned. How strange. It looked almost as if the girl had a black eye.
Perhaps it was not altogether by chance that he happened to pass near Nikita’s lodgings the next day and strolled about in the little market nearby. If he had been curious to see the girl, he was rewarded, for he had only been there a short time when she and her mother came by. He noticed that the mother, despite what Nikita had said, was hardly limping at all.
They saw him and greeted him politely. And as they came close he saw clearly that, though it was fading, the girl had certainly had a black eye.
He engaged the older woman in conversation, and she seemed quite happy to talk, but all the while he noticed the girl. There was something about her, a lightness on her feet, a faint humour in her lips, that almost reminded him of Anna. He knew she was staring at him. He tried to listen to what the older woman was saying.
And then suddenly he started. What had the woman said? She had just remarked that they came from the town of Russka. He questioned her more closely. She described the place, where it was; there could be no doubt about it: his young friend’s estate was undoubtedly the place from which his grandfather had run away. Which means, he thought with a smile, that if he hadn’t, I should very likely be a peasant of Nikita’s instead of a Cossack he entertains in his own house.
He was just about to blurt all this out when some instinct for caution held him back. Nikita might yet be useful to him, and who knew