Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [80]
‘Perhaps. But your rulers of Rus are incapable of order. You can’t deny it. The royal house is in chaos.’
What the old man said rang true. Yet Ivanushka was reluctant to agree. For despite his disgust at the people that day, with their foolish, anti-Semitic rallying cries, he could not help himself thinking: How wrong they are, these Jews. How far behind us, with their endless trust in laws and systems.
He sighed, then said aloud: ‘The law is not everything, you know.’
Zhydovyn gazed at him. ‘It’s all we have,’ he replied bluntly.
Ivanushka shook his head. How could he explain? That was not the way to think.
No. There was a better way. A Christian way.
He could not, perhaps, find the words himself, but that did not matter. For had they not already been said, better than he could hope to express them, in the most famous sermon ever given in the Russian Church?
It had been preached just before his birth, yet so well recorded that he had learned sections of it as a child. The sermon had been given by the great Slav churchman, Hilarion, in memory of St Vladimir. He had called it: On Law and Grace. And its message was very simple. The Jews had given mankind God’s law. But then had come the Son of God, with a greater truth – the rule of grace, of God’s direct love, which is greater than earthly rules and regulations. This was the wonderful message which the new Church of the Slavs would demonstrate to the vast world of forest and steppe.
How could he tell old Zhydovyn this? He could not. The Jews would never accept it.
Yet had not his own journey through life been a pilgrimage in search of grace? Had not he – Ivanushka the Fool – discovered God’s love without a textbook of laws?
He had no wish for a world of systems. It was not in his nature. The solution, with God’s grace, must surely be something simpler.
‘All we need,’ he told the Khazar, ‘is a wise and godly man, a true prince, a strong ruler.’
It was a medieval phantom that was to be the curse of most of Russian history.
‘Thank God,’ he went on, ‘that we have Monomakh.’
Before parting, however, as a token of affection, Ivanushka gave the old man a little gift: it was the little metal disk he wore around his neck on a chain, and which bore the trident tamga of his clan.
‘Take it,’ he said, ‘to remind you that we saved each other’s lives.’
It was a few days later that, by the grace of God, the princes bowed to the veche, and that, thanks to a revolution, there began the rule of one of the greatest monarchs Russia ever had: Vladimir Monomakh.
Ivanushka’s joy was even further increased when, that very autumn, the little church at Russka, with what seemed like miraculous speed, was completed.
He would often make the journey down to the village, staying days at a time, pretending to inspect the estate but in fact just enjoying the astonishing peace of the place.
Above all, at the end of the day, he liked to look at his little masterpiece. How gently it glowed in the evening light, its pink surface warmed by the departing rays of the sun.
He would sit contentedly gazing at the brave little building on its platform of grass above the river, with the dark woods behind, as the sun slowly went down.
Was there a sense of threat, of melancholy over the golden Byzantine dome as it caught the last flashes of light at sunset? No. He had faith. Nothing, it seemed to him, would now disturb the tranquillity of the little house of God, before the forest and above the river.
All nature seemed at peace in the vast, Russian silence.
And how strange it was, he sometimes thought, that when he stood on the bank by the church and gazed out at the vast sky over the endless steppe, the sky itself, no matter which way the clouds were passing, seemed like a great river to be motionless, yet retreating, always retreating.
And often, even on summer days, a slight wind from the east came softly over the land.
The Tatar
1237, December
The horseman’s broad Mongolian face was weatherbeaten to an ochre brown.
His beard and moustaches