Enchantment (13 page)

“He saved my life. While you, brother Dimitri, sat beside me making jokes. You would have kept joking until I dropped dead on the floor!”

“Why didn’t you tell me you needed help?”

“Because I was choking, my wise brother!”

By now the king had made his way through the throng to stand beside Ivan. “Dimitri,” said the king, “instead of ripping my guest’s arm from its socket, would you please let go of him and thank him for saving your sister’s life?”

It was couched as a request, but Dimitri interpreted it, correctly, as a command. “Sire,” said the knight. “I serve you always.” He let go of Ivan’s arm—the blood rushed painfully through the too-long-constricted veins—and now Ivan could turn to see the man who had seized him and tossed him so easily into the wall. Dimitri was built like . . . like Popeye. Like Alley Oop. His forearms were unbelievably muscular, his shoulders as massive as a bull’s. Was
this
what Katerina had been comparing him to? Was this what a “man” was to her? Ivan was taller than Dimitri, but in no physical way would he be a match for him. For the first time in his adult life, Ivan felt downright frail.

This man could snap my bones like twigs.

And it was clear that despite the king’s words, Dimitri wasn’t really mollified. His apology, while it sounded sincere enough—the king was watching, after all—clearly wasn’t what he wanted to say. “O guest of the king, I’m sorry I threw you against the wall. I’m also sorry you laid hands upon my sister. If you had told me she was choking,
I
would have saved her.”

Oh, sure, I’ll bet you would, the Heimlich maneuver was done all the time in the ninth century or whenever this is.

But Ivan decided that it was best to pretend to accept the apology and avoid antagonizing this man any further. “Sir, I would have told you, but I’m a stranger here and I don’t speak your language very well. I did not know how to say that she was choking. I only learned the word when it was said just now. So instead of speaking, as I should have, I thought it was better to act.”

“Of course it was better,” said King Matfei. “And you were fast—over the tables and across the room faster than a stooping hawk.” He turned and addressed the whole company. “Have you ever seen a man bound over a table like that? By the Bear, if I only had a hound that could leap like you!” Then the king realized what he had said. “That is, not by the Bear, of course, but by the Lord’s wounds.”

“Amen,” said a few of the more pious.

Katerina approached now, holding the robe she had picked up from where it fell. Not taking her eyes from Ivan’s face until she moved behind him, she placed the robe onto his shoulders. Gratefully he gathered the cloth around his waist. Katerina took her place beside him. “Do you see what a man the Lord has brought to me? Two women he has saved this day, Lybed and me, but I am the fortunate one who will have him as my husband.”

The hall rang with cheering.

“Lucky for you the princess got your promise first,” said Dimitri’s sister, Lybed, her eyes alight with something more than mead. “For I’m a widow, and I would gladly have thanked you well enough to wear you down to a stump.”

The company whooped at the ribald boast, King Matfei among them. Even Katerina smiled.

But Dimitri did not smile. Instead he took his sister by the arm and pulled her away. “We’ve eaten enough,” he said. “I’m taking you back to your children before you’re too drunk to walk.”

“I’m not drunk,” Lybed protested, but allowed herself to be led away.

“Well, now,” said the king. “We’ve seen with our own eyes that you’re a worthy champion, even if you do seem a mere lad. What you lack in strength you’ll make up for in liveliness, I’ll swear! So come back to table and have whatever you want!”

Ivan saw the opportunity and took it. “King Matfei, forgive me, but what I want most is a bed. I ran with a bear all morning.”

The king could take a hint. “What kind of host am I! The man rescues my daughter and brings her home, my kingdom will be saved from the great Bitch, he even saves the sister of my master-at-arms, and I don’t even think to give the man a bed! In fact, I’ll give him
my
bed!”

“No, no, please!” Ivan protested. “How could I sleep, lying in the bed of a king?”

King Matfei laughed. “So what? When you marry my daughter, you’ll be sleeping in the bed of a princess.”

Ivan glanced at Katerina. She showed no sign of noticing her father’s reference to the presumed consummation of their marriage. But this was a woman who knew how to speak her mind. About the marriage, she had nothing to say. She would do her duty, but she didn’t have to relish it.

He had always thought that he would marry for love. Instead, it looked like his bride was going to take him out of grim duty.

Please, yes, let me go to bed. If I sleep, perhaps I’ll wake up back in Cousin Marek’s house, or in Kiev, or back in Tantalus in my own room. That’s how these mad dreams end, isn’t it?

The bed, when they led him there, offered no redolence of home. It was clearly a place of honor, a bedstead a full three feet off the ground. But the mattress was straw in a tick, the room was cold and stank of old sweat and urine, and it wouldn’t get him any closer to home. There might be magic in this world, but none of it was in this room, and none of it was Ivan’s to command.

It took Esther a day of shopping, but she found it in a mall in Syracuse: a clay basin, made in Spain, plain dark blue inside, brightly decorated on the outside. She bought it and brought it home, arriving after dark. Piotr asked her where she had been, but she answered him in one-word sentences that let him know this was not a good night for chat.

Out in the back yard, she set up the basin on a lawn table, out in the open where moonlight fell directly on it. Then she took the garden hose and filled it to the brim with water. Using blades of grass and twigs from the lawn as shims, she finally got the bowl exactly level and perfectly full, so that the water in the basin was poised to brim over, held in place all the way around by surface tension alone. The last few drops she added with an eyedropper.

The water trembled from the last drop, shimmering for a long time as if to the echo of a distant drumbeat. She sat and watched, cupping her hand over her mouth and nose lest her breath disturb the water. The night was still, but she did not trust it. She murmured words to keep breezes away from this spot, ancient words in a language she didn’t really understand, and for good measure included the incantation that would keep the eager insects of spring from seeking out this pool of water for egg-laying.

At last the water was perfectly still. Carefully, she rose to her feet. Holding her clothing close to her body, so nothing would touch the basin and disturb the water, she looked directly down into the deep dark blue of the pool, the water as expressionless as night, and whispered, over and over, the true name of her only child.

6

Newcomer

While Ivan slept, Katerina and her father took a walk up to the hill-fort. The sound of mock combat came from the yard within; because Katerina wanted to talk in privacy, she held back, and her father waited with her outside the gate.

Father knew what she wanted to talk about. “Well?” he asked. “What kind of king will he be?”

“King?” She shook her head ruefully. “He knows nothing of kingliness.”

Father smiled slightly and looked off in the distance. “I’m sure you’re right.”

“Which means that you’re not sure,” she said, laughing.

“All through the dinner, I thought, the Pretender must be rejoicing to see this awful creature my daughter brought home. And then he saves a stranger from choking.”

“And provokes Dimitri—”

“Oh, of course, he does everything wrong, Katerina. But he does have the
heart
of a king. When he sees someone in need, he does not hesitate to act. He does not measure the cost, he does not fear criticism—”

“But if there’s anything you taught me, Father, it’s that a king
must
measure the cost! And he must act in a way that will be above criticism.”

“I did not say that this Ivan has the
mind
of a king. Only that he has the heart.”

“What good is the heart without the mind?”

“Better than the mind without the heart,” said Father.

“And what good are his personal qualities, if the people will not accept him? Look at him, Father. Who would follow him into battle?”

“You know, this whole idea of hereditary kingship has never sat well with me,” said Father. “We always elected our kings, in the old days, to lead us in war.”

“Yes, but that law of succession is the only thing holding the Widow back,” said Katerina.

“No one would vote for her, either.”

“If they feared her enough, they would,” said Katerina. “So I have to succeed you, and my husband will be king, and I gave my word to Ivan, and he to me.”

“We can fight the Widow,” said Father. “Choose another man. I’m sorry for this good-hearted boy, and grateful to him for saving you from the Widow’s curse, but choose another husband and we’ll fight. Our men are courageous.”

“One man with courage is no match for ten men with blood lust upon them.”

“God will fight with us against the powers of darkness. He fought for Constantine, didn’t he? ‘In this sign, you will conquer!’ ”

“Maybe that story is true, and maybe it isn’t.”

Father looked at her in horror. “Do we not have the word of Father Lukas for it?”

“He wasn’t there, Father.”

“He wasn’t at the resurrection, either.”

“Father, I’m a Christian and you know it. But the armies of Rome have been defeated many times since they converted to Christianity. Maybe when God has some great purpose, like converting an empire, he gives victory to his followers. But Christians can die. I don’t want Taina to be a nation of martyrs.”

“So you marry him because that’s what the Widow forced us to promise in order to get you back, and then we’re so weak, having this man of twigs for a king—did you see his arms? I don’t know if he can even
lift
a sword. If he were a tree he’d fall over in the first wind.”

“But he has the heart of a king, you said. If there’s time enough, can’t he learn all the rest?”

“So you like him,” said Father.

“He freed me. You didn’t see the bear. He was the god of bears, I swear it, Father. Terrifying. But Ivan faced him. Stayed with me and didn’t attempt to flee even as the bear climbed the pedestal. Did what I asked him to do to save us.”

“Obedience is not a quality of kings.”

“He did what was needed. In the moment of danger. Afterward . . . I don’t know, perhaps he really does come from a land where everything is crazy and the sun shines at night. But if the people would follow him, I don’t think he would disappoint them. Especially if he has time to learn.”

“But he may not have time. And they may not follow him.”

“They
would
not follow him,” said Katerina. “Not now. Not yet.”

“Maybe this is the man God brought us,” said King Matfei. “In my heart I want to have faith. Father Lukas says that Christ said that God works through the weak things of the world to achieve his great purposes. But can I bet on this boy Ivan, when my people’s lives are at stake?”

“More to the point,” said Katerina, “do we have any other choice?”

“If only
you
could lead them in battle.”

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that, Father? But I am no soldier. I can govern, I can hold the kingdom together and give justice to the people, but who would follow
me
into battle?”

“Put Dimitri in charge, in your name—”

“Then Dimitri would be king,” said Katerina. “The king is the war leader. The war leader is the king.”

“Not if you’re the one giving them the orders. Making the plans. You will be the king, Katerina, even though you can’t lead them into the fray.”

“No, Father. They have to see the king putting his life at risk, fighting alongside them. They have to see the king’s arm fall upon the enemy and rise up soaked in blood and gore. There’s no escaping that. You’re a man of peace—you would have turned away from battle if you could. But you did what your kingdom required.”

“Katerina, you’re smarter than ten sons. You’re right, though. You can’t lead men into battle. You will stay home and have babies—lots of them, mostly sons, so our kingdom will never be left without a male heir again!”

“Ivan’s sons,” said Katerina.

“
Your
sons,” said Father. “Maybe we’ll be lucky. Maybe he’ll marry you, get you pregnant with a boy, then take sick and die.”

Katerina gripped her father’s arm. “How can you say such a thing?” she whispered harshly. “It’s the sin of David, to wish for the death of a loyal man.”

“Get Father Lukas to read you the story again, Katerina.”

“I can read it myself.”

“King David’s sin wasn’t wishing, it was
doing
.”

“Would you wish my child fatherless?”

“I would raise the baby as my own, if this Ivan were to die. But have no fear—the Pretender will probably use every spell she knows to keep him healthy. He’s too useful to her and too destructive of all our hopes for her to let him come to harm.”

“Don’t despise him, Father,” she said. “
Teach
him. Make a man of him.”

“Of course I’ll teach him,” he said impatiently. “And I don’t despise him, I told you that. I admire his heart. But those weak arms—what were his parents thinking?”

“I think they were raising him to be a cleric.”

“Good for them. They should have taught him that when clerics see princesses lying enchanted in a place of power, with a huge bear as guardian, they should go away and let her be until a
real
man arrives to have a go at the task!”

“He
is
a real man, Father. In his heart.”

Father put his arm around her, held her close. “Who am I to stand in the way of love?”

Katerina grimaced. Father kissed her forehead, then led her into the fort. In the yard, some of the older men were training boys with wooden practice swords. Katerina came up beside her father and added a parting shot to their argument. “If they can teach boys, they can teach Ivan.”

Father rolled his eyes, but she knew he would try to make this betrothal work. He would do it because that was the only hope for the kingdom.

At the verge of the forest, Nadya was returning to her hut to get back to her weaving—so much work left to do, and never enough time, now that the days were getting so short. She had tried weaving in the dark, once, but nobody would have worn the cloth that resulted, so she pulled it out and did it over and never tried such a mad experiment again. Everything had to be done in the precious hours of daylight. Everything except make babies. Another reason to get done with her work as early as she could. Even though all but one of their babies had died after only a few days, it didn’t stop her husband from trying. And with each pregnancy, Nadya had new hope.

But she was getting on in years now. More than thirty years old, and her body wearied of more pregnancies. Their only living child, a son, was a cripple, deformed from birth and then the same leg injured in childhood, so what was already withered became even more twisted and stumpy. Others muttered sometimes that there was a curse on Nadya and her family, but Nadya paid them no mind. She did no harm to anyone—who would put a curse on her? She did not want to start thinking of her neighbors that way.

Not even the strange little old lady who stood leaning against the wall of Nadya’s hut. She came in from some distant, lonely forest hut. Nadya always shared food with her and treated her civilly, because you never knew who had the power to curse and because if her husband died before her, Nadya herself might be left on her own, hungry and alone, since her only living child was not likely to earn much bread—still less any to share with her, since her boy had given himself to the Christians and spent all his time with Father Lukas.

“Good evening to you,” said Nadya.

“New and news!” cackled the crone.

“You have tales from abroad?” asked Nadya. “Come in, and I’ll give you bread and cheese.”

The old woman followed her into her hut. “News from Taina!” said the old lady. “The princess is back!”

“I know it,” said Nadya. “I was there in the village when she returned with that naked fellow.”

The old lady sniffed, clearly offended that Nadya didn’t need her gossip.

“But I’m sure you know more about it than I do,” said Nadya.

The old lady softened. She took a bite of dry black bread with a nibble of cheese. “I hope you have a bit of mead to keep my throat open.”

Nadya handed her a pot of mead. The old lady quaffed it off like a man, then giggled in a way that made Nadya think of some chattering animal.

“He’s not
much
of a fellow, this man she brought back to marry,” said the old lady.

“He saved her from the Widow’s evil trap. Isn’t that enough?”

“You think so?” asked the old lady. “You really think that’s
all
that matters?”

“He saved Lybed, too, they say. Though Dimitri beat him for it afterward. Isn’t that a mean trick?”

The old lady smiled mysteriously. “He might have deserved the beating after all. For another reason.”

“Why? What do you know about him?”

“I know he was wearing
this
,” said the old lady. She reached into her bag and pulled out a tattered, stained hoose. Nadya recognized it at once as being of fine weave, with a delicate pattern woven into it. Her own work. She had given this hoose as a gift to the princess, and Katerina had been wearing it when she pricked her finger on the spindle and was carried away in her sleep.

“
He
wore it?”

“He demanded it from her. So he wouldn’t get scratched up walking through the forest. But the cloth had no comfort for him—see how the fabric tore to let the branches through so they could scratch him anyway? That’s why he cast it away. Because a Christian woman’s clothing will not bear the insult.”

“But—he put it on? He
dressed
in it?”

“Ask him. Ask Katerina if he had this girded about his loins, playing at being a girl. Ask them both, and see if they tell you the truth.”

“How do you know this?”

“Didn’t they walk right past me, not seeing me, overlooking me as folks always do?”

“
I
don’t,” Nadya reminded her.

“He cast it away, and I picked it up and brought it here. Because I think the people of Taina should know what kind of wickedness is in the heart of the man who thinks he can marry the dear princess.”

“But . . . she wouldn’t marry him if he were that kind of man,” said Nadya.

“She would, if she thought that’s what it took to keep Taina free of the great and powerful Pretender.”

“May I—may I keep this? To show?”

“Go ahead,” said the old woman. “I have no use for it.” Her supper finished, she arose to go. “But I fear the vengeance of this stranger, if it’s known who told his secret.”

“I don’t fear him,” said Nadya. “He doesn’t look strong enough to lead a dog on a leash.”

“You’re a brave one indeed,” said the old lady. “You think that because you’re virtuous and kind, and your son is a priest, and your husband a—”

“Sergei’s only a scribe, not a priest,” Nadya said.

“As if it matters.”

“You were saying?”

“I was just telling you that you’re not as safe as you think,” said the old lady. “There are some people so malicious, so delighted in evildoing, that even when you treat them kindly, they answer with a curse.”

“I hope I never meet such a wicked person.” But Nadya entertained a moment’s concern that perhaps the old lady was telling a secret about herself. Could this woman possibly have been the cause of the death of each of her babies? Of Sergei’s crooked leg? Of the fall from a tree that ruined it further?

She searched her visitor’s face. The old lady looked back at her, unblinking, bearing her gaze, showing no sign of guilt or shame—nor of malice or triumph. Only a look of genuine concern. Impossible to imagine that this woman had ever done her harm. It was wicked of Nadya even to have entertained the thought.

Nadya held up the tattered hoose. “Is it wrong of me to tell of this?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong or right,” said the old lady. “The princess seems not to mind. But what of the men who might follow this . . . person into battle? Will God fight on their side, with such a man as king?”

Nadya thought of her husband. Of the vicious combat that stopped Baba Yaga’s army when they first attacked. How defeat looked certain, until King Matfei cried out for his men to have courage, and then plunged headlong into the thick of the battle, beating down every sword raised against him. They could not let such a king risk his life for them, not without companions fighting with equal fervor at his side. It was the king who gave them heart.

What heart would this stranger give to anyone? How many lives would be lost, with him at the front of battle? God forbid there should ever be another war, of course, but if the choice was between war now, while Matfei still ruled, or war later, when this weakling was on the throne, better to fight it now. Let there be no marriage, and let Baba Yaga come in claiming to rule by right; the swords of the men of Taina, led by King Matfei, would show them what Baba Yaga’s claims were worth.