Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [41]
The monk’s gentle taunt, therefore, was merely a way of reminding Igor that, as his spiritual son, he owed him obedience.
‘I will do as you say,’ the noble replied. ‘As for the boy, if he’s not to be a priest, what’s to become of him?’
Father Luke did not even look at Ivanushka.
‘God knows,’ he replied.
1067
Kiev the golden. There was only one problem in the land of Rus. This was that its rulers had invented a political system that did not, and could not possibly, work. The problem lay in the system of succession.
For when the royal clan had chosen that cities should pass, not from father to son, but from brother to brother, they had not foreseen the consequences, which were disastrous.
Firstly, when a prince ruled a city, he might set his sons to rule over the lesser towns in that territory. But when he died, they usually had to give these up to the next prince in line, perhaps without compensation. Worse still, if one of the princely brothers died before being granted a city, his children were completely left out of the long chain of succession. There were many such landless princes without prospects, and these political orphans were known by the same name that was applied to other dispossessed or dependent folk in Russian society: izgoi.
And even when the succession of brothers did not create izgoi, it still produced ludicrous situations.
For the princes of Rus were often long-lived, and they had many sons. What if the eldest son produced children who were fully grown warriors and statesmen by the time his youngest brother, their uncle, was still a boy? They would still have to give up power for their boy-uncle. No wonder they were angry.
Indeed, as the generations passed, it became harder and harder even to work out who was entitled to what, let alone to get the parties to agree to it. Thus the ruling clan of Kievan Rus spent generations devising makeshift arrangements within a system that was inherently unworkable. They never solved their problem.
Kiev the golden. Of late it seemed to Ivanushka that a harsh, angry light menaced the golden city. Treachery was in the air. And now, a year after it had appeared, in the dead of winter, the meaning of the terrible portent in the heavens was becoming clear in the land of Rus.
At first, Ivanushka had even been afraid for his father.
Of all the princes in the land of Rus, none was stranger than the Prince of Polotsk. Men said he was a werewolf. He was certainly terrible to look upon. ‘He was born with a caul wrapped over his eye,’ Ivanushka’s mother had told him, ‘and it’s there to this day.’
‘And is he really so evil?’ Ivanushka had asked.
‘As wicked as Baba Yaga the witch,’ she had replied.
The revolt of the Prince of Polotsk was a typical dynastic quarrel. Though not a landless izgoi, this grandson of the Blessed Vladimir had been cut out of the main chain of succession: so while he kept the city of Polotsk, which lay towards Poland in the west, he could never inherit Kiev, Novgorod, Chernigov, or any of the greatest cities of the land of Rus.
For a time, while other, less important izgoi princes had been creating trouble in the outlying territories, the Prince of Polotsk had remained quiet. Then suddenly, at the dead of winter, he had struck in the north, at the great city of Novgorod; and as the snow lay thick upon the ground, Igor and his two eldest boys had ridden north with the Prince of Kiev and his brothers.
If only Ivanushka could have ridden with them. Since the interview at the monastery, he had spent a miserable year. Because of Cuman raids in the steppe, the caravan with Zhydovyn the Khazar had been postponed. Igor had made several attempts to place him in one of the princely households, but with no luck. More than once, his father