Holy Week passed quietly. Feeling guilty after his previous sins, Andrei fasted strictly.

On one day he, Burlay and the other Cossacks rode out to look at the Tsar's country residence at nearby Kolomenskoye. Sited by the Moskva River it was a curious jumble of buildings some wooden, others of brick, covered with white stucco. Its tent roofs, onion domes and towers flanked by ascending pyramids of kokoshniki kokoshniki suggested a silent, powerful peacefulness like an Indian temple. suggested a silent, powerful peacefulness like an Indian temple.

They returned to the city feeling refreshed.

By the end of the long and lovely Easter Vigil in the Kremlin at the end of the week, Andrei felt both weak in the knees and elated. The next morning, he saw the Tsar ceremonially give the brightly painted Easter eggs to the great men and soldiers at the Kremlin. Then he went to Nikita's lodgings for the feast that marks the end of Lenten fasting.

It was a happy occasion. Blinis Blinis, honey cakes, gingerbread, all manner of foods had been procured. Maryushka and her mother, both a little pale after their vigil the night before, served the collection of friends Nikita had invited. Appropriately, the sky had cleared to a pale blue that morning and this Easter Day Andrei felt suddenly as if he had been made anew.

Yet as his head began to swim pleasantly with the kvass kvass and mead and vodka he was offered, and a delightful warmth began to fill his stomach, his pious thoughts of the preceding week soon began to fade into the background, and looking across the room at Maryushka he thought happily: Soon I'll make love to her again. and mead and vodka he was offered, and a delightful warmth began to fill his stomach, his pious thoughts of the preceding week soon began to fade into the background, and looking across the room at Maryushka he thought happily: Soon I'll make love to her again.

The week after Easter is known, in the Russian Orthodox Church, as Bright Week.

And it was on the Tuesday that the Cossacks were at last received in person by Patriarch Nikon at his palace.

Only now, seeing him at close quarters and without his mitre, did Andrei realize the dominating presence of this legendary figure.

The Patriarch stood an astounding six foot six inches. Years of prayer and rigorous fasting had left their unmistakable mark on his face which, like his tall body, was gaunt but commanding. His eyes were not unkind, but piercing.

He treated the Cossacks in a friendly but businesslike manner.

'Though the Metropolitan of Kiev properly comes under the Patriarch at Constantinople,' he said, 'Holy Russia can and should give him its protection. This I am determined to do. And as for the Church in Moscow, it is backward. I welcome our brothers from Kiev who have so much that we need.' He looked at them severely. 'This is the dawning of a new age an age of renewed and purified Orthodoxy, led by a pious Russia. You Cossacks will have a splendid role in the defence of our Orthodox state. You may rely upon me, therefore,' he concluded, 'to support your application for the Tsar's protection. Indeed,' he smiled, 'I think you may be sure that your mission here will succeed.'

It was not only the ringing words it was the tone of them, the force of the man, which commanded, uplifted. And as he left, Andrei suddenly felt that he was no longer just a rebel against Poland, but the servant of a mighty cause.

Maryushka's husband arrived the next day.

Andrei saw her briefly at Nikita's lodgings, but it was only possible to talk for a few moments. She told him she was to return to Russka with her husband in three days.

'So I shan't see you again,' she said quietly. Then she was gone.

He was surprised by the effect this news had on him. A strange melancholy seemed to invade his whole spirit, a sense of loss rather like a foreboding. Yet why should that be? If he were truthful with himself, the ending of an affair usually left him with a sort of elation a sense, however mingled with regret, of freedom, of pastures new, and, it had to be said, the pleasant, self-satisfied feeling of a conquest completed.

Yet this time it was different. He felt a cold sadness he had not known before and he realized soon that it was not because she had meant so much more to him than any of the many others, but that this time, he was afraid for her.

It's not just the steward and what he'll do to her, he realized. It's something in herself.

Without fully understanding it, he was looking at the inner fate of a woman who wished to protest in an endless land where all must submit.

He did not want to lose sight of her. It was absurd.

A partial reprieve, at least, was suggested the next morning when Burlay, the leader of the mission, announced that their work was nearly completed and that they would soon be returning home.

'How soon?' Andrei asked.

'About a week,' he was told.

'Then I have a request to make,' he said.

'Very well,' Burlay said when he had heard it. 'As long as the landowner there has no objection. You can follow on as you please.'

And so it was that Andrei made preparations to accompany Maryushka to northern Russka.

Nikita Bobrov was amused when Andrei told him of his desire to visit the estate and explained his own connection with the place.

'My dear friend,' he laughed. 'Do you mean your own grandfather ran away from the Bobrov estate?'

'I think so,' Andrei admitted.

'What a pity he didn't leave later. If he'd been in a more recent census, I could probably claim you back!'

'A grandson?'

'Well, not in practice I dare say. But,' he grinned, 'have you ever seen the Ulozhenie Ulozhenie?'

The law about which Maryushka had complained. Andrei confessed that he had not.

'Well then, I'll show you.'

Some twelve hundred copies of the great law code of 1649 had been printed a huge figure for that time and Nikita Bobrov had one of them.

It was a remarkable document, written not in stilted chancery language but in plain, vernacular Russian, so that it would be readily understandable to all.

'Here we are,' Nikita showed him. 'Chapter Eleven.'

And now, for the first time, Andrei truly understood what it meant to be a Russian peasant.

There were thirty-four clauses dealing with peasants. They covered every imaginable circumstance. Not only was there no time limit whatever on when a lord could claim a runaway back if he married, the lord could claim his wife back; if he had children, the lord could claim them, their wives, and their children too.

It was forbidden for a lord to kill a peasant if he did so with premeditation. But if he did so in a fit of anger, it was not a serious offence. If, in a fit of anger, he killed the peasant of another lord, he must replace him.

Andrei asked to look at other chapters. They covered everything, from blasphemy to forgery, from monastery lands whose growth was now limited to illegal taverns.

One thing in particular struck him. It was the mention, time and again, of the knout.

'There's plenty of flogging in Muscovy,' he remarked.

'Only peasants can be flogged,' Nikita quickly assured him.

There were in fact one hundred and forty-one offences in the twenty-five chapters of the law code which carried punishment by the knout. More severe offences carried the death penalty. But since fifty lashes with the knout was usually fatal, the code could in practice be even more brutal than it looked.

As he read this stern, dark law code, Andrei realized with some shame that, though he had been here some time, and had received many hints, he had failed to look carefully beneath the surface of Muscovite life. More than ever, now, he understood the sense of oppression and claustrophobia that had assailed him ever since he passed the huge Belgorod fortress line across the steppe. And as he thought of the sunny, open lands of the Ukraine, of the unruly Cossack farmers, and of the free cities of Kiev and Pereiaslav who still governed themselves under western laws, he could only shake his head.

'If the Tsar wants to take the Ukraine under his wing,' he remarked thoughtfully, 'he will have to sign a contract to guarantee our people better rights than these.'

But now it was Nikita who shook his head.

'We know the Ukraine has other customs, which will be respected,' he assured Andrei. 'But surely you understand, if the Tsar accepts you under his protection, he does not sign contracts with you. That is beneath his sovereign dignity. You must trust in his kindness and understanding.'

'The King of Poland signed contracts with us,' Andrei protested.

'The King of Poland is only an elected monarch.' Nikita smiled with faint contempt.

'Cossacks,' Andrei said carefully, 'are not slaves.'

'And our Most Pious, Orthodox and Most Gentle Tsar is appointed by God to do with us all as he wishes,' Nikita replied firmly. 'You must remember,' he went on, with a trace of condescension, 'that the Tsar is the heir of St Vladimir, of Monomakh, and of Ivan the Terrible.' He smiled a little grimly. 'Ivan, I can assure you, knew how to command obedience. He had one of my own ancestors roasted in a frying pan.'

It was curious, Andrei thought, how these Russians seemed to take pride in the cruelty of their rulers, even when it was directed against themselves. He had several times heard Muscovites speak admiringly of the terrors of Ivan: they seemed almost to long for his return.

How different from the Cossack way. The Cossack warrior gave his Hetman Hetman power of life and death over everyone during a campaign, but woe betide him if he tried to exercise any authority in time of peace! power of life and death over everyone during a campaign, but woe betide him if he tried to exercise any authority in time of peace!

This little altercation had produced a slight tension between the two men. Nikita broke it with a laugh.

'Well, my Cossack, you are welcome to visit my poor estate. I've told my steward to put you in my house and look after you. I'm only sorry I can't come with you myself.' He paused. 'By the way,' he gave him a sidelong glance, 'I know I can rely upon you not to subvert any of my peasants to your Cossack ways of either sex.'

So, he knew. Andrei looked at the floor awkwardly. But as they parted he reflected that, in Muscovy, one could never be sure what people knew, and what they did not.

Russka.

He supposed it was what he had expected.

Spring had come to the little town and its monastery. As they approached the place, the woods opened out to large open fields; their long, gentle undulations of raw turf, dark earth and long slivers of greying snow seemed to be an echo of the endless spaces beyond. At Russka itself, the ice had cleared from the centre of the stream. At the edges, the women still knelt on boards by holes in the ice, washing their clothes in sight of the monastery's pale walls.

On the trees, even before the last traces of ice had melted from the ground around them, little green buds were already opening staunchly under the hard, bright blue sky. Just outside the walls of Russka, a cattle pen was already a little sea of mud.

It had been a strange journey. Maryushka and the steward travelled in a light, two-wheeled cart while Andrei rode. Despite the surrounding dampness, the tracks through the woods were fairly passable and they made good speed. At nights they rested in the villages or hamlets along the way.

The steward was sullen. Now and then, as if to prove that he was really an interesting fellow, he would engage Andrei in conversation. But Andrei politely discouraged him and remained aloof. To Maryushka he was similarly distant, so that the steward more than once growled to his wife: 'A cold fellow, that.'

Sometimes Andrei would trot on ahead of them; or he might hang back and watch their two heads from behind, Maryushka's held rather still, the steward's bobbing forward constantly as though he were nodding off to sleep. But more often he would walk his horse beside them, glancing across from time to time at Maryushka, who would always be looking, dully, straight ahead. How pale she was.

Twice, however, when her husband had taken the horses down to one of the nearby streams to drink, she had moved swiftly over to Andrei and whispered: 'Now, quickly. Take me now.'

And in the damp chill of the forest, for a few minutes, they had continued their urgent, surreptitious lovemaking before resuming their places, apparently distant from each other.

When they reached Russka, Andrei was to stay at Nikita's house near the church while the steward returned to Dirty Place. As they approached the town Maryushka remarked to her husband: 'I don't want to wait on that damned Cossack.'

'You'll do as you're told,' he answered gruffly. 'The master said I was to look after him so that's that. He'll be gone in two days,' he added, by way of encouragement.

And she had sullenly obeyed.

The two days in Russka had been even more memorable than the journey.

Firstly, there had been the village of Dirty Place, where the steward had obligingly taken him.

It was a small village, no different from any number of damp little hamlets he had seen on the way. Were there still relations of his there? No one seemed to know anything about his grandfather, who had fled eighty years before, until one old woman was able to tell him that, yes, she had heard that one young man had disappeared into the wild field a few years before she was born. The grandson of that family lived at one end of the hamlet. And so it was that Andrei found himself confronted with a sturdy, pleasant-faced fellow with a thick shock of wavy black hair. He and four children lived in one of the stout huts. They welcomed Andrei when they heard his story, looked with admiration at his fine clothes, and through this sturdy peasant he learned that he was, in some way or other, distantly related to many of the village folk including even Maryushka's mother.

'And you are free you have your own farm? You are not a serf?' his cousin asked in wonder.

It almost hurt Andrei to admit it and to see the look of friendly envy on the man's face.

He enjoyed his visit to the monastery rather more. The monks and the artisans of Russka still made icons, but in recent generations they had made no attempt to produce their own style, preferring to copy the work of others.

'Here,' one of the monks said proudly, as he showed Andrei a beautiful miniature icon, done in bright colours and lavishly decorated with gold, 'is a Mother-of-God in the style of the Stroganov masters. And here,' he showed his guest a large, imposing icon of Christ, the Ruler of the World, 'is a fine one in the present Moscow manner. This is for one of the Tsar's own churches.'

He thanked the monks for their kindness and gave a suitable donation before he left.

The last forty-eight hours had been difficult. There was the danger of discovery, for a start.

Not that he was afraid for himself. He was a Cossack after all. But there was a wildness, a desperation in Maryushka that made him afraid, more than ever, that she might do something foolish that could harm her.

She was cunning though. She complained grumpily to the neighbours and townspeople at having to clean and cook for the Cossack. She would be seen going irritably about her work while he was out, and she even made it appear that she left the house as much as possible when he was there.

Yet on both days she had slipped quietly into his bed in the early morning, and had already managed, on four other occasions, to make brief but passionate love to him when they could not be seen.

Several times, though, she had come close to him and whispered: 'Take me away with you. Take me to the Ukraine.'

It was impossible.

'You've a husband,' he reminded her.

'I hate him.'

'And I'm going on campaign.'

Did she love him or was he a means of escape? He did not know. He did not really care either. For the fact was, even if running off with Maryushka were possible, he did not want her.

Yet she did not give up. She would ask, wait a few hours, then gently ask again.

'Take me away, my Cossack. Take me with you. You needn't keep me. I'll go away and not trouble you. Just take me away from this place. Don't leave me here.'

It was a litany he quickly came to dread.

And then, the second afternoon, just when he expected it to begin again, she turned to him with apparent calm and asked: 'Have you any money, Cossack?'

'A little. Why?'

She looked at him in a matter-of-fact way, then pursed her lips.

'Because I think I'm going to have a baby.'

'You're pregnant?'

'I'm not sure but ... maybe. My time never came.'

'And it's mine?'

'Of course.'