My stepmother Galina came up to the room a little while later, after the court had been disposed of. Her carefully maintained placidity was stirred from underneath like ripples from fish darting this way and that. “Such a fuss,” she said. “Piotr would not go to sleep for an hour. Is your hair dry? How long it is! I always forget when you have it up.” She plainly thought of putting out her hand and stroking my head, but instead she only smiled at me. I would have been irritated if she had done it, and yet I was half sorry she hadn’t. But what I was really sorry for was that she hadn’t done it ten years ago, when I was small and irritating and motherless, another woman’s child—the woman her husband had loved better than her, I realized, which was why she hadn’t, even though it would have been sensible.
But it was just as well she hadn’t loved me, and made me love her, because she couldn’t have done anything to help me anyway. It wasn’t that my father wouldn’t listen or believe me, if I told him the tsar was a sorcerer. Everyone knew his mother had been a witch. But my father would only tell me to hurry and bear a child before the tsar spent himself in black magic, and then I would be the mother of the next tsar. Who would be his grandson—another useful tool in his hands, and all the more so if his father conveniently died off while he was still young enough to need a regent. If it was difficult or unpleasant for me to be married to such a man, very well; it had been difficult and unpleasant for him, after all, to go to war. He had brought our family this high, and it was my duty to bring us higher, if I could; he would not hesitate to spend me as he had spent himself.
And why would Galina want to defend me against such a fate? She had spent herself so, too. She had been a widow herself, childless, who could have lived prosperous and rich alone, but instead she had brought my father that chest full of gold, so she could be a duchess. Now she might be mother-in-law to the tsar: an excellent return on her own investment.
Magreta said, “Yes, you are right, milady, Irina’s hair is dry. It is time to brush it.” She drew me to a chair in the corner, and she did lay her hands on my head. She was slow and gentle with the tangles, too, as she usually wasn’t, and she sang very softly over my hair, the song I had always loved as a child, the clever girl escaping from Baba Yaga’s house in the woods.
It took an hour for her to brush my hair as she wanted it, and then another to braid it all up, and then she wrapped the plaits around my head like a crown. My father’s steward came up and knocked on the door without coming in, carrying the jewel-box. Tonight I would only wear the ring, tomorrow add the necklace, and the third night the crown, to decide matters if they had not yet been decided. I had thought of trying to slip in a substitute; my mother had left a few small silver trinkets that Galina hadn’t bothered to claim, among them a ring. It was pretty and well-polished, but no one would look at it on my hand and think me beautiful because of it.
But my father would know the difference, and tomorrow there would be the necklace, for which I had no substitute. Tonight the tsar was only meant to look at me and frown and look again, and have me as an itch in the back of his head all the next day, like my father’s thumb running the ring around and around on his own hand. Tomorrow night, I would really be brought to market, and the third night, my father hoped, would be a joint maneuver, him and his promised son-in-law displaying me for a shared triumph.
But the truth was, I wanted the ring. I wanted to put it on my hand, and feel the cool silver against my skin, mine. I stood up and went with Magreta into my bedroom, to put on my dress. She tied on my sleeves and pulled through the big clouds of silk chemise beneath, and once I was dressed, I went back to the sitting room and called in the steward. The ring, which my father had worn on his big thick sword-hardened knuckle, slid easily to the base of my right thumb, and fit there snugly. I held my hand out before me, the cold silver shining, and the chatter of the women sitting around me fell off, or perhaps my own hearing was muted. Outside the sun was sinking quickly, and the world going to blue and grey.
Chapter 9
Wednesday night in my grandfather’s house, my aunts with their families all came to dinner, everyone gathered round the table in a noisy crowd. My cousin Basia was there, of course, and as we all carried dishes to the table, she caught me aside and hugged me tight and whispered, “It’s all agreed! Thank you, Miryem, thank you, thank you,” in my ear, and kissed my cheek, before she went back to the kitchen. And oh, why shouldn’t Basia have been happy? But I would have preferred it if she’d slapped me across the face, and laughed at me, so I could hate her. I didn’t want to be the good fairy in her story, scattering blessings on her hearth. Where did all those fairies come from, and how rich could they be in joy to spend their days flitting around to more-or-less deserving girls and bestowing wishes on them? The lonely old woman next door who died unlamented and left an empty house to rob, with a flock of chickens and a linen chest full of dresses to make over: that’s the only kind of fairy godmother I believed in. How dare Basia thank me for it, when I didn’t want to give her a thing?
At the table, I cut a big slice of the cheesecake for myself and ate it without talking, rude and starved and angry, trying to tell myself I would be glad to go away from them all and be a queen among the Staryk. I wanted to make myself cold enough to want it. But I was too much my father’s daughter. I wanted to hug Basia and rejoice with her; I wanted to run home to my mother and father and beg them to save me. The cheesecake was familiar and sweet and soft down my tight throat, and when I finished, I slipped away and went up to my grandmother’s bedroom and pressed water from the basin over my face. I held the cloth against it and breathed through the linen for a while.
Then there was a big joyful noise coming from downstairs, and when I went back down, Isaac had come with his mother and father to drink a glass of wine with us; Basia’s parents had just announced the betrothal, although everyone in the house already knew, of course. I drank their health and tried to be glad, truly, even while I heard Isaac telling my grandfather his plans, standing before him holding Basia’s hand: there was a little house that had just come for sale two doors down the street from his parents; he’d buy it outright, with that gold I’d brought to him, and in a week—a week!—they’d be married, and just so quickly as that settled; as quickly as if a magical wand had been waved over their heads.
My grandfather nodded and said since the house was small, a good size for a young family, perhaps they would care to be married from this house instead, a mark of his approval; he liked that they weren’t spending too much of the money on something more grand. My grandmother had already gathered up the two mothers to begin discussing in low voices the messengers to be sent, the people to be invited, as Isaac and Basia came to me together, both of them smiling, and Basia held her hand out to me and said, “Promise us you will be there to dance at our wedding, Miryem! It is the only gift we ask of you.”
I managed to smile back and said that I would. But the candles were burning down, and it was not the only betrothal to be finalized that night. In the midst of their happy noise I began to hear sleigh bells ringing, too high and with a strange tone. They grew louder and louder until they were at the door, heavy stamping hooves up and down, and then a thump of a fist upon the door, knocking. No one else noticed. They kept on talking and laughing and singing, even though their voices seemed to me muffled beneath that enormous echoing sound.