Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [329]
It was just three months later that Countess Turova also died. ‘Truly,’ everyone said, ‘an era has really passed.’ She left the bulk of her huge estate to Alexander’s distant cousin. And a quarter of it to Adelaide de Ronville, who married soon after.
The Duel
1802
High in the blue September sky a pale sun hovered, while from time to time small white clouds drifted over the endless plain.
As they passed, the clouds assumed many forms. One resembled a fish, open-mouthed as it crossed the azure sky; another a horse and rider; a third, perhaps, the witch Baba Yaga sweeping by.
They came from the east, in a leisurely procession, past the old frontier city of Nizhni Novgorod, where the mighty Volga meets the sluggish Oka, and into the huge loop in the R of Russian rivers that is the Russian heartland. Westward towards Moscow they came, over ancient Russian cities – Riazan, Murom, Suzdal and stately Vladimir. And some of them, too, passed over the small, shining ribbon of river that cut through the forest down to the little town of Russka and the village beyond.
How insignificant these places looked, seen from above: with modest wooden houses and the town, perched on its high river bank, facing the little white-walled monastery opposite. How still everything was. Did the sound of the monastery bells, tolling over the trees, reach up to the passing clouds? Surely not. The sky was silent but for the faint hiss of the breeze. For what were the lives, the loves and the fates of men to those clouds? They came from the vast eastern spaces where the natural order of things is, like the endless sky, unknowable, beyond mere human comprehension.
And could anything be less important than the subject the two peasants were discussing that afternoon? They were speaking of silk ribbons.
They were standing by the river bank. Behind them was the little village that belonged to Alexander Bobrov. The place had improved recently. There was a wooden footbridge over the river and walkways made of boards traversed the muddiest places. The huts, mostly raised off the ground, were in good repair. One or two, though retaining the arrangement of the traditional peasant izba, had an upper floor as well, and elaborately carved shutters as proof of the wealth of their occupants.
The two men were cousins, though separated by two generations. In common with fifteen other families in the village, they shared a descent from the girl Maryushka, the sole survivor of the terrible church fire in the reign of Peter, who had returned to the village long afterwards. As it happened, both men had been christened Ivan.
But there the resemblance between them ended. Ivan Suvorin was a giant. In him, it might be suggested, the genes of Maryushka’s father, once called Ox, had miraculously reproduced themselves without dilution. He was a head taller than any other man in the village. His arms were so powerful it was said he could lift a horse. He could chop down a tree in half the time it took anyone else. As for his face, even his massive black beard could not conceal its heavy features or the huge, shapeless promontory that was his nose.
His cousin, by contrast, was of only medium height and in shape almost perfectly square. He had a mass of wavy brown hair, soft blue eyes, and, when he chose, sang beautifully. He was a kindly man, though given to moods of depression that would lead him to sudden rages, or morbid tears. But these would pass as quickly as they had come, and he seldom hurt anyone.
His name was Ivan Romanov.
It pleased him that it was the same as that of the royal house: but in fact this was not an unusual distinction. The name which the imperial dynasty had chosen in the sixteenth century was amongst the fifty most common in Russia, meaning