PROLOGUE
Go East, Young Man
Factory in Polxtz, Russia
February 1636
Stefan Andreevich wiped off the sweat, then motioned for Nestor to turn the crank. While Nestor cranked and the weight lifted, Stefan checked the irons in the fire. He had plenty of time. It was a stone forge with a leather bellows, newly made last year with little regard to appearance. The stones were quarried, but not shaped, and the mortar was not of good quality. The sparks flew up as Stefan used the tongs to check the color of the wrought iron globs in the glowing charcoal, while Nestor cranked away.
Once the hammer was up, Stefan used the tongs to pull the plate out of the stamp forge and set it on a scorched wooden shelf. Then he pulled the mop from the bucket and ran it over the bottom and top molds. The molds steamed and hissed with the water, but it was an important step. They couldn’t be allowed to get too hot or they would start to deform. He turned back to the fire and pulled another blob of wrought iron. It was yellow hot and would take off a limb if he allowed it to touch him. He placed it in the mold and signaled Nestor, who pulled the lever that dropped the weight.
Over five tons of lead-weighted stamp dropped almost six feet. Wham!
Torn between admiring the efficiency of the system and resenting the labor, Stefan repeated the process. Then he repeated it again. There was little discussion. The men at the bellows were from Poltz, where he and about half the men of Ruzuka had been sent to work. It made things much harder, because if they were here stamping out plates they couldn’t be back home weaving cloth, which was the main winter craft of Ruzuka. After a long day, the men were given a poor meal and sent to bed in a barn. Just as had happened yesterday and would happen again tomorrow and the day after, six days a week for the last three months and another to come.
Stefan wouldn’t be making cloth if he were in Ruzuka. He would be making iron parts for the looms and the plows and other needs of the village. He looked back into the fire of the forge and checked the color of the blobs, then waved for more pumping. Then he thought about how fast he could stamp out various parts if he had a drop hammer.
Nestor would be making cloth if he were in Ruzuka. Like most of the villagers in Ruzuka—and like most of the peasants in Mother Russia—Nestor had two professions. Farmer in spring, summer, and fall, but in winter he was a weaver and made cloth.
Stefan was an exception. A blacksmith was needed all year round, as much in winter as in summer. He was here because, as a blacksmith, he was a skilled craftsman. Colonel Ivan Nikolayevich Utkin, the man who held Ruzuka as pomestie from Czar Mikhail, would get paid more when he rented Stefan out.
Ruzuka, Russia
March 1636
Vera pulled Stefan to her and kissed him vigorously, then pulled back and looked into his eyes. “Was it bad?” she asked, her greenish-brown eyes shining.
“No worse than usual,” he told her stoically.
She hugged him again. “The women have been working at the weaving, but we don’t have nearly as much cloth as last year. Still, the colonel insists that we owe him the same amount of cloth, in spite of the extra work you’re doing. And Kiril Ivanovich has told him how much we made, so we can’t hide any away. The colonel is going to take almost all of it.” Vera’s usually pleasant tone was harsh and angry. Then she hugged him again, as though trying to use his strength to hold away the world.
Stefan wished he could hold away the world, but they were serfs and Colonel Ivan Nikolayevich Utkin controlled their lives. The colonel was a deti boiarskie, which literally meant “child of boyars,” but really meant a retainer of one of the great houses. Someone who served a member of one of the great houses or who owed their position in the bureaus or the army to the influence of a great house. The colonel was both. He was a retainer of Director-General Sheremetev himself and had gotten his position in the army due to Sheremetev influence. The village of Ruzuka was part of the colonel’s pomestie, payment in land with serfs. As a serf in Ruzuka, Stefan had little say in how his life or the lives of his wife and children would unfold.
A thought that had been slipping around in the back corners of his mind for the last couple of years came to the fore. We should run. He had his wife and children to think about, and though he wasn’t overfond of Father Yulian, the priest had said some things in his sermons that struck Stefan as worthwhile. That God and the angels had intended men to be free, but men, in their weakness and fear, had given over their liberty to the strong and the vicious, in hopes of protection. Well, the strong and the vicious had taken the liberty, but they didn’t seem overly concerned with protecting Stefan’s wife and child from hunger and want. Maybe it was time to try a little freedom. But for now Stefan kept the thought from his lips, even with Vera.
They sat down to a meal of stewed beets with just enough grease to make you think there might be some ham in there somewhere, and talked about the goings-on in the village. Vera’s friendly manner made her everyone’s confidant and mostly she didn’t share what she was told. Except with Stefan, but Stefan was a taciturn man. He didn’t talk much, being the sort who thought of just the right thing to say…a day or two after the conversation.
That night, with Vera snuggled against his chest, Stefan looked around the small room and thought about what they would need to take if they ran, and how they would carry it. Their house was next to the smithy and not in great repair. Stefan was good with metal, not so good with wood. But small as the house was and as little as they had, they would have to leave a lot. If they went. And if they went, where would they go? Vera hugged him in her sleep and he hugged her back.
Izabella smiled like a cat as she saw her mother leaving Father Yulian’s cabin. She knew what was going on there and she decided that if Mother could do it, she could too.
Three days later, she sat in the quiet room that Father Yulian used to take confession. “I have these urges, Father Yulian. Even while in church, I feel these strange new feelings.” Izabella was five foot three with golden blond hair, blue eyes, and a curvaceous figure. She knew she was desirable. She only needed Yulian to notice. And she paid attention in church and understood the doctrine. Besides, she had seen him with Mother and heard what he said. “They distract me from the contemplation of faith.” She considered mentioning that she had seen him and her mother. Perhaps confessing her snooping would be a good way, but she held that in reserve. She really wanted Yulian to want her, not to be forced into her bed.
Father Yulian was most understanding and instructed her that the best cure for lustful thoughts was satiating them. Then the mind was left clear for the deeper concerns of the faith. “Also,” he said, “the realization that our desires can distract us from the worship of God makes us humble and more willing to welcome the Holy Spirit.”
By the time he had finished ministering to her, Izabella felt so calm as to be called languid.
Life went on in the village, with Father Yulian ministering to the needs of his flock. To those with a need to learn, he taught reading, writing, mathematics, and other things. Increasingly, political philosophy found its way into his teachings, both from the pulpit and during his private counseling.
Ruzuka, Russia
April 1636
Stefan looked out at the fields. The crops were in the ground, but the children weeding the fields had a gaunt look about them. With the end of winter, the men had finally gotten to come home from the factory in Poltz to do the necessary work in Ruzuka.
Stefan stayed busy at his forge, and whenever he could he made the bits and pieces for a wagon and hid them away. He looked around again. Anatoly was working in his shop, making handles for the new reapers. It was a hot day for April which was part of the reason Stefan had stepped outside. Vera waved as she lead Vasily and Eva to the well. He’d almost told Vera about his plan a dozen times in the last few weeks, but he held back. The truth was that he was afraid that she would not want to leave her friends. Afraid that if he gave her time, she would talk him out of it and they would wait till it was too late to run. They were one of the wealthier families in the village, in part because Stefan had built his own drop hammer and that had saved him a great deal of time in the repairing of farm equipment, which in turn meant that there was more time to gather the iron ore and make the wrought iron. It let them trade for more food, more clothing, and they would be even better off if Vera didn’t insist on feeding half the village children.
Things were especially bad this summer. Sheremetev had taken power in Moscow, apparently with the acquiescence of Czar Mikhail. And the colonel, as one of Sheremetev’s deti boiarskie, wanted to prove himself by making the village produce. The only good news was he was doing it by mail, being busy in the army and his son, Nikita, with him. That meant that only his wife, Elena, and daughter, Izabella, were here. Father Yulian seemed to have a great deal of influence with them. Stefan grinned at that thought, because Vera had told him how that influence came to be. Father Yulian was a man who had plenty of stamina, Stefan had to admit. He’d been ministering to the women of the village for a long time. Even to Vera, back before she had decided to marry Stefan.
There was one other thing that Stefan had to respect about Father Yulian. He didn’t coerce the women of the village. They went to him. Once Vera had decided that she didn’t want to play anymore, Father Yulian had been fine with her decision.
Ruzuka, Russia
May 1636
“Might I have a few words with you?” Father Yulian asked Stefan as he was leaving the church one Sunday.
“I guess so, Father. Do you need new hinges for the church door?” Stefan looked at the door in question. The hinges were a bit rusty, but seemed in good enough shape.
Father Yulian just smiled and waved him toward the cabin next to the church.
“So,” Yulian asked, in his deep baritone, once Stefan was seated on a wooden bench by the stove, “when are you planning on running and where do you intend to go?”
Stefan blinked. “What?” The priest was grinning at him, his left eyebrow raised. He had dark hair and rough-hewn features. There was just a touch of gray at his temples. His beard had a little dash of gray too.
“I’m not blind, man,” Father Yulian said as his grin mellowed into a smile. “You have been making extra parts for a wagon and squirreling away dried meat and vegetables. At first I thought you were just preparing for the winter like any industrious man should, but then it came to me that your choice of goods are as light and compact as you can manage. You want things that you can carry with you.”
Stefan’s hand, almost of its own accord, crept toward his belt knife. This was a disaster. The priest might tell anyone—the colonel’s wife, the headman, Kiril Ivanovich. And Stefan would be strung up and beaten half to death, maybe all the way to death. Then what would happen to Vera and the children?
“You realize that leaving would leave the whole village in peril? Your debt would be applied to everyone left in the village. How do you think that’s going to make Vera feel?”
“Better than burying our children would,” Stefan said angrily, but his hand had stopped its creeping toward his knife.
Father Yulian nodded, but continued. “Probably. But better is not the same as good. Wouldn’t it be best to take the whole village?”
“The whole village! You’re crazy. There is no way. Besides, what makes you think that they will all want to go?”
“You don’t give me credit for knowing my flock, Stefan. There are a few who will actively oppose any attempt to leave. Kiril Ivanovich, for instance. Aside from the fact that he hates me personally, he believes that some are made to be serfs and some to be boyars, and that as a serf, his goal should be to be a good serf. At least, that’s what he tells himself. The truth is, he is a horrible coward who will yield to anyone with a whip.”
Father Yulian went through the village, telling Stefan who would be willing to run when the time came but couldn’t keep their mouths shut, who wouldn’t want to go but would continue on if they started, and finally those who he thought they could trust to be a part of the preparations. Mostly women, Stefan noted, in that last group.
But, in spite of it all, Stefan wasn’t convinced. “Look, Father, that’s all fine, but how do you expect to move a whole village through Russia without anyone noticing? And the ones that we force to go along…they will turn on us the first chance they get. How do you plan to deal with that?”
“No, not most of them. Once we leave, their only choice will be to go with us. They will already be Cossacks, runaways, according to Moscow. Especially with Sheremetev in charge. You know what the colonel has been doing since Sheremetev ‘retired’ the czar.”
And it was true. There had been whippings on each visit by the colonel since Sheremetev had taken power, and two girls of the village had been forced by the colonel’s son, Nikita.
They didn’t come to any agreement that day, but when Stefan got home, there was Vera waiting for him, and it was clear that Father Yulian had told her of his suspicions before he had brought the matter up with Stefan. She had many of the same questions, but she also wanted to know just where he planned on dragging her and the children.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Stefan admitted. “The Cossacks to the south, or east to the goldfields. I figure I can make us a good living making mining tools. The Cossacks are closer, and once I prove I can take it, they will leave you be.”
“We are not going to live with those animals. They have no law but strength and that’s not how I want Vasily growing up.”
“East to the goldfields then,” Stefan agreed. “After the harvest.”
“And we will take the looms and spinning wheels. The miners will need clothing as well as tools.”
“Are you crazy? Do you know how big a loom is?”
“No, tell me. I spent all of last winter in front of one. Do tell me how big they are. A loom may be taken apart and the parts can be stowed in a wagon, just like a blacksmith’s tools.”
Life moved on. Gradually, other villagers were brought into the plan, each one adding to the chance of discovery and making Stefan more nervous. He was still arguing for a small group. But Vera seemed to be assuming that the whole village would be coming.
“We don’t have enough wagons for the whole village,” Stefan insisted. “And if we start building wagons, everyone is going to know that something is up.”
“Well, think of something,” Vera said.
Stefan’s mouth fell open. What does she expect…? Never mind.…He knew perfectly well what Vera expected. She expected him to come up with some device or plan so that the needed wagons would just appear when needed.
She gave him a hard look. “That’s your job.”
Grumbling, Stefan went off to think of something.
Izabella failed to notice the first period she missed. Her cycle wasn’t all that consistent. She had a tendency to notice them when they happened, but was able to mostly ignore them. When she missed her second, she stopped and counted back. Her last period was over sixty days ago. And she had had no appetite in the morning for the last month and more. She didn’t want to believe it, but she was adding things up and they were working out to a baby on the way. Izabella didn’t panic.
She started thinking about how she could get out of this mess. Papa wasn’t going to be understanding. Part of the reason she had started up with Yulian was that Papa was so busy trying to figure out where he was going to sell her virginity to get the most value out of it. That, and the fact that Mama was already fucking Yulian. She paused in her thinking. That, in a way, was good news. There wasn’t much Mama could do, considering that Papa would likely just send Izabella to a convent…but he’d kill Mama. She mulled the whole matter over for a day or so, then went to talk it over with Yulian.
“Father Yulian?”
“Yes, my child?”
“You’re going to be a father.”
Father Yulian felt his eyebrows lift. Izabella had come over to relieve herself of lustful thoughts, so that she might free her mind for more spiritual matters and they had spent an enjoyable hour on that endeavor. She was lying on his bed with a blanket half over her and giving him a very straight look. This wasn’t the first time that Father Yulian had heard such news. For instance, it was fairly likely that Kiril’s daughter, Irina, was in fact his. But Irina’s mother was married, and so matters could be managed fairly straightforwardly. And Liliya, when she had realized, had quickly married young Makar, so that had worked out. But that wasn’t going to be an option in this case. Izabella was of the lower nobility and her father wasn’t a reasonable man.
“What do you want to do, Izabella? Don’t wonder what is possible for the moment. Imagine that everything is possible, and tell me what you want. We will work from there.”
“I’m not sure. I don’t think I can separate what I want from what’s possible. I want to not be pregnant, I guess.”
“That is possible, but dangerous,” Yulian said. He was reasonably well educated, having spent a couple of years at a monastery before he took up his duties here. He could read, write, and figure. He even had a fairly decent little library with no fewer than eleven books, including the Bible, of course. And for the past few years he had been reading every technical pamphlet that came out of the Gorchakov Dacha. There were pamphlets on medicine. “Some of the pamphlets discuss pregnancy and both what you need to do if you want to keep the child and what to do if you want to lose it. None of the options to lose the child are safe, not done here on our own. The techniques that are discussed in the pamphlets might work, but if something went wrong, you could bleed to death.”
Izabella shook her head. “It’s not that I am afraid, but as much as I wish I wasn’t pregnant, the idea of killing it…No, I don’t want to do that.” She thought for a minute. “I don’t know what is going to happen when I start to show, though. Father is going to want to know who the father is.”
Yulian looked at the girl. She was vain and self-centered, but beneath that, of good heart he thought. More importantly, she was smart. Surprisingly smarter than either her mother or her father. And, in a way, her situation was just as perilous as a serf’s, if rather more comfortable. Bringing her into the conspiracy was a risk, but it might well be the least risky option. Besides, if she was on their side, there were opportunities there. He wasn’t sure what those opportunities were yet, but he could smell them. “There might be another option. I will need your oath that what we discuss will not be shared with anyone. Lives are at stake.”
She nodded and he explained about the plans to escape.
“But why?” she asked.
And, for a moment, Father Yulian really wanted to hit her. “You know about the factory and that many of the men were sent to work in it over the winter. You know that it decreased the cloth that the village could make.”
At each statement she nodded, but still looked uncomprehending.
“You know that the excess cloth the village produced was traded for things like food and boots, for tools, and vegetables that the children, especially, need to grow up healthy.”
The nod came more slowly.
“Because of that factory, half the children in the village are sick or have been. And the whole village is malnourished, often hungry. We are running because your father is treating us worse than animals—like tools to be used up and thrown away.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“You chose not to.”
As she walked through the village on the way back to the house, Izabella noticed the thinness of the villagers and the slowness of their movements. She had seen the same thing yesterday, but now she noticed it and—combined with her own troubles—it started a change in the way Izabella looked at the world.
Stefan, as instructed, thought of something. “Father Yulian, can we talk?” Sunday services had just let out and for a moment Stefan thought the priest would put him off. The colonel’s daughter, Izabella, was hanging back, probably hoping for some “private instruction.”
But Yulian must have seen something in his face. “Give me just a minute, Stefan.”
He went over and said a few words to Izabella, then to the colonel’s wife, and they headed back to the big house.
“What can I do for you, Stefan?” Father Yulian waved Stefan into the priest’s cottage.
“Vera wants me to make sure there are enough wagons for the village, but if I make the parts for a bunch of wagons it will quickly become obvious…”
“I understand. But how can I help you?”
“The factory we worked in last summer used a stamp press. That’s basically a big hammer that was cranked up and then let fall. It was very efficient, and much more flexible than it might seem. What it made depended on the shape of the dies on the hammer and the anvil. In Poltz, the dies made shaped iron plates, which could then be used to make the shells for oreshki, which were sold as far away as Moscow. But the same techniques could be used to make clamps and bearings and a variety of other metal parts needed to make a wagon.”
“Excellent, Stefan. But, again, what do you need me for?”
“I’m getting there, Father, but you need to understand how this works for it to make any sense.”
Father Yulian scratched his beard, then nodded for Stefan to continue.
“If I made the parts themselves it would make our plans obvious, especially if I made several sets of bearings, say. On the other hand, having the stamp forge and the dies wouldn’t, because the dies could be used as needed over the course of years.”
Stefan continued before Father Yulian could interrupt again. “I need some reason to make the dies, Father. I need an order for the parts for a wagon, preferably two or three wagons. A farm cart, a troika, something else. I don’t know. Just enough bearings and hasps, brake pads, springs…enough so that it’s plausible that I would take the extra time to set up the dies for the drop hammer. Then, when we’re ready, I can make the parts for the rest of the wagons quickly.” For that matter, if he could manage it, Stefan wanted to take the dies when they left.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Father Yulian said.
Izabella crept into her father’s office and stole his seal. Colonel Utkin was literate, but barely, and he did as much as he could with stamps and seals. Generally, orders and legal documents were written by a clerk, or often Father Yulian, and then the colonel would pull out his stamp to make it official. The colonel’s signature was a scrawl that was omitted as often as it was included. What was necessary to make a document or instructions legally binding was the seal, and there was a spare seal in his desk.
“It’s a letter from Papa,” Izabella said, holding up the letter. “He says you’re to build a troika-harnessed carriage that has ball bearings and leaf springs.”
Stefan wiped his hands on his trousers, then took the letter. Stefan couldn’t read. At least, he wasn’t what an up-timer would consider literate. But with effort he could make out words one at a time. And by now he could interpret design drawings of the sort that were published by the Dacha. These designs were particularly clear to him because he had worked with Father Yulian in making them. He wondered how Yulian had gotten the seal, and it didn’t occur to him that Izabella might have something to do with it. He made something of a show of examining the sheets.
Then he called Anatoly from the wood shop and discussed the possibility of getting a troika made, casually mentioning that he was going to make dies for several of the metal parts.
Anatoly wasn’t thrilled, but Izabella stomped her foot. “These are my father’s orders. He says we’ll be going to Moscow after harvest and we are to have a modern carriage with springs.” She turned on Anatoly. “And it’s to be double walled for insulation. Like Czar Mikhail’s.”
They learned a fair amount from making the troika carriage. They learned to make two-walled wooden panels that were lightweight and provided excellent insulation. The wagons they had decided on were roofed and walled like a gypsy wagon. They had easier access to wood than cloth this year, but they did use strips of cloth, painted with rosin, to cover gaps. They had never heard of a prairie schooner or a Conestoga wagon. The wagons they knew were freight wagons for carrying grain or gypsy wagons for carrying people. That led to a new set of instructions from Colonel Utkin.
“…so the modules are to be made a consistent size of four feet by eight feet, double-walled with an air space of four inches. All as shown in the accompanying diagrams.”
“Why do we need to build a new barn?” complained Kiril Ivanovich, but not until the colonel’s lady was out of earshot.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.” Stefan shrugged. “But the orders are clear.”
Even Stefan didn’t know how those instructions had gotten into the pouch. He was fairly sure that they had been written by Father Yulian, but the priest hadn’t been anywhere near the packet that the messenger handed to the colonel’s daughter.
Ruzuka, Russia
June 1636
It was, Stefan had to admit, a really stupid way to build a barn. On the other hand, with the materials for the barn, it would take only a couple of weeks this fall to build a dozen wagons and run. He watched Anatoly splitting a log to make planks then handed the newly sharpened plane to Petr, Anatoly’s ten-year-old.
“Thank you, sir,” Petr said, with less than full enthusiasm. The plane blade was case hardened and sharpened on Stefan’s grinding wheel, but pushing the plane along the planks wasn’t going to be fun. Stefan knew that and sympathized with the boy, but not too much. They were all working hard. He heard a horse and turned to see a rider coming into the village. “That’s Konstantin Pavlovich, the post rider from the telegraph.”
Anatoly looked up from the log he was splitting. “That horse has been ridden hard.”
Stefan began to worry.
Elena held out the papers to Father Yulian with shaking hands and he took them with concern. The document was purportedly from Czar Mikhail, and according to it, Sheremetev was attempting a coup d’etat and had committed treason. That was a disaster for the colonel and their whole family, because the colonel was a client of the Sheremetev family. What she had barely noticed in amongst the papers was the grant of liberty to all serfs who joined the czar in the east. In fact, it—by royal decree—freed all the serfs in Russia. Not that the decree was going to hold sway here. But if they could get to the east…Elena was wringing her hands, wondering what was going to happen to the family.
Father Yulian reached out and pulled her to him, kissing her gently and murmured to her to calm down and be at peace. The world was working out to God’s plan, just as it should. It took him several minutes to get her calmed down and send her home. Then he sent for Stefan, Vera, Dominika, Anatoly, and Klara, the ringleaders of the escape plan. He also sent for Izabella.
“This doesn’t change anything,” Stefan said. “The czar is running for his life and this is just to spread chaos behind him to try and keep Sheremetev occupied while he escapes.”
“I think you’re right, as far as you go,” Anatoly said. “But so what? It will make trouble everywhere and that will make it easier for all of us.”
“But we aren’t ready, not unless you want to leave half the village behind,” Stefan was saying as the door opened and Izabella came in.
Stefan and the rest were all suddenly silent.
“Thank you for coming, my child,” Father Yulian said. “Have you read the documents?”
“No, Father Yulian,” Izabella said. “Mother started reading, then ran out of the house.”
Father Yulian passed them over, then he turned back to the group. “Please continue, Stefan. You were saying something about us not being ready to run?”
Stefan looked at the priest, then at the spoiled daughter of the colonel, then back at the priest, then over at Vera.
“So that’s how the instructions for the new barn got into the message pouch,” Vera said.
Izabella had been working through the dispatches, making slow going of it. Izabella wasn’t a reader by preference. Stefan looked over at her with surprised contemplation. In spite of the realization, he couldn’t bring himself to speak about this in front of her. For several seconds it stayed like that, Izabella struggling through the information and Stefan looking back and forth between her and the priest, with the rest of the group looking at Stefan.
“Father said that Sheremetev had taken steps to put the Dacha and Bernie Zeppi under control. I guess they didn’t work.” Izabella’s expression was half-amused, half-disgusted. “The politics have gotten weird since the czar went into seclusion. And from what we’ve heard, Sheremetev was getting everything organized just as he wanted it. Father and Nikita were both insufferably pleased with themselves, as though it was all their doing.”
“What will happen now?” Father Yulian asked.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out, and I’m not sure. A lot of Director-General Sheremetev’s power had to do with the fact that he had the czar in reserve. It’s likely that there were troubles in the duma when the news hit. I don’t know if the director-general has kept control. For all I know, he could have proclaimed himself czar by now. Or he could be out of power and another faction may be in charge. Father is with the Moscow garrison and, from his letter, he doesn’t expect to be released anytime soon. There may be fighting in Moscow between the factions.…” She stopped, her face going white. “Oh, my God. With the radios, the Poles and the Swedes already know, or they will within days. Invasion!”
The location of their village, as it happened, wasn’t quite on the direct line between Smolensk, the Polish border fort, and Moscow. Not quite. But they were considerably too close to that direct line for comfort.
“We can’t afford to panic,” Stefan said, feeling more than a little panicked just at the moment himself. “We will need wagons. We should wait, just as we planned.”
“In a month this place could be garrisoning a Polish army,” Anatoly said. “And it will be more than a month before the rye is ready for harvest.”
“What would you have us do? Try and pack the whole village on our backs?”
“If we have to,” Anatoly said. “Better than still being here, putting the finishing touches on our preparations, when the Poles arrive. Or having the colonel show up with his whip.” Anatoly had been severely beaten by the colonel’s order on his last visit.
“What about a compromise? We spend the next week getting ready as fast as we can, building wagons and loading them with everything we can carry, especially food…what there is of it. Then we go,” Father Yulian said.
“I don’t think we can build even eight wagons in a week, Father Yulian, even using the drop hammer to make the iron parts.”
“We will make what we can.”
“What about the ones who don’t want to go?” Vera asked. “As soon as we get started, everyone in the village is going to know what we’re doing.”
“We tell them the Poles are coming. Or that Father thinks the Poles are coming. Or might be coming. And he wants us to get ready to evacuate if they get too close,” suggested Izabella.
“It’s worth a try,” Stefan said.
“I’ll write the instructions, and we will insert them into the package that the colonel sent,” said Father Yulian.
For the next five days, the villagers worked like demons. Stefan’s drop hammer turned out flanges and bolt blanks and bearing facings and axe heads. The ax heads were to chop the trees to make planks for the bottoms and sides of wagons.
The “new barn” was torn down to the modules, which would be used to make wagons. The six teams of ponies were set to work dragging lumber to make construction easier.
“We don’t have enough ponies to pull the wagons,” Vera said.
“I know. But I can’t forge a pony!”
“What about one of those steam engines?”
Stefan looked at Vera, then shook his head. “I don’t know enough. You know that some of them blew up on the river? And those were the ones designed by the big brains in the Dacha.” Then he looked at her again and said, “Some of them are simply going to have to pull their wagons themselves.”
“Them? We don’t own a pony! Stefan, you’re a blacksmith, not a farmer.”
“We own one now,” Stefan said. “I traded some parts of the wagons for it. We only have the one, though, not a team. It’s going to be slow going and we will have to share them out when we’re going up hills.”
Kiril Ivanovich watched the preparations with an increasingly troubled heart. He didn’t like the idea of leaving, and the fact that the modules from the new barn just happened to be exactly the right length to make the new wagons struck him as highly suspicious. He was slowly becoming convinced that the whole thing wasn’t the colonel’s instructions at all. That fornicating priest and Stefan—who was an arrogant bastard, well above himself—were behind the whole thing. He considered going to the colonel’s lady, but that had done little good in the past. She was wholly under the priest’s sway, and Kiril didn’t think that it was because she was especially pious.
No. If he were to put a stop to this, he would have to get a message to the colonel. He knew where the radiotelegraph station was, and five days after the meeting in the priest’s house, he left the village on foot, intending to warn the colonel of dangerous goings on.
It took Dominika a few hours to realize that Kiril wasn’t where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing. Then she rushed to see Father Yulian. It took another hour to confirm that Kiril was nowhere in the village.
“Where do you think he’s gone?” Stefan asked.
“Wherever he can do us the most harm,” Yulian said. “Kiril is a man always ready with a knife for his neighbor’s back. Full of suppressed rages and desires that keep him from God.”
Time had run out. Father Yulian, Stefan, and Anatoly went to the big house to inform Elena that they were leaving to join Czar Mikhail at dawn, and she was coming with them. Although initially somewhat startled and unbelieving, thanks to her relationship with Father Yulian, she became very pleased and helpful. Her relations with her husband hadn’t been good for several years. She went into the house and brought out silver and a lot of the new paper money, which was apparently what the colonel had received for the work of his serfs at the factory in the neighboring village. Then she and Izabella started packing, as did the rest of the village. They took every wagon in the village, the new ones they had just built, and the older ones that they had used to manage the farming village and bring in the crops. They stripped the village of Ruzuka clean. Every animal that could pull a wagon, and they stripped the big house of every valuable.
They traveled well the next day, with Elena informing the headman of the neighboring village that her husband had told them to evacuate in advance of the approaching Poles. “Yes, he’s very close to Prince Sheremetev, my husband is,” Elena explained. They tried to buy extra horses, but after hearing about the evacuation, the beasts were not for sale. A bit of bad strategy that Izabella complained about the rest of the day and all that night.
For the next week and a half, they traveled without great difficulty. There was enough confusion that no one had much time to look for them and they had the letters and the colonel’s seal. They also had the colonel’s lady and daughter to act as cover for them by putting on their airs as a boyar’s retainer family. Airs that Elena never actually took off, but the villagers accepted that. She was being useful, and they were used to her acting that way, probably wouldn’t have known what to do with her if she had acted human.
Russia wasn’t like Europe. It was sparsely populated, even in the more civilized western portion around Moscow. After a few days, village headmen started sounding like they might be interested in holding them there. So, after considerable discussion, they started avoiding the villages. It made travel slower, but kept them out of conflicts. And, for that matter, it kept the colonel from knowing where they were.