Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [66]
But the fact was, he had fulfilled the prince’s conditions.
Yet more astonishing was the fact that Emma, having politely thanked all four men for the honour they did her, whispered to the prince that she chose Ivanushka.
‘As you wish,’ he replied, but felt obliged, out of loyalty to Sviatopolk, to add: ‘His elder brother is one of my best men, you know, whereas they say Ivanushka’s a fool.’
‘I know,’ she answered. ‘But,’ she smiled, ‘it seems to me he has a warm heart.’
So it was that the very next day Ivanushka, the son of Igor, and Emma, the daughter of a Saxon English noble, were married.
There was a splendid feast given by Vladimir where they were served roast cockerel; and a merry company then showered them with hops as they retired. And if Sviatopolk had any further designs against his brother, he hid them behind a mask of dignity.
While these small events, of such importance to Ivanushka, were taking place, the attention of everyone else at court was directed towards the political arena.
On December 27, the Prince of Kiev died, and Vsevolod of Pereiaslav himself took over Kiev.
‘It’s a great move for your father,’ everyone told Ivanushka. ‘Igor is a great boyar of the Grand Prince of Kiev now.’
For Vladimir Monomakh these events meant that he became master of Pereiaslav in place of his father, so that Sviatopolk and Ivanushka now had a richer master too. And the joy of the court was completed by the birth to the Saxon princess of a baby son.
Yet for Ivanushka these important events seemed of small significance.
He was married. He had discovered, in the depth of winter, a joy far greater than he had ever known – so much so that at times, as he looked across at the wonderful, pale form at his side, he could scarcely believe that such a source of continuous joy was not stolen. Yet the weeks passed and, far from being taken away from him, this joy was only increased. So it was that at last Ivanushka found, not merely happiness, but the sense of wholeness that, sometimes hardly aware of what he was doing, he had so long sought.
‘When I was a boy,’ he told Emma, ‘I wanted to ride to the great River Don. But now I’d rather be here with you. You are all I want.
She smiled, yet asked him: ‘Are you sure, Ivanushka? Am I alone really enough?’
He had stared at her, surprised. Of course she was.
In March she had told him she was pregnant.
‘Now what more could I want?’ he asked her playfully.
A few days later he went to Russka.
It was early in the morning, three days after he arrived there, that Ivanushka came out of the fort soon after the sun had risen above the trees, and sat on a bare stone gazing across the landscape to the south.
How silent it was. The sky above was pale blue, so crystalline that one might, it seemed to Ivanushka, have soared unimpeded into the clear air and touched the edge of heaven. The snowy landscape extended as far as the eye could see, the darker lines of the trees stretching until they seemed to become one with the snow of the endless steppe beyond.
The edges of the frozen river had recently begun to melt. Everything was melting. Only a little at a time, softly, so that you could scarcely hear it; yet inexorably. The more one listened, the more one became aware of the faint popping, the whispering of the whole countryside melting.
And as the sun acted upon the snow and ice, so, Ivanushka could almost feel, were underground forces similarly at work. The whole gigantic continent – the world itself as far as he knew – was softly melting, snow, earth and air, an eternal process caught, for a moment, in this shining stasis.
And everything, it suddenly appeared to Ivanushka, everything was necessary. The rich black earth – so rich that the peasants scarcely needed to plough it; the fortress with its stout wooden walls; the subterranean world where the monks like Father Luke had chosen to live, and certainly to die: why it should be so was beyond him, but it was all necessary. And so, I see, was the winding path of my own confused life, he thought. That too was necessary.