Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [330]
The two men were both serfs belonging to Alexander Bobrov. But there again, the similarity ended. For while Romanov worked the land and did wood carvings to help earn money to pay the landlord his obrok, Suvorin had been more enterprising. Starting with a single loom in the family izba, he had begun to weave cloth and sell it in the little market at Russka. Recently, however, he had discovered he could get a better price in the ancient city of Vladimir, a day’s journey away.
And now he wanted to make silk ribbons: and the question was, would his cousin Romanov like to come in with him?
The two men were accompanied by a ten-year-old boy, Suvorin’s son. He was called Savva and he was, as far as it was possible to be, a smaller replica of his father. As Romanov looked at the two Suvorins now, there was something about them that, he had to admit, made him feel nervous. What was it in those four piercing black eyes? He wanted to say it was cunning, yet there was no doubt that Suvorin was scrupulously honest. Perhaps they were just calculating. Yet it was more than that. There was something proud yet relentless about them, that was it, something unbending as if to say: ‘We are tall in stature and in spirit.’ Whenever he saw them, he remembered his mother’s favourite proverb: ‘It’s the tallest blade of grass that’s the first to be cut down.’
‘These silk ribbons are very profitable. We could all do well if you care to join us,’ Suvorin said.
Romanov still hesitated. He could use the money. He looked at them thoughtfully. And it was then that something struck him.
It was the boy: Savva. He was ten years old. And yet Ivan Romanov had never seen him smile.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll just stick to my wood carving.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Suvorin replied.
And they parted, not in any anger, but both parties understanding that, the offer having been refused, it would never be made again.
It did not seem significant to Romanov, at the time.
It was on that same day that, once again, Alexander Bobrov became a father. More or less.
As he held the child in his hands and inspected it, he felt conflicting emotions. There was, there must be, something wonderful, something holy, about a new-born child. As he looked down at Tatiana, who had gone through so much for him during many years, he gave her a kindly smile. ‘It’s a boy,’ he remarked.
Unfortunately, it was not his.
It had come as a shock to Alexander when, at the end of the previous year, 1801, Tatiana had been unfaithful to him. Strangely enough, it had come just as a new hope had entered his life.
The previous five years had been discouraging. Though Tsar Paul had released Alexander from prison, he had shown no desire for the former State Councillor’s services, and Alexander had remained, feeling rather useless, on the estate which his wife had run so competently without him. In a way, however, he was well out of St Petersburg, for the Tsar’s strange nature had soon turned to morbidness, then madness; and when a group of patriotic officers, in 1801, had murdered him and placed his son on the throne, all Russia had heaved a sigh of relief.
And Bobrov, too, had been filled with excitement. Young Tsar Alexander: the grandson whom Catherine herself had trained, autocrat of all the Russians, yet child of the Enlightenment. Youthful, beautiful to look upon, charming – the complete antithesis of his gloomy, narrow-minded father. The Angel, some called him. The Bobrov family had been planning to spend the winter in Moscow that year. In the month of November, suddenly fired with a new energy, Bobrov had left Tatiana and the children in Moscow and set out for St Petersburg alone. Perhaps, now, there would be some appointment for a man of his attainments. For two months he drifted about the capital, and received various promises which gave him hope, but nothing definite. In January he had returned.
It was a dashing young captain of Hussars who had