Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [59]
‘That’s him.’
‘Fetch him,’ the noble ordered.
And so a few minutes later, to his utter astonishment, Sviatopolk found himself staring at his brother Ivanushka; while Ivanushka, his eyes glazed and his mind apparently far away, looked back at him dully and said not a word.
‘Let the peasant go, he has paid his debt,’ Sviatopolk said calmly. ‘As for this vagrant,’ he gestured to Ivanushka, ‘throw him in prison.’
His mind was working quickly.
The candles were lit. The icon in the corner glowed softly as the Mother of God gazed out from her golden world into the dark spaces of the large room. On the table, the remains of the meal were being cleared away by the slaves.
Igor was sitting in a heavy oak chair. His long head, all grey now, was inclined forward, his chin resting upon his chest. His eyes were open, watchful, his face still but grim. His wife sat on a chair beside him. One might have guessed that, an hour or two before, she had been weeping; but now her face was pale, drawn, and upon her husband’s orders, impassive.
Sviatopolk was scowling with barely contained fury.
What unlucky curse, he wondered, had caused his father to walk out to the city wall just as they were leading the silent Ivanushka to the little jail where he would have been out of the way? He would have been drowned by now, Sviatopolk thought. For his intention – not knowing that Ivanushka was going to drown himself anyway – had been to take him down to the river that night and hold him under himself. Better for him. Better even for my parents, he had told himself. They’ll find the body, suppose he took his life, and end all this agony over a useless son. Besides, the fool would only ask for money.
But fate had intervened. True, his father had been grim-faced about it from the moment he had encountered him. He had marched his youngest son back to their house almost like a prisoner. And now, over the evening meal, the young man had been forced to explain himself.
It had scarcely been necessary for Sviatopolk to accuse him. He had, in his stumbling way, accused himself. Indeed, Sviatopolk had thought it wisest to say nothing against him but to suggest: ‘My brother has lost his way. I think he has almost lost his soul. Perhaps he may regain it as a monk.’ Monks usually died young.
Igor had put the questions, while his wife watched in silence.
Once, Sviatopolk had murmured: ‘Can such a son love his family?’ But the rest of the interrogation had gone on without his aid. And now, at last, the stern nobleman summed up.
‘You have lied to me, and to us all. You have thrown away your inheritance, which I gave you. You have even stolen. By no word did you tell us whether you were alive or dead, breaking your mother’s heart. And now, having stolen yet again, you give the money to a stranger and try to depart from the very place where your parents are living.’
It seemed to Sviatopolk that no indictment could be more complete. He watched, contented, while no one spoke.
Then Igor forgave his son.
The great Russian winter, terrible in its mighty cold, is also a time of joy. For Ivanushka, it was a time of healing.
At first, during the autumn months after his homecoming, his body and spirit seemed to collapse. The end of his long ordeal, as so often happens, caused a surrender in his system. He fell prey to a cold that soon turned into an illness that made his throat swell up, his limbs ache and his head throb so violently that he blinked with the pain. ‘It feels like an anvil,’ he muttered, ‘upon which two demons are hammering.’
It was his mother who saved him. Perhaps because only she understood. For when his father had wanted to send for one of the Armenian or Syrian doctors of the prince’s court, men skilled in the medicine of the classical world, Olga had refused. ‘We have folk remedies better than the medicine of the Greeks and Romans,’ she said firmly. ‘But send to the monastery if you wish, and ask the monks for their prayers.’ Then she had locked the door