Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [228]
Yet this time it was different. He felt a cold sadness he had not known before – and he realized soon that it was not because she had meant so much more to him than any of the many others, but that this time, he was afraid for her.
It’s not just the steward and what he’ll do to her, he realized. It’s something in herself.
Without fully understanding it, he was looking at the inner fate of a woman who wished to protest in an endless land where all must submit.
He did not want to lose sight of her. It was absurd.
A partial reprieve, at least, was suggested the next morning when Burlay, the leader of the mission, announced that their work was nearly completed and that they would soon be returning home.
‘How soon?’ Andrei asked.
‘About a week,’ he was told.
‘Then I have a request to make,’ he said.
‘Very well,’ Burlay said when he had heard it. ‘As long as the landowner there has no objection. You can follow on as you please.’
And so it was that Andrei made preparations to accompany Maryushka to northern Russka.
Nikita Bobrov was amused when Andrei told him of his desire to visit the estate and explained his own connection with the place.
‘My dear friend,’ he laughed. ‘Do you mean your own grandfather ran away from the Bobrov estate?’
‘I think so,’ Andrei admitted.
‘What a pity he didn’t leave later. If he’d been in a more recent census, I could probably claim you back!’
‘A grandson?’
‘Well, not in practice I dare say. But,’ he grinned, ‘have you ever seen the Ulozhenie?’
The law about which Maryushka had complained. Andrei confessed that he had not.
‘Well then, I’ll show you.’
Some twelve hundred copies of the great law code of 1649 had been printed – a huge figure for that time – and Nikita Bobrov had one of them.
It was a remarkable document, written not in stilted chancery language but in plain, vernacular Russian, so that it would be readily understandable to all.
‘Here we are,’ Nikita showed him. ‘Chapter Eleven.’
And now, for the first time, Andrei truly understood what it meant to be a Russian peasant.
There were thirty-four clauses dealing with peasants. They covered every imaginable circumstance. Not only was there no time limit whatever on when a lord could claim a runaway back – if he married, the lord could claim his wife back; if he had children, the lord could claim them, their wives, and their children too.
It was forbidden for a lord to kill a peasant – if he did so with premeditation. But if he did so in a fit of anger, it was not a serious offence. If, in a fit of anger, he killed the peasant of another lord, he must replace him.
Andrei asked to look at other chapters. They covered everything, from blasphemy to forgery, from monastery lands – whose growth was now limited – to illegal taverns.
One thing in particular struck him. It was the mention, time and again, of the knout.
‘There’s plenty of flogging in Muscovy,’ he remarked.
‘Only peasants can be flogged,’ Nikita quickly assured him.
There were in fact one hundred and forty-one offences in the twenty-five chapters of the law code which carried punishment by the knout. More severe offences carried the death penalty. But since fifty lashes with the knout was usually fatal, the code could in practice be even more brutal than it looked.
As he read this stern, dark law code, Andrei realized with some shame that, though he had been here some time, and had received many hints, he had failed to look carefully beneath the surface of Muscovite life. More than ever, now, he understood the sense of oppression and claustrophobia that had assailed him ever since he passed the huge Belgorod fortress line across the steppe. And as he thought of the sunny, open lands of the Ukraine, of the unruly Cossack farmers, and