Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [249]
‘Prepare with prayer and fasting,’ they advised, ‘for the end of days is nigh.’
Sometimes, having found such happiness at Russka, Daniel had wondered if perhaps the hermits over the Volga had been mistaken. By chance, after many years of the harshest winters, the climate in north Russia had become milder the year after his marriage: the cold season had been shorter, the crops better. Might it be a hopeful sign? But when, after four years of marriage, his wife had failed to become pregnant he sadly concluded: It is probably a sign that, for the faithful, the world is becoming too wicked a place for children to live in.
In 1684, if any confirmation were needed of the wickedness of the world, the blow fell.
An edict from the Regent Sophia outlawed the Raskolniki. Suspected schismatics could be tortured and anyone sheltering them would lose their property. For obstinate offenders the penalty was death. On the day that news of this terrible edict had reached Russka, Silas had come to Daniel’s house near the market square and spent an hour talking with him urgently. When he emerged, he was looking grim.
Arina had remained outside while the two men talked and did not venture back until some time later. But when she did, she found Daniel so deep in prayer that he was unaware of her presence. She had never seen him so agitated before. With tears in his eyes, he was prostrating himself before the blackened little icon in the corner, knocking his forehead on the floor and murmuring: ‘Lord have mercy. Let this cup pass from me.’ And feeling that she was intruding, Arina had begun to back out of the room.
It was just as she was doing so, however, that her husband said something else, that seemed to her very strange. For suddenly, staring up at the icon with a look of desperation he cried out: ‘Yet who am I, Lord, to ask for mercy – If who have murdered, not once but many times?’
Arina gazed at him. What could he mean? Surely the words were not to be taken literally, for it was hard to imagine her husband hurting a fly, let alone committing a murder. What, then, was in his mind? And it struck her, with a greater force than ever before, how little she still knew about the life of this man whom she unreservedly loved. And being ignorant, she thought, how can I help him now, in his hour of need?
When they were alone that evening, Daniel told her about Silas’s visit. Faced with the terrible new threat of the edict, even the old priest had been uncertain what to do. ‘He honoured me by asking my advice,’ Daniel gravely told her.
‘And what did you tell him, Petrovich?’
‘For my sins, I advised him to go on.’ He looked at her with troubled eyes. ‘If we continue, even in secret, it may bring great misfortune upon us – upon you too, Ivanovna,’ he confessed.
She bowed her head. Whatever suffering might lie ahead, she knew that she only desired to share it with him.
‘It is all I have – this faith,’ Daniel suddenly burst out. ‘I have wandered all my life in search of truth, Ivanovna. I cannot turn back now.’
And it was then, because the moment seemed right, that Arina begged him: ‘Will you not tell your wife something of your past life, Petrovich?’
It was a strange tale he had to tell: a story of solitary wanderings that seemed to have taken him all over Russia. He told her about the elders he had met