“Always!” Vasya burst out passionately. “Always! Let’s run away and live in the woods.”
“I’m not sure you’d like to live in the woods,” said Olga. “Baba Yaga might eat us.”
“No,” said Vasya, with perfect assurance. “There is only the one-eyed man. If we stay away from the oak-tree he will never find us.”
Olya did not know what to make of this.
“We will have an izba among the trees,” said Vasya. “And I will bring you nuts and mushrooms.”
“I have a better idea,” said Olya. “You are a great girl already, and it will not be too many years before you are a woman. I will send for you from Moscow when you are grown. We will be two princesses in a palace together, and you will have a prince for yourself. How would you like that?”
“But I am grown now, Olya!” cried Vasya immediately, swallowing her tears and sitting up. “Look, I am much bigger.”
“Not yet, I think, little sister,” said Olga gently. “But be patient and mind Dunya and eat plenty of porridge. When Father says you are grown, then will I send for you.”
“I will ask Father,” said Vasya confidently. “Perhaps he will say I am grown already.”
SASHA HAD RECOGNIZED THE monk the moment he strode into the yard. In the confusion of welcome and bride-gifts, with a feast in the making among the green summer birches, he ran forward, seized the monk’s hand, and kissed it. “Father, you came,” he said.
“As you see, my son,” said the monk, smiling.
“But it is so far.”
“Indeed not. When I was younger, I wandered the length and breadth of Rus’, and the Word was my path and my shield, my bread and my salt. Now I am old, and I stay in the Lavra. But the world is fair to me still, especially the north of the world in summertime. I am glad to see you.”
What he did not say—at least not then—was that the Grand Prince was ill, and that Vladimir Andreevich’s marriage was all the more urgent in consequence. Dmitrii was barely eleven, freckled and spoiled. His mother kept him in her sight and slept beside his bed. Small heirs of princes were wont to disappear when their fathers died untimely.
That spring, Aleksei had summoned the holy man Sergei Radonezhsky to his palace in the kremlin. Sergei and Aleksei had known each other a long time. “I am sending Vladimir Andreevich north to be married,” Aleksei had said. “As soon as may be. He must be wed before Ivan dies. Young Dmitrii will go with the bridal party. It will keep him out of harm’s way; his mother fears for the child’s life if he remains in Moscow.”
The hermit and the Metropolitan were drinking honey-wine, much watered. They sat together on a wooden seat in the kitchen garden. “Is Ivan Ivanovich so very ill, then?” said Sergei.
“He is gray and yellow together; he sweats and stinks, and his eyes are filmy,” said the Metropolitan. “God willing, he lives, but I will be ready if he does not. I cannot leave the city. Dmitrii is so young. I would ask you to go with the bridal party to watch over him and see Vladimir wed.”
“Vladimir is to marry Pyotr Vladimirovich’s daughter, is he not?” said Sergei. “I have met Pyotr’s son. Sasha, they call him. He came to me at the Lavra. Such eyes as I have never seen. He will be a monk or a saint or a hero. A year ago he wished to take vows. Would that he still does. The Lavra could use a brother like that.”
“Well, go and see,” said Aleksei. “Persuade Pyotr’s son to come back to the Lavra with you. Dmitrii must live in your monastery for his minority. All the better if he has Aleksandr Petrovich, a man of his blood, one dedicated to God, to be his companion. If Dmitrii is crowned, he will want every ally ingenuity can yield him.”
“So will you,” said Sergei. The bees droned about them. The northern flowers made up in heady scents for their brief, doomed days. Hesitantly, Sergei added, “Will you be his regent, then? Regents do not live long either, if their boy-princes are slain.”
“Am I such a faintheart that I would not put myself between that boy and assassins?” said Aleksei. “I would, though it cost me my life. God is with us. But you must be Metropolitan when I die.”
Sergei laughed. “I will see the face of God, and be blinded by glory, before I come to Moscow to try and manage your bishops, Brother. But I will go north with the Prince of Serpukhov. It is long since I traveled, and I would see the high forests again.”
PYOTR SAW THE MONK among the riders, and his face grew grim. But he spoke only courtesies until the evening after their arrival. That night, they all feasted together in the twilight, and when the laughter and torches of full-fed people slipped away toward the village, Pyotr came in the dusk and caught Sergei by the shoulder. The two faced each other beside the running stream.
“And so you came, man of God, to steal my son from me?” Pyotr said to Sergei.
“Your son is not a horse, to be stolen.”
“No,” snapped Pyotr. “He is worse. A horse will listen to reason.”
“He is a warrior born, and a man of God,” said Sergei. His voice was mild as ever, and Pyotr’s anger burned hotter, so that he choked on his words and said nothing.
The monk frowned, as though making a decision. Then he said, “Listen, Pyotr Vladimirovich. Ivan Ivanovich is dying. By now, perhaps he is dead.”
This Pyotr had not known. He started and drew back.
“His son Dmitrii is a guest in your house,” Sergei continued. “When the boy leaves here, he will go straight to my own monastery, there to be hidden. There are claimants to the throne for whom the life of one small boy is as nothing. A prince needs men of his own blood to teach him, and to guard him. Your son is Dmitrii’s cousin.”
Pyotr was silent in his surprise. The bats were coming out. In his youth, Pyotr’s nights had been full of their cries, but now they flittered silent as the encroaching dusk.
“We do not just bake altar-bread and chant, my folk and I,” added Sergei. “You are safe here, in this forest that could swallow an army, but there are few who can say as much. We bake our bread for the hungry and wield swords in their defense. It is a noble calling.”
“My son will wield a sword for his family, serpent,” snapped Pyotr, reflexively, angrier now because he was uncertain.
“Indeed he will,” said Sergei. “For his own cousin: a boy that will one day have all Muscovy in his charge.”
Pyotr again was silent, but his anger was broken.
Sergei saw Pyotr’s grief and bowed his head. “I am sorry,” he said. “It is a hard thing. I will pray for you.” He slipped away between the trees, the sound of his going swallowed by the stream.
Pyotr did not stir. There was a full moon; the edge of its silver disc rose over the treetops. “You would have known what to say,” he whispered. “For myself, I do not. Help me, Marina. Even for the Grand Prince’s heir, I would not lose my son.”
“I WAS ANGRY WHEN I heard you had sold my sister so far away,” said Sasha to his father. He spoke rather jerkily; he was training a young horse. Pyotr rode Buran, and the gray stallion, no plow-horse, was looking with some wonder at the young beast curvetting beside him. “But Vladimir is a decent enough man, though he is so young. He is kind to his horses.”
“I am glad of it, for Olya’s sake. But even if he was a drunken lecher and old to boot, I could do nothing else,” said Pyotr. “The Grand Prince did not ask.”
Sasha thought suddenly of his stepmother, a woman that his father would never have chosen, with her easy tears, her praying, her starts and terrors. “You could not choose either, Father,” he said.
I must be old, Pyotr thought to himself, if my son is being kind to me. “It matters not,” he said. The light slanted gold between the slender beeches, and all the silver leaves shivered together. Sasha’s horse took exception to the shimmer and reared up. Sasha checked him midleap and set him back on his haunches. Buran came up beside them, as though showing the colt how a real horse behaved.
“You have heard what the monk has to say,” said Pyotr slowly. “The Grand Prince and his s
on are our kin. But, Sasha, I would ask you to think better of it. It is a harsh life, that of a monk—always alone, poverty and prayers and a cold bed. You are needed here.”
Sasha looked sideways at his father. His sun-browned face seemed suddenly much younger. “I have brothers,” he said. “I must go and try myself, against the world. Here, the trees hem me in. I will go forth and fight for God. I was born to it, Father. Besides, the prince—my cousin Dmitrii—he has need of me.”
“It is a bitter thing,” growled Pyotr, “to be a father whose sons abandon him. Or to be a man with no sons to mourn his passing.”
“I will have brothers in Christ to mourn me,” Sasha rejoined. “And you have Kolya and Alyosha.”
“You will take nothing with you, Sasha, if you go,” snapped Pyotr. “The clothes on your back, your sword, and that mad horse you think to ride—but you will not be my son.”
Sasha looked younger than ever. His face showed white under the tan. “I must go, Father,” he said. “Do not hate me for going.”
Pyotr did not answer; he set Buran for home with such a vengeance that Sasha’s colt was left far behind.
VASYA CREPT INTO THE STABLE that evening when Sasha was looking over a tall young gelding. “Mysh is sad,” said Vasya. “She wants to go with you.” The brown mare was hanging her head over her stall.
Sasha smiled at his sister. “She is growing old for journeys, that mare,” he said, reaching out to stroke her neck. “Besides, there is little use for a broodmare in a monastery. This one will serve me well.” He slapped the gelding, who flicked his pointed ears.
“I can be a monk,” said Vasya, and Sasha saw that she had stolen her brother’s clothes again and stood with a small skin bag in one hand.
“I have no doubt,” said Sasha. “But monks are usually bigger.”
“I am always too small!” cried Vasya in great disgust. “I will get bigger. Don’t go yet, Sashka. Another year.”
“Have you forgotten Olya?” said Sasha. “I promised I’d see her to her husband’s house. And then I am called to God, Vasochka; there is no gainsaying.”
Vasya thought a moment. “If I promised to see Olya to her husband’s house, could I go, too?”
Sasha said nothing. She looked down at her feet, scraping a toe in the dust. “Anna Ivanovna would let me go,” she said all in a rush. “She wants me to go. She hates me. I am too small and too dirty.”
“Give her time,” said Sasha. “She is city-bred; she is not used to the woods.”
Vasya scowled. “She’s been here forever already. I wish she’d go back to Moscow.”
“Here, little sister,” said Sasha, looking at her pale face. “Come and ride.” Vasya, when she was smaller, had loved nothing more than riding on his saddlebow, her face in the wind, safe in the curve of his arm. Her face lit, and Sasha put her on the gelding. When they came into the dvor, he sprang up behind. Vasya leaned forward, breath quickening, and then they were off, galloping with a swift thunder of hooves.
Vasya leaned gleefully forward. “More, more!” she cried when Sasha eased off the horse and turned him for home. “Let’s go to Sarai, Sashka!” She turned to look at him. “Or Tsargrad, or Buyan, where the sea-king lives with his daughter the swan-maiden. It is not too far. East of the sun, west of the moon.” She squinted up as though to make sure of their direction.
“A bit far for a night’s gallop,” said Sasha. “You must be brave, little frog, and listen to Dunya. I’ll come back one day.”
“Will it be soon, Sasha?” whispered Vasya. “Soon?”
Sasha did not answer, but then he did not have to. They had ridden up to the house. He reined in the gelding and put his sister down in the stable-yard.
After Sasha and Olga went away, Dunya noticed a change in Vasya. For one thing, she disappeared more than ever. For another, she talked much less. And sometimes when she did talk, folk were startled. The girl was growing too big for childish babble, and yet…
“Dunya,” Vasya asked one day, not long after Olga’s wedding, when the heat lay like a hand over the woods and fields, “what lives in the river?” She was drinking sap; she took a great draught, eyed her nurse expectantly.
“Fish, Vasochka, and if you will only behave yourself until tomorrow, we shall have some caught fresh with new herbs and cream.”
Vasya loved fish, but she shook her head. “No, Dunya, what else lives in the river? Something with eyes like a frog and hair like waterweed and mud dripping down its nose.”
Dunya shot the child a sharp glance, but Vasya was occupied with the last bits of cabbage in the bottom of her bowl and did not see. “Have you been listening to peasants’ stories, Vasya?” asked Dunya. “That is the vodianoy, the river-king, who is always looking for little maidens to take to his castle under the riverbank.”
Vasya was scraping the bottom of her bowl with a distracted air. “Not a castle,” she said, licking broth off her fingers. “Just a hole in the riverbank. But I never knew what he was called before.”
“Vasya…” began Dunya, looking into the child’s bright eyes.
“Mmmm?” said Vasya, putting down her empty bowl and clambering to her feet. It was on the tip of Dunya’s tongue to warn her explicitly against—what? Talking of fairy tales? Dunya bit the words back and thrust a cloth-covered basket at Vasya.
“Here,” said Dunya. “Take this to Father Semyon; he’s been ill.”
Vasya nodded. The priest’s room was part of the house, but it could be entered through a separate door on the south wall. She seized a dumpling, stuffed it into her mouth before Dunya could object, and slipped out of the kitchen, humming loud and off-key, as her father was once wont to do.
Slowly, as though against her will, Dunya’s hand plunged into a pocket sewn inside her skirt. The star around the blue jewel gleamed, perfect as a snowflake, and the stone was icy cold to her touch, though she had labored over the oven all that sweltering morning.
“Not yet,” she whispered. “She’s still a little girl—oh, please, not yet.” The gem lay gleaming against her withered palm. Dunya thrust it angrily back into her pocket and turned to stir the soup with a vindictiveness most unlike her, so that the clear broth sloshed over the sides and hissed on the oven’s hot stones.
SOME TIME LATER, KOLYA saw his sister peering out from a clump of tall grass. He pursed his lips. No one in ten villages, he was sure, could contrive to be always underfoot, as Vasya was.
“Shouldn’t you be in the kitchen, Vasya?” he asked, an edge to his voice. The day was hot, his sweating wife irritable. His newborn son was teething and shrieked without pause. At last Kolya, gritting his teeth, had snatched line and basket and made for the river. But now here was his sister come to trouble his peace.
Vasya poked her head further out of the weeds but did not quite leave her hiding-place. “I could not help it, brother,” she said coaxingly. “Anna Ivanovna and Dunya were screeching at each other, and Irina was crying again.” Irina was their new baby half sister, born a little before Kolya’s own son. “I can’t sew when Anna Ivanovna’s about anyway. I forget how.”
Kolya snorted.
Vasya shifted in her hiding-place. “Can I help you fish?” she asked, hopefully.
“No.”
“Can I watch you fish?”
Kolya opened his mouth to refuse, and then reconsidered. If she was sitting on the riverbank, she wouldn’t be getting in trouble somewhere else. “Very well,” he said. “If you sit over there. Quietly. Don’t cast your shadow over the water.” Vasya crept meekly to the indicated spot. Kolya paid her no more attention, concentrating on the water and the feel of the line in his fingers.
An hour later, Vasya was still sitting as instructed, and Kolya had six fine fish in his basket. Perhaps his wife would forgive his disappearance, he thought, glancing at his sister and wondering how she’d managed to sit still for so long. She was looking at the water with a rapt expression that made him uneasy. What was she seeing to make her stare so? The wat
er whispered over its bed as it always had, beds of cress swaying in the current on either bank.
There came a sharp tug on his line, and he forgot Vasya as he drew it in. But before the fish cleared the bank, the wooden hook snapped. Kolya swore. He coiled his line impatiently and replaced the hook. Preparing to cast again, he looked around. His basket was no longer in its place. He swore again, louder, and looked at Vasya. But she was sitting on a rock ten paces away.
“What happened?” she asked.
“My fish are gone! Some durak from the village must have come and…”
But Vasya was not listening. She had run to the very brink of the river.
“It’s not yours!” she shouted. “Give it back!” Kolya thought he heard an odd note in the splash of the water, as though it was making a reply. Vasya stamped her foot. “Now! Catch your own fish!” A deep groan came up from the depths, as of rocks grinding together, and then the basket came flying out of nowhere to hit Vasya in the chest and knock her backward. Instinctively, she clutched it, and turned a grin on her brother.
“Here they are!” she said. “The greedy old thing just wanted…” But she stopped short at the sight of her brother’s face. Wordless, she held out the basket.
Kolya would have liked to make for the village and leave both his basket and his peculiar sister to themselves. But he was a man and a boyar’s son, and so he stalked forward, stiff-legged, to seize his catch. He might have wished to speak; certainly his mouth worked once or twice—rather like a fish himself, Vasya thought—but then he turned on his heel without a word, and strode away.
FALL CAME AT LAST TO LAY cool fingers on the summer-dry grass; the light went from gold to gray and the clouds grew damp and soft. If Vasya still wept for her brother and sister, she did not do it where her family could see her, and she stopped asking her father every day if she was big enough to go to Moscow. But she ate her porridge with wolflike intensity and asked Dunya often if she had grown any bigger. She avoided her sewing and her stepmother both. Anna stamped and gave shrill orders, but Vasya defied them.
The Bear and the Nightingale Page 8