Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [279]
Thus Peter began his new western capital.
A chilly spring day in St Petersburg, and Procopy Bobrov, a heavy woollen cloak over his uniform, was walking briskly along a muddy path by the River Neva.
A damp, salty wind from the sea was driving up the Neva from behind him, catching the back of his ears so that they were wet, red and tingling.
He was quite alone. But from time to time he would glance round and stare behind him, despite the fact that the wind then smacked him harshly in the face; and even as he screwed up his eyes to peer into it, like a sailor before the mast, something indefinable in his manner suggested he was embarrassed.
The fact was, he was afraid of being seen by Maryushka.
He pressed on in this manner for some distance, turning repeatedly to make sure she was not following him.
It was, undeniably, a confounded nuisance that, just when he thought he was rid of her, she should have embarrassed him like this. But she had come to him, pleading, in such a way that …
The fact was, his conscience troubled him.
Maryushka. They had all been kind to her. She had no complaints about that.
She had spent the first few years with the elder Bobrovs in Moscow until first Nikita and then Eudokia had died. If she could not have been happy, those years had at least been peaceful.
After the disaster at Dirty Place, Nikita had ruled his household with a rod of iron. The Raskolniki were never even to be mentioned. The family went to the authorized church. Even Eudokia, now, was so shaken that she did not speak of the forbidden subject to the little girl, even in private. Occasionally, after Nikita had gone, the old woman had spoken tenderly about Maryushka’s parents, but that was all.
Then Eudokia had died and Procopy had taken her on.
Procopy had not wanted Maryushka. She knew it perfectly well. But he had promised his mother that he would look after her until she married, and so she had been taken to the new city on the Neva.
Procopy’s house was large. Like everything in St Petersburg, its size was regulated by the Tsar. Since Procopy owned five hundred peasants, his house had to be two storeys high, and built of timber and plaster in the English manner. Thanks to this, it leaked. Each spring, the Neva overflowed and flooded the cellar.
Two of the houses nearby had been destroyed by fire; everyone in the city – merchants, nobles, even Peter himself – was part of the fire-fighting force. The Tsar himself had been present with his axe at one of these fires, and had saved the nearby houses. When the other one burnt he had been away on campaign, and people had just watched as three more houses had caught fire and had been destroyed as well.
How Maryushka longed for Russka and the hamlet at Dirty Place.
Alas, however, Dirty Place was empty.
When the Bobrovs had lost all their peasants there, they had intended to move families from their other estates to repopulate the place.
‘After all, we own plenty of souls elsewhere,’ Procopy had remarked.
But even so, they never had enough. The trouble was Tsar Peter’s endless wars.
It has been calculated that in over two decades, Peter enjoyed only a few months of actual peace. The wars in the north dragged on interminably. Everything was subject to them. Nobles, merchants, peasants – the entire huge country was bled by the huge cost. And so it was that, year after year, when the Bobrovs told their stewards to choose people to send to Dirty Place, the word came back that all the spare men had already been despatched to the recruiting officers.
‘For we can’t ruin three other estates just to get one started again,’ Procopy would point out.
There was another reason – though she did not know it – why Maryushka would never see Russka again.
‘People might recognize her there,’ Procopy confided to his wife. ‘And although the business with Daniel and my mother is all over now, it might