The Betrothed Sister (20 page)

When they reached the tower, and a guard opened the terem door, Thea felt uneasy. It was as if she were to be locked away like a princess in a fairy tale and Lady Olga the wicked witch.

Lady Olga lifted her skirts to mount the wide, curving staircase. The servant that followed with Thea's clothing coffer waited as she explained to Thea, ‘The kitchens and a refectory are both here on the ground floor. Steps lead down to the store rooms. Except for special occasions and some of our feast days you will not leave the terem.' She turned around and placed a finger on her thin lips. ‘Princess Anya resides on the first floor so your servants must climb up and down the staircase quietly as mice in the granary.' She turned back and quietly cautioned the servant bearing Thea's clothing coffer on his shoulders to travel upwards slowly. She frowned at Katya and Gudrun when their boots banged against a step.

When they entered Thea's chamber after several turns of the staircase, Lady Olga drew Thea over to her chamber's window. ‘I shall care for you, Princess, until your wedding. My husband is an important courtier here. He is Princess Anya's steward.'

Thea nodded, hoping she would remember who everyone was.

The sun shone through the window glass with a soft glow and a distortion of what lay outside. Lady Olga remarked, ‘I make it my business to know everything that happens in this castle and further beyond its walls. If you need anything send for me.' She smiled in a kindly manner. ‘Call me Olga,' she added before Thea had time to thank her. ‘That is when we are alone, my dear.'

‘Olga, when we are in private as we are now you must call me Thea. The governor called me Princess Gita. That is not the name my friends use. You see it is my grandmother's name also.'

Olga placed a hand over her hand which rested lightly on the deep window ledge. ‘You will eat with us in the terem. I shall send you my own maids in the morning to escort you up to our large chamber.' She swept her hand around the vast room that Thea was to share with Gudrun and Katya. ‘This is the best room in the tower. It will be cool in summer and warm in winter.'

Thea glanced around the spacious room. One wall was decorated with a fresco painting of the Madonna and her ladies seated amongst painted meadow flowers. A high bed with steps covered with thick counterpanes took up much of the space. Two pallets had been left for her maids.

Olga walked over to a wall opposite and flung open a low door. ‘The pallets must be hidden from sight by day. Come.' Thea crossed the room, followed by Gudrun and Katya.

They peered into a shadowy alcove set into the thick walls. Olga picked up a lamp from a chest and held it up so that it illuminated the wooden clothing rails. ‘Your maids may start unpacking your coffer. This must be kept as you now see it. Their own travelling bags must be kept here too, out of sight.'

Olga lifted lamp higher. The room reached deep into the wall where shelves held linens and useful items such as needles and embroidery silks. There was a chest for the sleeping pallets and covers, and further along behind a screen stood a covered glazed pot for the necessary.

Olga turned to Gudrun. ‘Empty the chest of clothing. Shake the garments out and hang them. I shall inspect this chamber for perfection after morning prayers tomorrow.' She returned to Thea. ‘After your bath, which my maids will now prepare for you, I shall send food for you. Tonight, you may eat in your chamber. After tonight you will join us in the terem refectory for all meals unless you are indisposed.' She sniffed delicately. ‘We do not eat with men. It is not our way in Russia.'

‘Thank you, Lady Olga,' Thea said.

Lady Olga bowed her head, ‘Goodnight, Princess.'

Thea could hear her padding down the stairway and telling the terem maids to be quiet as they carried something heavy towards her chamber. She supposed it was the bath tub and welcomed it.

As days and nights passed, Thea began to understand the rhythm of the terem. She came to like the women who dwelled there. She grew used to the spiced meals that the terem cooks prepared for them. She spent secluded days in the work room above her chamber. She studied the different traditions of the Rus Church. However, no matter how hard she tried to conform to the rhythms of the terem, she became restless. When would
her
prince come to free her? The more she thought about Prince Vladimir the more magical he grew, so magical that he was increasingly like a prince from a story than a man made of flesh and blood that she would one day reach out to touch. She confided in Gudrun and Katya and they exchanged looks. Finally Katya said, ‘My lady, try not to dream too much lest your dreams cause disappointment.'

‘I shall never be disappointed by Prince Vladimir, Katya.'

Every day during prayers in the chapel Lady Olga sent two slave girls to inspect Thea's chamber. Thea thought sadly, I have no secrets but if I had any Lady Olga would tear my secrets from the very walls. It is just as well that my life here is so predictable that I have nothing to conceal. What if I did have secrets? she thought to herself.

Life was too predictable. There was a garden and she walked in it. There was the work room. There was a beautiful church which she came to love. But there was no freedom. Perhaps I can ride out on Starlight, she thought, but when she asked, she was told she was not to ride out of the fortress. There was no one to escort her.

‘Padar could,' she said. Lady Olga shook her head. Anyway, Padar was setting up his trading business with Earl Connor. Padar rarely visited the fortress. She felt so alone.

If she felt alone, she noticed how Gudrun pined. Gudrun's appetite was like that of a sparrow. She was turning into a little bird before their very eyes. ‘I do eat,' Gudrun protested when Thea tried to tempt her with delicious honey sweetmeats.

‘Padar will return soon,' Thea said as she tried to forget her own longings.

We are both pining, Thea thought to herself, and we feel our confinement but what can we do about it? The other women are kind but they are so content to pass their days in a beautiful gilded cage, or they will sew, help with making kvass or supervise the endless work of the ovens. They play with their children. Their men come and go but they go more often than they come. I wish I could feel content as they do.

‘This is the way of it,' Katya said when she complained.

‘I hope I get used to this life,' Thea sighed, and tried to study her new prayer book.

15

June 1070

The possession of a secret crept up on Thea.

Lady Olga had introduced her to the ladies who lived in the terem and had then set her to work on a linen embroidery that was to record the most significant events of her life.

Lady Olga presented Thea with a length of linen as long as the stretch of her arms and as wide as the window opening above them. ‘A rushnyk is very individual. You will use stem stitches and cross stitches. It is important that you stitch carefully.' Thea opened her mouth to speak, to ask more about it.

Lady Olga stopped her question. ‘Before you ask any questions, it is a sacred towel, sacred to God and sacred to you. You will keep it with you all your life. It will follow you into St Sophia on your wedding day. One day it will be used to lower your coffin down into the grave.'

‘Just that, just a linen towel?' Thea said in her halting Rus as she stared at Olga, and at the length of linen lying across her knees, shocked at this new information, puzzled by the skeins of red, blue, yellow and white embroidery threads neatly set out on the low table by her designated sewing chair. ‘Wh-what must I embroider on it?' She was bewildered.

‘You embroider your path of life from your coming to your new land until your wedding and, in time, significant events after it. It tells your life, your life in perfect –' she touched Thea's hand and repeated, ‘– mind, in perfect cross-stitch work, just as the Nons spin out the lives of the Norse people under their tree of life. We also have a tree of life in our tradition. You can embroider the tree into your rushnyk.'

Thea nodded. Lady Olga knew so many things for a lady whose own life was apparently spun out in a closeted terem.

‘What else do I embroider?' It would not do to make mistakes here and embroider the wrong thing.

‘For your wedding, you should work a duck and a drake to symbolise Prince Vladimir and yourself. Ducks represent water which gives us life and I hope your marriage begets plenty of new life.' She lowered her voice. ‘Many children, of course. Your husband expects it of you.' Olga swept her hand over the table with the needles and skeins of thread. ‘These needles are special.' She lifted a bone needle with a blue silk thread dangling from it and passed it to Thea. ‘Take it. It is particular because it is your needle and it is yours alone. They are all new. If the needle breaks, you must have a new one for the blue thread to replace this one.'

She lifted the piece of fabric from Thea's lap. ‘Now you are ready to begin. If you work on your arrival here in Novgorod at the top, then I think you could stitch a ship and a horse, a girl with a crown of course as you will marry our prince, and a castle and church.' She looked thoughtful and her mouth pursed. ‘Just your life here; nothing else is of any consequence. Yellow is the colour of the sun, black is the earth and for your wedding you will use red and blue.'

Olga wrinkled her brow in thought for a moment. ‘You could stitch a sun at the bottom corner as you have come to us in the summer.' She paused and turned to the two watching girls, Gudrun and Katya. They were seated on stools beside their mistress. She said sharply, ‘You two are responsible for the care of your mistress's sewing threads. None must go missing. They are silk. They will be delivered carefully to her chamber every day and never left here by night.'

Now Thea understood why a whole shelf in the wall alcove of her chamber was set aside for embroidery threads and needles.

The girls nodded. ‘Yes, my lady,' Katya ventured.

‘Good.' Olga glanced down at the silks again and stretched out two long, slim fingers towards the threads that lay on a low table. She touched the red. ‘For the large wedding section you embroider the duck on the left and the drake to the right. Your drake, Thea, will be stitched in red. It represents his energy.' Her fingers momentarily hovered over the blue skein. ‘The duck is blue, blue representing purity, sky and water.' Olga then lifted the red thread and showed it to Thea who felt defeated before she even began to sew.

‘There is also a new needle for the red thread.' Olga set the small skein beside the blue and lifted the white. ‘Now, the white.' She held up the white skein. ‘White is the scared colour. When you stitch the Cathedral of St Sophia, you use white. Angels, too, are white. This thread also has its special new needle.' She threw Thea a steady gaze and repeated, ‘Your needles are never to be loaned or carelessly left here in the sewing room.' Olga gave Katya and Gudrun a stern look. ‘Your handmaidens must never use them. The needles possess your energy and none other.' The two girls lowered their eyes demurely to their hands folded neatly in their laps.

Olga went on, ‘Thea, we purchased all these needles for you Monday past. It is the day of the moon and the moon's energy will transfer into whatever your needles touch, into your bride and groom, into the fortress and into your new life here in our lands.'

She indicated the yellow threads. ‘Yellow is never used alone. Yellow represents wisdom. Little yellow stitches do make a beautiful border.' She stroked the silks in a covetous manner and finally said in a gentler tone, ‘All your threads are of silk. They travelled here from Byzantium. Make sure your handmaidens guard them carefully for you.' Olga looked again severely at Gudrun whom she clearly considered careless, though the truth was Gudrun was thinking of Padar, Thea mused. Lady Olga glared at Katya who perhaps was not quite good enough to be so close to the betrothed of Prince Vladimir, not from the elite of Russian maidens. She does not like me either, Thea thought with realisation. She does not make this task pleasant. She speaks of my wedding as if she resents it.

‘Thea, I shall leave you to make a small cross-stitched border in blue, a ship and a procession towards a kremlin. You will be seated on a white mare at its head. Let us see how you begin. I shall check it later. Tiny stitches because with many tiny stitches you can create the rushnyk's powerful energy…'

Olga never finished her sentence because an agonised shriek blew up the stairs as if a flying witch was chasing the cry with a besom. Thea looked startled. Gudrun clutched Katya. The women of the terem lifted their heads and gasped. Olga calmly inclined her head and listened. The cry continued, stretched out like a spider's long, sticky thread.

‘Princess Anya,' Olga then said. ‘Her birthing has begun.' She waved a hand towards the ladies who obediently picked up their embroidery again. ‘Carry on with your tasks.'

Thea lifted her needle secured the thread neatly on the back of the linen. She began to sew several rows of little blue crosses to represent the summer sea she had crossed from Denmark to Russia.

Stitching was a distraction from the cries in the chamber beneath them. Thea tried to concentrate on her embroidery. Katya and Gudrun advised and helped. The cries paused. The other women crossed the room one by one to admire her first stitches. Just as Thea had relaxed again, further agonised wails funnelled up the stairway. She murmured a prayer to St Theodosia for Princess Anya.

Lady Olga announced the obvious, ‘That will be the princess again.'

The ladies dropped their sewing into their laps. Their maids ran to the opened doorway and stuck their heads out. Lady Olga sent them scurrying back to their stools.

Olga smiled around the chamber before saying, ‘By evening we may have a new prince or princess. Put away your sewing. You, Lady Sabrina,' she looked over at a plump blonde woman of at least thirty years of age. ‘Lead the others to the church. Pray for the safe delivery of a prince. I shall visit the midwives.'