Russka

The Duel

1802

High in the blue September sky a pale sun hovered, while from time to time small white clouds drifted over the endless plain.

As they passed, the clouds assumed many forms. One resembled a fish, open-mouthed as it crossed the azure sky; another a horse and rider; a third, perhaps, the witch Baba Yaga sweeping by.

They came from the east, in a leisurely procession, past the old frontier city of Nizhni Novgorod, where the mighty Volga meets the sluggish Oka, and into the huge loop in the R of Russian rivers that is the Russian heartland. Westward towards Moscow they came, over ancient Russian cities – Riazan, Murom, Suzdal and stately Vladimir. And some of them, too, passed over the small, shining ribbon of river that cut through the forest down to the little town of Russka and the village beyond.

How insignificant these places looked, seen from above: with modest wooden houses and the town, perched on its high river bank, facing the little white-walled monastery opposite. How still everything was. Did the sound of the monastery bells, tolling over the trees, reach up to the passing clouds? Surely not. The sky was silent but for the faint hiss of the breeze. For what were the lives, the loves and the fates of men to those clouds? They came from the vast eastern spaces where the natural order of things is, like the endless sky, unknowable, beyond mere human comprehension.

And could anything be less important than the subject the two peasants were discussing that afternoon? They were speaking of silk ribbons.

They were standing by the river bank. Behind them was the little village that belonged to Alexander Bobrov. The place had improved recently. There was a wooden footbridge over the river and walkways made of boards traversed the muddiest places. The huts, mostly raised off the ground, were in good repair. One or two, though retaining the arrangement of the traditional peasant izba, had an upper floor as well, and elaborately carved shutters as proof of the wealth of their occupants.

The two men were cousins, though separated by two generations. In common with fifteen other families in the village, they shared a descent from the girl Maryushka, the sole survivor of the terrible church fire in the reign of Peter, who had returned to the village long afterwards. As it happened, both men had been christened Ivan.

But there the resemblance between them ended. Ivan Suvorin was a giant. In him, it might be suggested, the genes of Maryushka’s father, once called Ox, had miraculously reproduced themselves without dilution. He was a head taller than any other man in the village. His arms were so powerful it was said he could lift a horse. He could chop down a tree in half the time it took anyone else. As for his face, even his massive black beard could not conceal its heavy features or the huge, shapeless promontory that was his nose.

His cousin, by contrast, was of only medium height and in shape almost perfectly square. He had a mass of wavy brown hair, soft blue eyes, and, when he chose, sang beautifully. He was a kindly man, though given to moods of depression that would lead him to sudden rages, or morbid tears. But these would pass as quickly as they had come, and he seldom hurt anyone.

His name was Ivan Romanov.

It pleased him that it was the same as that of the royal house: but in fact this was not an unusual distinction. The name which the imperial dynasty had chosen in the sixteenth century was amongst the fifty most common in Russia, meaning simply: ‘the son of Roman’, and pronounced, with the stress on the second syllable, Romahnoff. Nevertheless, Ivan Romanov was proud of it.

The two men were both serfs belonging to Alexander Bobrov. But there again, the similarity ended. For while Romanov worked the land and did wood carvings to help earn money to pay the landlord his obrok, Suvorin had been more enterprising. Starting with a single loom in the family izba, he had begun to weave cloth and sell it in the little market at Russka. Recently, however, he had discovered he could get a better price in the ancient city of Vladimir, a day’s journey away.

And now he wanted to make silk ribbons: and the question was, would his cousin Romanov like to come in with him?

The two men were accompanied by a ten-year-old boy, Suvorin’s son. He was called Savva and he was, as far as it was possible to be, a smaller replica of his father. As Romanov looked at the two Suvorins now, there was something about them that, he had to admit, made him feel nervous. What was it in those four piercing black eyes? He wanted to say it was cunning, yet there was no doubt that Suvorin was scrupulously honest. Perhaps they were just calculating. Yet it was more than that. There was something proud yet relentless about them, that was it, something unbending as if to say: ‘We are tall in stature and in spirit.’ Whenever he saw them, he remembered his mother’s favourite proverb: ‘It’s the tallest blade of grass that’s the first to be cut down.’

‘These silk ribbons are very profitable. We could all do well if you care to join us,’ Suvorin said.

Romanov still hesitated. He could use the money. He looked at them thoughtfully. And it was then that something struck him.

It was the boy: Savva. He was ten years old. And yet Ivan Romanov had never seen him smile.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll just stick to my wood carving.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Suvorin replied.

And they parted, not in any anger, but both parties understanding that, the offer having been refused, it would never be made again.

It did not seem significant to Romanov, at the time.

It was on that same day that, once again, Alexander Bobrov became a father. More or less.

As he held the child in his hands and inspected it, he felt conflicting emotions. There was, there must be, something wonderful, something holy, about a new-born child. As he looked down at Tatiana, who had gone through so much for him during many years, he gave her a kindly smile. ‘It’s a boy,’ he remarked.

Unfortunately, it was not his.

It had come as a shock to Alexander when, at the end of the previous year, 1801, Tatiana had been unfaithful to him. Strangely enough, it had come just as a new hope had entered his life.

The previous five years had been discouraging. Though Tsar Paul had released Alexander from prison, he had shown no desire for the former State Councillor’s services, and Alexander had remained, feeling rather useless, on the estate which his wife had run so competently without him. In a way, however, he was well out of St Petersburg, for the Tsar’s strange nature had soon turned to morbidness, then madness; and when a group of patriotic officers, in 1801, had murdered him and placed his son on the throne, all Russia had heaved a sigh of relief.

And Bobrov, too, had been filled with excitement. Young Tsar Alexander: the grandson whom Catherine herself had trained, autocrat of all the Russians, yet child of the Enlightenment. Youthful, beautiful to look upon, charming – the complete antithesis of his gloomy, narrow-minded father. The Angel, some called him. The Bobrov family had been planning to spend the winter in Moscow that year. In the month of November, suddenly fired with a new energy, Bobrov had left Tatiana and the children in Moscow and set out for St Petersburg alone. Perhaps, now, there would be some appointment for a man of his attainments. For two months he drifted about the capital, and received various promises which gave him hope, but nothing definite. In January he had returned.

It was a dashing young captain of Hussars who had found Tatiana alone, and who had quite captivated her before moving on with his regiment to the Ukraine. The officer was witty, amusing, and already had a score of such affairs to his credit. He was twenty-five; Tatiana thirty-one.

The young captain was discreet, one had to say that for him. Indeed, Alexander had not even been sure that the affair had actually taken place until the incontrovertible signs began to appear in Tatiana that spring. What should he do? He thought of a duel, but then learned that the fellow had been killed in a border skirmish; for a week he even dreamed of giving the bastard child away to one of his serfs’ families – that would teach Tatiana a lesson! But he knew he would not. After all, he told himself bitterly, any husband who leaves his wife alone in Moscow for two months is a fool. And, besides, he would tolerate no scandal. Nothing more was said about the affair; the baby would be treated as his.

He had already repaired his self-esteem by taking up with a pretty serf girl who worked in the house. Though he was cool towards Tatiana, he remained polite. He told himself that the child was an accident and that it was beneath his dignity to think about it any further.

It only remained to name the boy. The custom was simple: the firstborn son was usually named after his grandfather, others, often, by the saint’s day nearest their birth.

‘You are fortunate,’ the priest remarked to them when he came. ‘His name day is the feast of St Sergius.’ Sergei it was therefore.

That gave a name and patronymic of Sergei Alexandrovich, since he was the official father. Not bad.

‘Sergei.’ Tatiana smiled. And then, looking at the child, she called to him, using the diminutive of Sergei: ‘Seriozha, come to your mother.’

‘Of course,’ Alexander said to her calmly, ‘this one will not inherit anything of mine. When I die, you will receive a widow’s portion. You can provide for him out of that. Meanwhile, I’ll provide for his education.’

Tatiana inclined her head. The subject was not mentioned again.

And so Sergei Alexandrovich Bobrov came into the world.

Six months later, Alexander resumed relations with his wife. In 1803, a daughter was born. They called her Olga.

1812, March

What a tumultuous time this was, these days of war and peace. Who would have guessed that out of the fire of the French Revolution – the fire of liberty, equality, fraternity – would emerge this astounding conqueror who made the whole world tremble? Napoleon: hero to some, ogre to others. Did he mean, like Julius Caesar or even Genghis Khan, to rule the world? Probably. And though the enlightened Tsar Alexander – the Angel, they still called him – had tried to preserve Russia from the horrors of these European wars, it seemed now, in the early spring of 1812, that Napoleon and his formidable Grand Army were preparing to invade from the west.

All Russia trembled. The Orthodox Church declared that Napoleon was the Antichrist. The Tsar called the country to arms. And if there had been some amongst the gentry who felt that the golden age of Alexander had not lived up to its promise, that the expected reforms had been few and unimportant, all this was suddenly forgotten as, in drawing rooms all over the empire, they rallied to ‘The Angel’.

It was a chilly, overcast day before the start of spring. The snow still lay hard upon the ground, and the Bobrov family were sitting in the salon of their country house, waiting for news.

The house was typical of its kind: a narrow, two-storey wooden structure about eighty feet long. The walls had been painted green; the windows picked out in white. The centre boasted a simple classical portico with four pillars, all in wood and painted white, which provided a spacious verandah. Two little single-storey wings that Tatiana had added, of two rooms each, extended from the ends. From the house’s position near the top of the wooded slope, the village was hidden by some trees, but there was a pleasant view down to the river. Behind it were various outbuildings. A little to the left was a wooden hut, half-submerged into the ground; this was the ice house, where ice from the frozen river in winter was stored through the warm summer months. On the right of the house was the bath house: another squat building made of huge, unpainted logs. So peaceful did this ensemble appear, that one might have supposed it had always been there. In fact, however, there had been nothing before Alexander’s father and it represented a profound change in the life of the family and of the village.

For the notion of a country house was still new to Russia. The knight’s manor and the magnate’s castle, so much the rule in England or France, could be found as far east as Poland – but in old Muscovy they had been completely unknown. As for the country villa of the Renaissance, with its cultivated pursuit of leisure – the idea would have been unimaginable. Until the eighteenth century, when the Bobrovs visited their estates, they had always stayed in houses within the walled town of Russka. Though a noble who was very poor might find himself living in a village, in a house almost indistinguishable from the peasants’, only after the reign of Peter the Great did landowners even begin to live like European squires.

Their country houses were nearly always modest. While Russian rulers and their favourites had palaces that might rival those of Germany or France, the houses of men like Bobrov would have seemed makeshift to an English gentleman. Indeed, their construction and scale were far closer to those of the landowners in the newly freed colonies of America.

Only one thing had spoiled the tranquillity of the Bobrovs – the name of their village: Dirty Place. When they had lived in Russka it had not mattered, but when he came to live on the estate, Alexander had found the name offensive and absurd. He had toyed with various new names before inclining towards one derived from that of his own family: Bobrovo. Bobrovo, therefore, was now the official designation of the village and estate, though some of the older peasants still referred to it as Dirty Place.

Today there was a sense of expectancy in the house. In the area around Moscow, new regiments were nastily being raised. The previous afternoon, Bobrov had received a personal letter from the military governor of Vladimir asking him to supply more serfs as recruits. The peasants in the village had been drawing lots that very morning and shortly he would hear who had been chosen.

His own second son, Alexis, though only nineteen, was proudly serving as an infantry officer. Every time anyone approached the house, Tatiana would rush to the door, hoping they might be bringing a letter from him. Patriotism, excitement, seemed to be in the air.

And yet, in all these preparations, there was one great problem that filled Alexander Bobrov with a special sense of foreboding.

‘For it’s not Napoleon’s troops I fear so much,’ he told Tatiana. ‘It’s our own people.’ The serfs.

When the story of Napoleon’s great invasion of Russia is told, it is often forgotten that, in the months leading up to it, a great many Russian landowners feared an internal revolution more than they feared the invader. And for this view there was good reason. All over Europe, the conquering emperor of the French had claimed to be liberating people from their rulers in the name of the Revolution: to many of them he was a hero. Indeed, of the huge force who were to march with him into Russia in 1812 – the legendary Grand Army – less than half were French at all. And of all these European contingents, none fought more eagerly than those from the next-door Polish territories – formerly grabbed by Austria and Prussia when unhappy Poland was partitioned – whom Napoleon had indeed liberated. No wonder then if Russian leaders feared that their own subjugated Poles, and their oppressed Russian serfs, might rise in sympathy with this liberating army. ‘He’ll do what Pugachev failed to do, and give us a real revolution,’ Bobrov had predicted gloomily.

If the outside world was full of danger, however, the salon where the Bobrovs were sitting was a scene of quiet, domestic calm. There were several pieces of rather stiff English furniture, two ancestral pictures and some sombre classical landscapes, all brought from St Petersburg. But the general impression of the room was still one of friendly disorder.

Alexander and Tatiana were sitting in armchairs. He wore an old blue English coat, cravat and silk stockings; she wore a long, high-waisted pink dress, with a bright shawl draped over her shoulders. In her hands was a piece of embroidery. Near the fire sat their eldest surviving son, twenty-two-year-old Ilya. He had his mother’s round face and fair hair. He was reading a book. In Alexander’s opinion, the young man should have been away fighting, like his brother. But perhaps because, back in ’89, she had so nearly lost him at birth, Tatiana had always kept him at home, insisting he was delicate. ‘He doesn’t look delicate to me,’ Alexander would grumble. ‘He just looks fat and lazy.’ It was a pity he had let Tatiana spoil the boy, because Ilya was intelligent. But Alexander could not be bothered to do anything about it now.

And then there was little Sergei. It would have surprised Alexander to know that his face lightened into a smile whenever he looked at this ten-year-old. Yet what a bright little fellow he was, with his black hair, his laughing brown eyes – the other Bobrov children’s eyes were blue – and his merry ways. He was sitting by the window now, with his sister Olga, inseparable as usual, drawing funny pictures to make her laugh.

Lastly, close by the children, sat a plump peasant woman in her early forties. This was the children’s nanny, Arina. A few minutes before, she had been telling the children one of her inexhaustible fund of fairy stories and Alexander, too, had half-listened, marvelling as he always did at the richness of the Slav folk tradition.

On the nanny’s lap sat a baby girl of one, an orphaned niece that the Bobrovs had allowed her to bring to live in the house, and to whom she had given her own name: Arina.

It was a pleasant scene. On a table in the centre of the room, in woven baskets, were rice and egg pirozhki and other pastries; on a plate, some cinnamon crescents; on another, an apple pie. In a little bowl was some raspberry syrup, with which Tatiana liked to flavour her tea, and slices of lemon for everyone else. For Alexander there was also a little flask of rum. And on a side table stood the most important item of all: the samovar.

It was a splendid one. Alexander had bought the samovar in Moscow and was very proud of it. It stood some two feet high, was silver, and shaped rather like a grecian urn. Heated by charcoal, the water in the samovar was always boiling hot, and from time to time Tatiana herself would go to fill the teapot with a fresh supply from the samovar’s tap.

So, on that cold, snowy day, the family quietly awaited news from the outside world.

It was little Sergei who, glancing out of the window, suddenly stood up and said: ‘Look, Papa. Visitors.’

Several things were striking about Ivan and Savva Suvorin. The first was that, at twenty, Savva was as tall as his father, so there were now two giants in the village. The second was that, unlike most Russian peasants who wore felt or bast shoes, the Suvorins both wore stout leather boots, which proclaimed their wealth. The third was that each wore a huge hat: the father’s shaped like a bulbous dome, the son’s high and rounded, with a large brim – almost like an old English Puritan’s hat – so that as they walked along they resembled nothing so much as a tall wooden church and belltower.

Both wore heavy black coats. From the older man’s belt hung a bag of coins. He made no secret of the fact that he had money. What was concealed, however, was the equal quantity of coins that was sewn into the inside of the other’s clothing. ‘God knows if we shall need it,’ Ivan remarked. ‘You can never tell with that greedy wolf.’

For the rich serf was going to see his master Bobrov; and the money was to save his son’s life.

‘Cheer up, Savva,’ he added, ‘you drew the lot – it was fate – but I can save you. It may be expensive, but better a serf than dead, eh?’ To which his son did not reply.

Savva very seldom smiled: he could not see the point. Though he was only twenty, something in his square young face suggested that on this matter, as upon most, his opinion had long ago been formed. With his black hair, huge nose and black, watchful eyes, he was already as formidable as his father. His mouth was usually pursed into a thin line of silent defiance, and his firm, determined walk somehow suggested that, wherever he was going, it was because he didn’t much care for the place he was coming from.

It was in silence, therefore, that they completed their walk up the slope to the house.

Alexander Bobrov could scarcely believe it had happened. Fate, for once, must have decided to smile upon him. As he gazed at the two Suvorins who now stood before him in his study, he had to fight to suppress a grin.

For this could only mean one thing: money. The question was, how much?

Bobrov was not a greedy man. Though he had once dreamed of riches, he had always rather despised money grubbing as such. But time, failure, and children to provide for had left their mark, so that it might be said that, nowadays, he was sporadically greedy.

‘So, Suvorin, your son doesn’t want to be a soldier?’ he remarked pleasantly. He turned to Savva. ‘You would get your freedom, you know,’ he added.

Since the time of Peter the Great, when a fixed proportion of all the souls in Russia became liable for military service, it was the rule that the serfs chosen – usually, as at Bobrovo, by lot – were granted their freedom upon discharge. But what was that worth when the twenty-five-year service was usually a sentence of death? Men had been known to mutilate themselves to avoid this fate. And now young Savva had drawn the unlucky lot, and Alexander Bobrov could hardly believe his luck.

For though the Suvorins were owned by Bobrov, they had money. Their achievements in the last ten years had been considerable. Not only did they turn out large quantities of silk ribbons, but they now ran a whole network of other serfs, taking their cloth to Vladimir market in return for a cut of the profits. Suvorin had a dozen looms working for him these days, and was adding more all the time.

All of which suited the landowner very well. For whatever he does, he told himself, Suvorin still belongs to me.

The rich serf was profitable to Alexander for a very simple reason. For while the serfs down on the Riazan estate still paid their dues with three days’ barshchina labour, he nowadays made all the Bobrovo serfs give him a cash obrok: and the amount of the obrok to be paid was set, at any figure he pleased, by the landowner! Twice in the last three years he had raised Suvorin’s obrok; both times the fellow had grumbled but paid. ‘God knows what he’s still hiding from me,’ Alexander had complained. Now was the chance to find out.

For there could be only one reason for this visit. Bobrov knew it very well, and intended to enjoy every moment of it. He leaned back in his chair, half-closed his eyes, mildly enquired: ‘So, what can I do for you?’ and waited. And just as Bobrov had known he would, Suvorin bowed low, and announced: ‘I have come, Alexander Prokofievich, to buy a serf.’

Then Alexander Bobrov smiled. For he had serfs to sell.

It had taken many centuries, but by the turn of the nineteenth century the legal position of the Russian peasant had finally reached its lowest point. Peasants now – whether serfs owned by a landlord or state peasants bound to crown land; whether well-off like the Suvorins or semi-starving – were all virtually slaves. A serf had almost no rights at all. Bobrov knew one landowner who insisted on a first night with every serf girl when she was married. He had heard of an old lady who had sent two serfs to Siberia because they forgot to bow to her carriage as it passed. The landlord was employer, judge and executioner. Indeed, even the one right he did not have – that of sentencing a serf to death – was easily circumvented by whipping the offender until, by accident, he died.

Above all, serfs could nowadays be bought and sold like chattels. A pretty girl or a man with special skills could fetch a high price. In a celebrated case, a magnate had sold an entire serf orchestra for a fortune.

Of course, it was wrong. It was monstrous. In his radical days, in the salons of Catherine’s St Petersburg, Alexander would have conceded as much. Nowadays, it was well known, the Tsar himself considered the practice of serfdom utterly repugnant.

‘But he can’t change it, not yet. The gentry won’t let him,’ Alexander would correctly argue. ‘And in the meantime, I must provide for the family,’ he told himself. At least on the Bobrovo estate, serfs were seldom flogged and never killed.

In all this terrible dealing in souls, probably no practice was more common than the selling of men as military recruits. And it was not the landlords who usually bought these.

It was other serfs.

For the recruiting officer cared not one rap whence the soldier came. As long as he had a body for cannon fodder, it was enough. A rich serf like Suvorin, therefore, did not let his own son go to war. He simply went to the landowner and bought another fellow to go in his place.

So here he was, and the only question was, how much? Slowly Bobrov considered, while the Suvorins waited.

It was quite by chance that, at this moment, Tatiana and young Sergei should have entered the room. The landlord’s wife had run the estate long enough to guess what business the Suvorins must have called upon. She had always rather liked the stern couple. Perhaps it was her Baltic ancestry, but their businesslike ways appealed to her. She looked at her husband enquiringly. As for young Sergei, he just smiled at them cheerfully, as he did at everyone.

And why was it that their entry should have caused Bobrov to change his price? Was it a sudden memory of his humiliation at Sergei’s birth? Was it a sense of his failure at his career and his wife’s success at running the estate when he was in prison? Whatever the cause, instead of the five hundred roubles he had thought of asking for, he calmly announced: ‘The price is a thousand roubles.’

The two serfs gasped. He had struck home this time; he could see it in their faces. The amount, of course, was outrageous. The top rate being asked for substitutes, even by the greediest landlords, was about six hundred roubles at that time. But it was not unknown for landlords to charge even greater sums if they thought the purchaser might have the means.

‘Of course,’ he added coolly, ‘I could just decide to send Savva anyway.’ It was within his power. Then he watched as the two serfs looked at each other.

They had brought eight hundred roubles. To get another two hundred they would have to dig under the floorboards. It was all they had in the world.

‘I could bring such a sum tomorrow, Alexander Prokofievich,’ Suvorin said glumly.

‘Very well, I will send for one of the Riazan serfs to take Savva’s place.’ Alexander concealed his smile, but he felt a glow of triumph. It was not easy to run the estate better than his unfaithful wife, but he had discovered that milking the richer serfs was one way. And he had certainly got the better of Suvorin today. In his triumph over the serf, he scarcely gave young Savva more than a glance.

Savva looked at the Bobrovs. Tatiana he did not mind. She was fair and she was practical. He correctly saw, from the distant look on her face, that she had no part in this. But the rest of them, father and sons, he hated and despised. He might have admired them, although they oppressed him, if they were strong. But he knew that they were not. He glanced at Sergei. Somehow he looked different. His bright brown eyes were watching Savva with apparent amusement: was the boy laughing at him?

The young peasant knew little of the past. Back in Peter the Great’s time, his grandmother had told him, her own grandmother had escaped from fire when the villagers burned themselves in the church. Then she had returned here later. ‘We’ve been here as long as the Bobrovs,’ she used to say. But that was all he knew. Of his earlier ancestors, cheated by a Bobrov on St George’s Day in the faraway reign of Ivan the Terrible, he knew nothing. He had never heard of Peter the Tatar and his severed head. All that was lost, long forgotten, buried in the ground.

What Savva knew was that these Bobrovs were his enemies: he knew it in his soul. And as he looked at them now, he made a simple, irrevocable decision. He would be rid of them. It might take him many years; he would need to be cunning and to be strong; but he had strength and endurance.

Master versus serf: it would be a duel, perhaps to the death.

1812, October

Sombre blue-grey skies; dark trees. First refugees had come by, then troops, each followed by complete silence – as when, after a shot has been fired and its echo died away, one continues to listen intently and the silence seems so much greater because one hears nothing.

The Russians had fought; they had defended the fatherland; the serfs had been loyal. And was it not natural to fight when they saw before them not only the French, but their traditional enemies from the ancient days of Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible – the German Prussians and the Poles?

First there had been the day when news came of the huge but inconclusive Battle of Borodino; soon afterwards, that Napoleon had entered Moscow. And then, the fire.

It could be seen from over thirty miles away – that tower of fire and smoke that rose, for three days, like a vast pillar into the September sky to announce that Moscow itself was burned down and that the mighty conqueror had been robbed of his prize. Still the emperor of the French lurked in the charred city. What would he do next?

Russka had been busy. Troops had come streaming through as the Russian army prepared to shadow the foe along the great curve of the River Oka. A few days before, a whole regiment of infantry in their green coats and white leggings came swinging by. Then squadrons of cavalry.

It was one October morning, during these days, that Sergei and his sister Olga were sitting with nanny Arina and her baby girl by the fire in the nursery.

There had been fresh news, and fresh rumours, every day. Napoleon was still cooped up in the burnt and empty city of Moscow. Would he try to strike up at St Petersburg where the Tsar was fortifying the approaches? Would he try to pull back to Smolensk? If so, the crusty old veteran, General Kutuzov, and the main Russian army were waiting for him on the way. Or would he attempt to sit out the winter in Moscow?

How thrilling it all was. Sergei was so excited, so anxious to see Kutuzov, or even the French, that Alexander had laughingly told him: ‘You won’t be satisfied until Napoleon himself has paid a visit to Russka!’

‘If he comes, we’ll all fight, won’t we?’ he had anxiously asked. He would stand, side by side with his father, and protect his mother and sister to the end. Which had just caused Alexander Bobrov to laugh, and ruffle the boy’s hair. ‘I dare say we should, Seriozha,’ he had replied affectionately.

The last few days had been quiet, though. No troops came by. Russka was as silent as usual.

Sergei was a passionate little fellow. He not only loved his family, he was in love with them. His mother at forty-two had matured into a classic, rather Germanic beauty. She was unlike any other woman the boy had seen and, for some reason too wonderful to understand, she seemed to treat him with a special softness that gave him a secret pride. Then there was stern Alexis, away at the wars. He was tall and dark like their father. Sometimes Sergei was a little afraid of Alexis, who could be rather cold and aloof. But hadn’t he the right to be? He was an officer. A hero.

Here at home was Ilya. Some people laughed at his fair-haired brother because he did nothing and was so fat. But Sergei didn’t. ‘He’s read so much,’ he would say in wonderment. ‘He knows absolutely everything.’

And then there was his father. It had always seemed to Sergei that Alexander Bobrov was everything a nobleman should be. He would look splendid, like Alexis, in uniform. Yet he was cultivated like Ilya. He could be stern; yet, with that ineffable little Bobrov gesture of the hand, he could seem wonderfully gentle. He had suffered in prison for his beliefs. And, above all, he had that most desirable of all qualities in the eyes of the schoolboy: he was a man of the world. How lucky he was to have such a father.

These were his heroes. There remained his childhood play-mate, the little girl with the long, dark brown hair and sparkling eyes: little Olga. He called her little because she was a year younger and he felt protective towards her. Yet at times she was like an extension of himself. Each always knew what the other was thinking.

How lucky, how supremely blessed by God he was, to be one of such a family.

Sergei and Olga sat each side of Arina. As usual, she had been telling them a story. How comforting her dear, shiny, round face was! She was going grey, she had lost a front tooth that summer, yet she was always the same. ‘Pretty I never was,’ she would admit cheerfully. How old was she? The two children often tried to guess, or to trick her into telling them. But all she would ever say was, ‘I’m as old as my tongue, my dear, and a little older than my teeth.’ Perhaps she didn’t even know herself.

And she was just about to start a new tale when, suddenly, they heard a commotion downstairs and then his mother’s voice was crying out: ‘Alexis!’

How handsome he looked. How utterly splendid in his fur-lined coat. In the grey light of the hall, with his dark, brooding features and deep-set blue eyes – like some warrior from another age, a bogatyr from the days of ancient Rus. Sergei was beside himself with excitement to see his hero.

Alexis even smiled at him. ‘Here,’ he called out, and to Sergei’s surprise produced a musket ball. ‘This is a French bullet. Just missed me and hit my supply wagon.’ Sergei took it with delight.

‘Did you see Napoleon?’ he cried.

‘Yes.’ Alexis grinned. ‘He’s nearly as fat as Ilya.’

Soon, round the dining-room table, he gave them all the news. After the Battle of Borodino, he proudly told them, old General Kutuzov had actually complimented him in person. Since Moscow fell, he had been specially picked to carry out sorties against the French. And now he came to the most exciting news of all.

‘Napoleon’s leaving Moscow. The French are going home.’ Alexis nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s too late, though. Napoleon’s supplies are already low and he must think he can make a dash for the border before the snow comes.’ He smiled at Sergei. ‘If so, Seriozha, he’s forgotten one thing.’ He paused. ‘Our Russian mud. He’ll get bogged down. Our Cossacks will destroy every sortie he sends to find food. Then winter will get him long before he even reaches Smolensk.’

‘And will we engage again?’ Tatiana asked anxiously.

‘Yes. Probably. But if there’s another big battle like Borodino, we’ll crush him this time.’

Soon Alexis had to hurry on. He could not even stay the night. The family watched as he and his father embraced and Alexander Bobrov gave his brave son his blessing. Then he was gone, and as always happens when a soldier departs, each of them wondered if they would see him again.

It was at dusk that young Sergei came upon his father, standing alone on the verandah, gazing out at the last glow of the sunset. Alexander did not see him. There were tears in his eyes, and he was muttering to himself: ‘A true Bobrov. A true Bobrov.’

And for the first time it occurred to Sergei that perhaps his father might love Alexis more than him; and he wondered what he could do to be worthy of this greater love.

Three weeks had passed; the first snows had fallen, and the shattered Grand Army of Napoleon was already reduced to a dark, straggling mass, leaving corpses along its route as a snail leaves a trail, when the Bobrovs were surprised to receive a very different sort of visit.

It was young Savva Suvorin.

Alexander Bobrov had decided that he really did not like the Suvorins. Perhaps he felt a little guilty for the way he had treated them over the substitute recruit. But there was something dark and calculating behind their reserve that made him feel uneasy. An instinct told him that they neither feared nor respected him. He was not inclined to help them, even though his wife would laugh and remind him: ‘They’re the best source of income you’ve got.’

Now he stood before Bobrov, this solemn twenty-year-old serf, with a strange gravity already in his walk, calmly making a most extraordinary request.

‘I wish, lord, to ask for a passport. To visit Moscow.’

As a serf, Savva could not travel anywhere without a passport from his owner. He even needed one to go to the regional city of Vladimir. It did not seem a matter of great significance, but Bobrov looked at him with suspicion.

‘What the devil for? The whole city has just burned down!’

Savva permitted himself a half-smile.

‘Exactly, lord. So if there’s one thing the people there will need, it is warm clothes. We should get a good price for our cloth just now.’

Bobrov snorted with disgust.

How typical. Here they were, in the middle of the great patriotic war, and all this fellow could think about was profit.

‘That’s profiteering.’

‘Just business, lord,’ the serf replied calmly.

‘Well, I won’t have it,’ Alexander snapped, and then, casting about for another reason: ‘It’s unpatriotic.’ With which he waved the serf away.

And why, he always wondered afterwards, had Tatiana decided that evening to interfere on this trivial matter? Perhaps it was some instinct, or just that she felt sorry for Savva. But as soon as he told her about it, she had begun to plead: ‘I beg you to reconsider.’ Until at last he had given way and signed a passport. It did not seem very important.

1817

The plan that young Sergei Bobrov had hit upon was daring – but with careful timing it should work. Two friends would answer for his whereabouts, a third would answer his name at roll call. By bribing one of the school servants he had secured horses for each stage of the journey out and back.

The school at the Tsar’s summer residence of Tsarskoe Selo, near St Petersburg, was both strict and elite. It adjoined the great blue and white Catherine Palace, and not only had the Tsar given its pupils the use of his own library, but the imperial family would come to watch the chapel services from a private gallery above. Alexander Bobrov had had to pull some strings to get young Sergei in there.

The illicit journey would not be easy. It was April. The snow was melting and everywhere the ground was sodden. The roads were like a quagmire. And if he got caught…

From under his bed he pulled out the box in which he kept his personal papers. There was the letter to his parents he had begun the previous evening. And there was the letter from his little sister, smuggled in three days before. Written in her large, childish handwriting, it was quite brief and to the point.

He read it again and smiled. Life at the prestigious Smolny School for Girls in the city of St Petersburg could be grim. He was not surprised that his lively, bright-eyed little sister was hating her first year. And though the risks might be great, he had only asked himself one question when he received the letter: what would Pushkin do? For Pushkin would have gone to her. Pushkin was his hero.

Sergei Bobrov was happy at Tsarskoe Selo. He was quick, intelligent, and even had talent. He could draw well and make up a verse in French or Russian better than any other boy in his class. ‘But if only I could do these things like Pushkin,’ he would sigh. Pushkin: the boy writer of daring verses; the cartoonist. Pushkin with his mop of curly hair, his soft but brilliant eyes, his wayward humour. He was always getting himself into scrapes – and always after women too. That year was his last at the school, and though some of the masters thought he was a mischief-maker, to the boys he was already a celebrity.

It was thanks to a common interest that Pushkin had taken notice of Sergei – a love of Russian folk tales. His nanny Arina, the serf woman, had taught Sergei most of what he knew: the tale of the fabulous firebird, the hero Ilya of Murom – ‘You should see my fat brother Ilya for a real comparison with the legendary hero!’ he would laugh – and countless others. Even Pushkin was impressed with his knowledge. ‘Always keep those folk tales in your mind, my young versifier,’ he would say. ‘They contain the true spirit, the special genius of Russia.’

It was Pushkin, however, who had led Sergei into serious trouble. It had begun with a cartoon – scandalous but light-hearted – which Pushkin had drawn after the final defeat of Napoleon. It showed the angelic Tsar Alexander returning in triumph – but having grown so fat in the west that the triumphal arches were hastily being widened for him! It was some months later that Sergei followed his hero. His target, however, was the new and intensely pious Minister of Education – one of the noble Golitsyn family. And his cartoon showed the Minister making a detailed personal inspection of the girls at the Smolny School, to ascertain their morals! It was outrageous, and though few of the teaching staff at the school had any love for the authoritarian minister, he was solemnly warned: ‘Any more trouble from you, Bobrov, and you’ll be expelled.’

Whatever the risk of trouble, however, Sergei knew what he must do. It’ll be all right, he told himself. And anyway, I won’t let Olga down.

The early morning was still dark when Sergei slipped out. A groom was waiting for him with a horse half a mile from the school and soon he was clattering down the road to St Petersburg. The road was empty. Sometimes he passed between long, dark lines of trees that seemed about to come together and smother him. Then the land would open out into a wasteland of desolate brown traversed by grey gashes of unmelted snow. More than once, he half-expected to hear the cry of a wolf. The icy wet air stung his face.

And yet he was happy. A day before, he had sent a message to Olga, telling her where to meet him, and in his mind’s eye he could see her pale face and hear her voice saying: ‘I knew you would come.’ It made him feel warm inside. How lucky he was to have such a beautiful sister. How happy he was to be a Bobrov.

And how fortunate to be alive – and a Russian – at such a time! Never had the world looked so exciting. The great threat of Napoleon had finally been laid to rest in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. Now the British had put the aggressor of Europe on the distant Atlantic island of St Helena, from which there would be no escape. Russia, meanwhile, was now stronger than ever before in her history. Down in the south-east, in the Caucasus Mountains, the ancient Kingdom of Georgia had at last been joined to Russia’s empire. In the north, Finland, long under Swedish control, had also been taken over by the Tsar. In the distant east, across the sea, Russia not only possessed Alaska but had now established a fort in California too. And, most splendid prize of all, at the great Congress of Vienna where, after Napoleon, the assembled powers had redrawn the map of Europe, Russia had been given almost the whole of her ancient rival Poland, with her lovely capital of Warsaw.

But what really excited young Sergei was Russia’s new place in the world. No longer the barbarous Asiatic kingdom cut off from the western world; no longer the backward pupil of Dutch and German adventurers, English and French. At the congress, it was the Russian Tsar who took the lead. More even than this, Russia had proclaimed her own, special mission.

‘Let us put a final end to these terrible wars and bloody revolutions,’ the Tsar had proclaimed to the governments of Europe. ‘Let the European powers come together in a new and universal brotherhood, founded solely on Christian charity.’

This was the famous Holy Alliance. It was, by any standards, an astonishing document. Russia even proposed a shared, European army – the first international peace-keeping force – to police this universal order.

Admittedly such grand ideas had existed before, in the days of the Roman Empire or the medieval Church; but the Holy Alliance with its mystical language was profoundly Russian. And if the devious diplomats of the west signed it with a cynical smile, and the pragmatic British refused even to do that, every Russian knew that the west was corrupt. Simple, straightforward, warm-hearted, fervent: the Holy Alliance was the Russians at their best. No wonder that young Sergei Bobrov the schoolboy felt exalted.

The city of St Petersburg was already in sight, under a platinum sky, when Sergei reached the post-house where he changed horses; and the harsh, bright morning was well advanced by the time he entered the capital.

The Smolny Convent School lay some three miles east of the Winter Palace, at the far end of the Neva basin where the river curved round to the south. Since he had time, Sergei took a leisurely route along the embankment beside the pink granite of the quays, past the great statue of the Bronze Horseman, the old Admiralty and the Palace. The Admiralty – though it still contained shipyards – was being refashioned to a severe neo-classical design, surmounted by a high, golden flèche to echo the slim golden spire of the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral across the water. Sergei breathed a sigh of contentment. How wonderful it was to be in St Petersburg.

There was another reason, too, for his excitement.

For in the northern capital of St Petersburg, in the month of April, it was the season of the break-up of the ice. Though much of the snow and slush had been cleared from the grey streets, there remained, through the centre of the city, the great white lagoon of the frozen Neva, and at this time it began to melt. The roads across it had been dismantled. Soon, before the ice floes began to move, they would take up the pontoon bridges too. And today, as he rode along the embankment, he could see great fissures across the Neva’s surface and, from time to time, hear a great crack, loud as a pistol shot, as another section broke up. How thrilling it was, on this chilly, damp morning, to feel the wet air on one’s face and know that here, too, the huge northern world, in its own indomitable fashion, was making life anew. As Sergei rode along, his young heart was dancing.

And it was dancing with excitement still as he came to the long, closed wall of the Smolny Convent.

He had told Olga in his message exactly where to go and when. Pushkin himself had told him about the little window in the wall where one could enter unobserved. Sure enough, it was there, about twelve feet up. Having left his horse at an inn, therefore, Sergei discreetly made his way to this spot and waited. He waited an hour. Then at last the window opened.

There were two hours before she would be missed. They sat side by side in the little whitewashed room, his arm around her shoulder and her head, from time to time, resting upon his chest as they talked softly together.

He loved her. Of the other Bobrovs, she resembled Alexis the most. Her build was slender though there was nothing weak about her long limbs and elegant, tapering hands. She had her brother’s slightly Turkish features with a long, chiselled nose, and a mouth that turned down with faint irony at the corners; but whereas there was a trace of cruelty in Alexis’s face, in hers there was only refinement. Her eyes were deep blue and sometimes seemed a little startled at the world, although they could suddenly become transformed into a glowing gaiety. And how gratefully, now, they looked up at him.

She was not happy, and no wonder. The education at the Smolny School was outstanding. As well as the embroidery, dancing and cooking one might expect young ladies to learn, the girls were taught languages, geography, mathematics and physics as well – a progressive education which astonished visitors even from America. But the discipline was harsh. ‘We sing psalms before every meal,’ Olga said sadly. And then, shaking her head: ‘It’s a prison.’ For from autumn until the end of spring, when the school year ended, the Smolny girls were virtually locked in the convent precincts. ‘I hate them all, even the other girls,’ she whispered.

He understood that she was only lonely. He held her gently, her long brown hair falling across his arm, and let her talk for nearly an hour until, gradually, she became more cheerful and even began to laugh. Then, nestling close to him she murmured: ‘Enough of my boring life, Seriozha. Talk to me. Tell me about the world.’

It made him so proud, to know that she looked up to him. And since his own mind was so full of ideas, it was no time before Sergei was excitedly outlining to her his hopes for the future.

‘The Tsar will create a new Russia,’ he told her. ‘Serfdom is going. There’ll be a new constitution. Look at what he’s already done in the Baltic states and in Poland. That’s the future.’

For as well as now abolishing serfdom in the Lithuanian and Baltic territories, Tsar Alexander had just amazed everyone by granting the newly acquired kingdom of Poland a very liberal constitution, with almost no censorship, an elected assembly, and votes for a wide section of the population.

‘And that’s only the start,’ Sergei assured her. ‘When Russia itself gets a new constitution, we shall be like Britain, or even America!’

The enthusiastic claim was not as wild as it sounded. The enlightened Tsar Alexander had in fact sought the advice of English diplomats, and of President Jefferson of the United States, on how to devise a new government. Years ago, his talented minister Speransky had drawn up a proposal which included separated powers, an elected parliament – a duma – and even elected judges. Even now, an official group had started to prepare a plan for dividing Russia into twelve provinces which would each have considerable autonomy. True, the Tsar was enigmatic – one could not be sure quite where he stood. But then this was Russia, where all change was slow and difficult.

‘And what will your part be, Seriozha, in this wonderful new Russia?’ Olga asked.

Oh, he knew that. He was certain about his own life. ‘I’m going to be a great writer,’ he said boldly.

‘Like your friend Pushkin?’

‘I hope so. Do you realize,’ he went on, enthusiastically, ‘that until the time of Catherine, Russian literature hardly existed! There was nothing but a lot of mouldy old psalms and sermons in Church Slavonic – the devil to understand. People like us wrote verse or plays in French. No one wrote a thing worth reading in actual Russian until Lomonosov, when Father was young, and dear old Derzhavin the poet, God bless him, who’s still with us. So you see,’ he exclaimed happily, ‘it’s for us to begin. No one can tell us what to do. You should hear Pushkin’s verse. It’s extraordinary.’

Olga smiled. She loved to watch her brother and his enthusiasms. ‘You’ll have to work hard at it, Seriozha,’ she said thoughtfully.

‘Of course.’ He grinned. ‘And what are you going to do, when you get out of this convent-prison?’ he asked playfully.

‘Get married, of course.’

‘To whom?’

‘A handsome officer in the guards.’ She smiled. ‘Who writes poetry in Russian.’

He nodded thoughtfully and then, to his surprise, felt sad. I wish I could be that man, he thought.

Soon afterwards, it was time to go.

The afternoon was drawing in when, tired but happy, Sergei returned the horse and walked the last half mile through the cold slush towards the school. No one was about; he slipped inside and made his way towards his quarters where his friends would be waiting. With luck he would not even have been missed. There was the door. He opened it. And started with surprise.

The high room was empty, except for a single, tall, slim figure in riding boots and uniform who stood by the grey light of the window and who now slowly turned towards him.

‘Alexis!’ His heart gave a jump; a little wave of joy swept over him. ‘How long have you been here?’

And then, suddenly, his smile faded.

‘Where have you been?’ Alexis’s voice was cold, cutting as a razor.

‘Nowhere.’

‘Liar! They’ve been searching the school for you for two hours.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Sergei hung his head. There was nothing he could say.

‘Being sorry is useless,’ Alexis said with a cold rage. ‘I came to see you as I happened to be here on business. While I’ve been waiting I have heard a good deal about you. You drew cartoons of the minister and you’re under threat of expulsion. I suppose you know that?’

‘Yes.’

‘I persuaded them not to expel you. You ought to be whipped. I offered to do it myself – for the family honour.’ He paused, waiting it seemed, for this last statement to have its full effect.

What was it, at that moment, that prompted Sergei to say something that he didn’t even mean? Was it irritation with Alexis’s lecturing tone, the shock of being caught, the fear of his punishment or, perhaps, a sudden impulse to strike out because the brother he loved and worshipped was seemingly turning against him? Whatever the cause, he suddenly blurted out: ‘To hell with the family honour!’

Alexis gasped. He had not gone to a school like this: he had gone, and as soon as he could, into his regiment. Service to the Tsar, family honour – these were his gods. He had no idea how it was possible for this boy to be so disloyal. Yet what was it that now made Alexis do the unforgivable? Was it a row he had had with a superior officer the day before and his fear for his own career? Was it a mistress who had dismissed him contemptuously the week before? Was it a streak of cruelty in his nature that secretly had been awaiting an excuse to inflict pain ever since, six months before, he had heard for the first time a certain piece of information in Moscow? Whichever of these, in a voice that was both icy and venomous he hissed: ‘That may be. But to me, to the rest of us, it matters a great deal. And kindly remember that, though you are not one of us, you still carry our name and we expect you to behave accordingly. Do you understand?’

‘What do you mean, not one of us?’

‘I mean, you brown-eyed little interloper, that you are not – to our parents’ shame – a Bobrov. But, because we do care about honour, we treat you as if you were.’ And then, as if it were a head cold that she had caught one day and lost: ‘At a time when she was lonely, our mother committed an indiscretion in Moscow. Long ago. It was over at once. Nobody knows. You don’t belong but we pretend you do. And since we have lent you our name, you will honour it.’ He paused. ‘If you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, I will kill you.’

Then, having wantonly destroyed his brother, he left.

Later that night, finishing his letters home which, through cold tears, he found difficulty in seeing, Sergei wrote:

He had always supposed his mother was perfect and that his parents loved him. Perhaps, if he was not a Bobrov, if he was unwanted, it scarcely mattered what he did with his life.

1822, January

Tatiana gazed round the little market place. For the first time after a month of dull days the morning sky was clear and all around Russka the snow was shining. Savva the serf was about to get into his sled. He was returning to Moscow. How smart he looked in his new coat. He turned and made her a low bow, and she smiled.

For they shared a secret.

Though Russka was quiet that morning, there were many indications that nowadays it was a busier place than before. True, the walls frowning from the high river bank were still as stout as in the time of Ivan the Terrible; the tall, forbidding watchtower with its steep tent roof still rose into the sky; but within the walls there were two wide streets of wooden houses on each side of the market, intersected by three more. Behind the church, there was now a broad avenue with rows of trees down the centre and on one side three neat stone merchants’ houses, with classical features. At the end of this avenue was a small park, and past that the old fortification wall had been lowered and a small esplanade laid out with a pleasant view over the river and the surrounding countryside. Outside the walls, on the side away from the river, the scattered huts and smallholdings had grouped themselves into several lanes which petered out into fields about a quarter of a mile away. The total population was about two thousand. In short, though certainly not the city designated by Catherine, Russka had still managed to assume the character of a small town.

Dear Savva: how close they had grown in the last four years. She was rather lonely sometimes. Alexander had become sick and this had made him rather uncommunicative. Sergei was employed in the Foreign Ministry nowadays, which kept him busy in St Petersburg and Moscow. Olga had recently married a handsome young guards officer with an estate near Smolensk, so she was absent. And Alexis, now married, had been posted down to the Black Sea, at the great port of Odessa. The previous month he had had a son, whom he had named Mikhail. But it might be years before Tatiana saw her first grandchild. So there’s only Ilya and me, really, she thought sadly. And though Ilya was at home, his large, placid head was usually in a book; one couldn’t talk to him about anything practical.

But Savva and his father were practical: that was what she liked about them. They ran two little factories in Russka now, each employing a dozen people. One wove woollen cloth, the other linen. And the two men were so well organized that they still had time to spare. Indeed, the previous year she had persuaded her husband to let Savva’s father go down to supervise the Riazan estate – with the result that its revenues immediately rose sharply. She often went into Russka to watch the Suvorins’ activities and talk to Savva about his business.

And it was these talks that had first led to a great realization, and her present secret plan.

For – though one would never have guessed it in the country houses of the gentry – Russia was slowly changing; and the change was taking place in the very region in which she lived.

There had always been several sources of wealth in Russia. The salt beds and the furs in the huge northern wilderness, which had once made the merchants of ancient Novgorod rich; the wonderful black earth, the chernozem, of the warm Ukraine; and since the time of Ivan the Terrible there had gradually been added the minerals of the Ural Mountains, far to the east, and some very modest trade from the huge, barely colonized wastes of Siberia that lay beyond.

Yet it was here, in the old Russian heartland around Moscow, where the weather was terrible and the land was poor, that the greatest strides were now being made. For here was the home of Russian manufacturing. Leather goods, metalwork, icon painting, cloth, linen, the printing of silks imported from the east, and most recently, cotton manufacture: these were light industries that could be set up in town or village. Then there were the old ironworks at Tula and the huge armaments factories of Moscow. The greatest market for iron, as well as many other commodities, lay only a few days to the east, where the Volga and the Oka met at the ancient frontier city of Nizhni Novgorod. In Catherine’s reign, an enterprising merchant family had even set up a glass factory in a village not twenty miles away from Russka. And above all, the provincial capital city of Vladimir, with a new industrial town called Ivanovo to the north of it, was becoming a huge new centre of the textile business.

By the standards of western Europe this new industrial and commercial activity was unimpressive. Under five per cent of Russians lived in towns, against twenty per cent in France and over thirty in England. But it was a beginning.

And to Tatiana, the more she understood it, the more exciting it became. Often Savva would remark to her: ‘Ah, Tatiana Ivanovna, what I could do if only I had more money to invest!’ She saw what huge opportunities there were and, having nothing else to occupy her active nature, brooded about them constantly.

‘If our serfs can set up little factories,’ she would challenge her husband, ‘we could set up big ones.’

It was a perfectly reasonable statement. Though most of the gentry despised such merchant activities, there were others who did not. Indeed, some of the greatest magnates were also owners of large industrial enterprises which were worked by their serfs. Bobrov could have set up a plant like the nearby glass-making factory without loss of face.

But he was not interested. ‘Who would run it after I am gone?’ he demanded. ‘Alexis? He’s a soldier. Ilya? He’d be incapable.’ He shook his head. ‘Far better to build up the estates for them than get into risky projects none of us understand. Besides,’ he would remind her, ‘it’s far simpler to let the serfs do it all: we get our reward by taking their profits in obrok payments.’ And when she was still unsatisfied, he remarked wearily: ‘You’re just a German.’

Tatiana had long supposed that she knew Savva; yet it was only a year before that she had fully realized the secret passion that drove him. It came to light one day when she was quizzing him gently about his personal life. The two Suvorins, as well as being entrepreneurs, were highly unusual in another way too: they were both single. Savva’s father was a widower. But Savva himself, though thirty-three now, was still unmarried. It was unheard of. The priest at Russka had spoken to him about it many times; Bobrov had threatened to force him to marry. But he had been strangely evasive. And only then had he at last confessed to Tatiana: ‘I’ll never marry until I’m free. I’d sooner go into the monastery.’

‘Who will you marry?’ she had asked.

‘A merchant’s daughter,’ he replied. ‘But no merchant will let his daughter marry a serf, since then she becomes a serf too.’

So that was it. He wanted to buy his freedom. Several times already he had approached Bobrov on the subject, but the landlord had waved him away. ‘Every landlord has a price though,’ he told Tatiana. ‘And then…’ Then she suspected he would do great things.

And so Tatiana had formed her plan. It was very simple, if somewhat unusual. And it rested on the perfect understanding which she now reached with Savva.

At first Alexander Bobrov was puzzled by his wife’s desire that he should sell Savva and his father their freedom. ‘What’s it to you?’ he would enquire. But weeks and months went by, and she continued to badger him: ‘Let them go, Alexander Prokofievich. You say you want to put money by. Take your profit now then, and sell them their freedom.’

‘I sometimes think you prefer those serfs to your own family,’ he would remark drily.

But still she had persisted until, just a week ago, and in order to get some peace, he had at last promised wearily: ‘Very well. But if they want their freedom, they can pay me fifteen thousand roubles for it and nothing less.’ After bleeding them white for so many years, he calculated, there was no possibility of their raising such a sum.

At which Tatiana only smiled.

Her understanding with Savva was very straightforward. ‘I shall persuade Alexander Prokofievich to sell you your freedom, Savva. I will also lend you the money you need, free of any interest. A year after you get your freedom, however, whenever that may be, you will repay me exactly twice what I lent you. Is that agreed?’ He had bowed low. ‘Very well then,’ she had told him. ‘Leave it to me. But tell no one.’

It might be highly unorthodox for a lady to concern herself with a serf like this – especially behind her husband’s back – but the plan was entirely sensible. Suvorin would get his freedom; Bobrov a substantial sum of money to pass on; and she would discreetly increase the little nest-egg she was building up for Sergei.

And though the sum Bobrov had demanded for the Suvorins’ freedom was huge, she had faith in the serf. It might take time, but he would find it.

Already she had lent him a thousand roubles. Now, this bright January morning, she had come into Russka with more – another thousand. ‘Take it to Moscow and use it well,’ she told him.

And as he mounted the sled and bowed again, she did not know that Savva had another secret, that he was concealing from her. He would have enough money now, to buy his freedom by the end of that very year.

The duel between master and serf was nearly over.

July

Olga gazed at her husband fondly. They had spent the last month together on the estate near Smolensk and, it seemed to her, she had never known such happiness. There was a glow upon her skin, a softness when she came near him, which made even the serfs on the estate smile and declare: ‘Truly they are man and wife.’

Then, with a laugh, she passed him Sergei’s letter.

He had always written to her regularly, ever since his schooldays, often enclosing a poem too, or some funny drawings. She kept the letters and loved to go over them again, when she had nothing to do. This one was characteristic.

September

It was the end of summer, which had been long that year. The buggy bumped along the dirt road; it went at an unhurried pace because old Suvorin was careful to avoid the numerous ruts and potholes; and besides, what was the use of hurrying anywhere when one was driving Ilya Bobrov?

It was three days since they had left the city of Riazan. Tomorrow they would get to Russka. ‘And it would have been tonight, sir, if you could get up in the mornings,’ the grey-bearded serf had remarked. To which Ilya had replied with a smile and a sigh: ‘I dare say you’re right, Suvorin. I don’t know why I find it so hard, I’m sure.’

The sunlight was already tinged with red. The track passed between endless stands of silver birch and larch trees, their leaves now turning to a rustling gold, against the pale blue sky. Soon, as the sun sank lower, the pigeons would come dipping over the tree-tops.

And now the trees opened out, and large fields appeared. Like many in the area, this village grew flax, barley and rye. The harvest was done. Little yellow-brown haystacks dotted the nearest field. Along its boundary, a bank of wormwood and nettles lent a faint, bitter smell to the air. As they approached the first izba, they were greeted by a barking dog and a large woman with a basket of mushrooms in her arms. Soon afterwards, they came to an inn.

‘We’ll have to stop here for the night,’ Suvorin remarked gloomily.

The inn was typical of its kind: a large room with tables and benches, a big stove in one corner, and a grumpy tavernkeeper, who immediately became obsequious when he caught sight of Ilya. While Suvorin saw to the horses, Ilya sat down near the stove and called for tea.

It had been a satisfactory journey. He was glad now that Tatiana had at last persuaded him to go with old Suvorin. They had thoroughly inspected the Riazan estate – at least, Suvorin had – taken their rents, sold the crops and some timber, and were returning to Russka with a considerable sum of money. Since the Riazan estate was one day to be his – Alexis would get Russka – he supposed it was as well he should get to know the place. Suvorin had even induced him to walk about outside so that his colour had improved from its usual pastiness.

Ilya Bobrov was not an invalid; yet thanks to Tatiana’s folly he had grown up genuinely uncertain whether he was well or not. He was no fool. Kept often in bed as a child, he began to read voraciously, and had learned from his father both a love of French literature and enlightened philosophy. Unfortunately, however, and because his father had, ultimately, been defeated by life, he had taken in, without even knowing it, a subconscious sense that everything was useless. Failure and impotence seemed, to Ilya, inevitable. A kind of torpor descended upon him. And though he often had an acute sense that he was wasting his life, that he must shake this torpor off, somehow, because he never had to, he did not. Now, at the age of twenty-eight, he was amiable, lazy, unmarried and decidedly fat. ‘I am too stout,’ he would say apologetically, ‘but I don’t know what’s to be done about it.’

This journey, however, had rather stirred him up. Indeed, it had even given him a new idea, which he had been thinking about all day. So that when Suvorin appeared with his portmanteau, and the landlord with a glass of steaming tea, he just nodded to them both, put his feet up on the travelling chest and, half-closing his eyes while he sipped his tea, he considered: Yes, it’s certainly time I stopped vegetating. I think I shall take a trip abroad. I shall go to France.

It was time for his life to change. And old Suvorin, watching him and thinking of his own son, Savva, in Moscow, concluded: If that fellow had half my son’s energy, he could still make something of himself.

So the time went slowly by, as the sun sank, and the landowner and the elderly serf contemplated their destinies. And the journey might have ended the next day, quite without incident, had it not been for the landlord.

For the little tavern saw only modest business. The landlord did not intend to let an obviously rich gentleman like Ilya slip through his hands too cheaply. As soon as Ilya had his tea, therefore, the fellow had slipped out, hurried off down the street, and did not return for half an hour.

Ilya was delighted with the landlord’s proposal. He had enjoyed a short catnap and now, stimulated by the journey and the new plans hatching in his brain, felt unusually lively.

‘Stop grumbling, Suvorin,’ he said. ‘It’s a capital idea.’ And then to the landlord, still bowing low: ‘Go and fetch them. And bring wine and vodka too.’

The landlord smiled. It was certainly good luck that those gypsies should have been passing through: if they would entertain the fat gentleman, he had already agreed to split whatever they were paid. As darkness fell, the little inn suddenly became a hive of activity. There was a smell of cooking. Wine and vodka appeared. So, miraculously, did a number of people. And then, with the food, came the gypsies.

There were eight of them, brightly dressed, swarthy skinned and not bad-looking. They sang, two of the women danced. Ilya grinned and tapped his foot. Yes, he felt livelier than he had in years. He did not usually drink much, but tonight… ‘More wine,’ he called to the landlord.

One of the girls was singing now, while the men strummed. What a strange sound the song had. Where did it come from? Was it Asiatic? He had no idea. The girl was about fifteen, he supposed, rather a scrawny little thing really. And yet… he felt a definite stirring. She was coming towards him, almost touching… My God, he thought, I must live, that’s it. I must travel.

By the time the evening finally ended, he had treated everyone in the inn to half a dozen drinks, had danced, ponderously, with the fifteen-year-old girl, and was quite in love – not exactly with her, but with life itself.

And it was well past midnight when, having cleared away some of the debris, the landlord made up a bed for him on one of the benches and Ilya lay down to sleep. ‘For the fact is, dear old Suvorin,’ he muttered, ‘I think I may be rather drunk.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The serf quietly arranged himself on another bench and closed his eyes.

It was five minutes later that, still lying with his eyes open, Ilya was suddenly struck by a thought. The portmanteau on the floor beside him was not locked. It was his own fault. Somehow he had mislaid the key while they were in Riazan; and it would scarcely have mattered except for one thing: all the money was in there.

And now, through the haze of his drunkenness, this idea seemed to grow in importance. It was urgent. The dim awareness that he had probably made a fool of himself with the gypsies became translated into the idea: They wanted to make a fool out of me. One of those devils, probably the girl, would sneak in there and rob them – with the landlord’s help, no doubt. He sat bolt upright.

‘Suvorin, wake up,’ he hissed. The old man stirred. ‘Come over here and open the portmanteau.’ Suvorin came. ‘Take the money out. The bag and the packet. That’s it.’

The bag contained silver roubles; the packet the banknotes, in use since Catherine’s time, which the Russians called assignats.

‘You keep them, Suvorin. They’ll never be able to rob you, I’m sure.’ The old man shrugged, but complied. Then they both lay down again. ‘You’re a capital fellow,’ Ilya said. Then he fell asleep.

It was an hour later that something woke him. Was it a sound or the moonlight outside the window? Scarcely awake, he was vaguely aware that there was something important he had not done. What the devil was it? Ah, yes, the money. Somehow, in the deep recesses of his sleep, the thought had formulated – what if all the gypsies crept up on poor old Suvorin and took the money? They’d get it all. But he’d outwit them.

Slowly, with difficulty, he managed to rise and lurch across the room and shake Suvorin awake. ‘The packet. Give me the packet.’ Unquestioningly, the serf fumbled in his clothing and produced it. Then Ilya lurched back and sat down heavily. Where could he conceal it? He opened the portmanteau and peered inside at the jumble of his possessions. His head fell forward: God he was sleepy. Ah, yes, that would do.

In the bottom of the portmanteau lay a book of Derzhavin’s verses. Unfortunately, the spine had broken and he had tied the book together with a cord. Fighting off sleep, Ilya undid the cord, slipped the packet in the book and tied it up again. I don’t suppose a gypsy would think of looking in a book, he thought as he closed the portmanteau. Suvorin was snoring. ‘I must keep watch,’ he muttered, and instantly fell back into a deep sleep from which he did not awake until well into the morning.

One of Ilya’s first acts, when he was back in his room at home, was to put the volume of Derzhavin’s verse back in his bookshelf. He had no memory whatever of waking up and putting the money there; and so he never gave the book a thought.

He was therefore completely mystified when, after he and old Suvorin had showed the accounts to his father, half the money was missing.

‘But you’ve got it, Suvorin,’ he said plaintively to the old serf.

‘You took back the notes, sir,’ the other replied with the faintest hint of impatience.

‘Do you swear to that?’ Alexander Bobrov demanded sharply.

‘I do, sir.’

And poor Ilya could only look baffled.

‘I just remember giving it all to you,’ he said.

It was not however until Tatiana herself had gone through his clothes and the portmanteau, and returned puzzled and shaking her head, that Alexander Bobrov made his terrible decision.

‘Suvorin, you have stolen it. I shall decide what to do with you tomorrow.’

In a way, Alexander Bobrov was glad. He had regretted giving way to his wife over the Suvorins, though he would not go back on his word: and now that he had an excuse to think old Suvorin was a thief, he was determined to believe it. ‘Either he’s a liar or your son is,’ he snapped when Tatiana pleaded with him. And when she reminded him that, according to Suvorin, Ilya had been drunk, Bobrov merely remarked: ‘All the easier to steal from him, then. You see,’ he added in justification, ‘if you offer a man like that the chance to buy his freedom, it just tempts him to steal the money to pay you.’

It was nonsense. Tatiana told him so. In his heart of hearts, he perhaps knew it. But the facts seemed unassailable; even Tatiana admitted that. And, it had to be admitted, this turn of events worked out very nicely for the Bobrovs.

For the next day Alexander Bobrov held court. This meant that he summoned Suvorin before him and acted, as was his right, as the serf’s accuser, judge, jury and executioner. Since he judged Suvorin guilty of a serious theft against him, the sentence was harsh.

‘I am sending you to Siberia,’ he announced.

He did not even need to add what the sentence also assumed – that everything the Suvorin family possessed would pass directly into his hands. So whatever money he would have paid for his freedom became Bobrov’s anyway. His son, now penniless, would remain a serf. It was certainly all very convenient.

‘But you can’t,’ Tatiana protested. ‘It’s against the law.’ For the law said that a master could not send a serf of over forty-five to Siberia. And Suvorin was forty-eight.

But the law was not strong, when confronted by a landowner.

‘I’m sending him to the military governor of Vladimir,’ Alexander said bluntly. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’ And though she tried all day, there was nothing Tatiana could say this time to change his mind.

Alexander Bobrov was quietly triumphant. He was within his rights, more or less. He had outmanoeuvred those cunning serfs and decidedly added to the value of the estate. Several small signs had told him recently that he might not have many years left to do that.

In a way, of course, he felt sorry for Suvorin – even though he was determined to believe him guilty. But then, he thought, these sudden and arbitrary reversals of fortune must be expected by any man. After all, it had happened to him, too, when Catherine had thrown him in jail. That was how things were and how they had always been, in Russia.

The very next day, wearing chains, Suvorin was taken to Vladimir from where, quite regularly, little parties set out on the long, long road to Siberia.

And the same day, Tatiana sat down to write a letter.

Savva took the little blackened object in his hands. And for once, he smiled. He had promised himself this treasure for a long time and now at last he felt he could afford it.

For they were home and dry. Two more weeks in Moscow and he would have the money for his and his father’s freedom. All I have to do now, he thought with a grin, is get out of this store.

‘It’s good,’ the grey-bearded seller said simply. ‘Very old. Before Ivan the Terrible, I think.’ Savva nodded. He knew.

It was a little icon – nothing to look at. There were dozens of bigger and brighter ones in the store. As with many ancient icons the paint had grown dark with age, been overpainted, grown dark again. In its long life this icon had probably gone through this process two or three times; and even now, the solemn figures of the Mother of God and Child could only dimly be made out against their darkening amber background. Why then should Savva value it so much?

It was because he knew the art of the icon was only visible to the trained eye, and even then, could only be apprehended by the spiritual sense. The icon was not just a painting, it was a prayer. The intimate little forms in their receding world were revered for their simplicity and grace – and this came from the religious intention of the hand that painted them. Most icons, therefore, were false, impure: only in a few, a very few, did the invisible fire of the spirit – as pure as in the dawn of Christianity in the ancient Greek and Roman world – show through. Painted and over-painted by religious hands, these icons were to be venerated by those who understood. Like Savva.

With a deep sense of satisfaction, Savva paid the old man. And now it was time to leave.

But, as usual, that was not so easy. The old fellow had somehow managed to get between him and the door. Two other younger men, with friendly but solemn faces, had joined him. ‘You would receive a warm welcome, you know,’ the old man reminded him for the twentieth time, ‘if you were to join us.’ And then, very seriously: ‘I would not sell this icon to most men.’

‘I thank you, but no,’ he replied, as he had done so many times before.

‘We can help you buy your freedom,’ one of the younger men remarked. But still Savva did not react. He had no wish to join them.

They were Old Believers. This was, nowadays, the name usually given to the sectarians – the old Raskolniki, – who had split off from the Church a century and a half before. There had been none in Russka since the burning of the church, and most had fled to the outer provinces during that period of persecution. But during the reign of Catherine they had been officially tolerated and there was now a sizeable community in Moscow. There were several rival groups: some who had their own priests, some who did without. And of all these there were none more remarkable than the group to which the fellows who ran this store belonged.

The Theodosian sect was rich and powerful. Its headquarters were by their cemetery in what had once been the village and was nowadays the outlying suburb of Preobrazhensk. They had numerous communes inside and outside the city. They owned public baths. They engaged in manufacturing and trading enterprises, and thanks to monopolies granted them by Catherine, it was the Theodosians who sold all the best icons. But the most striking thing about the sect was its curious economic organization.

For the Theodosians ran what were, in effect, cooperatives. Members of the sect could obtain loans from their coffers at low interest rates to start businesses. In all their enterprises – some of which were quite large textile factories – the poor were cared for by the community. And though some successful members grew extremely rich in their lifetimes, their assets at death were taken over by the community. Puritan, upright, its stricter members even celibate, this strange, almost monastic mixture of capitalist factory and village commune was a uniquely Russian solution to the challenges of the early industrial revolution.

Many times, since he had encountered them in Moscow, the Theodosians had urged Savva to join the sect. They could certainly have financed him. But each time he passed the high walls of the community’s compound he had thought: No, I do not want to give all I have to them. I want to be free.

He left the Theodosians in their store at last and made his way across Moscow to his own modest lodgings. This was a pleasant wooden house in a dusty street. On the door was a little sign with a name upon it – not his own, for being still a serf he could not legally own anything, but that of his landlord: Bobrov. Soon, he thought, that sign will say: Suvorin. And he went inside contentedly.

It was five minutes later that a messenger arrived with the letter from Tatiana.

She told him everything. That his father was already on his way to Siberia in chains; that he had lost all he had; that Bobrov was sending a man to take him back to Russka where, once again, he would be a poor serf. It ended with an act of generosity and a none too subtle hint.

His landlord’s wife was telling him to run away and keep the money. It was, he knew, an astonishing act for a member of the gentry towards a serf.

But he only sighed. It was no use. If I take the money and I’m caught, they’ll only say I stole it. Her letter won’t do me any good. Carefully he wrapped up notes to the value of her loan. He would leave them with a merchant he could trust who would get them to her. Then he considered what to do.

He would not go back. Not to the Bobrovs after what they had done. He would sooner die. As I dare say I shall, he thought. No, he would run away. There were ways of doing it. Men pulled the barges down the Volga. Backbreaking work. Several thousand men died at it every year. But you could get away like that – far away to the south and east with few questions asked. Or perhaps head east, for the distant colonies of Siberia where they wanted men, no matter who. Perhaps he would even try to find his father. It’s lucky, he considered, that I’m strong.

It seemed that, after all, he had lost his duel with the Bobrovs. But even so, he would not give up – not in a thousand years.

One thing at least was certain: he would never see that cursed place Russka again.

It was on the very day his father sent poor Suvorin away from Russka that, far away in the north-eastern province of Novgorod, Alexis Bobrov made a remarkable discovery.

The day was bright, with a sharp, damp wind blowing when he arrived at the place. The three young officers who rode with him were in cheerful spirits. ‘Though I’m sure I shall hate anything devised by that oaf,’ one remarked scornfully. But Alexis, as he passed through the gates and along the well-kept road, was filled with curiosity.

The oaf was the famous general Arakcheyev.

It was one of the strange features of the reign of the enlightened, even poetic, Tsar Alexander that he should have come to choose General Arakcheyev as his closest adviser. Perhaps it was an attraction of opposites. The general was half-educated and bad-tempered; his face was coarse, his hair close-cropped, his body perpetually stooped forward as though under the weight of the stern tasks he set himself. Alexis had come to admire him for the brilliant way he had directed artillery in the great campaign of 1812. ‘He may be crude,’ he told his companions, ‘but he is loyal to the Tsar and he gets things done.’ Like many straightforward soldiers – that was how Alexis liked to see himself – he had been delighted when the Tsar made Arakcheyev his closest councillor.

And it was here in Novgorod province that the general, upon the Tsar’s command, had now undertaken one of the greatest social experiments in Russian history.

The moment they entered the huge estate, Alexis sensed something strange about the place. The peasants looked odd; the road had no ruts in it; but only when they came to the village itself did the party gasp with astonishment.

It was not a Russian village at all. The haphazard collection of peasant izbas that had once stood there had been completely razed; in their place, row upon row of neat cottages. They were identical – each painted blue with a red porch and white fence. ‘Good God,’ Alexis muttered, ‘it’s like a barracks.’ Then he noticed the children.

They were little boys, some no more than six years old. They came swinging by, in perfect step and singing, under orders from a sergeant. They were in uniform. And then Alexis realized what had seemed so strange since he arrived: everyone was identically dressed, and none of the peasants had a beard.

‘Yes, you’ll find perfect order,’ explained the young officer who showed them round. ‘We have three sizes of uniform for the children – quite enough. They wear uniforms at all times. The men are cleanshaven: it’s neater. Iron discipline – we beat a drum when it’s time to work in the fields.’ He grinned. ‘We can almost make them mow a meadow in step!’

And a few minutes later, when they were shown inside the cottages, Alexis was even more astonished. They were all spotless. ‘How do you do it?’ he asked.

‘Inspections. See,’ the young man pointed to a list hanging on a wall. ‘That’s an inventory of everything in the house. Everything has to be checked and clean as a whistle.’

‘How do you keep discipline?’ one of the officers asked.

‘The cane is enough. Any slip and they get it. We salt the cane, actually,’ he added.

Alexis soon noticed something else. Unlike a normal village, there seemed to be as many men of all ages as women.

‘Everyone has to marry,’ their guide explained, then laughed. ‘Whether they want to or not. The women should be grateful, actually. No widows or old maids here – we give them a man.’

‘You must have plenty of children then,’ Alexis remarked.

‘We certainly do. If the women don’t produce regularly, we fine them. The empire needs people to serve it.’

‘Are they happy?’ one of the others enquired.

‘Of course. Some of the old women wept,’ the young man conceded. ‘But the system is perfect, don’t you see? Everyone works, everyone obeys, and everyone’s looked after.’

For this was General Arakcheyev’s Military Colony. It covered a huge area in the province, where the army settled and the local peasants were forcibly converted into reservists and militarized state workers. Further colonies were already being set up down south in the Ukraine. ‘Within three years,’ their guide said, ‘a third of the entire Russian army will be settled like this.’ There was no doubt, it was impressive.

But why should the enlightened Tsar Alexander have encouraged his henchman to set up these totalitarian districts? Was it just for convenience? For they were certainly a cheap way of keeping a standing army occupied and fed in time of peace. Was it, as some suspected, that the Tsar – hoping one day to weaken the grip of a conservative gentry upon the army and the land – was experimenting with these colonies as a way of doing so? Or was it perhaps that Tsar Alexander, imbued with a military streak like his father, and frustrated almost beyond endurance by the chaotic, refractory nature of the endless Russian land, had resolved – like Russian reformers before and after – to impose order somewhere at least, whatever the cost? Whichever explanation comes nearest, it was certainly true that the military colonies with their iron discipline, terrible symmetry and their complete dedication to the state, would have delighted old Peter the Great himself if only he had thought of them.

To Alexis Bobrov, the colony was a revelation. Hadn’t he dedicated his life to military service? Arakcheyev’s creation was the most perfect thing he had ever seen. How far it was from the shabby chaos of Russka and a thousand estates like it. Just as the army was, for him, a relief from the ineptitude of his own family, this place seemed an escape from everything that irritated him in Russia. He saw only that the people here were industrious and well fed: he saw what he wanted to see. For just as one man will be attracted to power, another will be fascinated by order. He was quite seduced.

And from that day there was rooted in his mind a single, unalterable precept which, whatever difficulties he encountered, seemed to make sense of everything. It was simply this: the Tsar would be served by imposing order. And from this principle derived a second: that which is most conducive to order must be right. ‘Good enough,’ he told himself, ‘for a straightforward soldier like me.’

It was in the summer of the following year, when Ilya had already departed with a family friend on his tour abroad, that Alexis, visiting Russka, chanced one day to take down the battered volume of Derzhavin’s verse. When he discovered the bank-notes, he guessed at once what had happened. But there was nothing to be done. Suvorin was in Siberia. His son had run away, God knew where. Alexander Bobrov was unwell.

Besides, to suggest Suvorin’s sentence was a mistake would look bad for everyone: bad for the family, bad for their class, not congenial to order.

He put the money in a safe place, and said nothing.

1825

If a Russian is asked for the date of the most memorable event before the present century, he or she will almost invariably reply: December 1825.

For this was the date of the first attempted Revolution.

The Decembrist conspiracy – so named after the month in which it took place – is almost unique in human history on account of its curious character. For it was an attempt – a very amateurish one – on the part of a handful of nobles, acting from the highest motives, to secure freedom for the people.

To understand how this came about it is necessary only to go back to the reign of Catherine, when in Russian noble circles, the ideas of the Enlightenment and of liberty had first taken root. Despite the shock of the French Revolution and the fear of Napoleon, the idea of reform in Russia had continued to grow under the enlightened Tsar Alexander. And God knew there was much to reform: a legal system that might have come from the Dark Ages, the institution of serfdom, a government that, despite the nominal existence of a judicial Senate, was in reality a primitive autocracy. Yet what was to be done? No one could ever agree. The representatives of the gentry, merchants and serfs called together by Catherine had simply quarrelled with each other. There were no ancient institutions, as in the west, to build upon. Tsar Alexander had found the same thing: great schemes were drawn up, but any attempt to introduce them promptly foundered upon the great Russian sea of obstruction and inefficiency. The gentry were loyal, but would not hear of freeing their peasants: by 1822 the Tsar had even restored their official right to send serfs to Siberia. Everyone feared another Pugachev uprising. The government found in practice that it could only tinker with the system, try to maintain order, and conduct experiments like the military colonies, to seek new forms that might lift the country out of its ancient social stagnation.

It was not surprising then, as the years went by, if some liberal young nobles began to feel that their angelic Tsar had cheated them. Their minds were opened by the Enlightenment; the great patriotic victory over Napoleon and, in some cases, contact with mystical Freemasonry, had filled them with a romantic fervour towards the fatherland. Yet while Tsar Alexander’s Holy Alliance might inspire them as they looked outward, at home Russia seemed increasingly dominated by the stern authoritarianism of General Arakcheyev. So it was, in the years after the Congress of Vienna, that a loosely knit group began to form, dedicated to change and even revolution.

They were quite alone. Within their own class, an idealistic few. The middle, merchant class, still small, was conservative and uninterested; the peasants completely ignorant.

Nor had they an agreed plan. Some wanted a constitutional monarchy on the English pattern; some, led by a fiery army officer, Pestel, down in the south, wanted to kill the Tsar and set up a republic. In secret they planned, plotted, hoped, and did nothing.

And then, quite unexpectedly, in November 1825, Tsar Alexander was no more. A sudden fever had apparently carried him off, and he had left behind no son. The succession fell to the Tsar’s two brothers: Constantine, the grandson Catherine had hoped would rule in Constantinople, and a younger brother, a well-intentioned but unimaginative fellow named Nicholas.

While the conspirators wondered what they should do, a series of bizarre events took place. Grand Duke Constantine, commanding the army in Poland, had already married a Polish lady and renounced his rights to the throne. Tsar Alexander had accepted this and issued a manifesto designating Nicholas the heir – which was so secret that not even poor Nicholas had been told. Now, therefore, Constantine immediately swore allegiance to young Nicholas; while Nicholas and the Russian army naturally swore allegiance to him! When at last the confusion was sorted out, it was agreed that everyone should, in December 1825, swear allegiance all over again, this time to the bemused Nicholas.

It was now that the conspirators, rather confused themselves, decided to stage a coup. There were only a handful of them: most of their colleagues had panicked at the thought of real action. They decided to incite a mutiny by persuading the troops to support Constantine against the new Tsar. After that – no one was quite sure. There were two groups of conspirators – one in St Petersburg and one, under Pestel, down in the Ukraine. They were badly coordinated and had different aims.

On the morning of December 14, when the army and the Senate were to take the new oath, a group of officers led some three thousand confused troops into the Senate Square. They arrived late, after the senators had already taken their oath. On the conspirators’ instruction the troops began to shout: ‘Constantine and Constitution.’ It was believed that the soldiers supposed that this strange word, constitution, must be the name of the Grand Duke’s wife.

Nicholas, wanting to avoid bloodshed, had them surrounded; but at dusk, when they did not budge, some rounds of canister were fired and several dozen men killed. Then it was over. Soon afterwards, in the south, Pestel’s rebellion was strangled at birth. Five ringleaders only were executed.

This was the Decembrist revolt. Aristocratic, amateurish, slightly absurd. Yet despite – perhaps even because of – the heroic folly of these nobles, they came to be seen as an inspiration, like the Christian martyrs of ancient times, for those revolutionaries who came after them.

To the new Tsar, Nicholas, the revolt was a shock. He was a simple man who believed in service. He assumed his nobles did. What possible reason could there be for these fellows to betray their sacred trust? He had all their confessions copied and bound in a book which never left his desk and which he studied carefully. From it he learned of Russia’s need for laws, liberty and a constitution. He was not a clever man, but he thought about it.

First, however, there must be order.

1827

Summer was beginning and Tatiana was contented: for now, suddenly, in place of silence and sadness, the house was full of happy voices. And as she looked forward to the coming summer months’, it seemed to her that nothing more was likely to shatter their tranquillity. My children, she thought, smiling, have come home.

In the year and a half since Alexander Bobrov had died, she had often been lonely, with only Ilya – who seldom went down to his Riazan estate – for company. In that time, too, tragedy had struck the family twice more. A year ago, Olga had lost her handsome husband – killed while on service – leaving her with one baby and pregnant with another. Thank God, at least, she was well-provided for, the Smolensk estate being large. Then, late last autumn, poor Alexis had lost his wife in a cholera epidemic, just before he was due to go off with his regiment; and one winter’s morning, a sled had arrived at Bobrovo containing – small, cold and miserable – his five-year-old son Mikhail, to be taken care of by his grandmother. ‘Just until Alexis marries again,’ she told Ilya.

Tatiana had been philosophical. Old Arina had been brought back into service as nanny, with her niece to help her. And under their care little Mikhail – Misha, they called him – turned out to be a gentle, sweet-tempered version of his father. Arina found him a child of his own age from amongst the serfs in the village – Ivan Romanov’s youngest son, Timofei – and soon the two little boys were playing happily together each day and old Arina pronounced confidently: ‘He’ll mend.’

And then, in spring, had come good news. Olga and her two babies would come there for the summer. And a week later a letter arrived from Alexis. A new campaign against the Turks was expected that autumn. But for the summer, he had obtained three months leave: ‘Which I intend to spend with you and my son,’ his letter declared.

‘So we shall have our hands full,’ Tatiana told the old nanny cheerfully.

Indeed, of all her children, only Sergei would be missing. ‘And that,’ Tatiana had to confess, ‘is probably just as well.’

At first, Olga saw no danger. She certainly meant no harm.

How happy she was to be back in the simple green and white house, and to gaze down the slope to the river bank where the sweet-scented pine trees grew. It was a return to her childhood and her family. And how good it was to see her two baby girls safely in the hands of the two Arinas. Her old nanny had only three teeth left now, and a hint of beard on her dear, round face; but her niece – young Arina, they called her – was a pretty, cheerful girl of sixteen who was quickly learning all the older woman knew. Olga would spend happy hours sitting out on the verandah with them, accompanied by young Misha, listening to old Arina’s wonderful stories.

The pain of her husband’s death, terrible though it had been, was passing; and in the huge, silent, Russian summer, she felt a sense of healing.

Indeed, there was an atmosphere of particular gentleness in the house that summer. Alexis, too, had suffered a loss and it had softened him. ‘I’d always supposed,’ he confessed to her, ‘that if I were killed – as I may be this autumn if we go to war with Turkey – Misha would at least have his mother. Now, I’d leave him an orphan.’ And though he did not care to show it, Olga knew that he treasured each day that he spent there with the little boy.

There might, perhaps, have been more laughter. Often as she sat with old Arina, she thought of Sergei, and his infectious gaiety. She had not received his usual letter for several weeks now, and she wondered idly what he was up to. But she was grateful, all the same, that he was not there.

It was eighteen months ago, at her father’s funeral, that the relationship between Sergei and Alexis, always strained, had reached breaking point. The attempted coup of the Decembrists was, at that time, only two months past. And when the family, all in black, had gathered in the salon, Alexis had gravely remarked that he thanked God, at least, that the conspirators had been so easily rounded up. Why Sergei could not keep his mouth shut, Olga did not know, but he had replied quite cheerfully: ‘I knew several of those fellows. If only they’d told me what they were up to I’d have joined them at once.’ And then, almost plaintively: ‘I can’t think why nobody told me.’

Despite the occasion, Olga had found it hard not to laugh. She could see exactly why the conspirators hadn’t told her indiscreet brother their secret.

But the effect upon Alexis had been terrible. His already pale face had gone completely white with anger, and after a second’s pause, he had said in a voice which, had it been more than a whisper, would have been shaking: ‘I scarcely know, Sergei, why you are here. And I am sorry that you are.’ The two had not spoken after that.

No, much as she loved him, she was glad Sergei was not there to disturb the tranquillity of this precious summer.

And perhaps because it was so peaceful, she did not see the danger.

His name was Fyodor Petrovich Pinegin. He was a friend of Alexis’s – an acquaintance perhaps, rather than a friend – whom her brother had brought down to stay with him. Pinegin was a quiet man, still in his twenties she supposed, with a thin, hard face, sandy hair, and pale blue eyes that seemed to have no particular expression. ‘He’s a good fellow, a bit lonely,’ Alexis told her. ‘He’s seen a lot of service but never talks about it.’ Indeed, he would sit quietly while others talked, just sucking on a short pipe, expressing few opinions. He had one peculiarity: he always wore a white military tunic and trousers – though whether this was from preference or because he had no other clothes, Olga did not know. When asked what he liked to do best he mildly replied: ‘To hunt.’

Since Alexis was busy with the estate and Ilya seldom moved from his chair, she found herself often in his company when she went for walks; and he made a surprisingly pleasant companion. He would only talk a little; he listened well; and there was a kind of quiet strength about him that she found rather attractive.

Olga knew that she was beautiful. She was twenty-four now, with a long, elegant build, large and luminous blue eyes, flowing brown hair and a high-spirited grace that reminded any horse-fancier of some pure-bred Arabian. Marriage had added to this a comfortable good humour, that she had kept in her widowhood, and which made both men and women feel relaxed in her presence. She had the impression that Pinegin liked her, but she had not thought about it very much.

There were many delightful places to wander. Close by the house there was a long, shady alley in a grove of silver birches. Or one could stroll by the river, where the pine trees gave their scented shade. But Olga’s favourite walk lay through the woods to the monastery.

She loved the monastery. Since the reign of Catherine ended, a number of Russian monasteries – taking their inspiration, as in former centuries, from the great centre at Mount Athos in Greece – had found a fresh vigour and dedication to the things of the spirit; and some ten years before this movement had reached Russia. A few monks had even revived the ancient hermitage, the skit, that lay across the river past the springs.

Twice Olga walked over to the monastery with Pinegin and proudly showed him the little icon by Rublev that the Bobrovs had given so long ago. Though he said little, it seemed to her that he was impressed.

The second time they went, Olga took little Misha with her. For some childish reason, he seemed to be shy of Pinegin and would not walk beside him; but on the way back, when he got too tired to walk, the soldier quickly picked him up and carried him home: for which Olga gave him a grateful smile. ‘One day, if you like, we can walk over to the old springs and the monks’ hermitage across the river,’ she suggested. To which Pinegin gladly agreed.

So the days had passed: Pinegin sometimes out with a gun in the early morning; Ilya reading; walks in the late afternoon. In the evenings they played cards. Tatiana usually won, with Pinegin never far behind. Olga had a feeling that, had he chosen to do so, the quiet officer could have won more often.

Indeed, the only thing that gave her any cause for worry during those days had nothing to do with Pinegin at all. It concerned the estate.

There was nothing much wrong. It was more a succession of little things which, Olga was sure, could easily be put right. If, that was, Alexis would allow it. For if a new cart or a pump were needed, he would brusquely order the serf to try harder with the old one; he was also cutting down timber a little faster than he replanted. ‘Discipline’s needed, not money,’ he would say.

‘I watch over things in his absence,’ Tatiana told her daughter, ‘but he won’t let me make any improvements. And of course,’ she confided, ‘now that the Suvorins are gone, the income from the estates is less.’

Two years before, news had come from Siberia that Ivan Suvorin had died. As for Savva, no word of him had ever been heard. Olga was sad to see these small signs of decline in her old home, but not unduly worried. There were still miles of trees to be cut down before Alexis would be in any real trouble.

The only hint she might have had, in retrospect, came when one morning she was starting out for a stroll through the woods and casually asked Pinegin if he would like to join her. ‘I’d be glad to,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid a plain soldier must be rather dull company for you sometimes.’

And just to be pleasant she had replied, with a warm smile: ‘Oh, not at all, Fyodor Petrovich. In fact, I find you very interesting indeed.’

To her great surprise she thought she had seen him blush. But apart from an almost unconscious feeling of satisfaction, she had scarcely given it another thought.

It was one of the worthy, but slightly tedious, aspects of Alexis’s character that, like his mother and the majority of the village people, every Sunday he liked to go to church – and though nothing was said, it was quite clear that he expected everyone in the house to accompany him. He went not to the little wooden church in the village, however, where once a week a priest came to hold a service, but to the old stone church by the market place in Russka.

‘I wouldn’t mind going,’ Ilya told her grumpily, ‘except for that damned priest.’

The priest at Russka, it had to be said, was not a pleasant man. While the monasteries of Russia, at this time, were experiencing a revival, the ordinary priesthood was not. The priestly class was looked down on, socially and, quite often, for its morals; and the priest at Russka did little to improve this image. He was a large, bloated man with red hair and a brood of children who, it was said, stole food in the market place. The priest himself never let slip any chance of coming by either food or money. But every Sunday, Alexis insisted on standing through the long service to receive a blessing from this man’s large, fat hand; and Olga naturally accompanied him.

It was on the way back, one Sunday, when he and Olga were walking across the market to their carriage, that he turned to her and remarked: ‘Of course, he’s got no money, but if you want to marry Pinegin, you know I’ve no objection.’

Marry? She stared at him.

‘Whatever put that idea into your head?’

‘You seem to spend a lot of time with him. I’m quite sure he thinks you’re interested.’

‘Has he said so?’

‘No. But I’m sure.’

Had she led him on? She really didn’t think so. ‘I just never thought about it,’ she truthfully replied.

He nodded. ‘Well, you’re a widow and you’re rich. You can do as you please. But be careful.’ And then he added something that surprised her further. ‘Don’t trifle with Pinegin, though. He’s a very dangerous man.’

She wondered what he meant, but he wouldn’t say more.

She was very careful, therefore, in the coming week. She did not try to be distant, for that might have seemed rude. She was as friendly as before. But now several times she went out alone, or took her mother or Alexis if she strolled out with him. And all the time she watched the quiet soldier and pondered: was he so dangerous?

It was one afternoon in the first week of June, when the family was sitting at tea on the verandah, that they saw what appeared to be a small whirlwind approaching. The whirlwind came along the lane, vanished behind the trees, and then appeared at the gates of the little park. ‘Good God,’ Ilya exclaimed, ‘it’s a troika.’

There was in Russia no more noble conveyance. No one knew exactly when the fashion had begun – some said it came from Hungary – but if a young nobleman nowadays wanted to impress the world, he found the smartest coachman he could and harnessed up a troika.

The troika – also known as a unicorn – consisted of three horses running abreast. In the centre, between the shafts and under a brightly painted headboard, was the leader, who trotted. On each side were two wheelers, fanning outwards, who galloped – one furiously, the other coquettishly. It was difficult to handle, stylish, and the ultimate in elegance. And it was such an aristocratic carriage that now, in a cloud of dust, came whirling up the slope towards them.

As it reached the house, they could see two passengers within; but it was the splendidly dressed coachman, who now leaped down with a cry, who look strangely familiar and caused Alexis to mutter: ‘What the devil’s this?’

It was Sergei. And as he strode forward and, in the Russian manner, kissed each of them three times, he cheerfully announced: ‘Hello, Olga. Hello, Mama. Hello, Alexis. I’ve been exiled.’

He was bound to have got into trouble sooner or later. And as Olga reminded Alexis, one didn’t have to do much to be in hot water these days.

For one of the first acts of Tsar Nicholas, to ensure political order in his empire, had been to set up a new special police bureau – the so-called Third Department – and place at its head one of his most trusted friends, the redoubtable Count Alexander Benckendorff. Benckendorff’s task was simple. The Tsar, who meant well, would consider reforms at the proper times; but meanwhile – however long this process might take – there were to be no more Decembrists. Benckendorff was thorough. Already his gendarmes, in their light blue uniforms, seemed to be everywhere. And in particular, the Department paid close attention to enthusiastic young gentlemen with too little respect for authority – men like Sergei.

In fact, it was Sergei’s boyhood hero Pushkin who had really started it. Pushkin was making a name for himself. Already, some of his first, brilliant writing had been published. And already, the young poet’s Ode to Liberty had landed him in trouble with the authorities. The Tsar had told Benckendorff personally to censor young Pushkin’s work. It was not surprising therefore that Sergei, longing to step into the limelight with his hero, should have hastened to produce something shocking of his own.

Sergei Bobrov’s poem The Firebird was printed at his own expense – a huge sacrifice for a young fellow on a modest salary of seven hundred roubles a year. Pushkin, to whom he immediately dispatched a copy, had sent a letter of generous encouragement: and in truth, for a first effort, it wasn’t bad. The firebird of his story was – needless to say – a harbinger of liberty. And in two days, before the ink was dry, Benckendorff had impounded it.

The author was so little known, the action of the Third Department so quick, that a week later Sergei found himself not a celebrity, but under orders to return straight to the family estate at Russka and stay there until further notice. And here he was.

‘There’s a letter for you, Alexis,’ Sergei went on. ‘Very important,’ he added, as he drew it from the recesses of his coachman’s coat.

It was from Benckendorff himself. Alexis took it, without a word.

At first it seemed all might be well. Besides his manservant, Sergei had brought with him a pleasant young man from the Ukraine, called Karpenko, whom he had met in St Petersburg. Between herself, Pinegin, and this Karpenko, Olga hoped she could keep Sergei and his soldier brother apart.

Alexis, she could see, was doing his best to be pleasant. He was somewhat mollified by Benckendorff’s letter.

‘We think,’ the great man had written, ‘that the young man is a harmless scamp; but it will do him no harm to cool his heels in the country for a while. And I know, my dear Alexis Alexandrevich, that I can rely upon you to keep a wise and fatherly eye on him.’

‘I’ll do that all right,’ Alexis told Olga.

But about Sergei’s high spirits he could do nothing.

Dear Seriozha. He made light of everything. No one could resist his good humour for long. Since Benckendorff, like Tatiana, came from the Baltic nobility, he insisted on bringing his mother his verses for censorship. Once he even wrote out the Lord’s Prayer for her. ‘For under the Third Department’s rules,’ he explained, ‘most of the Lord’s Prayer will have to go.’ And when he was able to prove that this was indeed the case, even Alexis could not help smiling.

He set about teasing old Arina at once. ‘Dear old nanny, my dove,’ he would say, ‘we can’t have an old thing with her head full of fairy tales looking after young master Misha here. He needs an English governess. That’s the thing nowadays. We’ll send for one at once.’ As for the little boy, he was immediately fascinated by this wonderful uncle who made rhymes and drew funny pictures. ‘Misha, you are my little bear,’ Sergei would say. And the little fellow followed him around everywhere.

Sergei and his friend made an amusing pair. Karpenko was a small, dark, twenty year old with rather delicate features, and very shy. It was obvious that he was devoted to Sergei, who treated him kindly. With Sergei’s encouragement, the Ukrainian’s soft brown eyes would light up and he would give brilliant imitations of everyone from a Ukrainian peasant to the Tsar himself. Karpenko taught Misha to do a little dance like a bear. And after the priest of Russka had come to call one day, the Ukrainian did such an explosively funny imitation of the fat man greedily ordering a meal and trying to rearrange his red beard over his huge stomach, that Alexis actually burst out laughing.

To little Misha it seemed that, after the cold winter and his mother’s death, he had found himself in a strange new world of wonderful sunlight and magical shadow that delighted him, but whose signals he could not always decipher.

For everywhere now, at the Bobrovo estate, a rich sensuousness hung in the air.

Young Arina, with her rather plump young body and her reddish-gold hair: Misha thought she was beautiful. Her blue eyes seemed to light up with excitement whenever she saw his Uncle Sergei or Karpenko. She was a little shy of Sergei though, whereas she would let the dark Ukrainian put his arm around her.

Uncle Sergei was a marvel: there was no doubt. Everyone loved him. He would talk with clever Uncle Ilya by the hour, often in French. And he was always happy to come and sit at old Arina’s feet where he would declare: ‘I’ve read all Krylov’s folk tales, but even he never told them like you, my dear.’ Misha was puzzled therefore when once he saw his father glaring at Sergei when the latter’s back was turned, and he asked his Aunt Olga: ‘Doesn’t Papa love Uncle Sergei?’

‘Of course he does,’ she told him. And when, rather shyly, he asked his father, Alexis said the same thing.

Often, when they all went for a stroll in the alley of birch trees behind the house, he would notice that Karpenko tried to walk beside Aunt Olga. Once he heard her say to Uncle Sergei: ‘Your friend’s in love with me,’ and then give a ringing laugh. Could Karpenko be in love with two women? the little boy wondered. And then there was Pinegin, with his pipe, his pale blue eyes and his white tunic. He was always there, quietly watching, giving a faint smile from time to time. Yet there was something about him, something hard and reserved, that made the boy afraid. Once, when they were all sitting on the verandah, Misha asked him: ‘Are you a soldier?’ And being told yes: ‘And soldiers kill people?’ Pinegin puffed on his pipe, then nodded. ‘He kills people,’ the little fellow announced to all the grown-ups, and everyone burst out laughing. Since he couldn’t see the joke, Misha gave up trying to understand things that afternoon, and ran off to play with Timofei Romanov.

To Olga’s relief, over a week passed without incident. Everyone knew that Sergei and Alexis must be kept apart. Everyone was careful.

She had forgotten how amusing he was. He seemed to know everyone and to have seen everything. He would tell her scandalous stories of the scrapes, duels and illicit affairs of everyone in Moscow and St Petersburg, but always with such unbelievable detail that she laughed so hard she had to hang on to his arm.

It was one evening, after listening to his stories, that she asked him curiously about his own love life. Had there been many women? she wondered. Whatever answer she expected, it was not what came next. Leading her to a quiet corner, he took a little book from his pocket and handed it to her. There were columns of names on each page, each with a little comment. ‘My conquests,’ he explained. ‘The ones on the left are platonic friendships. The ones on the right, I’ve had.’

It was outrageous. Nor could she credit the names. ‘The virtuous Maria Ivanovna slept with you, you rascal?’ ‘I swear.’ He gave her a graphic account. And she burst into peals of laughter.

‘I don’t know what we shall do with you, Seriozha,’ she said.

As the days passed, only two things troubled Sergei Bobrov. Neither could be mentioned to anybody.

The first was a tiny incident that had taken place the day before he left Moscow. He had been walking along the street with his manservant – a young serf from the Russka estate – when it had happened: and he had been so surprised that, before he could think, he had let out several incautious words – words that could be very serious for others. He had been unsure how much the young serf had taken in, but immediately afterwards he had sternly said: ‘Whatever you think I just said, you heard nothing – unless you want a thrashing. You understand?’ Then he had given him a few roubles.

He had kept an eye on the fellow since they got to Russka and, as far as he could tell, all was well. After a week, he put it out of his mind.

But the other matter could not be so easily dismissed. It was in his thoughts every day; and for once, he did not know what to do.

It seemed a harmless idea. Even Alexis agreed when, in his second week there, Sergei suggested they should get up some theatricals. He had found some French versions of Shakespeare’s plays in the library. ‘Ilya and I will translate some scenes into Russian,’ he announced. ‘Then we can all play them.’ After all, it was something to do.

So why did Olga feel a sense of misgiving? She was not sure herself. At the beginning, as it happened, this new activity brought her two pleasant surprises. The first concerned Ilya.

She had never, in truth, had much respect for her oldest brother. She remembered how, five years ago, everyone had hoped that his tour of Europe would improve his health and inspire him to do something. Indeed, after staying in France, Germany and Italy he had finally returned looking slimmer and even purposeful. He had obtained a good post in St Petersburg and it seemed he might make a career. And then, after only a year, it was over: he resigned, left the capital and returned to Russka. True, he had tried to take part in provincial affairs, but soon became discouraged by the lack of progress and by his boorish fellow gentry. A sort of lethargy seemed to overtake him. And now here he still was, living with his mother, reading books all day and hardly getting out of bed before noon – just as he had been when she was a girl.

But now, she had never seen Ilya roused to such enthusiasm. He and Sergei would work together for hours. His placid face would take on a look of furious concentration. He would even waddle about, waving his hands excitedly, as Sergei wrote down what he dictated. ‘He translates: I polish,’ Sergei explained. ‘He’s awfully good at it, you know,’ he added. And for the first time Olga had an inkling of what poor Ilya might have been.

The theatricals began light-heartedly. In the long, warm evenings, with the shadows slowly lengthening, and a faint, delicious smell of lilac wafting from some bushes nearby, they would gather by a linden tree before the house and practise their parts. Their first attempt was some scenes from Hamlet, with Sergei as Hamlet and Olga as Ophelia. Tatiana joined in; Alexis too, as Hamlet’s wicked uncle; Karpenko and Pinegin split the other parts between them, the soldier turning in a quiet, accurate performance, the Ukrainian hilarious as the ghost. ‘And what shall I be?’ little Misha had demanded.

‘You are the bear!’ Sergei told him. And to Olga’s murmur that there wasn’t a bear in Hamlet he whispered: ‘But Misha doesn’t know that.’ He paused. ‘Nor does Alexis, come to think of it,’ he added mischievously, which sent her into a fit of giggles.

Olga’s second discovery surprised her even more. It was about Sergei. They were playing a scene as the two awkward lovers when it first struck her. Then, as she listened carefully to other scenes, she suddenly realized. For while Ilya had made the translations, it was Sergei who had turned them into Russian verse.

And it was brilliant – so lovely, so full of feeling, that she was taken aback. Sergei’s voice too, she noticed, when he spoke this wonderful verse, became musical, beautiful to hear.

She remembered the wayward boy who had befriended her; she knew the scamp and womanizer who made her laugh. Yet here, suddenly, was another Sergei, hiding beneath the frivolous surface – of a poetic nature, perhaps even profound. She found that she was moved, and with a new respect she told him: ‘You must go on writing, Seriozha. You have real talent.’

The trouble was Alexis.

It was not his fault. His acting, though stiff, was not so bad. It was his language. For while Ilya and Sergei, as educated men, spoke both French and Russian elegantly, poor Alexis – never a scholar, and joining his regiment when almost a boy – had learnt French from fifth-rate tutors and Russian from the serfs at Russka. The result was rather unkindly, but accurately, summarized by Sergei: ‘He speaks French like a provincial and Russian like a servant.’ It was a curious condition, not unusual amongst men of his class at that date. Nor did one notice it so much in everyday conversation; but now, reciting Sergei’s beautiful verse, he frequently stumbled awkwardly and Sergei, with a laugh, would have to correct his grammar to prevent him making nonsense of a line. ‘I speak well enough for a plain soldier,’ Alexis growled; but Olga could see he felt awkward.

All the same, they managed to do quite well with Hamlet, and it was agreed that they would next attempt some scenes from Romeo and Juliet. ‘In which,’ Sergei added, ‘there is of course a bear.’

It was while Sergei and Ilya were busy with their translation that Olga decided one afternoon to go with young Karpenko and Pinegin on one of her favourite walks, along the low ridge behind the house.

The weather was perfect. The silver birches were gleaming in the sun and shedding a dappled shade. Karpenko, though he gazed at her with adoring eyes, was still too shy to say much. As usual, Pinegin was wearing his white tunic and puffing on his pipe. After two weeks of Sergei’s lively conversation, Olga found the soldier’s silence rather agreeable.

She had long ago decided that, if Karpenko was in love with her, he was certainly harmless. Indeed, he was so shy that she liked to bring him out of himself. She had learned, for instance, that he came from Poltava province, south-east of Kiev, from an old Cossack family. ‘My brothers are strapping fellows – it’s only me that’s so small,’ he apologized. After some coaxing, he had one day admitted that he, too, hoped to make a literary reputation in the future.

As usual, therefore, after they had walked awhile, they began to talk, and encouraged by Olga, the young Cossack started to speak of his beloved Ukraine. It was a delight to hear him, a pleasure to see his soft eyes glow as he described to them the whitewashed houses and their thatched roofs, the huge fields of wheat on the rich black earth, the vineyards and lemon groves down by the Black Sea, the huge melons that were grown in his own village. ‘It’s another world in the south,’ he confessed. ‘Life is easier. Why, even now, if we need more land, we just take our ploughs out into the empty steppe, which has no end.’

So wonderful was his description that Pinegin nodded his head thoughtfully and remarked: ‘It is so. I have been there, and it is just so.’

And it was this statement that suddenly prompted Olga to turn to the quiet soldier and try to draw him out for once.

How little, still, she knew of him. What sort of life had he had? Where had he come from? Where had he served? Was he always so much alone, or had there been others close to him in his past – lovers perhaps? And above all what did he really think about his life, this man who seemed to know so much, yet say so little?

‘It is your turn, Fyodor Petrovich,’ she said softly. ‘You say you have been in the south. What can you tell us about it?’

‘I passed through the Ukraine,’ he replied. ‘But I have served further south, in the Caucasus Mountains. Do you wish to know about that?’

‘Most certainly,’ she smiled. ‘I do.’

He took a little time to reply, but when at last he did, his thin, hard face took on a faraway look. His voice was very quiet. And the words he used were simple, soldier’s words, yet very carefully chosen. Olga was riveted.

He told her about the high Georgian passes that now belonged to Russia, and those beyond, where wild tribesmen still dwelt. He described the mountain goats; the huge ravines one could look down and see the shepherds in the gullies a thousand feet below; the swirling mists over which, as far as the eye could see, the snowy peaks hung pink and white in the crystal sky. He told her about the tribesmen in their bright tunics and shaggy sheepskins – Georgians, Circassians, and those distant descendants of the radiant Alans, the proud Ossetians – who might suddenly appear from nowhere: ‘Friendly one day, with a bullet for you the next.’ She could see it all, as though she had been there.

‘I was down in the eastern steppe once,’ he continued. ‘On the edge of the desert. That’s a strange region.’ And he told her about the little fortresses between the Black and the Caspian Seas, and about the Tatar and other Turkish tribesmen who made the frontiers such dangerous places. And now Olga had a vision of something huge, harsh, unknowable, yet pitilessly clear.

And as she listened, she wondered. There was something about him: something distant, something one could not touch. Had he, perhaps, drunk in something of the character of these harsh, lonely regions where he had lived? Was he, as Alexis said, dangerous? If so, she was not sure it wasn’t strangely attractive.

It was just as she was considering this, and hoping to draw him out further that, out of nowhere, Sergei suddenly appeared along the path.

‘Our work is done!’ he cried. ‘I am Romeo, and you are Juliet.’ And then in a whisper, which she hoped Pinegin could not hear: ‘Has he been boring you?’

But if Pinegin heard, he said nothing. And they all four walked back together.

Misha Bobrov watched the grown-ups. Young Arina was beside him. It had been very hot that day and everyone was lethargic. They were rehearsing a scene from Romeo and Juliet.

He had seen his father make two mistakes with his lines and Uncle Sergei had had to correct him. But it didn’t seem to matter because Uncle Sergei was laughing. His father looked rather red.

‘It’s beautiful, Seriozha,’ his Aunt Olga said. ‘But enough for today. I must sit down.’

Tea,’ called Sergei to young Arina. ‘We need tea.’

As the girl went off to the house, little Misha went over to his Uncle Sergei. He felt very hot too. Perhaps, he thought, if they all sat down, his Uncle Sergei would tell him a story. ‘Well, my little bear?’ his Uncle said. ‘What can we do for you?’ And Misha let him ruffle his hair.

But now his father was turning towards him.

It was such a small incident; yet, like one of those little flashes of lightning on the horizon that warns of the approach of a summer storm, Olga should have seen its true significance.

She was hardly surprised, when Alexis abruptly announced he was going for a walk, that no one was anxious to join him. But this caused him to turn to his little son, who at that moment happened to be standing beside Sergei, and ask: ‘Well, Misha, are you coming?’

It was such a small gesture: it was nothing really. The child just glanced up at Sergei and hesitated. That was all. But it was enough. Olga saw Alexis flinch for a second, then instantly stiffen.

‘You prefer to be with your Uncle Sergei than me,’ he said, with quiet bitterness.

The little boy, sensing his mistake, looked confused. Then he blushed.

‘Oh, no,’ he said seriously. And then: ‘You are my Papa.’ And he went to Alexis’s side.

Alexis turned and the two of them walked away, but Olga saw that he did not give the little boy his hand and, remembering that he would soon be leaving them to fight the Turks, she felt sorry for them both.

It was probably just as well, Olga thought, that on the following evening Sergei had arranged for some musicians to come over from Russka so that they could have a little dance – a ‘bal’ as he called it. Perhaps, Olga hoped, this would break the tension.

How delightful it was. Just as if she were in the city, Olga would pile up her rich hair, put on a gossamer ball gown with billowing sleeves and her dainty, flat-heeled dancing slippers with their pink ribbons; the men would put on uniforms, and take turns dancing with her and Tatiana by the bright light of a hundred candles, while the servants and the two Arinas watched with broad smiles.

But the star of the evening was little Karpenko. He borrowed a balalaika and led the musicians in haunting Ukrainian melodies. Then he danced for them – wild, Cossack dances, crouching almost on the ground while he kicked out his legs, and next, leaping high into the air while the musicians kept up a frenzied beat. Once, drawing himself up and arching his back, and jamming a tall, sheepskin hat upon his head, he gave a brilliant version of a stately Georgian dance – moving across the floor with precise little steps, turning his body from side to side as he went, so that he seemed almost to be floating. ‘He’s good,’ Pinegin remarked. ‘I’ve served down there so I should know.’ He smiled wryly. ‘He even manages to look two feet taller.’ And it amused Olga very much that a few minutes later, the Cossack disappeared on to the verandah outside with young Arina, and was gone for some time.

It was towards the end of the evening, when the others were outside, that Olga found herself dancing alone with Pinegin. As usual he was wearing his white uniform, but now it seemed to her rather becoming. She also noticed that he really danced very well – nothing flashy, his movements firm but controlled, and easy to follow. It was a pleasant sensation.

Then, suddenly, everyone was back. Sergei cried: ‘A mazurka!’ to the musicians. And scarcely waiting to ask Pinegin, he swept her away in a wild dance, whirling her round the room, stamping his feet, while Pinegin stood by the side of the room, silently. ‘I was lucky,’ Sergei explained to her. ‘I got lessons from the great dancing master Didelot himself.’

But Olga found, rather to her surprise, that she would have preferred it if he had not interrupted her dance with Pinegin.

The opening thunderclap of the great storm that was about to engulf them took everyone, including Olga, completely by surprise. It came the very next morning, when Sergei was in the bath house.

No one in Russia, from the imperial family to the most miserable serf, could imagine life without the traditional Russian bath. Similar in kind to a Scandinavian sauna, the bath house contained a stove which heated a deep shelf of large stones, upon which the bather tipped water to fill the room with steam. To stimulate the blood he might also swat himself with birch twigs. In a city, the communal bath house would take scores of people at a time; the little bath house on the Bobrov estate took only three or four.

Sergei loved to take a bath: in summer he would run down afterwards and throw himself into the river; in winter he would roll in the snow. And it was just as, tousle-haired and gasping, he emerged from the water that morning that little Misha came running down the slope towards him, crying out: ‘Uncle Sergei! You’ll never guess what’s happened. They’ve come to arrest the priest at Russka.’

It was true. Two hours earlier the big, red-headed priest had been astonished by the arrival of three blue-coated gendarmes of the Third Department who methodically proceeded to ransack his house. Within an hour the town, the monastery, and even the village of Bobrovo were buzzing with the news. What could it mean?

Olga guessed at once. She guessed – and her heart sank.

‘Oh, Seriozha,’ she whispered. ‘What have you done?’

‘Nothing much,’ he confessed with a sly grin. He had sent an anonymous letter to the Department saying the priest was operating an illegal Masonic press and distributing pamphlets. And to her protest that this accusation was unlikely, he replied: ‘It’s unbelievable. But the gendarmes don’t seem to think so, do they?’

‘Oh, Seriozha.’ She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was well known that Benckendorff’s department was being snowed under with false accusations from all quarters, and that some of their investigations had been strange, to say the least. ‘God help you when Alexis finds out,’ she said.

It was noon, just as the gendarmes, having found nothing, were leaving when Alexis, returning from a morning ride, passed through Russka and the shaken priest told him his story. Like Olga, Alexis guessed the cause at once.

And so it was that, seeing Sergei that afternoon, sitting with the family, he gave him a look of chilling scorn, and without the need of any further explanation said quietly: ‘You will regret this very much, I promise you.’

Alexis was surprised, early that evening, when Sergei’s manservant requested a discreet interview with him.

To the Bobrov serfs, Sergei’s position had always been a little puzzling. When his father died, they saw that the estates went to his brothers; but though Sergei’s different looks had caused some ribald speculation, it was more generally assumed that his youth and wild ways were the reason for this exclusion. One thing was certain however: if there was any choice to be made between their master Alexis and young Sergei, there was no doubt about whose side to be on.

Nothing is ever hidden from household servants. The growing rift between Alexis and Sergei had been noticed at once. Within minutes of their angry encounter that day, everyone knew. And it had caused the young serf to consider his position very carefully before, that evening, giving the older brother a careful account of a certain matter. When he had told his story, the landlord seemed pleased.

‘You were quite right to tell me this,’ Alexis said. ‘You will speak of it to no one,’ he added, ‘but if it ends well, then I’ll let your family off a year’s obrok.’ The manservant was delighted.

And that very day, Alexis put certain enquiries in motion.

Afterwards, Olga blamed herself. Yet she had meant so well.

The tension in the house, all the next day, was terrible. Alexis looked like thunder. They dined in near-silence. In the evening, she tried to persuade Sergei to come out for a stroll with her, but he obstinately refused and sat at one end of the salon while Alexis, at the other end, ignored him entirely. Everyone spoke in low tones, but Olga, looking at the two brothers, was terrified that at any moment, some careless word might start a quarrel. Sergei, in particular, looked as if he was ready to provoke his older brother. What could she do to keep the peace?

It was then that, looking at Karpenko, she suddenly thought she had had an inspiration.

‘Why don’t you tell us,’ she suggested, ‘a Cossack story?’

He blushed with pleasure. He understood very well what she wanted. How glad he was to be useful to Olga and Sergei, these two people he loved. And so, in a quiet voice, he began.

He was intensely proud of his Cossack ancestry. In no time they were all spellbound as he told them tales of the ancient days, of the wild Cossacks riding over the open steppe, and of the great river raids from the Zaporozhian camp down the mighty Dniepr. Tatiana sat with mouth open in wonder; Ilya put down his book; Pinegin nodded with approval and murmured: ‘Ah, yes. That is good.’ And even Alexis did not notice when Sergei moved his chair closer, in order to hear better.

What a gay, thrilling world the little Cossack opened before them. What mad feats of bravery, what good fellowship, what wild freedom! Olga congratulated herself on her choice: and if the young fellow was a little carried away, surely there could be no harm in that.

For there was something else about the tales, too: a haunting beauty, an air of nostalgia and even melancholy that she discerned in his tone – as there always is when one speaks of a world that has entered its twilight. ‘The old Zaporozhian sich is gone,’ he said quietly at one point. ‘Catherine the Great destroyed that.’ And later, rather sadly: ‘The Cossacks are all good Russians now.’ If he felt a tinge of regret for the past, Olga didn’t blame him. The disciplined Tsarist regiments of today’s Cossacks were fine in their way, but a far cry from the freedom of older times.

Ilya in particular was captivated. ‘My God,’ he exclaimed, ‘you tell your stories so well that if you want to make a literary reputation, you should write them down. Have you considered it?’

And it was then that the trouble began. For having blushed with pleasure and admitted that he had, Karpenko then added a curious and unexpected statement. ‘Actually,’ he confessed, ‘what I really want is to write them in the Ukrainian language. They sound even better that way.’

It was a perfectly innocent remark, though undoubtedly surprising. ‘Ukrainian?’ Ilya queried. ‘Are you sure?’ Olga, too, found herself puzzled. For the Ukrainian dialect, though close to Russian, had no literature of its own except one comic verse. Even Sergei, always willing to support his friend, couldn’t think of anything to say in favour of this odd idea.

And it was now that Alexis spoke.

Though he had obviously enjoyed the Cossack’s stories, Olga had noticed her elder brother’s expression gradually become rather thoughtful. She had not attached too much importance to this; though when the Ukrainian spoke of Russia, she had noticed that once or twice he frowned. Now, at this last suggestion, he shook his head.

‘Forgive me,’ he said calmly, ‘but the Ukraine is part of Russia. You should write in Russian therefore.’ His tone was not unkind, but it was firm. ‘Besides,’ he added with a dismissive shrug, ‘Ukrainian is only spoken by peasants.’

There was silence. Olga glanced anxiously at Karpenko. Then Sergei spoke: ‘How boorish.’

And Olga trembled. Was this the start of the quarrel she dreaded?

The little Cossack saw her face and understood at once. ‘It’s quite true that Ukrainian is the peasant’s language,’ he readily agreed. ‘But that’s why I’d like to use it – for writing about village life, you see.’ If he thought, however, that he had saved the situation, he was premature.

‘Quite right.’ Sergei was determined to defend his friend. ‘After all, our own Russian literature has only existed for a generation. Why shouldn’t the Ukrainians start their own?’ He smiled contemptuously. ‘Or is having their literature strangled at birth by an illiterate Russian to be another benefit of the Tsar’s rule?’

Olga caught her breath: a gratuitous insult. Alexis went pale; but with an effort he ignored Sergei. Turning to Karpenko, however, he asked dangerously: ‘Do the people of the Ukraine dislike the Tsar’s rule?’

The Cossack smiled gently. He could have said that the Ukrainian peasants had no special love for Russia; he might have mentioned that, under the programme of Russification, the towns were losing all their ancient liberties. He could have remarked that even his own family remembered bitterly that their ancestor, a proud Cossack landowner, was sent in chains by Peter the Great to his new capital in the north, and never heard from again. But instead he was tactful.

‘When Napoleon invaded,’ he quietly reminded Alexis, ‘the Tsar had no more loyal troops than the Cossacks. And on the eastern side of the Dniepr, where I come from, the landowners have been glad of Russian protection since the time of Bogdan. On the western side of the Dniepr, however, where there’s more Polish influence, Russian rule is accepted but not particularly popular.’ It was a fair assessment, and even if it was not quite what Alexis wanted, he could hardly argue. For the moment, he relapsed into silence.

And it was now that, casting about in his mind for a more cheerful topic, and without thinking too much, young Karpenko rattled on.

‘Do you know,’ he remarked, ‘funnily enough, about ten miles from where we live, there’s a place where my family used to have a farm once. It has a new name now, but in Peter the Great’s time it was called Russka.’

This, as he hoped, diverted their thoughts. Nobody had heard of it, though Ilya at once remarked: ‘Many northern place-names derive from the south. The Bobrovs formerly came from near Kiev, you know, so the village you speak of may once have been ours.’ He smiled. ‘There’s something we have in common, my friend.’ The fact that the Cossack’s ancestor had run away from the northern Bobrov estate and discovered this Russka in the south was unknown to them both.

‘I wonder what sort of place it is now,’ Olga said.

And then Karpenko made his great mistake. ‘Actually,’ he confessed awkwardly, ‘it’s a military colony.’

He realized his error the moment he had spoken. Alexis sat bolt upright. Sergei grimaced. And Alexis suddenly smiled. Now was his chance to put everyone in their place.

‘A military colony,’ he said with a triumphant look. ‘There’s a splendid improvement.’ And despite himself – he could not help it’ – the Cossack winced.

For of all the changes that the Tsar’s government had made in the Ukraine, the military colonies were the most universally loathed. There were about twenty of them, each large enough to support an entire regiment, and they covered a huge area. Since Karpenko could think of nothing to say in favour of these terrible places, he bit his lip and said nothing.

But Sergei, quietly simmering, had no such inhibitions. ‘If Alexis had his way, you see,’ he said quietly, ‘the whole of Russia would be a single military colony. Like Ivan the Terrible and his Oprichnina, eh, Alexis?’

His face became stony. ‘Young people should speak of things they understand,’ he stated with dry scorn. ‘Like making rhymes,’ he added bitterly. And he shifted his chair so that Sergei was presented with his back. Then, looking about for someone trustworthy, he remarked to Pinegin: ‘If all the empire were governed like a military colony, things would be a lot more efficient.’ To which Pinegin quietly bowed his head.

It was time to end the discussion – and end it quickly. Olga glanced round, wondering what to do. She signalled to her mother, who nodded, remarked placidly – ‘Well, well, this has all been very pleasant’ – and made as if to rise. But before she could do so, Sergei’s voice cut through the air.

‘You’re surely not suggesting, Alexis, that the military are efficient?’

Why, oh why, could he not for once keep silent? Olga saw a muscle flicker in Alexis’s cheek. But he did not turn. He merely ignored the interruption. Olga began to rise.

‘I said,’ Sergei repeated with an evenness that showed he was now angry, ‘do you believe the military are so efficient?’

In the silence that followed, one might have thought Alexis had not heard. But then he turned to Pinegin again and coolly remarked: ‘I think, my friend, I heard a dog yapping somewhere.’

And Sergei went scarlet. Olga knew then that there was nothing she could do. Sergei exploded. ‘Do you know how our wretched soldiers are taught to shoot a volley?’ he burst out to the whole room. ‘I’ll tell you. All together. Perfect timing. There’s only one problem – they aren’t trained to point at anything. It’s a fact. I’ve seen it. No one minds where they shoot, as long as it’s together. The chances of a Russian volley hitting the enemy are almost nil! But this,’ he sneered contemptuously, ‘is my brother’s military efficiency.’

Alexis had lost his calm now. He seemed about to turn and strike. But it was Pinegin who spoke. Olga had never seen him like this before. He was very quiet, but his eyes glittered, and there was something strangely menacing as he asked: ‘Are you insulting the Russian army?’

‘Oh, much more than that,’ Sergei shot back. ‘I’m criticizing the whole Russian Empire which thinks that by imposing order on the human spirit – no matter how absurd or cruel the order – it has achieved something. I’m criticizing the Tsar and that dog Benckendorff with his idiotic gendarmes and his censorship: I despise your military colonies, where you try to turn children into machines, and the institution of serfdom, which makes one man the chattel of another. And, yes, by all means I’m insulting the army, which is run by the same incompetents who are in charge of this whole vast sea of stupidity and rottenness that is called the Russian Government.’

He turned back to Alexis. ‘Tell me, my efficient brother, how many rounds are Russian soldiers given each year for target practice? How many?’ And when Alexis, too angry for speech, made no reply: ‘I’ll tell you then. Three rounds. Three a year. That’s how your men are trained before you go off to fight the Turk.’ He laughed savagely. ‘And no doubt military organization is just what you are using so effectively to run down this estate – now that it no longer has those Suvorins to prop it up!’

Olga gasped. It seemed that Alexis was about to throw himself upon Sergei. She looked at Pinegin desperately, beseechingly.

And the soldier in his white tunic smiled.

‘Well, Bobrov,’ he remarked with a dry laugh, ‘if your brother had said that to me in our regiment, I suppose I should have had to play target practice with his head. But we won’t mind. Let’s have a game of cards.’ And before Alexis could speak, Pinegin led him firmly away.

Thank God, Olga thought: thank God for Pinegin.

The following morning, Alexis announced that he had to go to Vladimir to see the governor. He expected to be back in a week.

‘Would you stay here, my dear fellow, and keep an eye on my brother?’ he asked Pinegin, to which the other quietly agreed.

By noon, Alexis was gone. With him he carried a letter that he had written late the night before. It was addressed to Count Benckendorff.

Did she still love Sergei? She was fond of him, of course; but could one love a man so self-centred? The quarrel with Alexis had been so unnecessary and his insults unforgivable. The next morning, when he took Misha out fishing, she ignored him.

All morning, she was occupied with her two babies. Old Arina was unwell that day, but young Arina helped her.

It was in the early afternoon, while young Arina was putting the two infants down for a sleep, that Olga, strolling towards the birch wood above the house, noticed the white uniform of Pinegin alone in the alley. Feeling she should speak to him, she followed him and soon came to his side.

‘I owe you many thanks, Fyodor Petrovich,’ she said quietly, as they walked along.

He gave her a quick look. In the flickering light and shadow of the alley his eyes looked a deeper blue than usual. ‘I am always at your service,’ he said, and quietly puffed on his pipe.

They went slowly up the alley. Despite the fact it was high summer, the short grass in the shade was still green and springy. There was the faintest breeze. ‘I am very angry with Sergei,’ she sighed.

He did not reply for a few moments. Then, taking his pipe out of his mouth, he said calmly, ‘If you will forgive me, he is still a child.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’

He glanced at her again. ‘Even children, Olga Alexandrovna, can be dangerous though.’

Sergei? Dangerous? Yet that was what Alexis had said of this man. They walked on in silence. What did she make of him? she wondered. If a man is to be judged by his actions, she must think well of him. It was certainly restful to be in his quiet presence. She looked at his hard, impassive face and remembered how he had danced with her, then smiled to herself. Perfect control: she could imagine him as a patient hunter, biding his time.

Yet still there was something distant about him, something she could not fathom. And, emboldened by the sense of intimacy they shared at that moment, she suddenly turned to him and said: ‘You told me something of your life once, Fyodor Petrovich. But may I ask you – what do you believe in? Do you believe in God, for instance? And what guides you when you are in danger?’ She stopped, hoping she had not offended him.

He puffed on his pipe for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Fate,’ he said at last. ‘When you never know if a tribesman’s going to put a bullet in your head, you start to believe in fate.’ He smiled. ‘It’s restful.’

‘You’re not like my brothers, are you?’

‘No, that’s true.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Your brothers are always hoping for something. If they can’t hope, they get angry – or give up, like Ilya.’

‘You don’t hope?’

He turned towards her. ‘As I said, I believe in fate. Things happen as they are meant to. We just have to recognize our destiny.’

She was conscious of his pale blue eyes, watching her. Yes, she thought; she had a strange sensation of being safe with him, yet also in danger – and she found it rather fascinating. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I understand a little.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, Olga Alexandrovna,’ he said quietly, ‘I think we understand one another.’

And sensing that this was a compliment, and not knowing quite how to respond, she reached out and lightly touched his arm.

Then they walked back.

And why not, after all? Pinegin was alone. After leaving Olga, he had decided to walk along the lane to Russka; and now he was sitting on one of the little burial mounds beside the path, enjoying the view of the monastery as the afternoon sun glanced off its golden domes.

Why shouldn’t he? He was a gentleman, wasn’t he? And this woman was special: she was not like the others.

He had had his share of women. There had been that Jewish girl, when he was stationed in the Ukraine. And the Circassian, down in the mountains. Pure beauty. There he had lived far from the clinging dross of civilization. And some others. But because he was so ridiculously poor, he had always felt awkward with the daughters of the gentry. He told himself they were shallow, vapid, and of no interest. I, who have stood so often on the edge of the abyss, between life and death, he used to think, what can they say to me? But Olga was a being apart. She has suffered, he told himself. She might understand me. He suspected he might never find another like her.

He was poor, of course. Yet he had noticed that when other poor men married rich women, people thought well of them, even admired them. Besides, he had other things to offer. He was not some young fool with only a few thousand serfs to recommend him. He was a man who could take care of himself, who had stood alone. And there was something else – a secret that he was strangely proud of: he had never known fear.

Quietly he puffed on his pipe. After all, why not?

Alexis would be back in a few days. If he hadn’t changed his mind, he would make his proposal then.

Young Karpenko looked at Sergei with a puzzled frown: something strange was happening to his friend.

There was something about him, some profound inner tension and excitement whose causes Karpenko could not fathom. He knew that behind the façade – behind the Sergei who played idiotic practical jokes, behind even the moralist who so furiously protested about the State of Russia – there was a still, poetic soul. This was the Sergei he loved. And, he could sense, it was this inner man who, for whatever mysterious reason, had been raised to a pitch of secret nervous exaltation. Why, he had no idea.

And now, this strange request. What could his friend be up to? Why was he so insistent?

‘I’ll do what I can,’ the Cossack said, ‘though I’m not sure it will work.’ He gave Sergei a puzzled look. ‘It’s just that I don’t understand…’

Sergei sighed. How could anyone understand? ‘Don’t worry,’ he reassured his friend. ‘It’s very easy. Just do as I say, that’s all.’ He hardly understood it himself. But he knew one thing, more certainly than anything in his life. ‘It must happen,’ he muttered. ‘It must.’ He had planned it all so carefully.

It was June 24, the Feast of St John. The last week, since his quarrel and the departure of Alexis, had not been easy. Everyone had been keeping to themselves and he had felt rather an outcast. Ilya stayed with his books; Pinegin frequently went out hunting alone; his mother would scarcely speak to him; even little Misha seemed to be shy of him. And Olga, after three days, had told him sadly: ‘I tried so hard to keep the peace, Seriozha. And you spoilt it. You have hurt me.’

But the coming feast had lightened the atmosphere. People had begun to look more cheerful. And when, two days before, Sergei had made his suggestion, it had been quite warmly greeted. ‘I always promised to take you there,’ Olga had said to Pinegin. And Tatiana announced: ‘Ilya and I will come too. I haven’t been to that place in years.’

And so it was agreed that, after the celebrations that day, they would all make an expedition to visit the old sacred springs. We’ll take the two Arinas as well,’ Sergei suggested. ‘Then old Arina can tell us fairy tales.’ It was a charming thought, for a delightful setting, and appropriate to the day. For it was the custom, upon St John’s Night, for people to go into the forest.

The feast of St John the Bather, as the Russians liked to call the Baptist, was a strange and magical day. Everyone dressed up, and in late morning the two Arinas appeared before the company in all their finery. How lovely, Sergei thought, and how stately was the traditional dress of the Russian peasant woman. Today, both the old nanny and her niece, instead of the usual simple skirt and shirt, wore embroidered blouses with billowing sleeves. Over these, and reaching to the ground, was a long sleeveless gown – the famous sarafan – coloured red and embroidered, as was the style in that village, with geometric birds of oriental design. And crowning this splendid ensemble was the high, tiara-like head-dress – the kokoshnik – a diadem embroidered with gold and silver threads, and river pearls. The only difference in their dress was that young Arina, as a still unmarried girl, wore her hair in a single, long plait, tied with ribbons, down her back. In such a dress, it was impossible not to walk in a stately fashion. As well they should, since, like every Russian peasant woman, they were arrayed – though they did not know it – like the ladies of the great, half-oriental, Roman court of Constantinople, a thousand years before.

At midday, they all went down the hill, to watch the celebrations. It was a curious feast, this day of John the Bather – half-Christian, half-ancient pagan Slav – and it was hard to say where one began and the other ended. Upon this day, at the village of Bobrovo, the villagers made little dolls of Yarillo the old fertility god and his female counterpart, whom they called Kupala; and having paraded them round the village, they drowned them in the river, in a ceremony that was half-baptism and half-ritual killing, and which in either case signalled an ancient rebirth.

Then, under the warm sun, they walked back to the house where a charming meal was laid out: meat pirozhki, cold shchi – the summer version of cabbage soup; trout, turkey and binis. There were cherry, apple and raspberry pies, accompanied by mountains of sour cream. To drink there was kvas, wine, and half a dozen different flavoured vodkas.

The mellow atmosphere was made softer yet when a little later the village women, all in their wonderful dresses, arrived in front of the house and, standing in a circle, sang those most lovely of all the Russian folk melodies, the ancient Kupala songs.

It was perfect, Sergei thought. Everything was just right. And as the afternoon’s lengthening shadows stole across the threshold of evening, he waited.

Misha and the two babies had been put to bed, and the reddening sun was glowing softly over the forest when they all set out to visit the springs.

Tatiana and Ilya went in a little cart, with one of the serfs driving. Everyone else walked. They took the lane that led through the woods past the old burial mounds, and came out by the monastery. Then they crossed the river under the town. And soon afterwards Tatiana and Ilya had to abandon the cart, to walk along the little path that wound along near the water’s edge towards the site of the springs.

How quiet it was. Only the faint sound of lapping water disturbed the darkness. High in the starlit summer sky, the three-quarter moon rode to the south.

They were walking now by twos: Olga and Pinegin in front; then Karpenko and young Arina; then Sergei and old Arina; and slowly bringing up the rear, Ilya and Tatiana.

The air was warm; there was almost no breeze. Once or twice Sergei smelled the delicate scent of wild strawberries, hidden in the darkness. Once, in a glade, they saw by the moonlight a bank of the blue and yellow flowers the Russians call John and Mary flowers.

The moon gave light enough to show the wanderers their path; and Sergei watched them all. He saw the way Pinegin, still in white, walked beside Olga: never too far, never too near. He watched Olga’s easy, swinging gait. He saw Karpenko surreptitiously slip his arm round young Arina. He saw Ilya stumble on a root that his mother had entirely avoided. Each of them had their thoughts that night, he supposed: each their secret hopes. But none, surely, like his.

Sergei had never felt this way before: unless, perhaps, it had always been so, and he had never known it.

In childhood, she had always been his friend, his confidante – his soul mate. How he had loved her pale and lively face, her long brown hair, her light and gentle laugh. She seemed a part of him, and he of her: they knew each other’s thoughts, always, without speaking. But then, as was to be expected, they had been parted.

Life had been hard on Sergei. His literary career was slow; money was short. He was often rather lonely. Yet she is there, he always told himself; and his jaunty letters only bore half the tale.

Night after night, he would sit down to write. His verse came slowly, often he gave up. His hopes for fame seemed dismally far away.

He invented a method, though, when he composed. Olga became his audience: in his mind’s eye, her image was always, hauntingly, before him. If what he wrote was moving, he had moved her; if gay, it meant that he had made her laugh. And once or twice he saw he made her cry. And so, unknown to Olga, through these years, she was Sergei’s companion in his thoughts. And often alone in his lodgings he would cry: ‘My Olga, you – at least you – will understand.’

Would it, he had wondered, be a disappointment, living in the family house with her again? Married, then widowed, with children – he imagined she would have changed. Nothing had prepared him, therefore, for what took place in June.

His discovery was made the first day. It was so overwhelming, so absolute, that at times it made him tremble; and at times he wanted to laugh. It cleaved the whole sky, like a silent flash of lightning. It was so natural, so inevitable: surely it was fated, predestined, fashioned by the gods from the beginning of time, enduring, who knew, even to the end. She filled his thoughts. His entire existence seemed to take place under her blue eyes’ gentle gaze. Everything was for her. The translations of Shakespeare she loved had been written, every word, for her alone. And everything else that he did – the practical jokes, the foolish quarrel with Alexis – was only an insane game, played to distract them both, by a man who must wear a mask because his true love was forbidden.

Never before, he now understood, had he known passion. And now he could go on no more. Tonight, he had vowed. It must be resolved tonight.

The springs had not changed in centuries. They still burst out of the high bank in these silvery cascades that drained away to the river. It was fully dark. The stars were out. The small, moonlit glade in front of them made a perfect resting place and, charmed by the spot, the company sat on the grass, while the little waterfalls made a low, splashing sound a few yards away. Then Sergei turned to the old woman: ‘Come now, Arina, my duck,’ he gently said. ‘Tell all your children a story.’

And so, in a quiet but musical tone, old Arina began to speak. She told them about the sacred springs and the spirits which inhabited them. She told them about the magic ferns and flowers in the forest. She told them about the souls of lovelorn girls – the rusalki – who lived in the river; she recounted the story of the firebird, Ilya of Murom, and several others. And all of them were entranced, grateful to be sharing this most magical night of the Russian year.

Only when she had done, and everyone was sitting, contented, yet half-hoping for something more, did the little Cossack say: ‘Recite us some of your poems, Sergei. He’s written some wonderful ones recently,’ he added. And when Sergei made a show of reluctance Olga softly chimed in, in a tone that showed she had forgiven him: ‘Yes, Seriozha. Let us hear.’

He had prepared himself so carefully. The mood of the company was just as he had hoped as quietly he began. The first poem was an old folk tale about Baba Yaga the witch, which made them laugh. The second was a poem to autumn. But the third was a love poem.

It was not very long – just five short stanzas. But he knew it was the best thing he had ever written. It spoke of the poet meeting a loved friend after a long absence and finding his love had turned to passion.

He told how, in the years of his own unhappy life, when they were parted, it was her memory that sustained him:

And that now, meeting his angel once more, she had awakened a passion; he was born again; and in his heart:

No one was looking at Olga. They did not realize. When Tatiana, after a pause, asked him who this lady was, he answered: ‘A woman I knew in St Petersburg.’ Everyone was quiet. Then he heard Ilya murmur: ‘Beautiful, my dear Seriozha. Exquisite. What a heart you have.’

And still, dear God, no one thought to look at Olga.

She was sitting a little back from Tatiana. She had only to move her face two inches to place it in shadow, and now she had done so, and bowed her head. But he had seen – even in the moonlight – he had seen her blush, then seen the tears upon her cheeks. Dear God, she knew. At last she understood.

They sat for several moments then Sergei suggested: ‘The night is young. Why don’t we walk to the skit where the monks live!’ The little hermitage lay at the end of the path. Karpenko at once endorsed the idea; Pinegin seemed agreeable. But Ilya and the two older women were disinclined. ‘We’ll go back to the cart and go home,’ Tatiana declared. ‘Let the young people go on.’ And so the party divided.

Those who continued were led by Sergei along the path. He had young Arina and Pinegin close beside him. Olga, seemingly lost in thought, walked just behind with Karpenko. Sergei moved along briskly, telling Pinegin something of the history of the little hermitage as they went. And so intent on this was he that, it seemed, he was taken by surprise to find after a few turns of the path that the Cossack and Olga had fallen behind so far they were out of sight.

‘Walk on,’ he said to Pinegin. ‘I’ll go and hurry them up.’ And a few minutes later the little Cossack came up to Pinegin, looking back over his shoulder as if the others were just round the corner, and remarked: ‘Olga’s talking to her brother. They’ll catch us up. This way.’ And he led them forward.

It was a couple of hundred yards further that the track forked. ‘Sergei said it’s this one,’ the Cossack said firmly. And they had walked on more than half a mile before the track petered out and Karpenko said: ‘Devil take it! I must have made a mistake.’

They stood together, Sergei and his sister. They had moved just off the path to the river bank, where they could watch the reflection of the moon and stars on the water. How pale she looked, in her long white summer dress. For a time they were silent.

‘The poem was for me?’

‘Of course.’

She gazed at the water. ‘I… had no idea.’ She stopped, then seemed to smile. ‘Dear Seriozha. It was very beautiful.’ She paused. ‘But the words… were not for a sister.’

‘No.’

She sighed. She shook her head, gently. ‘Seriozha… your poem spoke of love of the kind…’

‘Of passion.’

She took his hand and looked up at him for a moment, then down again at the water.

‘I am your sister.’

For a moment he did not speak. Then he said simply, ‘I dare say we shall never in our lives speak of this again. But, so that I may know, when I die – could you love me as I love you?’

She paused so long he thought the moon had moved upon the water. Then she shrugged. ‘What if I could?’ And then: ‘I love you as a brother.’ She squeezed his hand gently and turned her face up to his. ‘What is it you want, Seriozha, my poet of a brother? What is it you want?’

He smiled a little sadly. ‘I scarcely know. Everything. The universe. You.’

‘You want me?’

‘The universe, you: for me it’s one and the same.’

‘You brought me here, my dearest Seriozha, to seduce me?’ She smiled almost playfully.

‘You know that.’

She blushed. ‘I do now. Impossible – even if I would do such a thing. Not with my brother.’

‘Did you know,’ he asked softly, ‘that I’m only your half-brother?’

‘Yes, I did.’

She gave a little laugh that floated across the river.

‘Does that make it only half a crime?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps. It’s stronger almost than I am. An impulse.’

We can resist our impulses.’

‘Can we?’ he asked, in genuine surprise.

She did not move, however, and soon he put his arm around her while they stood and gazed silently at the sparkling night. He did not know how long they stood, but eventually he felt her give a little shiver, and taking his cue said soflty: ‘Let me this only time in my life, kiss you, just once.’

She looked down at the ground and slowly shook her head, and sighed and then looked up, with a strange, sad smile; then turned and reached up her hands around his neck.

By the time they got back to the fork in the path, Pinegin was getting irritable.

‘We’d better go on towards the skit,’ Karpenko said. ‘They must have passed us.’

But something – he did not know what – made Pinegin think otherwise.

‘I’m going back,’ he said.

‘They said to go on this way,’ the Cossack said anxiously.

But Pinegin took no notice. To Karpenko’s dismay, he went smartly off down the path; and after a minute or two of hesitation, the Cossack said: ‘I suppose we’d better follow.’

He might not have noticed them through the screen of trees if they had not moved. But suddenly Pinegin caught sight of a swaying shape as the two stood locked in each other’s arms. For a moment, just then, they seemed to draw apart, so that by the moonlight he saw their faces clearly. After a second’s pause, they moved again so that he could not see them.

For almost a minute he could not move. Olga, for whose hand he was about to ask, was with another man – her cursed brother. Stricken, he waited, and wondered what to do. Then cold anger seized him. Wasn’t she, after all, almost his own? Why should he let this happen? He started to turn off the path and move towards them.

But then he corrected himself. What was the point? This woman, whom he had loved, was dead to him now. And as he was thinking this, along came Karpenko.

‘Pinegin!’ the Cossack called out, so that his voice echoed through the trees. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Let’s go to the springs and wait for them there,’ Karpenko suggested loudly, so that the lovers could hear. And they walked back to the springs. Pinegin was very calm now. Coldly he counted the minutes. So many and Sergei had had her; fewer, and perhaps he had not.

It was just as he was on the point of deciding that, yes, this horror must have happened, that the two of them came down the path. Olga looked very pale, Sergei a little cautious. ‘We looked for you everywhere,’ he briefly said. And Pinegin nodded slowly.

‘It’s late,’ Olga then murmured. ‘Let us go home.’ She came to Pinegin’s side. ‘Arina,’ she ordered the girl, ‘you walk with us. The young men can follow behind.’

On the long walk home, they did not say much. After a time, Pinegin lit his pipe. Sergei and his friend had fallen far behind. As they came, at last, in sight of the house at Bobrovo, dawn was almost breaking, and Pinegin felt a trace of dew on his face.

Several thoughts had gone through his mind on the way back. For a short time, he had even considered forgetting the incident. It had been, perhaps, a moment’s madness. But then he had considered: If I were to take Olga now, all my life that young man would be looking at me and thinking… Thinking what? That there was Pinegin, a poor nonentity, acting the husband for his sister and lover. The thought filled his proud nature with icy rage. Whatever Olga’s guilt – and all women, he supposed, were weak – it was Sergei who had made a fool of him. He guessed, Pinegin thought, he saw my interest. Then he did this.

The simplest course would be to challenge Sergei. But a duel, whatever the outcome, is always talked of: and that would lead to Olga’s complete dishonour.

And that, he realized, would be beneath me. But something would have to be done. I shall have revenge, he thought coolly.

For Pinegin was very dangerous.

As dawn was breaking, young Arina waited.

After leaving Olga at the house, she had wandered about by herself, unable to sleep. It had been a magical night. She could hardly believe her luck when she and her aunt had been summoned to join the party. Then, when she was left with Olga and the others, she had been ecstatic.

It seemed to the girl that Olga was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. As for the two young men, she had been studying them, fascinated, ever since they arrived. They were made in heaven, she thought, not upon earth.

And now, after this magical night, all her senses were awakened. She could still feel the Cossack’s arm around her. She remembered his kiss, on the verandah at the dance. She had not understood what was passing in the woods that night – it had never occurred to her. All she knew was that she was warm, and sixteen, and that the night had been enchanted.

She was standing by the bath house. She saw the two men come from the lane and pause at the bottom of the slope. She watched intently. Then they parted, Sergei remaining by the water’s edge while the Cossack started up the slope to the house.

The girl smiled. It couldn’t have been better. The one she loved – alone.

It was a few minutes later that Sergei looked up to see the girl walking quietly along the bank towards him. The first rays of the sun were catching her hair. It did not take long for him to understand what she wanted. And a little while afterwards, in a pleasant clearing in the woods above the house, though the girl was not Olga, he managed, almost, to pretend to himself that she was.

Old Arina was furious. She had seen them, in the early morning, sneaking down from the woods towards the house. She had not even needed to question her niece to guess at once.

Now it was noon and the old woman was alone with Sergei on the verandah. She might be a serf, but she had also been his nanny. She was not afraid of him. And she was giving him a piece of her mind.

‘You are shameless. You write pretty poems, but you’re a selfish monster. And God will punish you, Sergei Alexandrevich, I swear He will.’ She positively glowered at him. ‘And so He should!’

‘I’m sorry, my duck,’ he said with a lame smile. ‘I dare say nothing will come of it.’

‘I shall marry her to someone in the village, straight away, just in case,’ old Arina said. ‘I’ll get your mother’s permission and you’ll be lucky if I don’t tell your brother Alexis. I just hope we can find a young man. They’re not so keen to be father to your brats, you know…’ And she went on for some time before she noticed that Sergei’s attention was riveted elsewhere.

‘Look,’ he said softly. And she turned.

The large carriage swept up the track to the house. It pulled up not by the main door, but in front of the stables to one side; Sergei and the old woman could see its occupants getting out. First came his brother Alexis, a look of grim triumph on his face. Then a stern-looking soldier.

And now. Sergei went completely white.

For from the back of the carriage, his hands in chains, they were pulling down a grim, bearded figure who, when he finally straightened up, towered over them all.

They had captured Savva Suvorin.

And Sergei knew it was his fault.

That single moment of carelessness in a Moscow street.

He had been so surprised to see the tall figure of Savva Suvorin that without even thinking he had called out his name. And when it seemed that Savva had not heard him Sergei had foolishly run across to him and taken him by the arm. Only as he did so and felt Suvorin stiffen did he remember – of course, the tall serf was still a runaway.

Sergei had always been appalled by the way the Suvorins had been treated. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t give you away,’ he quickly said.

But Savva was taking no chances. ‘A mistake,’ he muttered. ‘My name is not Savva.’ And he turned and disappeared through a doorway.

Sergei did not go after him. He stood there for a moment or two, looking up and down the street. It was as he did so that he suddenly realized they were only a few yards from the walled compound of the Theodosian sect. ‘The Theodosians,’ he muttered. ‘Of course, that must be it.’

He had heard how these Old Believers took people in and sometimes gave them false names and papers. No doubt this was the case with Savva Suvorin. Well, good luck to him. He turned away.

And it was only then that he realized that his manservant was standing beside him; and remembered that he was one of the serfs from the Russka estate. How much had the fellow heard? It was then that he had threatened him with a thrashing if he repeated anything.

Evidently, it had not worked.

There was a round-faced woman, too. That must be his wife. And a little boy of two. They were each taken down. They stood there silently. Then Savva Suvorin saw Sergei. His face did not register anything: he just stared at him. Sergei had an urgent desire to rush over and explain that he had not given him away. But what was the point? It was his carelessness and stupidity that had done it. He could only stare back, apologetically.

He heard Alexis say: ‘Well, Suvorin, you’ll be thrashed tomorrow.’ And then he turned and caught sight of Sergei.

‘Ah, Sergei.’ He smiled, which should have been warning enough. ‘I have some news for you. Come inside.’

And morosely Sergei went in.

Alexis was businesslike. Almost cheerful. He came to the point at once.

‘As you see, Sergei, we have recaptured a runaway serf. It seems that you saw him in Moscow but did not see fit to inform me. That, I suppose, makes you an accessory to theft. But we’ll say no more about that.

‘The real point, Sergei, is that as you know I was asked by Count Benckendorff to keep an eye on you. And I’m afraid I haven’t been able to make a very favourable report.

‘Count Benckendorff therefore – I’ll show you his letter – has decided that it would be better for you to go away for a while. Tomorrow I shall send you to the military governor at Vladimir. He will make arrangements for you to travel east – not to Siberia, by the way, just to the Ural Mountains. You’ll be staying there for three years, I believe.’

Exile. Three years’ exile in the Urals, hundreds of miles out beyond the River Volga.

‘Perhaps,’ Alexis suggested brightly, ‘you can make a study of mining conditions, while you are there.’

Little Misha did not understand. His Uncle Sergei looked white and scarcely noticed him when he came by; Karpenko was walking about shaking his head and muttering. His Aunt Olga was weeping. Even Pinegin, sitting in his white tunic and puffing on his pipe, looked grim. It seemed Uncle Sergei had to go away, but Misha could not work out why.

Nobody saw the little boy slip into the salon and stand behind a chair. His father was there, standing. His grandmother was sitting on a sofa. Misha was about to step out into the room when his grandmother spoke.

‘Wolf! That is what you are.’

Misha stared. She was speaking to his father.

‘You are responsible for this. I know it very well. My own son – a viper!’ She spat the word out. ‘I have nothing more to say to you. Please go.’

He saw his father wince. Then coldly turn. Misha hid behind the chair as Alexis walked slowly out. Then, trembling, he sneaked out himself.

What did it mean? Was his father wicked?

1844

The duel between Savva Suvorin and the Bobrov family entered its final stage in the year 1844. It was between a master who respected but hated his serf, and a serf who hated and despised his master.

Savva Suvorin had never given up. The day when he had fled Moscow after receiving Tatiana’s letter about his poor father, he had taken with him only some money sewn into his clothes, and the little blackened icon. For two terrible years, to keep out of sight, he had pulled barges on the River Volga. It was backbreaking work. He saw many die at it. But God had made him strong. And each night he took out the little icon and prayed: ‘Lord have mercy on me and keep me safe from the evil doings of unworthy men.’

After two years he had gone to the great fair of Nizhni Novgorod but it was hard to get anything except menial work without proper papers, and so he was led, finally, back to Moscow and the Theodosian community who welcomed him gladly and gave him forged papers.

He had been happy in Moscow. Though the community existed to look after its poorest members, it contained many vigorous men of business; and it was not long before Savva was noticed by them. He married the daughter of one: a quiet girl with a round face, pointed nose and, he soon discovered, an astonishing practical sense. They had a child they called Ivan.

And then Sergei had seen him.

On the day after he arrived back at Russka, Alexis Bobrov had him flogged. As the lashes fell on his back, however, he concentrated his mind on one thought: I shall live; and I shall one day be free. And, God be praised, at only the twentieth lash a figure had appeared and a voice cried out in fury: ‘Enough! Stop this at once!’ And so great was Tatiana’s anger that even Alexis had dared proceed no further.

The relationship between Savva and Alexis was uniformly sour. Only Tatiana had been able to save the serf from being systematically destroyed. When Alexis wanted to use Savva as a menial house-serf – ‘to teach him a lesson and some manners’ as Alexis put it – it was Tatiana who stopped him, pointing out: ‘Common sense at least should tell you he’s worth far more to you doing what he does best.’ And it was she who lent Savva money to get started again.

In the years that followed, Savva Suvorin wasted no time. Having been baulked of his object twice before, he pressed ahead with a relentless sense of urgency. When, right at the start, his old cousin Ivan Romanov offered to help – ‘I’ve three grown sons and a young boy growing too’ – he politely refused. He would have no partners, no interference, no one to slow him down.

In 1830, while Alexis was away at the crushing of another Polish uprising, Savva set up a small business for printing cottons. The profits were extraordinary. But when Alexis returned and saw what he had done, he tried to charge an obrok so high that it would almost have closed the business, and Savva told his wife grimly: ‘That fool doesn’t want to profit by me – he wants to ruin me.’

Only Tatiana, who ran the estate in Alexis’s absence, was able to restrain her son – and make it possible for Savva to operate. Thanks to her, and paying a reasonable obrok, he was able in ten years to build up a cloth mill with hired workers at Russka and to become richer than he had ever been before.

Yet despite this working arrangement, Alexis continued, each year, to become a little poorer. The reason was very simple. For though Tatiana could talk some sense into him about the running of the estate, she could do nothing about his personal expenses. And severe though he was, Alexis liked to live well. As his son Misha, destined for the guards, grew up, Alexis insisted on providing lavishly for him too. ‘For the honour,’ he said, ‘of the family.’ The result was that the extra obrok from Savva’s activities, instead of being ploughed back into the estate, just encouraged him to spend more, and still his expenses often exceeded his income.

By contrast, Savva’s treatment of his own son was harsh. While he and Maria were sad that God had only granted them a single child, ‘one is enough,’ Savva would say. Young Ivan, though not of his father’s towering build, was a shrewd boy with a fine singing voice. Though Savva had no objection to this, he knew where his son’s interest in music must end. When Ivan, aged thirteen, foolishly appeared in the house with a violin he had just acquired, Savva took it from him, examined it, and then with a blow that almost stunned the boy, broke it over his son’s head. ‘You’ve no time for that,’ he said simply, by way of explanation.

There was another source of friction between Savva and his master. This was that the serf was an Old Believer. He had kept his contact with the Theodosians, and though he did not seek to convert others, it would be noticed that, when he ate in company, he did so in the Old Believers’ manner – apart, using his own wooden bowl, and a little wooden spoon with a cross upon it.

Strictly speaking the Old Believers sects were loyal at this time. But to Alexis, this quiet profession of Savva’s faith was deeply objectionable – partly because it seemed like a sort of personal defiance and also, ‘It’s against the good of Russia,’ he firmly declared.

For in 1832, the government of Tsar Nicholas had formulated a doctrine that, in a way, summarized the outlook of all Russian administrations that century and even beyond. This was the famous doctrine of Official Nationality. It was declared in government, in the army, and above all in school, and resoundingly dictated that the good of Russia lay in three things: Orthodoxy, the Tsar’s Autocracy, and Nationality, which last meant a sense of communal belonging to the Russian nation.

The idea was simple. It suggested a paternal relationship between the Tsar and his people, entirely appropriate to a state that liked to refer to itself as Holy Russia. And to Alexis, the moment this doctrine of Official Nationality was announced, it was sacred.

The dour Old Believer, therefore, seemed to the authoritarian landowner to be vaguely treacherous, disloyal and disobedient. I should have thrashed him more, he thought, and if ever I get an excuse, I’ll thrash him again.

And still Savva’s real goal, his freedom, seemed elusive.

In 1837 he asked Alexis Bobrov what it would take to purchase his family’s freedom.

‘Nothing, because I will not free you,’ was the reply.

The next year he asked again and received the same reply. ‘May I know why, sir?’ he asked.

‘Certainly,’ Alexis said pleasantly. ‘It’s because, Suvorin, I prefer to keep you where you are.’

And bitterly, looking at his own son, Savva remarked to his wife: ‘He’s still just as I was at his age: a serf, and the son of a serf.’ And when Maria tried to comfort him and told him something would turn up, he only shook his head and muttered: ‘I wonder what.’

And then, starting in 1839, came the famine.

There had not been a crop failure for a number of years. Now the crops failed two years running. Alexis was away, down in the Ukraine. Though she was nearly seventy, the burden fell upon Tatiana.

For Russka, the two failures and the resulting famine were grim indeed. ‘The Riazan estate’s a complete wash-out,’ Ilya moaned. ‘The steward writes they’ve been slaughtering the livestock because there’s no winter feed.’ Numerous attempts were made to buy grain from other areas. ‘But even if we do find some,’ Tatiana remarked, ‘it gets lost on the way.’ By the winter of 1840 the situation was desperate.

Each day Tatiana would go down into the village and move from house to house. There were still some reserve supplies at the manor, though only enough to help the worst cases, and she used her judgement as best she could. She had two particular calls she always made. One was to the Romanovs, because their son Timofei had always been the playmate of little Misha; the second was to the izba where young Arina now lived with her husband and children. She owed it to old Arina, who had died five years before, to help her niece. It was a wretched business. Except for the eldest, a homely girl called Varya, the children were sickly. In the space of four weeks, she saw three of them die. And almost worse, she could not persuade Arina to eat. Anything she gave her finished up with Varya. Desperate to preserve at least one child, the mother was sacrificing herself. For a long time, Tatiana was certain, Arina had subsisted off a single turnip. And if these deprivations hurt the peasants, her sharing in their pain, she was sure, had damaged the health of Tatiana herself. In the summer of 1841 when, thank God, the crop did not fail, she said sadly to Ilya: ‘Something has happened inside me. I don’t think I shall make old bones.’

It was in the early spring of 1840, when things were at their worst, that the curious rumour started. It was Ivan Romanov who told her about it when she came to the izba one morning. Both he and all his sons were looking excited. ‘It’s the Tsar,’ he said. ‘The Tsar is coming here.’ He smiled. ‘Then everything will be all right.’

‘You mean Tsar Nicholas is coming?’

‘Oh no,’ he said with a smile. ‘The last Tsar. Tsar Alexander. The Angel.’

It was one of the many strange rumours in Russian history that Tsar Alexander I did not die in 1825, but instead went wandering, as a monk – usually by the name of Fedor Kuzmich. No one knows quite when it began. It is even claimed to this day that a certain English private family have papers to prove that this was true.

Each morning now, when she went down to the village, Tatiana saw people hopefully looking out for the former Tsar, in the belief that somehow he would bring food. And on one occasion, a monk from the monastery was stopped and carefully examined to make sure he was not the Tsar in disguise.

While she smiled sadly at all this, it also offended Tatiana’s practical nature. And it was this hopeful waiting for Tsar Alexander, as much as anything, that gave her a new idea. She summoned Savva Suvorin. ‘What we need here in future,’ she told that practical man, ‘is not a Tsar, but an alternative crop. I want you to make enquiries and see what you can find.’

It was not until three months later that Suvorin reported to her, but when he did, it was, for once, with a faint grin. In his hand he held a small sack, from which he now drew out a dirty grey-brown object. ‘This is your answer,’ he said. ‘The German colonists have been growing these down in the south for a long time, but we haven’t any up here.’

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘A potato, my lady,’ he replied.

And so it was, some time before it became usual on the private estates in the province, that one of modern Russia’s most important crops was first planted at Russka.

But for Savva Suvorin, though he regretted the suffering, it was hard not to take a grim pleasure in the failures of 1839 and ’40. For they gave him his chance.

‘That’s two years of income he has lost,’ he said to his wife and son. ‘That damned Alexis Bobrov can’t hold out much longer.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s time to make them an offer they cannot refuse.’ And in the spring of the following year, he requested a passport from Tatiana, to visit Moscow.

And now, in May 1844, Savva Suvorin stood before Alexis Bobrov and made his astonishing offer.

‘Fifty thousand roubles.’

Even Alexis was struck dumb. It was a fortune. How the devil had Savva found it?

‘I will return tomorrow, lord, in order that you may consider the matter.’ And he discreetly withdrew, while Alexis could only stare after him. This time, the serf thought, I have him.

The plan of Savva Suvorin was hugely ambitious. It centred on the gigantic loan he had negotiated, free of interest for five years, from the Theodosians. This loan would allow him to buy his freedom and also to make a single, enormous investment which would transfer the Suvorin enterprises into his own hands for ever.

There was at this time no more booming business in Russia than the manufacture of cotton from the imported raw material – so much so that the area above Vladimir was becoming known as ‘Calico country’. Savva’s plan was not only to convert his wooden plant over to cotton, but also to speed production hugely by the purchase of a large, steam-driven jenny from England. One or two of the more powerful Russian entrepreneurs had already done this a few years before and the results, he knew, had been spectacular. ‘But I won’t do it unless I’m free,’ he told his family. ‘I’m not setting up a big enterprise like that just to have those accursed Bobrovs steal it all on some pretext like they did before.’

Fifty thousand roubles. It was an extraordinary offer that the landlord had to consider.

Alexis Bobrov, at the age of fifty-one, was an impressive figure who looked rather older. His body was heavyset. His grey hair was cut short; his cheeks had filled out with age so that his long, hawkish face had become squarer, more massive. His nose had thickened at the bottom and curved down over his mouth so that, with his long, drooping grey moustache, he put one in mind of some Turkish pasha of unshakable authority. Upon his uniform were numerous medals and orders including that of Alexander Nevsky.

Having been widowed a second time, and suffering from an old wound acquired in the Polish rising, which gave him a slight limp, he had taken an honourable retirement that year and had come to live permanently on the Bobrovo estate.

When he told his mother and brother Ilya about the offer, they were both adamant: he should take it. In Tatiana’s case, the argument was simple. As well as her private sympathy for Savva, it was clear to her that the money was needed. ‘With that,’ she reasoned, ‘you could clear all the debts we’ve incurred from the crop failures, make the necessary improvements in the estate, and have plenty to spare.’ For a generation at least, the Bobrovs would be out of trouble.

Ilya’s argument was slightly different. Though he had never realized his mistake over the stolen money, he had always a vaguely guilty feeling over the way his family had treated the Suvorins. But even aside from that, there was another consideration. ‘For the fact is – forgive me putting it like this, my dear brother – but every civilized man in Russia finds serfdom repulsive. Even our Tsar, who most people think of as reactionary, is known to think that serfdom should be abolished. A major committee has already sat on the subject for years, and each season there’s a new rumour from the capital that something is going to be done. One day, I think that rumour will be true. A proposal, at least, will be made. And what will Suvorin offer you then, if he believes that in a year or two he may get his freedom anyway? Quite apart from my own feelings about serfdom, I say your own self-interest should make you take his offer.’

Yet as Alexis listened, he was not convinced. Ilya’s argument he rejected out of hand. ‘People have been talking about freeing the serfs all my life,’ he said, ‘but it never happens. The gentry won’t allow it: not in my lifetime. Perhaps not in Misha’s either.’

There was also something else that he found offensive about the business. He was shrewd enough to guess at once the likely source of Savva’s finance. Even he couldn’t come up with that much. It must be those damned Theodosians, he thought. And he remembered something the red-headed priest at Russka had told him the previous year. ‘You know, Alexis Alexandrovich, wherever these Old Believers set up factories, they start converting all the local peasants and the Orthodox Church loses its flock.’ Alexis could imagine just what might happen if Suvorin were free of his authority. The whole place would be riddled with Schismatics. As an upholder of the doctrine of Official Nationality he was appalled by the idea.

And thirdly, most important of all, he was secretly convinced of something else. My mother, he told himself, is admirable in her way, but now I’m here to manage the estate full-time, things are going to change. All that was needed to increase the income dramatically, he believed, was the bringing of what he called ‘a bit more discipline’ to things. Moreover, while his respect and affection for Tatiana would not allow him to offend her by doing so yet, she would not always be there; and when she was gone, he faithfully promised himself: I’ll squeeze that schismatic Suvorin until the pips squeak. He might not get fifty thousand roubles out of him, but over the years, he’d surely get enough. Let him make money, he vowed, but I’ll see he dies poor.

And so, when Savva appeared the next day, Alexis Bobrov looked at him coldly and declared: ‘I thank you for your offer, Suvorin, but the answer is no.’ And when the dumbfounded serf – who knew that this decision could not possibly be in Bobrov’s own interest – asked him when he might discuss the matter again, Alexis gave a smile and replied: ‘Never.’

That night, therefore, when Savva discussed it with his wife, he told her: ‘That obstinate fool is immune to reason.’ And when she suggested that perhaps, one day, something would change his mind, Savva grimly replied: ‘He’ll never give in, until he’s ruined.’

And he wondered when that might be.

It was at this time that Ilya began to behave strangely. No one quite knew what had got into him. Usually, as the warm weather approached, he would be found sitting by the window in the salon, or about on the verandah, reading. Seldom before high summer would he spend much time out in the open.

Now, however, his pattern of life had completely changed. He spent hours up in his room, from which he would emerge with a furrowed brow, frequently muttering, and generally locking the door, so that the servants could not clean it. He would pace up and down in the alley above the house for an hour at a time. And if Alexis or Tatiana asked him what he was up to, he would give them some meaningless reply – such as ‘Aha!’ or ‘Why, nothing at all!’ – so that they could only wonder what his secret was.

It was on one of these days, when Ilya had been pacing excitedly in the alley, that Tatiana experienced the first sign. It was nothing much: a sudden dizziness. But a few hours later, as she was sitting in the salon, she blacked out for about half a minute.

She said nothing to anyone. What was there to say? She went about her daily business. But from that moment the thought entered her mind and remained there quietly but insistently: the days to come were numbered, and the number might not be large. A week later, she had another blackout.

If these signs were not unexpected, Tatiana still felt rather lonely and afraid. She found she liked to go to church each day; but the red-headed priest at Russka was not much comfort. She visited the monastery and conversed with the monks, which was a little better. But it was after a Sunday service, when the bread that had been blessed was distributed, that a peasant woman she scarcely knew came up to her with a kindly smile and said: ‘You should go and see the old hermit beyond the skit.’

She had heard of this man. He was one of the monks at the little skit beyond the springs who, two years before, had been allowed to move further into the woods to a hermitage of his own. Stories had come back that he was a man of great holiness, but nothing more definite than that. There was no talk of miracles; he kept to himself and few knew much about him. His name was Father Basil.

For a week Tatiana put the idea at the back of her mind. It was far away, and she felt rather shy. But then she had another blackout and a pain in the chest which frightened her. And so it was, two days later, that she had the coachman harness up a little single-seated cart and, without saying where she was going, she set off.

It took them all morning. She had to leave the coachman and walk the last part on foot. But the place, when she got there, was not what she expected.

The clearing was quite large. In the middle stood a simple but well-built hut. Before the hut was a little vegetable garden. To one side, near the trees, two beehives made of hollow logs. Just in front of the door was a table with some books and papers upon it, and sitting at the table was a monk. She could see from a hoe beside the vegetable garden that he had been working that recently, but now he was engaged in writing. Seeing her, he looked up pleasantly. She had heard that he was an ascetic and that he was seventy-five, so she was surprised to see before her a refined but vigorous-looking man whose beard was still mostly black and a face that might have belonged to a man of fifty. His brown eyes were clear and looked at her with great straightforwardness. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I thought I felt somebody coming.’

He nodded politely when she introduced herself, and produced a stool for her to sit on. Then, as if he were waiting for something, he said, ‘Perhaps you would sit here for a little while, until I return,’ and disappeared into the hut, she supposed to pray.

It was warm and pleasant. The light breeze that rustled the leaves could hardly be felt in the glade below. While she waited she tried to work out what it was, exactly, she wanted to ask this holy man, how she should say it. And in this way some twenty minutes passed.

When she saw the bear she very nearly screamed. It seemed to come from nowhere and lumbered across the clearing straight towards her. She had just risen to rush into the hut when the hermit appeared.

‘Ah, Misha,’ he said gently. ‘Back so soon?’ He smiled at Tatiana. ‘He comes to beg for honey because he knows he’s not allowed to touch the beehives.’ And he stroked the bear’s head affectionately. ‘Off you go, you naughty fellow,’ he said kindly, and the bear lumbered away.

When the bear was gone Father Basil resumed his seat and indicated that she should do the same. Then, without asking her any questions, he began to speak quietly, in a deep, firm voice.

‘On the subject of our life after death, the Orthodox faith is very clear and quite explicit. You must not think that, at the moment of death, you suffer any loss of consciousness, for this is not the case. Indeed, quite the opposite. Not for an instant do we cease our existence. You will see the familiar world around you, but be unable to communicate with it. At the same time, you will encounter the spirits of those who have departed, probably those you have known and loved. Your soul, released from the clinging dross of the body, will be more lively than before; but you will by no means be free of temptations: you will encounter spirits both good and evil and be drawn to them according to your disposition.

‘For two days – I speak in terms familiar to us here on earth – you will be free to roam the world. But on the third day you will face a great and terrible trial. For, as we know from the story of the dormition of the Virgin, the Mother of God herself trembled at the thought of that day when, as she put it, the soul passes through the toll houses. This day you must fear. You will encounter first one and then another evil spirit; and the extent of your struggle with those evils in life will give you strength, or not, to pass through. Those who do not, go straight to Gehenna. On this day, the prayers of those on earth are of great assistance.’

Tatiana looked at the hermit thoughtfully. If she had hoped for comfort, she had not found it. Who would pray for her upon that day? Her family perhaps? Stern Alexis?

The hermit gave her a quiet smile. ‘I will pray for you then, if you like,’ he said.

Tatiana bowed her head. ‘But perhaps you will not know of my death,’ she suggested. The hermitage was so cut off.

‘I shall know,’ he replied. Then he continued. ‘For thirty-seven more days, after the third, you will visit the regions of heaven and hell, but without knowing your own destiny. Then you will be allotted your place to await the Last Day of Judgement and the Second Coming.’

He turned to her kindly. ‘I remind you of this so that you may know that your soul suffers no loss at death, but rather passes instantly into another state. Your life is only a preparing of the spirit for its ultimate journey. Prepare yourself, therefore, without fear. Repent your sins, which stand against you. Beg for forgiveness. Make sure that your spirit, on the threshold of its journey, is humble.’ He got up.

Tatiana also rose. ‘Will it be soon?’ she asked.

‘The hour is always late,’ he replied quietly. ‘You must prepare. That is all.’

He gave her his blessing, and a little wooden cross. And then, just as she was leaving, he motioned her to stop.

‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that before you pass over, you are to undergo a trial.’ He paused, gazing past her; then, turning his eyes back to her, he remarked: ‘Pray earnestly, therefore, as you prepare to receive a visitor.’

As she walked slowly back to the cart, she wondered what he meant.

It was a week later that a modest carriage, driven by an ill-dressed and rather grumpy-looking coachman, drew up to the house. In it sat Sergei. And with him was his wife.

At the age of forty-two, Sergei Bobrov looked what he was – a man whose talents had brought him minor standing, and who hoped for more. The two literary geniuses of his generation – his old friend Pushkin and, more recently, young Lermontov – had both appeared like meteors in the sky only to lose their lives in their prime. People looked to Sergei as a man who might, in his middle age, continue what they had begun when young. And perhaps part of the reason for the deepening of the lines upon his face was that, so far, he had not quite managed to justify this hope. His dark hair, worn long, had thinned at the front. He had thick side whiskers now, which were greying. His eyes looked somewhat strained. He had a slight paunch, which somehow suggested a kind of irritability. He came only seldom to Russka, and Tatiana knew he had constant problems with money; but he never complained.

And now, as soon as the couple were inside the house and the first civilities were done with, Sergei drew his mother to one side and explained: ‘The fact is, I’ve come to ask you all a favour.’

His old friend Karpenko, now living in Kiev, had invited him to tour the Ukraine. An arduous journey was planned, some of it on horseback and quite unsuitable for a woman. ‘If I’m going to do any good work,’ he confided, ‘I need a change of scene, the chance to get away.’ He expected to return in two months. In the meantime, he had come to ask: ‘Could I leave my wife with you?’

It would have seemed strange to Tatiana to refuse.

It was a pleasant gathering at dinner. In particular, it made Tatiana happy to see Alexis and Sergei together.

Over the years they had achieved a measure of reconciliation. And they had evolved a cast-iron rule for avoiding quarrels – which was simply never to discuss certain matters like the military or Savva Suvorin. And if she knew they had done all this chiefly for her sake, at least it was something.

If Alexis went out of his way to be agreeable, Ilya was beaming with pleasure. It was hard for this highly educated man to share many of his thoughts with her – still less with Alexis. But ever since Sergei’s appearance, Ilya had been galvanized, and before dinner she had heard him waddling about in his room, pulling out books and papers and muttering: ‘Ah, Seriozha! There are so many things we must discuss.’ If anyone would discover Ilya’s secret it would certainly be Sergei.

The one figure of mystery at the table was Sergei’s young wife. What could one make of her?

Sergei had married Nadia three years before. She was wellborn, a general’s daughter, whose fair hair and pretty appearance upon the dance floor had made her referred to in society, one year, as an ‘ethereal beauty’. It happened, that year, that Sergei too had been briefly in fashion. And it seemed that the girl and the rake had each fallen in love with each other’s reputation in the short-lived season. ‘She’s certainly blonde,’ Ilya had complained after their first meeting. ‘But I can’t see anything ethereal about her.’ Since the marriage, Sergei’s family had seen little of the girl. There had been a baby, lost when it was a week old, and no news of further pregnancies since. And now she sat quietly, looking a little bored but talking mostly to Alexis with whom, it seemed, she felt more at ease than with Ilya. If she was staying there all summer, Tatiana thought, no doubt she would know all about her before long.

At the end of the meal, Tatiana and Nadia both felt tired and decided to retire, while the men moved out on to the verandah to smoke their pipes and talk. The atmosphere between them now was mellow. Even Alexis, after talking to Sergei’s wife, was in a cheerful good humour; and when Sergei had given them the latest gossip from the capital, he turned to Ilya and remarked: ‘Well, brother, now that Seriozha is here, are you going to tell us, at last, what the devil you’ve been up to these last few weeks?’

And it was then that Ilya revealed his secret.

‘The fact is,’ he replied with a placid smile, ‘I’m leaving Russka.’ And as they gazed at him in astonishment he explained: ‘I’m going abroad to write a book. I’m calling it Russia and the West. It will be my life’s work.’

Perhaps it had been a sudden inspiration; perhaps the culmination of years of study. Or perhaps it had been the sight of Alexis’s medals, especially the Nevsky Order resting so ceremoniously upon his brother’s chest, which had suddenly brought it home to Ilya that while Alexis had already retired with proof of a lifetime’s accomplishment, he himself had absolutely nothing to show for his fifty-five years on earth. Whatever the cause, he had now decided to make a supreme effort: Ilya Bobrov, too, would leave some memorial.

He had spent a lifetime in study; he was a European, a progressive: what, then, could be better than to write the book which would lead his beloved Russia forward upon her destiny, so that future generations might look back and say: ‘Ilya Bobrov showed us the way’?

And now, with obvious pride, he outlined his plan. ‘My thesis,’ he explained, ‘is very simple. Russia has never, in all her history, been capable of governing herself. It has always been outsiders who brought order and culture to our land. In the days of golden Kiev it was norsemen who ruled us and the Greeks who gave us our religion. For centuries we lived in darkness under the Tartar yoke; but when we emerged, who led us forward into the modern world? Why the English, Dutch and German scientists and technicians imported by Peter the Great. Who gave us our present culture? Catherine the Great who brought us the Enlightenment from France. What philosophers inspire you and me, Sergei? Why, today’s great thinkers from Germany.

‘It must be so, for Russia has so little to offer of its own, and what we have belongs to the Dark Ages. Look at our laws!’ He turned from one to the other. ‘Just a few years ago our noble Speransky at last completed the great codification of Russian laws, and what do they reveal? A concept of justice that would have looked barbaric in the west a thousand years ago. The individual has no rights; there are no independent judges; no trial by jury. Everything may be done – even to landowners like us – at the whim of the Tsar. And to this we Russians cheerfully submit like oriental slaves. No wonder progress is impossible.

‘My plan is simple. I shall go to England, France and Germany to gather material for an outline for a new Russia. A Russia modelled on the west. A complete re-structuring of our society.’ And he gazed at them in triumph.

‘But, my dear brother,’ Sergei laughed, ‘if you say things like that, people will think you are mad.’ It was true that only a few years before, a distinguished Russian thinker who had espoused a similar view had been declared officially mad by the infuriated authorities.

Ilya, however, was not at all abashed. ‘The fault of that author,’ he declared, ‘was that even he did not go far enough. For here,’ he tapped the arm of his chair excitedly with his finger, ‘here is the true originality of my approach. I shall show that the key to our spiritual salvation lies not in religion, not in politics, not even in justice, but in economics. And here,’ he smiled complacently, ‘I have my bible and my prophet: I refer of course to the great Scotsman, Adam Smith, and his book The Wealth of Nations.’

Indeed, the writings of Adam Smith, the father of capitalist economics and free markets, were well known to Russian intellectuals at this time. The first Russian translation of Smith had appeared back in 1803. Ilya now expounded, with relish, the great economist’s ideas on enlightened self-interest and economic efficiency. ‘Everything flows from this,’ he declared, ‘even the freeing of the serfs.’

If Alexis had looked bemused during most of this, he now suddenly became attentive.

‘Freeing the serfs?’ he demanded. ‘Why?’

‘Because, my dear brother,’ Ilya explained, ‘numerous Russian economists over the last two decades have conclusively shown that, all other considerations aside, if you free your serfs, you yourself will actually be better off.’ He smiled. ‘Think of it. A free peasant, paid for what he produces, has incentive. Your serf, forced to work for no reward, does as little as he can get away with. It’s as simple as that.’ He paused. ‘I promise you, this view is well understood even in official circles. Only our Russian inertia holds us back.’

For several moments Alexis was quiet while he considered this. But when at last he spoke, he did so not in any anger but in genuine puzzlement.

‘Do you really mean then,’ he asked, ‘that each individual in society should act for himself, considering his own interest paramount? Do you mean that the peasant should strive to get as rich as he can and rely only upon his own hard work?’

‘Yes. Pretty much.’

‘And if his fellow peasant, who is weaker, falls behind, is he to be allowed to suffer?’

‘He may be helped, but, yes.’

‘And what about families like ours? Our whole role in history has been to serve the Tsar and our country. Should I be at home looking for profit like a merchant instead?’ He shook his head sorrowfully.

‘We all want to serve a cause, Alexis,’ Ilya explained, ‘but I am speaking of money and of markets.’

‘No,’ the other rejoined. ‘You are speaking of men and their actions. And if all men act only for themselves, as you suggest, then where is religion, where is discipline, where is obedience and humility? I see only chaos and greed.’ It was not often that Alexis was brought to such eloquence. It was obviously heartfelt. ‘I’m sorry, Ilya, but if that is your idea of progress, it is not mine. This is the evil, self-centred way of the west – and you are certainly right that it comes from the west. It is what Russia has fought against for centuries. I, and our Church, and even I suspect our serfs, will oppose it as long as we have breath.’

And sadly he got up, bade them both goodnight, and left them.

For a long time after he had left Sergei and Ilya continued to talk. They discussed Ilya’s journey, which he planned to begin that very autumn; they discussed literature, philosophy and many other matters. And it was far, far into the night when Sergei finally turned and said: ‘You know, my dear brother, Alexis was not altogether wrong about your ideas. You insult our poor old Russia, yet you are also wrong about her.’

‘How so?’

Sergei sighed. ‘In the first place, you want to bring efficiency to Russia. I tell you frankly, it cannot be done. Why? Because Russia is too big, and the weather is too bad. This is the wasteland the Romans never conquered. The west joins its towns by roads. Yet what have we got? One! One metalled road in the whole empire, from Moscow to St Petersburg – planned by Peter the Great but not executed until 1830 when he’d been dead a hundred years. Europe has railways. What have we? They started building one from the Russian to the Austrian capital last year and the Tsar himself has declared he thinks it is dangerous for people to move about so much. Russia is not the bustling west, my brother, and it never can be. Russia will be slow and inefficient until the Second Coming. And shall I tell you something? It doesn’t matter.

‘Which brings me to my second objection. Your prescription for Russia comes from the head. It is logical, reasonable, clear-cut. Which is exactly why it has nothing to do with the case.

‘The Russians will never be moved by such things. That is what the west will never comprehend. It is the deep weakness of the west, as we see it, that it does not know that to move Russia, you must move her heart. The heart, Ilya, not the mind. Inspiration, understanding, desire, energy – all four come from the heart. Our sense of holiness, of true justice, of community – these are of the spirit: they cannot be codified into laws and rules. We are not Germans, Dutch, or English. We are part of Holy Russia, which is superior to all of these. I, an intellectual, a European like yourself, say this to you.’

‘You are one of this new group then, who claim a special destiny for Russia, apart from the rest of Europe, whom people call Slavophiles, I take it?’ Ilya remarked. He had read a little of this group lately.

‘I am,’ Sergei said, ‘and I promise you, Ilya, it’s the only way.’

And so at last, their minds full of these grand and universal thoughts, the two brothers affectionately embraced each other and retired to their beds.

At eleven o’clock the next morning, Sergei departed for the Ukraine.

As he strolled through Vladimir that August morning, Alexis Bobrov was in a rather good temper.

Just before leaving, he had received a letter from his son Misha announcing that he would be joining his family at Russka for ten days on his way from his regiment to St Petersburg. He should be arriving at the very time I get back, Alexis thought contentedly. How pleasant that would be.

The summer had gone rather well. That accursed Savva Suvorin had kept quiet. On the estate, despite widespread failures in some areas, prospects for an excellent harvest looked promising. In the village there had been a marriage: Arina’s daughter Varya had married young Timofei Romanov, Misha’s childhood playmate. He liked them both. The Romanovs were always respectful. He had taken a particular interest, let the young couple off a year’s obrok, and thoroughly enjoyed giving them his blessing at the wedding. Whatever Ilya might say, that was how things were meant to be in Russia.

He had been busy in the district too. He had become an assistant to the Marshal of the Nobility – whose duties largely consisted of keeping up the registers of the gentry in the area. But it gave him a sense that he was participating in the province, and now, with time on his hands, he was making numerous visits to his fellow landowners – ‘To make sure I’m in touch,’ as he put it.

Above all, he had been pleasantly surprised by Sergei’s wife. It was amazing really, he thought, that such a sensible young woman should have married Sergei. He found they agreed about most matters, and though he was too well-bred to pursue the matter, certain hints she had dropped suggested that she had a sensible view of Sergei’s writing too. ‘I must confess,’ she had confided in him the previous week, ‘I didn’t realize when I married him that he just scribbled all the time. I supposed he did something else as well.’ It must be very trying for her, he thought.

It was a pity that Tatiana and Ilya didn’t seem to get on with her very well. But she certainly put herself out to be pleasant to him. ‘I really do think it’s too bad of Sergei to leave me in the country like this,’ she said to Alexis, ‘where there’s nothing to think about all day.’ And then she gave him a pretty smile. ‘I’m so grateful to have you for company.’

Alexis was in Vladimir that morning because he was on his way to spend a few days with a landowner nearby. He had just seen the governor and was planning to visit the great cathedral. And no person, certainly, could have been further from his mind when he suddenly paused, opened his arms, and cried out: ‘My dear fellow! What brings you here? Aren’t you coming to see us?’

It was Pinegin.

The house party was delightful. Misha was so happy to be home. He had arrived at Bobrovo a couple of days earlier than expected and been pleased to find Sergei’s wife Nadia there. She was only a few years older than he was and he thought her rather beautiful.

It was easy to see why young Misha Bobrov was popular in his regiment. Though he looked like his father Alexis, there were some important differences. Physically, he was an inch or two shorter, and more thickset. Intellectually, he was far more advanced. He loved to sit with his Uncle Ilya and discuss life. ‘And though I shall never read a hundredth part of what he has, I like to think a bit of his learning has rubbed off on me,’ he would say pleasantly. And lastly, by temperament he was optimistic and easy-going, so that even Alexis once remarked to Tatiana: ‘Frankly, he’s the best fellow this family has produced for a long time: I’m the first to admit it.’ He had the same little gesture as his grandfather, that gentle, caressing motion of the hand when he touched someone’s arm or ushered them into a room. Even Alexis’s occasional dark moods would usually dissolve at the sight of his son.

As was his habit, Misha spent the first day visiting all those he loved. He sat with his grandmother for an hour. The rest of the morning he spent with Ilya. He found his Uncle in a strange and excitable state, but put it down to the great book he was writing. He also visited the village, kissed Arina, and called upon his childhood playmate Timofei Romanov and his wife Varya. In short, Misha was home, and all was well in the world.

He was curious about the stranger, Pinegin. He had a vague memory of this man from his early childhood – a figure then, as now, in a white tunic and usually smoking a pipe. Pinegin was somewhere in his forties now, but scarcely changed except for a few more lines around the eyes, and the fact that his sandy hair had turned iron grey. He greeted Misha with a friendly, if slightly guarded, smile and Misha’s only thought about him was: Ah, there’s another of those quiet, rather lonely fellows from the frontier forts. He was glad to see that Pinegin was making himself pleasant to Sergei’s wife Nadia, sitting with her and Tatiana on the verandah telling them anecdotes, or accompanying her if she wanted to walk in the alley. After all, that was what a house-guest was meant to do.

And therefore, on the second afternoon, as he strolled up to join them in the alley above the house, Misha was completely dumbfounded when he caught sight of them, standing in the glade just off the park, and saw that Nadia was folded in Pinegin’s arms.

Misha stood quite silently, hardly able to believe it. And still Nadia and Pinegin kissed.

How easy it had been. Perhaps in a way, Pinegin thought, it would have been better still if the girl had, at least a little, loved her husband. But it was not so, and so it was futile to concern oneself with that.

It was strange to be back at Russka. ‘You must come, my dear fellow. I’ll return in a few days to join you. Amuse the ladies at least, I beg you, until then.’ Those had been Alexis’s words. And as he bumped along the road, Pinegin shrugged. How strange that they should have met like that in the street, when he was on his way to take some leave in Moscow. But then, if one believed in fate, nothing was surprising.

Seventeen long years had passed: seventeen long years of distant campaigns, border fortresses and frontier posts. Often he had been in danger; always he had been cool, protected by fate. A man could be a hero though, but still be forgotten at the centre, where promotions were made. A rich man, the husband of Olga, would find himself promoted: but Pinegin was still a captain. Possibly, one day, he would be a major. But something about him, something distant and rather lonely, made that uncertain. He preferred, it seemed, to remain a law unto himself.

Seventeen long years. After the Turkish campaign of ’27, he had lost touch with Alexis. But even in distant places, he had received news. He knew when Olga had remarried. He heard of Sergei’s return from exile; read his works when they appeared. Word of Sergei’s marriage to a general’s daughter reached him and a fellow he knew even managed to send him a little miniature picture of the girl. He heard that they had lost a child. And always these little items about the family who had insulted him were filed quietly away in his memory, like a weapon in an armoury, locked up but kept always burnished in case of some future use.

For to Pinegin, believing as he did in fate, there was nothing to do but wait for the gods, in their proper time, to give him their signal. When it came, they would find him ready. And clearly now, the sign had come; and with icy calm Pinegin had gone about the business. It was very simple, quite inevitable. Tit for tat: humiliation. He would seduce Sergei’s wife.

For as Alexis had long ago observed, Pinegin was dangerous.

All the rest of that afternoon, Misha wondered what the devil he should do. He loved his Uncle Sergei. He couldn’t just let this terrible business go on. Besides, since Pinegin had only been here a few days, surely the affair could not have gone too far as yet.

That evening, therefore, while the others were sitting out on the verandah playing cards, he found an excuse to walk alone with Pinegin, and take a turn up the alley. He was very careful to be pleasant and polite. But when they reached the place opposite where Pinegin had kissed Nadia, Misha quietly observed: ‘I was here this afternoon, you know.’

Pinegin said nothing, but gave him a thoughtful sidelong glance and puffed on his pipe.

‘I hardly know my sister-in-law,’ Misha went on quietly. ‘She has been left alone here all summer, of course. And I probably misunderstood what I saw. But you will understand, I’m sure, that in the absence of my father and my Uncle, Captain Pinegin, I must ask you to make sure that nothing takes place which would bring dishonour to my family.’

And still Pinegin puffed on his pipe and said nothing.

He had not counted on this young man. The deed was the key. He had even left to fate the question of whether or not Sergei discovered his revenge. If he did, so much the better: Pinegin had no fear of the consequences. But young Misha was a bystander whom, for some reason, the gods had added to the scene, and there it was. The young man’s speech, of course, was absolutely correct. He found no fault with it at all. And he wondered what to do.

Slowly he turned and began to stroll down the alley again, Misha at his side.

‘I certainly have no quarrel with you, Mikhail Alexeevich,’ he remarked at last. ‘And you have spoken wisely. I will not say whether or not there has been a misunderstanding: but I believe that you should no longer feel any concern about the matter. Please put your mind at rest.’

And taking this for an assurance, Misha was satisfied.

It was therefore with stupefaction, on rising early the following morning, that he saw Pinegin quietly come out of Nadia’s room.

An hour later, he challenged him.

‘I’m afraid I cannot accept your challenge.’

Misha stared at him.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I refuse to fight you,’ Pinegin told him calmly.

‘Do you deny sleeping with my Uncle’s wife, in this very house?’

‘No.’

‘May I ask why you refuse my challenge?’

‘I do not wish to fight you.’

Misha was completely at a loss.

‘Then I must call you a coward.’

Pinegin bowed.

‘For that, Mikhail Alexeevich, I will fight you.’ He paused. ‘Are you content to fight at a time of my choosing?’

‘As you wish. The sooner the better.’

‘I will let you know when I am ready. Next year perhaps. But I promise you, we shall fight.’ And with that he walked away, leaving Misha completely mystified.

Now, he thought, what the devil do I do?

At ten o’clock that morning, a small event took place at Bobrovo that went almost unnoticed.

Ilya Bobrov came slowly downstairs, crammed a large, wide-brimmed hat on his head, took a stout walking stick and left the house without a word to anyone. A short time later, the villagers were surprised to see his cumbersome figure wheezing along, his face red with the unwonted exertion but set into a look of the grimmest determination. Nobody had ever seen him go walking like this before. Once through the village, he took the lane that led through the woods towards the monastery. Several times, as he went along, he muttered nervously.

No one had taken much notice of Ilya recently. If he had seemed to be more abstracted than usual, if there had sometimes been a hint of desperation in his manner, Tatiana had put it down to hard work and thought nothing of it. She was quite unaware, therefore, that after all his months of labour at this great project, Ilya had reached a point of absolute crisis and near breakdown. He had been up all the previous night; and had anyone met him as he walked through the woods, they would have noticed that his eyes, which usually gazed out so placidly upon the world, were fixed ahead, staring wildly as though the sight of only one object in the universe could satisfy them. He looked like a haggard pilgrim in search of the grail.

Which in a way he was.

It was at noon that day, when Tatiana had gone over to Russka, taking Pinegin with her, that Misha, alone with his thoughts in the quiet house, was suddenly disturbed by a clatter at the door and the sound of laughing voices.

It was Sergei, back from the Ukraine. And he had brought his friend Karpenko with him.

He bounced into the hall, looking sunburned, rested, full of life and good humour. Encountering Misha in the hall, he gave a cry of joy and embraced him. ‘Look at this,’ he called to Karpenko. ‘See what has become of little Misha the bear!’

In front of Misha now stood a very different man from the nervous youth who had once gazed adoringly at Olga. Karpenko was a charming man at the end of his thirties with a gleaming black beard, wonderful, sensitive eyes, and a reputation of huge success with women – ‘Who always seem to stay his friends, whenever he dumps them,’ Sergei would say with puzzled admiration. Karpenko had reason to be contented. Most of his hopes had been realized. For himself he had three plays to his credit and edited a successful journal in Kiev. Even better, in a way, he had witnessed his beloved Ukraine achieve literary honour. His fellow Ukrainian, the satirist Gogol, had already made an important name for himself in Russia. And best of all – confounding all those who would dismiss it as a peasant’s language – his country had at last found a writer of true greatness, the national poet Shevchenko, who wrote his exquisite lines in the Ukrainian tongue; so that Karpenko could truly say, ‘See, the ambitious hopes of my youth have not been dimmed: they have been vindicated.’

And Misha stared at this happy pair and wondered what to say.

‘We shall go to Moscow tomorrow,’ Sergei gaily announced. ‘Then to St Petersburg. Karpenko and I are full of ideas. We shall take the capital by storm!’ He looked about him. ‘Where the devil’s Ilya? We’re both longing to see him.’ And servants were sent to look for him.

It was only after running upstairs to see his wife that Sergei returned looking puzzled. ‘That’s the strangest thing,’ he remarked to Misha. ‘I thought she hated the country. Now she says she wants to stay down here another week or two while we go on to Moscow. What do you make of that?’ And then, staring in perplexity at his nephew’s troubled face: ‘Now what’s the matter with you, my Misha?’

And now, it seemed to Misha, he had to tell him.

The arrangements were discreetly made that afternoon.

The place chosen was the little clearing by the burial mounds off the lane that led to the monastery. No one was likely to come by there at dawn. Pinegin having no person to be his second, Karpenko had unwillingly done as Sergei asked, and assumed that responsibility.

Dinner that afternoon passed quietly. Sergei, Pinegin and Karpenko made polite conversation, in which Misha attempted to follow them. By agreement, neither Tatiana nor Nadia was given any inkling of what was passing.

Indeed, the only mystery that day lay in the whereabouts of Ilya who still, by afternoon, had not returned. Since he had been seen going along the lane towards Russka, however, it was hard to believe that much harm could have come to him. After dinner, Karpenko undertook to amuse the ladies while Sergei retired to his room to make his preparations.

There were a number of letters to write. One was to Olga; another to his mother; another to his wife. He wrote them very calmly and carefully. The one to his wife contained no reproaches. The letter on which he spent the most trouble, strangely, was the one to Alexis.

It was in the late afternoon, as the sun was starting to sink towards the tall watchtower at Russka, that another, even more curious sight was seen by the villagers at Bobrovo.

It was the return of Ilya.

He came, as before, on foot. He was very tired now and his feet were dragging, but he did not seem to mind. And upon his face was a look which, insofar as was possible in a man so overweight, could only be described as religious ecstasy.

For Ilya had found that which he sought.

And it was this wonderful discovery that he shared with Sergei, in the latter’s room that night, long after the sun had gone down.

It was a strange little scene: the one brother tired, shaken, longing only to be left alone with his thoughts until the dawn; the other, entirely unaware of what was going on, his face flushed with excitement, intent upon telling his companion the things that were passing through his mind and which seemed to him so important. ‘Indeed, Seriozha,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t have come at a better time.’

The great crisis Ilya had suffered was easy enough to understand. All summer he had laboured at the plan of his great book. Every waking moment, all his mind, had gone into it. And by August he had produced a blue-print for a new Russia, a modern Russia, with western laws and institutions, and a vigorous economy – ‘maybe like that of the merchants and free farmers of America,’ There was really nothing wrong with Ilya’s plan. It was intelligent, practical, logical: he could see just how Russia could become a free and prosperous like any other nation.

And then the crisis, for Ilya, had begun.

In a way, as Sergei listened to his brother’s urgent explanation, the business was almost comic. He could just see poor Ilya waddling about in his room with furrowed brow, shaking his head at the problems of Russia and the universe. And yet at the same time, he understood and respected Ilya’s problem, which was not really comic at all, but represented the tragedy of his country. And this tragedy was expressed in a single statement.

‘For this was the trouble, Seriozha. The more my plan made sense, the more every instinct inside me said: “This is nonsense. This will never work.” ’ He shook his large head sadly. ‘To lose faith in your own country, the country you love, Seriozha: to feel that because your plan makes sense, that is exactly why it is doomed – that is a terrible thing, my friend.’

It was not uncommon; Sergei had known many thoughtful men, some in the administration, who suffered from exactly this agony of mind. Like many before, no doubt like many after, Ilya the civilized westernizer was being undermined, and mocked, by his own instinctive understanding of his native Russia.

Yet still, all summer, he had pressed on. ‘This was to be my life’s work, Seriozha. I couldn’t just toss it aside. I couldn’t just accept it was an exercise in futility, don’t you see? It was all I had.’ Week after week he had ploughed on, refining, improving and yet no less troubled. Until finally, after a sleepless night, the crisis had come that morning. He could go on no longer.

It was then, in a state of extreme nervous excitement, that Ilya had walked out of the house and gone – as he had not done in years – to the monastery. He himself hardly knew what had led him there. Perhaps a childhood memory. Perhaps an instinctive turning to religion when – as it had for him personally – all else had failed.

He had wandered about at the monastery for several hours without receiving any enlightenment. Then it had occurred to him to go and look at the little icon, the Rublev, which his family had given to the place all those centuries ago. ‘At first,’ he said, ‘I felt nothing. It was just a darkened object.’ But then, slowly, it seemed to Ilya that the little icon had begun to work upon him. He had stayed before it for an hour. Then a second.

‘And then, at last, Seriozha, I knew.’ He took Sergei’s arm excitedly. ‘I knew what was wrong with all my plans. It was exactly what you – you, my dear Seriozha – had told me. I was trying to solve Russia’s problems by using my head, by logic. I should have used my heart.’ He smiled. ‘You have converted me. I am a Slavophile!’

‘And your book?’ Sergei asked.

Ilya smiled. ‘I have no need to travel abroad now,’ he said. ‘The answer to Russia’s problems lies here, in Russia.’ And in a few brief words, he sketched out his new vision. ‘The Church is the key,’ he explained. ‘If Russia’s guiding force is not religion, then her people will be listless. We can have western laws, independent judges, perhaps even parliaments. But only if they grow gradually out of a spiritual renewal. That has to come first.’

‘And Adam Smith?’

‘The laws of economics still operate, but we must organize our farms and our workshops on a communal basis – for the good of the community, not the individual.’

‘It won’t be like the west then, after all.’

‘No. Russia will never be like the west.’

Sergei smiled. He did not know whether his brother was right or wrong, but he was glad to see that, for him at least, the agony seemed to be over. The debate between those who looked to the west and those who saw Russia as different would no doubt go on. Perhaps it would never be resolved.

‘It’s very late,’ he pleaded. ‘Please may I get some rest?’ And he finally persuaded a reluctant Ilya to depart.

There were still a few hours to go before the dawn. For some reason he found himself thinking almost continuously of Olga.

The little glade was very quiet. There was a faint sheen of dew upon the little mounds nearby that caught the early rays of the sun. In the middle distance they could see the little monastery, whose bell had just stopped ringing.

The two men had stripped to their shirts. There was a faint chill in the air which caused Sergei involuntarily to shiver.

Karpenko and Misha, both very pale, had loaded the pistols. Now they handed them to the two men.

And all the time, Misha kept thinking: I know this must be done. It is the only honourable way. And yet it’s insane. It is not real.

There was no sound, for some reason, not even a bird, as the two men paced slowly away from each other. All that could be heard was the faint sound of their feet brushing the short, damp grass.

They turned. Two shots rang out.

And both seconds ran, with a cry, to Sergei.

It was not surprising that the bullet had struck him precisely in the heart. Ever since he was a young man, Pinegin had never been known to miss. Down in the frontier forts, he had an enviable reputation for it: which was why, years ago, Alexis had remarked that Pinegin was a dangerous man.

When Alexis returned to Russka that afternoon and heard the news, he broke down and wept. At his request, Pinegin left at once.

But the most unexpected event took place that evening.

Sergei’s letter to Alexis was a very simple, but moving document. It asked his forgiveness, first, for any hurt he had brought the family. He told Alexis, frankly, how hard it had been for him to forgive the exile in the Urals that his brother had engineered; but thanked him for his restraint in the years since. And it ended with a single request.

Twice Alexis read this. Twice he noticed that little phrase – ‘You have a clear conscience about it’ – and twice he shook his head sadly as he remembered the bank-notes he had hidden all those years ago.

And so it was that evening that, after struggling uselessly for decades, Savva Suvorin was astonished to be summoned to the manor house and told by Alexis, with a weary smile: ‘I have decided, Suvorin, to accept your offer. You are a free man.’

1855

Sevastopol. At times it seemed to Misha Bobrov that no one would ever get out of it.

We’re marooned, he used to think each day, like men on a desert island.

Yet of all those defending the place, of any man fighting in this whole, insane Crimean War, was there anyone, he wondered, in a stranger position than he? For while I struggle to survive in Sevastopol, he considered, I’m under almost certain sentence of death if I ever get out of it. The absurd irony of the situation almost amused him. At least, he thought, I can thank God I shall leave a son. His boy Nicolai had been born the previous year. That was one happy consolation at any rate.

His sense that he was on a desert island in Sevastopol was not so fanciful. The great fortified port lay in a circle of yellowish hills near the southern tip of the Crimean peninsula – not far from the ancient Tatar capital of Bakhchisarai – and was therefore some hundred and fifty miles out from the Russian mainland into the waters of the warm Black Sea. To the south, before the port’s massive, jutting fortifications, the forces of three major European powers – French, British and Turkish – were encamped. The bombardment from their artillery – superior in every way to anything the Russians possessed – had been pounding at poor Sevastopol for eleven months. Its once graceful squares and broad boulevards were mostly rubble. Only the endless obstinacy and heroism of the simple Russian soldiers had prevented the place from being taken a dozen times.

Those approaching the city from the north crossed the harbour on a pontoon bridge. To the west, across the harbour mouth, the outdated Russian fleet had been sunk to prevent the allied ships getting in. The best use for our ships really, Misha considered, since they’re quite incapable of actually fighting the modern fleets of the French or the English. Beyond the line of sunken hulks, out in the open waters of the Black Sea, the allied ships lay comfortably across the horizon, blockading Sevastopol very effectively.

What a mad business it was, this Crimean War. On the one hand, Misha supposed, it was inevitable. For generations the empire of the Ottoman Turks had been getting weaker, and whenever she could, Russia had taken advantage and expanded her influence in the Black Sea area. Catherine the Great had dreamed of taking ancient Constantinople itself. And if ever Russia could control the Balkan provinces, then she could sail a Russian fleet freely through the narrow strait from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. No wonder then if the other powers of Europe watched with growing suspicion every time Russia looked at the Turks.

Yet the actual cause of the war was not a power play at all. In his chosen role as defender of Orthodoxy, the Tsar had found himself in dispute with the Sultan when the latter had removed some of the privileges of the Orthodox Church within his empire. Troops were sent by Tsar Nicholas into the Turkish province of Moldavia, by the Danube, as a warning. Turkey declared war; and at once the powers of Europe, refusing to believe that the Tsar was not playing a bigger game, entered the war against Russia.

There were in fact three theatres of war. One by the Danube, where the Austrians contained the Russians; one in the Caucasus Mountains, where the Russians took a major stronghold from the Turks; and lastly, the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea, which the allies attacked because it was the home base of the Russian fleet.

It was a messy business. True, there were moments of heroism, such as the insane British Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. But mainly it had been a stalemate, with both sides entrenched upon the peninsula, and typhus carrying off far more, despite the ministrations of Florence Nightingale and others like her on all sides, than did the actual fighting.

Above all, win or lose, the war was a humiliation for Russia. The weapons and techniques of the Russian army were shown to be hopelessly out of date. Her wooden fleet could beat the Turks, but confronted with the French or British, it was a joke. The prestige of the Russian Tsar abroad plummeted. Belief in the Tsar’s autocracy at home, too, was severely shaken.

‘Our country simply doesn’t work,’ people complained. ‘Do you know,’ a senior officer remarked irritably to Misha, ‘the allies out there can get relief supplies from their own countries far faster than we can get them from Moscow. These are modern countries fighting an empire that is still in the Middle Ages!’

The war had started in 1854. By the end of that year, everyone knew, even down to the simplest enlisted peasant, this simple but devastating fact: ‘The Tsar’s empire, our Holy Russia, doesn’t work.’

If I get out of this, Misha had decided, I’m going to resign my commission and go to live in Russka. His father and Ilya were both dead. The estate needed looking after. And anyway, he concluded, I’ve had enough.

It was only after he had been in Sevastopol a week that he encountered Pinegin.

He had almost forgotten about the man, yet suddenly there he was, hardly changed: still a captain, his iron-grey hair hardly any thinner, his weatherbeaten face as calm as ever, and a pipe as usual stuck in his mouth.

‘Ah, Mikhail Alexeevich,’ he said, as if their meeting were the most expected thing in the world. ‘We have a matter to settle, I believe.’

Was it really possible, Misha sometimes wondered, that after all these years Pinegin could really be serious? Indeed, at first he had been inclined to treat the matter as a sort of macabre joke.

But as the months passed he came to realize that for Pinegin, with his rigid code, there was no other course. Misha had called him a coward; therefore they had to fight. The fact that ten years had passed before they happened to meet again was a mere detail, of no importance.

It was out of the question, against all rules of military conduct, to settle such matters during an active engagement. ‘But when this is over, if we both live, then we can settle our difference,’ Pinegin remarked pleasantly. And there was nothing to be done about it. Which means that, excluding a miracle, he’s certainly going to kill me, Misha thought.

They met, quite often, as it happened, during that terrible siege. There, with men dying in their thousands in the beleaguered and disease-ridden port, these two – separated by their strange understanding, Misha thought, like two visiting spirits from another world – continued to meet quietly, politely. The encounters were almost friendly. Once, after a heavy bombardment, with hundreds of casualties, they found themselves helping each other to remove bodies from a burning building. On other occasions, Misha saw Pinegin calmly moving amongst the sick, apparently oblivious to the risk of infection himself. He would quietly write letters for the men, or sit there, smoking his pipe, and keeping them company by the hour. He was a perfect officer, Misha considered, a man without fear.

And yet this was the man who had killed Sergei and would surely kill him too.

So the months had passed. In March that year, Tsar Nicholas had died, and his son Alexander II had come to the throne. There were rumours that the war would end: but although there were negotiations, they failed, and the dismal siege went on. In August, a Russian relieving force had been checked by the allies. Three weeks later, the French had taken one of the main redoubts and refused to yield it.

It was on the morning of September 11 that the word finally came. It spread through the port like a whimper; it turned into a mutter, then a huge, excited, restless moan: ‘Retreat.’ They were going to retreat. Suddenly pack horses were being prepared; wounded men loaded into wagons. Confusion was everywhere, in the streets, along the boulevards, as the vast, untidy business got under way by which a weary army makes a last, huge effort to pull itself together sufficiently to remove itself, with some semblance of order, from the scene of conflict.

It was mid-morning when the special units were sent into action. There were several dozen of these and their task was simple but important. They were to blow up all the remaining defences of Sevastopol. ‘If the enemy wants this place, we shall leave him only ruins,’ Misha’s commanding officer remarked. ‘I’ve been asked to supply some officers and men right away. You’re to report to the ninth company at once.’

And so it was that Misha found himself under the command of Captain Pinegin.

It was unpleasant, dangerous work as they moved forward towards their first objective. As they crossed a small square, a shell whistled overhead and exploded on a house a hundred yards behind them, sending a shudder through the ground. In the narrow street they had to negotiate next, there were two unexploded shells lying in the rubble. At last, however, they came to the place. It was a section of wall that had been built up to provide a gun emplacement. To reach it, however, one had to walk along another section which, whether through laziness or stupidity, had not been properly protected. And since a party of French snipers had established themselves in the section of ruined city beyond, it made a hazardous journey. Twice, as they had made their way along, Pinegin had pulled him down as a sniper’s bullet whistled overhead.

The task was easy enough. The men brought up kegs of powder. Misha and Pinegin arranged everything carefully, setting a fuse and laying it along the wall. Meanwhile, they sent the men away with the rest of the explosives.

For some reason, while the two men worked, it became very quiet. The snipers were certainly still out there, but waiting for them to show themselves. The bombardment had briefly paused. There was a faint breeze and the sun felt pleasantly warm. The sky was a pale blue.

And it was then that Misha Bobrov suddenly realized that he could commit murder.

They were quite alone. Their men were several hundred yards away and out of sight. The place was otherwise deserted. Pinegin, as it happened, was not armed. He was kneeling with his back to Misha, fiddling with the fuse, while he crouched by the wall, keeping out of the snipers’ sight.

So who in the world would ever be the wiser? It would be so easy to do. He had only to show himself for a moment upon the parapet – just enough to draw the snipers’ fire. Even a single shot would do – something their men would hear. And then… His hand rested on his pistol. A single shot, it hardly mattered how it was done. The back of the head would do. He would leave Pinegin there, blow up the emplacement, tell the men a sniper caught the captain. No one would even suspect.

Was it really possible that he, Misha Bobrov, could commit a murder? He was surprised to find that he could. Perhaps it was the months in that hell-hole that had made him more careless of human life. But he did not think that was it. No, he admitted frankly, it was the simple human instinct for self-preservation. Pinegin was going to kill him in cold blood. He was just doing the same, getting his shot in first.

And what was there to prevent him? Morality? What morality, ultimately, was there in a duel where both men agree to commit murder? Was Pinegin’s life really worth so much compared to his? Hadn’t he himself a wife and child at home, while this fellow had nothing but his cold heart and his strange pride? No, Misha decided, there was nothing to stop him killing Pinegin, except for one thing.

Convention. Just that. Was mere convention so strong as to allow him to the for it? Convention – a code of honour that was, when you really looked at it, insane.

His hand rested on his pistol. Still he did not move.

And then Pinegin turned and looked at him. Misha saw his pale blue eyes take in everything about him. And he knew Pinegin guessed.

Then Pinegin smiled, and turned his back again, and continued fiddling with the fuse.

It was several minutes later that they lit the fuse and watched the little spark run away from them, along the wall, to its destination. Just before it reached the barrels, they both ducked down and held their breath. But then, for some reason, nothing happened. ‘Damned suppliers,’ Pinegin muttered. There had been problems recently with all kinds of supplies, even military, reaching the army. ‘God knows what’s wrong now. Wait here,’ he ordered. And he ran up and, keeping his head low, made his way swiftly along the wall. Just before he reached the barrels, a single sniper’s bullet whistled harmlessly overhead. Then the barrels blew up.

1857

Only one thing puzzled Misha Bobrov when, late in 1857, he returned at last to Russka.

It concerned Savva Suvorin and the priest.

Of course, there were better things to think about. The new reign of Alexander II seemed likely to bring many changes. The Crimean War had been concluded on terms that were humiliating to Russia. She had lost her right to a navy in the Black Sea. But no one had any stomach for further hostilities. ‘First,’ Misha declared, ‘the Tsar must sort things out at home. For this war has almost ruined us.’ Everyone knew that things had to change.

And of all the reforms that were being spoken of, none was more important, and none would affect Misha more, than the possible emancipation of the serfs.

Upon this great subject, in the years 1856 and 1857, the whole of Russia was a seething mass of rumour. From abroad, the radical writer Herzen was despatching his noble journal The Bell into Russia, calling upon the Tsar to set his subjects free. Closer to home, returning soldiers had even started a rumour – that spread like wildfire – that the new Tsar actually had granted the serfs their freedom, but that the landlords were concealing the proclamations!

But amidst all this excitement, Misha Bobrov – though he personally believed that emancipation was desirable – was very calm. ‘People mistake the new Tsar,’ he told his wife. ‘They say he’ll be a reformer and perhaps he will. But actually he is a very conservative man, just like his father. His saving grace is that he is pragmatic. He will do whatever he has to do to preserve order. If that means freeing the serfs, he’ll do it. If not, he won’t.’

Many landowners, however, were nervous. ‘I’ll tell you a useful trick,’ one fellow landlord told him. ‘Some of us reckon that if the emancipation comes, then we’ll have to give the serfs the land they till. So what you can do is to take your serfs off the land – make them into household domestics for the time being. Then if this awful thing happens you’ll be able to say: “But my serfs don’t till any land.” And you may not have to give them a thing!’

And, indeed, Misha actually discovered one landlord in the province whose lands were completely untilled, but who had suddenly acquired forty footmen! ‘A trick,’ he remarked to his wife, ‘which is as stupid as it is shabby.’ The Bobrov serfs stayed where they were.

Whatever changes were coming, Misha was looking forward to being at home. He had inherited not only Bobrovo, but also the Riazan estate from Ilya. ‘I shall devote myself to agriculture and to study,’ he declared. After Ilya’s death five years before, he had discovered the huge unfinished manuscript of his Uncle’s great work. ‘Perhaps I can complete it for him,’ he suggested.

No, there were plenty of things to think about. But still, the matter of Suvorin and the priest intrigued him.

‘For the one thing I regret about giving Suvorin his freedom,’ Alexis had always told him, ‘is that once he’s not under my thumb, he’ll start bringing his Old Believers here and converting people. And I always promised the priest I wouldn’t let that happen.’

In his years away on military service, Misha had rather forgotten about this; but now he had returned and had begun making some enquiries, it was soon clear to him that, indeed, this transformation had taken place.

The Suvorin enterprise was growing rapidly. The jenny imported from England for the cotton plant had been a huge success. Savva Suvorin now employed half the people living in the little town of Russka. His son Ivan ran the business in Moscow. And while it was not clear to Misha whether all those Suvorin employed were Old Believers, there was certainly a core of them at the factory; and the fact that recent legislation had broken up some of the Old Believer groups, including the radical Theodosians, had obviously not stopped some sort of observances continuing almost openly. Indeed, Timofei Romanov once obligingly showed Misha the house in the town where they met to pray.

Yet – here was the puzzle – there was no word of protest from the priest at Russka.

The first time Misha had asked him about this, the priest had denied it. ‘The congregation at Russka is loyal, Mikhail Alexeevich. I don’t think you need worry about that.’ His red beard was turning grey now. He was fatter than ever. Congregation or not, Misha thought, he certainly looks well fed.

Misha even once, out of curiosity, confronted Savva Suvorin himself. But that worthy, gazing down at him contemptuously from his great height, merely remarked with a shrug: ‘Old Believers? I know nothing of that.’

It was on a Sunday morning, one day in December, that Misha received his little moment of enlightenment. He was standing in the snow-filled market square in Russka, shortly after the church service, which had been rather poorly attended. He would have gone home; but it was at just this time, as it happened, that the sled bringing newspapers from Vladimir often arrived, and he had hung around for a little while in hopes of getting the latest news.

He was still waiting there when he noticed the red-headed priest emerge from the church and begin to walk ponderously towards his house. With him, Misha noticed, was a rather surly-looking fellow, also with reddish hair, whom Misha vaguely recognized as the priest’s son. Paul Popov – this was his name – was a clerk of some kind in Moscow, he had heard: one of that tribe of underpaid petty officials who, in those days, made ends meet by whatever small-time bribery and corruption they could come by. Misha gazed at the priest and his son with vague contempt.

And then he saw the strangest thing. Savva Suvorin entered the square and walked close by them. As he drew near, he gave the priest a curt nod, almost as he might to an employee. But instead of ignoring him, both the priest and Paul Popov suddenly turned and bowed low. Nor was there any mistaking the meaning of their gesture. It was not the polite bow that Misha made to the priest, and the priest to him. It was the bow of servant to master, of employee to paymaster. And they had both given it, father and son, to the former serf.

And then Misha understood.

It was at just this moment that the long awaited sled came in through the gates of Russka and jingled across the square.

Misha ignored it. He could not resist the sudden impulse that had suddenly taken hold of him. He had never cared for the redheaded priest, and this opportunity was too perfect. He strode across the market place and, just as the priest reached the centre, accosted him in a loud voice.

‘Tell me,’ he cried, ‘how much is it? How much do Suvorin and his Old Believers pay you for giving up your congregation to them?’

The priest went scarlet. He had hit!

But Misha never received his answer. For at that moment there was an excited shout from the far side of the square, where the newspapers were being unloaded. And as they all turned, a voice excitedly cried out: ‘It’s official. From the Tsar. The serfs are going to be freed.’

And Misha forgot even the priest, and hastened across the square.