The Winter of the Witch Read online

  “Black magic,” said one. “Olga Vladimirova, surely you see—”

  “There is death in our fortunes tonight,” Vasya said to her sister, ignoring the others.

  Olga’s face drew into grim lines. “Not if I can help it. Vasya, take the end of the bench; help Varvara bar the door—”

  In Vasya’s head beat a swift litany: It is me they want.

  Out in the dooryard, Solovey squealed. The gates shook. Varvara stood nearest the door, silent. Her eyes seemed to convey something. Vasya thought she knew what it was.

  She knelt, stiffly, to look her niece in the face. “You must always take care of the domovoi,” she said to Marya. “Here—or wherever you are—you must do your best to make him strong, and he will protect the house.”

  Marya nodded solemnly, and said, “But Vasochka, what about you? I don’t know enough—”

  Vasya kissed her and stood. “You will learn,” she said. “I love you, Masha.” She turned to Olga. “Olya, she—soon, you must send her to Alyosha, at Lesnaya Zemlya. He will understand; he knew me, growing up. Masha cannot stay in this tower, not forever.”

  “Vasya—” Olga began. Marya, puzzled, clutched at Vasya’s hand.

  “For all of this,” said Vasya, “forgive me.” She let go of Marya’s hand and slipped out the door, which Varvara opened for her. For an instant, their eyes locked in a look of grim understanding.

  * * *

  SOLOVEY WAS WAITING FOR Vasya by the palace door, seemingly calm, save that a white rim showed about his eye. The dooryard was dark. The shouting had grown louder. A splintering crash came from the gate. The light of torches gleamed between the cracking timbers. Her mind was racing. What to do? Solovey, unmistakable, was in danger. They all were: herself, her horse, her family.

  Could she and Solovey hide in the stable, the door barred? No—the maddened crowd would make straight for that vulnerable terem-door, for the children inside.

  Give herself up? Walk up to them and surrender? Perhaps they would be satisfied, perhaps they would not break in at all.

  But Solovey—what would they do to him? Her horse, standing stalwart at her side, would never leave her willingly.

  “Come on,” she said. “We are going to hide in the stable.”

  Better to run, said the horse. Better to open a gate and run.

  “I am not opening any gate to that mob,” Vasya snapped. She made her voice coaxing. “We must buy all the time we can, so that my brother will come, with men from the Grand Prince. The gate will hold long enough. Come, we must hide.”

  The horse, uneasy, followed her, while the shouting rose up all around them.

  The great double door of the stable was made of heavy wood. Vasya opened it. The horse followed her, huffing uneasily into the dimness.

  “Solovey,” Vasya said, drawing the door nearly to. “I love you.”

  He nuzzled her hair, careful now of her burns, and said, Don’t be frightened. If they break the gate and come in here, we will just run away. No one will find us.

  “Take care of Masha,” said Vasya. “Perhaps one day she will learn to speak to you.”

  Vasya, said Solovey, throwing his head up in sudden alarm. But she had already pushed his head away from her, slipped out the narrow opening of the door and shut the stallion securely in the stable.

  Behind her she heard the stallion’s furious squeal, heard also the splintering, barely audible over the shouting, of his hooves on the sturdy wood. But even Solovey could not break through the massive door.

  She started making her awkward way to the gate, cold and terrified.

  The cracks in the gates widened. A single voice soared up into the night, urging the crowd on. In answer, the shouting rose to a greater pitch.

  A second time the same voice called, silken, half-singing, cutting through the noise with its purity of tone. The slow, stabbing ache in Vasya’s side worsened. The lamps had been put out in the terem above.

  Behind her, Solovey squealed again.

  “Witch!” called the powerful voice a third time. It was a summons; it was a threat. The gate was splintering faster by the instant.

  This time she recognized the voice. Her breath seemed to leave her body. But when she answered, her voice didn’t shake. “I am here. What do you want?”

  At that moment, two things happened. The gate gave way in a shower of splinters. And behind her, Solovey burst the stable door and came galloping through it.

  3.

  Nightingale

  THEY WERE NEARER HER THAN Solovey, but nothing was faster than the bay stallion. He was coming for her at full gallop. Vasya saw a final chance. Goad the mob into pursuit; lead it away from her sister’s door. And so, as Solovey flew past her, she timed his stride, running alongside him, and then leaped to his back.

  Pain, weakness disappeared in the urgency of the moment. Solovey was charging straight toward the smashed gate. Vasya shouted as they went, drawing the mob’s eyes from the tower. Solovey lashed out with all of a war-stallion’s viciousness, tearing through the crowd. People clawed at them, only to be flung back and away.

  Near the gate now. Her whole being was bent on escape. On open ground, nothing could outrace the bay stallion. She could draw them off, buy time, come back with Sasha, with Dmitrii’s guards.

  Nothing could outrun Solovey.

  Nothing.

  She never saw what hit them. It might have been only a log meant for someone’s fireplace. All she heard was the hiss as it swung, and then she felt the shock, vibrating through the stallion’s flesh, as the blow landed. Solovey’s leg went sideways. He fell, a stride before the ruined gate.

  The crowd shrieked. Vasya felt the crack like a wound herself. Instinct rolled her clear, then she was kneeling at the horse’s head.

  “Solovey,” she whispered. “Solovey, get up.”

  People pressed nearer; a hand seized her hair. She whipped round and bit it; the owner swore and fell back. The stallion struggled, kicking, but his hind leg lay at a terrible angle.

  “Solovey,” Vasya whispered. “Solovey, please.”

  The stallion breathed a soft, hay-scented breath into her face. He seemed to shudder, and the mane pouring over her hands felt spiky as feathers. As though his other, stranger nature, the bird she’d never seen, was going to fight free at last and take wing.

  Then a blade came down.

  It bit into the horse just where his head met his body. A howl went up.

  Vasya felt the blade go through the stallion just as though it had cut her own throat, and she did not know she was screaming as she whirled like a wolf protecting her cub.

  “Kill her!” cried someone in the crowd. “There she is—the unnatural bitch. Kill her.”

  Vasya launched herself at them, heedless of anything, careless of her own life. Then a man’s fist fell on her, and another, until she could not feel them at all.

  * * *

  SHE WAS KNEELING IN a starlit forest. The world was black and white and quite still. A brown bird fluttered in the snow just out of reach. A figure, black-haired and bone-pale, knelt beside it, extending a cupped hand toward the creature.

  She knew that hand; knew this place. She thought she could even see feeling behind the ancient indifference in the death-god’s eyes. But he was looking at the bird, not at her, and she could not be sure. He was stranger and farther away than he had ever been, his whole attention fixed on the nightingale in the snow.

  “Take us together,” she whispered.

  He did not turn.

  “Let me come with you,” she tried again. “Let me not lose my horse.” Far away, she could feel the blows on her body.

  The nightingale hopped into the death-god’s hand. He closed his fingers delicately about the creature, picked it up. With his other hand, he scooped up a handful of snow. The snow melted to water in
his hand; it dripped upon the bird, who at once went still and stiff.

  Then, at last, he raised his eyes to hers. “Vasya,” he said, in a voice she knew. “Vasya, listen to me—”

  But she could not reply.

  For in the true world, the crowd drew back at a word from a man’s thunderous voice, and she was wrenched back to nighttime Moscow, bleeding in the trampled snow, but alive.

  Perhaps she only imagined it. But when she opened her blood-smeared eyes, the death-god’s dark figure was still beside her, fainter than a noontime shadow, eyes urgent and quite helpless. He held the stiff body of a nightingale most tenderly in one hand.

  Then he was gone. He might never have been there at all. She was lying across the body of her horse, sticky with his blood. Above her stood a man with golden hair, his eyes blue as midsummer. He wore the cassock of a priest and was looking at her with an expression of cold and steady triumph.

  * * *

  THROUGH ALL THE LONG ROADS and the griefs of his life, Konstantin Nikonovich had one gift that had never failed him. When he spoke, crowds grew pliant at the sound of his voice.

  All that night, while the midnight snowstorm raged, he’d said extreme unction for the dying and comforted the wounded.

  Then, in the black hour before dawn, he spoke to the people of Moscow.

  “I cannot be silent,” he said.

  At first his voice was low and gentle, addressing now this person, now that. As they began to pool about him, like water in the hollow of his hand, he raised his voice. “A great wrong has been done you.”

  “Done us?” asked the soot-smeared, frightened people. “What wrong has been done us?”

  “This fire was God’s punishment,” said Konstantin. “But the crime was not yours.”

  “Crime?” they asked, uneasy, clutching their children.

  “Why do you think the city burned?” Konstantin demanded. Real sorrow thickened his voice. Children, smothered with smoke, had died in their mothers’ arms. He could grieve for that. He was not so far gone. His words were hoarse with feeling. “The fire was God’s punishment for the harboring of a witch.”

  “A witch?” they asked. “Have we harbored a witch?”

  Konstantin’s voice rose. “Surely you remember? The one you thought was called Vasilii Petrovich? The boy—who was in truth a girl? Remember Aleksandr Peresvet, whom all men thought so holy, tempted into sin by his own sister? Remember how she deceived the Grand Prince? That very night the city caught fire.”

  As he spoke, Konstantin felt their mood shift. Their rage and grief and fright were turning outward. He encouraged them in this, deliberately, deftly, like a blacksmith putting an edge on a sword-blade.

  When they were ready, he had only to take up the weapon.

  “Justice must be done,” said Konstantin. “But I know not how. Perhaps God will know.”

  * * *

  NOW SHE LAY IN her sister’s dooryard with the blood of her horse drying on her hands. Her own blood stained lip and cheek and her eyes were full of tears. She breathed in wrenching gasps. But she was alive. She crawled gracelessly to her feet.

  “Batyushka,” she said. The word cracked her lip anew and set the blood seeping down. “Call them back.” Her breaths came quick and painful between words. “Pull them back. You have killed my horse. Not—my sister. Not the children.”

  The crowd spilled around and past them, their bloodlust unslaked. They were beating at the door of the palace of Serpukhov. The door was holding, just. Konstantin hesitated.

  Low she added, “Twice I saved your life.” She could barely stand.

  Konstantin knew himself powerful, riding the crowd’s fury, like a rider on a half-tamed horse. Abruptly he put his hand to the reins. “Back!” he cried to his followers. “Get back! The witch is here. We have taken her. Justice must be done; God will not wait.”

  She shut her eyes in relief. Or perhaps it was weakness. She did not fall at his feet; she did not thank him for his mercy. Venomously, he said, “You will come with me and answer to God’s justice.”

  She opened her eyes again, stared at him, but did not seem to see. Her lips moved in a single word. Not his name, not a plea for mercy, but, “Solovey…” Her body bent suddenly, with grief more than pain, bowed as though she’d been arrow-shot.

  “The horse is dead,” he said, and saw her take the words like fists. “Perhaps now you will turn your mind to things proper for a woman. In the time that is left to you.”

  She said nothing, her eyes lost.

  “Your fate is decided,” Konstantin added, bending nearer, as though he could force the words through her mind. “The people have been wronged; they want justice.”

  “What fate is that?” she whispered through bruised lips. Her face was the color of the snow.

  “I advise you,” he whispered, gently, “to pray.”

  She threw herself at him, like a creature wounded. He almost laughed with unlooked-for joy, when a blow from another man’s fist flung her down, crumpled at his feet.

  4.

  The Fate of All Witches

  “WHAT IS THAT NOISE?” DMITRII demanded. Few of his gate-guards had survived the night unwounded; the few that had all seemed to be shouting. Outside the walls of his palace came a tumult of voices and the sound of many feet in the snow. The only light in his dooryard was torchlight. The noise in the city rose steadily; there came a shattering crash. “Mother of God,” said Dmitrii. “Have we not had trouble enough already?” He turned his head to snap swift orders.

  Next moment, the postern opened amid a flurry of shouting. A servant with yellow hair strode without diffidence up to the Grand Prince, trailing Dmitrii’s bewildered retainers in her wake.

  “What is this?” Dmitrii demanded, staring.

  “That is my sister’s body-servant,” said Sasha. “Varvara, what do—”

  Varvara had a bruised cheek, and her expression chilled him to the marrow.

  “Those people you hear,” Varvara snapped, “have broken the gates of the palace of Serpukhov. They killed the bay stallion that Vasilisa loved”—here Sasha began to feel the blood draining from his face—“and they have dragged off the girl herself.”

  “Where?” said Sasha, his voice remote and terrible.

  Beside him, Dmitrii was already calling for horses, for men-at-arms: “—Yes, even if they are wounded, get them on horses, it cannot wait.”

  “Down,” said Varvara, panting. “Down toward the river. I fear they mean to kill her.”

  * * *

  VASYA WAS NEARLY SENSELESS with the mob’s fists, her clothes torn and bloodied. She was borne along, half-dragged, half-carried, and the world was full of noise: shouting, a cold, beautiful voice controlling the crowd, and the word, endlessly murmured—Father. Batyushka.

  Down, they were going downhill; she stumbled in the hardened slush of the street. Hands—many hands—scoured her body; her cloak and letnik had been ripped away, leaving her in her long-sleeved shift, her kerchief gone, her hair falling about her face.

  She was barely aware of it. She was locked in a single memory: the impact of a club, a blade, the shock that ran through her own body. Solovey. Mother of God, Solovey. As the mob raged, all she could see was the horse, lying in the snow, all the love and the grace and the strength broken and muddied and stilled.

  More people were tearing at her clothes; she knocked one groping hand aside, and a fish-smelling fist struck her across the face, bringing her teeth together. Pain like stars exploded on her mouth; the neck of her shift tore. Konstantin’s even voice remonstrated, too late, with the crowd. They drew back, a little chastened.

  Still they dragged her downhill. All around was torchlight, throwing sparks across her sight. “Finally frightened?” Konstantin murmured to her under his breath, his eyes bright, as though he had bested her at some sport.
r />   She hurled herself at him a second time, in a rush of rage that swallowed up her pain.

  Perhaps she was trying to get them to kill her. They nearly did. Konstantin let the crowd punish her. A gray fog slipped slyly over her sight, but still she did not die, and when she came back to herself, she realized that they had borne her past the gates of the kremlin. Now they were in the posad, the part of Moscow that lay outside the walls. Still hurrying; they were going down to the river. A little chapel loomed up. They paused there for a swift debate. Konstantin spoke, though she caught only a word here and there.

  Witch.

  Holy father.

  Bring wood.

  She wasn’t really listening. Her senses were numb. They had not harmed her sister, they had not harmed Marya. Her horse was dead. She cared not what they did with her. She did not care for anything.

  She felt the change in the air, when she was thrust from the beating, insistent torchlight into the darkness of a candlelit chapel. She tumbled to the floor not far from the iconostasis, jarring her torn mouth.

  There she lay, breathing the smell of dusty wood, passive with shock. Then she thought that she might try to rise at least, stand with a little courage. A little pride. Solovey would have. Solovey…

  She dragged herself to her feet.

  And found herself alone, and face-to-face, with Konstantin Nikonovich. The priest had his back to the door, half the length of the nave between them. He was watching her.

  “You killed my horse,” she whispered, and he smiled, just a little.

  * * *

  SHE HAD A CUT ACROSS her nose; one eye was swelling shut. In the half-light of the chapel, her bruised face looked more unearthly than ever, and more vulnerable. The old desire flared, and the accompanying self-hatred.