Peter the Great - Alexey Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Book OneChapter One
1
Sanka jumped off the stove and hit the jammed door with her back. Yashka, Gavrilka and Artamoshka quickly climbed down behind Sanka: suddenly everyone was thirsty, and they jumped into the dark entryway following a cloud of steam and smoke from the sour hut. A slightly bluish light shone through the window through the snow. Studeno. A tub of water became iced over, and a wooden ladle became iced over.
The children were jumping from foot to foot - everyone was barefoot, Sanka had a scarf tied around her head, Gavrilka and Artamoshka were wearing only shirts, up to their navels.
- The door, the catechumens! - the mother shouted from the hut.
Mother stood by the stove. The torches on the pole lit up brightly. The mother's wrinkled face lit up with fire. Most terribly of all, from under the torn cloth, the tear-stained eyes flashed, like on an icon. For some reason Sanka got scared and slammed the door with all her might. Then she scooped up the fragrant water, took a sip, bit into an ice cube and gave it to her brothers to drink. She whispered:
- Are you cold? Otherwise, we’ll run into the yard and see – Dad is harnessing the horse...
Outside, my father was harnessing the sleigh. A quiet snow was falling, the sky was snowy, jackdaws were sitting on the high tyne, and it was not as cold here as in the entryway. On the bat, Ivan Artemich - that’s what his mother called him, and people and he himself in public - Ivashka, nicknamed Brovkin - a high cap pulled down over his angry eyebrows. The red beard was not combed from the very cover... The mittens stuck out behind the bosom of the homespun caftan, belted with a low bast, the bast shoes squealed angrily in the dung snow: the father had trouble with the harness... The harness was rotten, only knots. Out of frustration, he shouted at the black horse, the same as his father, short-legged, with a swollen belly:
- Pamper, unclean spirit!
The children relieved themselves at the porch and huddled on the icy threshold, although the frost was biting. Artamoshka, the smallest one, barely said:
- Never mind, we’ll warm up on the stove...
Ivan Artemich harnessed and began to water the horse from the tub. The horse drank for a long time, puffing out his shaggy sides: “Well, feed him from hand to mouth, I’ll drink plenty”... Dad put on his mittens and took a whip from the sleigh, from under the straw.
- Run to the hut, I’ll get you! - he shouted to the children. He fell sideways onto the sleigh and, rolling outside the gate, trotted past tall spruce trees covered with snow to the estate of the son of the nobleman Volkov.
“Oh, it’s cold, bitterly cold,” said Sanka.
The children rushed into the dark hut, climbed onto the stove, chattering their teeth. Warm, dry smoke curled under the black ceiling and escaped through the little window above the door: the hut was heated in black. Mother was making dough. The yard was still prosperous - a horse, a cow, four chickens. They said about Ivashka Brovkin: strong. The embers of the torch fell from the light into the water, hissing. Sanka pulled a sheepskin coat over herself and her brothers, and under the sheepskin coat she again began to whisper about various passions: about those, never mind, who rustle underground at night...
- Just now, my eyes burst out, I got scared... There is rubbish at the threshold, and on the rubbish there is a broom... I look from the stove - the power of the cross is with us! From under the broom - shaggy, with a cat's mustache...
“Oh, oh, oh,” the little ones were afraid under the sheepskin coat.
2
The slightly beaten path led through the forest. Centuries-old pines covered the sky. Windbreaks and thickets are difficult places. The year before last, Vasily, the son of Volkov, was seized from this land by his father, a Moscow serving nobleman. The local order imposed four hundred and fifty dessiatines on Vasily, and thirty-seven souls and families were assigned to them as peasants.
Vasily set up an estate, but he wasted money; half of the land had to be mortgaged to the monastery. The monks gave me money at a high rate - twenty kopecks per ruble. But according to the layout, it was necessary to be in the sovereign service on a good horse, in armor, with a saber, with a arquebus, and to lead with him warriors, three men, on horses, in tegileys, in sabers, in saadaks... I barely raised it with monastic money He's such a weapon. How about living on your own? How about feeding the servants? What about the increase in pay to the monks?
The royal treasury knows no mercy. Every year there is a new order, new money - feed, travel, tribute and quitrents. Will you lose too much? And everyone asks the landowner why he is so lazy to extract rent. But you can’t take more than one skin off a man. The state under the late Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich was exhausted from wars, from unrest and riots. As the anathema thief Stenka Razin walked the earth, the peasants forgot God. If you press a little tighter, they bare their teeth like a wolf. Out of hardship they flee to the Don, where they can’t be obtained with either a letter or a saber.
The horse trudged along at a road trot and was completely covered with frost. The branches touched the arc and sprinkled snow dust. Clinging to the trunks, fluffy-tailed squirrels looked at the passerby - this squirrel was dying in the forests. Ivan Artemich lay in the sleigh and thought - the peasant had only one thing to do: think...
“Well, okay... Give me this, give me that... Pay this, pay that... But - a breakthrough - such a state! -Will you feed it? We don’t run away from work, we endure. And in Moscow, the boyars began to ride in golden carts. Give it to him for the cart, the well-fed devil. Well, okay... You force it, take what you need, but don’t be mischievous... And this, guys, is to tear two skins - mischief. The sovereign's people are now divorced - spit, and there is a clerk, or a clerk, or a kisser, sitting, writing... And there is only one man... Oh, guys, I'd better run away, the beast will break me in the forest, death is sooner than this mischief... So you'll be with us for a long time don't feed yourself..."
Ivashka Brovkin thought, maybe so, maybe not so. A Gypsy (by his nickname), a Volkovsky peasant, a black, gray-haired man, rode out of the forest onto the road, kneeling in a sleigh. For fifteen years he was on the run, wandering around the yard. But a decree was issued: to return all fugitives to the landowners without a statute of limitations. The gypsy was taken near Voronezh, where he was a peasant, and returned to Volkov Sr. He was about to sharpen his bast shoes again - they caught him, and they ordered Gypsy to be beaten with a whip without mercy and kept in prison - on Volkov's estate - and when the skin healed, he was taken out, in another row they were to beat him with a whip without mercy and again throw him into prison, so that he, the rogue, the thief, would not be allowed to run around in the future. The only way the gypsy got out was that he was sent to Vasilyev’s dacha.
“Great,” said the Gypsy to Ivan and got into his sleigh.
- Great.
- Can not hear anything?
– It’s as if we haven’t heard anything good...
The gypsy took off his mitten, unfolded his mustache and beard, hiding his slyness:
– I met a man in the forest: the king, he said, was dying.
Ivan Artemich stood up in the sleigh. It’s creepy... “Whoa”... He pulled off his cap and crossed himself:
-Who will they say is king now?
“Apart from that,” he says, there is no one like the boy, Pyotr Alekseevich. And he barely dropped a tit...
- Well, boy! – Ivan pulled his cap down, his eyes turned white. - Well, guy... Now wait for the boyar kingdom. We'll all fall apart...
– We’ll disappear, or maybe nothing – that’s it. – The gypsy stuck his head in close. Winked. - This man said - there will be turmoil... Maybe we’ll live a little longer, chew bread, tea - we’ll be experienced. - The gypsy bared his lesh teeth and laughed, coughing for the whole forest to hear.
