by E. P. Clark
As Slava had still not received a summons from her sister by the evening, she and Vladislava had supper with Olga, Dunya, and the men, and then Slava, feeling unaccountably tired after her uneventful day, retired early to bed.
Chapter Fifteen
The next day, though, Slava’s sister made up for her earlier neglect by sending Slava a message before breakfast, demanding that Slava come see her this instant. Accordingly, and filled with a mixture of curiosity and dread, Slava, still in her dressing gown and escorted only by the two guards stationed outside her apartment for the night, went to her sister’s chambers.
“What is this!” Slava’s sister demanded as soon as Slava entered her room. She was standing by the fire, but even that could not explain the hectic flush of her cheeks, and Slava could see that she was furiously angry, and probably a bit drunk besides.
“What?” Slava asked her.
“This…This report I hear that you called the singer in for a private audience yesterday morning!”
Of all the things Slava had expected to be challenged on, this was not one of them.
“She is a fine singer, and from Severnolesnoye,” Slava said mildly. “I merely wished to express my admiration, give her news of her kin, and make sure that she wanted for nothing.”
“You…! You’re plotting with the Severnolesniye!”
Slava was so surprised by the leap her sister had taken that for a moment all she could do was laugh, which made her sister even angrier.
“I assure you,” Slava said, as soon as she had regained control of herself, “I am not plotting with the Severnolesniye. And if…well, Lyudmila Krasnoslavovna has no connection with that family.” As she said it, Slava realized that it was not quite true, but it was, she was sure, true in the sense she meant it, so she plowed on. “She’s just a poor peasant girl, come to Krasnograd to make her fortune with her song. I happened to become acquainted with her brother during my journey—he joined our party briefly—and I decided I would look her up, once I was back in Krasnograd.”
“Lyudmila Krasnoslavovna!” cried Slava’s sister, as if her name had some particular significance.
“Yes,” Slava confirmed, puzzled. “That is her name.”
“And yet you claim to have no connection with her!”
“Her mother and I are namesakes, it is true, but how many Krasnoslavas are there in Zem’? Almost as many as there are Vladislavas or Miroslavas…Why, Dunya’s sister asked to be allowed to name her daughter Krasnoslava while I was in Naberezhnoye…”
“Dunya’s sister! So her family is part of this too! All the North is rising against me!”
“No, not at all,” Slava told her, still puzzled, and starting to grow alarmed as well. “Surely naming a child after the Tsarinovna could not be construed as an act of rebellion against the Tsarina.” Slava thought about adding that most people in the North did not think much about the Tsarina from one month to the next, except on tax days, but decided against it, fearing that in her present state of mind, her sister would construe that as a threat, too. Slava took a step closer to her, and caught the smell of both old and new vodka rising from her skin. Her clothing, while as rich as ever, appeared wrinkled, as if she had spent the night in it.
“Are you sure you are well?” she asked, filling her voice and her eyes with concern. “You do not look very well at all. Perhaps you have caught a chill—your duties must be a great burden on you, and it would be no wonder if you were to fall ill.”
“I knew it!” Slava’s sister’s voice was almost a shriek. “You are trying to take the Wooden Throne from me! You’d like nothing better than to claim I’d fallen ill, and take power for yourself—just like your friend Vasilisa Vasilisovna did with her mother, I have no doubt! Well, it won’t work on me!”
“Vladya!” cried Slava in horror. “What has come over you! What are you saying! You must be unwell, it is the only explanation!” She reached out and, pushing aside her sister’s feeble attempts to fend her off, felt her forehead. It was burning up, from fever or drink Slava couldn’t tell.
“You are ill,” she told her. “Come, you must lie down, you simply must, Vladya, before you do yourself even greater harm. Where is your night-maid?”
“I dismissed her,” said Vladya, looking down at Slava with a confused expression. “I was afraid…I thought she was in league with Masha and Manya…”
“And Anna Avdotyevna?”
“I don’t know…Slava! I can’t remember! I can’t remember what I did or said!”
“Shhhh…Come, come lie down on the bed…Anna! Anna Avdotyevna! Anna Avdotyevna! Come here this instant!”
As Slava had guessed, Anna Avdotyevna was in the next room, along with Vladya’s night-maid, and they both came running in as soon as she called for them, and in very short order her sister was in clean nightclothes, in her bed, and Krasnograd’s best healers and herbwomen had been sent for.
At least half-a-dozen healers and herbwomen came to Slava’s sister’s bedside that morning, and, after bowing and expressing their gratitude for the immense honor that had been vouchsafed them, they all felt her pulse and looked into her eyes and nodded gravely, before telling her it was but a passing indisposition and, if she drank the infusions they recommended, she would be sure to recover in a day or two. Slava’s sister accepted this with incurious relief, but Slava, after she had heard the same thing from five different people, followed the sixth one out into the front room and demanded to know the truth from her.
“The truth, Tsarinovna?” repeated the healer. “The truth is that the Tsarina will almost certainly recover within a day or two.”
“But why did she fall ill in the first place?” Slava pressed. “What ails her?”
“The strain of a Tsarina’s duties must be great, Tsarinovna,” said the healer evasively.
“And so?”
“And so…Sometimes one may treat one symptom, only to cause more.”
“You mean she’s been drinking,” guessed Slava.
“Well, Tsarinovna…”
“Don’t lie to me, for I’ve witnessed it myself, and I’ve only been back in Krasnograd two days,” said Slava. “How grave a danger does it pose her?”
“Well, Tsarinovna…”
“The only thing you have to fear is a dishonest answer,” Slava said. “I will forgive you any truth, no matter how bitter, but don’t lie to me about my own sister’s health!”
“Well, Tsarinovna, in that case…Luckily your sister has already produced an heir, and seems unlikely to produce more…Until this morning, I would have said that the Tsarina was in no great danger, but this sudden attack…You should watch her, Tsarinovna, watch her and see if she has more attacks, or if her condition worsens…It is so hard to tell what will happen, when a person takes to drink. One woman will drink a bottle of vodka a day for years without any ill effects, and another will drink herself into an early grave within half a year, and one simply can’t tell which it will be.”
“I see,” said Slava. She thanked the woman for her honesty, and sent her on her way, before returning to her sister’s bedside, where she spent a long and anxious day. Luckily there was no important business to attend to, and so Slava was free to sit by her sister’s bed and think dark and serious thoughts from breakfast until suppertime. After the parade of healers had finished, her sister, to Slava’s relief, fell asleep, and Slava, having sent away Anna Avdotyevna to deal with all the questions that her sister’s absence would no doubt provoke, was left entirely on her own for many hours.
The most important conclusion she came to, after a morning of sitting with one eye cocked towards her sister’s movements, and another towards her own idle ruminations, was that it seemed entirely possible that this was the work of Princess Severnolesnaya’s curse. If so, it was most cleverly disguised as simply an extension of her sister’s folly, but Slava remembered what Anastasiya, Sonya’s second-sister, had said about how curses only had the power that their victims gave them, and that they alwa
ys ran downhill, like water. The curse had been for Slava’s sister to be betrayed by those nearest to her, and that was what her fearful fantasies seemed to be telling her—thereby making it all the more possible that they would become reality. Although Slava was certain—well, fairly certain—that she would not betray or attempt to usurp her own sister—well, not unless, Slava admitted to herself uncomfortably, she continued behaving in this hysterical and irrational fashion—Slava knew that people who were treated as untrustworthy tended to become untrustworthy, even if they had not been so before. And if—Slava had to confess to herself—her sister’s mind was somehow affected, and she became unfit to rule, Slava would have no choice but to replace her, no matter how bitter her objections—both their objections—would be to such a step. Prasha was still far too young to take her place on the Wooden Throne. Slava even wondered if Prasha would ever be ready to take her place on the Wooden Throne, for woe betide Zem’ if she should not show more promise as a ruler than she had hitherto…It occurred to Slava that she could find herself Zem’’s most qualified ruler in a very short time…Or that the rule could some day pass down to her daughter, and she could be the Tsarina’s mother…She wasn’t sure that she liked that picture very much, but she liked the picture of Prasha’s selfish petulance on the throne even less…
“Is it daytime?” Slava’s sister asked groggily from the bed.
“Midday,” Slava told her gently. “You’ve slept all morning, the gods grant that it did you a great deal of good. Do you want anything to eat?”
“Tfoo,” Slava’s sister made a face at the thought. “Just…is there something to drink?”
“The healers recommended watered wine with healing herbs,” Slava told her, holding up a jug of it. “Would you care for some? Shall I help you sit up?”
“Oh…I suppose…I suppose I can’t drink it lying down…If you give it to me…No one else but you…And you won’t leave me, will you?”
“Of course not,” Slava told her. She helped her up to a sitting position and gave her a cup of watered wine, which she drank down thirstily. Slava offered her more, but she refused, saying weakly that she still felt too unwell to trust her stomach to anything more. She tried to say something else, but fell back asleep before she could finish her thoughts. Slava continued to sit at her bedside, struggling against the desire to fall asleep herself. At one point she did in fact start to nod off, but was startled back to wakefulness by the sensation that a shadow was watching her from the corner of the room. When she went to investigate it, though, nothing was there.
Vladya awoke again in the late afternoon, jerking up in her bed with a start.
“Slava!” she cried. “Are you still there?”
“Right here,” Slava assured her.
“You didn’t leave me, did you? You won’t leave me, will you?”
“Of course not,” Slava promised.
“Oh Slava! And I used to laugh at your dreams! Slava, Slavochka, I had the most terrible dream! A dark cloud full of rain was hanging over Krasnograd, and I said, ‘Good, here come the spring rains,’ and then it opened up and let loose so much water, and I was washed away, Slava, I was washed away!”
“It was only a dream,” Slava told her soothingly.
“No, Slava, it was terrible, terrible! I always used to laugh at your dream-fears, but now I see! It was much more than a dream, much worse! Slava, I don’t see how I will ever be free of the fear again!”
“You will,” said Slava. “Not entirely, of course, but in a few hours it will start to fade away, and in a week it will be no more than a distant memory, like the pain of your sprained ankle from when you were ten.”
“Oh Slava! You promise!”
“I promise,” Slava told her solemnly. “It has been so for me, many, many times.”
“Really?” asked Vladya, looking up at Slava with a face full of uncertain hope.
“Really,” promised Slava. “How many times when we were children did I come to you with a bad dream, crying and shaking? And yet here I am.”
For a moment Vladya’s face filled with horror at the thought of Slava’s childish suffering, and then even more horror at the thought that Slava could ever have possibly felt the same things that she had, when she was so sure that they were so different—already the old Vladya was coming back—and then all the horror drained away at the realization that, of course, Slava was lying, and she exclaimed, “A child could never have had such a terrible dream! I was so afraid! I still am!”
“Who knows fear better than children?” said Slava. “And yet I got over it every time. It is very hard to die of fear, whatever we might like to think to the contrary.”
“What should I do, Slava?” For a moment Vladya looked as lost as when she had first awakened. “Should I go back to sleep? I’m so afraid of sleep now!”
“Try to get up, if you can,” Slava advised her. “If you go right back to sleep after a bad dream, often as not it will just come to reclaim you.”
“But I’m so tired! And yet I don’t think I could dare to close my eyes, even so!” Vladya’s face was now filled with the dreadful awareness of her own suffering, something she had hitherto had very few occasions to contemplate. The knowledge was so unusual and so crushing that for an instant Slava wished she could be spared it, even though she knew that there was nothing her sister needed more than the awareness of her own and others’ suffering.
“Perhaps if you get up you will wake up a bit,” Slava told her. “And it will help you forget the dream.”
Vladya, after a bit more wavering and doubting, saw the sense in that, and allowed Slava to help her out of bed and into the front room, where she cheered up so much that she took a bit more watered wine and even some white bread. This brought about an even greater improvement in her spirits, so that she decided to get dressed and walk about the kremlin. This was even more beneficial, and by evening she was almost her old self again. Slava could tell it was so because she, Slava, was dismissed in favor of the servants and flatterers whose company her sister normally preferred to her own. As Slava watched her sister’s face regain its usual expression of confident and unquestioning self-satisfaction under the influence of these more congenial companions, she realized with painful clarity that her sister preferred them to Slava, her own flesh and blood, precisely because they were servants and flatterers, and therefore would pose Vladya no threatening questions, nor fill her head with frightening doubts. Slava feared that the dream, which three hours ago her sister had claimed would haunt her forever, was long forgotten. By Vladya, anyway. Slava, although she had done her best to soothe her at the time, feared that the dream was just as significant as Vladya had initially felt it to be, and she retired to her own chambers full of all the terrors for the future that by rights should have been Vladya’s, but had somehow ended up as her own lot instead.
***
The next day Slava’s sister was able to make her triumphant return to the Hall of Council and the Wooden Throne, and reassure all her anxious subjects of her complete return to health. To celebrate it she declared another feast, which set her recovery back considerably, although this time she suffered nothing worse than a day of misery and ill humor.
Over the next few days she continued to leave Slava to her own devices, which suited Slava just fine. Slava, for her part, busied herself with finding tutors for Vladislava and showing Dunya the sights of Krasnograd, or at least the sights of Krasnograd that were best shown by the Tsarinovna and not Olga’s men. Slava suspected that they were also showing Dunya the sights of Krasnograd, but that they were the kind of sights that she, Slava, was supposed to pretend ignorance of. Taverns, she guessed from Dunya’s occasional remarks, made up the bulk of the Krasnograd known to Olga’s men. She also guessed from Dunya’s brief comments that she, Dunya, did not care overmuch for spending so much time indoors, especially in such doors, but that in her own quiet way she also found all this merrymaking to be quite amusing, and so allowed them to drag her along a
nd be their chaperone whenever they needed the appearance of a woman’s steady hand guiding and watching over them—some innkeepers refused unsupervised parties of men admittance to their establishments, out of a well-founded fear of destructive and licentious behavior. In fact, it seemed that Dunya had become a great favorite of several of the innkeepers, who had taken to treating her like a daughter, and Dunya, in turn, had taken to imitating, quite unconsciously, their turns of speech, which caused Slava much internal merriment. It was quite odd, and even more amusing, to see someone as self-possessed as Dunya be taken over in this way, which was how Slava thought of this encroachment of the slurred speech of the common folk of Krasnograd onto Dunya’s clipped Northern voice. She wondered what people would think of it when Dunya returned to Naberezhnoye, but promised herself she would never mention it, much less laugh about it, in Dunya’s presence.
Dunya had also, Slava gathered, seen Lyudmila Krasnoslavovna and her Misha perform at several of the taverns, always with great success. Slava was glad to hear it, and half-wished that she could join Dunya and the others one evening and see Lyudmila herself, but decided it would be better not to, as it would certainly raise a number of questions in a number of heads, including in the head of Slava’s sister. Slava did not want to provoke another such outburst as she had already witnessed on that score if it could possibly avoided, and so she contented herself with listening to Dunya’s descriptions of the songs Lyudmila sang, the applause she received for them, and the fullness of her hat after it had been passed around.
Unfortunately, Slava could not spend all her time only in the company of Dunya and Vladislava. Although, just as Olga had predicted, much of the original joy at Slava’s return had died down within two days of her arrival at the kremlin, all the princesses currently in Krasnograd still seemed to want to see her, and it was a rare day that she did not receive a request for the honor of her company for dinner, tea, or supper. Disinclined as she was to spend so much time amongst women whose society she had for the most part previously always found excruciatingly painful, and whom she now suspected of inviting her out of boredom and a vague desire to alleviate it by the always-popular sport of mocking the Tsarinovna, she could not bring herself to refuse them.