Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [84]
And, to add religious importance to their new northern capital, they brought from Greece a sacred icon of the Mother of God and installed it in the new cathedral of Vladimir. No object was more reverenced in all Russia than the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir.
There was, however, one central weakness in the state of Rus: it was disunited. Though the rules of brotherly succession still applied for the position of Grand Duke, individual cities had gradually become power bases for different branches of the numerous royal house. The disputes were endless. No ruler in Vladimir ever imposed unity upon them from the centre.
The state of Rus was disunited. The Mongols knew it very well.
1239
Yanka was awake at dawn. The sky was growing pale.
Quietly she slipped off the warm shelf over the stove and made her way to the door. She could hear her parents and her brother breathing. No one stirred.
Pulling on her furs and her thick felt boots, she unlatched the door and stepped out on to the crisp snow.
In the half light, the village seemed grey. A few feet away on the right was a small dark dot on the ground. She inspected it. It was just a dog’s mess that had frozen to stone in the cold clear night. There was no wind, and only the pleasant smell of woodsmoke that emanated from the chimneyless huts. No one was about as she began to walk.
There was no particular reason why Yanka should have walked through the woods that dawn; except that, after a restless night, she was glad to go out into the cold open spaces away from the village for a while. She began to walk along the path through the trees.
She was seven years old: a quiet, rather self-possessed little girl, with hazel-flecked blue eyes and straw-coloured hair. Of the children in the village of Russka, she was one of the most fortunate: for her mother’s family were descended from the peasant Shchek, the keeper of the honey forest in the days of the boyar Ivan and the Grand Prince Monomakh. By the time of his death Shchek had acquired numerous beehives of his own and even now, generations later, in addition to the traditional distaff, salt box and butter press that came with every bride, Yanka’s mother had brought a handsome dowry, including several beehives. She was a gay, quick-witted woman, resembling her ancestor mainly in her thick dark hair and square build; and she loved to sing. Sometimes, it was true, Yanka had noticed some tension between her parents. She had even heard her mother speak words of scorn. But for the most part their household seemed happy.
The sun was about to rise. Its rays caught a single, small white cloud overhead, causing it to gleam. Yanka wandered on. She smelt the faint earthy scent of a fox that must have crossed the track. Turning, she saw it, watching her through the trees thirty paces away on the right. ‘Good morning, fox,’ she said quietly.
The fox slipped away across the snow, like a shadow dropping foot-prints as it passed.
It was time to turn back. Yet she did not. Something seemed to beckon her to the edge of the steppe. I will look at the sun rising over the steppe, she thought, before I go back to the village.
The settlement of Russka had become rather isolated in recent times. The fort was still there but poorly manned, for recently there had not even been a prince in Pereiaslav. The boyar’s family had long ago become strangers to the village. Ivanushka’s grandson, another Ivan, had married a Cuman girl, and their son, a strange, fair-haired fellow called Milei whose blue eyes were set in a rather high-boned Turkish face, had taken no interest in Russka. ‘The Turk’ the villagers called him; although by the standards of the Russian princes, some of whom were now seven-eighths Cuman, he was not particularly Turkish. Apart from this, the boyar’s family owned large estates in the north-east, beyond the River Oka. The boyar lived in the city of Murom. His steward came to inspect the village from time to time, and to take the profits from the honey. The family also kept up the little church,