by E. P. Clark
“I am glad to see you take your duties so seriously,” said Slava, with an encouraging smile. “It must be a great responsibility, being a gate guard.”
“Oh it is, girl…aunty…” the guard stumbled a bit over what to call Slava, who was of an awkward, indeterminate age for that sort of thing, but when she continued to smile at him encouragingly, he regained his courage and boasted all the way from the gate to the front hall about his duties. By the time he left Slava in the hands of the kremlin servants, he was clearly feeling much better about himself and had forgotten all about his earlier embarrassment. Slava made sure not to smile at him until he was out of sight.
When the serving girl whose duty it was to wait in the front hall and greet visitors demanded to know who Slava was and what she wanted, Slava told her, “Please tell Olga Vasilisovna that Slava has returned,” which first brought nothing but disdain, until the girl remembered that Olga Vasilisovna had arrived with an important guest, who had left a few days ago, but was now back, and that the important guest was said to be the Tsarinovna herself, unlikely as such a wild rumor seemed. Nonetheless, the mere possibility caused the serving girl to jump out of her seat and bow down to her boot tops, just in case, before scurrying off to announce Slava’s arrival to someone else, in order to get rid of the responsibility as soon as possible.
It took a surprisingly long time for someone to come fetch Slava and bring her to Olga. Her escort was an older, steadier serving woman, but despite her age and experience, she appeared to be quite shaken. At first Slava thought she herself must be the cause of the other woman’s unease, but by the time they had started up the stairs towards the bedchambers, the other woman had begun unburdening herself to Slava, as people were so in the habit of doing. And a good thing, too, for by the time they reached Olga’s bedchamber, Slava had discovered what she would be walking into.
It seemed that while she had been gone, Mirik had come to the kremlin demanding to see Andrey Vladislavovich. The latter had, of course, refused to see him, but before being dragged away by Dima, Mirik had managed to let the whole kremlin know that Andrey Vladislavovich had caused terrible trouble by chasing after Mirik’s sister last spring, and he had finished by insisting that Olga do something about her husband. This had provoked a terrible scene between Olga and Andrey Vladislavovich, which had thrown the whole kremlin into the greatest of confusion.
“I see,” said Slava, when the serving woman had finished telling her tale. “And what does Olga Vasilisovna intend to do about it?”
“I don’t know, noblewoman—Tsarinovna, but they say she’s threatening to send him back to his mother. The merchants are calling for his exile—they say he’ll be a bad influence on their own sons, especially as he’s been trying to rule the city in Vasilisa Vasilisovna’s stead, which they say now—even though they weren’t raising a peep about it a week ago—that they won’t hold for at all, they say no good will come of having a man in charge, and rightly so. Andrey Vladislavovich has been screaming and shouting all day—Olga Vasilisovna locked him in his room for his own good—and Vasilisa Vasilisovna fell into such a fit of hysterics that they had to call a healer for her, and Olga Vasilisovna’s been going around with a face like thunder, and the merchants and noblewomen have been besieging her night and day—well, it’s only been a night and a day, but you know what I mean, Tsarinovna, and in general it’s been such an uproar, you can’t imagine.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” said Slava.
“Where is Oleg Svetoslavovich, Tsarinovna? Olga Vasilisovna has been asking for him.”
“He did not return with me,” said Slava.
“Olga Vasilisovna won’t like that one bit,” said the serving woman, shaking her head darkly. Fortunately, just then they arrived at Olga’s bedchamber, and her shouted, “Come in!” to the serving woman’s knock spared Slava the need to respond.
Olga did look to be in a thunderous mood, just as the serving woman had said, and her first words on seeing Slava were, “Where’s Oleg Svetoslavovich?”
“He did not return with me,” Slava repeated.
“The Black God take him! When will he be here?”
“I don’t know,” said Slava, and then, realizing that was not a very honest answer, amended it to, “He’s not coming back. He’s gone back into the woods. The gods called him.”
“Curse the gods! Cut off their nipples with a rusty spoon! May they wither and die childless! Why did they call him now?”
“He had done what they required of him,” said Slava guardedly. Luckily, Olga was too consumed with her own problems to worry about anyone else’s, and she only cursed the gods in the most colorful terms before pouring out all her troubles to Slava. It seemed that Mirik had not only spread his story all over the kremlin, but he had gotten his companions—that is, the rest of Olga’s men—to spread the story all over Lesnograd, and now half the town was up in arms against Andrey Vladislavovich and demanding his punishment or at least removal.
“It’s not that he doesn’t deserve it, or that I don’t enjoy locking him in his room and listening to his screams of rage,” said Olga. “But now is not the time! My mother still lies in her unwaking sleep, Vasya is in no state to assume control, Lisochka is no use, and Vladya is too young. Besides, there’s been so much bungling since I was last here, I’m surprised the kremlin doesn’t fall down around our ears, and now these rumors of curses and treason…Our rule—our family—is in a delicate state right now, and the last thing I need is more trouble, since it seems that I will have to rule for the moment, whether I want it or no. The noblewomen and merchants are on the verge of mutiny, they say that lawlessness and licentiousness are on the rise and this is simply the most flagrant example, soon the peasants will be infected, especially if they don’t feel safe in their own villages, and then what will we do…There are bandits in the woods, as we know to our cost—curse Mirik!—the harvest was poor this year, and many other troubles as well. The streets are practically impassable, for example. And as much as I would love to send Andrey back to his mother where he belongs, our relations with Vostochnoye Selo have been strained for a long time, and I fear that this could break our fragile peace, and as much as I would love to give my mother-in-law a good slap, metaphorically speaking, well, and literally too, now is not the time, now is not the time…”
“Let us sit down and plan, then,” said Slava, interrupting Olga’s breathless tirade before she could become truly hysterical. “Let us put our heads together and plan. Where is Dima?”
“You’re right!” cried Olga, seizing on Slava’s words gratefully. “He should be planning with us! He has the coolest head of all of us! I was afraid to inflame things more by sending for him, but you’re right!” She ran over to the door and called for a servant to send for Dima immediately, and then ran back to where Slava was now sitting at her table.
“When did you last eat?” asked Slava.
“Eat?” repeated Olga. “I don’t know. I’ve been too busy. So much trouble! I’m not cut out to be a ruler.”
Privately, Slava agreed, if this was how Olga was going to react to every minor crisis. Olga, who had always been so calm and cheerful in the face of physical danger, seemed to have lost her head completely over this one small affair. Of course, anything involving Andrey Vladislavovich or the rest of her family did seem to make her lose her head, but still…
“You should eat,” Slava said firmly. “You’re not going to do anyone any good if you faint from hunger. You need a clear head.”
“You’re right!” And Olga ran back to the door and called another servant—the first had gone off in search of Dima—and sent her down to the kitchens for food.
It took a large supper and many soothing words, as well as the stalwart presence of Dima, before Olga was calm enough to make any kind of a reasonable plan. It seemed that the matter was not actually so black as it had originally been painted to Slava, and that the noblewomen and merchants, while unhappy, were not on the verge of mutin
y, and that, if they could be appeased over the matter with Andrey Vladislavovich, they could prove to be valuable supporters, and that everything could be brought back to normal with very little trouble on Olga’s part. If, that is, Andrey Vladislavovich could be brought back under control.
“You have the perfect pretext to send him back to his mother now…” Slava began, but then, struck by a sudden idea, finished, “But what if we could do something else with him?”
“What, take him back to Krasnograd?” asked Olga sarcastically. “Are you going to take him in like you have all the other strays you’ve picked up along the way? Let me guess: you feel sorry for him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do, but that’s not the point,” Slava told her. “I mean: what if we could find some better use for him? Something more diplomatic.”
“The noblewomen and merchants—and Mirik—are not wrong about one thing, though, Tsarinovna,” Dima interjected. “He is a bad influence on others. And what he did was wrong—unkind, surely you can see that—and he deserves to be punished.”
“The gods forbid that we should get what we deserve,” Slava said. “I do not deny that what he did was wrong, or that he caused harm, but this is still an opportunity we could take advantage of. Is there anything he’s good at? Any skill that he possesses?”
“Quarreling, and chasing women, apparently,” said Olga angrily.
“I would speak to him,” said Slava.
“Why?” demanded Olga. “Why would you subject yourself to that?”
“Why not?” asked Slava. “Perhaps I will learn something of value.”
“What could you possibly learn of value from him?” cried Olga.
“I won’t know until I ask,” Slava told her, rising. “It is still early; I will go to him now.”
Olga tried to talk her out of it some more, and when she refused to change her mind, turned to Dima for support, but Dima, his head bowed, said that in matters involving Andrey Vladislavovich his heart was too divided to give good counsel, and so Olga let her go, although with many imprecations against Andrey Vladislavovich’s character and intelligence.
“If only Oleg Svetoslavovich had come back, instead of running off again!” were Olga’s final words. “Why’d you let him go? Couldn’t you have influenced him somehow? I know you haven’t had a chance to grow truly close to him, not as I’d hoped you would, but you could’ve if you’d tried! Couldn’t you’ve kept him?”
“No,” Slava told her. “It was the will of the gods.”
“Well, what do they know! I don’t see what task they could possibly have set him, if he ran off without accomplishing anything, and just when we need him the most! No, I suspect he was just leaving us again, just as he always does, he never could be relied upon, he never cared about anyone else, especially the women in his life, no, it was always him, he never could be relied upon for anything…”
Slava left before Olga could finish, sensing that there was nothing she could say to calm Olga down, now that she was dwelling on Oleg’s abandonment of her. Slava hoped that Dima would be able to soothe her, although at the moment Olga appeared to be beyond any soothing…Perhaps sleep would overcome her, and she would awake the next morning more refreshed…Slava had to hope so. And in the meantime she would speak with Andrey Vladislavovich, in the hopes that she could find some tiny shred of sense, of decency, somewhere inside of him, and rescue him from his own stupidity. Slava was aware that she had set herself a hard task, but somehow she had been unable to sit there in silence as Olga criticized him, just as her criticisms had been. Slava had to admit to herself that her previous attempts to bring out Andrey Vladislavovich’s better side had met with very limited success, but she still couldn’t stop herself from trying.
From Olga’s account of his behavior, Slava half-expected to find Andrey Vladislavovich banging on his door and screaming, but when she arrived at his chamber, all was quiet. Two bored guards were sitting outside his door and playing cards. They rose reluctantly when they saw Slava, and at first refused to let her in or even believe who she was. It was only when Andrey Vladislavovich called through the door, “Tsarinovna? Is that you?” that the guards agreed to unlock the door and allow Slava to enter, although it was plain that they still didn’t believe in her identity.
“What brings you here, Tsarinovna?” asked Andrey Vladislavovich as soon as she came through the door. “Come to gloat? Or to lecture me some more? They say you are a good person; are you come to remind me of my own lack of goodness?”
Despite his angry words, Slava could see that behind them, he was shaking, and that in another moment he might burst into tears. She also noticed for the first time that his hair had a reddish tint that made it seem like a thin, lank shadow of Oleg’s, and that his face, while thin and weak, also bore a resemblance to Oleg’s, as if they were many-times-distant brothers—which they probably were, Slava thought. The population was sparse up here in the North, and everyone was probably everyone else’s fourth-sister, so to speak. Part of Slava felt more kindly disposed towards Andrey because of this, but part of her recoiled back for the same reason, and she guessed that perhaps one of the causes of Olga’s intense antipathy towards him was that he was a rather sad and pathetic reflection of her own father, something any woman would have a hard time stomaching in a husband, Slava thought. But of course, none of that was Andrey’s fault. He stood there by the table, glaring at Slava was sullen resentment and wringing his hands just like Vasilisa Vasilisovna.
“A good person would not come to gloat,” said Slava.
“So I bet you’re not coming to gloat because you’re too good for that! I bet you think such base passions are the lot of us ordinary folk, especially us poor, pathetic, foolish men,” his voice rose to a hysterical shriek. “Well, you know what, Tsarinovna, it’s true! I’m not above base passions, and I proclaim it proudly! I…I am learning to…to understand the true nature of manhood! To get closer to the earth and the gods—some of us have been talking of that here, did you know that? The sanctuary brothers have been spreading word of such things from Krasnograd and the West all the way even to our barbaric North! We have been talking of freedom!”
For a moment Slava was distracted from Andrey’s words by her need to repress the urge to roll her eyes and sigh. It seemed that this nonsense had, just as he had said, spread all the way to Lesnograd. Slava couldn’t help but spend a few breaths considering the foolishness of the sanctuary brothers, who, despite their supposedly lofty aims of retirement from the world and contemplation of the will of the gods, for the most part seemed to her to be the same squeamish boys that one encountered every day in Krasnograd. Probably there were some noble ones mixed in with the others, but so pervasive was the disease of human folly that even a sanctuary provided no safety from it. In fact, anywhere where men were jammed together with no leavening of the good sense provided by their mothers and sisters was no doubt one of the most concentrated sites of human folly in the land…
“We men have feelings too!” Andrey Vladislavovich was saying, trembling slightly with the overflow of his own emotions.
“I can see that,” said Slava. “Most men of my acquaintance seem to have feelings in abundance.” She thought of adding, in excess, even, but refrained for fear of hurting Andrey Vladislavovich’s vaunted tender feelings. It was probably a needless precaution, though, as he carried on, his voice rising and rising and his eyes fixed on Slava with a fierce hatred, without actually, as far as she could tell, seeing her at all.
“Tell me,” she said, trying to bring his attention back to her, rather than his ugly inner vision of her, “these sanctuary brothers: they wouldn’t happen to be hosting foreigners, would they?”
“And what of it!” demanded Andrey Vladislavovich. “Foreigners are people too! From foreigners comes wisdom!”
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Slava. “The wisdom of freedom, for example?”
“Yes! And putting aside our backwards ways that are holding us back! We could
be…did you know that we could be, we could be living like they do in the West, on the Middle Sea, if only…did you know how wealthy they are? They eat off plates of gold down there!”
“Some of them do,” said Slava. “But others…”
“And they don’t slave away like we do!” Andrey Vladislavovich interrupted her. “They have slaves to do that sort of thing! That’s how they get their wealth, that’s how they get their freedom, and we could to! That’s what lets them…instead of making men serve in their guards and armies, they have slaves to do that sort of thing! So that men like me can, can live as equals, can be free!”
“Yes, well…” said Slava, who had spotted a rather large flaw in that argument, but Andrey Vladislavovich barreled on, not hearing her at all.
“And after all, if my wife could run off with a lover, why shouldn’t I?” he was ranting. “Why should she have all the happiness? Why should I have to be locked up here, wasting away my life with crazy people, with no hope of ever doing anything, of ever seeing anything, of ever having anything worth having, just because my wife couldn’t be bothered to do her duty and stay with me? Why? It’s not fair! It’s not just! I won’t even have the honor of fathering an heir, because my daughter, my poor, pathetic, foolish daughter, is not even going to rule Lesnograd! No, Vasilisa took care of that, didn’t she? After all those years of not being able to bear the touch of her husband or any other man, of being a dried-up, self-satisfied old stick whose every attempt to bear fruit ended in miscarriage, she suddenly realized that Lisochka was going to inherit the rule of Lesnograd, and so what did she do? She got a child! I even think she did as she claimed and got it off her half-wit of a husband. No doubt she was hoping the child would turn out to be a half-wit as well, so she could run its life just as she does her husband’s, but as the gods would have it, she got Vladislava instead! Much as I hate Vladislava and everything about her existence, I have to admit, it gives me pleasure to see her set her mother down the way she does all the time! A just punishment, don’t you think, Tsarinovna? That Vasilisa, who will never set the world on fire, let’s be frank, and her half-wit husband got Vladislava, whom even I have to admit is the cleverest girl this side of the Krasna, even though we all like to pretend that isn’t so, that there’s something wrong with her…But there’s not! A just punishment for all of us, wouldn’t you agree, Tsarinovna?”