It was true of course. Andrei could not deny it. For men like Bogdan – for Andrei and his father too – the terms were excellent. But those poor peasants, inspired by Bogdan’s promises of freedom, who had risen with their makeshift weapons and suffered the magnates’ revenge – for them there was nothing at all.
When challenged about it, what had Bogdan and his council replied?
‘Let the Cossack be a Cossack, and the peasant a peasant.’
This simple statement, which would long be remembered, had served as the epitaph for a free Ukraine. It left many of the participants disgusted.
‘That is not what I came to fight for,’ Stepan said grimly.
‘It’s as good as we could get,’ Andrei remarked.
Truth to tell, it was as much as he wanted. He realized that. Why should he want a free peasantry now that he was in a position to buy an estate? But in any case, the whole idea was impossible.
‘You can’t have complete freedom. It’s an illusion,’ he suggested.
The big man shook his head.
‘It’s no illusion, but you fear it,’ he replied sadly.
‘I just know it can’t work. And anyway, who would protect us from attack? Freedom leaves us defenceless. We need authority, a big power. Don’t you see that?’
‘I see that treachery brings only evil,’ the big man replied.
And now, within days, he was being proved right.
The peasants, furious at being sold out, were beginning to rise up again; and now it was the Cossack council, not the Poles, who decreed they must be put down at once. The orders had been issued. Andrei prepared to ride.
He knew it was the end of his friendship with Stepan: he knew it the moment he heard the order.
Yet, even so, he was in for a small surprise.
He found the big man already prepared to leave. Though he greeted his friend gruffly, Andrei guessed that Stepan must have been waiting for him before departing. His horse was saddled; some modest possessions were strapped to a pack-horse. Andrei saw a spare horse standing nearby.
‘You’ve heard the order, then?’
‘I have.’
‘You’re going?’
‘Of course. I want no part of it.’
Andrei sighed. He didn’t try to dissuade him.
‘So you’re going back to the Don?’
‘Perhaps.’
Andrei looked around, a little puzzled.
‘Where are your Polish horses? Where’s all your loot?’
‘I gave them away.’
‘Gave them away? To whom?’
‘To some peasants. They needed money more than me.’
It was a stunning rebuke, but Andrei did not try to justify himself, nor did he feel insulted. Stepan thought one way; he thought another.
‘But haven’t you kept anything for yourself? What about your farm back on the Don?’
‘Perhaps I won’t go back to the Don.’
‘Men are free there, my Ox, even if they aren’t in the Ukraine. That’s where you belong.’
For a moment or two, the Ox did not reply. It seemed there was something on his mind, something he had been brooding about for some time. He shook his head slowly.
‘Men,’ he muttered at last, ‘are never free. Not when they are ruled by their own desires.’
Andrei looked at his friend. There was a kind of finality in this statement which suggested that, whatever path it was that Stepan had been travelling in his thoughts, he had come to the very end of it and had, so to speak, returned before setting off again.
‘Don’t you have faith in men any more, my Ox?’ Andrei asked affectionately.
The fact that Stepan did not reply at once told Andrei that his faith in the affairs of men had been destroyed.
‘We are all sinners,’ he grunted with a frown.
‘Where will you go, then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Then you still have faith of some kind.’
‘Perhaps.’ Stepan glanced down at his feet. ‘One day I may become a priest,’ he said gloomily.
‘A priest?’
‘Or a monk. But not yet. I am unworthy.’
Andrei scarcely knew what to make of this.
‘Will I ever see you again, old Ox?’ he asked.
‘Perhaps.’ He wiped a fly off his long brown beard. ‘Perhaps not.’ He glanced at his horse. ‘I must be off.’
Andrei embraced him.
‘Goodbye, my Ox. God be with you,’ he said.
He did not expect to see him again.
1653
And now, on a sharp, cold morning, in the spring of 1653, young Andrei was riding northwards with the Cossack envoys.
They were going to see the Tsar.
His own career, since the departure of Stepan, had gone from strength to strength. He had increasingly come to Bogdan’s personal notice, and the Hetman, with his long, crafty face, had often given him sensitive missions.
Old Ostap had died – not of his bad heart, as Andrei and his mother had always expected, but of a plague that had visited the Ukraine a little after the peasant revolt. The incident had saddened Andrei and reminded him of his own mortality.
‘Time you married,’ Bogdan had told him. But for some reason, though he had taken to enjoying conquests wherever he went, Andrei had not yet done so. Could it really be that he still remembered Anna? And if so, what could he possibly hope for? He did not know; and he was, besides, too busy to think about it.
The present mission, he understood very well, was by far the most important of his life. The letters the little party was carrying from the Hetman were designed to do nothing less, this time, than save the Ukraine.
For events had been moving towards a crisis.
Poland had not been content with even a partial Cossack state. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Uniates could tolerate the success of Orthodoxy in the Kievan lands; the magnates wanted their lands back; the Szlachta nobility and every taxpaying Pole was indignant at the huge increase in the Cossack register and the large number of Cossacks who therefore might suppose the Commonwealth should pay them salaries. Soon there was more fighting. The Poles added large numbers of German mercenaries to their forces and Bogdan was not always successful. Gradually his hold was weakened. Jews began to return to the Ukrainian lands. And twice, now, large parties of Cossacks and peasants had crossed the border into Russia and been given asylum.
What should the Cossack Hetman do?
He’s still a crafty fox, Andrei had often reminded himself, with admiration.
Indeed he was. At any one time he might be negotiating with the Sultan, the Tatars, the Tsar and the Poles all at once; he even tried to get the throne of the little state of Moldavia, down in the south by the River Danube, for his son. But above all, it was becoming clearer each year that the only hope for the Cossacks lay to the north and east, with Russia. Only the Tsar would respect the Orthodox religion; only he could protect the Ukraine from mighty Poland.
The problem was that Russia was unwilling. The great empire of the north had troubles of her own; she had no wish to risk a costly war with a furious Poland if she accepted the Ukraine. Bogdan had sent messengers, threatened to give the Ukraine to the Turkish Sultan, even harboured a strange adventurer who claimed the Russian throne – anything to get the Tsar’s attention.
Now, this spring, the Poles had sent another large force to reduce the Ukraine and yet again, the Hetman was appealing to Moscow. But this time, things might be different.
‘So far we’ve had nothing but offers of cheap bread and salt,’ the Hetman told Andrei, as he handed him the letters. ‘But there may still be one way to sway them.’