whole group was listening.
‘Why wouldn’t they want that, Ivan?’
‘Because they’re mean bastards, that’s why. And because this way they’ve got us where they want us: on our back with their thumbs on our wind-pipe!’
‘They’re not that bloody mean, are they?’
‘They bloody are!’
‘I don’t reckon you ought to talk like that, Ivan,’ said someone uneasily, seeing the blue tunic and while gloves coming across the yard.
‘I’m not afraid of him!’ said Ivan.
‘No,’ said someone who evidently knew the family, ‘but you are afraid of Agafa, aren’t you, and she’ll be up your backside if she hears you’ve got yourself arrested just when she’s sick and needs you!’
‘She certainly will!’ said a deep voice behind them. It was Father Sergei.
‘And they’re quite right: you’re needed at home! So let’s be off with you!’
He bent down and with surprising strength yanked the big peasant to his feet.
‘I can’t go empty-handed!’ protested Ivan.
‘Who’s talking about going home empty-handed? You come with me to the kitchens and I’ll get Father Osip to fill up a sack for you!’
He shepherded the big man dexterously away.
‘Anyway,’ muttered one of the men as they watched them go, ‘I reckon you’re up the creek, Ivan; about them taking the Old Girl, I mean. She’d be far too fly for them. I don’t think they’ve got her at all. I reckon she’s well on her way to Opona by now.’
‘You men,’ said Volkov, ‘where do you come from?’
‘Tula,’ they said.
‘Aren’t there monasteries up there?’
‘There’s the Kaminski,’ said someone.
‘What’s wrong with the Kaminski?’ said Volkov. ‘Why aren’t you going there?’
‘Because the Old Lady is down here,’ said one of the men. ‘Or should be.’
‘She used to be up there,’ another man said. ‘But then she was brought here.’
‘Why was that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said the man. ‘It seems daft to me. Tula is where she belongs.’
‘If she was up there,’ said another man, ‘we wouldn’t be down here. We’d be going to the Kaminski.’
‘And what would you be doing with her?’ said Volkov.
‘Doing with her?’ said the man, surprised. ‘Nothing. We’d be praying to her, I suppose.’
‘It’s what she’d be doing for us,’ said someone, ‘not what we’d be doing with her.’
‘And what would she be doing for you?’
‘Putting a word in,’ said one of the men.
‘You see, Your Excellency,’ someone explained, ‘word’s not getting through at the moment. Not up in Tula, I mean. God doesn’t hear us. There’s terrible famine in the province and –’
‘The Tsar hears you,’ asserted Volkov.
His listeners seemed unconvinced.
Dmitri followed Father Sergei and Ivan to the kitchen. The way was blocked by a massive farm cart. On top of the cart was a large square behind dressed in a faded red skirt. The behind heaved and a shower of cabbages descended into a wicker-work basket that a man was holding beside the cart. They hit the basket like blocks of ice, which they almost were, having been dug out of a snow-covered heap only that morning. The woman straightened and Dmitri saw that her hands and forearms were bare.
‘Cold work. Mother,’ he said
The woman looked down.
‘Not if you keep busy,’ she said. ‘You must try it some time, young Barin!’
She roared with laughter and bent down into the cart again. Another shower of cabbages hit the basket.
‘Is that about it?’ said the man below.
He took the basket away into the kitchens and the woman climbed down on to the ground.
‘Who are you, then?’ she said to Dmitri. ‘You don’t look as if you belong here.’
‘I’m from the Court House at Kursk,’ said Dmitri.
‘Oh, you’re after the One-Legged Lady, are you? Well, you won’t find her here. She’ll be half way to Opona by now. Or else that daft old monk has got her tucked away somewhere and forgotten where he put her!’
The man came back, this time carrying a glass of tea.
‘This’ll warm you up, Grusha,’ he said.
‘It’d warm me up even more if it had a spot of something in it,’ she said.
The man laughed and took the glass away.
‘You’re in here every week, are you?’ said Dmitri.
‘That’s right.’
‘Are there many other carts coming and going?’
‘Not at this time of year. There’s Nikita Pulov bringing logs but apart from that –’ She thought, and shook her head. ‘More in the summer, of course. Sometimes you can’t get into the yard for them. Them and sleighs.’
‘Do you ever get asked to take things out?’ asked Dmitri.
The old woman looked at him shrewdly.
‘I wonder what you’re thinking of?’ she said. Then she laughed. ‘No such luck! If they’d asked me, I’d have jumped at it. You don’t get much for cabbages, you know. Not from this mean lot!’
‘Who’s a mean lot?’ said the man, returning. ‘Does that mean you don’t want this glass, then?’
The old woman grabbed it.
‘That’s better!’
‘I’d hope so. I put two spots in that, Grusha!’
‘You’re all right,’ she said. ‘It’s the fathers I’m talking about.’
‘It’s true they don’t throw their money around,’ the man acknowledged.
‘Except when it comes to tarting the place up,’ said Grusha, looking up at the onions sparkling in the sunlight.
Dmitri found Father Sergei and the big peasant in the kitchen holding a sack.
‘Bread won’t do,’ the peasant was saying. ‘It won’t last.’
‘I was thinking of grain.’
‘Will he go along with that? He is a mean old skinflint.’
‘He’ll go along with it, all right. He’s a country boy like yourself. Comes from Bushenko. He knows what grain means.’
‘Well –’
Father Sergei looked up and saw Dmitri.
‘You go on in there and ask him,’ he said, giving the peasant a push. ‘And then be on your way! Oh, and drop in at the gate-house on your way out. I’ve got a few things I’d like you to deliver. My people come from up there,’ he explained to Dmitri.
Ivan ambled out through the door.
‘Now,’ said Father Sergei, turning to Dmitri. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘Vehicles,’ said