“Did your journey go so ill?” asked Andrei, watching him eat.
Sasha shook his head, chewing. He swallowed and said, “No. We found the bandits, and slew them. Dmitrii Ivanovich was delighted. He has gone to his own palace now, keen as a boy.”
“Then why are you so—” Andrei paused, and his face changed. “Ah,” he said slowly. “You had the news of your father.”
“I had the news of my father,” Sasha agreed, setting his wooden bowl on the hearth and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His brows drew together. “So have you, it would seem. The priest told you?”
“He told us all,” said Andrei, frowning. He had a bowl of goodly broth for himself, swimming with the last of the summer’s fat, but he set that reluctantly aside and leaned forward. “He told a tale of some wickedness—said that your sister was a witch, who drew Pyotr Vladimirovich out into the winter forest against all reason—and that your sister, too, is dead.”
Sasha’s face changed, and the hegumen misread it entirely. “You didn’t know, my son? I am sorry to cause you grief.” When Sasha did not speak, Andrei hurried on, “Perhaps it is better she is dead. Good people and wicked may come from the same tree, and at least your sister died before she could do greater harm.”
Sasha thought of his vivid Vasya riding her horse in the gray morning and said nothing. Andrei was on his feet. “I will summon the priest—Father Konstantin—he keeps much to himself. He prays without cease, but I am sure he will take time to tell you all. A very holy man…” Andrei was still flustered; he spoke as though caught between admiration and doubt.
“No need,” said Sasha abruptly, rising in turn. “Show me where this priest is, and I will go to him.”
They had given Konstantin a cell, small but clean, one of several kept for monks who wished to pray in solitude. Sasha knocked at the door.
Silence.
Then halting footsteps sounded within, and the door swung open. When the priest saw Sasha, the blood left his face and washed back again.
“God be with you,” said Sasha, wondering at the other man’s expression. “I am Brother Aleksandr, who brought you out of the wilderness.”
Konstantin mastered himself. “May the Lord bless you, Brother Aleksandr,” he said. His sculpted face was quite expressionless, after that one involuntary spasm of frightened shock.
“Before I renounced the world, my father was Pyotr Vladimirovich,” said Sasha, coldly because doubt had wormed in: Perhaps this priest has spoken true. Why would he lie?
Konstantin nodded once, looking unsurprised.
“I hear from my sister Olga that you have come from Lesnaya Zemlya,” Sasha said. “That you saw my father die.”
“Not saw,” replied the priest, drawing himself up. “I saw him ride out, in pursuit of his mad daughter, and I saw his torn body, when they brought him home.”
A muscle twitched in Sasha’s jaw, hidden by his beard. “I would like to hear the whole story, as much as you can remember, Batyushka,” he said.
Konstantin hesitated. “As you wish.”
“In the cloister,” said Sasha hastily. A sour stench—the smell of fear—drifted out from the priest’s narrow room, and he found himself wondering what it was that this Father Konstantin was praying for.
PLAUSIBLE. THE TALE WAS so plausible—yet it was not—quite—the same story Vasya had told him. One of these two is lying, Sasha thought again. Or both.
Vasya had said nothing of her stepmother, save that she was dead. Sasha had not questioned that; people died easily. Certainly Vasya had not said that Anna Ivanovna died with their father…
“So Vasilisa Petrovna is dead,” Konstantin finished with subtle malice. “God rest her soul, and her father’s and stepmother’s, too.” Monk and priest paced the round of the cloister, looking out onto a garden all gray with snow.
He hated my sister, Sasha thought, startled. Hates her still. He and she must not come face-to-face; I do not think boy’s clothes will deceive this man.
“Tell me,” Sasha asked abruptly. “Did my father have a great stallion in his stable, bay in color, with a long mane and a star on his face?”
Whatever question Konstantin had been expecting, it was not that. His eyes narrowed. But—“No,” he said, after a moment. “No—Pyotr Vladimirovich had many horses, but not one like that.”
And yet, Sasha thought. You fair snake, you remembered something. You are telling me lies, mixed with truth.
As Vasya did?
Damn them both. I want only to know how my father died!
Looking into the priest’s gray-hollowed face, Sasha knew he would get no more from him. “Thank you, Batyushka,” he said abruptly. “Pray for me; I must go.”
Konstantin bowed and made the sign of the cross. Sasha strode down the gallery, feeling as though he had touched a slimy thing and wondering why he should feel afraid of a poor pious priest, who had answered all his questions with that air of sorrowful honesty, in a deep and glorious voice.
VASYA WAS SCRUBBED TO her pores by the efficient Varvara, who was perfectly in her mistress’s confidence and perfectly unflappable. Even Vasya’s sapphire pendant only elicited a scornful snort. There was something naggingly familiar about the woman’s face. Or maybe it was only her briskness that reminded Vasya of Dunya. Varvara washed Vasya’s filthy hair and dried it beside the roaring stove in the bathhouse. “You ought to cut this off—boy,” she said drily, as she braided it up.
Vasya frowned. Her stepmother’s voice would always live in some knotted-up place inside her, shrilling “Skinny, gawky, ugly girl,” but even Anna Ivanovna had never criticized the red-lit black of Vasya’s hair. Yet Varvara’s voice had held a faint note of disdain.
“Midnight, when the fire is dying,” Vasya’s childhood nurse Dunya had said of it, when she had gotten old and inclined to fondness. Vasya also remembered how she had combed her hair by the fire while a frost-demon watched, though he seemed not to.
“No one will see my hair,” Vasya said to Varvara. “I wear hoods all the time, and hats, too. It is winter.”
“Foolishness,” said the slave.
Vasya shrugged, stubborn, and Varvara said no more.
Olga appeared after Vasya’s bath, thin-lipped and pale, to help her sister dress. Dmitrii himself had sent the kaftan: worked in green and gold, fit for a princeling. Olga carried it on one arm. “Do not drink the wine,” the Princess of Serpukhov said, slipping unceremoniously into the hot bathhouse. “Only pretend. Do not speak. Stay with Sasha. Come back as soon as you can.” She laid out the kaftan, and Varvara produced a fresh shirt and leggings and Vasya’s own boots, hastily cleaned.
Vasya nodded, breathless, wishing she might have come to Olga a different way, so that they could laugh together as they used to, and her sister would not be angry.
“Olya—” she said, tentatively.
“Not now, Vasya,” Olga said. She and Varvara were already arranging Vasya’s clothes with brisk and impersonal skill.
Vasya fell silent. She had a child’s memories of her sister feeding chickens, hair straggling out of its plait. But this woman had a queenly beauty, regal and remote, enhanced by fine clothes, a headdress, and the weight of her unborn child.
“I haven’t the time,” Olga went on more gently, with a glance at Vasya’s face. “Forgive me, sister, but I can do no more. Maslenitsa will begin at sundown, and I must see to my own household. You are Sasha’s concern for the week. There is a room waiting for you in the men’s part of this palace. Do not sleep anywhere else. Bolt your door. Hide your hair. Be wary. Do not meet any women’s eyes; I do not want the cleverer ones to recognize you when I eventually take you into the terem as my sister. I will speak to you again when the festival has ended. We will send Vasilii Petrovich home as soon as we may. Now go.”