He itched to be home, but they could not hurry. For all his efforts, Anna grew pale and feeble with journeying, and would beg them to halt earlier and earlier in the day, to set up tents and braziers, that the servants might serve her hot soup and warm her numb hands.
But they crossed the river at last. When Pyotr judged the party less than a day away from Lesnaya Zemlya, he set Buran’s feet on the snowy track and gave the stallion his head. The bulk of his men would follow with the sledges, but he and Kolya flew home like windblown ghosts. It was with inexpressible relief that Pyotr broke from the cover of the trees and saw his own house standing silvery and unharmed in the clear winter daylight.
EVERY DAY SINCE PYOTR and Sasha and Kolya had gone away, Vasya had slipped from the house whenever she could contrive it and run to climb her favorite tree: the one that stretched a great limb over the road to the south of Lesnaya Zemlya. Alyosha went with her sometimes, but he was heavier than she, and a clumsier climber. So Vasya was alone on the day she saw the flashing of hooves and harness. She slid down her tree like a cat and bolted on her short legs. By the time she reached the palisade-gate, she was shouting, “Father, Father, it is Father!”
By then it was no great news, for the two riders, coming on much faster than one small girl, were already crossing the fields at a great pace, and the villagers, from their little rise, could see them plainly. The people looked at each other, wondering where the others were, fearing for their kin. And then Pyotr and Kolya (Sasha had stayed with the sledges) swept into the village and reined their stamping horses. Dunya attempted to seize Vasya, who had stolen Alyosha’s clothes to climb her tree and was grubby to boot, but Vasya wriggled away and ran into the dooryard. “Father!” she cried. “Kolya!” and laughed when each caught her up in turn. “Father, you are back!”
“I have brought a mother for you, Vasochka,” said Pyotr, looking her over with a raised eyebrow. She was covered in bits of tree. “Though I did not tell her she was getting a wood-sprite instead of a little girl.” But he kissed her grubby cheek and she giggled.
“Oh—then where is Sasha?” cried Vasya, looking about her in sudden fear. “Where are the sledge-horses?”
“Never fear, they are on the road behind us,” said Pyotr, and he added louder, so all the assembled people could hear, “They will be here before nightfall; we must be ready to receive them. And you,” he added lower to Vasya, “get you into the kitchen and bid Dunya dress you. All else equal, I’d rather present a daughter to her stepmother and not a wood-sprite.” He put her down with a little push, and Olga hauled her sister into the kitchen.
The sledges came with the westering sun. They made their weary way over the fields and up through the village gate. The people cheered and exclaimed at the fine closed sleigh that contained the new wife of Pyotr Vladimirovich. Most of the village assembled to see her.
Anna Ivanovna came out of the sleigh tottering, stiff, pale as ice. Vasya thought that she looked scarcely older than Olya, and not nearly so old as her father. Well, all the better, the child thought. Perhaps she will play with me. She smiled her best smile. But Anna did not answer, by word or sign. She cringed at all the stares, and Pyotr remembered belatedly that women in Moscow lived apart from the men. “I am tired,” Anna Ivanovna whispered, and crept into the house clinging to Olga’s arm.
The people looked at each other, nonplussed. “Well, it was a long journey,” they said at last. “She will be well in time. She is a Grand Prince’s daughter, as Marina Ivanovna was.” And they were proud that such a woman had come to live among them. They returned to their huts to build up their fires against the dark and eat their watery soup.
But in the house of Pyotr Vladimirovich, they all feasted as best they could with Lent upon them and winter grown old and bony. They made decent shrift of it, with fish and porridge. Afterward, Pyotr and his sons told the tale of their journey while Alyosha leaped about, threatening the fingers of servants with his splendid new dagger.
Pyotr himself set the headdress on Olga’s black hair, and said, “I hope you will wear it on your wedding day, Olya.” Olga blushed and paled, while Vasya, wordless, turned her vast eyes onto her father. Pyotr raised his voice, so the room at large could hear. “She will be the Princess of Serpukhov,” he said. “The Grand Prince himself betrothed her.” And he kissed his daughter. Olga smiled with half-frightened delight. In the tumult of congratulation, Vasya’s thin, forlorn cry went unheard.
But the feast wound down, and Anna sought her bed early. Olga went to help her, and Vasya trotted after. Slowly the kitchen emptied.
Dusk deepened to night. The fire crumbled on a glowing core and the air in the kitchen chilled and sank. At last the winter kitchen was empty but for Pyotr and Dunya. The old lady sat weeping in her place near the fire. “I knew it must come, Pyotr Vladimirovich,” she said. “And if ever there was a girl who ought to be a princess, it is my Olya. But it is a hard thing. She will live in a palace in Moscow, like her grandmother, and I will never see her again. I am too old for journeys.”
Pyotr sat before the fire, fingering the jewel in his pocket. “It comes to all women,” he said.
Dunya said nothing.
“Here, Dunyashka,” said Pyotr, and his voice was so strange that the old nurse turned quickly to look at him. “I have a gift for Vasya.” He had already given her a length of fine green cloth, to make a good sarafan. Dunya frowned. “Another, Pyotr Vladimirovich?” she said. “She will be spoiled.”
“Even so,” said Pyotr. Dunya squinted at him in the dark, puzzled by the look on his face. Pyotr thrust the necklace at Dunya as though eager to be rid of it. “Give it to her yourself. You must see she keeps it always by her. Make her promise, Dunya.”
Dunya looked more puzzled than ever, but she took the cold blue thing and squinted at it.
Pyotr frowned more terribly than ever; he reached out as though to take it back. But his fist closed on itself, and the motion died unfinished. Abruptly he turned on his heel and sought his bed. Dunya, alone in the dim kitchen, stared down at the pendant. She turned it this way and that, muttering to herself.
“Well, Pyotr Vladimirovich,” she murmured, “and where in Moscow does a man get such a jewel?” Shaking her head, Dunya slipped it into her pocket, resolving to keep it safe until the little girl was old enough to be trusted with the glittering thing.
Three nights later, the old nurse dreamed.
In her dream she was a maiden again, walking alone in the winter woods. The bright sound of sleigh bells rang out on the road. She loved sledging, and spun to see a white horse trotting toward her. Its driver was a man with black hair. He did not slow when he came up alongside, but caught her arm and pulled her roughly onto the sledge. His gaze did not leave the white road. Air like the iciest of January blasts eddied around him despite the winter sunshine.
Dunya was suddenly afraid.
“You have taken something that was not given to you,” he said. Dunya shuddered at the whine of storm winds in his voice. “Why?” Her teeth were chattering so hard she could barely form words, and the man whirled on her in a blaze of thin winter light. “That necklace was not meant for you,” he hissed. “Why have you taken it?”
“Her father brought it for Vasilisa, but she is only a child. I saw it and I knew it was a talisman,” stammered Dunya. “I have not stolen it, I have not…but I am afraid for the girl. Please, she is too young—too young for sorcery or the favor of the old gods.”
The man laughed. Dunya heard a grinding bitterness in the sound. “Gods? There is but one God now, child, and I am no more than a wind through bare branches.” He was silent, and Dunya, trembling, tasted blood where she’d bitten into her lip.
At last he nodded. “Very well, keep it for her, then, until she is grown—but no longer. I think I need not tell you what will happen if you play me false.”
Dunya found herself nodding vigorously, shaking harder than ever. The man cracked his whip. The horse raced off, running ever faster o
ver the snow. Dunya felt her grip on the seat slipping; frantically she clutched at it but she was falling, falling over backward…
She woke with a gasp, on her own pallet in the kitchen. She lay in the dark, shivering, and it was a long time before she could get warm.
ANNA CAME RELUCTANTLY AWAKE, blinking dreams from her eyes. It had been a pleasant dream, the last; there had been warm bread in it and someone with a soft voice. But even as she reached for it, the dream slipped away, and she was left empty, clutching blankets around her to ward off the dawn chill.
She heard a rustling and craned her head around. A demon sat on her own stool, mending one of Pyotr’s shirts. The gray light of a winter morning threw bars of shadow over the gnarled thing. She shuddered. Her husband snored beside her, oblivious, and Anna tried to ignore the specter, as she had every day in the seven since she first awoke in this horrible place. She turned away and burrowed into the coverlet. But she could not get warm. Her husband had thrown off the blanket, but she was always cold here. When she asked that the fire be built up, the serving-women just stared at her, politely perplexed. She thought about creeping closer, to share her husband’s warmth, but he might decide he wanted her again. Though he tried to be gentle, he was insistent, and most of the time she wanted to be left alone.
She risked a look back at the stool. The thing was staring straight at her.
Anna could stand it no more. She slipped to the floor, pulled on garments at random, and wrapped a scarf round her half-raveled braids. Darting through the kitchen and out the kitchen door, she earned a startled look from Dunya, who always rose early to set the bread baking. The gray morning light was giving way to rose; the ground glittered as though gem-studded, but Anna didn’t notice the snow. All she saw was the little wooden church not twenty paces from the house. Heedless, she ran toward it, yanked open the door, and slid inside. She wanted to weep, but she clenched her teeth and her fists and silenced her tears. She did altogether too much weeping.
Her madness was worse here in the north—far, far worse. Pyotr’s house was alive with devils. A creature with eyes like coals hid in the oven. A little man in the bathhouse winked at her through the steam. A demon like a heap of sticks slouched around the dooryard.
In Moscow, her devils had never looked at her, never spared her a glance, but here they were always staring. Some even came quite close, as though they would speak, and each time Anna had to flee, hating the puzzled stares of her husband and stepchildren. She saw them all the time, everywhere—except here in the church.
The blessed, quiet church. It was nothing, really, compared to the churches in Moscow. There was no gold or gilt, and only one priest to give service. The icons were small and ill-painted. But here she saw nothing but floor and walls and icons and candles. There were no faces in the shadows.
She stayed and stayed, by turns praying and staring into space. It was well past dawn when she crept back to the house. The kitchen was crowded, the fire roaring. The baking and stewing and cleaning and drying went on without cease, from dark to dark. The women did not react when Anna crept in; no one so much as turned her head. Anna took that, above all, as a comment on her weakness.
Olga looked up first. “Would you like some bread, Anna Ivanovna?” she asked. Olga could not like the poor creature that had taken her mother’s place, though she was a kind girl and pitied her.
Anna was hungry, but there was a tiny, grizzled creature sitting just inside the mouth of the oven. Its beard glowed with the heat as it gnawed a blackened crust.
Anna Ivanovna’s mouth worked, but she could make no answer. The little creature looked up from its bread and cocked its head. There was curiosity in its bright eyes. “No,” Anna whispered. “No—I don’t want any bread.” She turned and fled to the dubious safety of her own room, while the women in the kitchen looked at each other and slowly shook their heads.
The following autumn, Kolya was married to the daughter of a neighboring boyar. She was a fat, strapping, yellow-haired girl, and Pyotr built them a little house of their own, with a good clay oven.
But it was the great wedding the people awaited, when Olga Petrovna would become the Princess of Serpukhov. That had taken almost a year to negotiate. The gifts began coming from Moscow before the mud closed the roads, but the details took longer. The way from Lesnaya Zemlya to Moscow was a hard one; messengers were delayed or disappeared; they broke their skulls, were robbed, or lamed their horses. But it was settled at last. The young Prince of Serpukhov was to come himself, with his retinue, to marry Olga and take her back to his house in Moscow.
“It is better for her to be married before she travels,” said the messenger. “She will not be so frightened.” And, the messenger might have added, Aleksei, Metropolitan of Moscow, wanted the marriage accomplished and consummated before Olga came to the city.
The prince arrived just as pale spring became dazzling summer, with a tender, capricious sky and the fading flowers buried in a wash of summer grass. A year had ripened him. The spots had faded, though he was still no beauty; and he hid his shyness with boisterous good temper.
With the Prince of Serpukhov came his cousin, the blond Dmitrii Ivanovich, calling out greetings. The princes had come with hawks and hounds and horses, with women in carved wooden carts, and they brought many gifts. The boys came also with a guardian: a clear-eyed monk, not very old, silent more often than speaking. The cavalcade raised a great noise and dust and clamor. The whole village came to gawk, and many to offer the hospitality of their huts to the men and pasture for the weary horses. The boy-prince Vladimir shyly slipped a sparkling green beryl onto Olga’s finger, and the whole house gave itself to mirth, as it had not since Marina breathed her last.
“THE BOY IS KIND, at least,” said Dunya to Olga in a rare quiet moment. They sat together beside the wide window in the summer kitchen. Vasya sat at Olga’s feet, listening and poking at her mending.
“Yes,” said Olga. “And Sasha is coming with me to Moscow. He will see me to my husband’s house before he joins his monastery. He has promised.” The beryl ring blazed on her finger. Her betrothed had also hung her throat with raw amber and given her a bolt of marvelous cloth, fiery as poppies. Dunya was hemming it for a sarafan. Vasya was only pretending to sew; her small hands were clenched in her lap.
“You will do very well,” said Dunya firmly, biting the end of a thread. “Vladimir Andreevich is rich, and young enough to take the advice of his wife. It was generous of him to come and marry you here, in your own house.”
“He came because the Metropolitan made him,” Olga interjected.
“And he stands high in the Grand Prince’s favor. He is young Dmitrii’s dearest friend, that is plain. He will have a high place when Ivan Krasnii is dead. You will be a great lady. You could not do better, my Olya.”
“Ye—es,” said Olga again, slowly. At her feet, Vasya’s dark head drooped. Olga bent to stroke her sister’s hair. “I suppose he is kind. But I…”
Dunya smiled sardonically. “Were you hoping that a raven-prince would come, like the bird in the fairy tale that came for Prince Ivan’s sister?”
Olga blushed and laughed, but she did not reply. Instead she picked up Vasilisa, though she was a great girl to be held like a child, and rocked her back and forth. Vasya curled rigid in her sister’s arms. “Hush, little frog,” said Olga, as though Vasya were a baby. “It will be all right.”
“Olga Petrovna,” said Dunya, “my Olya, fairy tales are for children, but you are a woman, and soon you will be a wife. To wed a decent man and be safe in his house, to worship God and bear strong sons—that is real and right. It is time to put aside dreaming. Fairy tales are sweet on winter nights, nothing more.” Dunya thought suddenly of pale cold eyes, and an even colder hand. Very well, until she is grown, but no longer. She shivered and added, lower, looking at Vasya, “Even the maidens of fairy tales do not always end happily. Alenushka was turned into a duck and watched the wicked witch butcher her duck-children.”
And seeing Olga still downcast, smoothing Vasya’s hair, she added, a little harshly, “Child, it is the lot of women. I do not think you wish to be a nun. You might grow to love him. Your mother did not know Pyotr Vladimirovich before her wedding, and I remember her afraid, though your mother was brave enough to face down Baba Yaga herself. But they loved each other from the first night.”
“Mother is dead,” said Olga in a flat voice. “Another has her place. And I am going away forever.”
Against her shoulder, Vasya let out a muffled wail.
“She will never die,” retorted Dunya firmly. “Because you are alive, and you are as beautiful as she was, and you will be the mother of princes. Be brave. Moscow is a fair city, and your brothers will come to see you.”
THAT NIGHT, VASYA CAME to bed with Olga and said urgently, “Don’t go, Olya. I’ll never be bad again. I’ll never even climb trees.” She looked up at her sister, owl-like and trembling. Olga could not forbear a laugh, though it broke a little at the end. “I must, little frog,” she said. “He is a prince and he is rich and kind, as Dunya says. I must marry him or go to a convent. And I want children of my own, ten little frogs just like you.”
“But you have me, Olya,” Vasya said.
Olya pulled her close. “But you will grow up yourself one day and not be a child anymore. And what use will you have then for your tottering old sister?”
The Bear and the Nightingale Page 7