'He's an icon painter,' she explained, 'but a wonderful carpenter too. You must meet him, Nikita. His name is Daniel. His wife's a treasure too.'

Nikita met them. The fellow was huge; the woman of no interest. Yet Eudokia was always talking to them. Indeed, after a couple of weeks, she seemed to think the sun shone out of their eyes. Personally, he couldn't think what she saw in them.

Silence some believe gives a man power. So it seemed to be with Daniel. For though he said little, and asked for no consideration at all, the people of Russka looked up to him.

Not that they knew him. Even now, after seven years, he was still a mystery. Yet, like some huge old oak tree in the forest, his whole presence suggested permanence, and a comforting stability which seemed to come from the earth itself.

He even looked like a tree, his wife thought fondly. In the winter months, he would wrap himself in a thick, dark gown that reached to his ankles and which looked like a monk's habit. On his head he would wear a high, conical cloth hat, trimmed with fur so that his wife, glancing up at the old watchtower with its high, tent roof, would say: 'Why do we need a watchtower with my husband here?'

At other times, emerging sedately from the swirling snow, he would look like some ancient winter god, coming from the endless greyness of the forest.

In his presence she always had a sense of perfect peace. She knew him as well as it is possible to know another being; she knew that, at the core of this mighty oak, resided a man of huge wisdom. When they slept together she experienced frequently, not only that oceanic feeling within herself but also the sense that, like all truly simple people, he possessed a life without end.

Yet she knew nothing of his past. She knew only that, for some reason he would never explain, he had not been married before; and that, thanks be to God, he had changed his mind.

She also knew that sometimes, in private, Daniel was deeply troubled.

He had not planned to marry when he came to Russka. I am too unworthy, he told himself. How can I ask another to share my life when I am confused and so steeped in sin? Nor would he have stayed, if it had not been for Silas.

It was not only that Silas made the sign of the cross with two fingers. The priest seemed instinctively to understand his troubled soul. 'Remember,' he would quietly admonish him, 'we are here to suffer; but we are forbidden to despair. If you are troubled by the world, still more are you called to rejoice in the Risen Lord.'

And gradually, in the little wooden church, as he looked around at the simple villagers and as he felt that intense, emotional warmth which is the hallmark of the Russian Church, Daniel found, for the first time in years, that he had no further urge to move on. For wherever I wander, it can only be the same, he considered. What else could there be, after all, but the warmth of the little village community, huddled together, naked before the Lord, in the endless Russian plain?

It was one Sunday after he had been there two years that old Silas had quietly come up to him and said: 'It is time, I think, that you married.'

Greatly as he revered the priest, he had wanted to contradict him. 'I am too old I'm over fifty,' he protested. 'And I am unworthy.'

But Silas had been firm. 'Not so. It is not for you to decide you are unworthy.'

'But ... I had not thought. Whom should I marry? And who would have me?'

Silas had smiled. 'If, as I believe, it is the Lord's will, you will know.' And seeing Daniel for once look utterly confused, he had continued: 'You should marry one who is beautiful not unto men, but unto God. You should marry one by whom God is rightly praised.' He smiled again. 'You will be guided.'

That week, and the next, Daniel had considered the matter. He felt uncertain, yet also a little excited. He thought of all the women in Russka and Dirty Place, but came to no conclusion.

It was on the third Sunday, as he stood in the little wooden church at Dirty Place, that he found his attention caught by one person in particular. Why had his head slowly turned that way? Why, because she was singing, of course: she was singing with a voice of extraordinary beauty. And then, looking at her poor, plain face with its unsightly wart a pale face that would have been almost ugly but for the lovely expression of rapt, religious attention that it wore he saw what the priest had meant.

He spoke to her uncle and her old grandmother immediately after the service.

And so it was that, to old Elena's astonishment, and at the unheard of age of twenty-five, Arina was married to Daniel.

On her wedding day, Elena solemnly gave her granddaughter a golden bracelet set with a large amethyst. She did not say where it came from. Then she, with all the rest of the family, escorted Arina to Daniel's little house in Russka.

Both husband and wife had been astonished at their own happiness. They were each of them so surprised to be married at all; neither had any vanity; they could only try, rather humbly, to give happiness to the other, and as a result their love progressed with extraordinary speed.

For Daniel, the sight of this plain woman, who had never dared to hope for love, moved him profoundly. The natural tenderness which his feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness had always held back, now suddenly found expression. There was nothing to prevent it: the priest had told him it was his duty to love.

He was tender, and determined to succeed. He studied her, observing her secret doubts and need for reassurance until, with a sense of delight, he saw that like a tree after winter she was quivering into life.

Like many Russians, they called each other not by their first names but in the ancient manner, by their patronymics. At first, this had led to a small discussion. 'For,' as Arina confessed with a blush, 'my real father was a Cossack and I do not know his name; but my supposed father was called Ivan.' His father, he had told her, was called Peter; and so, since the full form of patronymic was now in general use, he was, to her, always Petrovich; while she was Ivanovna.

If only Daniel could have felt that his personal joy was a harbinger of better days to come.

He had wandered so many years, all over Russia, troubled by his sinful past, seeking peace yet never finding it. He had sought out holy men. But it was only during his time in Yaroslavl that he had truly found them. For it was there, in the wild Black Lands beyond the Volga, that he had met the stern Trans-Volga hermits and their followers. These were the true Russian believers, these austere and godly men who lived in the forests. In the manner of ancient Israelites, they felt their daily lives were close to God. Some were prophets. They shunned the evil world they saw around them. Like Avvakum and the other Raskolniki Raskolniki they were shocked at the changes in the Church, and with even more certainty than Avvakum they declared that these signs of wickedness meant the coming of the Antichrist himself. they were shocked at the changes in the Church, and with even more certainty than Avvakum they declared that these signs of wickedness meant the coming of the Antichrist himself.

'Prepare with prayer and fasting,' they advised, 'for the end of days is nigh.'

Sometimes, having found such happiness at Russka, Daniel had wondered if perhaps the hermits over the Volga had been mistaken. By chance, after many years of the harshest winters, the climate in north Russia had become milder the year after his marriage: the cold season had been shorter, the crops better. Might it be a hopeful sign? But when, after four years of marriage, his wife had failed to become pregnant he sadly concluded: It is probably a sign that, for the faithful, the world is becoming too wicked a place for children to live in.

In 1684, if any confirmation were needed of the wickedness of the world, the blow fell.

An edict from the Regent Sophia outlawed the Raskolniki Raskolniki. Suspected schismatics could be tortured and anyone sheltering them would lose their property. For obstinate offenders the penalty was death. On the day that news of this terrible edict had reached Russka, Silas had come to Daniel's house near the market square and spent an hour talking with him urgently. When he emerged, he was looking grim.

Arina had remained outside while the two men talked and did not venture back until some time later. But when she did, she found Daniel so deep in prayer that he was unaware of her presence. She had never seen him so agitated before. With tears in his eyes, he was prostrating himself before the blackened little icon in the corner, knocking his forehead on the floor and murmuring: 'Lord have mercy. Let this cup pass from me.' And feeling that she was intruding, Arina had begun to back out of the room.

It was just as she was doing so, however, that her husband said something else, that seemed to her very strange. For suddenly, staring up at the icon with a look of desperation he cried out: 'Yet who am I, Lord, to ask for mercy If who have murdered, not once but many times?'

Arina gazed at him. What could he mean? Surely the words were not to be taken literally, for it was hard to imagine her husband hurting a fly, let alone committing a murder. What, then, was in his mind? And it struck her, with a greater force than ever before, how little she still knew about the life of this man whom she unreservedly loved. And being ignorant, she thought, how can I help him now, in his hour of need?

When they were alone that evening, Daniel told her about Silas's visit. Faced with the terrible new threat of the edict, even the old priest had been uncertain what to do. 'He honoured me by asking my advice,' Daniel gravely told her.

'And what did you tell him, Petrovich?'

'For my sins, I advised him to go on.' He looked at her with troubled eyes. 'If we continue, even in secret, it may bring great misfortune upon us upon you too, Ivanovna,' he confessed.

She bowed her head. Whatever suffering might lie ahead, she knew that she only desired to share it with him.

'It is all I have this faith,' Daniel suddenly burst out. 'I have wandered all my life in search of truth, Ivanovna. I cannot turn back now.'

And it was then, because the moment seemed right, that Arina begged him: 'Will you not tell your wife something of your past life, Petrovich?'

It was a strange tale he had to tell: a story of solitary wanderings that seemed to have taken him all over Russia. He told her about the elders he had met at Yaroslavl. 'And before that, for a time, I was a lay brother in a monastery. That is when I learned to read.'

And now Arina told him what she had overheard that day and gently asked him: 'What did you mean, Petrovich, when you said that you had murdered?'

To which, to her surprise, he sadly answered: 'Yes, it is true. I have killed.'

For several moments after this confession he was silent, then he slowly continued, 'You see, Ivanovna, even when I was a child, I had a passion for justice. Indeed, I would be so offended by anything that, to my childish eyes, seemed unjust that I would even pretend to be a fool, not to understand what was going on so that often the other boys thought me simple in the head.' He smiled regretfully. 'Nowadays, of course, I know that justice belongs only to God, and that goodness can only be found in prayer. But when I was young, I believed there could be true justice in the government of men: and when I did not find it, I became angry.'

'What did you do?'

'I fought. I joined Stenka Razin.'

'You were in his rebellion?'

He nodded. 'And we killed, Ivanovna. In the name of justice we killed not only soldiers and wicked officials, but God knows how many innocents too. At the time I thought it right: now I can only throw myself at God's feet and beg for mercy.'

'You were a Cossack then?'

'I was. A fighting Cossack. I fought with Bogdan too. I thought nothing of killing in those days.' He paused. 'Later, I wanted so much to break with my evil past that as though I had taken holy orders I changed my name to Daniel.'

'What was it before?'

'Stepan.' He smiled gently. 'Though since my brother Cossacks thought me big and simple, they gave me another name. They used to call me the Ox.'

1698.

Procopy Bobrov was an enthusiast. He was thirty-one yet, to his mother at least, he sometimes seemed like a child. Often she would say: 'It was the worst thing I ever did in my life, to send him to Preobrazhenskoe.' And when the nice, sensible wife she had chosen for him complained that he shamefully neglected her, Eudokia could only sigh sympathetically and remark: 'I'll do what I can, my dear. But it's that accursed Peter who makes him so.'

For this was how, in private, she referred to the Tsar.

Preobrazhenskoe was a pleasant spot a modest wooden hunting lodge with large stables, only three miles from Moscow's walls and close by that other satellite of the city, the German quarter. All around stretched broad meadows, dotted with silver birches; further away lay a white-walled church whose blue dome looked rather cheerful against the paler blue of the sky. And it was there that the sixteen-year-old Procopy Bobrov had made the acquaintance of a striking twelve-year-old boy, already as tall as he was.

The women's network of Eudokia's family had worked only too well. The young Tsar's Naryshkin mother had been only too grateful to greet a friend for her son from a sound old family like the Bobrovs. For her state was pitiable: except when he was needed for some ceremonial appearance, the boy Peter was ignored; their allowance was so small she had even had to beg the Patriarch for extra funds; and fearing for their safety, she was glad enough to keep out of sight at Preobrazhenskoe.

'There is nothing nothing! good that one can say about Peter,' Eudokia would cry contemptuously. 'He's nothing but,' she'd search for words, 'a German lout!' If only she had never sent Procopy to Preobrazhenskoe. That was where the trouble had begun. The boy's mother was at fault. He had not been properly supervised, allowed to run wild, mix with all sorts of company. He ate like a peasant even Procopy admitted that. And he was forever playing soldiers with his friends. Including Procopy, thanks to her folly.

Preobrazhenskoe the Tsar had taken the name of his little village and given it to one of his new household regiments: the Preobrazhensky Guards. Procopy was an officer in it now. How she despised them, with their foreign uniforms! And Peter's childish games, his endless playing at soldiers they had developed into real wars now.

And to think she had supposed that nothing could be worse than the rule of Sophia and that terrible Golitsyn: the Pole, as she called him.

Their foreign wars had been their downfall. That Golitsyn with his foreign ways he was the one who wanted to be friends with the Poles. In return for another peace treaty with them, he had foolishly promised to help them against the Turks and their vassal the Crimean Khan.

A war against the Tatars on the steppe. It had been a disaster, and a costly one. The great men of the state had turned to Peter and in 1689 Sophia and her favourite had fallen from power: she was sent to a convent, Golitsyn into exile.

Peter was seventeen. Though technically he was still co-ruler with poor Ivan, it was time for him to assume control.

'But does he rule? Does he behave like a man?' Eudokia would furiously demand. 'No. He plays his games like an evil child, which is exactly what he still is.'

Briefly, she had been hopeful. The old Patriarch, having at last got rid of Golitsyn, was determined to rid Holy Russia of all these foreign influences. But then he had died, and Peter's strange regime began.

And strange it certainly was. While a small council, including his mother and some of the Naryshkins, acted as an informal regency, the hulking boy refused to take any interest in his empire at all. Often, he stayed at Preobrazhenskoe. But even worse, he spent more and more time in the German quarter, amongst the foreigners. And it was not long before his behaviour became scandalous.

'The German suburb! What kind of people does one meet there?' Eudokia would comment contemptuously. 'And see what kind of games these heretics like to play.'

It cannot be denied that the behaviour of Peter and his friends, some of whom were old enough to be his grandfather, was totally outrageous; and while historians have tended to gloss over this as either the high-spirited buffoonery of an adolescent, or else a calculated political message, it is very hard to see why they should have acted so.

At the heart of it all was the so-called Jolly Company a group of friends who might at any given moment number a dozen or two hundred. Some were Russian, but many were foreigners. They included a brilliant Swiss adventurer, Lefort, and an otherwise sensible old Scottish general, Gordon.

It was not the drunken parties, which might go on for days at a time. That was perfectly Russian. It was not even that they might, if you were a merchant or nobleman, visit your house and smash all the furniture. Russians were rather proud of Tsars, like Ivan the Terrible, who wreaked havoc at the slightest whim. Russians could even forgive, when he was sober, Peter's fascination with foreign crafts, and his learning the rudiments of mathematics and navigation though these interests were certainly eccentric.

But what could anyone make of his open and insulting mockery of religion?

For in these years, the young Tsar formed what he called his Drunken Synod the All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters. One of his drinking companions his old tutor became Prince-Patriarch, though this was changed to Prince-Pope. Dressed up in ecclesiastical regalia, he would appoint a drunken synod of cardinals, bishops, abbots and other priests. And then, mocking the liturgy, making lewd benedictions over the company continually, the Prince-Pope under Peter's direction would lead the Drunken Synod in its all-night drunken revels. They were not just held indoors, out of sight in the German quarter. The young Tsar and his friends used to take to the streets of Moscow, even in Lent, taking good care to outrage every religious sensibility of the people he was to govern. So that the foreign ambassadors from the west who were themselves entirely used to the high-jinks of young aristocrats, or the occasional calculated outrages of the students in their ancient university towns could only conclude that the young Tsar had little interest in his people and that, ingenious or not, he was vulgar without being amusing.

For several years, this extraordinary regime had gone on. No one could control the wayward youth, it seemed. His mother, as Eudokia had done with Procopy, found him a wife. But Peter seldom even visited her. Then his mother died, but still his strange adolescence continued.

What was the young Tsar thinking of?

As time passed, it seemed to Eudokia that when he was sober, young Tsar Peter thought only of two things. One was war.

'And the other is boats. Boats everything with this man is boats!' she would complain. And when Procopy laughingly reminded her that Russia was a land of rivers she would brush him aside irritably. 'You know very well what I mean. It's these accursed boats that go to sea. No Russian has ever needed to go to sea.'

'Not so. The ancient Rus went to sea. They went across the Black Sea to Constantinople. And that's what we'll do now.'

'First it's the Crimean Khan and his Tatars, now it's the Turkish Sultan himself you want to attack,' she said drily.

'Precisely.'

For though Peter's conduct might be odd, there was no doubt that he had, from the first, dreams of conquest. They were very natural dreams.

Who, after all, were Russia's heroes? Were they not great men like St Vladimir, Yaroslav the Wise, and mighty Monomakh in the days of ancient Kiev? And in those times, had not the state of Rus traded freely from the Baltic to the warm Black Sea? Did it not crush the tribesmen of the southern steppe? Had not the ancient Rus kept a settlement by the mouth of the Don in old Tmutarakan? Was there not a colony of Rus in the imperial city of Constantinople herself? Yet now, Russia possessed only a miserable little toehold, at the frozen northern end of the Baltic Sea, while the rich Baltic ports were still in the hands of the Swedes and Germans. In the south, the mouth of the Don was closed to Russians, guarded by the Turkish port of Azov, and the Turkish fleet entirely controlled the warm Black Sea. Finally, most insulting of all, and centuries after Moscow had thrown off the Tatar yoke, the Tatar Khan of the Crimea still sent huge raiding parties across the steppe, stealing Slavs by the thousands from the villages of the Ukraine and sending them to the slave markets of the Middle East. He even had the impertinence to claim tribute from the Tsar; and though his claim was ignored, the Russian government humiliatingly still found it wise to send him handsome gifts.

So if Peter, like Ivan the Terrible before him, wanted to break out to north and south, it was not so surprising.

Boats: they were the answer. Young Peter had discovered boats real boats from the foreigners in the German suburbs. He had built a boat of his own. He had seen, up in the north, the foreign vessels that came to distant Archangel or plied the Baltic Sea.

That was what he needed a fleet to go down the mighty Don and break through, past Azov, to the warm Black Sea. It was time to turn his war games into the real thing. They would build galleys first, for the Don; then real ships for the sea.

Strangely, if Procopy Bobrov had been excited by this adventure, his father was equally so. For though he was not required on the campaign, the sixty-five-year-old former official had now acquired a new lease of life. The young Tsar needed timber for his fleet. Above all, he needed ash trees for masts.

'They're getting some from Tula, but we have plenty on our estates,' he had declared happily, and immediately made the Tsar a present of one of his woods.

When the news came, in 1696, that the Turkish fort of Azov had fallen, he was ecstatic.

'Can't you feel it?' he cried to Eudokia. 'I can. I feel a warm wind blowing into our northern forests a warm wind from the south.'

One other development had taken place during the Azov campaign: Peter's invalid half-brother Ivan had died. It was not an important event in itself but it meant that now, as he returned to Moscow in triumph, Tsar Peter at the age of twenty-four sat alone upon the throne.

'He may be wild,' Nikita had assured his wife, 'but now we shall see great things.'

Even he however had been thunderstruck by what happened next: Peter's triumphal entry into the capital.

It took place on a sunny October day in 1696. By the Moscow river a triumphal arch had been erected in the Roman manner, with huge statues, one of Mars, the other of Hercules, on each side. Below it was a model of the Turkish Pasha in chains.

When the procession came, it was headed by Peter's tutor the man who played Prince-Pope in the infamous Drunken Synod dressed up in armour. Then in a gilded carriage came the Swiss Lefort. Then more carriages. Then came a cart containing a traitor who had foolishly helped the Turks during the campaign. The instruments of the torture and execution he was to suffer were displayed beside him.

And at last, towards the rear of a procession that went on for miles, came Peter.

To many who had never got a good look at him before, he was an astounding sight. He was built like an athlete. He had a mop of dark hair, a moustache like a Cossack, and piercing, staring eyes. He stood no less than six foot seven inches high.

Yet this young Russian giant was not wearing Russian dress. He wore a German uniform, a black coat and a huge black three-cornered hat in which he had jauntily stuck a long white feather.

And there was not a priest in sight.

No icons came before the procession; no priests with banners. No welcoming speech from the Patriarch; no church bells rang. A Roman Caesar had come, wearing a German uniform; a pagan procession was entering the capital of Holy Russia.

'Yet even the Romans had their gods,' Nikita murmured. 'And even Genghis Khan, pagan that he was, did not despise the Church.' And as he gazed at the procession he thought he saw a new, harsh sun that would burn away all the shadows.