Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [78]
‘Killing us, lord,’ the man shouted. ‘Merchants and nobles alike. Turn back, sir,’ he added, ‘only a fool would go in there.’
Ivanushka smiled grimly to himself, and rode forward. He passed into the podol. The streets were full of people, running to and fro. The uprising looked spontaneous, and seemed to be universal. Some of the small traders were boarding up their houses, but at the same time others were forming into armed groups in the street. Several times he had difficulty getting through.
In one small street, he came face to face with a group of twenty or so.
‘Look,’ one of them shouted, ‘a muzh – a nobleman.’ And they rushed at him with such fury that he only just managed to get away.
The crowds were surging towards the centre. Already he could see flames coming from the citadel of Yaroslav. And a single thought formed in his mind: I must go and save Sviatopolk.
It was as he came towards the Khazar Gate that he saw something that made him go cold, and for a moment drove even thoughts of his brother from his mind.
The crowd numbered at least two hundred. They had entirely surrounded the house. And whereas the people he had seen so far looked either angry or excited, the faces of these rioters had taken on a cruel aspect. A number of them were grinning with obvious pleasure at the punishment they were about to inflict.
The house belonged to old Zhydovyn the Khazar.
An expectant murmur rose from the crowd.
‘Roast them a little,’ he heard a voice cry.
There was a chorus of approval.
‘Roast pig belongs on a spit,’ a large man shouted jovially.
Some of them, Ivanushka noticed, carried flaming torches. They were already preparing to set light to one side of the house; but it was obvious from their faces that their desire was not so much to burn it down as to smoke the inmates out.
‘Villains,’ a man cried.
‘Jews!’ shouted an old woman.
And at once several more in the crowd took up the cry: ‘Come out, Jews, and be killed.’
Ivanushka understood very well. The fact that many of the Jewish Khazar merchants were poor; the more significant fact still that nearly all the leaders of the exploiting cartels had been Slavic or Scandinavian Christians – both these truths had been temporarily forgotten. In the heat of the moment, the angry crowd, looking for scapegoats to attack, had remembered that some of the capitalists were foreign. They were Jewish. There was now a grand excuse for acts of cruelty.
It was just then, scanning the house, that Ivanushka saw a single face at a window.
It was Zhydovyn. He was looking out gloomily, unable to gauge what he should do.
One of the men had pushed his way to the front. He was carrying a long, thin pike. ‘Show us your men,’ he shouted.
‘There are no Jewish men,’ someone replied. And there was a general laugh.
In fact, as far as Ivanushka could tell, old Zhydovyn was probably alone in there except for some servants.
‘Show us your women, then!’ the man bellowed, to a general guffaw.
Ivanushka braced himself and started to push his horse forward, through the crowd. People began to turn. There were cries of anger.
‘What’s this?’
‘A damned noble!’
‘Another exploiter.’
‘Pull him down!’
He felt hands grabbing at his feet; a spear was thrust up at him, only just missing his face. He wanted to strike at them with his whip, but knew that if he made the slightest angry movement he was lost. Slowly, imperturbably, he coaxed his horse forward, gently nudging his way through the parting crowd to the front. Then he turned.
Ivanushka looked at the crowd, and they stared at him.
And to his surprise, he experienced a new kind of fear.
He had never faced an angry crowd before. He had faced the Cuman horde; he had several times looked at death. But he had never faced a wall of hatred. It was terrifying. Worse than that, he suddenly felt numb. The crowd’s hate came at him like a single, unstoppable force. He felt naked, fearful, and strangely ashamed. Yet why should he feel ashamed? There was no cause for it. True, he was a noble; but he knew very well that he had done these