He glanced towards the family, and Igor respectfully bowed. But Father Luke saw nothing. Ivanushka stared at him. And the euphoria of the miracle suddenly evaporated.

This, he remembered with terror, is what it means to be a monk.

It seemed to Ivanushka, though he could not be sure, that he was in the woods near the village of Russka.

At least, when he remembered the dream afterwards, this was where it had seemed to be.

It was late afternoon. The shadows were lengthening, but there was still a brightness in the sky which told him it was summer. He was riding along a path he thought it led to the east, though he could not be certain. The trees, mostly oak and birch, seemed to be speaking to each other as he rode past them in the dappled light. His horse was black.

He was searching for something. But he did not know what.

It was not long before he passed a pool on his right. Turning to look at it, he noticed the pale glint on its smooth surface; and at the same time thought he heard a faint cry from the water was it a moan or a laugh? Realizing that it was the rusalka rusalka of the place, he put spurs to his horse and hurried on. The woods grew darker. of the place, he put spurs to his horse and hurried on. The woods grew darker.

It was morning next, and he was still in the wood. His horse, for some reason, had now changed its colour to grey. The path led to a glade, where there was a stand of silver birches; and at the far end of the glade was a crossroads. Standing by the crossroads, he saw, was a small brown figure which somehow looked familiar. He approached slowly.

It was Father Luke. His eyes were quite bright now. It was evident that he could see. Ivanushka bowed to him respectfully. 'Which way should I travel, Father?' he asked.

'There are three ways to choose between,' the old man said quietly. 'If you go to the left, you will preserve your body but lose your soul.'

'And to the right?'

'You will keep your soul, but lose your body.'

Ivanushka thought. Neither sounded attractive to him.

'And straight ahead?'

'Only fools go that way,' the monk replied.

It was hardly more encouraging, but as he considered, it seemed to him the only choice. 'They call me Ivanushka the fool,' he said. 'So I may as well go there.'

'As you wish,' Father Luke answered, and then vanished.

And so Ivanushka rode forward, he knew not whither. It seemed to him that he heard a raucous clanging in the sky; and his horse, for no reason, had turned from a grey into a roan.

This was Ivanushka's dream, the night before his journey.

It was still morning as the two boats, one laden with goods, the other carrying only a few travellers, glided silently down the huge, pale, moving surface of the river. Above was a washed blue sky; on the right, high, sandy banks above which, here and there, cattle grazed. In the yellow banks nearest to them, Ivanushka could see a mass of little holes around which small birds were darting. Far away, on the left bank, stretched a light green plain dotted with trees.

He was well provided for. The bag of silver grivnas grivnas his father had given him was safely attached to his belt. 'By turning monk, you've got your inheritance long before me,' Sviatopolk had remarked drily as he set off. his father had given him was safely attached to his belt. 'By turning monk, you've got your inheritance long before me,' Sviatopolk had remarked drily as he set off.

And now the great River Dniepr was carrying him southwards towards his destiny.

They had travelled all morning, and Ivanushka was just about to close his eyes for the midday nap when he was startled from his drowsiness by a loud cry from the boat in front. 'Cumans!' The passengers strained forward in astonishment, but there was no doubt: the dark Turkish faces in the long boat pushing out from the shore on their right were certainly Cumans. The travellers had reason to be surprised. It had been thought that the Cumans were resting in their camps at this time, far away on the steppe. And besides, it was almost unheard of for them to attack by water. They usually preferred to wait far to the south, where there were rapids, and attack the caravans as they were carried round them overland.

'They've forced some Slavs to row them out,' someone muttered, and Ivanushka saw that the oarsmen were indeed some unhappy Slav peasants. As he watched, one of the Cumans took a long, curved bow; an arrow flashed over the water, and one of the men in the cargo boat slumped over the side. 'Behind you!' came a shout across the water. And he turned and saw another boat cutting them off upstream.

'There's nothing for it. We'll have to make for the left bank,' the skipper of the little vessel cried.

Yet it was far away. To Ivanushka at that moment, staring across the soft blue waters, it seemed to be almost on the horizon. Grunting with the effort, the oarsmen pulled, and the boat slipped quickly across the flow.

Turning round, Ivanushka saw that the boat with the cargo was already lost. He wondered if the Cumans would be satisfied with that. Moments later, however, he saw that the other Cuman boat was pulling after them.

'There's a little stream that joins the river over there,' the skipper called out. 'There's a fort a few miles up it. We'll make for that.' And Ivanushka found himself mumbling a prayer. For he knew the fort in question very well.

It was strange to be back at Russka. Zhydovyn was not there, but half a dozen soldiers made them welcome. The Cumans had given up soon after they had left the Dniepr; but the travellers had decided to wait two days in the fort before tempting fate again.

He had trailed about the fort, visited the village and wandered along the quiet paths in the woods, feeling strangely contented. He had even walked out to the edge of the steppe, and gazed out across the feather grasses to where an ancient kurgan kurgan could still be seen. could still be seen.

On the third day, the travellers set off again.

But Ivanushka did not go with them.

He hardly knew why. He told himself that providence had granted him a respite. I can pause here, take stock of life, and prepare myself for my journey, he reasoned. The fact that all his decisions had been taken and that he was already on his journey, he somehow put to the back of his mind. All that third day, he walked about by the river.

On the fourth day, he was overcome with a feeling of lassitude, and he slept.

It was on the next day that he met the peasant Shchek. The fellow was thinner than before, but he greeted Ivanushka warmly. When Ivanushka asked him if he had paid his debts now, he grinned sheepishly.

'Yes and no,' he replied. 'I'm a zakup zakup.'

This was a harsh institution. A man who could not pay his creditors had to work for them, virtually as a slave, until the debt was paid off. Since the debt continued to accrue interest during this period, however, these unfortunates seldom managed to get free again. 'I got the prince's steward to take over all my debts,' he explained, 'so now I work for the prince.'

'And when will you get free again?' Ivanushka asked.

Shchek smiled ruefully. 'In thirty years,' he said. 'And what are you doing, young lord?' he inquired.

Ivanushka explained that he was going on a great journey to Constantinople and to Greece, to become a monk. Shchek listened carefully, then nodded in understanding.

'So you'll never be free either,' he remarked. 'Just like me.'

Ivanushka gazed at the peasant. The similarity between them had not occurred to him. But I suppose he's right, he thought. I'm a prisoner of fate too. And reaching into his pouch, he gave Shchek a silver grivna grivna. Then he passed on. He wondered if he should have given him more. But I need my money, he considered, for my journey.

The day afterwards he left Russka on foot, going towards the River Dniepr.

It was after parting from Ivanushka that Shchek the peasant had wandered out from the village towards the steppe.

Though the little fort had somewhat increased the significance of the hamlet of Russka since ancient times, it was still a tiny and deserted place. To the south, two miles away, lay one of the prince's estates; to the east, the steppe; and to the north, nothing at all for fifteen miles, where there was another similar hamlet and a fort.

As he walked, Shchek was rather cheerful. Since he had become a zakup zakup, his life had not been easy. The prince's steward worked him hard. His wife, ashamed of his status, had become sullen. But this unexpected gift from the young noble was a great windfall. A silver grivna grivna was worth about three months' wages to a peasant like Shchek. was worth about three months' wages to a peasant like Shchek.

He took the path through the woods and continued along it to the glades where the women picked mushrooms. He pressed on, past the pool where, the villagers said, rusalki rusalki dwelt. It was a little way past the pool that he came to a crossroads. The right-hand track, he knew, led south to the prince's estate. The left-hand track led northwards; but since it passed through a place where one of the villagers had been killed by a boar, few people took that route, thinking it unlucky. dwelt. It was a little way past the pool that he came to a crossroads. The right-hand track, he knew, led south to the prince's estate. The left-hand track led northwards; but since it passed through a place where one of the villagers had been killed by a boar, few people took that route, thinking it unlucky.

On impulse, however, the peasant decided to do so. That Ivanushka brought me luck, he considered. I've nothing to fear today.

Some way to the north of Russka, the river made a large curve round a low and densely wooded hill. It was here that the villager had been killed. Thick undergrowth had formed round the base of the hill, much of it bramble and thorn. It was not an inviting spot, and he would not have paused had he not suddenly seen, a hundred yards ahead of him, a large fox slipping silently into the undergrowth.

I wonder if he has a lair in there, Shchek thought. Fox fur was valuable. As quietly as he could, and suffering a number of scratches, he made his way through the undergrowth and began to climb the hill. And a few minutes later, having almost forgotten the fox, he was grinning with delight and astonishment.

For the hill, so densely covered with oak and pine, and which no one ever visited, was a treasure house. It was crowded with beehives. He could smell the rich, thick smell of honey up in the trees everywhere. As he wandered around, he counted no less than twenty hives up in the branches; until finally he laughed aloud. 'That Ivanushka has brought me more luck than he knew,' he cried.

He did not plan to tell anyone about it. For already he could see how to make use of it. I might even be able to get free one day, he mused.

1075.

In the year 1075, few men in the land of Rus were considered as lucky as Igor the boyar.

His master, Prince Vsevolod of Pereiaslav, showered gifts upon him. No one was held in more honour in that prince's druzhina druzhina.

The greatest nobles, now, had a new status: instead of the old blood-money of forty grivnas grivnas, their lives had been set at eighty. Even to insult them carried a fine of four times the value of a smerd smerd.

Igor had been granted this high status. More than that, so impressed was the Prince of Pereiaslav with his loyal servant, that the previous year, he had given Igor the lordship of extensive lands on the south-east border of the principality, including the little hamlet of Russka.

These outright gifts of land were a new method of rewarding faithful retainers. Cheaper than gifts of money, in a state where land was plentiful, these land grants began the process whereby the term 'boyar', which originally meant a retainer or nobleman of the druzhina druzhina, came to signify 'landowner'.

Igor the boyar had reason to be happy. Yet behind his aloof and busy manner, there was a sadness. Seeing Igor and his greying wife together, a stranger might have thought that they shared a love of quietness. Yet in fact, they were quiet because each was afraid that almost anything either of them said might bring to the surface the sadness concealed in the other.

Boris was dead. He had been killed in a skirmish at the edge of the steppe one winter day. As was the custom, they had brought his body back on a sled.

Igor would never forget that day. It was snowing, and as they pulled the sled up the slope to the city gates, the snow flurries had slapped, softly, across his face so that at times he could scarcely see the sled. He had prayed in front of the icon for long hours at that period, and sought the comfort of Father Luke.

But the loss of Boris was a wound that could heal.

Not so the loss of Ivanushka.

Where was he? A month after he had left for Constantinople, they had heard from Zhydovyn the Khazar that he had been seen at Russka. But where had he gone after that? Word came from the Russian merchants in Constantinople: he had never arrived there. A year of silence followed; then a rumour that he had been seen in Kiev; vague reports came also from Smolensk, Chernigov, even distant Novgorod. He had been seen gambling; he had been seen drinking; he had been seen begging. There were few reports, however, and none of them very reliable.

And from Ivanushka, for three years, came not a word to his parents to let them know if he was alive or dead.

'He is searching for something,' his mother said, after the sighting in Kiev had been reported.

'He is ashamed,' Igor concluded sadly.

'Yet even so,' Sviatopolk remarked, 'he cannot love any of us, to behave like this.'

And as the third year passed, and no word came, even his mother began to believe Ivanushka did not love her.

The jetty was crowded. Above, a long path of dry earth made an untidy diagonal gash across the tall ramparts of Pereiaslav. In the faint sun, the ramparts, where they were not dirty brown, had a pale green covering of tired autumnal grass. The summer had passed. There was an air of lassitude about the place. The broad river, too, looked brown and dreary, stretching away like a monotonous echo under an iron sky. At the end of the jetty, a stout boat was about to cast off an event which would have attracted no special attention but for a little incident concerning a young man.

He was a strange figure. His whole person appeared to be filthy. The brown cloak wrapped round him and the peasant's bast shoes he wore had almost disintegrated.

He was sitting with an air of sullen helplessness on a small barrel by the end of the jetty, while the master of a stout boat was yelling at him.

'Well, are you coming or not?'

It seemed he nodded.

'Devil take it! Then get in, man!'

Again the young fellow assented. But he did not move.

'I'm casting off, you fool,' the master shouted in an access of fury. 'Do you want to see Tzargrad or rot in Pereiaslav?'

When there was still no movement: 'You promised me the fare. I could have had another passenger. Give me my money!'

For a second, it really seemed the passenger would rise; but he did not. With a curse the older man gave the order, and the stout boat with its single mast and bank of oarsmen pulled out into the broad, sluggish river and headed south.

And still Ivanushka did not move.

How long he had wandered. In the first year, several times, he had started to go south. At least, he had found merchants who were prepared to take him, and got as far as inspecting their boats. But each time, some invisible force had pulled him back. Just as surface tension holds a light object one pulls from the water, so a subterranean force seemed to make it impossible for Ivanushka to break free from his native soil and set out upon the great river that would carry him towards the religious life. It was almost, sometimes, like a physical force, a huge weight of inertia dragging at his back.

As his money had been eaten into, he had started to gamble.

If I win, he reasoned, it means that God wants me to go to the monastery. But if I lose all my journey money, then obviously He doesn't. It seemed a good argument, and he did not have to gamble long before he lost.

It was not that Ivanushka consciously turned away from God, but rather that he hoped, by these devious means, to slide towards Him comfortably. As time went on, however, he had sunk into lethargy, punctuated by increasingly frequent bouts of drinking. He wandered from city to city, unable to go south or to return home. In the second year he began to steal.

They were only small amounts; and strangely enough, he even persuaded himself that he was not really stealing. After all, he told himself, if I take from the rich man, what does it matter? And besides, did not Our Lord Himself let His disciples pick the ears of corn in the fields? Often, before stealing, he would work himself up into a kind of angry scorn. He would tell himself that he was a man close to God while those from whom he stole were contemptible, lovers of money who should be punished. And after stealing, and buying food and drink, he would wander through the countryside for days with that slight elation from a half-empty stomach that he took to be a state of grace.

The winters were very hard. Even stealing had not helped him: one could not live in the open. He had travelled from church to monastery as an izgoi izgoi, picking up what charity he could. Several times he had nearly frozen.

Once, he had seen his father. He had been wandering through the woods near Chernigov one spring day, when suddenly he heard the sound of approaching hoofs, and a cavalcade had swept into sight.

He had hidden behind an oak tree as they had come by, a big party of noblemen with their retainers. He had seen young Prince Vladimir amongst them, and almost beside him his father and brother Sviatopolk. Igor was carrying a hawk on his wrist. He wore a hat made of sable, and was listening with a cool sardonic expression while the young prince, laughing, told him some story.

And to his astonishment, Ivanushka had been afraid, as terrified as any peasant might have been. Yet more than that: ashamed. Dear God, he prayed, do not let them see me. For was not he, the failure, now an outcast from this glittering world, with his gnawing hunger and his filthy rags to prove it? The thought of their embarrassment, of their disgust, were they to recognize him, was more than he could face. How tall, how hard, and how terrifyingly magnificent they looked. That world is closed to me now, he thought.

Yet he could not take his eyes from them.

It was as they had almost passed that he saw something else that made him gasp aloud. For riding together at the rear of this hunting party were two young women: one a young lady, the other little more than a girl.

They were sumptuously dressed. They rode well, with gracious ease. And both were fair-haired and blue-eyed fairer than any women he had ever seen before. And it suddenly seemed to him, as he crouched behind his tree, that he had seen a vision not of the royal court, but of heaven itself. They are like two angels, he murmured, and wondered where they could possibly have come from.

Moments later the vision faded and the sounds died away. But the memory of the two girls remained with him, hauntingly, to remind him as the months passed: You are just an animal of the forest now.

It was that spring, when by chance he found himself near Russka, that Ivanushka had finally made one last attempt to recover himself. I can't go on like this, he had decided. I can either end it all, or go to the monastery. The thought of death frightened him. And no monastic rule, he considered, could be worse than this life I lead.

Only one problem remained. He no longer had any money.

It had been a warm spring morning when Zhydovyn had glanced out from the warehouse in Russka to see, loitering opposite, the shabby figure of the wanderer. Russka was very quiet that day. The little fort, unguarded at present, was almost empty.

The Khazar had recognized him almost at once, but being a cautious man, he gave no sign; it was midday before the wanderer ambled, a little stiffly, towards him.

'You know who I am?'

The voice was quiet, yet there seemed to be a hint of abruptness, even scorn, in it.