anyone steal an icon? It was a question that Dmitri had been asking himself and which he put to the Father Superior as they were walking across the yard.
‘Not for its intrinsic value,’ said the Father Superior, ‘its value strictly as an object, that is. It contains some silver, certainly, but it would hardly be worth anyone’s while separating it out.’
‘A collector, then?’
‘I don’t think a collector would be interested. It’s too big. Huge! Six feet by four. And then the workmanship is a little crude. For my taste, that is. It’s peasant work, really. I was saying as much to the Governor last night. Not that I would presume to set my taste against his. “There is that rumour that it’s by the Master of Omsk,” he said. “Yes, I know,” I said. “But really –”’
‘The Governor has quite a taste in these matters?’
‘Oh, yes. He’s got quite a good collection of his own. Nothing like Marputin’s, of course, but pretty good.’ He glanced sideways at Dmitri. ‘You know Marputin?’
‘No, I don’t think I do.’
‘Oh, I thought you might. He’s down here quite often. Especially at the moment. He is a friend of the Mitkins’. I think,’ said the Father Superior, ‘that he would like to be more.’
‘More?’
‘Yes. He has his eye on the Mitkin daughter. Of course, he’s much older than she is, but then, that doesn’t matter much, does it, when there are other considerations?’
‘What other considerations?’
‘Well, the Mitkins are a good family. Poor nobility. Noble – on the mother’s side, that is – but poor. Mitkin’s often said to me that getting the Governorship was the saving of him. Marputin, on the other hand, is the son of a serf. Pots of money but no birth at all. So it suits everybody. Except Ludmilla, of course.’
‘Ludmilla?’
‘She’s the daughter.’
The Father Superior was taking Dmitri to the Monastery gates.
They’re closed at night?’
‘Always.’
‘The problem as I see it,’ said Dmitri ‘was not so much taking the One-Legged Lady down – Father Kiril allowed for – as getting her out.’
The black smudge outside the gates had dissolved. A steady stream of pilgrims was crossing the yard and going into the main buildings. A smaller stream was heading for the Chapel: and there was another, countervailing stream going out through the gates.
‘That may well have been the way she went,’ said Dmitri.
‘You don’t think Father Sergei might have noticed,’ asked the Father Superior, ‘if someone had gone out carrying a six-feet by four-feet icon?’
‘Father Sergei?’ said Dmitri.
‘He’s in the gate-house,’ said the Father Superior.
‘Well, I don’t know why he should say that,’ said Father Sergei, surprised. ‘Other than his normal dislike of me.’
‘He spoke of another monastery.’
‘Is he still harping on that?’ Father Sergei shrugged. ‘Well it’s true I came here from somewhere else. But that was fifteen years ago. You would have thought that after all these years –’ He shrugged again. ‘But that is Father Afanesi for you!’
‘What monastery did you come from?’
‘The Kaminski. It’s near Tula.’ Father Sergei smiled. ‘Where the One-Legged Lady originally came from.’
‘Perhaps that’s something to do with it?’
‘Well, it’s true that they would like her back. It was a smart move of Father Grigori – he was Superior here at the time – to snap her up. But the Kaminski needed the money. She was paid for fair and square and, really, they’ve no cause for complaint. In any case, they’d hardly go to the length of stealing –’
The Father Superior had gone back to his room. Dmitri returned, cautiously – he had no wish to run into Father Kiril or Father Afanesi again – to the Chapel. He was looking again at the links when a carpenter came in and dumped a bag of tools down in front of the iconostasis.
‘So she has gone!’ he said, looking at the gap on the screen. ‘Well, I’m not surprised. I reckon she upped and walked away in shock.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘Because of what they were doing to her.’
‘What were they doing to her?’
‘Making money out of her. Making money left, right and centre. And I don’t reckon she liked it. I mean, it wasn’t what she was used to, was it? I mean, up in Tula it was the other way round. She was on the side of the poor, then, wasn’t she? Well, I tell you this, Barin, she’s not been on the side of the poor down here. She’s been on the side of the bleeding rich!’
‘The pilgrims don’t look very rich to me,’ said Dmitri.
‘Not the pilgrims, although some of them have got more than they let on. No, the Monastery! See, everyone who comes puts a kopeck or two into the box and if you’ve got lots and lots of people coming, in the end it adds up to lots and lots of kopecks. And it doesn’t go back to the poor, either. Do you know what it goes on? That roof. Now, I’m all for a lick of paint. I think it freshens things up; but the amount that’s gone on that roof! And you don’t have to go all the way to Tula, either, to find people who could have done with some of that.’
The bottom of the Icon had rested on a thick ledge which at one end had come away from the iconostasis.
‘Now there was no need to do that, was there?’ grumbled the carpenter. ‘They could have just lifted her down.’
He knelt down and began working.
‘I can do it,’ he said. ‘There’s no problem about that. But what it needs is a proper base. If I’ve told them that once, I’ve told them a thousand times. But will they do anything about it? No, not they!’
He sat back on his heels and looked up at Dmitri.
‘Mean as flint, they are. Do you know what Nikita Pulov was telling me the other day?’
‘Who’s Nikita Pulov?’
‘He’s the carter. Comes in twice a week. Would come in more often if they’d have him. Well, do you know what he was saying? He was saying that the other day when he was here, his horse drops a turd, and the next moment one of the fathers is out there with his shovel. ‘I want that for my garden,’ he says. ‘Your garden’s four feet deep in snow!’ says Nikita. It’ll melt, won’t it?’ says the father. I tell you they’re after the dung even before the horse shits it!’
‘Yes, well, –’ said Dmitri.
‘Do you know what I reckon has happened to the Icon?’
‘No?’
‘I reckon they’ve sold it.’
‘Sold it!’
‘Yes. To fetch a rouble or two. For the Monastery.’
‘But I thought you said it was making them a lot of money?’
‘Yes, but she’s been here a long time. There comes a time when you want something fresh. Now, what I reckon is that they’ve sold her and very soon they’ll start saying: “Oh dear, the Old Lady’s gone for good. We’ll have to start looking around for something to go in her place.” And all the time they’ll have had their eye on something else, another icon maybe, or perhaps a holy relic, and they’ll get it and put it in here, and the pilgrims will start flocking, and they’ll say, “Ah, well,