Enchantment (21 page)

Four feverish days thus passed, in exhaustion on the practice field, exhilaration as he read over Sergei’s work, and then lying sleepless and aching in his flea-ridden bed, pinching the damned insects between his thumbnails so he could burst their miserable tough carapaces and thinking grandiose thoughts of accomplishments that would remain forever out of reach.

So he was not in the best of shape when the day of his wedding began, and the king himself rousted him out of bed and insisted on the two of them going down to the river together to swim in the bitterly cold water. No doubt this, too, had its roots in some ancient, culturally potent ritual, but when it came to swimming, Ivan was a great believer in heated and chlorinated pools.

But when he and the king came out of the water, shriveled and shivering and stamping their feet, while dozens of men stood by laughing and making obscene catcalls about how disappointed Katerina was going to be when she saw her husband’s cold-withered hilt, for the first time it dawned on him that this was the day of the irreversible steps. To marry Katerina was not just a show, not just a courtesy, a favor to a pretty woman who was in a bit of trouble the other day. If he made these vows, he was promising to be her husband. She was promising to be his wife. She would bear his children. They would raise them together.

He wasn’t ready.

It didn’t matter. Ready or not, he realized, here I come.

Sergei sat in Ivan’s room, trying to remember all the details of the tale of the Bear’s gold ring before committing any words to paper—there was no room for errors on the remaining parchment. Ivan was somewhere, probably with the king, getting dressed out in garments fit for a boyar’s wedding; it would not be right for him to dress as a prince until after the wedding, and even then modesty suggested he might wear slightly humbler clothing. Only when he became king would the distinction disappear. To jump from peasant garb to boyar’s clothing was shock enough.

Sergei valued such solitary time at a writing desk. Father Lukas so disdained Sergei’s copywork that he rarely gave the young man much of anything to do that used his skill with letters. Until now, Sergei had not thought he had any. But over these days of furious writing, he could see how his hand had become smoother, tighter, more regular. He could also see how much more fluidly the language came from him. Looking over the first tales he wrote down, he saw that not only were the letters too large and ill-shaped, but also the language was awkward and sometimes confusing. What he was writing now, however, was in letters much smaller and yet more, not less, legible.

The trouble was, all the blank space on the backs of the parchments was nearly full. Sergei hated to see the project end. Though he had chosen the best stories to write down first, there were so many more yet to write; and when the work ended, what would there be for Sergei then, except more slavelike labor at the church? Father Lukas would not know how Sergei’s hand had improved. He would have him hobbling about emptying slops, sweeping up, carrying things. Sergei had never understood why, if his malformed body made him so unfit for the physical labor of the village, they determined to give him to the priest—to perform his physical labor. Perhaps they felt that Father Lukas did not need to have his menial work performed quickly or well. Or perhaps they expected him to be more patient with Sergei’s slowness and clumsiness. If so, they were mistaken. Well, not entirely. Father Lukas did not yell at him to hurry, or curse him when he spilled or broke something. But the look of beatific patience in Father Lukas’s eyes as he mumbled a prayer—of course it was a prayer, he was a priest, wasn’t he?—could stab deeper than the shouts of the village men and women ever had.

A message to a faraway land, to be wrapped and double wrapped and saved for a thousand years in the earth. It was surely an age of miracles, that such things were possible. Christ himself never buried a message.

Thinking of Christ in the context of stories made Sergei remember the parable of the stewards with their talents. It occurred to him that he, Sergei, was the steward with the single talent, and he was indeed planning to bury his talent in the earth. But how could he do otherwise? These stories were already had among his people—he could hardly show them his writings, for they would say, “We all know the story, Sergei, why would you write it down?” There was nothing to do but bury it. Still, it made him uneasy, to know that he was like the foolish steward in this way. But perhaps he was misinterpreting the parable. Or at least misapplying it. If only he could ask Father Lukas about it.

Out in the corridor, Sergei heard voices for a few moments before they came near enough for him to make out what they were saying. Two men.

“Of course she’ll try to disrupt the wedding. This is a disaster for her.”

“It’s the child she’ll go after, when a boy is conceived. What’s the wedding to her?”

“The wedding is everything. She must respect widow-right, even without children, because she herself holds her kingdom by widow-right alone.”

“Less widow-right than sheer terror. Who in her benighted land would dare stand against her? Only a few of them have even enough courage to flee.”

“She will move against the wedding, and we must be prepared.”

“If you say so. It costs nothing to be vigilant. Katerina and Ivana will have our protection.”

The use of the female form of the name
Ivan
struck Sergei hard. He had not heard anyone speak so offensively against Ivan. Or perhaps he had, but now he knew Ivan better and so it bothered him more.

“As for the twig-man, the vigilance ends after he’s bedded her.”

The other chuckled. “I see now why you care so much for widow-right.”

“Let’s just say that it’s to the Pretender’s benefit to kill him before the wedding; afterward, we’re the ones with the most to lose if he stays alive.”

“He’s such a clumsy fellow. Everyone knows it.”

“He might fall into the river and get swept away.”

“Or he might tumble from a cliff.”

“He might even fall on his own sword.”

“That’s as clumsy as you can get.”

Chuckling grimly, the two men parted.

If Sergei had ever been permitted at the practice field, he might have known the voices. Neither could possibly be the king—that was a voice he knew. He could also rule out Father Lukas and Ivan himself. But most of the other voices Sergei knew well were those of the women who came to pray and confess at the church.

A plot to kill Ivan, but the plotters were not known. Still, they were men who felt responsible for vigilance during the wedding. Not common peasants, then, but men of soldiering age and with the responsibility of boyars or of the king’s own druzhina, the knights who stayed always under arms and under the orders of the king. If the king’s own druzhina were plotting against Ivan, what did that mean? Either they were not obedient to the king, or they were. If they were, then the king was a murderer like King David of old; if not, then the king’s authority was in danger, for his men were contemplating a great crime against the king’s will.

Sergei must tell someone. But whom? Ivan, even if he knew, would be powerless to protect himself—he was the only man of such an age in Taina who handled the sword as feebly as Sergei himself. The king? Well and good if the king were not in the plot, but if he was, then what good would it do to tell him?

Who is wise? Who can tell me what to do?

Father Lukas had grave misgivings about the marriage, just as he had had about the baptism. But as Kirill had told him more than once, a priest has no right to withhold the rites of the Church, even when the person receiving them is clearly unworthy. Let God damn whom he damns; it is our business to try to save all who come before us. Especially the marriage, Father Lukas knew, for there was no law requiring that a Christian priest give his blessing to a marriage. The old customs still had full force, and if he declined to marry this foreign pretender to the Christian princess, the marriage would happen anyway, but the priest would be seen by all as the enemy of the king and the people in their effort to stay free of Baba Yaga.

Thus did the compromises begin. He had seen a thousand such compromises with political power during his years in Adrianople, where bishops constantly had to bend to the will of the political and social leaders of the city. In Lukas’s opinion, as a young cleric, bending to political pressure had become so habitual as to be automatic, even in cases where a good Christian should have resisted. Yet now that he himself had to weigh the needs of the Church in this place, where the foothold was yet so fragile, he could clearly see that it was more important to preserve the kingdom that preserved the Church, than to insist on utter rectitude when it might put the survival of the Church in danger.

So he put the best face on it, even refraining from complaint that Ivan had appropriated his one assistant. Truth to tell, he rather hoped Ivan would keep Sergei, thus putting King Matfei in a position where he would have to give Father Lukas a new assistant—preferably one who wasn’t clumsy and stupid, and who wasn’t deformed in mockery of the creation of God. How could anyone be expected to keep their minds on worship and holiness with the clump clump clump of Sergei’s passage from room to room? A little boy would be preferable—they never talked back, or if they did, you could whack them a couple of times and get them in line. You could beat Sergei, too, of course, but it did little good. Sergei had never changed his mind through beatings—the man was stubborn beyond belief. A stump would respond better to teaching. At least stumps never talked back to their master.

Father Lukas went outside to greet the people gathering at the bower. Old pagan custom, this collection of greenery and flowers. Homage to some god whose name Lukas did not even wish to know. Well, the technique for dealing with that nonsense was well known to every priest. He would declare the flowers to be in homage of the Word of God, the ineffable Son, who made all things that grow upon the earth, and for whom palm fronds were laid down to cover the ground at his coming.

Oh, of course. Now that all the work is done, here comes Sergei. Father Lukas refrained from turning away in distaste. Let the man come. He was no worse a burden than the horsehair shirt Lukas wore under his tunic, where other men wore linen. The constant rashes and raw patches from the horsehair kept his flesh mortified before God; if God then chose to mortify the spirit as well, that was his holy business.

As he held still, waiting for Brother Sergei, the women who had been working on the bower came up to ask him for approval.

“Yes, lovely, lovely. God will be pleased that you did such work in his holy honor.”

There. Now even the unbaptized among you have served God, without even meaning to.

“Oh, look, there’s my boy.”

It was Sergei’s mother who spoke; but she was not speaking to Father Lukas. Instead, she was half-dragging a bent-over old lady along with her to intercept Sergei as he headed for Lukas. “Sergei, look who’s come to the wedding!”

Sergei greeted the old lady with deference but without recognition. “You know, Sergei,” said his mother. “The one who gave me the . . .” Her voice fell to a whisper. But Lukas knew what she was saying: The old woman who gave her the hoose that Ivan had supposedly worn. A troublemaker and a gossip, thought Father Lukas. A king by his conversion and example could create a church; old women with their gossip and nastiness could destroy one.

It was just as well that the old biddy was ignoring Father Lukas. Indeed, she ignored Sergei, too, after a perfunctory greeting. Apparently she wanted to talk only to her sisters in crime, the gossips of the bower.

Sergei quickly got away from his mother and closed the rest of the distance between him and Father Lukas. “Father, I need your counsel.”

“Really? I thought only Ivan was your teacher now.”

“I’m
his
teacher,” said Sergei, somewhat resentfully.

“Let’s not argue about who is teaching whom,” said Father Lukas. “What did you want my foolish counsel for?”

“I overheard something in the king’s house. Two men speaking, plotting to . . .” Sergei looked around.

So did Lukas. The old woman who had come with Sergei’s mother was still loitering nearby. Listening? Lukas took Sergei’s arm and led him into the church. He could see the old woman wandering off, around the church in the other direction. Well, let her listen. What could an old woman hear through walls?

“Speak quietly, we have an eavesdropper,” Lukas murmured.

“A plot to kill Ivan, Father,” said Sergei. “Two men in the corridor. Speaking of how there should be an accident after the wedding.”

“More fools they,” said Father Lukas. “They’d better await the birth of a son.”

“Widow-right,” said Sergei. “Have you heard that word before?”

“In whispers, lately,” said Father Lukas. “But there
is
no widow-right. That’s Baba Yaga’s invention, to justify her continuing to hold her late husband’s throne and forbidding a new election to replace him. Baba Yaga’s law will never work to the benefit of Taina.”

“Then perhaps at the wedding, if you say something to that effect . . .”

“There’s no part of the ceremony where the priest, acting in the place of God, warns the guests not to murder the bridegroom because it might jeopardize the succession.”

“You’ll do nothing?”

“I’ll do what I can. But to pollute the wedding with charges and accusations, especially when they’re only vague ones about two men overheard and perhaps misunderstood through walls and doors, that I will not do, because it would do no good.”

“That’s why I came to you for counsel, Father. Because you would know what to do.”

Cheerful now, Sergei bustled out of the church.

Father Lukas sat down on a bench and thought about what Sergei had told him. A plot to kill the bridegroom. It should have been foreseen. Indeed, Lukas had foreseen it—but not so early. Someone had lied to these conspirators and told them that there was no need to wait beyond the wedding night.