Vasya’s room in the men’s quarters was small, but warm and far cleaner than anything in Dmitrii’s palace. Some wine had been kept hot on the oven beside a little stack of butter-cakes, only a little gnawed by an adventurous mouse.
Sasha brought her to the threshold, said “God be with you,” and left.
Vasya sank onto the bed. The sounds of Moscow in festival filtered in through her slitted window. She had ridden all day every day for weeks on end, endured both battle and sickness, and was bone-weary. Vasya bolted the door, cast off cloak and boots, ate and drank without tasting, and climbed beneath the mound of fur coverlets.
Though the blankets were heavy and the stove sent out steady warmth, still she shook and could not fall asleep. Again and again she tasted the lies on her own tongue, heard Father Konstantin’s deep, plausible voice telling her brother and sister a tale that was—almost—true. Again she heard the bandit-captain’s war-cry and saw his sword flash in the moonlight. Moscow’s noise and its glitter bewildered her; she did not know what was true.
Eventually Vasya drifted off. She awoke with a jolt, in the still hour after midnight. The air had a thick tang of wet wool and incense, and Vasya stared bewildered into the midnight rafters, longing for a breath of the clean winter wind.
Then her breath stilled in her throat. Somewhere, someone was weeping.
Weeping and walking, the sound was coming nearer. Sobs like needles stabbed through the palace of Serpukhov.
Vasya, frowning, got to her feet. She heard no footsteps, just the gasp and choke of tears.
Nearer.
Who was crying? Vasya heard no sound of feet, no rustle of clothes. A woman crying. What woman would come here? This was the men’s half of the house.
Nearer.
The weeper paused, right outside her door.
Vasya nearly ceased to breathe. Thus the dead had come back to Lesnaya Zemlya, crying, begging to be taken in out of the cold. Nonsense, there are no dead here. The Bear is bound.
Vasya gathered her courage, drew her ice-knife to be cautious, crossed the room, and opened the door a crack.
A face stared back at her, right up against the doorframe: a pale, curious face with a grinning mouth.
You, it gobbled. Get out, go—
Vasya slammed the door and flung herself backward to the bed, heart hammering. Some pride—or some instinct of silence—buried her scream, though her breath snarled in and out.
She had not bolted the door, and slowly it creaked open.
No—now there was nothing there. Only shadows, a trickle of moonlight. What was that? Ghost? Dream? God be with me.
Vasya watched a long time, but nothing moved, no sound marred the darkness. At length, she gathered her courage, got up, crossed the room, and shut the door.
It was a long time before she fell asleep again.
VASILISA PETROVNA AWOKE ON the first day of Maslenitsa, stiff and hungry, remorseful and rebellious, to find a pair of large dark eyes hanging over her.
Vasya blinked and gathered her feet beneath her, wary as a wolf.
“Hello,” the owner of the eyes said archly. “Aunt. I am Marya Vladimirovna.”
Vasya gaped at the child, and then tried for an older brother’s outraged dignity. She still had her hair tied up in a hood. “This is improper,” she said stiffly. “I am your uncle Vasilii.”
“No, you’re not,” said Marya. She stepped back and crossed her arms. Her little boots were embroidered with scarlet foxes, and a band of silk hung with silver rings set off her dark hair. Her face was white as milk, her eyes like holes burned in snow. “I crept in after Varvara yesterday. I heard Mother telling Uncle Sasha everything.” She looked Vasya up and down, a finger in her mouth. “You are my ugly aunt Vasilisa,” she added, with a fair attempt at insouciance. “I am prettier than you.”
Marya might well have been called pretty, in the unformed way of children, were she not so pale, so drawn.
“Indeed you are,” Vasya said, torn between amusement and dismay. “But not as pretty as Yelena the Beautiful, who was stolen by the Gray Wolf. Yes, I am your aunt Vasilisa, but that is a great secret. Can you keep a secret, Masha?”
Marya lifted her chin and sat down on the bench by the stove, taking care with her skirts. “I can keep a secret,” she said. “I want to be a boy, too.”
Vasya decided it was too early in the morning for this conversation. “But what would your mother say,” she asked, a little desperately, “if she lost her little daughter, Masha?”
“She wouldn’t care,” retorted Marya. “She wants sons. Besides,” she went on, with bravado, “I have to leave the palace.”
“Your mother may want sons,” Vasya conceded. “But she wants you, too. Why must you leave the palace?”
Marya swallowed. For the first time, her air of jaunty courage deserted her. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I probably would.”
Marya looked down at her hands. “The ghost is going to eat me,” she whispered.
Vasya lifted a brow. “The ghost?”
Marya nodded. “Nurse says I mustn’t tell tales and worry my mother. I try not. But I am scared.” Her voice faded away on the last word. “The ghost is always waiting for me, just as I fall asleep. I know she means to eat me. So I have to leave the palace,” said Marya, with an air of renewed determination. “Let me be a boy with you, or I’ll tell everyone that you’re really a girl.” She delivered her threat with ferocity, but shrank back when Vasya rolled out of bed.
Vasya knelt before the little girl. “I believe you,” she said mildly. “I have also seen this ghost. I saw it last night.”
Marya stared. “Were you scared?” she asked at length.
“Yes,” said Vasya. “But I think the ghost was scared, too.”
“I hate her!” Marya burst out. “I hate the ghost. She won’t leave me alone.”
“Perhaps we should ask her what she wants, next time,” said Vasya thoughtfully.
“She doesn’t listen,” said Marya. “I tell her to go away, and she doesn’t listen.”
Vasya considered her niece. “Masha, do you ever see other things that your family doesn’t?”
Marya looked warier than ever. “No,” she said.
Vasya waited.
The child looked down. “There is a man in the bathhouse,” she said. “And a man in the oven. They scare me. Mother told me I must not tell such stories, or no prince will wish to marry me. She—she was angry.”
Vasya remembered, vividly, her own helpless confusion when told the world she saw was a world that did not exist. “The man in the bathhouse is real, Masha,” Vasya said sharply. She took the child by the shoulders. “You must not be afraid of him. He guards your family. He has many kin: one to guard the dooryard, another for the stable, another for the hearth. They keep wicked things at bay. They are as real as you are. You must never doubt your own senses, and you must not fear the things you see.”
Marya’s brow creased. “You see them, too? Aunt?”
“I do,” Vasya returned. “I will show you.” A pause. “If you promise not to tell anyone I am a girl.”
A light had come into the little girl’s face. She thought for a moment. Then, every inch a princess, Marya returned, “I swear it.”
“Very well,” said Vasya. “Let me get dressed.”
THE SUN HAD NOT risen; the world was subtle and flattened and gray. A sweet and waiting hush lay over Moscow. Only the spiraling smoke moved, dancing alone, veiling the city as though with love. The dooryards and staircases of Olga’s palace were quiet; its kitchens and bakeries, breweries and smokehouses just stirring.
Vasya’s eye found the bakery unerringly. The air smelled marvelously of breakfast.
She thought of bread, smeared with cheese, and then she gulped, and had to hasten after Marya, who was running straight down the screened-in walkway to the bathhouse.