Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [242]
The question was – what could they do about it? Which was when she had made her curious suggestion.
It was doubly galling because the family had been doing well ever since the Romanovs came to the throne. The first Romanov had rewarded Nikita’s grandfather in two ways. He had allowed him to convert the old estate – held on pomestie service tenure under Ivan the Terrible – back into the hereditary votchina that could not be taken away. And he had given him some more votchina, from the good land beside the monastery, as well. Nikita’s marriage had brought him fresh estates. He kept them all in good order. His peasants worked three days barshchina and paid him modest rents in cash and kind. They were, he supposed, no better and no worse off than most peasants. In addition, he had bought several small parcels of land south of the River Oka in Riazan province, on the edge of the steppe where the soil was rich and where his stewards used slave labour – a combination of men who could not pay their debts and of captured Tatar raiders. The returns there were excellent.
Nikita had done well. Indeed the family’s status had never been higher. For though the Tsar had finally abolished the old mestnichestvo records of precedence – which, though terribly inconvenient, had guaranteed the Bobrovs a certain status – Nikita had managed to get himself raised into the coveted ranks of the Muscovite nobility. This meant that he lived in Moscow, close to the Tsar, and even dreamed of being a candidate for the provincial governorship. If only he had been able to take that one, further step into the Tsar’s favour, he might have become a rich man.
And though his wife and he had known the sadness – all too common in Russia – of losing children, in 1668, Praise the Lord, a robust little boy had been born who showed every sign of surviving. They had named him Procopy.
As he approached his fifties, therefore, Nikita had been sanguine. He enjoyed good health and high rank. Though growing stout, he was elegant. All he had to do was attract the favourable notice of the Tsar.
Things had certainly been changing in the capital. The court of Alexis had been growing more cosmopolitan, more western. Great men like the Tsar’s friend Matveev encouraged western manners; a few of the inner court circle even shaved their beards.
As an ambitious man with some education himself, Nikita was drawn towards these court circles. The great Matveev liked him and became his mentor. Though he still had a healthy suspicion of all foreigners, Nikita occasionally changed his kaftan for a Polish coat. He had heard German musicians play at Matveev’s house. He occasionally attended a church with a choir that performed part-singing in harmony, in the western manner. And in 1673 he had even obliged his wife to attend one of the new entertainments arranged by the Tsar – a play.
She had not approved.
Her name was Eudokia, or in full: Eudokia Petrovna Bobrova. She was Bobrova because, like all Russian married women, she took the feminine form of her husband’s name, Bobrov. Her patronymic came from her father Peter, whose memory she still revered. And people usually addressed her, respectfully, as Eudokia Petrovna.
She was a powerful woman: black-haired, thickset, with a round face whose placid gentleness completely belied her character. A strict conservative, she was fully conscious of her wealth and her late father’s high position as a military commander. When guests came to their house, she remained out of sight until she was summoned to serve the men brandy after their meal; then, having saluted the guests, she would discreetly depart again. But in private, with other women, or alone with her husband, she had no hesitation in expressing her views. On no subject were they stronger than the changes favoured by the court. A foreigner without a beard, she told him, looked like a chicken that had just been plucked. The western music and plays were sacrilegious: ‘I go to church to hear the Word of God, not some Polish whining,’ she would