FIFTY-TWO.
The Lady of the Volga
19 October 1642 – 12 July 1646
It was on the march to Džuketau that Elisei Anatoľevich Gorčakov,
boyar of Ryazan, encountered Damira Abouzarova. It was a fateful meeting—one that was to shape the entire course of Russian history.
Elisei was crossing his troops at the Great River Volga near the town of Saratau, which the Ruthenians had established some decades earlier as a means of establishing both their economic and military predominance in the Volga valley—against both Byzantium to the south and Garderike to the north. The residents of the area, however, were still very much so a mixture of Bolghar Muslims and Christian Ruthenians.
The Volga is shallow at that crossing, with many small islands and sandbars dotting the river between the left and right banks. It was on one of the nearer islets that Elisei first caught a glimpse of a strange, pale shape half-submerged in the water among the sedges and mallows. Thinking that it might be a dead river-animal of some sort, Elisei dismounted and waded into the shallows to get a closer look at it.
However, the pathetic outline of a slender young girl soon suggested itself to him, seemingly drowned. With her hair as wet and as dirty with river-weeds and such as it was, there was no way to tell its original colour. But the face of the girl was young, unblemished, and fair indeed to look on. Elisei crossed himself and moved toward her—whoever she was, Musulman or Christian, she deserved better than to be left exposed to the elements on a riverbank like this.
She was petite and light—almost fey in her proportions. Elisei lifted her easily over his shoulder, and again sloshed his way across to the solid mainland right bank with her. But he very nearly slipped and fell into the Volga himself when he felt a bubbling cough erupt from her, and felt her dislodge some of the water in her windpipe across his back.
‘Get a tent up!’ Elisei called to his men when he’d regained his senses. ‘And get a fire going! And for the love of God find me a clean, dry set of clothes!’
~~~
The half-drowned waif recovered under Elisei’s care, as his unit stood for the next few days on the Volga’s right bank. As her hair dried, Elisei took note that it was in fact a very attractive oaken-brown. His physician managed to get most of the water out of her lungs, and then prescribed that some cleaner sample of the same stuff be gotten down her throat the correct way. What was death in the windpipe might prove a harbinger of life within the gullet.
She drank. And then she stirred.
It quickly became clear from her reaction, finding herself newly awakened among strangers, which side of the religious divide she was on. As she opened her eyes and found herself staring at a bunch of fair-bearded Rus’ men around her, she very quickly cast about for something to cover her head and face with, and withdrew herself into a corner as far as she dared.
‘What is your name?’ asked Elisei gently.
The girl shook her head. It was unclear if she didn’t understand, or if she was too frightened to answer.
‘I am Elisei,’ the Rus’
boyar spoke to her—as one might to a small frightened bird or squirrel. ‘Who are you?’
‘D—Damira,’ the girl stammered.
‘You are Bolghar?’ asked the
boyar.
The girl merely stared at him reproachfully.
‘Well. We’ll keep you here long enough to recover your strength, but after that you will be free to return home,’ said Elisei. ‘You are neither prisoner nor slave here, and you need fear nothing from me.’
‘N—no!’ cried Damira, in broken Slavic. ‘P—pl—
please no send home! I’s run! I’s run away!’
‘You’re running away?’ Elisei asked her gently.
Damira was clearly wrestling with herself, how far to trust this stranger whom she didn’t know at all. It took great effort and concentration even to collect her thoughts. But Elisei was patient, and gentle, and did not press her in any way. Eventually the story came tumbling out of her, and her Slavic became more fluent with her renewed wakefulness.
‘I am Damira, daughter of Abouzar. I am Bolghar. My uncles want me to marry. But I do not like the man they chose—he is cruel and wicked, a robber. I would either marry, or I would be killed for honour. I chose neither. I sought out the river. Better I should drown, than disgrace myself and my father!’
‘Is there no other way? No recourse you might take with your father?’
‘My father trades,’ Damira muttered. ‘He is upriver now, with the Swedes. My uncles rule me, while he is gone.’
Elisei examined Damira carefully. Of long and bitter experience, he had little reason to trust the Bolghars—but then, he’d rarely encountered their womenfolk before. The fair girl with the oaken-brown hair had deep, soulful brown eyes, and a certain shy, retiring dignity that he couldn’t help but respect.
‘We shall stay here a few days longer,’ he told her, ‘before we must march on Džuketau. If you wish it, I can speak with your uncles on your behalf… or bring you along with us.’
Perhaps it was bound to happen sooner or later. But Damira was a very pretty girl, in addition to being sweet and modest and high-minded. And Elisei, a bachelor
boyar of means and power among the Rus’, was also kind and gentle and patient—everything a man ought to be to a woman. Wariness yielded to respect, and respect to liking, and liking to still tenderer emotions of the heart. It was very little surprise to his men, when the
boyar Elisei brought Damira Abouzarova before the unit chaplain and asked him to bind them together in matrimony—thus solving her dilemma. Damira Abouzarova additionally agreed to undergo baptism into the One, Holy,
Sobornyi and Apostolic Orthodox Church, for the love of a husband who had done her such good turns.
And by the time the main bulk of the Great Rus’ Army showed up under the command of Ivan Ogloblin, Damira was already pregnant with Elisei’s child.
The Moravians, too—redoubtable Orthodox brothers ever of the Ruthenian people—had shown up in force in this campaign against the Muslim Tatars of Džuketau, who were allied with the Bashkirs and with the Uzbeks of Gurgânj. Ogloblin engaged the Bashkirs near the town of Balakovo on the left bank of the Volga; while the Moravians under the command of Totil z Husi engaged the Uzbeks at Penza.
Totil utterly trounced the Uzbeks, and sent them fleeing back over the border into Garderike. Taking advantage of the opportunity provided him, the typically-bold Totil made a beeline across the old Bolghar lands to take Džuketau directly from the west, instead of through Ruthenian-held territory. Unfortunately, the Ruthenians did not fare as well on that southward route. The Prussian general Butvydas von Buxhövden, who served as a Baltic mercenary for Černigov, was caught at Yaik with an inferior force composed mostly of cavalry, and confronted with a Bashkir force nearly twice his size under the Bashkir
Tarkhan Rateg 3. He was forced to beat a hasty retreat back across the Volga.
As usual, the more conservative Wojen 2. Rychnovský of Drježdźany took up the rearguard, and committed himself to the far less glamourous task of re-establishing Ruthenian control over the Volga’s right bank. Wojen quickly joined up with Butvydas von Buxhövden and the unit from Ryazan under Elisei Gorčakov.
The Sorbian
wójwoda was charmed to see the
boyar of Ryazan together with his Bolghar bride; a very pretty picture the two of them made! Hand-in-hand, decorous, trusting and sweet with each other—and she over twice as big around at the abdomen with the fruit of their love, as she would have been otherwise!
‘When are you due?’ Wojen Rychnovský asked Damira.
‘Less than a month hence, God willing,’ Damira answered demurely, laying her thoughtful free hand over her enormous belly, ‘will my lord have an heir.’
Elisei squeezed her other hand. ‘I’ll find you a safe, clean place to deliver—away from all this warlike nonsense.’
‘Not if it will hinder you. You have your duty,’ Damira Abouzarova assured her husband. ‘I know what you owe to your people and to your
Knyaz’, and you won’t give them of anything less than your best. I wouldn’t have you be any other way.’
Wojen grinned. Seeing Elisei and Damira together like this, reminded him strongly of himself and Anetka when they were younger, and brought back reminiscences of her Regency with him, when together they were responsible for administering justice for a long swathe of (at that time) disconnected Sorbian lands. Shared duty—and with it mutual respect, trust, affection, desire… The Rus’
boyar and his Bolghar wife were almost a bit
too adorable in that sense, but Wojen still wished them well with all his heart.
‘
Ej, Wojen—’ Elisei Gorčakov motioned to the Sorbian lord, ‘
Slovo na uho. The Rychnovských in Sorbia… are they loyal to the current king of Moravia?’
‘As loyal to ours, I trust, as you are to yours.’ Wojen found himself having sudden pricks of misgiving.
‘As it should be, as it should be,’ Elisei nodded emphatically. His searching blue eyes reached into Wojen’s dark ones. ‘I give these cautions into your ear alone among the Moravians, because I understand your loyalty. You are a Rychnovský: the same as our
Veliky Knyaz’ Vseslav the Sixth. You will not betray him, anymore than you would betray your king.’
‘What is this about?’ asked Wojen warily.
‘This is about the brotherhood of the Orthodox Slavic peoples,’ Elisei told him firmly, ‘and the dangers to that brotherhood! Listen. Vseslav believes in the Moravian-Ruthenian alliance. It is written in him as deep as blood, as deep as faith. Yet his daughter, Dobroslava… have you met her?’
‘I’m afraid I haven’t yet met cousin Dobroslava.’
‘For that, give thanks to God! She is, I fear, a vain, fickle and pampered creature… and an unwise one,’ Elisei shook his head grimly. ‘It grieves me to say this as a
boyar. But I fear this comes of her living in Kiev, with both its splendid glories and its worldly corruptions. In her mind, the crown of Moravia belongs on her head; and not upon the head of some upstart army captain of paltry birth.’
‘That is… not an uncommon sentiment among our kin,’ Wojen ventured.
‘
Pravda, pravda,’ Elisei waved an impatient hand, ‘but you have both the wisdom and the righteousness not to act on such vainglorious thoughts! Dobroslava knows no such restraint, but wags her tongue freely. It is a shame to her father. He and
Knyaginya Angelina have been trying like mad for a son, but sadly her womb bears only girl-fruit.’
‘Why are you telling me all of this?’ asked Wojen Rychnovský.
‘
Kto predosterežjon, tot vooružjon,’ Elisei Gorčakov tapped the side of his nose. ‘The better you know, the better you can prepare. Speaking for myself, I will stand always behind my
Knyaz’. But let’s see to it now that we don’t end up on opposing sides.’
Džuketau itself fell to Husi’s armies on the eighteenth of September, 1643.
From there, Husi divided his men and swept southward into Buzuluk and eastward into the Tatar tribe of Belebej. There was little by way of resistance, and the Ruthenians soon came to terms with the Tatars of Belebej—peace in exchange for tribute.
On the home front, from the mines of Moravia, there came both good news and bad. The good news was: a massive deposit of gold was found beneath the Veselý vrch in central Bohemia—one large enough to keep the treasury of the state in liquidity for decades. The bad news: the veins of tin and iron ores that had been surveyed beneath Jáchymov and Horní Blatná in the Ore Mountains had been tapped out, and the new veins that were being explored there were of markedly lower quality. Equipping new military units became subsequently more expensive.
Nonetheless, Husi pushed further and further forward with the resources and men he had. Moving past Belebej, he attacked the Bashkir horde at Ufa, and laid siege to their main camp. The siege lasted over two hundred days, but he eventually forced the Bashkirs to parley.
In the camp at Balakovo, on the left bank of the Volga, Damira Abouzarova gave birth to a son. The thin tuft of hair on the baby’s head was brown, like his mother’s; but his eyes were blue, like his father’s. He did not cry out or have tantrums, having inherited the mild disposition of his mother. Being a November child, he was christened Ivan Eliseevič, under the patronage of St John Chrysostom.
The Moravian Army managed to adopt some significant tactical advantages as they advanced the line into Gurganj. The high steppes, with their sparse dry gullies, made some adjustments to field tactics necessary. Combat on the steppes was a matter of mobility and flexibility, though enemy manoeuvres could be seen literally miles away. Moravian artillery commanders responded by going for range and mobility over depth. The resulting flexibility made it easier for the Moravians to herd the Uzbeks into directed crossfires for greater killing effect.
Totil z Husi’s advance toward Gurganj, however, was a slow and grinding one. Totil hadn’t quite put behind him his youthful exuberance and his preference for the decisive engagement, the grand gesture. But—as the war for Pest hadn’t quite yet managed to teach him—decisive battles don’t exist, and grand gestures don’t win wars.
The Uzbeks did put up a valiant resistance to the Moravian-Ruthenian incursion, costing them nearly two years of advance time. That was enough time for the Galicians to begin working against Moravia on the homefront. Discontent with the government of Mojmír 2. was still, unfortunately, not that hard to drum up. Mojmír had managed to wrong-foot both the Church and the high nobles of late, and this created an atmosphere where dissatisfaction with recent policy choices could grow unchecked. In the end, Mojmír was forced to capitulate to some of the conservative faction’s demands in order that his rule should continue easily in the absence of his armies.
After the fall of the Uzbek camps along the Torģai River, a long and drawn-out process that involved hit-and-run engagements along the silver snake’s entire meandering length through the steppes, Gurganj finally came to terms. Once Gurganj had made peace with Ruthenia, it was all over for Džuketau. That town, along with the Tatar settlements south, were incorporated as a client-state of Ruthenia.
When the campaign was over, it did indeed come as something of a surprise, when the
boyar of Ryazan showed up in his town with a
svelte young Bolghar bride, and their healthy brown-haired toddler with them. The townsfolk of Ryazan wished the new family well, though. As yet, none of them had any inkling of the fateful destiny that was to await Ivan Eliseevič Gorčakov.