Yet, even so, he was in for a small surprise.

He found the big man already prepared to leave. Though he greeted his friend gruffly, Andrei guessed that Stepan must have been waiting for him before departing. His horse was saddled; some modest possessions were strapped to a pack-horse. Andrei saw a spare horse standing nearby.

'You've heard the order, then?'

'I have.'

'You're going?'

'Of course. I want no part of it.'

Andrei sighed. He didn't try to dissuade him.

'So you're going back to the Don?'

'Perhaps.'

Andrei looked around, a little puzzled.

'Where are your Polish horses? Where's all your loot?'

'I gave them away.'

'Gave them away? To whom?'

'To some peasants. They needed money more than me.'

It was a stunning rebuke, but Andrei did not try to justify himself, nor did he feel insulted. Stepan thought one way; he thought another.

'But haven't you kept anything for yourself? What about your farm back on the Don?'

'Perhaps I won't go back to the Don.'

'Men are free there, my Ox, even if they aren't in the Ukraine. That's where you belong.'

For a moment or two, the Ox did not reply. It seemed there was something on his mind, something he had been brooding about for some time. He shook his head slowly.

'Men,' he muttered at last, 'are never free. Not when they are ruled by their own desires.'

Andrei looked at his friend. There was a kind of finality in this statement which suggested that, whatever path it was that Stepan had been travelling in his thoughts, he had come to the very end of it and had, so to speak, returned before setting off again.

'Don't you have faith in men any more, my Ox?' Andrei asked affectionately.

The fact that Stepan did not reply at once told Andrei that his faith in the affairs of men had been destroyed.

'We are all sinners,' he grunted with a frown.

'Where will you go, then?'

'I don't know.'

'What will you do?'

'I don't know.'

'Then you still have faith of some kind.'

'Perhaps.' Stepan glanced down at his feet. 'One day I may become a priest,' he said gloomily.

'A priest?'

'Or a monk. But not yet. I am unworthy.'

Andrei scarcely knew what to make of this.

'Will I ever see you again, old Ox?' he asked.

'Perhaps.' He wiped a fly off his long brown beard. 'Perhaps not.' He glanced at his horse. 'I must be off.'

Andrei embraced him.

'Goodbye, my Ox. God be with you,' he said.

He did not expect to see him again.

1653.

And now, on a sharp, cold morning, in the spring of 1653, young Andrei was riding northwards with the Cossack envoys.

They were going to see the Tsar.

His own career, since the departure of Stepan, had gone from strength to strength. He had increasingly come to Bogdan's personal notice, and the Hetman Hetman, with his long, crafty face, had often given him sensitive missions.

Old Ostap had died not of his bad heart, as Andrei and his mother had always expected, but of a plague that had visited the Ukraine a little after the peasant revolt. The incident had saddened Andrei and reminded him of his own mortality.

'Time you married,' Bogdan had told him. But for some reason, though he had taken to enjoying conquests wherever he went, Andrei had not yet done so. Could it really be that he still remembered Anna? And if so, what could he possibly hope for? He did not know; and he was, besides, too busy to think about it.

The present mission, he understood very well, was by far the most important of his life. The letters the little party was carrying from the Hetman Hetman were designed to do nothing less, this time, than save the Ukraine. were designed to do nothing less, this time, than save the Ukraine.

For events had been moving towards a crisis.

Poland had not been content with even a partial Cossack state. Neither the Catholic Church nor the Uniates could tolerate the success of Orthodoxy in the Kievan lands; the magnates wanted their lands back; the Szlachta Szlachta nobility and every taxpaying Pole was indignant at the huge increase in the Cossack register and the large number of Cossacks who therefore might suppose the Commonwealth should pay them salaries. Soon there was more fighting. The Poles added large numbers of German mercenaries to their forces and Bogdan was not always successful. Gradually his hold was weakened. Jews began to return to the Ukrainian lands. And twice, now, large parties of Cossacks and peasants had crossed the border into Russia and been given asylum. nobility and every taxpaying Pole was indignant at the huge increase in the Cossack register and the large number of Cossacks who therefore might suppose the Commonwealth should pay them salaries. Soon there was more fighting. The Poles added large numbers of German mercenaries to their forces and Bogdan was not always successful. Gradually his hold was weakened. Jews began to return to the Ukrainian lands. And twice, now, large parties of Cossacks and peasants had crossed the border into Russia and been given asylum.

What should the Cossack Hetman Hetman do? do?

He's still a crafty fox, Andrei had often reminded himself, with admiration.

Indeed he was. At any one time he might be negotiating with the Sultan, the Tatars, the Tsar and the Poles all at once; he even tried to get the throne of the little state of Moldavia, down in the south by the River Danube, for his son. But above all, it was becoming clearer each year that the only hope for the Cossacks lay to the north and east, with Russia. Only the Tsar would respect the Orthodox religion; only he could protect the Ukraine from mighty Poland.

The problem was that Russia was unwilling. The great empire of the north had troubles of her own; she had no wish to risk a costly war with a furious Poland if she accepted the Ukraine. Bogdan had sent messengers, threatened to give the Ukraine to the Turkish Sultan, even harboured a strange adventurer who claimed the Russian throne anything to get the Tsar's attention.

Now, this spring, the Poles had sent another large force to reduce the Ukraine and yet again, the Hetman Hetman was appealing to Moscow. But this time, things might be different. was appealing to Moscow. But this time, things might be different.

'So far we've had nothing but offers of cheap bread and salt,' the Hetman Hetman told Andrei, as he handed him the letters. 'But there may still be one way to sway them.' told Andrei, as he handed him the letters. 'But there may still be one way to sway them.'

Andrei nodded.

'The Church?'

'Exactly.' The Hetman Hetman leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes. 'Holy Russia. That's how they like to think of Muscovy now. Moscow, the third Rome. Remember, the old Moscow Metropolitan became a Patriarch after Ivan the Terrible's reign just like Constantinople or Jerusalem. That's very important to them. There are powerful men in the Church and amongst the boyars, who think they should protect their Orthodox brothers in the Ukraine. What's more, they're getting stronger.' leaned back in his chair and half-closed his eyes. 'Holy Russia. That's how they like to think of Muscovy now. Moscow, the third Rome. Remember, the old Moscow Metropolitan became a Patriarch after Ivan the Terrible's reign just like Constantinople or Jerusalem. That's very important to them. There are powerful men in the Church and amongst the boyars, who think they should protect their Orthodox brothers in the Ukraine. What's more, they're getting stronger.'

He opened his eyes again and grinned. 'Shall I tell you something else? Our Ukrainian priests are better trained than the Russian ones. I'm told that the new Patriarch wants to import more of them to civilize his own priests. Let them pay the price, then don't you think?' He closed his eyes again. 'I've told him I'm ready to give the Ukraine to the Sultan. Of course, I know our people wouldn't like it because the Turks are Moslems, but the Orthodox Russians will like it even less.'

Bogdan had given the envoys three letters: one for the Tsar, one for his adviser the boyar Morozov, and one for the Moscow Patriarch.

'Send word by messenger on how you are received, then if things look promising, stay in Moscow and keep your ears open.'

These were the instructions Andrei carried with the letters as he went on his thrilling mission.

Muscovy. Two Cossacks led the party Kondrat Burlay and Silvian Muzhilovsky. Andrei was their aide.

Swiftly they made their way eastward from the River Dniepr, through the thinning woods until finally, leaving the trees behind them, they ventured out on to the open steppe. They travelled east another day before turning northwards. The winter had been long and bitter. The ground was still hard, with little snowdrifts in places.

It was a strange frontier region, this. Andrei had never been here before, though he knew that many Cossacks and Ukrainians had fled to these broad borderlands where they had come, at least in name, under the protection of the Russian Tsar.

'And the Tsar has been making his presence felt here, too,' Burlay told him. 'In the old days, the Russian fortress line against the Tatars was a long way north, almost up at the River Oka. They've just finished a new line now, though. It runs right across the steppe.' He laughed. 'It's quite impressive.'

Nothing, however, had prepared Andrei for what he saw when they came to it the next day.

He simply gasped. So this was the might of Muscovy!

The new, so-called Belgorod line of the Muscovite state was an awesome undertaking. The completed line ran across the steppe from near the fortress town of Belgorod all the way to the distant Volga as it descended towards the deserts by the Caspian Sea. Huge earth walls with trenches in front of them, wooden palisades above, stout towers with sharpened wooden stakes pointing outwards from their tops: this was Muscovy's mighty barrier against the Crimean Khan who, even now, a century after Ivan the Terrible had conquered Kazan, still demanded tribute, from time to time, from the Russians in their forest empire.

It was as he gazed upon this tremendous wall that the young Cossack received his first impression of the true character of the Russian state of the north.

These people are not like the Poles at all, he suddenly realized. The Poles would never build like this. Poland had simply given the huge tracts of the Ukraine to a few magnates to exploit as they thought best. True, they set up forts to protect their income; they employed Cossacks to keep the raiders at bay. But they were just a collection of great lords, concerned with reaping a profit from these rich borderlands, to keep themselves in comfort in their European palaces in the west.

This colossal fortification, though, was not the work of mere aristocrats. It was the work of a mighty emperor of a great, dark power, half-Slav, half-Tatar. It's like a Tatar city on the steppe, he thought, looking at the high pointed stakes on the parapet, but huge, endless.

And, indeed, the great wall itself seemed to speak, as though to say: 'We know you horsemen of the steppe, for we are partly of your blood; but see, we can out-build you for our heart is greater than yours. Thus we shall carry our mighty Russian forest, even across the endless steppe, until one day even the proud Khan shall bow before our Holy Russia.'

It was Burlay, riding beside him, who now remarked: 'If you want to understand the Russians, Andrei, always remember whenever they feel threatened, they rely upon size.'

So it was that the little party continued, into the great fortress of the Russian state.

At first, Andrei noticed nothing very different. When they began to encounter woodland again, the broad-leaved forests seemed very like those around Kiev: the villages with their thatched roofs and timber stockades seemed familiar, too.

Yet gradually he began to see a change. The thatched roofs petered out, to be replaced by heavy logs. It grew colder: the snow lay more thickly upon the ground. Somehow the woods, and the fields, looked grey.

And there was something else.

He was used to Russians: there had been plenty of them at the Cossack camp. They spoke Great Russian of course, but that was not difficult for a Ukrainian to understand. Not that they compared with a man from the south. 'Those Russians are crude fellows,' the Ukrainians used to say. For just as the Poles despised the Ukrainians, so they in turn liked to despise their Orthodox cousins in the north.

Yet now that he had entered Russia Andrei was surprised to feel a faint sense of unease as he travelled north. It was something to which, at first, he could not put a name. Something oppressive.

The forest grew thicker and darker. Sometimes, in the forest, they encountered little settlements where the people produced potash. In these, the Cossacks noticed, the peasants looked healthy enough. But in the ordinary villages it was a different story.

'This is the third year the winter has gone on too long,' the people told them. 'Even in a good year, we only have just enough. With these poor crops, another year and we'll be starving.'

When Andrei looked at their villages and heard their sad story, there was one thing that puzzled him. 'Your fields are huge,' he exclaimed. 'Surely you should have enough even in bad years.' 'No,' they told him, 'it's not so.' And only at the third such village did Andrei discover the reason.

'You see, for every measure we sow, we only get three back at harvest,' a peasant explained.

A yield of three to one. A miserable rate, unthinkable in the rich Ukraine.

'Our land is poor,' the man said sadly.

And badly cultivated, he could have added. For this three to one crop yield in north Russia was no more than farmers in western Europe had been getting in the Dark Ages, a thousand years before.

But if the poverty of these little villages struck Andrei, he was soon to see something very different.

The party was about fifty miles below the great eastward loop of the River Oka when they came to the old frontier line. Though not as impressive as the new Belgorod line, it was another sign of the formidable power of the Muscovite state. The stout wooden forts and palisades were still intact.

'They stretch another hundred miles, all the way to Riazan,' Burlay remarked.

In many places there was long-established open parkland in front of the line; but where there was not, huge swathes had been burned through the woodland so that the Tatar raiders would not have any cover.

And it was just past this great line that they came to the sprawling industrial town of Tula.

Andrei had never seen anything like it. It was a town, yet not a town. Everywhere there seemed to be long, stout houses, of wood or brick, filled with the sounds of men hammering. Half the buildings seemed to be smithies.

'The whole place is like a giant armoury,' he remarked.

And most impressive of all, there were the big, grim buildings with continually smoking chimneys which contained the blast furnaces.

These were the first blast furnaces that Russia had seen. Operated by the Dutch family of Vinius, they had been set up at Tula because of the ancient iron ore deposits in the region. Not only were the mighty furnaces here, but innumerable workshops where armaments were made.

'They make more weapons here than anywhere except Moscow itself,' Burlay remarked. 'They say these Romanov Tsars are bringing in new foreigners all the time, because they're the only ones who know how to operate these new machines.'

Cannons, muskets, pikes and swords: Andrei saw wagon-loads of them. As a soldier, he was impressed; but he found the huge, smoky place rather frightening, and was glad soon to be on his way to Moscow again.

They reached the capital a week later.

It had been a long, hard winter. The huge city of Moscow was still under snow, although the Lenten season had begun.

Over the vast, snowbound city, the skies were grey, heavy and monotonous. In the streets, where the snow had not been cleared, there was also greyness, as though at some point the clouds had let fall not flakes of snow, but a dismal settling of ice-dust and cinders in their place.

Yet the scene was not without colour. The roofs of the houses were white. Above, the domes of the churches were gold, silver, or brightly painted. Occasionally in the street one might encounter a noble in a voluminous, fur-trimmed cloak of red or blue; there might be a glimpse of rich brocade beneath; the patrols of musketeers, the streltsy streltsy, were to be seen in the citadel with their red coats and gleaming pikes; even the simple townswomen often went out with brightly coloured scarves wrapped over their heads.