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Title: The Monastery of Petschenga : Sketches of Russian Lapland
Author: Friis, J. A. (Jens Andreas)
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Monastery of Petschenga : Sketches of Russian Lapland" ***
THE
MONASTERY OF PETSCHENGA.
SKETCHES OF RUSSIAN LAPLAND.
(FROM HISTORICAL AND LEGENDARY SOURCES.)
BY
J. A. FRIIS,
Professor in the University of Christiania.
Translated by Hill Repp.
LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1896.
TO THE PAST AND PRESENT MEMBERS
OF THE
FAMILY OF CARR ELLISON,
OF HEDGELEY, IN THE COUNTY OF NORTHUMBERLAND,
THE FRIENDS AND BENEFACTORS OF MY LATE PARENTS,
AND OF THEIR CHILDREN,
THIS TRANSLATION IS LOVINGLY
AND GRATEFULLY
DEDICATED.
NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.
To Professor Friis, of Christiania, who very kindly gave me permission
to publish a translation of this book, and to T. M. Fallow, Esq., M.A.,
of Coatham House, Coatham, who has assisted me in the translation, I
offer my sincere thanks.
HILL REPP.
Redcar,
April, 1896.
AUTHORITIES.
A letter, dated Vardö, August 7, 1590, preserved among the State
Archives of Norway; Büschings Magazine, Halle, 1773; Opisanie
Archangelskoi Gubernii, by S. Kosma Moltscanoff, St. Petersburg, 1813;
the periodical Suomi for 1843–1848; Opisanie Archangelskoi Gubernii, by
Poschman, Archangel, 1866; Ruskii Wiestnik, Siderof, 1866; Sapiski dljä
Stenia, Tschubinski, St. Petersburg, 1867; Murmanskii i Terskii Berega,
E. Ogorodnikoff, St. Petersburg, 1869; Novoje Wremja, December 10,
1883.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE MILLSTONE 1
II. TRIFON, THE FOUNDER OF THE MONASTERY 10
III. THE MONASTERY AND ITS INDUSTRIES 20
IV. THE MONK AMBROSE AND THE PIRATE ANIKA 29
V. JUSSI AND UNNAS 40
VI. THEODORE AND ANNITA 48
VII. THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MONASTERY ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1589 71
VIII. REUNION 81
PETSCHENGA MONASTERY.
CHAPTER I.
THE MILLSTONE.
Come with me, and let us take a trip far away to the North Country, to
the coast of the White Sea, to the land of the midnight sun, to the
shores of Russian Lapland. There is very much in those parts that is
still quite unknown. The district to which we journey has never yet
been described, nor has it even been explored. The fisherman has not
visited it. The rivers, with their flowing streams, and their beautiful
pools swirling beneath the waterfalls, remain in their virgin purity,
and have never been whipped by the salmon-fisher. No one has pulled a
line or trawled a net across the lakes, nor has anyone passed to and
fro over them, dragging that miserable implement which is known as an
oter. [1]
No sportsman has been to these parts. The hares skip about, and are as
tame as if they were in the Garden of Eden. The hills and dales have
never echoed to the hare-hunters’ halloo, to the baying of hounds in
full cry to the sound of a gun, or to the death-shriek of the quarry.
The last time I was in this district of Lapland I was sitting, at
eleven o’clock one evening, in beautiful sunlight, outside the door of
a Lapp who lived on the banks of a river which we shall very soon reach
in our journeyings. Suddenly, I observed on the other side of the
river, on a sunny knoll where the herbage springs up early in the
season, five or six dark-coloured animals skipping about. I thought
they were sheep, and I asked the Lapp whether they were his sheep.
‘A sheep,’ said the Lapp; ‘that isn’t a sheep, it is a jenesiä; that is
to say, a hare.’
‘Well,’ I thought, ‘what a scrimmage, what an awful scrimmage there
would be if one were suddenly to let loose in this place a couple of
spirited Christiania harriers!’ At any time of the year, hares are to
be found in almost incredible numbers, and at eleven o’clock at night,
when all is calm and quiet, and the sun is still above the horizon,
they may be seen coming out of their hiding-places, and feeding and
playing about.
Ptarmigan and snipe are also found in great numbers, but none of them
know what a setter or a pointer is like. Not one of them has ever seen
a dog come snuffing and sneaking along, and then suddenly stand
stock-still, as if turned to stone, ready to make a desperate spring.
Too much ink has not been wasted in describing the people who dwell in
this region, and their surroundings. And yet it is a country which has
a remarkable history. It was quite by accident that I was led to make
inquiry about it, and the reader will be able to gather from the
narrative that follows the result of my studies.
First of all, we will make for Finmark, but when we arrive at
Hammerfest we must not forget to apply to the Russian Consul for a
passport, as we then shall be within the territory of the great Russian
Empire. If any of our party can speak a little Russian, it will be sure
to come in useful, as nearly all Russian Lapps can speak that language
after a fashion. From Vadsö we will travel by one of the small fjord
steamboats across to Elvenaes in South Varanger. Perhaps we may be
lucky enough on our way to see a whaler give chase to a whale, and
harpoon one of those monsters.
From South Varanger we can go by foot to our destination, across a
tract of country extending for three or four miles, or we can go by
sea. I propose the latter plan. In a good eight-oared boat we can (we
are three in number—sportsman, fisherman, and botanist) take with us
all that we shall need: tents, bed-clothes, meat and drink, as well as
hunting and fishing tackle. We can sail or row according to the state
of the weather. If we wish to do so, we can, as we go, fish for huge
cod and wonderful haddocks, which bite very differently from the small
fish which are taken in the Christiania fjord. The bait which we shall
need is not an artificial fly from Christiania, but something as thick
and solid as the line itself which is used there. If we have a fair
wind, and do not want to be delayed by fishing, or by shooting
sea-fowl, we can reach our destination in about four-and-twenty hours.
We shall sail past a projecting promontory or peninsula called
Normanssaet, where there was formerly a colony of Norwegians. Then we
must turn to the south, up a small fjord which is called in Russian
Petschenga, but in Norwegian Munkfjord. The latter designation can
scarcely fail to attract attention, but the visitor looks in vain for
the slightest sign or trace of monks or of monasteries. The banks of
the fjord are very lovely; there are undulating ridges of ground
clothed with birch, but the banks are in other parts wild and desolate.
Not an individual is to be seen anywhere. No smoke rises from a single
hearth to point out the dwelling of man. A short way up the fjord, on
the east side, there is an inlet which is rather narrow where it enters
the fjord, but wide, deep, and broad inside, and this inlet affords the
chief harbour for vessels, as it is never blocked by ice. This harbour
is called the Warehouse Inlet, a name which suggests former
inhabitants, but there are no more indications of warehouses now than
there were of monks in Munkfjord.
On the tour of which some details are now given, after passing a small
river known as Trifon’s River (a name pointing to events which occurred
long ago), we reached the head of the fjord where the Petschenga River
discharges itself. Here, at a place called Barken, a few Lapps live.
From these people we each hired a boat of the kind that is now in use
in Finmark. They are long and narrow, almost exactly like those which
are used on the Hallingdal River. The same kind of river has produced
the same type of boat. We transferred our luggage to these river-boats,
and arranged it in the centre, so that, according to our inclination,
we could either sit or lie down in the boats. Then we set off, with a
couple of men in each boat, one in the bow and the other at the stern,
each furnished with a long pole. The boats glided on as the boatmen,
encouraged by us, pushed along the banks of the river, competing with
one another. The banks are covered on both sides with beautiful
white-stemmed birch trees. Here and there a solitary fir is to be seen,
which looks almost black by contrast with the bright green birch
leaves. Further toward the south the firs are more plentiful, and quite
in the distance dense pine-woods appear. The fact is, that the river
rises in the south, and in travelling up it we take a southerly
direction.
A quarter of a mile up the river we reached such a lovely spot that we
decided at once to disembark, and pitch our tents for the night. There
is a level plot of ground a few feet above the river-bed, and it is as
smooth and as flat as a parlour floor, so that it must have been made
at some period by the river itself. Here and there are clumps of trees
that are a hundred years old, birch, aspen, and mountain-ash; and in
the open spaces between the clumps a luxuriant herbage is growing. It
looks as if somebody, a long time ago, had laid out plantations here.
From this level piece of land there is a view across the river, which
flows still and deep just below, and there is another view over the
fjord towards the north, while very far to the south-east, mountains
with the snow upon them can be seen. A more lovely spot for a dwelling
could scarcely be found anywhere, even in Norwegian Finmark.
For about an hour we were busily occupied in pitching our tents,
strewing thin fragrant birch twigs on the ground, spreading
reindeer-skins over the twigs, and arranging our baggage according to
each one’s taste, and idea of order. When all was finished we paid
calls on each other, and discussed the question, what should we have
for supper, or, to speak more correctly, for dinner; for in those parts
one is often at dinner when it is midnight in Southern lands.
‘Fresh salmon,’ said the sportsman.
‘And young ptarmigan,’ said the botanist.
‘And cloudberries for dessert,’ said the fisherman.
‘Do salmon come up the river as far as this?’ I asked of one of the
boatmen.
‘Salmon indeed!’ he replied, ‘why, I should think so; they come up
here, and many miles further to the Harefos, then they can’t get
further, and are packed like herrings in a barrel.’
Out, then, with salmon rod, reel, line, and gaff, and so into the boat
once more. It is just eight o’clock in the evening, and this is not too
late for a bite, before the fish are away to rest for the night. The
sportsman at the same time took his gun, and sallied forth with Pan,
the dog. I put a bright spoon on the line, and got the Lapp to row off
with a single stroke, so as to row ‘poiki, poiki,’ backwards and
forwards, across the stream. It was not necessary to work very long.
The third time of crossing, the line ran buzzing violently off the
reel.
‘Lohi on, lohi on! That’s a salmon, that’s a salmon!’ shouted the Lapp.
‘Yes, yes,’ said I; ‘but surely you aren’t afraid of a salmon? Why, a
salmon is what we want for dinner!’
At that very moment the salmon took a vigorous leap of three feet into
the air, so that the evening sun glittered on its shining silvery
scales, and it fell again with a splash.
‘Iso on! It is a big one!’ said the Lapp.
‘Yes, it’s an eighteen-pounder,’ I replied. ‘I have taken so many of
them with the line that I am not far wrong, if I can only see the fish
once.’
Another leap into the air, and it became so tractable that we were able
to row with it towards our encampment. There I landed, and soon had it
close to the shore; then, with a final effort, it was off again into
the middle and deepest part of the river. It was, however, quite
powerless to rise, and lay flat on its side. The line was quickly wound
in, and the fish guided to the shore through deep water, when the Lapp
plunged the spear into it. It was ours, and weighed eighteen and a half
pounds. So we had enough fish for ourselves and for the men.
As if by a preconcerted arrangement, at the very same moment a double
report was heard, one shot immediately after the other, from a bleak
spot a little distance off. The sportsman had come upon some ptarmigan.
He is a crack shot, as the two reports following each other so quickly
showed. Immediately afterwards two more shots were heard. Clearly we
had got three young birds at least, one for each of us.
‘But how about the cloudberries?’ I remarked to the botanist, who was
standing and gazing at the salmon.
‘Oh, I have sent a Lapp to pick them,’ he replied; ‘he knows better
than I do where to find them.’
While we were cutting up the salmon the sportsman and Pan returned. The
latter seemed quite crestfallen at the expedition having proved such a
short one.
‘How many reports did you hear?’ the sportsman inquired.
‘Four,’ we replied.
‘Just so: two double ones,’ he said. ‘I have only shot four young
birds; they are, however, enough for us to-day.’
The botanist was with one voice condemned to pluck the ptarmigan, as he
had been too lazy to pick the cloudberries. He went away with the
birds, but, shameful to say, when he came back he had skinned them
instead of plucking them. What barbarism! A fire was lighted, and a
couple of pots were set over it. There was plenty of fuel, and we had
an excellent kitchen. The smoke soon began to curl in the air, and
protected us from the mosquitoes, so that we were able to take the
veils off our faces.
After having regaled ourselves with a capital meal, some of the party
retired to rest. The Lapps laid themselves down on the ground under a
birch-tree. They needed no tent. They drew themselves up, head, legs,
and arms, within their coarse-woven garments, and had by this means
both over and under clothing, as well as a protection from mosquitoes.
Only an old Lapp, Nilas, and I remained sitting at the fire chatting,
and smoking our clay pipes over a glass of grog. The nectar of life
excited the Lapp; he became communicative, and I began to question him
as to whether he knew anything about what had occurred in those parts
in former times. I could see that there must have been people living in
the district at some period. The grassy mounds were in places so
regular, and of so remarkable a shape, besides being so neatly formed,
that they must originally have been the work of man.
‘Have you seen the big wonderful stone that is lying close to the
Kujasuga River?’ asked the Lapp.
‘No,’ I said; ‘I have never been here before, and I have neither seen
nor heard of any stone. But let us go and look at it.’
Two thousand feet or so behind our encampment a small rivulet emptied
itself into the river; it was as bright and clear as crystal. Probably
it was not flowing far from its source, or it would not have been so
free from mud, and so wonderfully clear and cold. Just below a little
waterfall which the rivulet forms, a huge round stone was lying. At
first I thought it might be an old idol which the Lapps formerly
worshipped, but in this I was mistaken. When I got down close to it,
and had cleared it of the branches and rubbish which covered it, I saw
to my amazement that it was—a Millstone. There was no possible mistake
about it. It was a real millstone, and so big that I doubt whether, at
the present day, a bigger one could be found in any water or wind mill.
The hole in the centre was so large that I could easily put my head
through it. It was also quite evident that the stone had been in use at
some time. But how on earth did it get there? How did it find its way
there in the seventieth degree of north latitude, where not a single
blade of corn ever grew, to say nothing of ripening? It could not have
lain there since the Deluge. Nor could it have been brought there by
the ice, like a stray log of wood, for the motion of the ice is from
north to south, and surely in olden times people were not using
millstones at the north pole, unless it should really turn out to be
the case, in accordance with the very newest theory, that Europe has
been peopled from the north! It was an enigma, and one which completely
puzzled me.
A shipwreck? Perhaps, thought I, it was brought there by a shipwreck.
But no; the millstone is about a quarter of a mile from the sea. It was
clear that somebody must have taken it there, and must have had a mill
at that place. But who?
‘Can you tell me anything about the stone, Nilas?’ I asked. ‘Do you
know what such a stone is used for?’
‘No,’ replied Nilas; ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know whether it has been lying here for a long time?’
‘Yes,’ said Nilas; ‘it has lain here for hundreds of years. I heard
that from my old grandfather.’
‘God bless both you and your old grandfather!’ I said; ‘but who brought
the stone here?’
‘It must have been the monks,’ said Nilas.
‘The monks, do you say? Why, what monks?’
‘The monks who lived here a long time ago, about whom my grandfather
has told me.’
‘You are my friend, Nilas,’ I said; and I rubbed my hands together for
joy. ‘Come, let us get back to the fire, good Nilas, and sit down. You
must tell me all you have heard from your grandfather about these
monks. You mustn’t forget anything. I shan’t let you go till you have
told me all that you know.’
‘Well,’ thought I to myself, ‘here is the explanation of the names
Munkfjord, Warehouse Inlet, Trifon’s River, and others.’
We went back to the fire, and remained sitting through the light
night-time, and far on into the morning, Nilas squatting on the ground,
half in the smoke of the fire, with which he mingled the smoke from his
own pipe, looking, with his red head-covering, just like an imp. I sat
with a veil over my face, and with paper before me, he relating and I
listening, and scribbling down on the paper, as fast as my pen would
go, his strange tales about a big monastery which had once stood where
our tents were pitched, and about a magnificent church, and monks who
used to go in procession, and sing psalms, and burn incense. If I had
not found the millstone, I should most probably never have learnt the
history of this monastery, but the millstone gave me the first clue,
which I resolutely followed up, carefully searching through legends and
manuscripts and books, among the State archives, and in libraries in
Norway, Finland, and Russia. I have picked up and collected every
trustworthy piece of historical and ethnographical information, and
woven these together with the old legends which I heard from the Lapp
Nilas that night on the banks of the Petschenga River.
Before we left the neighbourhood I went once more to the millstone, to
look at it somewhat more closely, and to take leave of it. It had been
the upper of the two stones which are used in a mill. It lay with the
hollowed part uppermost, and a quantity of dead leaves—yellow, green,
and red birch leaves—had collected in the hollow. While I was sitting
quite alone and dreaming of the old times, a little whirlwind arose
which whisked the leaves round in a circle on the stone, and swept them
into the hole, rolled them up again, and then whirled them into the
air, so that they danced about, chasing one another hither and thither
as if at play, just as if they had all of a sudden come to life, and
had been transformed into a variety of yellow, green, and red
butterflies.
Are they the souls of the monks, I thought, which have come back here
again, and are carrying on a sprightly dance over the solitary relic of
their former glory? and is it for joy because now at last, after the
lapse of three centuries, they are to be rescued from oblivion and
brought to the light of day once again? If this be so, then I hope they
will not be altogether displeased with my endeavour to serve them.
We will now take our leave of both the sportsman and the botanist, and
endeavour to recall, and to present to our readers, scenes and
incidents which belong to the middle of the sixteenth century.
CHAPTER II.
TRIFON, THE FOUNDER OF THE MONASTERY.
Not many persons are acquainted with the fact that in Finmark, far away
to the North, and on the very shores of the Arctic Ocean, there once
stood a large monastery, which was famed, in its day, throughout the
Greek Church for its sanctity, its wealth, and its industry.
That monastery was the most northerly one on the globe. It was situated
on the seventieth degree of latitude, not far from the mouth of the
Petschenga River, and immediately to the east of the present boundary
between Norwegian Lapland and Russia. The districts of Neiden, Pasvig
and Petschenga (or Peisen) formed, as is well known, a debateable
territory, on which both Norwegians and Russians levied taxes.
At the present time the monastery of Solowetski, which stands on an
island in the White Sea, is the most northerly in the world, as the
monastery of Petschenga no longer exists. There are not even any
remains or ruins of its numerous buildings or of its handsome churches
to be found. All are gone; they are either overgrown, or buried, or
removed, and have entirely disappeared. Trees which are a hundred years
old have grown up on the site. Traditions concerning it still exist
among the older folk of the country, and vague, romantic, and wonderful
tales are told about the monks, their wealth, their shipbuilding, their
whale fishery, and their commerce with foreign lands.
The founder of the monastery was known as Trifon, and his name is
celebrated to-day throughout the Greek Church. He is still regarded as
a great saint, and is reverenced and invoked as such. But Trifon was
not always a saint. Tradition relates that in his youth he was a wild
freebooter, ‘a valiant warrior against a foe.’ He used to haunt the
frontiers of Finland and Karelen with a band of outlawed comrades, and
there ‘he plundered numbers of people, set fire to dwellings, and spilt
much blood.’ It is evident that he was the captain of a band of
brigands. It will be interesting to inquire how he came to be a saint,
and who was the means of his conversion.
Traditions has it that during his wild career as captain of the
brigands, Trifon was always accompanied by a beautiful young woman.
Sometimes she dressed as a man, and followed him on horseback. But
whether she was his lawful wife or his mistress, no one seemed to know.
Her name was Ellen, and she is said to have been of noble parentage,
and to have belonged to a Russian family of distinction; whereas
Trifon, on the other hand, was of humble origin, the son of a poor
priest at Torschok, in the department of Tver. He had been a teacher on
her father’s estate, and what is constantly happening still, occurred
in this instance—the daughter of the house fell in love with the tutor,
and ran away with him, following him about in his unlawful and
desperate career. Her gentle nature, by its influence over Trifon,
often saved innocent persons, and curbed his fierce passions.
On one occasion she wished to save a young man from death who had, for
some time, been in Trifon’s service. He had been brought to Trifon in
bonds by his comrades, who charged him with meditating treason. There
was no doubt of his intended guilt, and he was condemned to death. But
just as Trifon was in the act of striking the death-blow Ellen threw
herself in front of him so as to shield the young man. Trifon’s
jealousy was so inflamed at this, and he was so maddened at her
conduct, and with the strong drink which he had too freely taken, that
he struck such a desperate blow at his beloved one as to cleave open
her beautiful pale brow, and she fell forward, with her outstretched
arms covered with blood, and soon lay dead at his feet. Trifon,
appalled at what he had done, drew back a little, and gazed
speechlessly at her, while his companions also stood terror-stricken
around him. Then he threw aside the blood-stained sword, clasped his
hands before his face, and threw himself with a wild shriek of despair
on the dead body.
After a time he raised himself up, and found that he was alone; but he
was a changed man. He at once left the band of brigands and sought for
solitude, hiding himself away from the haunts of men in lonely forests
and desolate places. For a long time he would not look another person
in the face, for there was constantly before his eyes, whether he was
sleeping or waking, the vision of Ellen with her blood-stained, cloven
brow. He had loved the woman, who, though rich and of good birth, had
forsaken all on his account. Compunction and remorse so preyed upon him
that he appeared like a living corpse. And the more his body wasted
away, the wilder became his illusions and dreams.
One night he dreamt that Ellen was standing in the broad daylight,
alive, before him, with the gaping wound in her brow, from which the
blood, drop by drop, was trickling down her face, and she seemed to say
distinctly to him:
‘Trifon, Trifon! you will never have peace or repose, either in life or
in death, until you do penance. Do penance! Do penance!’
‘What am I to do?’ Trifon inquired
‘You are to go to a barren and inaccessible land, and preach the Gospel
to the poor,’ she replied.
From that time he began to undergo further and greater hardships. He
took a vow that he would never more taste ‘any drink brewed from hops,’
neither eat any flesh meat, but ‘subsist only on fish and the kindly
fruits of the earth.’ He girded his loins with a common thong, in place
of the costly sword-belt which he had before worn, and he never
afterwards wore any linen next his skin.
Then he began his wanderings northwards, towards the unknown shores of
the Arctic Ocean. He went further and further, and on and on, until at
last he reached the sea-shore and could get no further. There he found
people who were living in heathenism, ‘worshipping images, serpents,
and creeping things.’ There, in the year 1524, he built a hut on the
shore of the Petschenga River, about a mile from the head of Munkfjord.
He lived on this spot for some years without mixing with other people,
subsisting only on the ‘fish which he caught himself, and on the roots
and fruits which he found in the wood.’ The fame of this hermit, who
was living in a wretched hut in this remote place by the Arctic Ocean,
and of the saintly life of renunciation which he was leading, gradually
spread southwards, and pilgrims began to flock to the place to see him
and his wretched dwelling. Then he built himself a small chapel. He cut
down the timber himself in the woods at Peisen, and carried it on his
shoulders to the site. In this chapel he hung up pictures of the saints
which he had brought with him, as well as a picture of Ellen, with her
blood-stained brow, which he had painted himself. From that time
forward more people came, and began to give their money to Trifon in
large sums. There was something mysterious and beyond the Christian
comprehension in this temple, or house of God, standing so far North,
and in unknown regions which, according to the general belief, lay one
half of the year in total darkness, or had night at high noon, and
during the other half of the year had noonday light at midnight.
The most zealous of the pilgrims who went to the monastery at
Solowetski sometimes extended their wanderings as far as the chapel at
Petschenga, and made there, at the altar in the church, their pious
offerings, crossing themselves, and beseeching and praying God for
remission of their own sins and the sins of others. Before they
departed they used to gather wild-flowers in the fields, as memorials
of their pilgrimage, and these they would take home, and preserve as
precious relics.
The inhabitants of the district also came to see Trifon and the chapel,
and he began to interest himself in the heathen Lapps, and to instruct
them in the Christian religion. But for a long time they would not
listen to his preaching. Their wise men and sorcerers very violently
opposed him. ‘They pulled him by the hair, threw him on the ground, and
threatened to kill him if he did not leave their country. They often
contemplated putting their threats into execution, but the Lord
protected him.’ When Trifon went to them, and visited them in their
huts, they would scarcely give him a night’s shelter. They mixed dirt
and filth in the wretched food he obtained, and tormented him in all
sorts of ways. But, as a true Christian, he did not grow weary of being
‘long-suffering and of great kindness. He bore all things, believed all
things, hoped all things, and endured all things,’ and in the end they
came to esteem, honour, and love him, and listened to his preaching. He
could not, however, baptize them into the Christian faith, as he was
not yet ordained to the priesthood.
The Russian fishermen also, who sojourned during the summer in that
district, attended the chapel and took part in the services. They made
voluntary oblations and gifts, and by this means still more money
reached Trifon’s hands. He now realized that something more had to be
done, and that he must have assistants for his work. It became
necessary for him to enter into communication with the outside world,
from which he had been for so many years voluntarily separated.
Accordingly, about the year 1530, he undertook a journey to Novgorod,
where he obtained from Archbishop Macarius a letter of commendation, or
indulgence, for the erection of the church at the Petschenga River. He
immediately returned, but this time he was not to be alone. He took
with him builders, and with their assistance he erected a handsome
wooden church beside the Petschenga River, but much nearer to the
fjord, only about a quarter of a mile from the place where the river
empties itself into the fjord.
For a couple of years this church remained unconsecrated, but in 1532
Trifon made a tour through the district of Kola, whose chief town,
Kola, was not built until 1582. In that district, in the year 1529 (or,
according to other authorities, in 1475), by the mouth of the Kola
River, a church and monastery had been erected by the Solowetski monk,
Theodorit, and at this monastery Trifon met with a certain Bishop
Ilija. He persuaded the latter to accompany him back to Petschenga to
consecrate the church. This was done, and it was dedicated to the Holy
Troitsa, or Holy Trinity. At the same time Ilija invested the builder
of the church with the monastic habit, giving him the name of Trifon,
and ordaining him priest. It is probable that before becoming a monk,
and during his wild career as a brigand captain, he had borne some
other name, but no record of it is to be found. During the same visit
Ilija baptized all the Lapps whom Trifon had instructed in the
Christian faith.
In this way was laid the foundation of the monastery, which was
afterwards built beside the church. Trifon’s fame for sanctity soon
caused both monks and lay people to come, and request permission to
settle there. When they had increased in numbers, they elected from
among themselves a venerable old monk, Gurij, who had travelled to
Petschenga on foot, to be their Superior.
At first the monks were very poor, and had great difficulty in
supporting themselves. They had not as yet any ecclesiastical rights,
but were wholly dependent on the charitable offerings of the poor
inhabitants of the district, and the gifts of the pilgrims who visited
them. Trifon therefore decided to make another journey into Russia, and
this time not merely to visit Novgorod, but to get as far as the
capital, Moscow, in order that he might personally present a petition
to the Czar. The ruler at that time was Ivan Wasilievitsch, whom
history has branded as the Cruel or Terrible, and apparently not
without sufficient reason. It is related of him that ‘when he was a boy
of twelve years of age, he began to put animals to death by throwing
them downstairs or out of the windows; and in his fifteenth year he
carried on the same sport with human beings.’ Sergius Koubasov says of
him that ‘he was tall and ugly, with a long flat nose and gray eyes,
thin, but broad-shouldered.’ As Czar he burnt and destroyed Novgorod,
and caused twenty-seven thousand people in the town and its suburbs to
be killed. Eventually, in a passion, he killed his eldest son, Ivan,
with an iron bar, because on one occasion he complained that his father
had been very cruel to his wife (although she was enceinte), solely
because she was wearing a dress which he did not like, and he had
struck her so violently that she was confined of a still-born child.
But at times this tyrant indulged in fits of piety. He then retired to
Alexandra Sloboda, a fortified village in the neighbourhood of Moscow,
and conducted religious services, for which he dressed all his
courtiers in cassocks and monastic habits, and then officiated as
Prior.
One day, as he was going in solemn procession to church with his second
son, the pious Prince Theodore Ivanovitsch, in order to hear Mass,
there stood outside the church door a venerable-looking monk with a
long white beard, who was clad in a shabby old habit. The Czar started
at the sight of him, and stopped. The monk crossed himself, bowed low
to the Czar, and then, kneeling down, presented him with a paper or
petition. The Czar ascertained from the bystanders that this was a holy
monk named Trifon, who had built the most northerly church in his
realms. He accepted the petition, and entered the church. There both he
and his son read it, and the pious Theodore was so much touched by it,
that he went into the sacristy and divested himself of his costly
cloak, which he sent out to the poor monk, and offered it to him as a
gift. The Court attendants could not be behind-hand in their gifts. The
Czar was on this occasion accompanied by princes and boyars, among
others by Vjæsemski, Nikita, Boris Gudunov (to whose sister, Irene
Gudunov, Theodore was married), Morosov, Theodore Basmanov, Gregon,
Skourlatov (his executioner, who was known as Malijuta), and others.
All of these bestowed valuable gifts of gold and silver on Trifon, so
that in a very short time, from being a poor pilgrim, he became a rich
man.
The next day he was summoned to the palace, to an audience with Ivan
the Cruel. The latter was anxious to hear from Trifon an account of
those Northern regions in which he lived and laboured. Trifon spoke in
glowing terms of his life in those parts, with the light summer nights
and the dark wintry days. He told the Czar of the heathen people who
lived there, the wealth of fish, both in the fjords and in the rivers,
the enormous whales in the vast Arctic Ocean, the virgin forests, the
herds of reindeer, and, above all, the need there was that the Russian
Church should erect places of worship and monasteries, and thus, in a
way, put the stamp of the Russian kingdom on those lands, and so take
them into the Czar’s possession, seeing that Denmark was laying some
claim to them. This had its effect, for Ivan, who after the fire of
Moscow was in one of his fits of piety, was now entirely controlled by
the priests Sylvester and Alexis Adasjev, and on their advice issued a
deed of gift to the holy Trifon on November 22, 7065 (1556). This deed
of gift has been preserved, and it runs as follows:
‘According to the intercession of our sons, the Princes Ivan
Ivanovitsch and Theodore Ivanovitsch, we have granted unto Gurij, the
Superintendent of the monastery of the Holy Trinity at Petschenga,
together with the convent of the same; and do also grant to every
Superintendent and convent of that monastery, because of their poverty,
and in place of clerical dues, and revenue from the saying of Masses,
the Mototsk (Mutkafjord), Litsk (Litzafjord), Ursk (Orafjord), Pasrensk
(Pasvig), and Navda (Neidenfjord), as hereditable property. In like
manner also the entire fishery, and wreckage as well—for example, that
which the sea casts up on the land—whales and walruses, or any other
sea-creatures, together with the foreshore, the land, all the islands,
rivers, and smaller streams. Similarly all the forests, meadows,
hunting-grounds, as well as the Lapps, who, moreover, at the
before-named Mototsk and Petschenga fjords are bound to pay tax to us;
and also all the pasture-land belonging to them, and all royalties
which appertain to the Czar and the Grand-Duke, with all levying and
collecting thereof. All of which is to serve the monks for the
sustentation and erection of a monastery. And be it known that our
Boyars of Novgorod and Dvina, and all the inhabitants on the coast, as
well as the Karelen folk and the Lapps, and all others whom it may
concern, have no right to acquire property, either in rivers, or
jetsam, or fish, or any other thing.’ [2]
By this means the foundation of the power and prosperity of the
monastery was laid. By virtue of this deed of gift the monks obtained
even greater rights over those parts than the people of Bergen obtained
over Finmark about the same period (1562), and in the worst days of the
tyranny of monopolies. The entire population was by this deed virtually
sold to the monks, almost as if they were slaves, so that the monks
could levy taxes and tithes as they thought fit.
Every year more and more monks and lay-brothers came to the monastery.
Larger buildings were erected for them, and also a hospice for guests
and pilgrims. Only thirty or forty years had passed since Trifon had
come to Petschenga as a poor hermit, and in the year 1565 there were
twenty monks and thirty serving-men.
At this time a large amount of money from shipping dues came to the
monastery. It is related in one place that a number of persons came
from Cholmogor and Sergopolis with goods, which they bestowed on the
monastery for its adornment and for the conversion of the Lapps. About
this time Trifon built a new church at the mouth of the Petschenga
River, or (according to other accounts) on an island at the lower part
of the fjord. This church was called St. Mary’s Church. Thither at
times Trifon retired and lived as a hermit, and performed Divine
service. Close to the church, or near the spot where it stood, a small
river discharges itself into the fjord; this is called Trifon’s River.
It obtained its name because Trifon used to fish in it when he resided
there as a hermit.
At this time he undertook the building of a chapel by the river Pasvig
in honour of the saintly and pious princes, Boris and Gleb. This chapel
is, as is well known, still standing in South Varanger; it was
consecrated, according to the inscription on the cross, by the priest
Hilarion on June 24, 1565. Finally, Trifon undertook the erection of a
little chapel by the Neiden River as a sign that this district had also
been bestowed on the monastery by the Czar, and that it belonged to the
Russian kingdom. Nothing was, however, done on the part of Denmark in
the matter of its claim, no effort was made to secure the districts for
that country, though Denmark had undoubtedly a better right to them
than the Czar.
Trifon died on December 15, 1583. He was probably born in 1500, or a
year or two later. At any rate, he lived to a good old age. His
birthday was probably February 1, as both that day, and December 15,
were in after-times observed as festivals in his memory. He was buried,
according to his will, in St. Mary’s Church, but at a later period his
body was translated to the church which still exists, about a mile
further from the sea, and which is called Trifon’s Church. The cross
over his grave is now just outside the church door. This cross is a
very tall one, and is esteemed so holy and so miraculous, that when the
church was struck by lightning on one occasion and set on fire, the
fire put itself out as soon as it had burnt down to the level of the
cross.
When Trifon was nearing his end and felt death to be approaching, he
sent for old Gurij in order to receive the Sacrament. When he had
received it, he raised his feeble hand and pointed to the picture of
Ellen which he had hung by his bed.
‘You see that red blood,’ he whispered, ‘which is dropping down over
that woman’s brow? That is patent to everybody’s eyes, but nobody has
seen the tears of my heart. Those colourless tears have for fifty years
dropped like burning resin on my sinful soul, and have tormented and
crushed it night and day to my last breath.’
‘Trifon, thou art dying! The Lord have mercy upon thee!’ prayed the old
Gurij, as he knelt by the bedside.
‘Ellen!’ muttered Trifon once more, and died with a smile upon his
face. He saw her beatified, and she received him.
Tradition gives another incident which is related as occurring after
Trifon’s death. While the Czar and the Grand-Duke Theodore (who came to
the throne after his father in 1590) were carrying on a war in Esthonia
against the Swedes, under Karl Horn, in 1584, the Czar had fixed his
camp during the siege of the town at Rugodew, or Ivangorod, and had
deposited his baggage and pitched his tent not far from the town. The
crafty Esthonians, however, unperceived, directed all their cannons
against the baggage and the tent. While the Czar, wearied with the
fatigue of battle, was resting in his tent, a venerable monk appeared
before him, and said:
‘Czar, arise and leave thy tent, that thou mayest not suffer death
before thy time.’
The Czar inquired, ‘Who art thou?’
The monk answered: ‘I am Trifon, on whom thou didst confer thy mantle
as an alms to set others a good example. Therefore saith the Lord my
God to thee, Tarry not, arise from this place.’
The Czar got up at once and left the tent. The Esthonians immediately
began firing at the baggage and tent with their well-aimed cannon, and
a cannon-ball which hit the tent fell on the bed where the Czar had
been reclining.
The Czar then stormed Narva, but was driven back. To save the city and
to escape a fresh storming of it, Ivangorod was delivered to the
Russians by Karl Horn, and Theodore made his entry into the town ‘clad
in white cloth of gold, and drawn by his soldiers in a large sledge,
under which a stove was arranged for warmth.’ The Czar praised God and
rejoiced over his deliverance. He related the episode with the monk to
his boyars, and sent messengers to the monastery at Petschenga to seek
for Trifon. But the old man had already departed to the habitations of
eternal life, and the monastery lay in ruin.
CHAPTER III.
THE MONASTERY AND ITS INDUSTRIES.
After Trifon’s death the monastery continued to grow in numbers,
wealth, and influence. A large conventual building was erected close
beside the church; in it each of the monks had his own separate cell,
but the refectory was common to them all. There was connected with the
convent an entire suite of apartments for guests and pilgrims, who came
to the monastery every returning season.
Opposite the dwellings of the monks there were workmen’s dwellings, and
in these the serving-men lived. All the buildings, as well as the
church, were surrounded by a strong wall of wood. The country was
unsettled and poorly governed, and it was by no means impossible that
some hostile bands might find their way to the monastery in search of
plunder. The monks at the monastery of Solowetski had often to defend
themselves against such attacks.
The church, which was built in honour of the Holy Trinity, was adorned
with a tower and dome. It was decorated inside with paintings and with
the gifts of pious pilgrims. It was constructed after the old Greek
Church plan, which is followed throughout Russia, whether the church is
large or small, or whether it is built of stone or merely of wood. Such
a church has three divisions, viz.: the narthex, or outer church; the
hieron, the sacred part, or church proper; and the hieraton, the
sanctuary, or holy place. This division is said to be a representation
of the Temple at Jerusalem. The outer church is separated from the
hieron by a wall, in which are two large folding doors; these are
always open during Divine service. The hieraton, or sanctuary, in which
the altar is placed, is in turn separated from the church, or hieron,
by the iconastasis, or wall of pictures. This wall is decorated with
carvings, and there are three doorways in it leading to the holy place.
The middle one of these doorways is only closed with a wooden door for
half of its height, but the upper half is shut off by a curtain, which
can be drawn aside so that the priest as he officiates and offers
incense may be seen. At other times he is hidden from the congregation.
Not a pew or seat is to be found in the church. Everybody has to stand,
rich and poor alike, for no distinction is made. Turning to the holy
place, or towards the picture of some particular saint, the people
cross themselves three times in the Greek manner, by putting three
fingers, the first finger, thumb and middle finger, on the right and
left shoulders, the forehead and breast, and bowing themselves very
low, with their foreheads touching the ground, at the same time saying,
‘Gospodi pomilui’ (Lord, have mercy). This sentence is constantly
repeated throughout the service, and it frequently happens that the
more devout members of the congregation, by reason of their continual
bowings to the ground, leave the church with red spots on their
foreheads.
All the walls inside the church are covered as completely as possible
with pictures, which are either painted on the walls themselves, or are
hung in frames against them. The pictures in the narthex are taken, as
a rule, from the Old Testament, and those in the hieron from the New
Testament. Besides these there are pictures of men and women who are
recognised as saints in the Eastern Church. The older these pictures
are, the holier they are esteemed. In copying them, therefore, the
chief object is to give the copy an appearance of antiquity. Many of
the pictures have been painted by the monks themselves, and, as a rule,
they are done in very glaring colours. The heads of the saints are
always surrounded by a golden glory, on the gilding of which much money
is frequently expended. They are also often hung with presents, such as
handkerchiefs and other personal finery, which have been offered by
pilgrims whose particular saint is represented. Sometimes one sees a
wreath of blown birds’ eggs hung up by the picture, a melancholy token
of hopes blighted in this world. The front wall in the church, through
which access to the outer church is gained, is covered with a lean-to
roof, and on this wall there is depicted, in order to excite the
imagination and the fear of the heathen folk, on the right hand of the
door the bliss of Paradise, and on the left hand the torments of Hell.
Here the heathen as they stood outside the church and listened to the
singing, would have made manifest to them what would be the lot of
those who did not seek the help which the Church offered them, and who
refused to be baptized. One thing, however, in the pictures was strange
and suggestive, and might have made the heathen doubtful about the
charms of Paradise, and this was, that the saints in Paradise were
delineated as so fearfully emaciated that they seemed to be nothing but
skin and bone, owing to the fasting and the asceticism by which they
had made themselves worthy of heaven. The other folk, moreover, who
were in hell, seemed to be well-favoured, lusty, and thriving, and
altogether more attractive.
In the middle of the courtyard, between the monastery buildings, there
was a draw-well, and upon a beam placed over it there was the following
inscription, which can be read backwards,
Νίψον ἀνομήμα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν [3]—
(Wash away uncleanness, not from the face alone)—a reminder that water
is used in the administration of Holy Baptism.
The monks, who year by year became more numerous, obtained by degrees
still further privileges from the Czar of Russia.
According to the rules of the monastery, the monks had both ‘to till
the ground and to follow all such profitable employment as was
practicable.’ There were people among them who had a very fair
knowledge of secular affairs, and who, moreover, did not always despise
the good things of the world. Accordingly, the monks summoned competent
artisans and work-people from Russia, and with their help they devised
boat and ship building on the river Pasvig, and also further out in the
Munkfjord at the Warehouse Inlet, where the water was clear of ice even
in the winter. They had their own store of timber, and they were
enabled to build comparatively large ships; in these they exported the
produce of the country. A great number of rafts and boats were also
built, and these were sold to the Russian and Norwegian fishermen.
Besides boat-building, they also had salt-pans on such a large scale
that they not only provided the whole fishing population with salt, but
also exported salt to the interior of Russia. In their ships they
brought back in return, ‘flour, wax, drapery goods, and cordage.’ The
salt-pans were probably situated on Fiskerö, where the sea-water is
least mixed with fresh-water from the inland rivers.
One of the most remarkable of their doings was the erection of a mill
at the Kujasuga River, immediately behind the monastery. This is the
only establishment which existed during the prosperous days of the
monastery of which there is any trace still left. The monks must have
found that it was more profitable to import corn and to grind it
themselves, than to import the ground flour, as is usually done now.
They had also out-houses, and must have owned a considerable herd of
cattle. They had occasion to clear out and till meadows, both on
Fiskerö and along the Petschenga River. Several of the meadows where
the monks used to mow their hay are now overgrown with birch-trees that
are more than a century old. It may not have been exclusively for the
sake of the flesh that they kept these herds of cattle, because the
long fasts allow the Russians only to eat sparingly of meat. It was no
doubt also for purposes of trade as well as for the sake of their
skins. It is expressly stated that the monks possessed a tannery, and
that they tanned leather both for their own requirements, and for
supplying the people of the country.
They are also said to have worked mines. Possibly the monks were the
first people to wash gold in the rivers in the interior of Lapland.
Their most important means of support were, however, the fisheries,
both the sea and the fresh-water fisheries, involving the exportation
of fish. They understood how to make good use of the deed of gift,
which they had obtained from the Czar Ivan Wasilievitsch. According to
it, everything that was found in land or water belonged to the monks,
and the inhabitants were compelled either to deliver up or sell to the
monks what they did not themselves use, of course at the price which
the monks saw fit to arrange. The fisheries were carried on by their
own numerous servants or the lay-brothers of the monastery. Some of
these lived at the monastery itself, others at the Warehouse Inlet, at
the mill, or in Kjörvaag, or West Bumand Fjord. By these fisheries the
monks obtained such an immense quantity of fish, that they not only
exported it to Vardö and Archangel, but also entered into mercantile
connection with foreign towns, principally with Antwerp and Amsterdam.
Information as to this is obtained from a Dutchman named Simon van
Salingen, who for several years made business journeys in Finmark and
Russian Lapland. He records that in the years (1562–1564) when Eric
Munck was bailiff of Vardöhus, ‘the monks from the monastery in
Munkfjord were in the habit of coming with their fish, train-oil, and
other local produce, which they collected during the summer and winter,
that they might sell them. In Munck’s service there was a youth named
Philip Winterkonig, a Dutchman from Oltgensplaet, in Zeeland; but
either voluntarily or otherwise, he left his master, and entered into
partnership with John van Reide, Cornelius de Meyer Simonsen, of
Malines, and in 1564 he came in a large vessel from Antwerp to Vardö,
under the impression that Munck was still bailiff there.’ He must have
sailed direct to Vardö without touching at Bergen, and so he had not
heard that this town had recently obtained the monopoly of the trade of
Finmark. ‘When he arrived at Vardö, he found that Munck was no longer
bailiff there, and that a certain James Hansen held the office in his
stead. Hansen made Winterkonig and his crew prisoners, seized the ship
and its cargo, and maintained that Winterkonig had forfeited his life,
because he had acted in opposition to the privileges of the citizens of
Bergen.’
While these people were detained in custody, God vouchsafed such a rich
harvest of fish that the Lapps, the Norsemen, and the monks at
Munkfjord, caught so large a quantity that there were not ships, or
yachts sufficient in draught, to carry the fish to Bergen.
James Hansen therefore arranged with Winterkonig that he should be let
off his punishment if he would load his vessels with fish, and take
them to Bergen on behalf of Norway, and would also promise never again
‘to trade contrary to the privileges of the town of Bergen.’
Winterkonig readily agreed to this, and was set at liberty. At the same
time some of the monks of Petschenga, who were present at Vardö, made
an arrangement with Winterkonig, that next year he should come to them,
and lade his ship with the things which they would have ready.
According to this agreement Winterkonig came to Munkfjord in 1565 with
a large ship, which he loaded with fish, and then despatched back again
to the ship-owners at Antwerp. He hired, on his own account, a Russian
lodje (yacht), with thirteen men in order to carry the rest of his
goods from Antwerp to St. Nicholas. [4]
On the way, however, near the promontory of Tiriberka, on the Murman
coast, he was overtaken by such a severe storm that he was obliged to
seek a harbour of refuge. While he lay there another Russian lodje
arrived, also having goods on board, which the captain sold to
Winterkonig. But as soon as the Russians saw the valuable cargo which
Winterkonig had on board his lodje, they were seized with a desire to
possess it, and they fell on him at night, and cut the throats of his
three servants and thirteen sailors while they were asleep. Winterkonig
awoke and escaped to land severely wounded, but he was followed, and
was shot through with an arrow from behind a tree. The robbers then
hastily plundered the ship, and, as they saw another yacht approaching,
they left the seventeen corpses unburied and escaped. However, they
could not take everything with them, and among the things left behind
were ‘four hogsheads of wine, and these remained on the beach.’
The firm at Antwerp, who had not heard of the murders, directly after
the big ship had arrived from Munkfjord, sent two more ships to
Winterkonig, and these were laden with all sorts of goods which he had
ordered. Both the ships reached Munkfjord safely in the autumn, and
anchored off the Warehouse Inlet. As soon as the monks heard of this,
they despatched one of the ships back to Antwerp with the news that
Winterkonig and his men had been murdered on his way to St. Nicholas,
and that the goods had been stolen. The other ship the monks sent, with
Cornelius de Meyer Simonsen, to Malmis (Kola), from which place
Simonsen travelled to Moscow, in order to lay a complaint concerning
the murder, and the plundering of the ship. He failed, however, to
obtain an audience with the Grand-Duke, because the name of the
Grand-Duke (Ivan the Cruel) was not written sufficiently large in his
letter of complaint, and he had to return to Kola with his object
unaccomplished.
In the following year, 1566, the firm at Antwerp sent Simon van
Salingen with two ships to Munkfjord, where he arrived late in the
spring, and they made him fetch the ship that had been left at Malmis
by Cornelius Simonsen. Salingen then loaded all the three ships—partly
at Munkfjord, partly at Keervagh (Kjorvaag or Kjervan, a harbour at the
western entrance of the Bumandfjord on Fiskerö)—with as much fish-oil,
salmon, and other goods as were suitable for export to Antwerp. He
hired on his own account two lodjer from the monks, and laded them with
his goods and sailed for Malmis. Here he met Cornelius Simonsen who had
just returned from Moscow. They travelled, together with their goods,
through Russia during the winter as far as Moscow, and traded with the
inhabitants.
At a later period it would seem that the monastery entered more
especially into commercial connection with Amsterdam. A treaty has been
found which was concluded between a firm in that town and the monks of
Petschenga. The agent of the firm was named Andrew Neich. He went every
year to Munkfjord with a large ship laden with barrels of salt, in
order to take on board, and bring back to Amsterdam, the fish they had
caught. The convent had pledged themselves ‘for six years to sell to
Neich all the red fish (salmon), and not to sell to anyone else the
fish taken in draught-nets or in rivers; and in like manner not to
lease or sell the fishing in the sea for sjomga (salmon), cod, or cod
blubber, or whale blubber, but on the contrary they were to be held
bound to bring to them (the merchants), to their storehouse (factory),
the fish from Kola and the river Tulom. If the chief of the monastery,
or the Brothers, kept back or sold them to others, the chief of the
monastery was to pay a hundred roubles.’ In addition to this, it was
also arranged what the quality of the fish contracted for was to be.
‘And the Superior and convent are not to deliver any “tinda” or
“waltschak” (presumably smaller kinds of sea-fish); broken, damaged, or
stale salmon; damaged, stale, raw, half-dried cod; or salmon of less
than 7½ lb. weight. And if any fish is delivered under 7 lb. weight,
two such fish are to be taken in place of one; but of fish from
Tiriberka, whether large or small, two are to be reckoned as one, and
none are to be accepted of less than 4 lb. weight.’ Then several other
kinds of fish are mentioned. As to the price of the fish there was a
still further arrangement that they were to give ‘ten roubles for 100
salmon, or twenty good jefimker’ (Dutch silver money). The period
appointed for receiving the fish was from May 10 to July 20. The
merchants were bound to leave salt and barrels at Kola, so that the
agent at that place would deliver these to the fishermen. ‘If the fish
from lack of salt, or vat, were spoilt, the Amsterdam merchants were
still bound to accept them, and to pay the same price as for good
fish.’ The fish were to be paid for at two terms: ‘the first term was
St. Peter’s Day, and the second term July 20; the one half in roubles,
and the other half in jefimker, and one jefimke was reckoned as half a
rouble.’
From the ship the Brothers of the monastery obtained all that they
needed or required in the way of goods, partly for their own use, and
partly for trading purposes with the inhabitants of those parts, or,
indeed, for exporting again to St. Nicholas, Cholmogor, Wologda, and
Jaroslav. Thus, no doubt, they obtained no inconsiderable supply of
corn, since they had built a mill for themselves. In addition to the
goods which the firm at Amsterdam had to send according to requisition,
Neich was also bound to bring with him, as a donation and gift to the
monastery, ‘1 pud [32 lb.] of incense, 2 pud of wax, 1 cask of red
church wine, as well as two casks of brandy, and one firkin of Rhenish
wine.’
The monastery in its time carried on no inconsiderable whale fishery.
It is distinctly stated that the monastery ‘should be free of taxation
for exporting whale blubber.’ The train-oil was exported to other parts
of Holland as well as to Amsterdam. The Dutch people were themselves
carrying on at this time a whale-fishery, both in Norwegian Finmark,
where they had a special place of resort at Sörö, and along the coast
of Russian Lapland. At that time the Greenland whale was found along
the Norwegian and Russian coasts, or, at any rate, a kind of whale
which could be somewhat easily killed with the harpoon. A loose harpoon
was mostly employed. Whenever a whale was encountered, they hurled one
or more harpoons at it, and these had the owner’s name marked on them.
Then the whale was allowed to go its way. Sometimes it escaped and was
never seen again; but generally it died, and was thrown up on the shore
at one point or another, but most frequently in the Mutkatfjord, where
even at the present day whales are frequently stranded high and dry.
The people attached to the monastery soon got information of the
reappearance of the harpooned whale, and took possession of it, for,
according to their prerogatives, they alone had the right to all
flotsam and jetsam.
In such ways the monastic establishment, in the course of about fifty
years, developed into a very important colony, which must have had an
extraordinary influence in the civilization of those parts, in a wider
extension of the fisheries, and in the foundation of several towns, if
it had continued to prosper, and had not, as the sequel will show, come
to such a sudden and unexpected end.
In no respect does the improvement of the inhabitants appear to have
been the object of the labours of the brotherhood. Certainly they
christened or baptized the Lapps, so that they could no longer be
called heathens, but that was all. Not a word is said as to any schemes
for their education and civilizing. The priests of the Greek Church,
even at the present day, take no trouble to teach the people. The
Russian Lapps, therefore, as a rule, cannot even now either read or
write, while among the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish Lapps there are
but few who cannot do both.
CHAPTER IV.
THE MONK AMBROSE AND THE PIRATE ANIKA.
The Chief Monk or Abbot of the Monastery of Petschenga in the most
prosperous period of its existence, about the close of the sixteenth
century, was named Gurij. He must have been an old man of about eighty
years of age when he was elected Primicier, or President, in 1540, not
very long after the founding of the monastery. There were fifty monks
under him. The most prominent man among these monks was known as
Ambrose. He was either dumb, or so abnormally silent that sometimes
during an entire month he neither spoke to anyone, nor replied if
anyone spoke to him. According to their rule the monks were required to
be silent, even during meals. When they assembled, one of them was
employed in reading aloud from a book, in order to help the company to
keep their rule of silence. Nobody knew why Ambrose had imposed this
unusual silence on himself, but it was supposed that something had
happened in his earlier life which had left a deep wound in his heart,
and that this had made him so reserved. He arrived at the monastery all
alone one day, having travelled on foot over the mountains from Kola.
He brought with him letters of commendation from a monastery in Russia,
and also from Solowetski. From these letters, it appeared that he
belonged to an ancient Russian boyar family. He was received as a
novice, and, after a year’s probation, obtained his own cell in the
monastery, but silent he was from the first, and silent he remained
unto the end. He was a tall and unusually handsome man, with delicate,
pale features, and with a scar on the right temple, as if from a
sword-cut. When he exerted himself unduly, or became unusually excited,
the scar assumed the appearance of a red gash, and the monks learned by
degrees that he was not a man to be trifled with, though, as a rule,
his disposition was amiable and gentle. It was easy to see from his
broad shoulders and his general build that he was a man of great
physical strength. This was fully shown when he began to take part in
the different kinds of daily manual labour. Both among the Brothers of
the monastery and among the work-people, he came to be known as Ambrose
the Strong. There was also something in his bearing which suggested
that he must at one time have been a soldier. He took a great deal of
physical exercise, and he was often present to supervise the
shipbuilding that was carried on at the Warehouse Inlet, the work of
the salt-pans on the Fiskerö, and also the sea-fishery. In this latter
industry he showed himself both courageous and skilful.
He frequently made excursions into the country, and it was asserted
that he returned with gold-dust. In these excursions he was invariably
accompanied by a Finn, a diminutive creature, who was called Unnas,
whose appearance corresponded to the meaning of his name. Ambrose had,
on one of his wanderings over the mountains, come upon something which
looked like a bundle of clothes; on closer inspection he observed that
something moved within the bundle. It was the little creature Unnas,
who had squeezed himself together in his coat, and had laid himself
down there to die. He had broken his leg, and for two days had
painfully tried to creep towards some human habitation; but at last, in
pain and helplessness, he had abandoned all hope of getting help.
Ambrose lifted him with ease on his strong shoulders, and carried him
home to the monastery. Here he allowed him to have a berth in his own
cell, set and bandaged his leg, and attended to him for some six weeks,
until he had recovered. From that time forward the little creature
Unnas followed Ambrose about like a faithful dog. Ambrose could not get
quit of him, although he did not always want him. His efforts were of
no avail, even when he endeavoured to escape from him. Unnas would
track him wherever he went, and follow him at a distance, until the
good-natured Ambrose would make him a sign to come closer, and allow
him to accompany him.
When Ambrose came to the monastery, there was a pirate who had for
years made descents on the shores of the Fishers’ Isle, and his visits
were the terror and temporary ruin of the inhabitants. The pirate was
named Anika, and every year he came, late in the summer, with a big
ship, and anchored beside a small island, which took its name, Anikief,
from him. Whence he came nobody knew, nor where he went with his fish
when he had laden his ship. In the winter time no one ever saw anything
of him. But in the spring, when the first fleet of boats arrived for
the fishing season, either from Kola or from Pomorien, Anika’s ship
would be lying off Anikief. And as soon as the fishermen came in from
the sea with their take of fish, they might be sure of seeing Anika
walking along the shore, ready to receive them. They were then obliged,
whether they liked it or not, to give him the tenth part of their
catch. If they did not at once give it to him willingly, he and his men
took it by main force, and the fishermen were more than likely to get a
good beating into the bargain.
The pirate, however, behaved in some respects in a chivalrous manner.
If, for instance, all the fleet of boats which were accustomed to lie
in the harbour of Anikief had come in (and frequently there would be
more than a hundred of them), he would have all the men called
together, and inquire of them whether there was any one of them who
would risk himself in a duel with him. He declared himself willing to
fight with anyone, and with any kind of weapon. If he were beaten, they
should be free from any claim to pay him tribute; but if he proved to
be the strongest, they would have to pay the blackmail. Anika was
bigger-framed and physically stronger than most men, and none of the
fishermen were willing to take the risk of an encounter with him. They
had, therefore, no choice but to pay him the blackmail. For many years
this torment is said to have continued, and the name of the pirate
Anika was a terror to all the fishermen at Fiskerö. He did what he
liked. He recognised neither law nor justice. Nobody was in a position
to punish him or to withstand his demands.
To the monks in the monastery at Petschenga there came intelligence
respecting this pirate, but they had no power to help the fishermen to
resist his demands. The spring after Ambrose entered the monastery,
there came fresh news of the pirate, and of his violent conduct towards
the fishermen. They themselves, indeed, came, and complained to the
monks; and the head of the monastery, Gurij, suggested, in a conference
with the senior Brethren (at which Ambrose was present, and at which he
sat, as usual, a silent listener), that a message should be sent to
Ostrogen, in Kola, or to Solowets, for a ship with cannons and an armed
crew, which could chase the pirate away.
The following day Ambrose approached the head of the monastery, and
asked for leave of absence for a few days.
‘Where are you going, Brother?’ asked Gurij.
‘To Fiskerö.’
‘To Anikief?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps you want to pay your respects to Anika?’
‘I want to fight him.’
‘To fight him?—you, a Brother, and a man of peace!’ exclaimed Gurij.
‘Yes; for the sake of making peace,’ replied Ambrose.
‘But can you wield a sword? You will never drive him away with
spiritual weapons,’ said Gurij.
‘Yes, I know how to wield a sword. I was once a soldier, and I still
know how to give a blow with a sword better than most men.’
‘Will you not take some of our men with you?’
‘No; I will go quite alone.’
‘But you have neither sword nor armour.’
‘You can let me have the sacred sword hanging in the church, and the
coat of mail belonging to it,’ said Ambrose. ‘Let me have the sword and
coat of mail, Father Gurij, and bless me, and let me go. I am ready for
the fight—for a fight for life or death. If you hear no more of me,
then I have been killed; but if I return, I shall bring you news of my
victory.’
Early next morning Ambrose set off on foot, with the sword and coat of
mail under a loose overcoat. From Petschenga there is a way across two
isthmuses, and across Fiskerö itself, to the harbour of Anikief. Unnas
was not about early enough in the morning to see Ambrose start; but
when he came somewhat later to the monastery grounds, and heard that
his benefactor had started for Fiskerö, he at once hurried full speed
after him, and it was not long before he came upon the footprints of
Ambrose. However, he did not catch him up until he had reached Anikief,
and there he met such a number of strange and odd-looking people that
he would not venture among them, but kept at a distance, for Unnas was
not stout-hearted.
So it happened that one day, according to the legend, when a fleet of
Russian boats was to put out to sea in order to cast their lines, a
stranger came unexpectedly to them. The stranger saluted the chief
officer very politely, and said:
‘Take me with you to-day, comrades; I shall be of use to you in baiting
your hooks.’
The chief officer looked at the stranger, but neither he nor any of his
men could call to mind that they had ever seen him before.
‘We have men to bait our lines, men to pull the lines, and oarsmen,’
said the chief officer. ‘There are four of us as usual, and it will
only cause trouble if we take more with us.’
‘Anyhow, take me just this once,’ said the stranger; ‘I particularly
want to be with you, and perhaps I may bring you good luck.’
‘Very well, then; as you have such a great desire to be with us, I will
let you,’ said the chief officer. ‘Cross yourself, say your prayer, and
get into the boat.’
The stranger crossed himself in the Greek manner, bowed towards the
east, and prayed, ‘Gospodi pomilui nas!’ ‘Lord have mercy upon us!’
Then he got into the boat with the rest, and they put off to the place
where the lines were to be cast.
They were specially fortunate that day. There were fish, so to speak,
on every hook, and the boat was quite laden with them. So they rowed
back again to the harbour; but, as usual, the chief officer did not
venture to omit taking the course by the island of Anikief, in order to
deliver a portion of the fish to the pirate who lay off there with his
big ship. The stranger was decidedly of opinion that there was no need
to hurry; they might just as well first row back to their own place and
wait for Anika to come in person and demand the fish, if he dared.
‘Dares!’ said the chief officer. ‘He will kill us if we do not
voluntarily give what he demands, and take it to him on board his
ship.’
‘Let’s see,’ suggested the stranger.
They then made for the island to land there, and the stranger was the
first to jump on shore. While the others were still in the boat he took
hold of it by the bow, and pulled it so far up on the beach that four
men together could not have done it better.
‘That fellow doesn’t want for strength,’ thought the chief officer to
himself.
They then threw the fish ashore to clean them. This last work was
entrusted to the stranger, while they themselves disentangled and
baited the lines.
The stranger did as the fishermen were in the habit of doing. He cut
off the head, took out the entrails, collected the livers in a jug, and
split open the fish. But he did all this so expertly and so quickly
that the boatmen stood watching him with astonishment. When he had
finished cleaning the fish, he took his thick fishing-gloves off his
hands and told the man who rowed to clean them in the sea. He did as he
was bidden, and gave them back to Ambrose again. But the stranger did
not think that he had wrung the water thoroughly from them. He folded
them together, therefore, and wrung them himself; but as he did this
they came to pieces in his hands.
The crew, when they witnessed this fresh evidence of his extraordinary
strength, began to feel some misgivings. They feared that the stranger
could not be a real man, and they wondered what would happen when Anika
came, whom they were expecting every minute, and who, perhaps, was not
a little exasperated that they had failed to bring him their tribute.
Anika did not keep them long waiting, but came at once, striding along
the beach towards them. He was a giant of a fellow, with a fierce
appearance and with a long brown beard hanging down over his breast.
‘Hi! you men there!’ he shouted at once from a distance in a voice of
thunder. ‘Why haven’t you brought me my tribute of fish to-day?’
The four men did not dare to utter a word. They stood silent with fear,
and with their uncovered heads bowed down, and crossed themselves.
Their strange companion did not take his hat off, but went a few paces
towards Anika, and then demanded:
‘Who are you, and what do you want?’
‘Who am I, and what do I want?’
‘Yes, certainly.’
‘Don’t you know me?’
‘No, I don’t know you, and I have no wish to make your acquaintance. So
you need not come any nearer. The best thing you can do is to take
yourself off again, or you shall see——’
‘See what? Ha, ha!’ laughed Anika; ‘I can see you don’t know who I am;
but look out for yourself, and be gone, or you shall feel Anika’s fists
fall like blows from a hammer on your wicked skull!’
The stranger, however, did not allow himself to be disconcerted, but
stood bolt upright before Anika.
‘Just so, my little friend,’ said Anika. ‘I see you are not wanting in
courage.’
‘No; I am not much afraid of you.’
‘Perhaps you have even come here on purpose to fight me?’
‘You are quite right.’
‘Very well. I am glad of that,’ said Anika. ‘You shall have your wish
fulfilled, and you shall choose the weapons. What will you fight with?’
‘With a sword, and in armour,’ said Ambrose; and he cast off his
overcoat and stood transformed into a soldier, with a sword in his
belt, and clad in a shining coat of mail.
The island was now full of life. The news flew like lightning from one
boat’s crew to another that a strange soldier had arrived, who was
going to fight a duel with the much-dreaded Anika. All work stopped,
and the people crowded together from all parts to see the stranger. The
crew of Anika’s ship also came ashore to be present at the fight. A
place was chosen on Fiskerö where the fight was to take place. At last
they made their way thither, each with his own company: Anika with his
sailors, and Ambrose followed by the fishermen. The place was cleared
and enclosed by a circle of stones, and it is still shown to visitors,
even after a lapse of more than three hundred years.
The two combatants placed themselves inside the ring, while the
fishermen crowded together, and in silence formed a living wall around
them.
It was close upon midnight, and all was ready. The sun lay low down to
the north, red as molten gold, tingeing with a marvellously beautiful
purple glow the clouds and sky, and glittering like diamonds and rubies
over the foaming waves, which the Arctic Ocean dashed, with a sullen
roar, upon the rocky coast.
The fight began. Sword clashed with sword, and the golden red of the
sun shimmered on the crossing sword-blades. Ambrose soon recognised,
after the first thrust had been made and parried, that he had a
practised foe before him. He was obliged even to give way in parrying
the furious blows which Anika showered upon him, and he had to retreat
to the edge of the circle.
According to the story as it is told, the one who was driven outside
the circle was accounted as conquered. As Ambrose was in the act of
retreating in parrying the blows, Anika sought with one desperate blow
to finish him. The blow was so tremendous that only an adept could
withstand it. It was parried about an inch from the top of Ambrose’s
head, but his hat, which he had on, was knocked off by it, so that the
whole of his noble face and his beautiful priestly hair, which fell on
his shoulders, could be seen. A shout of astonishment and of contempt
broke forth from Anika’s men. ‘It’s a monk, it’s a priest, who has come
here to fight our unvanquished chief!’
But now the scar in Ambrose’s forehead turned a brilliant red, and it
seemed as if, all at once, his limbs had become steeled. His strokes
fell so rapidly and so furiously that it was Anika’s turn to retreat
nearer and nearer towards the ring, on the opposite side. The fishermen
cheered on the stranger with shouts of encouragement, Anika defended
himself with desperation, but it was as if a panic had seized him on
the discovery that he was fighting with a monk, and without resistance
he was driven backwards to the ring. ‘Pirate,’ shouted the stranger at
the last, ‘you shall die!’ and at the same moment he levelled such a
fearful blow at Anika in the forehead that he fell backwards, ‘three
ells outside the ring,’ as the legend has it.
Anika’s men took to immediate flight. They ran straight back to the
ship, weighed anchor, and made off. They were seen no more. The
Russians dug a grave inside the ring. In it they laid the warrior
Anika, and a stone barrow was raised over him. Then the fishermen
accompanied the mysterious stranger back to the shore. There he called
them together before him, and said: ‘See, the sun is now rising again
over the world, and is casting his glorious light over man’s path! Fall
each one of you upon his knees this newborn day, and give thanks to
God. Your foe is no more, and henceforth no one will hinder you in your
peaceful labours. God be with you all. Farewell.’ With these words the
stranger vanished, and no one knew whence he came or whither he had
gone.
So the legend runs, and it is not possible to say how much of it is
history and how much romance.
A few years ago, however, a traveller visited the place, and long years
after Anika’s death the barrow was opened. Some mouldering human bones
were found, and among them a couple of leg-bones of an unusual size. We
may therefore reasonably assume that Anika once lived, that he fought,
and was conquered, and found his grave at this spot; but up to this
time very few persons have known anything of the legend which
associates Ambrose, a monk from the monastery of Petschenga, with his
conqueror.
Ambrose made his way back again over the waste swamps, and Unnas was
ever at a little interval behind him. Presently he drew nearer. Ambrose
heard something moving behind him, and turned round and saw him.
‘Well, are you there, my little friend? Come nearer, then,’ he said.
Unnas sprang forward to him, and fell on his knees and kissed his hand.
Then he took out of his bosom some bread and dried fish.
‘You have had nothing to eat to-day, Father. Won’t you have a little?
You must want some food.’
‘Thank you, my little Unnas. You are right; I do want some food. Did
you see the fight?’
‘Yes, but I did not venture to go close up.’
‘No. Courageous you are not, Unnas, but you are a very faithful
friend.’
‘Yes, I am to you.’
‘Not to others, aren’t you? Not even to my friend Jussi?’
‘No; he beats me.’
‘Well, but you don’t behave well to him, either. You enticed him once
upon a time on to an island in the river, and left him there for a
couple of days.’
‘Yes, because he struck me, but perhaps some day I shall take him in as
I took in Stallo.’
‘What Stallo?’
‘Oh, indeed, you see that, little as I am, I once killed a big Stallo,
a goblin, or monster, such as one sometimes encounters here in the
mountains, and which is so dangerous that one must either kill it, or
be killed by it.’
‘Was it here?’
‘Yes, it was just here, by this very lake where we now are.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘Well, you see that the lake here is long, and you travelled all the
way round it when you were on your way to Anikief; but that was not
necessary. We can slip across here, as I will show you, but you must
not tell anybody. No one besides me knows about it. Promise me that you
won’t tell anything.’
‘Yes, I promise you.’
‘You see this narrow strip of water here: it is not more than fifty
ells broad, but it is deep. If you watch the slight current attentively
as it flows through the channel, you will detect that at several points
it is a little irregular. The reason of this is that some large stones
lie just under the surface of the water, not half an ell below the
surface. They are laid at such a distance apart that it is easy to jump
from one to the other, but we must know exactly where they are laid; by
this means we can get over to the other side more easily and quickly
than even if we could swim like reindeer. I put the stones there
myself, and built them up when the lake was almost dry. Many years ago
I came, quite alone, tramping here, and suddenly I caught sight of a
Stallo, seated on a stone a little in front of me. When I stood still
for fear, he beckoned to me that I should go closer to him, but you may
be sure I wasn’t such a fool as to go up to him. I jumped back again as
quickly as I could, but as I looked I saw him coming after me. I then
made various circuits between the barren ridges of ground and the birch
copse as a fox would do, and hid myself at one spot, so that he sprang
past me. Then I ran quickly back again, got under cover behind the
hill, and made my way here without his seeing me. I leaped on the
stones across the channel to this place, and then along the shore a
little bit lower down, where you see the lake is much broader. There I
stood and began to howl and cry so that the Stallo might find where I
was. This he did, and he came down to the shore on the opposite side.
Then I began to abuse him as a coward, and as an old woman who wouldn’t
venture to wade across where a little Finn had waded. At last he was so
exasperated that he took the sword in his mouth, leaped into the water,
and came swimming across to me. But I had my bow ready, and when he was
close enough I shot an arrow with an iron point at the end, and hit him
in the forehead, so that he threw up his hands into the air and went to
the bottom.’
‘But possibly it was an ordinary man, a peaceable traveller, whom you
killed, Unnas. I don’t believe in Trolls.’
‘Not a bit of it; it was a Troll—a real Stallo.’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’
‘Well, you see, he had a dog with him, a great, brown, smooth-haired
dog. They always lead dogs like that with them by strings, and the
Stallo had such a dog, and it swam beside him; but as it was getting
near the land I gave it an arrow in the eye as well, and it turned
round and sank. If the dog can lick the Stallo’s blood he comes to life
again; that is why a Stallo always has a dog with him.’
There was great rejoicing in Petschenga Monastery when Ambrose
returned, victorious over the pirate, and the next day a thanksgiving
service was held in the church. The sword and coat of mail were hung up
again in their place, and Ambrose relapsed once more into his usual
silence.
But Unnas related, and was never tired of relating, to the work-people,
or to anybody who would listen to him, how it all happened, and so it
has been again and again repeated by others for three hundred years,
just as it was told to me by Nilas the Finn that night beside
Petschenga River.
CHAPTER V.
JUSSI AND UNNAS.
There was something so attractive about the monk Ambrose that everybody
liked him. The old, white-haired Superior, Gurij, loved him as if he
had been his son, and the other monks had a high regard for him. His
pale, handsome and manly face not only inspired feelings of confidence,
but called forth even warmer feelings. The better he was known, the
more certain did it appear that he was a man who might be thoroughly
trusted, and would respond to trust in times of peril, when courage and
energy were demanded. He very seldom smiled, but, in spite of this, he
was invariably cordial, considerate, obliging, and lenient in his
judgment of others. He was ever ready to defend the weak, and was
generous towards his opponents.
All the work-people connected with the monastery were anxious to merit
his approval, and to have him with them, whatever their work might be.
There were two of the work-people who were specially attached to him:
little Unnas, who has been described in the previous chapter, and a
Kvaen named Jussi. Unnas Ambrose had rescued from death. With Jussi
Ambrose had made acquaintance in quite a different way.
He had on a certain occasion come upon Jussi out in the country, as
Jussi was in the very act of maltreating a woman. Ambrose spoke sharply
to him; and when the Kvaen became insolent, he had lifted him up to
throw him aside. Then the Kvaen’s blood boiled over, and he struck at
Ambrose. Thereupon a struggle ensued between the two men, both of whom
were unusually strong. The Kvaen was one of those strongly-built men
belonging to that nation who, if they are provoked, do not shun any
peril, and do not give in until they have either lost their life, or
have come off victorious. The same characteristic rests upon their
ordinary daily work, be it manual labour, navigating or fighting. If
the Kvaen has begun anything in earnest, no power on earth can restrain
him until he has accomplished what he has taken in hand. In good or in
evil, in friendship or in enmity, the Kvaen is persevering and
constant. In that respect he is quite different from the Finn, who for
a short time can be eager enough; but the energy is only a spurt, and
never lasts long. The Kvaen, on the other hand, is tough and true as
steel, and can even be cold-blooded and cruel, and as heartlessly
ferocious as a wolf.
The monk and the Kvaen fought in earnest; but if the Kvaen was as
physically strong as Ambrose, the latter was his superior in the
expertness with which he administered his blows with the closed fists,
and on this occasion no other weapons were employed. Unnas was not
present; had he been, he would assuredly have fixed his teeth firmly in
the Kvaen’s leg, even at the risk of being kicked to death. A fearful
blow on the forehead caused the Kvaen to stumble, and then Ambrose
felled him to the ground and knelt upon his chest.
‘Do you give in?’
‘No, never.’
Ambrose took him roughly by the throat, and almost strangled him.
‘Well, will you give in, and ask for grace?’
‘No,’ the Kvaen hissed out, and struggled to get free.
‘Very well, get up again,’ said Ambrose who was now beginning to get
angry himself, as the scar in his forehead got red, ‘and I will let you
know that I am master.’
The Kvaen jumped up, and the fight was continued; but at last he
received a stunning blow, and fell backwards on the ground, with
Ambrose on top of him.
‘Will you now give in, and sue for peace?’
The Kvaen made no reply.
‘You are a wild creature, Jussi; but I believe that you have good in
you, after all, and that you won’t make a bad companion. Now let us two
from to-day be friends—friends in life and death—enemies no longer.
Will you?’
‘Yes,’ groaned the Kvaen softly. He was conquered, and tears fell from
his eyes.
‘Get up again, then, and shake hands,’ said Ambrose.
From that day forward, Jussi was the monk’s friend, and this
intercourse gradually produced an ennobling effect upon him, so that
he, too, began to realize what it is to be chivalrous. By this means,
also, the behaviour of Unnas and Jussi towards each other became better
than it had been. Jussi might still strike Unnas for some trick or
other which Unnas had played upon him, but it was now with more or less
of good-nature and laughter that he treated the little dwarf.
The following story will afford a good insight into Jussi’s character,
and give some idea of the coarseness and roughness of a Kvaen. I am
very reluctant to relate it, for the reader of it will not think the
better of Jussi, but rather the worse. Still, I must tell the truth,
and show both the good and the bad sides of his nature.
Jussi had his own house, and a little bit of land just opposite the
monastery. One spring it happened that a wild goose settled on the
field close to the houses. It was one of a flock of geese which were
making their way to the north, but it had injured one of its wings, and
could not fly any further. Jussi’s children, a boy and a girl, caught
the goose, and shut it up in a hay-loft. There they gave it food and
water to drink, and took such good care of it that in a short time it
became quite tame, so that they let it out into the field, where it
followed them wherever they went, and would even walk straight into the
kitchen to get a few delicacies. It let the children stroke it on the
neck and back, and of course they became very fond of it, treating it
almost as if it had been their own sister. They even decorated it with
a red ribbon, and called it Hanhi or Hanhiseni. It stayed with them the
whole winter, and roosted at night on some hay in the loft.
The following spring a flight of wild geese again passed over the
houses. Hanhi, or the tame goose, was in the yard with the children at
the time, and it called out to the other geese. One of them called back
again, and the whole flight swooped round the enclosure. Then they came
hovering over the houses, and were evidently enticing the tame goose to
join them. It responded by trying its wings, which had been unused for
so long a time. The trial was successful: the wings carried it, and
away it flew with the other geese, to the dismay and grief of both the
children, who kept standing there, and shouting in vain, ‘Hanhiseni!
Hanhiseni!’ They saw no more of it during the whole of that summer. But
late in the autumn, when numbers of migratory birds began to return
southwards again, a flight of geese one day passed over the place. They
swooped round over the houses, and suddenly, before the children were
aware of it, the entire flock settled on a field not far from them.
There were eleven of them, and they came walking together towards the
enclosures. At the head walked a large goose, with a red band round its
neck. It cackled, ‘Kah! kah! kah!’ as if to say, ‘How do you do? Here I
am again, and all my children with me;’ and so it waddled with the
others following it, straight into the enclosure, and into the little
barn. The children rushed in and told Jussi that their beloved Hanhi
had at last come back, that it had gone into the barn, and that it had
a whole flock with it.
‘Leave them alone, leave them alone,’ said Jussi; ‘don’t frighten
them.’
The goose had told her family, on their way from the North Pole or
somewhere in that region, that she knew of a spot on their way where
they would do well to alight and rest awhile. They had no reason to be
in the least afraid. She knew all the people very well, they were all
kind, particularly the children. They would do them no harm, but, on
the contrary, give them food, and they would have plenty to eat, and
could rest for a night in a barn, where she herself had been sheltered
and made comfortable for a whole winter. For the matter of that, any of
them who did not care to go over to Africa could remain at that place.
None of the young geese had ever seen human beings before, and were not
afraid of them, but went on confidently, following their mother.
As soon as the last goose had got inside the door, Jussi jumped up and
fastened the door, remaining inside himself.
And what did he do? Did he fondle them, or stroke the old goose who
stood so fearlessly in the centre of the flock, looking up at Jussi as
if she expected him to pet her? Instead of that he did something so
shameful, so unmercifully brutal, so cruel, that one would rather not
tell the story.
He set to work to wring their necks, one after the other, and killed
all of them, even the old goose with the red band round its neck—Hanhi,
the children’s pet. The children, who were standing outside, began to
suspect mischief. There was such a screaming inside that they
themselves began to scream and cry, and to stamp on the ground, and to
shout through a chink in the door, ‘Father, father, don’t kill them!
don’t kill Hanhi! Let us have her, let her live! Hanhi is our sister,
father!’
Presently, with bloody hands, Jussi came out; he had killed every one
of them, and the next day he sold them to the monks in the monastery.
He would not tell them how he had obtained them, for he was afraid of
what Ambrose would say concerning his cruelty.
Unnas would not have done such a thing as this. He would, at least,
have spared the life of the old goose, either from compassion, or from
calculation, hoping that it might at some other time bring him another
haul of the same kind.
But if Jussi was cruel to helpless animals, he was no coward in front
of a bear. He showed his bravery when these three men, Ambrose, Jussi,
and Unnas—men as different in appearance and in character as three men
could be—were out on an expedition in snow-shoes, and this story I must
now narrate:
Jussi had a large scar, evidently left from the blow of an axe, on his
right hand, between the thumb and forefinger. This was a souvenir of
Ambrose. On one of their excursions they suddenly came upon a bear. On
seeing them, it raised itself on its hind-legs, and made straight for
Ambrose, who had no weapon with him except an axe. Jussi sprang behind
the bear, and seized it with his powerful arms by the neck, and
squeezed it with all his might against himself, and then, being half
throttled, it struck out violently with its fore-paws. Ambrose raised
the axe, and endeavoured to hit the bear on the forehead; but either
the axe was blunt, or he missed the middle of the forehead, for the axe
slid off on to Jussi’s right hand, with which he was squeezing the
bear’s neck. Still, Jussi did not let go. He was not a man who in a
struggle for life and death would give in readily. Even if his hand
itself had been cut off, he would have held fast with the stump. ‘Lyö
kirveen tallala!’ (Hit him with the blunt end!), he cried; and he
hugged the bear against himself still tighter, shielding his own head
behind the bear’s shaggy neck.
A heavy blow with the blunt end of the axe from Ambrose’s strong arm
stunned the bear, and it sank to the ground; at the same moment Unnas
rushed in with his long Finn’s knife, and plunged it in the bear’s side
up to the hilt. Another blow on the top of its head finished it; but
Jussi ever after bore the frightful scar on his right hand as the
result of the first blow of the axe.
This encounter united these three men more than ever to one another.
As affording a little insight into the character of a Finn, the
following incident may be of service. According to the legend, it took
place precisely as it is here related:
Unnas was an only son. His mother died young, and his father, Andrew,
was exceedingly fond of his only son. There was nothing in the world
for which he cared except his son. But when Unnas was twenty years old,
he had a very serious illness, and it was not thought possible that he
could recover from it.
Unnas had been baptized by one of the priests of Petschenga Monastery,
but his father, Andrew, was still a heathen. He would not consent to be
baptized; he declared that he would live and die believing in his old
gods. He was not a mere heathen, but was an active sorcerer (a ‘Noide’)
or wiseman. He had, therefore, his sorcerer’s or magician’s drum, which
he consulted whenever anything of particular importance was to be taken
in hand, or to be prevented.
When Unnas was taken ill, his father sought at once, by means of
sacrifice, to come to terms with one of his chief gods, who, in the
form of a weather-worn stone, was standing a long way up by the side of
the Kujasuga River, in a birch-wood, and was surrounded by a fence made
of reindeer horns. But it was of no avail. His son grew worse and
worse. The old man fretted terribly, and began to be afraid that the
illness had no natural origin. According to the opinion of the old
Finns, dangerous illnesses often proceeded from the fact that one or
other of the sick person’s deceased relatives wanted to have his or her
help and companionship in the other world. In that world the Finns,
according to their notion, lived with their herds of reindeer, much in
the same way as they had done upon earth, only, of course, they were
free from their worst enemies, the wolves and the husbandmen.
Whenever, therefore, anybody was stricken by a serious illness, which
had no very distinctive symptoms, it became an urgent question whether
by sacrifice a person might reconcile, or come to terms with, the
deceased relative, or at least obtain some postponement of the death of
the sick person.
Andrew consulted the sorcerer’s drum, and tried different sacrifices in
order to excite the compassion of the deceased relative, but in vain.
His son lay writhing with pain, and wandering in his talk. Then Andrew
sent for his brother-in-law, who was a still greater sorcerer than he
was himself, so that he might also consult the magic drum, and perhaps
discover a conciliatory sacrifice.
The brother-in-law came, and different sacrifices were tried, until at
last a whole reindeer was offered up; but even that did not succeed. A
black cat was purchased—for offerings of black animals were considered
the most acceptable—and the cat, too, was sacrificed, but all in vain.
The father knelt down beside his son’s bed terrified and in despair,
while the brother-in-law lay upon his knees, and beat the sorcerer’s
drum; but the movable ring on it insisted on moving to the place which
pointed to the Kingdom of Death, and stopped there, however much he
struck, and knocked, and made promises of sacrifices. Nothing seemed to
be of any avail; neither prayer nor payment sufficed.
At last the brother-in-law was compelled to have recourse to the last
and most desperate remedy. He must himself cross over to the Kingdom of
the Dead, in order to converse with the deceased relative. After a
variety of ceremonies and charms, as well as taking some stupefying
drink, he fell into a trance, and lay as if dead for half an hour,
during which time his spirit was supposed to visit the other world.
Andrew watched him with anxiety, and when he again recovered
consciousness, he asked him in great fear:
‘What does Jabmek, the dead one, demand?’
‘He demands either the immediate sacrifice of a horse on this spot, or
the surrender of some other man’s life,’ answered the brother-in-law.
These were hard terms. To procure a horse at once was impossible; and
who was likely to volunteer to give his own life in order to save that
of the boy?
Then the legend says that the old father determined, out of love for
his son, to offer his own life, and to die himself, that his son might
live.
‘If my son dies,’ he said, ‘then the fire on my hearth goes out. I
should have no more pleasure in anything in this world. I am old, and
have not many years to live. Therefore let me die, so that these years
may be given to my only begotten son, and his life may be long and
happy in this world.’
When he had taken this resolution, he kissed his son’s forehead, and,
with the firm resolution of sacrificing his life, the old man went out
in the darkness of the night to the idol, and fell on his face at its
feet.
And the legend says that, wonderful to relate, the son was better in
the morning, and regained his health, but the father lay dead before
the altar of the idol. The firm belief in the truth of the
brother-in-law’s message, and his own self-sacrificing resolution, had
broken his old heart, and probably the message about it caused a change
for the better in the son’s illness, and practically saved his life.
Unnas sacrificed, as was the custom at that time, a full-grown draught
reindeer (a ‘Kjöre-ren’) at his father’s grave. For the Finns, who
belong to the Greek Church, have a beautiful belief that every person,
man or woman, young or old, even the greatest malefactor, is shown such
mercy from our Lord that his soul, after death, is allowed to drive
about for seven days with the reindeer which have been sacrificed at
his burial. He is thus enabled once again to revisit all the places to
which he had travelled during his life. He thus lives again, for a
short time, the whole of his previous life. He is reminded of
everything (that has happened) from the earliest days of his childhood.
He recalls all the sorrows and joys which he has ever known, the love
and hatred which he may have nourished, the friendship and enmity and
the good and evil (which have made up the experiences of his past
life). As a dragon-fly over a pool, his soul flutters from place to
place, even to the most distant and hidden by-places, and lingers at
each for a moment, so that he can have an opportunity for sorrowing,
forgiving, conciliating, making good again, or begging forgiveness for
what he has done; and then, when all has been revisited and briefly
lived over again, he is set before the judgment-seat of the Most High,
and receives his unalterable sentence—guilty or not guilty.
CHAPTER VI.
THEODORE AND ANNITA.
In the year 1589 the number of monks in the monastery of Petschenga
reached sixty, and there were more than two hundred lay-brothers. On
account of the secular business in which the members of the monastery
were engaged, some of them were always away, either attending to the
mill, the shipbuilding, or the fisheries, or else they were travelling
on business to Vardö or Kola. But on the great festivals they were all
assembled in the monastery, and the services were conducted with full
and impressive solemnity.
The forms of worship in the Eastern Church, which the monks were bound
to observe, are strictly observed at the great feasts, and also during
the forty days of Advent and Lent. The daily offices of the Church are
six, and sometimes seven, in number, according to Psa. cxix. 164:
‘Seven times a day do I praise Thee, O Lord.’ These offices are said
partly during the night, and the following is the appointed order: At
midnight what is called Mesonyktikon is said; this lasts for three
hours. Then there come Matins, and then the lesser Hours. At seven in
the morning the Liturgy itself is celebrated. This is the service in
which the Eucharist is hallowed and administered. The Brethren usually
receive the Sacrament four times a year. In the afternoon Vespers are
said, and finally, at the close of the day, Compline. On fasts and
great festivals ‘Apogrypnia’ is said after ten o’clock at night, and
this is an office which requires that the night shall be passed in the
church and spent in prayer. When ‘Apogrypnia’ is said, it is usual to
celebrate the Liturgy rather earlier, and then the monks go to rest
till Vespers. There is never any sermon at these services, but on the
festivals a portion of the lives of saints and martyrs is read.
Ambrose was not as yet a full monk, but he had completed his novitiate,
and it was decided that he should take the vow on Christmas Eve, 1589.
The venerable and aged Superior, Gurij, had frequently discoursed with
him, and had earnestly explained to him the unalterable nature of the
vow which he was to take, and which would, for all his future life,
bind him to the monastic life. Ambrose had declared that he was ready
to take the vow, and with it to bid farewell to everything in the world
which was not consistent with the strict, secluded life of a monastery.
Nevertheless, old Gurij, who had attached himself more to this young
man than to any of the other monks, had observed at times that there
was an indication of something like suppressed anxiety in his pale face
as the day approached nearer and nearer on which the solemn vow was to
be taken. He fancied that at times there was in Ambrose’s features an
expression as of a profound and unendurable anguish. Ambrose, who was
usually very silent, had never told him much about his earlier career.
It was not improbable, therefore, that in some deep recess of the man’s
heart there lay hidden away memories of occurrences of which nobody had
any knowledge.
The old Superior made up his mind that he would once more speak to him
privately, before he took the irrevocable vow, and he decided to do so
after the first office for the day before Christmas Eve had been said.
When therefore, Mesonyktikon, or the midnight office, was over—that is,
about two o’clock in the morning on Christmas Eve—Gurij summoned
Ambrose to his cell.
‘To-day,’ he said, ‘you are to take the final vow and be one of us, and
become a monk for the rest of your life.’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘You have no doubt as to your decision?’
‘No.’
‘There is nothing about which you wish to consult me?’
‘No.’
‘There is nothing you wish to confess to me or confide to me?—you know
that I am not only your brother, but an old friend too.’
‘I have no confession to make.’
‘Have you never done wrong? Is there nothing in your earlier career for
which you need to obtain forgiveness or the intercession of the
Church?’
‘Indeed, Father, I have done wrong; but others have done more wrong to
me than I have done to them.’
‘You have no longer any ill feeling; you have forgiven them?’
‘No,’ said Ambrose, after a moment’s reflection.
‘But you must forgive; you will obtain no peace until you do, and you
cannot take the vow while you bear malice in your heart. Before you bid
the world farewell you must realize the calm peace of reconciliation.’
‘I cannot.’
‘Who is it that has wronged you so cruelly?’
‘My father.’
‘Your own father?’
‘Yes, and my relations and friends.’
‘There are also many things connected with the world with which your
heart is still occupied, and on which your thoughts dwell, instead of
being engaged in prayer and fasting.’
‘No; there is nothing in the world in which I have lived that I look
for. All is hidden, forgotten, buried and lost.’
‘But it has left behind bitterness in your feelings. Have you never
loved—loved some woman?’
‘Certainly,’ exclaimed Ambrose, and he thereupon turned paler than
ever. There suddenly arose from the innermost recess of his soul a form
so lifelike, as it stood before him, that he covered his face with his
hands and fell on his knees, and laid his head on the old man’s lap,
while he slowly muttered the name ‘Annita, Annita.’
The old man allowed him to remain thus for a while, as he perceived
that this strong man was weeping like a child. There must, then, as he
had suspected, be events which had taken place in his earlier career
which were now revived with painful vividness.
‘Brother,’ he said, ‘will you here, in the quiet of the night, open
your heart to me, and tell me all about your previous career? I do not
ask you from inquisitiveness, but tell me if you can; I will listen to
you. You know that I am your friend. Moreover, I have loved you, and
will understand you, and sympathize with you.’
‘Yes, Father,’ said Ambrose, ‘if you will listen to me, I will tell you
everything. My name is not really Ambrose, but I bear the same name as
our orthodox Czar, whose father conferred on this monastery its
charter. My name is really, like his, Theodore Ivanovitsch, and I come
of an old Russian boyar family. A pious mother taught me in my early
youth to read the lives of the saints and martyrs, and to go to church.
But as I am of noble birth, and at some period would have to serve the
Czar, I also learned to ride and fence and hunt and shoot. I have been
an officer. You see this scar which I have on my forehead? I received
it in battle. There has, as you know, been variance for many years
between the monastery of Solowetski and the Swedish Finns in heretical
Finland. This variance still continues, and none the less now that
there is war between the Czar and John III. of Sweden. The monastery of
Solowetski was, as you know, founded in 1429, and obtained at length
even greater privileges than our own monastery has done. But it was
also bound to protect Karelstrand and the towns in that neighbourhood
against attacks from Finnish pirates. For the protection of the
monastery the Czar has now, as you also know, built a stone wall which
is to have eight towers, and is to surround the churches and all the
buildings. Meanwhile the Swedish Finns, out of their old hatred of the
Russians, had been making piratical incursions into Karelen, attacking
our orthodox people, and the Solowetski people did not hesitate to
retaliate. In this way, about twelve years ago, I was sent as a young
officer to Karelen with a troop of Cossacks to protect the inhabitants
against these Swedish Finns. I must admit that the Cossacks whom I had
to command were wild and cruel men. Young, and unused to the horrors of
war, I often tried to restrain them from needlessly killing men and
women, while they were plundering their dwellings. At times I was,
fortunately, able to save the innocent; but on one occasion, when we
had chased a crowd of Swedish Finns back out of Karelen, into which
they had made a piratical incursion, and had pursued them right into
the district of Kajana, it so happened that some of my men, who were in
the van, had reached the farmstead of Kuolaniemi in Sotkamo before I
came up. They had attacked the farm people, and, as usual, had killed
and plundered them. After this they had fired the houses. I saw the
fire, and pressed on with my men. The farm was beautifully situated on
a projecting promontory by the side of a large lake. The houses and
tall spruce firs down by the lake were so clearly reflected in it, that
it looked as if the smooth depths of the lake below, as well as the
clouds in the sky above, were ablaze. As, in a state of indignation, I
rode inside the burning farmstead, determined more strongly than before
to remonstrate with the more bloodthirsty of my men, I caught sight of
a woman, struggling desperately with a Cossack at the doorway and on
the steps of the burning house. The master of the house they had
already killed, but the mother was clinging, though mortally wounded,
to the leg of a Cossack to save a child—a little girl—whom he was
trying to drag away with him. Before I could reach him, I saw him lift
a spear and plunge it into the mother’s breast, so that she swooned
away and let go her hold of his leg, while at the same moment the child
tore herself away and ran off towards the courtyard. Enraged, the
monster threw his blood-stained spear after the child, and sprang aside
to catch her. Fortunately, he only touched her flowing hair, and at
that moment I and my men reached him.
‘“Monster!” I shouted. “Would you kill an innocent child?” and I placed
my spear on the man’s breast so that he stopped.
‘The child clung to my leg, and cried to me in mortal fear and with
tears in its little eyes, “Save me! save me!” I took her in my arms and
lifted her on to my horse. Poor child! she clung in her terror close to
me, and hid herself under my large riding-coat.
‘The farm continued to burn. No one seemed to think of putting out the
fire, and the people belonging to the farm who had not been able to
escape at once were lying dead in all directions in the burning house.
I gave orders for a retreat within the boundary of Karelen; but what
was I to do with the child whom I had beside me on my horse, a little
girl some six or seven years old? She looked terrified at my men if any
of them came near me, and with her little arms took tight hold of me.
‘“Hold me fast!” she cried; “don’t let go of me, dear, dear man! don’t
let them kill me!”’
‘“No, my child, no one shall touch you,” I said, to pacify her.
‘The district was a lonely one, and the people all about had taken to
flight. I could not, therefore, leave the child at the farm which had
been burnt down. She would have perished of cold and hunger, as most
likely people would not venture there again for some time. I took the
child with me, therefore, to the camp. She was a pretty little girl.
When we dismounted from our horses at the camp, she would not on any
account let go my hand, which she grasped with both her own.
‘“What is your name?” I asked her, when we had entered my tent and her
terror had somewhat subsided.
‘“Nita,” she replied, crying.
‘“Your parents are dead, my poor child,” I said. “Have you brothers and
sisters?”
‘“No; father and mother had only me.”
‘“Have you any relations?”
‘“No; I don’t know of any.”
‘“I really don’t know what to do with you, my poor little Nita, or
where to send you.”
‘“Don’t send me away!” she cried. “Can’t I stop with you? I am so
frightened at all the men here. Can I keep with you? I will be a good
girl, and I am called Annita, too. Annita is my proper name.”
‘We talked for some time together, but I could not make out anything
respecting her relatives. This much only was evident, that her parents
had been ordinary farm-people, but apparently well-to-do folk, for the
child was well dressed, well brought up, and, moreover, intelligent for
her age.
‘She slept in my tent at night, and could not be prevailed upon to
leave me, so afraid was she of my rough men. So I came to the
conclusion to take the little orphan home with me to my parents in
Russia. I explained, therefore, on the next day to my men that for the
future I should consider Annita as my child, and threatened with death
the man who should do her any harm.
‘As there was now not much probability that the Swedish Finns would
soon make a fresh attack on Karelen, I returned to my home on the
border of Lake Ladoga, close to Olonet, not far from Finland, where my
father owned an estate and several hundreds of serfs. My parents were
very much surprised at my bringing home, as a trophy from the
battlefield, a little girl, but when they heard further particulars
they considered that I had done right, and they received the child
kindly. Annita was both a pretty and an amiable child, and she soon
became a favourite.
‘At the end of a year she had learnt to speak Russian, only with me she
preferred to speak Karelsk, her mother tongue, which I could also speak
fairly fluently. It was natural that the child clung to me, and was not
quite satisfied unless I was somewhere near. I had rescued her. She
looked on me as another father. She could be merry, and happy, and
boisterous, like other children, when we went about together, but if I
were from home she used to be silent and quiet. Other people might
praise her, pet her, or scold her, but she did not seem to care much
about it. Only when the praise or blame came from me was she pleased or
sorry. She was educated at my home, and in every respect brought up
like a daughter of the house. Sometimes I used to teach her myself, and
she then was always most diligent.
‘In this way several years passed by. Annita grew up, and by degrees
she began to look upon me as an elder brother. I was, moreover, ten
years her senior. When she was fifteen years old she was sent to a
convent, where she remained for two years. At the same time I was
stationed at Moscow, in Ivan Wasilievitsch’s service, and came to know
personally both him and his son, the pious Theodore, as well as many
other persons who were great and powerful at Ivan’s Court.
‘I remember well that Annita had no wish whatever to go to the convent.
I had to start first, and the day before my departure, when it was
bedtime, I laid my hand on her little head, and said:
‘“Good-bye, Annita; God bless you!”
‘But she only clung to me, and exclaimed:
‘“Take me with you! Can’t you take me with you?”
‘She was simple enough to think that she could travel to Moscow with
me, and that she could there keep house for me.
‘“I cannot take you with me, Annita,” I said; and I tried to take one
hand out of hers.
‘“I won’t go to the convent,” she said with indignation, and she would
not loosen her hold on my hand.
‘“You must go,” I said. “It cannot be otherwise, Annita. I will come
and see you, and look after you. Say good-bye, and be a reasonable
little girl,” I replied, bending down to her.
‘She threw her arms around my neck, sobbed bitterly, and again
exclaimed:
‘“But why can’t you take me with you?”
‘I gently disengaged her arms, kissed her on the forehead, and she went
with my mother into her room.
‘I said good-bye to my parents overnight, as I was to start very early
in the morning. It was still quite dark when I got up and went down to
the sitting-room. When I entered it, I saw Annita standing by a small
table, where the cloth was laid for me.
‘“Annita;” I exclaimed, as she approached me; “are you here, child?”
‘“Yes,” she said; “I wanted to see you before you left.”
‘“But how did you manage to wake up so early?”
‘“I first tried to remain awake in my room, but I couldn’t. Then I went
quietly to the maid’s room, and slept with her so as to be sure to wake
up, and so contrive that you would not leave without my seeing you off.
Are you angry with me?”
‘“No, my child; I am not angry with you. God bless you! Good-bye again,
and be a good girl, and go and lie down again!”
‘She went back again to her room in tears. She had to the very last,
perhaps, entertained a slight hope that I would be prevailed upon to
take her with me. I was sincerely sorry for the child, but it was
altogether out of the question for me to think of taking her to Moscow.
‘On Christmas Eve in 1584 we were both to be at home again. Theodore
had come to the throne, and I obtained leave to go home and visit my
parents. Annita arrived before me, and received me in company with my
father and mother, as I came driving into the courtyard. Annita was in
her nineteenth year, and had so grown that she was almost as tall as my
mother. She was a delicately-made, slender girl, with glossy, fair
hair, which curled slightly over her temples. She still wore her
convent dress, and had during the three years she had been away become
beautiful like a Madonna. But there were two things in particular which
marked Annita out as distinct from any other woman whom I had ever
seen—her beautiful eyes and an engaging smile. When Annita smiled no
mortal man or woman could resist her. I often observed that when she
came into a room, where there were many people, it was as if a ray of
sunshine had suddenly shone into the room. Even if it so happened that
the company had been sitting in silence, Annita’s appearance seemed to
cast a ray of friendliness and harmony over the faces of the company,
and they soon became gay and lively.
‘When I came home on this occasion Annita did not, as usual, spring
wildly to me, and cling fast to my hand with both of hers; but she
stood quite still, and only shook hands with me.
‘“Well, Annita,” I exclaimed, “aren’t you glad I’ve come home again?”
‘“Indeed I am,” she said; “I am very glad;” and she smiled as she
looked at me. To look at those eyes was like looking into the clearest
crystal well. There was no secret hidden at the bottom. No passion had
as yet dimmed the lustre of that depth. Her look was childlike, pure,
innocent, and decorous. And when she slowly opened her large eyes and
gazed at me, it seemed as if I was folded in a wonderfully warm and
enchanting light.
‘I was much taller than she was, and a big, strong man. I had often, in
earlier days, taken Annita in my arms and run off with her over the
fields. She would then, in her wild joy, pull my hair, and call out,
“Gallop, my horse! Gallop, quicker, quicker!”
‘I thought of doing something of this kind again, and half made a sign
of taking her up in my arms, but Annita laughed and jumped aside.
‘“No, thank you,” she said; “I am too big now. You can’t lift me.”
‘“I can try,” I suggested.
‘“No, I won’t let you.”
‘“Am I never more to be allowed to lift you?”
‘“Perhaps, some other time.”
‘The next day I had to go and visit one of our neighbours, a distant
relative, who owned the adjoining estate. The only daughter of the
house, a big, strong girl, was about my own age, and we had played
together as children. It had also, long before, been settled between
our parents that we were to marry one another, so that the two
properties might be united. She and I had quite accepted this
arrangement, and it had never occurred to us to think of raising
objections to our parents’ plans.
‘You well know, Father Gurij, that a Russian master is a patriarch, and
is despotic in his house and family. No person has any right to
question his orders, not even the noblest in the town, not even the
Czar. The house-father is above all written law. His house is not
merely a castle, but a church as well, and whatever he does is sacred
and holy. “Two wills in one house,” says the Russian proverb, “would be
impossible; and would never do.” My father Ivan was a very strong man,
and often he was cruelly severe with his serfs, whom he looked upon and
treated as mere slaves. His will was the one thing which must be
followed and obeyed. Not unfrequently they have felt the
cat-o’-nine-tails, and he was dreaded both by his own servants and by
the serfs in the village. He commanded, and nobody dared to offer the
slightest opposition, whatever the matter might be. If it was his will
that a young man and a girl should marry, then they must marry, and if
any persons wanted to marry, my father had to be consulted, and his
decision accepted.
‘My mother was as weak as a reed, and she would not venture in the
least degree to oppose my father’s will. If he were provoked, it might
happen that he would beat his wife, like an ordinary Russian, who, as
you are aware, does this pretty often—so frequently, indeed, that it
once happened on our estate that the wife of one of our serfs came to
my mother with tears in her eyes, bewailing the fact that her husband
no longer thrashed her as before. She was afraid that it was a sign
that he no longer cared for her.
‘I believe that my mother was fond of Annita. It was impossible not to
be. The servants also were all of them very much attached to her. On
the other hand, my father seemed to be rather hard on her, and I
noticed that at times there was a glance in his eye when he saw her
which seemed to forbode no good. And she, on her part, was afraid of
him.
‘I was again absent at Novgorod for about a year. Some little time
before I was to return I got a letter from my mother, and inside it was
a short note from Annita.
‘“Dear Brother,” she wrote, “come home soon. I am so terrified and
frightened when you are not here. I have never before felt that you
were so long away as this time. Your father has been kind to me,
and has made me a present of a bracelet; but, all the same, I am
afraid of him, as I always have been. How happy I shall be when you
are here once more! I need not see you, but only know that you are
here. I am so safe when I know that you are near me; then I can fly
to you, and cling to you, as I did the first time, when you brought
me here. I shall have no rest or peace until you return to your
little sister,
‘“Nita.”
‘This letter thoroughly opened my eyes. I clearly saw and realized what
I had expected would come about.
‘Father Gurij,’ said Ambrose, ‘you understand that I loved this young
girl whom I had saved, and to whom I had been as a father and a
brother. Now I could no longer think of her merely as a sister. The
spark in my heart had caught fire, and was blazing forth into a strong
flame. But you cannot well understand the depth of my feelings. I was,
indeed, at this time a man of years, yet never before had I been in
love with a woman. It was with a feeling of fear that I realized how
strong my passion was, and how violent it would become, and how
wretchedly unhappy I should be, if anyone deprived me of Annita, or did
any harm to her. I was of a noble family, and a rich man’s only heir,
and I was on intimate terms with many families of quality at Moscow. I
had seen many women, and many women had smiled on me, but their smile
was cold and cheerless, and nothing to that which, in my own home,
beamed on me from Annita. I decided, therefore, at once to return home,
and openly tell my parents that I loved Annita, and that I wished to
have her for my wife, and nobody else.
‘“But what will Annita say?” I thought while I was on the way. “She has
never heard any man whisper a word of love. Perhaps she will be
frightened. Perhaps she will be as much afraid of me as of my father.”
‘I returned home, and I was welcomed by these three on the stairs of
the house. My father was reserved and undemonstrative, my mother was
weeping when embracing me, and Annita looked very pale, as she reached
out her hand to me. I took both her hands in mine, and looked into her
pretty eyes, but she cast them down directly. There must have been
something in my look which she had not seen before, something of a
lover’s look, which caused her to cast her beautiful eyes down to the
ground, while a slight blush tinged her cheeks.
‘The next day I said to Annita, “Come and let us go for a walk;” and we
went together out into the park to her favourite place under a large
oak, where there is a view over Lake Ladoga, which spreads out like an
ocean. On previous occasions, when we had walked about together alone,
she had always been full of fun, and asking questions, and like a child
dragging me hither and thither. But this time she was silent and quiet.
‘“Annita,” I said, when we had seated ourselves under the oak, “can you
remember twelve years ago?”
‘“Yes; I remember everything—my poor parents!”
‘“Can you remember when we came here—how frightened you were? how you
clung to me?”
‘“Yes, I remember it distinctly. I remember the first night I would not
sleep in the servant’s room, but that I cried so, and that I insisted
on having my little bed moved into your room.”
‘“But can you remember what you once said, when we were walking about
here together?”
‘“No; I don’t know what you refer to. I have no recollection of
anything.”
‘“But I remember it very well myself.”
‘“What was it, then? Was it some very silly thing?”
‘“No, it was not silly; but listen: while you held my hand, and skipped
along by my side, you suddenly said to me, ‘Do you know what I am going
to be?’
‘“‘No,’ I answered; ‘I don’t in the least know what.’
‘“‘Very well,’ you said very earnestly, ‘I mean to be your wife. You
and I shall be man and wife.’
‘“‘Oh, of course,’ I said; ‘you shall be Madame Theodora.’”
‘“Yes; but I was a simple child then,” Annita said, “a child that
played with dolls. I did not know what I was saying; besides that, my
dolls were husband and wife, don’t you know.”
‘“No, you did not know what you said, that is certain enough; but now
you are a grown-up young woman, Annita, you are no longer a child.”
‘“No, I am nearly twenty.”
‘“And sensible.”
‘“No, not particularly.”
‘“And pretty.”
‘“Am I?”
‘“Yes, you certainly are; yes, so pretty that I cannot any longer be
your brother.”
‘“Are you angry with me?”
‘“No, I am not angry with you; but there is something I want to tell
you.”
‘“What is it?”
‘“A secret.”
‘“A secret! It will be nice to have a secret. I haven’t any.”
‘“I am not so sure that it is always nice.”
‘“What is the secret? Will you tell me?”
‘“Yes, I will tell you; but you must not be frightened. It is the
greatest secret of my life, Annita, and the secret is this: that I love
you, Annita, seriously and deeply. I am in love with you, and with no
one else, for the rest of my life. Annita, I ask you now, will you be
my wife? Look at me, Annita; what do you say? You care a little bit for
me, Annita, don’t you?”
‘Annita stooped to me in trepidation.
‘“Is it true, Theodore,” she whispered, “that you love me, and will
have me for your wife? Say it once more.”
‘“Yes, Annita, I love you, and you alone, and no one but you in the
whole world,” I said, pressing her to me, and kissing her pale face
till the rosy colour came back in her cheeks.
‘“Theodore,” she whispered, “I have always loved you. I have always
thought of nobody but you. All I have is yours, and has been yours for
many years—heart, soul, and thought.”
‘“God bless you, Annita!” I exclaimed. “At the last minute I began to
doubt. If you had not cared for me, Annita, I should have been very
wretched; in fact, a miserable man, bad, morose, and full of hatred.
But not now: you know what the saying is of catching a sunbeam.”
‘“Can one catch sunbeams?”
‘“Yes, the sunbeam is the smile on your lips, Annita; if I can catch
that smile all my life, then I am saved, and will be a good man and a
happy one.”
‘“You shall have it, Theodore; it shall be yours, and yours only.”
‘The sun was just then setting. The evening was calm; there came gentle
breezes over us from the wind, which was going down. Never had it
seemed to me that the sun set so brilliantly, or that Lake Ladoga ever
looked so beautiful, as on that evening when Annita confessed her love.
As the sun disappeared behind the waves of the lake, and darkness
spread over the sky, I felt that even were the earthly sun to depart,
yet an everlasting dawn of light and joy had arisen in my soul. We
wandered back through the flower-garden to the house.
‘“But what will father and Theodora say?” exclaimed Annita as we
approached the house.
‘“To-morrow I shall talk to my parents and Theodora’s parents,” I said
calmly.
‘The next day I went to my father, and told him that Annita and I were
in love with each other.
‘“Just so,” said my father, “just as you like, as far as I am
concerned.”
‘“Will you consent, then, to our marrying?”
‘“You marry Annita!” he exclaimed.
‘“Yes; I want no one else for my wife.”
‘“You have really thought of marrying the beggar-girl, Annita. Ha, ha,
ha!” laughed my father in derision, and was on the point of breaking
out in an uncontrollable passion, but I saw that he restrained himself;
he very well knew that his beloved son was stubborn, too, and he
considered that at the outset it would be best to proceed cautiously.
‘“Annita is poor,” I said quite quietly; “but she is no beggar, and she
is prettier than any rich girl I have seen; and she has been, moreover,
as well brought up as any Russian lady of rank.”
‘“Her bringing up I have nothing to do with, but you intend, do you? to
break your promise to Theodora, and to set yourself against both my
plans and those of Theodora’s parents.”
‘“I have never proposed to Theodora, neither have I made her any
promise. It has all been arranged between you and her parents, without
our being consulted or having given our consent to it.”
‘“Yes, just so, and just so is it to be. I will in no manner give my
consent to your marriage with a beggar-girl. Your marriage with
Theodora has been put off long enough; and on that account it will be
best that it should take place as soon as possible. I will provide for
Annita myself. There is no hurry as regards her. I will provide a
suitable husband for her in good time from among my serfs or
servants—for example, Anthony Kudsk, or some other suitable youth.”
‘“Father,” I exclaimed in horror, “don’t do it! I ask you dutifully,
and humbly, let me have Annita for my wife! I assure you, solemnly and
truly, that I will marry no other girl.”
‘“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed my father; “when you are married to
Theodora, and Annita has married Anthony, your romantic ideas will soon
disperse, and later on you will be grateful to me.”
‘“Father, don’t joke, or rather make fun of us. Annita would die rather
than marry Anthony, or any other serf. She has been brought up too well
for that; and besides that, she admitted yesterday that she had always
loved me since she was ten years old.”
‘“Leave that to me; I am master here.”
‘“Not over Annita,” I ventured to remark.
‘“Don’t you think so?”
‘“She is not your daughter, and neither a slave nor a serf.”
‘“Who has brought her up for the last twelve years?”
‘“You and my mother have.”
‘“Then I suppose we have something to say as to her future?”
‘“No; when Annita’s future has to be provided for, I have something to
say. It was I who saved her life.”
‘“Ah, well! I have heard that story before now.”
‘“Father, have you anything to reproach Annita for?”
‘“No; but I will not have my son mix Finnish peasant blood with ours. I
will have you marry a girl who is your equal in station and position,
and that Theodora Petrovna is.”
‘“But if I won’t?” I made bold to say once more.
‘“You won’t! You can’t! you shall, though!” exclaimed my father in a
rage.
‘“Will I, though?”
‘“Yes, you shall. I am master in my own house, and in my family. You
are to marry Theodora, even if I have to lead you bound, and cudgelled,
to the altar. In any case, I will never consent to your marriage with
Annita. Now you know my answer, and we have no need to say anything
more about it.”
‘“Just one word,” I said respectfully; “I am your only child and your
heir, and I may presume that you have some little affection for me. Why
can’t you grant me my heart’s fondest wish? Annita would make me a more
faithful and affectionate wife than any other woman I know. Why should
we, who are both in a sense your children, be compelled to curse,
instead of to bless you?”
‘“I see what is for your future good, better than you do yourself. The
whole thing is nothing more than a passing romantic fancy, and it won’t
be long before you yourself will give it up as a piece of folly.”
‘“No,” I exclaimed, “not before Annita or I am dead.” And with these
words I left my father.
‘In bad spirits I went to my mother, and related the whole story to
her; and although she as well would have preferred that I should marry
Theodora, I believe that she would have forgiven Annita and me, and
have given us her blessing. A mother is always ready to pardon her only
son, and I am pretty sure that my mother would have taken my part, even
if I had turned into a brigand or murderer. But her opinion was not of
the slightest weight, against that of my father.
‘I told Annita that my father would not consent to our marrying, but I
assured her, over and over again, that she, and nobody but she, should
be my wife.
‘“And, Annita,” I asked, “what do you say?”
‘“I!” said Annita; “why, he may take my life before I consent to be
married to any of his serfs. You may implicitly rely on me. Neither
persuasion nor threat will ever influence me. I am yours, and never in
this world will I belong to any other man.”
‘In this way time slipped by. Annita and I were happy in the
consciousness of our mutual affection for each other, but we were
unhappy because our parents took no share with us in it. My father was
gloomy, and severe with everybody, and I seldom spoke to him. Annita
had a good voice, and sang our national Russian songs beautifully; but
her singing seemed to give my father pain, and to jar on his ears, for
he left the room as soon as he heard her voice.
‘A short time afterwards, a letter came from a mercantile house at
Novgorod, to say that I must go there to take part in arranging some
complicated money matters connected with a patrimony which had come to
me through the death of an uncle. Annita was in despair at my having to
leave her, but I endeavoured to console her with the thought that it
would not be for long, and that I would hurry as much as possible, and
return as soon as I could. I also tried to comfort her with the
reflection that I had now come in for property of my own, so that we
could marry as soon as we wished, independently of my father, and go
where we liked, and even, perhaps, make a trip to the country of her
own childhood.
‘The business, however, took longer than I had expected, and six months
elapsed before all was settled and I was able to return home. The
nearer I approached my home, the more I hurried on, and at last I drove
from station to station like a madman.
‘Do you believe in omens, Father Gurij? I expected some mishap, and I
was terribly apprehensive; the nearer I approached my home, the more my
fears increased. I reached home in the afternoon. My father and mother
came to receive me. I saluted them, but I saw nothing of Annita.
‘“Where is Annita?” I asked.
‘“She is not at home,” answered my father.
‘“Isn’t she at home? Didn’t she know that I was to be back to-day?”
‘“I don’t know. Perhaps she may come soon.”
‘“Has she gone out?”
‘“Probably.”
‘“Where has she gone?”
‘“I really don’t know; perhaps she has gone across to Theodora’s.”
‘I went over there, but Annita had not been there. I ran back, and
rushed in despair to my mother, and implored her to tell me where
Annita was.
‘“I hope no misfortune has happened to her,” I exclaimed.
‘“I don’t know,” said my mother; “ask your father.”
‘I went to my father, and I must have had a strange look, there must
have been something alarming in my countenance, for he turned pale.
‘“Where is Annita? What have you done with her?”
‘“I don’t know. I have already told you so,” he replied evasively.
‘“You don’t know—‘don’t know,’ you all say. Who, then, does know where
she is?”
‘“Well, that is just what nobody does know.”
‘“If she is dead you may as well tell me at once.”
‘“No, so far as I know, she is not dead.”
‘“But where has she gone, then? In God’s name tell me what you know,
and what has happened.”
‘“She has disappeared.”
‘“Disappeared! Why, in what way?”
‘“About a month ago she was missed, and since that time we have neither
seen nor heard anything of her.”
‘I was on the point of falling, but I collected myself, and went close
up to my father, as pale as death, and with frenzied threatening
gestures, so that he drew back.
‘“Surely you are not going to strike your father,” he exclaimed.
‘“No,” I said; “but I will know the truth. Where is Annita? What have
you done with her? Have you murdered her?”
‘“As I tell you, she disappeared a month ago; nobody knows any more.”
‘“Father, that is not true. You are lying to your son. You hide things
from me, but I will know the truth, even if I have to squeeze it from
you like drops of blood.”
‘“You can do what you like.”
‘“Did you look for her?”
‘“Yes; your mother and the servants searched for her.”
‘“And found no trace?”
‘“No; none that I know of.”
‘I rushed again to my mother, but she called heaven to witness that she
knew nothing. I ran round to the servants, and asked them all the same
question, but I got the same answer, that she had disappeared, and that
no one knew anything as to how it had happened. I rushed to her room,
but all the things were untouched, and the room was as if she had only
just left it. Could she have gone out for a walk, and have been killed
by some wild beast, or robbed and murdered?
‘I couldn’t sleep that night. Overwhelming sorrow kept me wide awake.
Half mad, I went the next day into the village, and made inquiries of
everybody, but nobody had anything to relate except that she had
disappeared. I again went to the house, and asked for Anthony, the
coachman, whom I had not yet seen. I got the same answer from him, that
she had disappeared. Quite infuriated, I made for my father, and had
forgotten myself so far as to grip him by the throat and dash him on
the floor in order to get the real truth out of him.
‘“Lay a hand on your father!” he exclaimed; “you are a fine sort of
son.”
‘I was at once disarmed.
‘“If you have done some unworthy act, father,” I exclaimed, “then own
to it, and make a clean breast of it. I don’t know what I shan’t do to
you or to myself, but I will know the truth.”
‘“I have tried to spare you,” my father said; “but when you go on in
this fashion with violence and threats, then there is nothing to be
done but to tell you exactly what has really happened. The matter is
simply this, that Annita and Anthony Kudst disappeared on the same
night. It pains me to tell you this; but the girl was originally of low
birth, and Anthony has been making good use of the time while you were
away to gain her affection. He was, too, a good-looking fellow, and
from the same country as the girl, and I suppose the beggar-girl
persuaded him to run away with her back to their dear old heretical
fatherland.”
‘“That is not true,” I said; “it is a base, abominable lie, and I don’t
believe it. If it were true I would go after them and murder them both;
but it is not true.”
‘I went down to the village again and threatened both grown-up people
and children, but I could get hold of nothing from anybody. The only
person who knew anything, they declared, must be my father himself. I
never for a single moment yielded to the thought that Annita had gone
off of her own accord with Anthony. I was so fully persuaded of the
impossibility of her doing such a thing that it did not strike me that
she would, in such a case, have taken various things with her, which I
knew remained untouched in her room. If she had gone on account of her
fear of my father, she would also have taken several things with her,
and she could then have been traced, or something would have been heard
of her. But had she been stolen, carried off by force, or kidnapped? If
that were so I could surely find some trace of her. I did not at first
think that she was dead, and this hope kept me going.
‘I noticed that a dog which was very much attached to her, and which
was called Karo, followed me about wherever I went, and was evidently
also trying to find her. This was a further sign to me that she had not
voluntarily disappeared. The dog would have accompanied her. I took the
dog with me, in the hope that it might possibly scent out her
footprints, and we hunted through the house, the park, the village, and
the neighbourhood, but all in vain. I could not find the slightest
trace of her.
‘“Do you still refuse to tell me the truth?” I asked my father when I
returned home. “Can you tell me if Annita is dead? because if I know
that, then I know what to do.”
‘“I can’t tell you more than I know.”
‘“You are lying, father!” I exclaimed in anger; “but it is all the
same; I will find her, or get to know about her. I will not rest,
either day or night, till I find her, living or dead. But may God
punish you with everlasting remorse if I find that you have driven her
with blows to the altar to marry Anthony.”
‘“Unnatural son! go and ask the priest.”
‘I went to the pope in the village. Like one demented, I rushed into
his room and asked:
‘“Have you married Annita and Anthony?” As he hesitated with his answer
I caught him by the throat, threw him on the ground and knelt on his
chest.
‘“Out with the truth, you wretch!” I cried; “have you married Annita
and Anthony?”
‘He assured me, by all that was holy, that he had not married them, and
that he knew nothing about it. I could not but believe him. If I had
felt any doubt as to the truth of his word I believe that, in the
desperate and frenzied state in which I was, I should have held my hand
so long on his throat that I should have choked him.
‘The next day I also disappeared and was away for a whole year. I
wandered about from house to house, village to village, and inquired of
everybody, and promised rewards if anyone would procure me tidings of
Annita. But all in vain. I could find no trace of her. I went to
Finland, to Annita’s homestead, and through Kuolaniemi, where I had
rescued her. The farm-house had been rebuilt, and had a new proprietor,
but nobody had heard anything of Annita.
‘I returned home as ragged as a beggar, sick, haggard, hollow-eyed, and
in despair. I was no longer as angry as before, but dreadfully out of
spirits and broken-hearted. I again begged my father to tell me the
truth, or let me know for certain whether Annita was alive.
‘“I don’t know,” he replied as before. I went off again without even
saying good-bye to my parents. I visited all the convents, but no nun
bore her name, and no one had heard anything of her. I went to Moscow,
to the Czar, to the pious Theodore, in whose service I had been, and I
laid a charge against my father by telling him what I have now told
you. He sent a judge to Olonets and had my father examined, but he
denied, as before, that he knew anything about Annita; perhaps bribed
the judge as well—he was rich enough to do it. After an absence of two
years I returned to my saddened home.
‘“You have been complaining of me to the Czar,” said my father.
‘“Yes,” I replied.
‘“You wanted to have your own father punished as a criminal.”
‘“Yes; because you would not tell me the truth.”
‘“Well, then, I have now just one word to say to you, and that will be
the last word spoken between us.”
‘“Say it, then.”
‘“If you don’t marry Theodora, I shall order my servants to remove you
by force from the house, and then I disinherit you.”
‘“I will not marry Theodora.”
‘“Very well, then, you are no longer my son.”
‘“Be it so,” I said. “Nothing more can wound or grieve me. I am deaf
and dead to all the feelings of a son towards his father, and to all
his father’s threats. I, too, have made my decision.”
‘“And I should like to know what that may be?”
‘“I am going to be a monk, and shall enter a monastery. I renounce the
estates and the property, and everything else in this world.”
‘“And all for the sake of a beggar-girl.”
‘“Yes, for the sake of a poor, harmless, forlorn girl—for the sake of
the one woman whom I have loved, and whom I have lost, and of whom my
own father has deprived me.”
‘“As you will,” said my father, but he hardly believed that I was in
earnest. I made one more desperate journey to seek for some trace of
Annita. At a place in Karelen I was informed that one Sunday a young
couple, who were travelling, had been at church there, and as they were
driving off again, the young woman, when they were crossing a bridge,
either threw herself, or fell into the river and was drowned. But who
they were nobody knew. I called on the priest of the parish, and asked
him, but he could not remember that he had heard the names of Annita or
Anthony, and he had never married persons so named.
‘I returned home, but I could not bring myself to live there. Wherever
I went I was reminded of Annita. I went out in the park, where she used
to play as a child, and where, as a grown-up woman, she had assured me
of her love. I threw myself down on the ground with my face to the
earth, and lay there a long time. I did not give way to tears, but I
had a sense of vacuity about me and around me. A blow had fallen upon
me from a cruel hand, and my life was cut in twain. So I bid farewell
to my parents, and to my home, and I went to Solowetski to be a monk.
But there was too much bustle and secular excitement in that huge
monastery, and I did not find sufficient solitude there. I longed for
solitude, and for a scenery as bare, bleak, and desolate as my own
inner feelings. So I journeyed on foot to this dreary spot. Here, I
will remain, and to-morrow I will take the vows. Annita must be dead,
or, what is still worse, living as dead to me, for not a trace of her
has been found, and it is now three years since anything has been heard
of her. I also will die, therefore, from henceforth to the pleasures
and sorrows of the world. I am weary of life, weary unto death, and I
renounce everything.’
‘Perhaps all this has been for your good, and for the saving of your
soul,’ said old Gurij.
‘No, no!’ Ambrose exclaimed passionately, and springing up from the
place where he was reclining. ‘I could have been so happy in Annita’s
love. You don’t know, nobody knows, what that child was to me. I have
watched at night by her sick-bed, and have felt that were she to die, I
should lose that which nothing could replace. I have carried her in my
arms, and she was more precious to me than my own flesh and blood. I
lived wholly and solely in her love. She was my all—my future was
centred in her. She was my hope, my sanctuary, and my home.’
‘But, perhaps, in the course of time you might fall in love with some
other woman, and be happy in her company?’
‘Never! never! I was no mere lad, who, in the unruly passion of the
passing moment, gave vent to vows, the meaning of which he had never
reflected on. I was a full-grown man who, with my whole understanding,
had pledged myself to that woman.’
‘I can understand how hard it must have been to give up that earthly
hope.’
‘Yes, and you must not suppose either that I have patiently submitted
to my hard fate. No, indeed; there were times when my heart rebelled at
the thought that I was unloved by any human being. Shall I tell it to
you—how I have murmured against Providence, how I have indulged
rebellious thoughts against Providence, and how I dared to reproach the
Divine decrees? But that state of rebellion within me is at an end, and
so are all my hopes. I look for nothing more. I hope for nothing more.
I have now only before my eyes a quiet resignation to my lot and a
humble self-renunciation.’
‘And as regards your father?’
‘Yes, yes, my father.’
‘Do you forgive him?’
‘Yes; may God pardon him for the wrong he did to Annita and to me.’
‘That is right, my son,’ said the old man. ‘Such should be your state
of mind when you take the vows this night, and may it be that you will
find peace within the Church’s fold; for the holy Church alone can
offer balm to your wounded heart here on earth, and give to your soul
everlasting bliss hereafter.’
CHAPTER VII.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE MONASTERY ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1589. [5]
There was war between John III. of Sweden and the Czar, Theodore
Ivanovitsch, and though an amnesty had been agreed upon for four
years—from 1585 to 1590—there were during that time slight skirmishes
between the people who lived along the coast of Karelen, and the Finns,
of Swedish Finland. Early in 1589 the Karelens had, in this irregular
manner, made an incursion into Finland, in the direction of Kajana. In
revenge for this attack, the Swedish Finns, not long afterwards, made
an incursion into Karelen. It is recorded that ‘they came in boats over
the river Kovda, seven hundred strong, and invaded and burnt the
Karelen towns of Kovda, Umba, Keret, and other places along the coast.
After this they made their way southwards in Kemste Volost, and
plundered all the habitations. Thence they retraced their steps across
the river Kem.’
The inhabitants of Solowetski retaliated, and with a troop of thirteen
hundred men made another incursion into Finland, plundering several
towns within the Finnish territory.
The Finns, on their part, revenged themselves ‘about Christmastide’ by
making another invasion; not, however, this time eastwards towards
Karelen, but northwards to the less defended coast of Russian Lapland,
to Enare, Peisen, Petschenga, Orafjord, and Kola. The troops, whose
numbers have not been recorded, marched from the district of Kajana,
and it is probable that they first reached Enare, or, as it is called
in the old documents, ‘Innier.’ Here they slew, among others, ‘Tykum
Thudesen, who yielded tribute to Denmark, Sweden, and Russia,’ and who,
from his name, we judge must have been a Norwegian. From Enare they
probably went along the Pasvig river, or through its valley to Pasvig,
or Klosterfjord, where Boris and Glebs Chapel had been built by the
monks of Petschenga. Here they put to death ‘four men, three boys, and
one woman.’ Among the boys Mikel Ottesen is mentioned, who was probably
a Norwegian, and the woman, who was named Oditte Andrisdatter, was also
in all probability a Norwegian woman. It is noteworthy that in this
case they spared the chapel, as it is still in existence, but usually
they burnt both the churches and the houses. From Peisen they went by
sea to Bomeni, or Bumandsfjord, on Fiskerö. They easily obtained boats
at Pasvigfjord, where the monks had a shipyard. The number of those who
were killed at Bomeni, and the property belonging to the monks which
they destroyed, is not known. ‘There was nobody there,’ the letter from
Vardö states, ‘when the magistrate arrived’ after Christmas to collect
the usual tax, or, as it was called, the ‘Nordfjeldskat.’ From Bomeni
they went to Petschengafjord. At the mouth of the fjord, at Warehouse
Bay, or, as the Vardö letter calls it, ‘at Wickits,’ was the monks’
shipyard. Here they set fire to the houses, and burnt all the boats
which they did not require. At the head of the bay was St. Mary’s
Church. This they also set on fire, after having plundered the
treasures which they found in it. From thence they crossed the river to
the monastery itself.
They reached it on the day before Christmas, 1589, during the night,
and while the office of Nocturns was being recited in the church, and
at the very time when Ambrose was about to take the vows. Most of the
monks were assembled in the church. A great many of the work-people
also were there, for everyone wanted to be present when a man who was
so highly esteemed by them all was to take his final vows. Fifteen of
the monks appear to have been absent from the monastery when it was
attacked, and thus they escaped death. Probably the monks who were at
the monastery had received intelligence of the ravages of the hostile
troops, and had done what was possible by way of defending themselves,
but evidently they had not anticipated an attack quite so soon.
The solemn consecration had begun, and at ten o’clock at night Ambrose
entered the outer church. There he took off the ordinary clothes which
he had been wearing, and stood with only his hair-shirt on him, without
stockings, shoes, girdle, and with his head uncovered. This was an
indication that he had now completely renounced everything in the
world. Then the assembled brothers approached him, each one bearing a
lighted taper in his hand as a symbol of the Gospel approaching the
penitent soul. He then joined in with their voices, and sang the hymn:
‘Lord, receive me in thy Fatherly embrace.’
At the entrance of the chancel the president of the monastery met him
‘as a father at the threshold of his house,’ and delivered a charge to
him, in which he adjured him ‘to open his heart, and to give heed to
the voice of the Lord, which now was calling on him to take His easy
yoke upon him. He must not forget that while with joy and trembling he
made his vows, the Saviour Himself, and the Mother of God, and all the
host of heaven, would hear each word he spoke, and that those words
would resound again before him, at the resurrection at the last day.’
Having entered the chancel, Ambrose knelt down, turning towards the
Superior and the Brothers, who stood in a semi-circle before him.
The Superior then inquired of him, ‘Wherefore art thou come hither, my
brother, and art kneeling before this sanctuary, and before the sacred
Brotherhood?’
He responded: ‘From the desire to lead a holy life of
self-renunciation.’
‘Dost thou desire to be reckoned worthy of being received as a monk,
and a partner of the Brethren’s sacred company?’
‘I do, by the help of God, Reverend Father,’ responded the novice.
The Superior commended his good intention, and said:
‘Yea, verily, it is a beautiful and laudable service to which thou art
now consecrating thy life. Mayest thou also fulfil thy vows! But so
grave an undertaking cannot be faithfully borne without toil, and
self-denial, and prayer.’
Then the Superior again demanded: ‘Is it of thine own free will that
thou hast come hither before the Lord?’
‘Yea, Reverend Father.’
‘Not by necessity, nor by force?’
‘No, Reverend Father.’
‘Wilt thou abide here in the monastery, and submit thyself wholly to a
monk’s life of self-denial and austerity, until the day of thy decease?
Wilt thou all the days of thy life be obedient to thy Prior, and to
this Brotherhood in Christ? Wilt thou keep thyself in temperance and
chastity? Dost thou forsake all thy possessions, and all that is in the
world?’
To all these demands the novice responded with lowly voice, in
consciousness of his own frailty, but in hope of help from on high,
‘Yea, Reverend Father.’
After this public confession, which is intended to remove every fear
that force may have been used in securing the devotion of the novice,
the Superior addressed to Ambrose some further words of admonition, in
which he clearly explained to him the significance and the claims of
the monastic life. He again pointed out to him its principal rules,
which demand chastity, humility, obedience, and self-denial. He warned
him against the temptations with which the chief enemy of mankind would
assail him, more especially by bringing before him, awake and asleep,
visions of his former life in the world, its joys, its hopes, and its
sorrows. He made mention of the martyrs as examples to be followed, and
even spoke of the Lord Himself, Who, for our sake, ‘denied Himself, so
that He became obedient unto death,’ and then demanded of him once
more, ‘All this thou dost pledge thyself to observe, in reliance on
God’s might, and dost promise to keep thy vow unbroken, all the days of
thy life, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ?’
‘I do, with the help of the Lord, Reverend Father,’ responded once more
the new champion of the Lord.
The Superior then said a prayer, in which he called to mind God’s mercy
when He spake to the children of Israel, ‘Even though a mother forget
her child, yet will I not forget thee;’ and he sought to confirm the
soul of the new brother with the promise of Divine strength and comfort
from the Holy Ghost in the spiritual struggles which were to come upon
him.
Then the Superior pointed to the Book of the Gospels, which lay upon a
table, as a symbol of Christ’s presence, and again put him in
remembrance that he had, of his own free will, made request to enter
the order of monks.
Then, one of the Brothers, who had been appointed to do so, took a pair
of scissors, which were lying on the Gospels, and delivered them to the
novice. Then the novice handed them back. This was done thrice. When on
the third occasion the monk received the scissors from the hand of the
novice, he cut off a small portion of the hair over the novice’s
forehead, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as a token that therewith
all carnal lusts are abolished, saying as he did so: ‘Never forget Whom
it is that thou art now espousing, to Whom it is that thou art going,
and what it is that thou art forsaking.’
While the assembled monks were softly singing ‘Gospodi pomilui,’ ‘God
have mercy,’ the Superior invested the new Brother with the monastic
habit, of which each separate article, habit, girdle, hood, and
sandals, has its own symbolical meaning. Each time that the Superior
placed on him a fresh portion of the habit, he turned to the brothers
and said: ‘Let us pray for him. Lord have mercy.’ As soon as he had
completely invested him, he repeated a prayer, in which he implored the
Lord that He would ‘Lead this Thy servant into Thy spiritual house,
receive him into Thy flock, and purify his soul from all carnal
affections, and ever put him in remembrance of the blessing and
heavenly joy which awaits the elect of God, and all them who, in the
life of the monastery, have crucified the flesh for the Kingdom of
Heaven’s sake.’
Then the Superior and the assembled Brothers and the novice together
sang a beautiful old Russian hymn:
‘Tossed on the stormy billows of life, I flee to this haven of rest;
Lord, let me here find peace, and balm for the wounds of my heart.
With my tears, O Lord, I will wash away the evil tale of my misdeeds,
And my life henceforth shall be vowed to Thee, in penance and humble
prayer;
But the fiend will come to entice and deceive my wavering soul;
Lord, help me then with Thy might, that I may not yield to his wiles.
I am a sheep of Thy flock, O Lord; unto Thee do I flee for refuge.
Though a wanderer, let me come to Thee; O God, have mercy upon me.’
Portions were next read from the Epistle to the Ephesians (vi. 10–17)
and from the Gospel according to St. Matthew (x. 37, 38; and xi.
28–30). Then, during the recital of a prayer, the Prior laid a cross on
the novice’s chest and shoulders, and called upon him to bear in mind
the words of Christ (St. Matt. x. 38). He handed him a lighted taper,
and with this in his hand he was to stand before the picture of Christ,
until the administration of the Holy Communion. When he handed him this
taper, he said, ‘Let your light so shine before men, that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven’ (St. Matt.
v. 16).
The only thing which now remained was for Ambrose, with the Superior
and Brothers, to receive the Blessed Sacrament, and they had all to
give him the kiss of peace, in token that he was received as a Brother
in their community.
But at eleven o’clock the solemn function was suddenly interrupted.
Some of the work-people rushed into the church and shouted: ‘The enemy
is at our gates!’ And a banging of axes on the wooden walls was at the
same moment heard within the church. In place of the most solemn
silence, there now reigned a most uproarious alarm. The servants of the
monastery rushed from the church, and ran to their different dwellings
to arm themselves with what weapons they possessed, while the soldiers
battered away at the gate of the wooden wall which surrounded the
church and other buildings. It was not long before they burst it open
and rushed into the courtyard. Being better armed with swords and guns,
they speedily overpowered the servants of the monastery, and drove some
of them back into the church, and others into their own dwellings, or
into those of the monks. Some of the ruffians pursued them from room to
room, and murdered the defenceless people, and then plundered whatever
seemed to be of any value, and set fire to the buildings.
In the meantime, the monks, with some of the work-people, were
collected in the church. The leader of the troop, with a portion of his
band, broke through the slender walls and entered the outer church; but
the doors into the chancel were stronger, and withstood their attack
for a while. They well knew that the money and other treasures would be
found in the church, and particularly in the Sanctuary, or Holy Place.
They therefore surrounded the church, so that nobody should escape
through any secret door, while they continued to batter at the door
leading to the chancel.
In the meanwhile, the monks’ and servants’ dwellings were burning, and
the smoke came down over the church and enveloped both besieged and
besiegers in a thick white mist.
The doors, of course, did not long withstand the blows of the axes. The
soldiers smashed them and stormed into the chancel, where the helpless
monks stood assembled in their priestly attire, with the Superior, the
aged Gurij, at their head. He, venerable old man, knelt down and held
out a gilt cross to the enemy, and at the same time asked for mercy for
himself and his helpless brothers. But he was at once ruthlessly struck
down by the leader, and the cross snatched from his hands. Then they
set to work upon the others, and struck them down man by man. There was
only one who offered anything like resistance. Ambrose had rushed into
the Sanctuary and put on the coat of armour and seized the sword. Thus
armed, he thrust himself forward, and restrained some of the enemy who
were on the point of killing the rest of the monks. He struck out all
round, and defended himself with great spirit, his back being against
the Sanctuary, while the bodies of his dead and dying brethren lay in a
heap at his feet, and the whole of the floor of the church flowed with
their blood.
All of a sudden, as if shot from a cannon, a man sprang out of the
Sanctuary to his assistance. It was the huge, powerful Jussi, his
trusty friend. Jussi had entered by a secret door, and had armed
himself with a long, heavy iron crowbar. Armed with this, he sprang
forward in front of Ambrose and wielded it with his giant-like
strength, and dealt blows with such violence on all sides that he mowed
down like grass a number of the soldiers, and drove the others back.
But like a swarm of bees they surrounded him again from all sides, so
that at last, mortally wounded, he turned towards Ambrose, and, falling
over him, gasped:
‘Fly for it—Unnas is waiting—secret door.’
More he could not utter, before he was stabbed through and through a
dozen times. Ambrose leaped over the half-door of the Sanctuary,
slammed firmly back the upper half of it, and so gained a moment’s
respite. A secret door opened out of the Sanctuary into the back of the
monastic enclosure, and through that door peeped the terror-stricken
face of Unnas.
‘Come, come,’ he whispered.
The Sanctuary door crashed and burst in just as Ambrose disappeared
through the secret door, which was so placed that the soldiers had not
detected it, and so had not guarded it. But, in escaping through the
wooden fencing which surrounded the whole of the monastery, Unnas and
Ambrose had to jump across the burning remains of a part of the
servants’ dwellings. Unnas jumped over them first, and his Finn’s dress
and thick cap protected him from the flames, but Ambrose, with nothing
on his head, had his face badly scorched, although he had held his
hands over it.
They escaped through a small gate in the fence, and then made off
through the smoke and darkness down to the river, while the soldiers
were engaged in plundering the Sanctuary. When they reached the river,
Unnas jumped on to a block of ice and threw a rope to Ambrose. He
leaped from one block of ice to another, and in that way got across to
a small island in the middle of the river. Ambrose, who was heavier,
and not so nimble as the Finn, fell straight down, exhausted, wounded,
and almost blinded; but he had the rope round his waist, and, partly
dragged by Unnas, and partly crawling himself along the beach, the Finn
at last helped him up and enabled him to reach a gamme, [6] or hut
built of earth, which was on the island. There were two islands in the
river opposite the monastery, and no doubt they still exist, unless the
river has changed its course, or swept them away. On these two small
islands, it is expressly mentioned in the letter from Vardö, ‘there
were two “gammer,” which remained untouched, as the Swedes could not
reach them.’
Unnas and Ambrose were thus, for a time at least, in security. They
could see from their place of refuge how the church was burning. The
invaders had set fire to it, after they had plundered whatever they
could find of any value. The church and the various monastery buildings
made together a huge conflagration, round which they could see black
figures moving about on the snow.
The next morning, Christmas Day, nothing remained but the smouldering
ruins of the church, the buildings, the barns, and the mill. All that
the invaders could carry with them, that was of any value, they had
pillaged, and the rest they had burnt.
In the letter from Vardö forty-one of the murdered monks are mentioned
by name. ‘The following,’ it states, ‘the Swedes slew belonging to the
monastery that was called Pesantz: The chief monk, Archimandrite Gurij.
Three priests, by name Packum, N. Foser, and Jonno N., together with
the following monks.’ (Here follows a list of their names.)
Similarly the names of fifty-one of the servants, or lay-brothers, are
recorded as having been killed. (Here follows another list of names.)
According to some authorities a total of fifty-one monks and sixty-five
servants were slain, and according to others even a larger number. The
majority of the names are Russian, only one or two are Finnish or
Norwegian. In the barn they killed two women, Kyllinna and Fefemj by
name. In all probability they were milkmaids, who attended to the cows.
With this the invaders ended their errand, and made their way down to
the fjord again. From thence they went across to ‘Urze,’ by which most
likely Orafjord is meant, and there they put to death five men, three
lads, five women, and four girls. Among the men are mentioned by name,
Jorgen Iffersen, Iver Ottesen, and Thimofe Mickelsen, who were probably
Norwegians. Among the women, Marin Iffuansdatter is mentioned; she was
also, most probably, a Norwegian woman. The names of the rest seem to
have been those of Russians. These marauders spared neither man nor
woman, but put to death everybody they could.
From Orafjord they made for the town of Kola, which was pretty well
fortified. ‘They reached it two days after Christmas. But the besieged
inhabitants made a sally, and the marauders were completely routed.
Sixty of them were slain, and the rest escaped by boat across the river
Tulom.’ This river has its source in the Nuotjavre Lake, and from it
the remnant probably made their way southwards again to the region of
Kajana, whence they had come. Nothing more, however, is recorded of
their exploits.
Unnas and Ambrose were not the only persons who escaped from being
killed by fire and the enemy’s sword. It is not unlikely that a few
others of the monks also escaped by flight, but nothing is said in the
documents on this point. Ambrose lay ill on a plank bed, with a bandage
over his eyes. His hair was almost entirely burnt off, and his hands
and face were so scorched that he was scarcely to be recognised.
The following day Unnas went over to the ruins. It had frozen during
the night, so that the ice on the river was strong enough to bear him.
There he found nothing left of the entire monastery but smouldering
embers, and charred corpses among the ruins. A number of clothes and
other things had been fetched from the monks’ chambers on to the snow,
and had served the ruffians for beds. Perhaps at one time they had
thought of taking some of these things with them, but had afterwards
abandoned the idea. Unnas took some of the things with him across to
the island, so that both he and Ambrose might have something to rest
upon. The barn was, as has been already observed, also burnt down, and
the cattle had been killed. Part of the slaughtered cattle the brigands
had taken with them, the remainder they had thrown into the fire.
Ambrose and Unnas, however, were not on that account obliged to starve.
They found in a shed on the island a large amount of salt fish. The
monks had speared salmon on the islands during the summer, and it
sometimes happened that one or more of them, together with some of the
servants, would remain in the gamme for several days. Pots and cooking
utensils were to be found there, and neither Ambrose nor Unnas had any
need to fear either cold or hunger for awhile; they could wait for
Ambrose to recover his strength, and for the people who were spared to
return.
After a few days had passed, most of the fifteen absent monks did
return, and found to their horror the monastery destroyed, and their
brothers’ half-burnt corpses lying among the ruins. They had to live
for the present in a ‘bathing chamber, situated a little way from the
monastery,’ which had been spared, or perhaps had not been noticed by
the marauders. At first they had enough to do in burying their murdered
brethren and the servants.
CHAPTER VIII.
REUNION.
Pilgrimages are very common throughout the whole of the Russian Empire.
Men, women, and children travel in company, and move from monastery to
monastery, or from one holy place to another, to perform their
devotions in them. There are individuals, even among the womenkind, who
spend the whole of their lives in pilgrimages, although they could be
in possession both of house, and home, and fortune. An unaccountable
impulse seems to force them on. They have scarcely returned home from
one journey, and rested for a day or so, before they are off again to
journey, in want and hardship, to a fresh place, where this or that
saint is buried, or where there is some celebrated shrine, with relics
of this or that martyr.
Many of the pilgrims, even cripples who drag themselves along with
great difficulty, make pilgrimages of this character in fulfilment of
some vow, and in the hope that by fulfilling the vow they may be healed
of their sickness. A pilgrim is accounted a holy person in the eyes of
a Russian. No door, not even that of the richest, is closed against a
pilgrim, and no voice is ever raised against one. On the contrary, it
is esteemed a happy occurrence, and regarded as a good omen, for a
pilgrim to cross the threshold of a house. People are anxious to give
them lodging and to help them on their way to their destination. There
is, probably, no one who has not some sin on his conscience, or who
does not feel himself all the better for making some offering to the
Church, and so obtaining the prayers of some holy person; or has not
had a mass offered for the departed. If a person cannot travel as a
pilgrim himself, he will send offerings by the hands of a pilgrim to
the various monasteries, so that he may be prayed for at this or that
holy shrine. A poor man will often spend his last kopeck with this
object in view. And both the rich and the poor are fully persuaded that
a pilgrim would rather die than deceive them.
Among other shrines, there are, to this very day, annual pilgrimages
made to the monastery at Solowetski. It is now an easy matter to reach
this monastery, for there is a regular service of steam-vessels running
between Archangel and the island on which the buildings stand. But in
olden times, when the events which are related here took place, the
pilgrims often had to wait for a long time before they could secure an
opportunity for reaching the island by means of a boat.
From Solowetski the more zealous of the pilgrims used to prolong their
journeys through Russian Lapland to Kola, and thence to the monastery
on the Petschenga River, celebrated both for its far distant situation
and its sanctity, and for being the place where the holy Trifon was
buried.
In this way it happened that at Christmastide in 1589 a band of
pilgrims arrived at Kola just before the detachment of Swedish Finns
who had destroyed the monastery had been repulsed from Kola, and had
retreated along the banks of the river of Tulom. Among the pilgrims
there were both men and women, rich and poor. They continued their
march from Kola to Petschenga partly on foot, partly with the help of
reindeer, which the Lapps either drove themselves, or allowed the
pilgrims to use. The pilgrims at that time knew nothing for certain
about the destruction of the monastery. Among them was a young woman
who was distinguished from the other women by her pale, but unusually
handsome face. Sorrow had clearly left its traces on her countenance,
and her cheeks lacked their proper fulness. But there flashed a bright
spark of animation from her beautiful eyes, and her smile seemed like a
benediction for those on whom it was cast. She was dressed as a nun,
and was looked upon by the other pilgrims as a saint. She had attached
herself to the band at Olonets, and since then had patiently shared
their wants and hardships. She nursed the sick, consoled the sorrowful,
and was regarded with affection and esteem by the whole of the company.
The pilgrims were naturally greatly alarmed, when they crossed the
Petschenga River, which was at the time covered with ice, and saw,
instead of a splendid monastery, with church, and buildings, and
guest-houses for pilgrims, nothing but a heap of blackened ruins, and
among them a number of unburied corpses. Some of the monks, who had
been away, had returned, as has already been mentioned, and had taken
refuge in the bathing house, but as yet they had not had time to remove
all the corpses for burial. It was of course a pious work for the
pilgrims to assist in. The young woman listened with anxious attention
to the names that were mentioned of the monks who had been killed. She
drew a sigh of relief when she heard that there was nobody among them
named Theodore, but in reply to her inquiry whether any of the monks
who were still alive bore that name, she also received a negative
reply.
‘Are you looking for some relative?’ asked one of the monks.
‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘he ought to be either at Solowetski or here, but
he was not at Solowetski, so I expected to find him here.’
‘What was he like?’
‘He was a tall, handsome, and strong-looking man, with fine light hair,
and a scar on his forehead.’
‘Perhaps it is Ambrose, who is lying ill across on the island.’
‘No,’ said the young woman, ‘his name is Theodore Ivanovitsch.’
Meanwhile, Unnas came over from the island to see the pilgrims, and to
talk to them. But there was only one with whom he could at all freely
converse, and that was the young woman who, besides Russian, could also
speak Karelen. He informed her that in a gamme on the island, across in
the river, a poor monk was lying with his face and hands burnt, and he
asked her if she, or one of the others, had any remedy which might do
him good.
‘We have very few remedies,’ she said; ‘but I was taught in a convent
how to nurse sick people, and I will go across with you and attend to
him.’
On their way Unnas told her how the sick man had on one occasion saved
his life, and that he was to have been made a monk and to have taken
the vows on the very night that the monastery was attacked and
destroyed by the invaders.
On a plank bed, in the somewhat dark earth-hut, Ambrose lay with a
bandage over his eyes. Unnas told him that a band of pilgrims had
arrived who knew nothing about the destruction of the monastery, and
that in their company was a young woman—a nun—who understood doctoring,
and who had been so good as to come with him, and that she was now
there in order to examine his injuries.
‘Thanks,’ said Ambrose.
The young woman came to the bedside, and carefully loosened the bandage
over his eyes. The sick man could not open them, as a hardened scab
from the burns had formed over nearly the whole of his face. She
beckoned to Unnas, and told him to bring her some water, so that she
might wash and cleanse the sores on the face of the sick man with her
pocket-handkerchief. At the sound of the strange woman’s voice the sick
man suddenly raised himself up to a sitting posture. There was
something in that voice, and in the sound of the Karelen word which she
uttered, that seemed to strike a chord in the depth of his heart. But
with a sigh he laid himself down again on the bed.
‘I am dreaming,’ he sighed.
The young woman had taken the basin with the water from the Finn, and
she dipped her pocket-handkerchief in it and knelt down beside the sick
man. She carefully undid a little more of the bandage, and began to
wash his face, but suddenly she turned as pale as a corpse, let go the
pocket-handkerchief, and folded her hands. Had she not seen the scar on
that forehead often before!
‘God in heaven!’ she exclaimed, ‘but can it be possible?’
Then she got up, breathed deeply, and looked at the man, his forehead,
his hands; then she stooped down again, and groped with her fingers
about his neck, and pulled out a little cross on a string. She
recognised the cross. There was her name on it. It was a present she
had given him.
‘Theodore!’ she exclaimed in fear and doubt. ‘Theodore Ivanovitsch,’
she said again; ‘is it you who are lying here ill and burnt?’
‘Who is it who is speaking? Who are you?’ exclaimed the sick man. ‘Who
is here, Unnas?’
‘Annita,’ said she softly.
‘Annita!’ exclaimed the sick man. ‘Unnas,’ he shouted, ‘where am I? am
I dead or alive? and who is this who is speaking to me?’
‘Theodore,’ whispered Annita, while she knelt down by his bed and
kissed his forehead, ‘I am Annita—your own Annita—the lost Annita; and
God be for ever praised that you are alive, and that I have found you.’
The sick man lay perfectly still for a moment, altogether overcome by
his feelings.
‘Is it true? is it really you, Annita, or am I dreaming, am I fancying
it, and have I lost my reason?’
‘No; it is I, Theodore, in very truth, and I came here on a pilgrimage.
I have come straight from your home.’
‘I must look at you,’ said the sick man, ‘and I will take the bandage
off my eyes.’
‘No, no, my dear,’ said Annita, and she held his hands down; ‘you must
not attempt to open your eyes. Your face is burnt; it would be
dangerous; you must be careful.’
‘Give me your hand; let me kiss your hand; I will hold your hand in
mine; I will grasp your hands as you once did mine, my dear Annita.
Here you really are, alive, and with me in this wretched hovel! Then
you are not dead? you were not robbed, not kidnapped, and not married
to Anthony?’
‘No, indeed, nothing of the sort.’
‘How is all this possible? Where have you come from?’
‘I have come from your home, from our home, and I have brought you a
greeting from your mother.’
‘How has all this come about?’
‘You shall know all by-and-by, but not now; I must go to our encampment
and fetch some salve for your eyes, and then I will return and tell you
all. You know now that I am alive and am here, and that I shall not
leave you any more.’
‘Do you know who the woman is whom you brought here, Unnas?’ Ambrose
said when Annita was gone.
‘No; but she seems to be good and kind.’
‘Good and kind!’ said Ambrose; ‘yes, Unnas, she is an angel, dearer to
me than all the angels put together. Heavenly Father,’ he exclaimed, as
he folded his hands across his breast, ‘I thank Thee with all my heart,
that Annita lives, and that Thou hast also spared my life, whereas all
my brethren have been slain. Even the aged Gurij is dead, and has not
seen Annita.’
‘Is it your sister?’ Unnas inquired.
‘Yes, she is both my child, my sister, my beloved one, and my bride.’
Unnas did not exactly understand this, but that it was a joyful
surprise to his friend was plain enough.
The legend has preserved this incident relating to the monk who had
escaped from the massacre, and who had concealed himself on an island
in the Petschenga River. But, according to the legend, it was not a
mortal woman who came and nursed him, but an angel from heaven, who
came down each night to him, and placed her hand on the monk’s eyes,
until he was cured and regained his sight.
When Annita returned, Ambrose’s wounds were dressed, while questions
and answers were exchanged between them. As they spoke in Karelen Unnas
was also able to follow them, and in that way heard much about his
benefactor’s earlier life, of which he had previously known very
little.
‘Your mother sends you her greeting,’ said Annita; ‘she will receive us
with open arms, and give us her blessing when we return.’
‘And my father?’ said Ambrose.
‘Your father?’
‘Yes; will he give us his blessing, too, and forgive us?’
‘Then you don’t know what has happened? You don’t know that your father
is no more? Your father is dead.’
‘May God have pity on his soul!’
‘You have not heard that your father met with an accident?’
‘No. I know nothing about things that have occurred at home since I
left.’
‘While driving with three horses which he had bought, and which he
would drive himself over to one of his neighbours, the horses shied,
and reared, and upset the carriage, and he injured his head so that he
died the day following.’
‘Had you returned home when it happened?’
‘No; your mother told me of it. It is now six months since it happened.
His last words, your mother says, were “Call Theodore back, and Annita;
she is in a convent at——” More he could not manage to utter. I believe
that he intended to forgive us when he saw death approaching.’
‘Were you hidden in a convent?’
‘Yes, in a little nunnery in the neighbourhood of Novgorod.’
‘What is it called, and who took you there?’
‘That I don’t even now know; they were strangers whom I have never seen
either before or since.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘One winter evening I had been sent across to Theodora Petrovna, and
was to drive back again with Anthony Kudst, who came to fetch me. We
were set upon by three men; I was lifted out of the sledge and placed
in theirs, and was driven away, night and day, till we reached the
convent, where I was confined more strictly than any of the nuns, and
was kept under guard, and never allowed to speak to a stranger.’
‘And Anthony, what became of him?’
‘Ah! what became of him nobody knows; most probably your father gave
him money, and sent him back to his own country.’
‘I hunted for you for more than two years, Annita, far and near, as
well as in all the convents.’
‘The nuns, or the abbess of the convent, probably received money,
according to some agreement with your father, not to give the slightest
information. I wrote several times, but the letters, of course, were
never sent. Some time after your father’s death they became much less
strict in watching me. News of his death had reached the convent, and
more money was not sent. I ran away one day from the convent, and
travelled on foot as a pilgrim in my nun’s dress, begging all the way,
to your home.’
‘Was my mother glad to see you again?’
‘Yes; she embraced me with tears when she saw me again. All the
servants and people in the village were glad to see me again. “But
where is Theodore?” you may be sure I asked at once, when I did not see
you there.
‘“Theodore,” said your mother with a sigh—“Theodore has gone away.”
‘“Where?”
‘“Ah, my dear child!” your mother exclaimed, and began to cry bitterly,
“Theodore has gone to Solowetski monastery to be a monk.”
‘“To be a monk!” I exclaimed in alarm.
‘“Yes; when he gave up the hope of finding you again, or believed that
you were either dead, or had been compelled by our father to marry
Anthony, he decided to become a monk.”
‘“Marry Anthony!” I exclaimed, “how could he think such a thing?”
‘“Father could have made you.”
‘“Never!” I said. “I would have taken my own life before that.”
‘Neither your mother nor I knew exactly where Solowetski monastery lay,
or how far it was from our home, but a short time afterwards a troop of
pilgrims passed by, and were housed on the estate. You may be sure that
I was glad when I heard that the object of their journey was to visit
Solowetski. I at once told your mother that I would go with them. Then
it was my turn to hunt for you. But you were not at Solowetski. The
monks stated that you had gone further northwards, to a monastery which
I knew still less about. Then, as a part of our company decided to go
on to Petschenga, I gladly joined them, and now here I am.’
‘Yes, indeed—God be praised!’
‘And are you now a monk, Theodore?’
‘No, Annita, thank God, I have not taken full vows. I should have taken
them on Christmas Eve, when the monastery was attacked, the brothers
were slain, and everything was burnt to the ground.’
‘Then you can return back again to the world, and to your home?’
‘Yes, when I am well enough to travel, and have recovered my sight, you
may be sure that I shall leave this place.’
‘And will you take me with you? Will you give me leave to go home with
you?’
‘Annita, kiss my forehead, let me feel your lips upon my brow, as I
cannot kiss your lips. What would it be to me to return without you,
Annita? What do I care for castle, and estate, when there are no
sunbeams on them? What good does it do to a man if he conquers all the
world, but cannot win a woman’s heart? All with you, Annita, or nothing
without you.’
The band of pilgrims soon left the ruins of the monastery at
Petschenga, and went southwards again, and one of them promised to make
for Olonets, and inform Theodore’s mother that he and Annita were
alive, and had found one another. Four weeks later it was possible to
remove the bandage from Theodore’s eyes.
‘Well, Annita,’ he said, the first time he opened them, ‘now I see you,
that it is you yourself. I wasn’t absolutely certain before, but now I
see the old smile upon your lips, and am quite certain. No other woman
smiles like you.’
It was late one winter evening when Theodore and Annita drove into the
courtyard at Olonets. The whole house was in darkness. Only in one room
was a light burning, and it shone on them, and welcomed them like a
friendly star on a dark night.
‘There is a light in your mother’s room,’ said Annita. ‘She is still
awake. Come!’ she said, and took Theodore by the hand.
They went quietly to the window and looked in. The old lady was
kneeling on a rug which she used at church, with a book before her,
absorbed in prayer.
‘She has been weeping,’ said Annita; ‘she has been stricken with fear
and doubt while we have been so long away.’
‘Let us go in,’ said Theodore.
‘Yes; you go,’ said Annita. ‘I will wait here a little; but be careful,
for your old mother is very feeble now.’
When Theodore had gone, Annita tapped on the window pane, and called
out, ‘We are here, mother,’ so that she might not be startled too
suddenly. The old lady folded her hands together, and partly rose. At
the same moment Theodore entered, and knelt down beside her. She
uttered a shriek such as could only come from a mother’s heart.
‘Theodore, my son! my son!’ and she clung to him, weeping on his neck.
Annita then entered quietly, and shed tears of joy with mother and son.
Afterwards all the servants in the house came and kissed the hands of
the home-comers.
It was a day of rejoicing throughout the estate when Theodore and
Annita returned. When this was reported in the village one of the women
went running home and told her husband. He exclaimed: ‘Is it true what
you say, wife, that Theodore Ivanovitsch and Annita have returned?’
‘Yes, it is as true as that I live,’ she said.
‘Then I will never thrash you again,’ he exclaimed.
All the people streamed up to the castle to see the returned ones, and
to kiss their hands. Theodore and Annita had taken Unnas with them, and
when, half a year later, there was a wedding at the castle, Unnas also
celebrated his wedding in the village.
Theodore had told him that he might choose any girl among all the
serfs, and that he should have her. Unnas fell in love with a girl who
was a complete contrast to himself—the tallest girl in all the
village—and for a good word, and a good house, and a piece of land, she
gave the little Finn both her hand and her heart. She was at all events
certain of never getting a thrashing from her husband. Thus it came
about that to this day Theodore and Unnas’ descendants live at Olonets.
With this, the romance of the monastery comes to an end. As regards the
ethnographical portion of it a little further may be added.
When information of the destruction of the monastery reached the Czar,
the pious Theodore Ivanovitsch, he is said to have been deeply grieved,
and to have expressed his sorrow at the disaster. To assist those of
the monks who had recovered, and were homeless, he gave orders that a
new monastery should be built at Kola, within the fortress, so that it
might be secure from attacks of the Swedes, or other enemies. The
church of the Annunciation of St. Mary in the town was granted, and the
monastery was built close to the church. But in the year 1619 both the
town and the church and monastery were destroyed by fire.
After this, the then Czar, the orthodox Michael Theodorovitsch, ordered
that a monastery should be built in the neighbourhood of the town, but
on the other side of the Kola River. This new monastery received the
name of New Petschenga, or Koloska Petschenga monastery, and had its
own Archimandrites or Superiors, till the bishopric of Archangel was
founded.
In 1675 Alexei Michaelovitsch confirmed to this monastery the
privileges which former monarchs had bestowed on the monastery at
Petschenga. Probably it was the erection of this monastery which caused
one Russian author to state that at one time there were two monasteries
at the Petschenga River.
In the year 1701 it is said there were thirteen monks in this
monastery, and, according to a letter from Laurence, the Superior of
it, to Archbishop Athanasius, the monastery exported in that year
‘12,752 stockfish, 144 pounds of train-oil, and 2,470 salmon.’ But this
is the last occasion on which anything is said of the industrial
activity of the monastery. Among the Archimandrites of the New
Petschenga monastery is mentioned the holy Jonas, a pupil of Trifon;
and, like Trifon, he is still had in reverence by the pilgrims and by
the inhabitants of the district.
In the year 1724 mention is made of three churches at Kola, viz.,
Trinity Church, the Church of the Assumption of St. Mary, and SS. Peter
and Paul’s Church. Eventually, the monastery was dissolved in the year
1764, and annexed to the cathedral church of Kola, and appointed the
residence of the bishop of Kola. The Empress Catherine II. issued, on
February 26 in that year, a brief, according to which the monastery and
churches were deprived of their ancient privileges, as well as of their
tenants and serfs. At the present time both the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities of Russia have their attention directed to
the re-erection of the monastery of Petschenga on its ancient site.
In the year 1881 a commission was appointed in Archangel to consider
what could be done to promote different kinds of industry in those
northern districts, and remedy several defects. This commission decided
that it was of great importance that the Petschenga monastery should be
rebuilt, and in the year 1882 the Holy Synod permitted and sanctioned
its re-erection. Serapion, Bishop of Archangel, has likewise taken
great interest in the scheme. He has procured a copy of the picture of
Trifon, and has, it is said, had it painted at his own expense. It is
thought that the rebuilding of the monastery of Petschenga will, in
time, have the same beneficial effect on those parts as Solowetski
monastery has had on the region of the White Sea. A Special Committee
has therefore been appointed by the ecclesiastical authorities. The
Committee appeals to all who may be supposed to feel an interest in the
undertaking, and invites charitable contributions, which should be sent
to
The Committee at Archangel
For the Restoration of Petschenga Monastery.
NOTES
[1] The ‘oter’ is a Norwegian fishing implement, consisting of a board,
or piece of wood, with a number of hooks attached to it.
[2] He thus gave away that over which he had not undivided proprietary
rights, viz.: the whole of the so-called debatable land over which both
Norway and Russia claimed taxes, and which was parcelled out in 1826
for the first time.
[3] [The inscription Νίψον ἀνομήμα μὴ μόναν ὄψιν occurs on the fonts at
Sandbach Church (Cheshire), Rufford (Lancashire), and elsewhere in
England.—Note by the Translator.]
[4] A monastery on the Dvina, built by Princess Martha, in memory of
her two sons who were drowned there, whose patron was St. Nicholas. It
may be noted that Archangel was first founded in 1584.
[5] According to several writers, the date of the destruction of the
monastery is set down as 1590, but a letter from Vardö, relating to the
destruction, is dated August, 1590, so that it must have occurred on
Christmas Eve, 1589.
[6] A ‘gamme’ is the name given to the mud huts in which the Lapps
live.
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