‘But mainly …’
‘I wake and you’re gone. And I know you’ve gone back. I can feel it.’
I remember nodding to her, unable to find the words, as I nod to her now and look away.
For just the thought of it breaks my heart.
The children – boys
and
girls aged six to thirteen – spend each morning of the year, festivals and Sundays excluded, in the three big, high-ceilinged classrooms of the crafts school. There, besides obtaining a solid grounding in the skills they’ll need to become good farmers, tanners, livestock breeders, carpenters or whatever else, they learn their numbers and basic literacy. Enough to allow them to hold their own at market and no more. It’s far from a complete education, but that would be wasted on them, not because they’re incapable of learning more, but because it would be a burden, living in these backward times. This is the thirteenth century, after all, and a
muzhik
is still a
muzhik
, no matter what’s in their head. Moreover, outside of Cherdiechnost, such ‘embellishments’ are unwelcome in citizens of their lowly status. The boyars of this age want their peasants subservient and dumb. They don’t want an educated sub-class. In fact, were it known what I’m doing here, they’d probably try to burn the crafts school down.
The peasants themselves recognised this from the start and, of all my innovations, this was the hardest to push through, especially my insistence that the girls too should get their chance. But little by little I made them see the benefits and now they glow with pride to think that their children will be better than themselves.
Even so, it’s a fragile thing, and I wonder just how long it will survive me. The powers-that-be – of Church and ‘State’ – depend almost entirely upon the ignorance of their subjects. The last thing they want is for the
muzhik
to start thinking for themselves.
Hecht would not approve. He would argue that I am setting myself up against the flow, building dams when I should be building rafts that float easily and unopposed down the stream of events, and part of me agrees. It’s even possible that I’m storing up trouble. Only
I
am master here, not Hecht, and if this small estate is my lot – the only chance I’ll have to ‘play’ at being ‘lord and master’ of a thousand peasants – then I’ll play with a serious intent. That is,
to make a difference to the lives of those I touch here
.
I watch from across the stream, as, to the ringing of a bell, the children spill out from the big wooden schoolhouse, boisterous and loud after being cooped up all morning in their hot and stuffy classrooms, keen to get out into the fields and help the adults.
My own three, of course, are among them, better dressed, perhaps, but not ostentatiously so. Like their father and mother, they have learned to fit in, not to play high and mighty. For we are family here. Households and estate. And there is no stronger bond.
Seeing me, they shriek and run towards me, crossing the plank bridge in leaps and bounds, Irina the first to reach me.
‘Papa! Papa! Are we really going to have a picnic?’
‘We are!’ I say, picking her up and swinging her round, even as the other two rush up to me. ‘We’re meeting Mama on the hump. Look …’ And I turn, letting them see, not a quarter of a mile distant, the sight of Katerina and three of the servants carrying the big basket-woven hamper by its handles, making their slow way up the slope.
Just beyond them, to the left a little, and set back among the trees, is the wooden frame of a half-completed house, and as we look, so my father-in-law, Razumovsky, steps out into the sunlight and, seeing us, lifts a hand in greeting. He has sold up his business interests in Novgorod and moved in with us, much to the girls’ delight.
‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Go to your mother.’ And they rush off past me, half turning to blow me kisses as they go.
The feeling I woke with has faded. Hard work and sweat and the company of my fellows has subdued it –
blunted it
, one might say – but it is still there, at the back of my consciousness and in the pit of my stomach, like a tingling that doesn’t tingle, or a sound just beyond the range of hearing.
It’s what we travellers sometimes call ‘
a sense of the presence of the frame’
. The frame being the no-space dimension that both surrounds and is embedded within every other; that same medium through which we travel every time we make a jump.
Sometimes it manifests itself in a strange sense of unreality. A feeling that the world is a simulacrum, generated merely for the purposes of the Game. At such times it’s easy for the inexperienced
Reisende
to make mistakes, to think that the timestream that they’re in is somehow less real than that from which they’ve come, and that their actions therefore have no consequences. Or none that matter. Symptoms include taking bold risks, being cavalier with one’s own safety and, perhaps worst of all, telling someone in that world precisely
who
and
what
you are.
You’ll smile, for I have done all of these things. Only I have had a reason for everything I’ve done. No, I’m talking here of a kind of random activity akin to drunkenness. A kind of letting go.
The cloth is laid down on the grass, the picnic spread out by the time I get there.
Katerina greets me with a brimming mug of apple juice, freshly made that morning.
It’s cool and refreshing and I drink it down in one, handing her back the empty mug then wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. Seeing it, she laughs. ‘You are becoming more Russian by the day!’
To some extent it’s true. Down to the clothes I wear: the leather shoes – more moccasin than shoe – the plain cloth trousers and my cotton smock. I have indeed gone native. Why, I even slur the simple Russian words I use, like I was born here in the north of Rus’. But I still think like a German.
I grin, then look past her, to where the girls – all five of them, including the baby, are playing a kind of skipping game with a rope. I watch them for a while, a strange inner stillness settling on me as I study their happy, shining faces, the way their long hair jumps in the sunlight.
Slow it down
, I think.
Let me see it clearly
.
Let me
remember
this
.
But I understand now, with the full force of experience, just how transient this is. Like all such moments, it’s gone almost as soon as it’s there, for this is what it’s like to be time-bound. The days and hours and minutes flying by, and no returning …
I look down, choked suddenly, not really knowing why. Katerina reaches out and touches my cheek. ‘Otto …?’
I meet her eyes. ‘It’s okay. It’s just … I’m happy.’
She nods, and I see she understands. ‘You feel it too?’
Perfect
, I think.
Perfect that she understands me so.
‘It won’t happen yet,’ I say. ‘I’m sure it won’t …’
Only I’m not sure. This feeling … it’s like someone is making decisions for you somewhere else in Time. Moving you. Placing you somewhere else on the board.
‘Let’s not spoil the day,’ she says and smiles. ‘Come. Sit down. There’s chicken pie and ham. Whatever you want.’
But what I want isn’t possible. What I want is to stay here for ever and never leave.
It is late in the afternoon, the youngest, Zarah, asleep in my arms, when Anna runs up from the fields where she’s been playing and calls out to me. ‘Is it true, Papa? Is Jamil returning for the harvest?’
I look to Katerina, alarmed, but she shakes her head. ‘No, Anna, it’s not true. Jamil went home, to Belarus. You know that.’
‘Who told you this?’ I ask, sitting up straight. ‘Who has been spreading such rumours?’
‘Young Tikhon, you know, Tikhon Ignatev. He said he saw her in the marketplace in Novgorod.’
Katerina has gone pale. Ignatev is one of Alexander’s apprentices in the carpentry shop, a sober, hard-working young man, not given to wild flights of fancy, and he
was
in town with Alexander yesterday.
I turn to Pavlenko, who is seated with his family nearby. ‘Igor, go fetch young Tikhon! Quickly now!’
The steward hurries off. While he’s gone, I hand Zarah over to Katerina, then gather the rest of my girls about me and speak to them.
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘This cannot be Jamil. It can only be her twin, and she is a bad woman, an
evil
woman. If you ever see her, here on the estate, you must tell me at once. And you
must never go with her
. Not ever, understand? Not even if she claims to be Jamil!’
I have frightened them. Little Martha bursts out crying, while both Anna and Zarah look close to tears. But this is necessary.
‘I know Jamil would never hurt you,’ I say, gentler than before, ‘but her sister …’
Razumovsky, who has been napping, now wakes and sits bolt upright. Seeing his girls in tears, he frowns at me and gives a roar. ‘Otto! What’s going on?’
‘It’s Jamil’s twin,’ Anna says, before I can speak. ‘She’s a witch! Papa’s said we’re to run away if we see her!’
I would laugh at her childish distortion, only it’s far too serious a matter. If she
is
here …
Then why would she show herself?
I turn, my hand going up to touch the necklace of tiny silver Thor hammers about my neck as if to reassure myself, and see young Tikhon running full pelt up the slope towards me, the portly Pavlenko trailing in his wake. The men and women have stopped their labours in the fields to stand and watch.
Breathless, he stands before me. ‘Meister?’
‘Jamil. You saw her?’
Tikhon gasps for breath, then nods. ‘Yes, Meister. She smiled at me. But we didn’t speak.’
‘Are you sure it was her?’
‘Or her twin.’ And he smiles, as if it’s a joke, but that’s not his fault; he’s not to know.
‘What was she doing?’
‘Doing, Meister? Why, shopping, I guess. She had a basket.’
‘And you saw her … what? Once? Twice?’
Tikhon shrugs, then scratches his head, as if to aid his thought processes. ‘Three, maybe four times? Every time I walked through to Master Jablokov’s workshop, there she was!’
‘Thank you, Tikhon.’ And to impress him that he’s not in trouble I take a copper denga from my belt-pouch and hand it to him. It is a day’s wages and more. ‘Now go,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry to take you from your work.’
He beams. ‘It’s okay, Meister. We’d finished anyway. Master Alexander—’
Pavlenko says it for me. ‘Tikhon, you can go.’
Embarrassed, he bows, then turns and walks away. But watching him go, I feel cold despite the heat of the late-afternoon sun, for there is nothing accidental about this. This has been done to remind me just how vulnerable I am.
A man alone, he can cope with such threats, but a family man, with children
…
Katerina touches my arm. ‘We’ll be okay …’
‘Will we?’
I meet her eyes, knowing that I have never felt so defenceless. Because I know what they are capable of. How they might materialise, at any time, in any place. Heartless assassins who’ll kill a child without compunction then fade back into the air. What good are walls or locked doors against such adversaries? How can one defend against their careful, calculated schemes?
Urd help me
, I think. For there is nothing I can do. Nothing. And that is a dreadful, debilitating feeling. It makes me feel sick,
poisoned
.
Only maybe that’s what’s intended. To wound me. To weaken me and make me less effective.
I take a long, calming breath, conscious how everyone there on the hump is watching me, taking their lead from me. And I know, in that instant, that I cannot be seen to be weak, no matter what I feel inside. Those bastards think they have me, but that’s far from the truth. For I am fated to return here, to live here and have children.
All that is in
my
future.
I smile and look about me, exuding confidence, making them smile just to look at me.
‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘We’ll post guards. Keep watch against her, and if she comes …’
‘We’ll slit her throat,’ Razumovsky says, drawing his knife theatrically, making the girls give little squeals of delighted horror.
I nod
. If you’re quick enough. If you can cut air.
I open my mouth, meaning to say more, when a cry goes up from the fields below us and, turning, I see what it is. Horsemen – a dozen or so of them – coming across the plank bridge from the north village.
As the leading horseman draws up ten feet away, I realise that I know him, that I met him in Moscow, when Katerina and I were there, years –
or was it months?
– ago.
He is one of Prince Alexander’s bodyguards – his
oprichina
– and he and his men must have ridden out the eleven miles from Novgorod to see us. His horse – a grey – is lathered, and as the man addresses me, it pulls back its long head, as if it longs to gallop more.
‘Are you the owner of this estate?’
I stand defiantly before him, my arms across my chest. ‘What if I am?’
Men are coming up from the fields now, hurrying to reach me, wanting to hear what’s said and to take their place behind me, facing these strangers who have trampled our crop without a second thought. They carry sticks and scythes and other makeshift weapons.
There are eleven horsemen in all, armed warriors, rough blankets thrown across their horses’ backs, their packs slung over the horses’ rumps. With their topknots and loose clothes, their short swords and spears, they look like nomads, yet these are the highest authority in the land: they represent the Prince.
Hearing the tone of defiance in my voice, their leader scowls at me, then leans over his horse’s neck to spit. Then he looks at me again, contempt in his eyes. ‘You owe the Prince your duty.’
‘I owe him nothing. What was due has been paid. Every last kopek.’
‘So you say. But word is that this is a rich estate and that you have …
underestimated
.’
Men are still coming up from the fields. Already there are sixty or so behind me, and more are joining them every second, but the horsemen seem barely aware of it. The men behind me are, after all, only
muzhik
and would run if it came to real swordplay. At least, that’s what these rogues are thinking. And so it normally is. Only these are my
muzhik
, and we have been through hard times together and fought off many adversaries. This is not the first group of men to venture out from Novgorod to demand what isn’t theirs.