Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [247]
Nikita was finished; his career was over. What should he do now? Above all, how could he advance the family interests – what should be done about Procopy?
He was a pleasant youth. He looked remarkably like his father, with the same broad forehead and black hair; he was somewhat given to enthusiasms – perhaps too much so. But his excitement was infectious and gave him great charm. It would be tragic if the cloud over the family should prevent him having a fine career.
To Nikita’s great surprise, it was Eudokia who supplied the answer. ‘We’ll get nothing from Princess Sophia,’ she argued. ‘So our only hope is to gamble on the next reign. Let Procopy go and serve the boy. Let him serve young Peter.’
Peter? Who knew anything about the boy? Would he ever be allowed to come to power by Sophia and the scheming Miloslavskys?
‘He’s our only chance,’ Eudokia repeated. ‘Just leave the whole business to me.’ And rather to Nikita’s surprise, it was not long before she was summoned to see the boy Tsar’s mother, and returned with an invitation for Nikita to pay young Peter a visit.
He was to go, not to the Kremlin, but to a little village just outside the capital, called Preobrazhenskoe.
It was two months later, as the leaves were beginning to fall, that Nikita Bobrov and Eudokia came to Russka.
Procopy had been successfully placed in Peter’s household. No one wanted Nikita in Moscow. So he had decided to visit his estates.
He found his house in the town needed repair, and sent for men at once. He visited the monastery and gave the monks some more money to say masses for his father. He carefully inspected Dirty Place. And Eudokia, as was her way in the country, took care to inspect everything too. It was in this way that she discovered, as she put it, ‘just the man’ to undertake the more elaborate carpentry needed in the house.
‘He’s an icon painter,’ she explained, ‘but a wonderful carpenter too. You must meet him, Nikita. His name is Daniel. His wife’s a treasure too.’
Nikita met them. The fellow was huge; the woman of no interest. Yet Eudokia was always talking to them. Indeed, after a couple of weeks, she seemed to think the sun shone out of their eyes. Personally, he couldn’t think what she saw in them.
Silence – some believe – gives a man power. So it seemed to be with Daniel. For though he said little, and asked for no consideration at all, the people of Russka looked up to him.
Not that they knew him. Even now, after seven years, he was still a mystery. Yet, like some huge old oak tree in the forest, his whole presence suggested permanence, and a comforting stability which seemed to come from the earth itself.
He even looked like a tree, his wife thought fondly. In the winter months, he would wrap himself in a thick, dark gown that reached to his ankles and which looked like a monk’s habit. On his head he would wear a high, conical cloth hat, trimmed with fur so that his wife, glancing up at the old watchtower with its high, tent roof, would say: ‘Why do we need a watchtower with my husband here?’
At other times, emerging sedately from the swirling snow, he would look like some ancient winter god, coming from the endless greyness of the forest.
In his presence she always had a sense of perfect peace. She knew him as well as it is possible to know another being; she knew that, at the core of this mighty oak, resided a man of huge wisdom. When they slept together she experienced frequently, not only that oceanic feeling within herself but also the sense that, like all truly simple people, he possessed a life without end.
Yet she knew nothing of his past. She knew only that, for some reason he would never explain, he had not been married before; and that, thanks be to God, he had changed his mind.
She also knew that sometimes, in private, Daniel was deeply troubled.
He had not planned to marry when he came to Russka. I am too unworthy, he told himself. How can I ask another to share my life when I am confused and so steeped in sin? Nor would he have stayed, if it had not been for Silas.
It was not