cast a lustful eye on her soon after his wife died in childbirth and sent his guards to collect my sister and two other maidens to form the beginning of what was to become a harem of a dozen village girls.
'I shall never forget the look of terror on my sister's face as she was dragged by the arms from our home. My father and I tried to stop the guards as they were pulling her through the door. As we struggled outside the house we were felled to the ground by their cudgels. The shock of losing her daughter affected my mother so deeply that she just faded away until she looked like a bag of old bones. She was dead within two months.'
Some tears began to well up in Vladimir's eyes. Dara leaned forward and offered him her handkerchief. He sighed, overcome by the memories of the past and, after wiping his eyes, continued with his story.
A month after my mother's death, my sister was brought before His Excellency for the “sin” of allowing herself to become pregnant. She was obliged to crawl towards the man who had ruined her, kiss the hem of his coat and ask for His Excellency's forgiveness for her crime and then banished to the snowy wastes of Siberia for ten years. Transport was too much of a luxury for serfs and, along with hundreds of other serfs who had offended their masters, she had to walk the whole way to Siberia.
As more and more girls were taken to replace those that our nobleman had tired of, or who had become pregnant, there was much grumbling among the peasants and one or two foolish fathers went to the big house to protest forcibly about the loss of their daughters. For their impertinence, their naked backs were whipped into a bloody pulp and then salted. Feelings rose so high in the village that my father feared there would be an uprising and bloodshed. He had no faith in money and, over the years, had bought a considerable amount of gold and silver jewellery whenever he could afford to do so. Digging up his cache of jewellery hidden under the floorboards, he placed it all in a small wine cask and sent me off in thedroshkyto a trustworthy friend who lived in a small town forty miles south of our village. I was instructed to leave the cask with this friend and to lodge with him for at least five days before returning to the village.
'He obviously wanted me to escape the punishment that would be dealt out most harshly to all who were involved in any way with an uprising. My father had read the signs of a revolt with the instinct of a leader who is as one with his people. At dusk, two days after my departure, all the men of the village, armed with scythes and cudgels and other weapons, half of them drunk withQvass, assembled outside my father's house and demanded that he lead them up to the big house for a talk with His Excellency. They stood in sullen silence unmoved by my father's appeal for them to wait until he had had a private word with our nobleman, but they would have none of it, insisting that the Count be told that night that he could ravish no more girls from the village for from now on none would be allowed to go to the big house.
'They hustled my father before them saying, “You are ourhetman, you will speak for us.” He had no option but to lead them to the big house. In grim silence they followed, holding their smoking torches above their heads. The Count had seen their approach and, with the confident arrogance of the true aristocrat, stood at the top of the marble steps that led up to the entrance to the house. When all the serfs were assembled in front of the house, my father came forward and, with one knee resting on the bottom step, addressed the Count.“Batiushka, we ask your forgiveness for disturbing you at this hour.”
“What do you want, you filthy scum? Down on your knees, every one of you,” the Count screamed. Without a moment's hesitation they sank to the ground like dumb beasts of the field at nightfall. With a sneer on his face, he looked at them and then at my father. “Well! You stupid oaf, what have you got to say for yourself?”
' “Begging your pardon, Your Excellency, I speak not for myself but for thegromada. These unworthy serfs who kneel before you would have me inform you that they will allow no more of their daughters to be taken for your pleasure.”
'On hearing these words, the Count's features twisted into a snarl and he launched into a great tirade of abuse against his ungratefulmoujiksas they bowed their heads lower as if to escape from the heat of his rage. Rushing down the steps, he cracked his whip across my father's back and then, plunging into the crowd of bowed serfs, he scattered them like frightened sheep in all directions with his flaring whip.
'I learned all this from my father on my return. The silent, brooding log huts of the village warned me that something dreadful had happened. No one stood at the doors of theirisbasto welcome me.'
Dara interrupted Vladimir to ask what anisbaswas.
'Anisbas,'he snapped back at her impatiently, 'is a one roomed, filthy hovel that the serfs call a home.'
'And what's abatiushka?'asked Dara.
Batiushka means father, and in the case of the Count it means a father figure with absolute authority. Now let me continue. But before I do, I need some more ale,' he said, looking at me meaningfully.
I soon replenished his tankard and, after taking a swig at it, he continued with his story.
'My father told me of how, after leading the serfs back to their homes, about ten or more of them, disappointed that nothing had been achieved that evening, returned to the big house and set it alight with their torches. No lives were lost, but the house was burned to the ground. The Count called on the Military for help and, the day after I arrived back from my journey south, the soldiers came and rounded up all the men and imprisoned them under armed guard in a large barn. The Count was now living in the outbuildings while men worked frantically to rebuild his house.
'I was the first to be called out of the barn and brought before His Excellency. Abasing myself, I crawled to him, kissed his boots, and proclaimed my innocence as I had been absent from the village at the time of the uprising.'
Vladimir broke off to explain, 'I am not ashamed to admit that I abased myself to save my skin, for I knew that retribution with a vengeance was about to fall on all the heads of those who had taken part in the uprising. As it turned out, it was a retribution that was appalling even by Russian standards.
All that morning men were led out of the barn to be tortured and beaten until they confessed their guilt or informed on their neighbours and friends. I could hear their screams and shrieks of pain and I sent up a silent prayer of thanks that my father, in his great wisdom, had arranged for me to be absent at the right time. Before midday the guards had the names of the twelve men who had fired the house with their torches and wasted no time in bringing every living soul from the village to the walled courtyard of the big house. Mothers with babes in their arms, the old and the infirm, were all huddled together in family groups cowed and fearful.
'There was a large tree in the centre of the courtyard and its spreading branches were used to string up by their wrists the men who had set fire to the house. They had been stripped of their clothes and, with their toes just touching the ground, they hung from the branches writhing and trembling with fear. Their mystic father, the all powerfulBatiushka, approached them holding a half empty bottle in one hand and a glass full of wine in the other. Behind him were the guards with their whips. He filled his mouth with wine, with a disdainful gesture, signalled the guards to choose a victim for their whips. The air was rent with shrieks as the naked men twisted and turned against the knotted leather whips which cut deep into their flesh. After a time some of them passed out, unable to bear the cruel treatment any longer, but their bodies, criss-crossed with deep, bleeding cuts, continued to jerk and swing around as the whips lashed around them. They were bleeding profusely and pools of blood began to form beneath them. The Count ordered that buckets of water be thrown over their heads to revive them. Satisfied that he had got them sufficiently alive to feel pain again, he set the guards at them with their cudgels. The blows were not hard to begin with, just sufficient to raise bruises where the flesh was not already torn by the whipping. The men hung from the tree branches limp and exhausted by the cruel punishment they had undergone. Feeble little moans escaped from their lips from time to time.
'Once more, buckets of water were splashed over their heads as the Count strolled amongst them sipping his wine. He kicked at the hanging, bleeding bodies and then looked into their glazed eyes to see if there was still some life left in them and then had a quiet word with the guards, who took up their cudgels to commence their grim task again. They had obviously been told to break as many bones as they could with their heavy cudgels. As they swung the cudgels with all the strength of their arms, they sweated in their efforts to crack as many bones as possible.
'The women and children and the rest of the men who had been brought out of the barn to witness this brutal, savage massacre, stood in shocked silence as they looked at the dead, broken bodies hanging from the tree. I heard some of the women scream when they heard the bones crack under the blows of the cudgels but now there was only dumbfounded shock as they faced the bloodied, crumpled, broken bodies with gaping mouths.
'His Excellency, well satisfied with the punishment he had meted out so far, called the rest of the men to come forward and kneel before him. “Your guilt was not as great as those who fired my house but you all took part in the uprising and must be punished. My sentence is ten lashes of the whip on all of you, except yourhetman. I
