The day afterwards he left Russka on foot, going towards the River Dniepr.
It was after parting from Ivanushka that Shchek the peasant had wandered out from the village towards the steppe.
Though the little fort had somewhat increased the significance of the hamlet of Russka since ancient times, it was still a tiny and deserted place. To the south, two miles away, lay one of the prince’s estates; to the east, the steppe; and to the north, nothing at all for fifteen miles, where there was another similar hamlet and a fort.
As he walked, Shchek was rather cheerful. Since he had become a zakup, his life had not been easy. The prince’s steward worked him hard. His wife, ashamed of his status, had become sullen. But this unexpected gift from the young noble was a great windfall. A silver grivna was worth about three months’ wages to a peasant like Shchek.
He took the path through the woods and continued along it to the glades where the women picked mushrooms. He pressed on, past the pool where, the villagers said, rusalki dwelt. It was a little way past the pool that he came to a crossroads. The right-hand track, he knew, led south to the prince’s estate. The left-hand track led northwards; but since it passed through a place where one of the villagers had been killed by a boar, few people took that route, thinking it unlucky.
On impulse, however, the peasant decided to do so. That Ivanushka brought me luck, he considered. I’ve nothing to fear today.
Some way to the north of Russka, the river made a large curve round a low and densely wooded hill. It was here that the villager had been killed. Thick undergrowth had formed round the base of the hill, much of it bramble and thorn. It was not an inviting spot, and he would not have paused had he not suddenly seen, a hundred yards ahead of him, a large fox slipping silently into the undergrowth.
I wonder if he has a lair in there, Shchek thought. Fox fur was valuable. As quietly as he could, and suffering a number of scratches, he made his way through the undergrowth and began to climb the hill. And a few minutes later, having almost forgotten the fox, he was grinning with delight and astonishment.
For the hill, so densely covered with oak and pine, and which no one ever visited, was a treasure house. It was crowded with beehives. He could smell the rich, thick smell of honey up in the trees everywhere. As he wandered around, he counted no less than twenty hives up in the branches; until finally he laughed aloud. ‘That Ivanushka has brought me more luck than he knew,’ he cried.
He did not plan to tell anyone about it. For already he could see how to make use of it. I might even be able to get free one day, he mused.
1075
In the year 1075, few men in the land of Rus were considered as lucky as Igor the boyar.
His master, Prince Vsevolod of Pereiaslav, showered gifts upon him. No one was held in more honour in that prince’s druzhina.
The greatest nobles, now, had a new status: instead of the old blood-money of forty grivnas, their lives had been set at eighty. Even to insult them carried a fine of four times the value of a smerd.
Igor had been granted this high status. More than that, so impressed was the Prince of Pereiaslav with his loyal servant, that the previous year, he had given Igor the lordship of extensive lands on the south-east border of the principality, including the little hamlet of Russka.
These outright gifts of land were a new method of rewarding faithful retainers. Cheaper than gifts of money, in a state where land was plentiful, these land grants began the process whereby the term ‘boyar’, which originally meant a retainer or nobleman of the druzhina, came to signify ‘landowner’.
Igor the boyar had reason to be happy. Yet behind his aloof and busy manner, there was a sadness. Seeing Igor and his greying wife together, a stranger might have thought that they shared a love of quietness. Yet in fact, they were quiet because each was afraid that almost anything either of them said might bring to the surface the sadness concealed in the other.
Boris was dead. He had been killed in a skirmish at the edge of the steppe one winter day. As was the custom, they had brought his body back on a sled.
Igor would never forget that day. It was snowing, and as they pulled the sled up the slope to the city gates, the snow flurries had slapped, softly, across his face so that at times he could scarcely see the sled. He had prayed in front of the icon for long hours at that period, and sought the comfort of Father Luke.
But the loss of Boris was a wound that could heal.
Not so the loss of Ivanushka.
Where was he? A month after he had left for Constantinople, they had heard from Zhydovyn the Khazar that he had been seen at Russka. But where had he gone after that? Word came from the Russian merchants in Constantinople: he had never arrived there. A year of silence followed; then a rumour that he had been seen in Kiev; vague reports came also from Smolensk, Chernigov, even distant Novgorod. He had been seen gambling; he had been seen drinking; he had been seen begging. There were few reports, however, and none of them very reliable.
And from Ivanushka, for three years, came not a word to his parents to let them know if he was alive or dead.
‘He is searching for something,’ his mother said, after the sighting in Kiev had been reported.
‘He is ashamed,’ Igor concluded sadly.
‘Yet even so,’ Sviatopolk remarked, ‘he cannot love any of us, to behave like this.’
And as the third year passed, and no word came, even his mother began to believe Ivanushka did not love her.
The jetty was crowded. Above, a long path of dry earth made an untidy diagonal gash across the tall ramparts of Pereiaslav. In the faint sun, the ramparts, where they were not dirty brown, had a pale green covering of tired autumnal grass. The summer had passed. There was an air of lassitude about the place. The broad river, too, looked brown and dreary, stretching away like a monotonous echo under an iron sky. At the end of the jetty, a stout boat was about to cast off – an event which would have attracted no special attention but for a little incident concerning a young man.
He was a strange figure. His whole person appeared to be filthy. The brown cloak wrapped round him and the peasant’s bast shoes he wore had almost disintegrated.
He was sitting with an air of sullen helplessness on a small barrel by the end of the jetty, while the master of a stout boat was yelling at him.
‘Well, are you coming or not?’
It seemed he nodded.
‘Devil take it! Then get in, man!’
Again the young fellow assented. But he did not move.
‘I’m casting off, you fool,’ the master shouted in an access of fury. ‘Do you want to see Tzargrad or rot in Pereiaslav?’
When there was still no movement: ‘You promised me the fare. I could have had another passenger. Give me my money!’
For a second, it really seemed the passenger would rise; but he did not. With a curse the older man gave the order, and the stout boat with its single mast and bank of oarsmen pulled out into the broad, sluggish river and headed south.
And still Ivanushka did not move.
How long he had wandered. In the first year, several times, he had started to go south. At least, he had found merchants who were prepared to take him, and got as far as inspecting their boats. But each time, some invisible force had pulled him back. Just as surface tension holds a light object one pulls from the water, so a subterranean force seemed to make it impossible for Ivanushka to break free from his native soil and set out upon the great river that would carry him towards the religious life. It was almost, sometimes, like a physical force, a huge weight of inertia dragging at his back.