Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [335]
Above all, serfs could nowadays be bought and sold like chattels. A pretty girl or a man with special skills could fetch a high price. In a celebrated case, a magnate had sold an entire serf orchestra for a fortune.
Of course, it was wrong. It was monstrous. In his radical days, in the salons of Catherine’s St Petersburg, Alexander would have conceded as much. Nowadays, it was well known, the Tsar himself considered the practice of serfdom utterly repugnant.
‘But he can’t change it, not yet. The gentry won’t let him,’ Alexander would correctly argue. ‘And in the meantime, I must provide for the family,’ he told himself. At least on the Bobrovo estate, serfs were seldom flogged and never killed.
In all this terrible dealing in souls, probably no practice was more common than the selling of men as military recruits. And it was not the landlords who usually bought these.
It was other serfs.
For the recruiting officer cared not one rap whence the soldier came. As long as he had a body for cannon fodder, it was enough. A rich serf like Suvorin, therefore, did not let his own son go to war. He simply went to the landowner and bought another fellow to go in his place.
So here he was, and the only question was, how much? Slowly Bobrov considered, while the Suvorins waited.
It was quite by chance that, at this moment, Tatiana and young Sergei should have entered the room. The landlord’s wife had run the estate long enough to guess what business the Suvorins must have called upon. She had always rather liked the stern couple. Perhaps it was her Baltic ancestry, but their businesslike ways appealed to her. She looked at her husband enquiringly. As for young Sergei, he just smiled at them cheerfully, as he did at everyone.
And why was it that their entry should have caused Bobrov to change his price? Was it a sudden memory of his humiliation at Sergei’s birth? Was it a sense of his failure at his career and his wife’s success at running the estate when he was in prison? Whatever the cause, instead of the five hundred roubles he had thought of asking for, he calmly announced: ‘The price is a thousand roubles.’
The two serfs gasped. He had struck home this time; he could see it in their faces. The amount, of course, was outrageous. The top rate being asked for substitutes, even by the greediest landlords, was about six hundred roubles at that time. But it was not unknown for landlords to charge even greater sums if they thought the purchaser might have the means.
‘Of course,’ he added coolly, ‘I could just decide to send Savva anyway.’ It was within his power. Then he watched as the two serfs looked at each other.
They had brought eight hundred roubles. To get another two hundred they would have to dig under the floorboards. It was all they had in the world.
‘I could bring such a sum tomorrow, Alexander Prokofievich,’ Suvorin said glumly.
‘Very well, I will send for one of the Riazan serfs to take Savva’s place.’ Alexander concealed his smile, but he felt a glow of triumph. It was not easy to run the estate better than his unfaithful wife, but he had discovered that milking the richer serfs was one way. And he had certainly got the better of Suvorin today. In his triumph over the serf, he scarcely gave young Savva more than a glance.
Savva looked at the Bobrovs. Tatiana he did not mind. She was fair and she was practical. He correctly saw, from the distant look on her face, that she had no part in this. But the rest of them, father and sons, he hated and despised. He might have admired them, although they oppressed him, if they were strong. But he knew that they were not. He glanced at Sergei. Somehow he looked different. His bright brown eyes were watching Savva with apparent amusement: was the boy laughing at him?
The young peasant knew little of the past. Back in Peter the Great’s time, his grandmother had told him, her own grandmother had escaped from fire when the villagers burned themselves in the church. Then she had returned here later. ‘We’ve been here as long as the Bobrovs,