No, Vasya whispered back against that voice. That is not it, not it at all.
But it was hard to remember exactly what was true—there in that dim, airless room, wearing a stifling tent of a sarafan, with her sister’s frozen expression hanging before her eyes.
For their sake, Vasya thought, I must make it right.
But she could not see how.
OLGA’S VISITORS DEPARTED AS soon as the excitement was over. When they had all gone, the Princess of Serpukhov walked heavily down the steps to Vasya’s room.
“Speak,” Olga said, as soon as the door swung shut behind her. “Apologize. Tell me that you had no idea this would happen.”
Vasya had risen when her sister entered, but she said nothing.
“I did,” Olga went on. “I warned you—you and my fool of a brother. Do you realize what you have done, Vasya? Lied to the Grand Prince—dragged our brother in—you will be sent to a convent at best now; tried as a witch at worst, and I cannot prevent it. If Dmitrii Ivanovich decides I have had a hand in it, he will make Vladimir put me aside. They will put me in a convent, too, Vasya. They will take my children away.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
Vasya’s eyes, wide with horror, did not leave Olga’s face. “But—why would they send you to a convent, Olya?” she whispered.
Olga shaped her answer to punish her idiot sister. “If Dmitrii Ivanovich is angry enough and thinks I am complicit, he will. But I will not be taken from my children. I will denounce you first, Vasya, I swear it.”
“Olga,” said Vasya, bowing her shining head. “You would be right to. I am sorry. I am—so sorry.”
Brave and miserable—suddenly her sister was eight again, and Olga was watching her with exasperated pity while their father thrashed her, resignedly, for yet another foolishness.
“I am sorry, too,” Olga said then, and she was.
“Do what you must,” Vasya said. Her voice was hoarse as a raven’s. “I am guilty before you.”
OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF the prince of Serpukhov, that day passed in a glorious exchange of rumors. The heave and riot of festival—what better breeding-ground for gossip? Nothing so delicious as this had happened for many a year.
That young lord, Vasilii Petrovich. He is no lord at all, but a girl!
No.
Indeed it is true. A maiden.
Naked for all to see.
A witch, in any case.
She ensnared even holy Aleksandr Peresvet with her wiles. She had mad orgies in secret in the palace of Dmitrii Ivanovich. She had them all as she liked: prince and monk, turn and turn about. We live in a time of sinners.
He put a stop to all that, did Prince Kasyan. He revealed her wickedness. Kasyan is a great lord. He has not sinned.
Gaily the rumors swirled all through that long day. They reached even a golden-haired priest, hiding in a monk’s cell from the monsters of his own memory. He jerked his head up from his prayers, face gone very pale.
“It cannot be,” he said to his visitor. “She is dead.”
Kasyan Lutovich was considering the yellow embroidery on the sash about his waist, lips pursed in discontent, and he did not look up when he replied. “Indeed?” he said. “Then it was a ghost; a fair, young ghost indeed, that I showed the people.”
“You ought not to have,” said the priest.
Kasyan grinned at that and glanced up. “Why? Because you could not be there to see it?”
Konstantin recoiled. Kasyan laughed outright. “Don’t think I don’t know where your mania for witches comes from,” he said. He leaned against the door, casual, magnificent. “Spent too much time with the witch-woman’s granddaughter, did you; watched her grow up, year by year, had one sight too many of those green eyes, and the wildness that will never belong to you—or to your God, either.”
“I am a servant of God; I do not—”
“Oh, be quiet,” said Kasyan, heaving himself upright. He crossed over to the priest, step by soft step, until Konstantin recoiled, almost stumbling into the candlelit icons. “I see you,” the prince murmured. “I know which god you serve. He has one eye, doesn’t he?”
Konstantin licked his lips, eyes fastened on Kasyan’s face, and said not a word.
“That is better,” said Kasyan. “Now heed me. Do you want your vengeance, after all? How much do you love the witch?”
“I—”
“Hate her?” Kasyan laughed. “In your case, it is the same thing. You will have all the vengeance you like—if you do as I tell you.”
Konstantin’s eyes were watering. He looked once, long, at his icons. Then he whispered, without looking at Kasyan, “What must I do?”
“Obey me,” said Kasyan. “And remember who your master is.”
Kasyan bent forward to whisper into Konstantin’s ear.
The priest jerked back once. “A child? But—”
Kasyan went on talking in a soft, measured voice, and at last Konstantin, slowly, nodded.
VASYA HERSELF HEARD NO RUMORS, and no plotting, either. She stayed locked in her room, sitting beside the slit of a window. The sun sank below the walls as Vasya thought of ways to escape, to make it all right.
She tried not to think of the day she might have had, down in the street below, had her secret been kept. But thoughts of that kept creeping in, too; of her lost triumph, the burn of wine inside her, the laughter and the cheering, the prince’s pride, the admiration of all.
And Solovey—had he been walked cool and cared for after the race? Had he even suffered the grooms to touch him, after the first exhausted yielding? Perhaps the stallion had fought, perhaps they had even killed him. And if not? Where was he now? Haltered, bound, locked in the Grand Prince’s stable?
And Kasyan—Kasyan. The lord who had been kind to her and who had, smiling, humiliated her before all Moscow. The question came with renewed force: What does he gain from this? And then: Who was it who helped Chelubey pass himself off as the Khan’s ambassador? Who supplied the bandits? Was it Kasyan? But why—why?
She had no answer; she could only think herself in circles, and her head ached with suppressed tears. At last she curled herself onto the cot and drifted into a shallow sleep.
SHE JOLTED AWAKE, SHIVERING, just at nightfall. The shadows in her room stretched monstrously long.
Vasya thought of her sister Irina, far off at Lesnaya Zemlya. Before she could prevent it, other thoughts crowded hard upon: her brothers beside the hearth of the summer kitchen, the golden midsummer evening pouring in. Her father’s kindly horses, and the cakes Dunya made…
Next moment, Vasya was crying helplessly, like the child she certainly was not. Dead father, dead mother, brother imprisoned, home far away—
A hissing whisper, as of cloth dragged along the floor, jarred her from her weeping.
Vasya jerked upright, wet-faced, still choking on tears.
A piece of darkness moved, moved again, and stopped just in the faint beam of twilight.