But Natya and her like can go to hell. When Katerina looks at me I feel seventeen again, fresh from the Garden, the whole of life laid out before me, like it was all new and promising.
Unsullied
.
There’s part of me, of course, that knows it isn’t so: that Time is Time and sullied. That life, far from being romantic, is a vale of tears. And that a man’s destiny – whatever it may prove to be – is never what he expects.
Yet when I look into her eyes and see her smiling back, I can easily believe that nothing in the universe is more powerful than this.
Not even Time can destroy this bond.
Katerina walks slowly round the stall, leaving Natya to bring the basket.
‘Otto, so you’re up?’
‘So it seems.’
Her right hand lifts from her side, crosses the space between us and gently touches my chest. Like a blessing. I look down at it, then place my own over it. Her eyes are watching me now with such an intensity, such a seriousness, that I wonder how the noise and bustle of the marketplace can continue – how it is that everyone there in that crowded space is not watching us?
‘I missed you this morning.’
‘Did you?’ she asks. And again, the intensity within those words is almost too much for them to carry. She would die for me, and I for her.
‘Your father—’
‘Got you drunk last night?’ The smile returns. ‘You
need
help, then?’
I smile at her teasing. ‘We were celebrating.’
‘Celebrating?’
‘Us going away.’
‘Ah …’ And she looks more thoughtful. ‘You told him, then?’
I nod.
‘And he agreed?’
‘He didn’t like it, but he has given us his blessing. I told him that the journey would make us rich. That I would buy an estate when we returned with a thousand serfs.’
She frowns at that. ‘You want that, Otto?’
‘It would make things easier. Our own place.’
‘But we have that.’
‘Here in town, yes. I meant a place away from here. In the countryside. With just you and I … and our children.’
Her eyes widen. For a long moment she says nothing, her eyes searching mine, and then she lifts herself up on to her toes and kisses me softly, gently on the lips.
‘Ah, my sweet
batiushka
,’ she says, and I feel a small tremor pass down my spine at the words, for it is a kind of private code between us.
Little father
. It is what she always calls me when she wants me to make love to her.
‘Natya,’ she says, raising her voice, but never moving, never looking away from me. ‘Take the basket to my father’s house and wait there for instructions.’
‘Mistress?’
‘Go!’
And Natya scuttles off, frowning unhappily at having her shopping expedition curtailed. But I don’t spare her a thought. Walking back, my arm about Katerina’s waist, the enticing warmth of her against my side, I am aware of nothing but her.
We go to bed and stay there until the evening comes. Leaving her there, sleeping on her back, I slip on my robe and go out to use the midden and as I’m there, smiling to myself, remembering the afternoon’s sweet lovemaking, there’s a hammering on the door, and old memories make me frown, recalling how cruelly my happiness has been shattered in the past. But not this time. This time it is Razumovsky, come calling on me, returning Natya and the basket, though that’s not the only reason for his visit. The council of city elders – the
veche
– wish to see me, and so I wash and dress and, leaving a note for Katerina, venture out into the warm evening darkness, Razumovsky at my side.
He seems excited, yet he will not tell me why. ‘You’ll find out,’ is all he says, his dark eyes shining, a broad grin splitting his thick beard. It’s a beautiful evening, a full moon laying a coat of silver over the town as we climb the hill toward the assembly building.
I look back at the river, then beyond it to the forest, recalling what Katerina said as we lay there after our first bout of lovemaking.
‘Are you afraid?’ I had asked.
‘Of the journey? Yes. But I want to go. Nothing matters, as long as I’m with you, Otto. If I were here … it would be awful. Every moment I’d be wondering where you were, worrying that something might have happened.’
‘Nothing will happen.’
‘Yet if it did …’
In my mind I see her there, naked beside me, and see again how she turns her face away briefly, a look of pain in her lovely eyes. When she looks at me again, her voice is the merest whisper. ‘If you died, I would die too. I couldn’t live without you, Otto. The times you are not here …’
She doesn’t have to finish her sentence. I feel that too. To be apart from her is hell. And when did I ever feel that for anyone?
Razumovsky nudges me, and it’s only then that I realise I have stopped and am staring back towards the house, as if to see her through the solid layers of wood and stone between her and me.
‘Otto? Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say, and wonder what he’d make of it if I told him the full content of my thoughts, and how each waking, breathing moment of my life is dominated by my love for her.
He would think such love excessive and unmanly. ‘
A man must be the master of his emotions, Otto, not a slave to them
.’ Yet how can I feel other than I feel? For Katerina is the other half of me, the part that makes me whole. Without her …
Jump back in time, Otto Behr, and you will see an unhappy, unfulfilled fellow, not knowing what he lacked, not even guessing.
‘I was thinking,’ I say to Razumovsky as we begin to walk again.
‘
Thinking
? About what?’
‘That maybe I should ask one of the members of the
veche
to look into the matter of the estate.’
Razumovsky glances at me frowningly. ‘But I thought—’
‘No disrespect, Father,’ I say hurriedly, ‘but I am thinking in terms of the benefits to our family. Were I to leave the matter in your hands, I am certain you would find me the very best of estates and at a bargain price. But my thinking is as follows. If we ask one of the
veche
to undertake this matter for us, it will create an obligation.’
Razumovsky stops dead, then turns to me. ‘An
obligation
? But surely that’s a bad thing?’
‘Not at all. What is trade if not a web of mutual obligations? And what binds men together better than trade? No … if we ask one of the
veche
to do this for us, it could well be the beginning of greater alliances between our family and the boyars. And in time, well, I do not wish to presume, but to have a grandchild of yours on the
veche
, that would be something, would it not?’
It would indeed. Razumovsky, now that his imagination has been stirred, fairly glows at the thought of it. He reaches across and grasps both my shoulders in his massive hands. ‘Otto, you are a genius.’
‘And a German,’ I say. ‘And so a stranger here in Novgorod, however long I live here. Yet my sons, and daughters, will be Russians. And it is their future that I must attend to.’
Razumovsky positively beams. He draws me close and hugs me in a bear-like hug. ‘Why, yes,’ he says. ‘And they will be fine boys, I know it!’
Another time I might have agreed with confidence, having gone forward to see how the future transpired. But this once …
This once I am loath to glimpse what yet will be. This once I want to
live
it. To watch it unfurl, hour by hour, minute by minute, whatever fate has in store.
Like ordinary people with their ordinary families.
As Razumovsky releases me, I realise another thing. That I like him. That it pleases me to have this large and colourful man for my father-in-law, and that my toast last night was honesty, not policy. That what I love in Katerina I also glimpse in him.
We come to the assembly house to find the
veche
already gathered, the boyars seated about a massive wooden table in a raftered hall that swelters in the evening’s heat. The place is lit by torches, which hang in small braziers on the walls. In their light these bearded figures seem like something from a dream. They are all here, the
posadnik
at the head of the table, Novgorod’s military commander – the
tysiatskii
– standing just behind.
If Razumovsky had not been so excited, I might be fearful, for there is a distinctly sombre feel to this gathering, yet the
posadnik
greets me cheerfully enough.
‘Meister Behr, welcome to our
veche
. If you would take a seat …’
I sit in the only vacant chair, Razumovsky standing behind me. Looking about me, I see how every eye is on me. These are rich, powerful men – boyars all. Nor is their power illusory. In the past century they have won the right to nominate their own candidate for prince, expelling – even killing – those they felt were unsuitable to rule. They sit there in their furs in the heat, their full beards specially combed for the occasion.
Gathered together thus they look very strange, very primitive, and I feel like smiling, only a smile would be inappropriate,
disrespectful
.
‘Gentlemen,’ I say, ‘thank you for inviting me. But tell me … what do you want?’
At another time and in another place this might seem too forward, too pushy, but these are practical men, used to great suffering and hardships. Novgorod has suffered many famines. In 1128 the town was ravaged by starvation when an early frost destroyed the winter corn and its people were forced to eat birch-bark and wood pulp mixed with husks and straw to survive; only a few years ago, in 1230, more than three thousand died, the people feeding on moss and snails and even eating the dead bodies of the fallen.
For all its apparent wealth, this land is still a wilderness, and Novgorod is still vulnerable and can be brought low by disease and bad harvests. Thus its boyars like directness. They are blunt to the point of rudeness, and I have learned to be like them.
The
posadnik
grins and looks about him before addressing me again. ‘I understand you are about to leave on a journey, Meister Behr. To Moscow. A trip that, it’s rumoured, will make your fortune.’
Behind me Razumovsky shuffles a little, uncomfortable. If there are rumours flying about, it’s clear who started them.
‘That is so.’
‘Good. Then we have a proposition to make you, Meister Behr. As a body, we would like a share in your mission, and thus – naturally – in the profits to be made.’
‘And in return?’
The
tysiatskii
answers this time. ‘In return you have the favour of the
veche
. And whatever internal passes you require.’
The
posadnik
turns slightly in his seat and looks back and up at his fellow, and nods, his long beard bobbing in the light from the torches.
I smile. ‘I have no problem with that. What share does the
veche
wish?’
The
posadnik
hesitates a moment, a hardness in his eyes, then says calmly. ‘A half.’
‘A third,’ I say, my voice brooking no argument, and strangely enough the
posadnik
does not argue. Instead he laughs, his laughter joined a moment later by that of others, until the whole table is laughing, and I with them. The deal is done. They have just gained themselves a third of my profits for almost no material effort.
It’s a bribe, of course, but that is how things work here, and at least I do not now have to go with cap in hand to the
tysiatskii
and beg for a passport to travel overland to Moscow.
We drink huge goblets of wine to seal the deal, and afterwards I take one of the boyars aside and – as I rehearsed with Razumovsky earlier – ask him if he would be my agent in the purchase of an estate, somewhere to the south of the town. The man says he is honoured, and we embrace like old friends, then drink yet another goblet of wine.
Later, walking home unsteadily, Razumovsky puts his arm about my shoulders and, drawing me closer, breathes wine into my face.
‘I wasn’t sure about you, Otto. But now … You are a fine chap. A most excellent son. To think that I might have had that nauseous little toad for a son in law!’
Kravchuk
, he means. But I don’t want to think about Kravchuk right now.
‘Father?’
Razumovsky pushes himself back away from me a little and straightens up, trying hard to appear dignified. ‘Yes, Otto?’
‘I’ll look after her. I promise on my life. I’ll make sure she gets back safely.’
Young Alexander Alexandrovich whips off the rough glue-stained sheet and beams at me with pride.
‘There! What do you think?’
I am standing in the workshop, Ernst at my side, an excited crowd of apprentices hemming us in, old Yakov Arkadevich, the master, looking on, concerned.
I step forward, then go down on to my haunches, examining it carefully, then reach out to touch and feel the solid reality of the sled. It has been polished and varnished, and it looks a beauty. Straightening up, I walk round it, stopping every now and then to scrutinise something or another. But this is all for show. I know already what a fine job Alexander Alexandrovich has made of it.
As I look up and meet the chief apprentice’s gaze, I am aware that everyone is staring at me, holding their breath, waiting for my verdict, old Yakov especially so. Giving the slightest nod I reach into my pocket and draw out the bag of silver coins and, almost casually, throw it to Master Arkadevich. His toothless grin brings laughter from all sides. The laughter of relief.
Looking to the younger man, I smile. ‘This is an excellent job, Alexander Alexandrovich. Better than I’d dared hope for. I particularly like your own improvements.’
If the young man smiled any more, his face would split. As it is, he hurriedly bows his head, his neck and face flushed a brilliant scarlet.
‘Thank you, Meister—’
‘Indeed,’ I carry on, ‘I am so pleased that I have decided to double your bonus and –’ I look to the old man ‘– with Master Arkadevich’s permission, naturally, I would like to treat you all at the local tavern.’
There are cheers, and no protests from the old man, who, hugging his bag of dirhams, is only too willing to break off and celebrate. After all, it is not every day that one brings a new thing into the world, and this sled – this wonder made of wood and glue and varnish – is perhaps the most important innovation Russia will see for many a year.