Kremlins Boxset

by K L Conger

  "Is there any truth to these accusations, my lady?" Vorotynsky asked.

  Inga hesitated. “Truly, my lord, I am not a lady. Merely a maid.”

  He gave her a small smile. “Very well, then, my lady maid, are there any truth to these accusations?”

  Inga allowed herself a fleeting smile before turning serious again. "My lord, Yehvah is a good and God-fearing woman. There is no doubt in my mind she is innocent of the crimes they’ve laid at her feet. I do know, however, that she mixed herbs for the Tsarina. At the Tsarina’s request. I visited the woman who supplied the herbs. The woman claims the herbs themselves were not harmful. Taken too often or in the wrong dosages, however, they might be responsible for sickness. Yehvah tells me the Tsarina's mother took over the administration of the herbal concoction. She may not have been schooled in the ways of herbs and may have given her daughter too much in the hopes of quick conception."

  Understanding entered Vorotynsky's eyes. “And no one will accuse the mother of a Tsarina of killing her daughter, even if she did so accidentally." Vorotynsky studied the carpet for a few minutes and Inga remained silent, letting him run through the ramifications in his head. Finally, he raised his eyes to hers again. "I see your difficulty, my lady. I sympathize. What is it you wish me to do about it?"

  Inga took a deep breath. "To be frank, my lord, I hoped you might be willing to step in on Yehvah's behalf."

  Vorotynsky frowned, looking troubled.

  Inga hurried on. "I know it's a lot to ask, but I am desperate. You're the hero, both of Kazan and of Molodie. Surely, Ivan will listen to what you have to say. Perhaps even grant you a boon."

  Vorotynsky studied Inga in a considering way. He slowly shook his head. "I wish such was the case, my lady. Unfortunately, things are not so simple. Ivan keeps little counsel these days, except his own. I do not think anything I say will help your friend."

  "Surely, my lord," Inga pressed. "A great war hero like yourself—"

  "Is not someone Ivan wants to hear from, on this or any other subject," Vorotynsky cut her off.

  Inga frowned, genuinely confused. "Why not? All the people love you."

  "Exactly." Vorotynsky said quietly.

  "Forgive me, my Lord. I do not understand."

  Vorotynsky heaved a deep sigh. "It is complicated, my lady maid, and one I do not wish to go into at length. Suffice it to say, the more Ivan's people love something, the less he loves it."

  Inga still didn’t understand his logic. "Why?"

  "Because the Tsar wishes for all the love in the universe to be centered upon his own person."

  Inga turned his answer over in her head for several seconds. She glanced up to find Vorotynsky watching her thoughtfully. "Do you mean to say Ivan sees you as competition?"

  Vorotynsky raised an eyebrow at her, looking mildly impressed. "Something of that nature."

  "But you have no claim to his throne," Inga protested. "No possible way to take away Ivan’s power."

  "Preaching to the converted, my dear," Vorotynsky said. "The Tsar is who he is. We mere mortals cannot hope to understand his logic." He sighed and studied his hands a moment. "The point is, anything I say might doom your friend faster, rather than save her. I dare not try. I fear her blood will only come upon my hands."

  Inga sighed, disappointment threatening to overwhelm her. The general had been her last hope. She locked eyes with him again. "Can you give me any other advice on how to help Yehvah?"

  Vorotynsky studied the carpet, obviously deep in thought. No matter what he said, Inga appreciated him thinking seriously on it. He didn’t think her some silly maid with problems beneath a noble or general. He genuinely wanted to help.

  The general raised his eyes to hers again. "I'm sorry, I can think of nothing. Chances are, they will do the swimming test. If she fails it, she will be burnt at the stake. Are you familiar with the swimming test?"

  Inga nodded, a cold fear clutching at her belly. Most people were familiar with the swimming test. The courts used it as the standard to measure all accused witches by. "She's not a witch, my Lord. I give you my word as a Christian. Is there a way to use the swimming test to prove it?"

  "She must not float. If she doesn't float, they will believe in her innocence. Yet, I've never seen anyone not float for the amount of time it takes to administer the test. I cannot advise you on this, my lady maid. My apologies." He looked genuinely sad.

  Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Inga nodded and stood. "I appreciate you seeing me, my Lord, and all your consideration."

  Vorotynsky rose as well. "I'm sorry I cannot be more help. Best of luck to you and your friend, my lady maid. May God smile upon you both."

  INGA SLOWLY DESCENDED the ladder and into the dungeon. She’d made this trip several times in the last two weeks. No matter what happened tomorrow, this would be her last trip to see Yehvah in the dungeons.

  She brought a small bit of bread which she'd secreted under her skirts, to give Yehvah, but not nearly the amount she'd brought the first time she came down. The guards watched her much more closely now. If they noticed so much as a lump under her dress, they’d take the bread from her. In order to efficiently conceal it, she’d brought only a mouthful. Not even enough for two meals. Still, after running their eyes briefly up and down her body, the guards watching the trap door leading down in the dungeons shrugged and waved her down.

  Reaching the bottom of the ladder, Inga stepped off into the darkness. They gave her only a candle to take down with her—no torch this time—and told in no uncertain terms to make sure she brought the candle back. She couldn’t leave it with Yehvah.

  By now, the route to where Yehvah lay chained felt familiar to Inga. She walked to it swiftly and squatted at Yehvha’s side in a matter of seconds.

  Yehvah looked paler and frailer than Inga had ever seen her. Even after Nikolai's death. Two weeks in a freezing dungeon with little food and no blankets did that to a person. Yehvah’s age worked against her as well.

  Inga reached up under her skirt and yanked the tiny sack of food from its place, pressing it into Yehvah’s hand. The woman immediately opened it and ate, though not with the ferocious hunger Inga saw the first time she brought food. Even that cooled as Yehvah became weaker.

  "Have they decided?" Yehvah asked, her mouth full of bread.

  Inga sighed. The ‘trial’ consisted of Ivan and his judges meeting together to determine Yehvah’s fate. The only trial a female maid could expect. "They’ll do the swimming test tomorrow."

  Yehvah held a morsel of bread in one hand and moved it toward her mouth. She froze at Inga's words, and her hand dropped into her lap, the morsel forgotten. "Then tomorrow I meet God."

  Inga shook her head. "Don't say that. They must prove you aren’t a witch. You can't float. You know how to swim, Yehvah. Swim down to the bottom and hold on to something so you don't float back to the surface. After a certain amount of time, they’ll decree you innocent, and you can come up."

  Yehvah studied Inga's face for several minutes and gave her a gentle smile. "I recognize you're trying to be hopeful Inga. You know everything you said is foolishness. For one thing, I’ll be bound hand and foot. Who can swim without arms or legs for help?”

  “You can still kick your legs and try to stay beneath the surface.”

  “The river is icy cold. No one can keep their wits about them enough to do anything specific in water that cold, such as a swim to the bottom. Depending on where they carry this out, the bottom may be too far to reach anyway. The instant the cold hits you, it sends your system into shock. Most people can't do much except try to breathe. It's why the swimming test works for finding out witches. They can't think enough to be diabolical. Besides, I’d be required to stay underwater for a long time."

  "You can do it," Inga insisted. "Yehvah, you must do it. You must stay alive, both for me and for everyone in the palace who needs you. You must try!" Inga's voice broke with the last word. The dungeon felt too cold to shed tears, but
her voice thickened with them.

  Yehvah made a hushing sound and pulled Inga into her thin arms, hugging her tightly. At least, as tight as Yehvah could. She felt so frail, Inga feared if she hugged her any tighter, she might hurt her.

  "Of course I will try," Yehvah said. "I will always try. But Inga," she pulled back to look at Inga's face. "Even if by some miracle, I can stay under the water long enough for them to decree I'm not a witch, even if I don’t bob to the surface simply because I became too cold and couldn’t make my limbs obey me, you know going into the river is a death sentence. I'm an old woman. That kind of cold will do me in anyway."

  "No!" Inga shrieked. Her voice echoed off the stone walls of the dungeon. She quickly moderated her tone. "I don't believe that. You can beat this. You have to beat this, Yehvah."

  Yehvah gazed into Inga’s face, her expression full of empathy. "I am so sorry, Inga. This is all my fault."

  Inga peered at Yehvah in the darkness, utterly confused. Yehvah held no fault in the Tsarina’s death. They both knew it. How did Yehvah see fault for herself in the death, this trial, any of it? "What do you mean? What's your fault? What are you sorry for?"

  Yehvah shook her head. "I mean that you’ll be alone here when I die. I'm so sorry to have talked you out of going with Taras when he asked you to go with him."

  Inga blinked at Yehvah, uncomprehending. Shook her head. "I made my own decision."

  Yehvah shook her head. "No. Well, perhaps yes. Overall, you made your own decision. But I know you, Inga. You loved Taras. You wanted to go with him. If I hadn't been here, hadn't begged you to stay with me, he might have prevailed in convincing you."

  Yehvah studied her hands in her lap, and Inga wondered what thoughts ran through her mind.

  A moment later, Yehvah heaved a deep, shuddering breath and Inga realized she battled her emotions. When she spoke again, her voice grew thick with tears, and when Yehvah raised her head, her eyes shimmered with them. "I'm so terribly sorry, Inga. I took your life’s happiness from you. I felt so much fear. Fear of being alone when you'd gone, and too afraid to follow you. I felt exactly like you feel now. You’ve been my companion for many years now and I felt terror at the prospect of losing you.

  "Of course, not long after Taras left, me and Nikolai rekindled our romance, and I’ve been less alone these past fifteen years than I've ever been in my life. I didn't know it would happen when Taras left and begged you to come with him. I didn’t want you to go either way, because I love you and would have missed you. I acted out of pure selfishness. Nothing else. I didn't want to be alone, so I begged you to stay. Now Nikolai is gone, and when I go, you will be alone again."

  Inga felt tears bubbling up in her eyes, despite the cold of the dungeon. "Yehvah," she grappled for words. "What you asked...it wasn't unreasonable. You saved my life when I was a child. Raised and protected me. You gave me a profession. You’re my mother."

  Yehvah nodded. "Yes. A mother who put her selfish desires above those of her child. Can you ever forgive me?"

  Inga sighed. "Truly Yehvah, there's nothing to forgive. If it makes you feel better, then yes, I forgive you any flaw or circumstance from these past years. You gave my life meaning and taught me to walk with my head high. The rest is inconsequential as far as I'm concerned."

  Tears streamed down Yehvah’s cheeks. "Inga, I want you to understand something. Something I didn't understand until after Nikolai died. Once he died, I realized I've lived in fear most of my life. Fear of losing him, fear of losing you, fear of being alone. When he died, I knew he lay in the bosom of Almighty God. And yet, for the first time in my life, I didn’t feel fear anymore. What’s the point of being afraid? Afraid to die? When I do, I'll be with Nikolai. Afraid to live? After all we've been through, can anything truly become worse? Perhaps Ivan will think of another scheme and we will see more terror, but I don't think we can see anything more horrible than we already have."

  She took Inga's hands in both of hers. They felt frail and icy against Inga's palms. "If you can take any lesson from me, my daughter, let it be this. You don't have to be afraid anymore. You don't have to live your life like that."

  "I am...not afraid, Yehvah." Was she? Inga truly didn't know. She didn’t spend her days skittering through the halls nervously like a frightened mouse. She didn't think of herself as a fearful person. Yet she had said no to Taras. The thought of losing Yehvah did fill her with a horror she couldn't control.

  "Ah," Yehvah answered quietly. "But you are. And it's my fault. I've taught you to be afraid. To fear people and your connection with them." She sighed, looking down at their clasped hands. "I think sometimes we put walls up around ourselves, Inga. It's understandable. We do it to protect ourselves. But it keeps us from living the life God would have us live."

  She peered up at Inga's eyes. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  Inga wanted to nod, but she didn’t entirely understand.

  "Be brave, Inga. Be fearless. Be confident. Don't let the horrors of Ivan, the cold of the Moskva, or the blood of the innocent keep you from being courageous and happy. Don’t let your destiny be a dungeon of your own making.” Yehvah studied their joined hands again. “And know that whenever and wherever you die, you’ll have people waiting for you."

  Inga knew Yehvah’s words were profound. She couldn't internalize them. Yehvah's final sentence brought her back to reality.

  "No! You're not going to die tomorrow. I'm not ready to lose you. Pass the swimming test, Yehvah. Promise me you will!"

  Yehvah rubbed her hand soothingly up and down Inga’s arm. "I will do everything in my power to pass the test, Inga. You have my word. Whether I pass it or not, I no longer fear the consequences."

  THE NEXT DAY, INGA ventured out onto the banks of the Moskva to watch the swimming test. More people showed up for it than she would have thought. Most attended for legal reasons. Clerks and chaplains, royal scribes and lawmakers. Proprieties needed to be observed and records kept. In all, perhaps thirty people stood on the bank.

  Inga wore a thin, colorless shawl she took from a peg in the servants’ quarters. She didn’t think anybody would ask her to leave, yet felt it best to blend in. After ten minutes of standing in the bitterly cold wind, Inga shivered and her bad shoulders throbbed. Yehvah's words about the cold doing her in kept creeping into Inga’s mind. She squashed them ruthlessly. Yehvah would be fine. Somehow. She had to be.

  Finally, they marched a frail, sick-looking Yehvah out onto the bank. One of the guards cut away her dress and outer garments, leaving her in a thin shift. They tied her wrists and ankles tightly with rope. A third rope wrapped around her waist. They left a long tail of it hanging, with which they could pull her from the water when the test ended. The rope around the waist was common practice, but Inga knew accidental drownings still happened.

  Inga wanted to call out to Yehvah. She wanted Yehvah to know of her presence, so Yehvah didn’t feel alone. Inga didn't dare. It might cause trouble. At the least, she might be asked to leave, so she kept silent.

  Ten more minutes of hemming and hawing passed. They unrolled parchments, read things, scratched on other parchments with their quills. One finely dressed man, who Inga thought a legal clerk, stepped forward and unrolled a parchment. He read from it in a loud voice.

  “Yehvah, Head Maid of the Terem palace, you are accused of witchcraft and harming of the Tsarina’s person through your herbs and other spelled brews. This day the twenty-ninth day of May, 1565, we come before Almighty God to pass judgment. We will administer the swimming test. As witches reject the holy sacraments, including baptism, the holy waters reject them before God. If innocent, the water will envelop you warmly like a child and pull you into its depths. If a witch you be, it will reject you and you will float upon its surface. If you are found to be a witch, you will burn for it. Right. Let's begin."

  He nodded and two guards stepped forward. Each of them took Yehvah by one arm and one leg and unceremoniously hurled her into the river.
>
  Inga took a step toward the river before she could stop herself. Yehvah disappeared momentarily beneath the black swirling currents of the river. Barely three seconds later, she bobbed to the top. She visibly shivered and gasped at the cold. And she floated.

  "The waters have spoken," the legal clerk cried venomously. “They have rejected the maid, Yehvah. Prepare the fire. We will burn her at sundown."

  Inga fell to her knees in the half-frozen mud, a sob escaping her throat. Her chest felt tight, as though she’d been bound with cords. She couldn’t breathe.

  Three men pulled the rope at Yehvah’s waist and she soon lay on the bank again. The guards hoisted her up and set her on her feet. Her legs collapsed beneath her and in the end, she needed to be carried back to the dungeon. Inga watched her go with tears leaking down her cheeks.

  In the end, Yehvah did not burn, which Inga regarded as a small mercy. Yehvah’s prophecy about not surviving the cold proved correct. Three hours after the swimming test, alone in the cold dungeons beneath the Kremlin palace, her heart stopped. Inga's walls crumbled a little further.

  Chapter 29

  March 1568, Siberia

  Taras tied multiple packs, filled with dried meat and hard biscuits and wrapped in twine made from dried-out vines, to the horse’s saddle.

  He’d acquired the animal two seasons before from a passing peddler. The mare didn’t look like much. Slightly lame on her front right hoof, and sway-backed, her greatest value proved to be as a stock horse.

  Still, she possessed both strength and great endurance. Taras constructed a plow for her to pull to help them in the spring planting. He and Nikolai ate well the past two seasons.

  None of that mattered now. Taras didn’t want his son crossing Siberia on foot. When Taras became a traveler, he’d ridden Jasper. He doubted he’d have made it far, much less all the way to Russia, with only his feet beneath him.