Enchantment (15 page)

“Not Father Kirill’s first copy, then.”

“Of course not,” said Father Lukas. “That was long since given to the Patriarch of Constantinople for safekeeping, so that more copies could be made from it, endlessly.”

So it had been in safekeeping in the Hagia Sophia—no doubt until it was taken by the Turks in 1453.

“But this was copied from it? In Father Kirill’s own hand?”

“Part of it,” said Father Lukas, smiling a little sheepishly at the near-deception he had almost practiced. “I should have said that from the start. He gave it to Father Methodius to finish. I think half of Saint Mark and all of Saint John are actually in the brother’s hand. I served them both well. That is why I was given this precious book.”

Ivan thought, uncharitably, that perhaps Father Lukas protested too much. That perhaps after he left on his own missionary journey, Father Methodius spent the rest of his life wondering what in the world ever happened to that book of the Gospels that Constantine and he had copied out.

What has happened to me? Ivan wondered. Because I dislike his attitude toward Sergei, though it is hardly a surprise given the time and place, I immediately assume him capable of all sorts of perfidy. Why shouldn’t the book have been a gift?

Ivan began to read on the page where the book had chanced to open. “Whoever says to his brother, I will kill you, is in danger of judgment, and whoever says, Thou fool, is in danger of hellfire.”

Brother Sergei gasped in admiration. “Father Lukas, he is already a Christian.”

“Being able to read the words of Christ doesn’t make one a believer in the Word,” said Father Lukas. There was scorn in his voice; or at least Ivan thought he heard scorn.

“Brother Sergei has never known a man who could read and write who was
not
Christian,” said Ivan. “So his mistake is understandable.”

Ignoring Ivan’s defense of the scribe, Father Lukas looked at him shrewdly. “How many of us are there who know this alphabet?” he asked. “How did you learn it?”

“My father taught me,” said Ivan. Though, when he thought about it, it was much more likely that his mother had given him his letters. He had entered school already able to read and write, and had no conscious memory of ever learning; but it was impossible to believe that his father would have had the patience to teach a toddler to read and write. Never mind; it would be hard enough for them to believe he learned from his father, let alone from a woman.

“Who is your father, then? He has to have learned it from someone I know.”

Why evade, when his answer cannot possibly be checked anyway? “Piotr Smetski.”

“His
name
is Piotr?” Father Lukas leapt to the obvious conclusion. “So he was baptized Christian, and took that name upon him. And yet you are a Jew.”

“Whatever I am, I’m here now, to be taught by you,” said Ivan.

“And what do you expect me to teach you?”

“How to be a Christian. So I can be baptized and marry Princess Katerina so that Taina can be saved from Ba—from the Widow. I think that’s the whole story, isn’t it?”

“That is not a reason to become a Christian. It is only a reason to go through the empty forms of conversion, with greed in your heart, lust in your loins, and a lie on your lips.” Father Lukas leaned close. “I can’t stop a man from lying to God, but I can at least make sure he has every chance to be telling the truth when he confesses the name of Christ.”

“So this won’t be quick and easy,” said Ivan.

“The only books written in this barbarian tongue are the Gospels and liturgy,” said Father Lukas. “Therefore you must have learned to read from the words of the evangelists, and yet they were not sufficient to convert you. What can I say more, that they have not said?”

“And how do you know that I was not converted?” asked Ivan, getting peeved at the thought of having to go through an exceptionally rigorous course of study in the Orthodox version of Christianity. He hadn’t even decided he was going to accept conversion in the first place. Though a sophistry had already arisen in his mind to excuse it. Since he wasn’t circumcised until the 1970s, and he would be baptized in the 890s, clearly his circumcision took place
after
his supposed baptism. Therefore whatever rite he went through here to become a Christian would be obliterated nearly eleven centuries later. So it was as if he never converted at all. Wasn’t it?

“Were you converted?” asked Father Lukas.

“As much as Brother Sergei here,” said Ivan.

Father Lukas snorted. “Brother Sergei has as much faith in Christ as I have in Brother Sergei.”

Suddenly Lukas’s disdain for Sergei had to be seen in a new light. Was it possible Lukas disliked Sergei because of his hypocrisy, and not because of his barbaric culture?

“Brother Sergei has never spoken false to me,” said Ivan.

“He takes communion and eats damnation to his soul,” said Father Lukas. “Nevertheless, he is the only man the village can spare, and he does read and write well enough, and does passable copywork. So . . . I make use of what God has given me.”

“As do we all,” said Ivan.

“I don’t know why you say these things, Father Lukas,” murmured Brother Sergei. “Christ has no stronger follower than me.”

After the words escaped Sergei’s mouth, they all realized what he had just said—that he, a cripple, was the strongest of Christ’s followers. But instead of being offended, Father Lukas merely laughed. “At least your infirmities can be seen on the surface, Brother Sergei,” he said. “As can your lack of faith. How many of these women piously pray and confess their sins every day, only to turn around and practice black magic in their own homes, inviting the devil to curse their neighbors and calling on heathen gods like Mikola Mozhaiski to bless them?”

“Old ways are hard to let go of,” said Ivan.

“Especially when they work,” murmured Sergei.

“What?” demanded Father Lukas.

“May I return now to my work?” said Sergei. “He reads better than either of us. You won’t need me to interpret.”

“Go, tend to your vegetable garden, or whatever work you have found to do. But make sure I see you at vespers! Do you hear me?”

Brother Sergei nodded, smiled, crossed himself, and left.

Father Lukas sank down onto his stool. Ivan took the other and sat beside him, where both could see the book easily.

“You touched the book with reverence,” said Father Lukas. “Is Sergei right? Do you already love Christ?”

“I love this book,” said Ivan. “With all my heart.”

“Then perhaps the job of converting you is already half done,” said Father Lukas. Then he drew a deep breath, as if gathering the courage to say what must next be said. “In confession, someone has spoken of a rumor so foul that I can scarcely believe it, but I must know the truth before I go on. Are you disposed to wearing the clothing of women?”

Ivan sighed. Apparently Sergei’s decision to keep silent on the matter hadn’t extended to others. How many knew about the damned hoose? It’s not like he wore it for more than a few seconds. But he might as well have branded a scarlet letter on his chest.

“I did not dress after the manner of women,” said Ivan, “or out of the desire to appear to be a woman. I was cold, and took up what would give me warmth.”

“You did not know it was women’s clothing, then?” asked Father Lukas sharply.

“I knew, but my thought was that it was nothing but cloth, when a woman wasn’t wearing it, and when I put it on, that made it men’s clothing, for a man was wearing it.”

Father Lukas rolled his eyes. “That’s the best you can come up with? Even the Pharisees did better.”

“Doesn’t the blood of Christ wash away sin?” asked Ivan, struggling to remember the scraps of Christian doctrine he had picked up over the years. “If I sinned, it was only the once, and I’ll never do it again. Won’t the water of baptism cleanse me?”

“It will,” said Father Lukas. But he seemed uneasy. “But once you
are
baptized, you must forgo such things, or the penalty is severe.”

“As I told you,” said Ivan, “I did as Adam and Eve did, when they covered their nakedness.”

“A hoose is not a fig leaf.”

“Both hoose and fig leaf were the nearest things at hand, to cover a man who was ashamed to be naked.”

“Very well,” said Father Lukas. “I see that you are a man torn between humble repentance and a desire to justify his sins. The former man must be encouraged, the latter one smothered to death as quickly as possible.”

Ivan didn’t like the imagery, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “First, though, may I ask you a question?”

Father Lukas waited.

“Do you believe in the power of the Widow?”

“You mean Baba Yaga? Oh, don’t be surprised. There is nothing to fear from speaking the name of a witch in the house of God.”

“But outside this church, you do believe she has power?”

“I’ve seen her soldiers in action. I’ve seen the tortured bodies of some she’s punished. Oh, yes, she has power—the power of the jackal, to tear and kill and devour.”

“I spoke of the power to enchant Princess Katerina, and leave her guarded by a huge bear for a thousand years.”

“It was only a few months,” said Father Lukas, “and I have no idea where Baba Yaga might have hidden her, or what poisons might have been used to keep her asleep. As for magic, if Baba Yaga has enlisted the devil into her cause, she will find that Christ is more than a match for him, and he will betray her at the final moment, as he betrays all who trust in him.”

From this speech Ivan decided that Father Lukas wouldn’t be a good one to trust with the truth about his problems. He didn’t want to imagine what would have happened had he faced the bear armed with a cross instead of a large stone or Katerina’s quick-witted fulfillment of the terms of the enchantment.

Too bad. But at least, in studying with the priest, Ivan would have a chance to get his hands on the oldest Cyrillic manuscript that anyone in the twentieth century had ever seen. In fact, anything that Ivan wrote while he was here, if it survived, would automatically be the oldest surviving Cyrillic manuscript.

Ivan imagined writing an account of his life here, using local inks and parchment, and hiding it up for future generations to find. What consternation it would cause, to have such an obvious modern forgery that was undeniably written on ancient parchment, which could be carbon-dated to the ninth century.

Consternation? It would be a disaster. Even if someone else saw Ivan writing in the modern, fully developed Cyrillic alphabet and changed the shape of their letters even slightly to adapt to his style, it would falsify the archaeological record and make nonsense out of scholarship forever. With a sinking feeling Ivan realized that the one thing he could never do while he was here in Taina was write with his own hand.

“What is it, my son? I saw your face filled with pain.”

“It was my keen awareness of the awfulness of my sins.”

Lukas searched his face. “Are you converted so quickly?”

“To know my sin is not the same as being converted,” said Ivan. “Do those who suffer the torments of hell not know their sin? And yet the atonement of Christ has no power over them, because they rejected the works of righteousness.”

How easily the words came to his lips. He wasn’t sure if he was aping the radio and television preachings of Protestants or dredging up some half-remembered morsel of the rumors of Orthodox preaching that one could learn here and there in a Kievan neighborhood. Or was it some question on
Jeopardy
? Whatever the source of his Christian theology, translated into Old Church Slavonic it apparently sounded convincing enough to Father Lukas. Ivan thought that “works of righteousness” was a nice touch, because in European history in high school he remembered that the Protestants were big on grace, the Catholics on works, and presumably the Orthodox were in the works camp, too.

Why had he dodged the seminars dealing with the Church in Russia? Irrelevant, he had thought at the time. The Church was the influence that had made the chronicles of early Russian history so utterly useless, as every chronicler twisted the record to make it seem that Orthodoxy had prevailed at every point. Now he was going to have a crash course in Christianity whether he liked it or not, ending with baptism. The Orthodox didn’t do it by immersion, did they? No, surely they were sprinklers.

If only he could get home again, he’d never have second thoughts about marrying Ruth again. The hoops she made him jump through were nothing compared to this.

And yet . . . he remembered Katerina’s beauty as she lay asleep on the pedestal. And again, later, when she entered Taina with a bold, regal bearing. None of this highfalutin royal-wave nonsense like the Queen of England, dignified and aloof. No, she was a princess who knew her people and strode among them without pretense, the first among equals. Not like a politician, desperate to be liked, either. She was as untainted by pleading as by arrogance. She was a formidable woman, and he was supposed to get a baby into her as quickly as possible. It was an intimidating thought. But not an entirely unpleasant one.

That is, as long as he had no choice anyway. And as long as he could stay persuaded that he wasn’t being false to Ruth, any more than he was being false to Judaism. It still felt like sophistry to him, to claim that his engagement to Ruth was a thousand years in the future.

“Your mind wanders,” said Father Lukas.

“I’m tired from the journey,” said Ivan.

“Then tomorrow we’ll meet again.”

Do we have to?

Ivan wisely kept the thought to himself. But then he thought of a way that perhaps he could avoid spending so much time in Father Lukas’s company. “I hate to keep you from your ministry,” said Ivan. “Perhaps if Brother Sergei could teach me the basics, and then I could come to you for examination.”

“Sergei?” asked Lukas with obvious distaste. “Shall the blind lead the blind?”

“May a man, coming out of darkness, not spend a moment blinking until he is able to bear the light of the sun?”

“I have only the vaguest notion of what you mean, and even that vague notion smacks of Plato rather than Saint Paul. Nevertheless, since Brother Sergei performs his work at best sloppily and at worst not at all, I doubt you would be doing the work of the Church serious injury if you took him from his duties.”