The Girl in the Tower Page 2

  “Snegurochka said nothing and went home weeping. For weeks she stayed in the izba, hiding in the shadows.

  “But the young shepherd went and tapped on her door. ‘Please, my love,’ he said. ‘Come out to me. I love you with all my heart.’

  “Snegurochka knew that she could live forever if she chose, a snow-girl in a little peasant’s izba. But…there was the music. And her lover’s eyes.

  “So she smiled and clothed herself in blue and white. She ran outside. Where the sun touched her, drops of water slid from her flaxen hair.

  “She and the shepherd went to the edge of the birch-wood.

  “ ‘Play your flute for me,’ she said.

  “The water ran faster, down her arms and hands, down her hair. Though her face was pale, her blood was warm, and her heart. The young man played his flute, and Snegurochka loved him, and she wept.

  “The song ended. The shepherd went to take her into his arms. But as he reached for her, her feet melted. She crumpled to the damp earth and vanished. An icy mist drifted under the warmth of the blue sky, and the boy was left alone.

  “When the snow-maiden vanished, Spring swept her veil over the land, and the little field flowers began to bloom. But the shepherd waited in the gloom of the wood, weeping for his lost love.

  “Misha and Alena wept as well. ‘It was only a magic,’ said Misha to comfort his wife. ‘It could not last, for she was made of snow.’ ”

  OLGA PAUSED IN HER STORYTELLING, and the women murmured to one another. Daniil slept now in Olga’s arms. Marya drooped against her knee.

  “Some say that the spirit of Snegurochka stayed in the forest,” Olga continued. “That when the snow fell, she came alive again, to love her shepherd-boy in the long nights.”

  Olga paused again.

  “But some say she died,” she said sadly. “For that is the price of loving.”

  A silence should have fallen, as is proper, at the end of a well-told story. But this time it did not. For at the moment Olga’s voice died away, her daughter Masha sat bolt upright and screamed.

  “Look!” she cried. “Mother, look! It is her, just there! Look!…No—no! Don’t— Go away!” The child stumbled to her feet, eyes blank with terror.

  Olga turned her head sharply to the place her daughter stared: a corner thick with shadow. There—a white flicker. No, that was only firelight. The whole room roiled. Daniil, awake, clung to his mother’s sarafan.

  “What is it?”

  “Silence the child!”

  “I told you!” Darinka squealed triumphantly. “I told you the ghost was real!”

  “Enough!” snapped Olga.

  Her voice cut through the others. Cries and chatter died away. Marya’s sobbing breaths were loud in the stillness. “I think,” Olga said, coolly, “that it is late, and that we are all weary. Better help your mistress to bed.” This was to Eudokhia’s women, for the Grand Princess was inclined to hysteria. “It was only a child’s nightmare,” Olga added firmly.

  “Nay,” groaned Eudokhia, enjoying herself. “Nay, it is the ghost! Let us all be afraid.”

  Olga shot a sharp glance at her own body-servant, Varvara, of the pale hair and indeterminate years. “See that the Grand Princess of Moscow goes safe to bed,” Olga told her. Varvara too was staring into Marya’s shadowed corner, but at the princess’s order, she turned at once, brisk and calm. It was the firelight, Olga thought that had made her expression seem an instant sad.

  Darinka was babbling. “It was her!” she insisted. “Would the child lie? The ghost! A very devil…”

  “And be sure that Darinka gets a draught and a priest,” Olga added.

  Darinka was pulled out of the room, whimpering. Eudokhia was led away more tenderly, and the tumult subsided.

  Olga went back to the oven, to her white-faced children.

  “Is it true, Matyushka?” snuffled Daniil. “Is there a ghost?”

  Marya said nothing, her hands clenched together. The tears still stood in her eyes.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Olga calmly. “Hush, children, do not be afraid. We are protected by God. Come, it is time for bed.”

  2.

  Two Holy Men

  Marya woke her nurse twice in the night with screaming. The second time, the nurse, unwisely, slapped the child, who leaped from her bed, flew like a hawk through the halls of her mother’s terem, and darted into Olga’s room before her nurse could stop her. She crawled over the sleeping maidservants and huddled, quaking, against her mother’s side.

  Olga had not been asleep. She heard her daughter’s footsteps and felt the child tremble when she came close. The watchful Varvara caught Olga’s eye in the near-dark, then without a word went to the door to dismiss the nurse. The nurse’s stertorous breathing retreated, indignantly, down the hall. Olga sighed and stroked Marya’s hair until she calmed. “Tell me, Masha,” she said, when the child’s eyes had grown heavy.

  “I dreamed a woman,” Marya told her mother in a small voice. “She had a gray horse. She was very sad. She came to Moscow and she never left. She was trying to say something to me, but I wouldn’t listen. I was scared!” Marya was weeping again. “Then I woke up and she was there, just the same. Only now she is a ghost—”

  “Just a dream,” Olga murmured. “Just a dream.”

  THEY WERE AWAKENED JUST after daybreak by voices in the dooryard.

  In the heavy moment between sleep and waking, Olga tried to recover a dream of her own: of pines in the wind, of herself barefoot in the dust, laughing with her brothers. But the noise rose, and Marya jerked awake. Just like that, the country-girl Olga had been was once again gone and forgotten.

  Olga pushed back the covers. Marya popped upright. Olga was glad to see a little color in the child’s face, the night-horrors banished with daylight. Among the voices spiraling up from the dooryard was one she recognized. “Sasha!” Olga whispered, scarcely believing. “Up!” she cried to her women. “There is a guest in the dooryard. Prepare hot wine, and heat the bathhouse.”

  Varvara came into the room, snow in her hair. She had risen in the dark and gone out in search of wood and water. “It is your brother returned,” she said without ceremony. Her face looked pale and strained, Olga did not think she had slept, after Marya waked them with nightmares.

  In contrast, Olga felt a dozen years younger. “I knew no storm could kill him,” she said, getting to her feet. “He is a man of God.”

  Varvara made no reply, but stooped and began to rebuild the fire.

  “Leave that,” Olga told her. “Go to the kitchens and see that the ovens are drawing. Make sure there is food ready. He will be hungry.”

  Hastily, Olga’s women dressed the princess and her children, but before Olga was quite ready or her wine drunk, before Daniil and Marya had eaten their honey-drenched porridge, the footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Marya flew to her feet. Olga frowned. The child had a fey gaiety that belied her pallor. Perhaps the night was not forgotten after all. “Uncle Sasha is back!” Marya cried. “Uncle Sasha!”

  “Bring him here,” Olga said. “Masha—”

  Then a dark figure stood in the gap of the door, face shadowed by a hood.

  “Uncle Sasha!” Marya cried again.

  “No, Masha, it is not right, to address a holy man so!” cried her nurse, but Marya had already overset three stools and a wine-cup and run up to her uncle.

  “God be with you, Masha,” said a warm, dry voice. “Back, child, I am all over snow.” He put his cloak and hood aside, flinging snow in all directions, made the sign of the cross over Marya’s head, and embraced her.

  “God be with you, brother,” Olga said from the oven. Her voice was calm, but the light in her face stripped away her winters. She added, because she could not help it, “Wretch, I was afraid for you.”

  “God be with you, sister,” the monk returned. “You must not be afraid. I go where the Father sends me.” He spoke gravely, but then smiled. “I am glad to see you,
Olya.”

  A cloak of fur hung clasped about his monk’s robe, and his hood, thrown back, revealed black hair, tonsured, and a black beard rattling with icicles. His own father would barely have recognized him; the proud boy had grown-up, broad-shouldered and calm, soft-footed as a wolf. Only his clear eyes—his mother’s eyes—had not changed since that day ten years ago when he rode away from Lesnaya Zemlya.

  Olga’s women stared surreptitiously. None but a monk, a priest, a husband, a slave, or a child might come into the terems of Moscow. The former were generally old, never tall and gray-eyed with the smell of faraway on their skin.

  One serving-woman, gawky and with an eye to romance, could be heard incautiously telling her neighbor, “That is Brother Aleksandr Peresvet, Aleksandr Lightbringer, you know, the one who—”

  Varvara smacked the girl, and she bit her tongue. Olga glanced at her audience and said, “Come to the chapel, Sasha. We will give thanks for your return.”

  “In a moment, Olya,” Sasha replied. He paused. “I brought a traveler with me out of the wild, and he is very ill. He is lying in your workroom.”

  Olga frowned. “A traveler? Here? Very well, let us go see him. No, Masha. Finish your porridge, child, before you go racing about like a bug in a bottle.”

  THE MAN LAY ON A FUR RUG near the stove, melting snow in all directions.

  “Brother, who is he?” Olga could not kneel, vast as she was, but she tapped her teeth with a forefinger, and considered the pitiful scrap of humanity.

  “A priest,” Sasha said, shaking water from his beard. “I do not know his name. I met him wandering the road, ill and raving, two days from Moscow. I built a fire, thawed him a little, and brought him with me. I had to dig a snow-cave yesterday, when the storm came, and would have stayed there today. But he grew worse; it seemed he would die in my arms. I thought it worth the risk of traveling, to get him out of the weather.”

  Sasha bent deftly to the sick man and drew the wraps from his face. The priest’s eyes, a deep and startling blue, stared up blankly at the rafters. His bones pressed up beneath his skin, and his cheek burned with fever.

  “Can you help him, Olya?” the monk asked. “He’ll get nothing but a cell and some bread in the monastery.”

  “He’ll get better than that here,” Olga said, turning to give a rapid series of orders, “although his life is in God’s hands, and I cannot promise to save him. He is very ill. The men will take him to the bathhouse.” She surveyed her brother. “You ought to go as well.”

  “Do I look as frozen as that?” the monk asked. Indeed, with the snow and ice melted away from his face, the alarming hollows of cheek and temple were evident. He shook the last of the snow from his hair. “Not yet, Olya,” he said, rousing himself. “We will pray, and I will eat something hot. Then I must go to the Grand Prince. He will be angry that I did not come to him first.”

  THE WAY BETWEEN CHAPEL and palace was floored and roofed, so that Olga and her women could go to service in comfort. The chapel itself was carved like a jewel-box. Each icon had its gilded cover. Candlelight flashed on gold and pearls. Sasha’s clear voice set the flames shivering when he prayed. Olga knelt before the Mother of God and wept a few tears of painful joy, where none might see.

  Afterward they retired to chairs by the oven in her chamber. The children had been led away, and Varvara had sent off the waiting-women. Soup came, steaming. Sasha swallowed it and asked for more.

  “What news?” Olga demanded as he ate. “What kept you on the road? Do not put me off with mouthings about the work of God, brother. It is not like you to miss your hour.”

  Despite the empty room, Olga kept her voice down. Private talk was almost impossible in the crowded terem.

  “I rode to Sarai and back again,” said Sasha lightly. “Such things are not done in a day.”

  Olga gave him a level glance.

  He sighed.

  She waited.

  “Winter came early in the southern steppe,” he said, relenting. “I lost a horse at Kazan and had to go a week on foot. When I was five days, or a little more, from Moscow, I came across a burnt village.”

  Olga crossed herself. “Accident?”

  He shook his head slowly. “Bandits. Tatars. They had taken the girl-children, to sell south to the slave-market, and made a great slaughter among the rest. It took me days to bless and bury all the dead.”

  Olga crossed herself again, slowly.

  “I rode on when I could do no more,” Sasha went on. “But I came across another village in like case. And another.” The lines of cheek and jaw grew more marked as he spoke.

  “God give them peace,” Olga whispered.

  “They are organized, these bandits,” Sasha went on. “They have a stronghold, else they’d not be able to raid villages in January. They also have better horses than the usual, for they could strike quickly and ride away again.” Sasha’s hands flexed against his bowl, sloshing soup. “I searched. But I could find no sign of them, other than the burning and the tales of peasants, each worse than the last.”

  Olga said nothing. In the days of their grandfather, the Horde had been unified under one Khan. It would have been unheard of for Tatar bandits to strike Muscovy, which had always been a devoted vassal-state. But Moscow was no longer so tame, so canny, nor so devoted, and, more important, the Horde was not so united. Khans came and went now, putting forward now this claim, now that to the throne. The generals fought among themselves. Such times always bred masterless men, and everyone within the Horde’s reach suffered.

  “Come, sister,” added Sasha, misreading her look. “Do not fear. Moscow is too tough a nut for bandits to crack, and Father’s seat at Lesnaya Zemlya too remote. But these bandits must be rooted out. I am going back out as soon as can be managed.”

  Olga stilled, mastered herself, and asked, “Back out? When?”

  “As soon as I can gather the men.” He saw her face and sighed. “Forgive me. Another time I would stay. But I have seen too much weeping these last weeks.”

  Strange man, worn and kind, with his soul honed to steel.

  Olga met his glance. “Indeed, you must go, brother,” she said evenly. A keen ear might have detected a bitter note in her voice. “You go where God sends you.”

  3.

  The Grandsons of Ivan Moneybags

  The Grand Prince’s feasting-hall was long and low and dim. Boyars sat or sprawled like dogs at the long tables, and Dmitrii Ivanovich, Grand Prince of Moscow, held court at the far end, resplendent in sable and saffron wool.

  Dmitrii was a man of ferocious good humor, barrel-chested and vivid, impatient and selfish, wanton and kind. His father had been nicknamed Ivan the Fair, and the young prince had inherited all his father’s pale good looks: creamy hair, tender skin, and gray eyes.

  The Grand Prince leaped to his feet when Sasha came into the long room. “Cousin!” he roared, face alight beneath his jeweled cap. He strode forward and upset a servingman before he stopped, recalling his dignity. He wiped his mouth and crossed himself. The cup of wine in his free hand marred the gesture. Dmitrii put it hastily down, kissed Sasha on both cheeks, and said, “We feared the worst.”

  “May the Lord bless you, Dmitrii Ivanovich,” Sasha said, smiling. As boys these two had lived together at Sasha’s monastery, the Trinity Lavra, before Dmitrii reached his majority.

  A babble of men’s voices filled the smoky feasting-hall. Dmitrii was presiding over the remains of a boar. The light women had been pushed hastily out, but Sasha could smell the ghost of them, along with the wine and the greasy ends of meat.

  He could also feel the boyars’ eyes on him, wondering what his return foretold.

  What, Sasha had always wondered, made people want to cram themselves into grimy rooms and shut away the clean air?

  Dmitrii must have seen his cousin’s distaste. “Baths!” he cried at once, raising his voice. “Let the bathhouse be heated. My cousin is tired, and I want some private talk.” He took Sasha’s arm
confidingly. “I, too, am weary of all this clamor,” he said, though Sasha doubted it. Dmitrii thrived on Moscow’s noisy intrigues; the Lavra had always been too small and too quiet for him. “You there!” called the Grand Prince to his steward. “See that these men have all they need.”

  LONG AGO, WHEN THE MONGOLS first swept through Rus’, Moscow had been a crude and jumped-up trading post—an afterthought to the conquering Horde, beside the glories of Vladimir and Suzdal and Kiev herself.

  That was not enough to keep the city standing when the Tatars came, but Moscow had clever princes, and in the smoking ash-heap of conquest, the Muscovites at once set about making allies of their conquerors.

  They used their loyalty to the Horde to further their own ambitions. When the khans demanded taxes, the Muscovite princes delivered them, squeezing their own boyars in order to pay. In return the khans, pleased, gave Moscow more territory, and still more: the patent for Vladimir and the title of Grand Prince. So the rulers of Muscovy prospered and their little realm grew.

  But as Muscovy grew, the Golden Horde diminished. Bitter feuding between the children of the Great Khan shook the throne, and the whispers began among the boyars of Moscow: The Tatars are not even Christians, and they cannot keep a man on their throne six months before another one comes to claim it. Why, then, do we pay tribute? Why be vassals?

  Dmitrii, bold but practical, had eyed the unrest in Sarai, realized that the Khan’s record-keeping must be five years behind, and quietly ceased paying tribute at all. He hoarded the money instead, and dispatched his holy cousin Brother Aleksandr to the land of the pagan to spy out their dispositions. Sasha, in his turn, had sent a trusted friend, Brother Rodion, to his own father’s home at Lesnaya Zemlya to warn of war brewing.

  Now Sasha had returned from Sarai, in the teeth of winter, with news that he wished he was not carrying.

  He leaned his head back against the wooden wall of the bathhouse and shut his eyes. The steam washed away some of the grime and weariness of travel.