Citadels of Fire

by L.K. Hill

  Chapter 8

  Moscow 1538

  The scathing shriek shattered the silence of the early morning. Inga jumped so violently that she dropped her small stack of stoneware plates. They shattered at her feet, spewing jagged debris in every direction. Bogdan, standing across from her in the kitchen, peered at her with wide, frightened eyes.

  What did a scream like that mean?

  They both listened intently for a few moments. The silence stretched. Bogdan went back to his task, loading a large pot onto a swing arm over the fire to prepare breakfast. Inga glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the scream, wondering if she should go investigate. She shivered and bent to clean up the broken dishes. Distracted and unnerved, she cut a trembling finger on one of the shards.

  “Ouch!” She sucked the sprout of blood from the tip of her middle finger.

  “Inga,” Bogdan chided, coming around the counter to help her, “pay attention. We have too much to do to have you injured.”

  Inga glared at him, but said nothing. She gazed over her shoulder again.

  “Inga,” Bogdan snapped, “Focus. Clean this up.”

  Inga barely paid attention.

  “I can’t.” She looked back in time to see his eyebrow go up. “I mean . . . I will. I only need to go check something.”

  Bogdan wasn’t fooled. “It came from far away—perhaps from the royal rooms. It’s not our concern.”

  “You think it was the grand princess?”

  “No. I think it’s none of our concern.”

  “Bodgan,” Inga straightened. “What if it was one of the maids, or other servants? I’m responsible for them. I must go make sure they are all well.”

  “Even if it is one of them, they most likely caught sight of a rat.”

  Inga spun to face him, crossing her arms, fighting down a sudden surge of anger.

  “We maids aren’t that jumpy, and you know it.”

  Bogdan dropped his gaze, sufficiently chastised, and Inga headed for the door before he could argue again.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said over her shoulder. As she left, he muttered about some maids who were jumpy. She ignored him.

  Hurrying through the hushed corridors, Inga peered down each hallway she crossed, searching for anything out of place. Still too early for anyone except a few servants to be out of bed, the passages were mostly empty. Finally, Inga glimpsed Anne down a corridor to her right.

  Anne claimed more years than Inga, and a prime example of why Yehvah had put Inga in charge, despite her youth. When something as simple as a missing tablecloth went wrong, Anne couldn’t handle it. She was likely to go into labored-breathing fits in the corner. She would never be able to shoulder the amount of responsibility Yehvah had given Inga. Now, the woman leaned against a thin table beneath a green and red tapestry showing the ancient Viking prince Oleg conquering Kiev. Anne’s hand rested on her stomach.

  “Anne, what happened?”

  Anne seemed to be carefully controlling her breathing. Inga waited for her to answer, resisting the urge to tap her foot.

  Anne pointed up the corridor, the way Inga already faced. “The cry came from that way.”

  Inga nodded. “Everything’s fine, Anne. Go back to work,” she called as she headed down the corridor. She passed several servants with similar expressions to Anne's. They pointed her in the right direction, and she told them to go back to their tasks. Inga marveled that the scream reverberated so loudly in the kitchens from so far away.

  She ended up in the antechamber to the grand princess’s rooms. The doors were flung wide. Inga could see the princess’s torso and legs laid out on top of the covers. Doctors milled about the room, while half a dozen boyars paced the anteroom in circles. Yehvah stood off to Inga’s left, her face the color of the clouds in summer.

  To Inga’s right stood Ivan.

  The small boy, now eight years old, screamed and thrashed, walking in place against the strong hands of two boyars who held him there. Inga did not register the moisture in her eyes until the tears spilled onto her cheeks.

  Ivan did not scream for his mother. Instead, he cried out for Agrafena, who stood a few feet from him; he wanted her. Elena had been a distant mother, more concerned with preserving power for her son’s future, keeping him physically alive, and bedding her lover, Obolensky, than being a nurturing mother to her children. Agrafena was Ivan’s only friend. Yuri stood stoically beside his thrashing brother, observing everything but comprehending nothing.

  A movement caught her attention: Yehvah motioning to her. Inga walked to where Yehvah stood, and Yehvah pulled her into a secluded corner so they could speak.

  “Is she—?”

  “Dead. Yes.”

  “How, Yehvah?”

  “The doctors don’t know. She has been fighting a lung infection these past days, and that could be it. There is also talk of poison.”

  Inga glanced around the room. Boyars, servants, doctors. This new information made them all look suspicious. “But we are so careful with her meals.”

  Yehvah sighed. “Truthfully, it’s amazing she’s kept herself alive this long. Five years since Vasily died, and not one day has passed that an attempt has not been made on her life. This only means someone finally succeeded.”

  Ivan’s wails grew in pitch. His howls dug into Inga’s spine, running along her veins with a horrible prickling sensation. Even her fingertips ached for him.

  “What will happen to Ivan now? Elena was the only thing between him and assassination.”

  Yehvah stayed silent for a long time. It barely registered with Ivan’s screams in the background. Inga turned her back on the scene, trying to drown out the misery. Yehvah watched Ivan, but Inga didn’t think she truly saw him.

  “I think he is safer than ever, Inga.”

  Inga’s head snapped up. “Why would you think that?”

  “Elena represented the true power behind the throne. It was she the boyars wanted dead. They went after Ivan because, without him, there would be no one she ruled for, no forthcoming grand prince. A woman by herself cannot rule Russia. Now, with Elena dead, Ivan and Yuri will be swept under a rug, forgotten for the present.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Yehvah pursed her lips, not answering, and Inga took it as a no.

  “Who screamed earlier?”

  “Elena’s lady in waiting. She found her when she came to wake her.”

  “What is happening with Agrafena?”

  Yehvah didn’t answer right away, and Inga turned to look at her. Pain lined Yehvah’s face.

  “Obolensky and Elena were lovers. The boyars will kill him, now, without her protection. Agrafena is his sister, so they are sending her to a convent.”

  Inga shut her eyes, trying to dispel the horror of it all. No wonder Ivan was screaming.

  Two armed guards entered the anteroom and took Agrafena by the elbows. As they headed for the corridor, little Ivan escaped his guards by ducking underneath their arms. He threw himself onto Agrafena’s skirts, crying. One of the guards pushed him roughly away, and the Boyars who’d been holding him grabbed him again.

  “Please, sirs,” Ivan called after them, “have pity. She’s done nothing wrong. She is not her brother. LEAVE HER!” They paid him no heed, hurrying Agrafena down the corridor. Agrafena gazed longingly back at Ivan, tears on her cheeks. Inga knew Ivan would never see his nurse again.

  Worse, Ivan knew it.

  The doctors and boyars in the anteroom grew tired of Ivan’s wails, so one of the men holding him back picked him up and carried him out of the room, though not unkindly. Ivan’s skinny arms reached around both sides of the man’s neck, thrashing and clawing for his nurse. His screams echoed through the palace, fading until they finally fell silent.

  The following silence sounded loud by comparison. Inga wrapped her arms around herself, feeling the cold of the day. Yehvah’s hand rested on her shoulder, her eyes empathetic.

  “Better get back to the kitchens, Inga.
Bodgan will need you.” Inga nodded and hurried from the room. She did not want to be there anymore.

  The initial scream awakened much of the palace, and many of its occupants had donned robes and come into the corridors, trying to find out what had happened. Most of them stood far above Inga’s station and ignored her. Several servants stopped her, asking what she knew. She told them to go back to work.

  Inga neared the kitchens when she crossed an intersection and Natalya skidded into her. She grabbed Inga’s arms and swung her around so they faced one another.

  “Inga, what’s happened?”

  Normally, Inga would have pulled Natalya into a nearby corner and explained, but she'd passed the rooms of a boyar—Nikolai—who stood out in the corridor, looking on. Bare from the waist up, he stood right outside the door to his rooms, not six feet from them. He’d ignored Inga as she passed him, but if they talked, he might be able to hear. “Go back to work, Natalya.”

  “No. You know what’s happened. I see it in your face. Tell me.” Inga glanced up at Nikolai. She thought he concentrated too hard on the far end of the corridor, but Natalya would not take “no” for an answer. Inga dropped her voice, praying he could not hear.

  “Elena is dead.”

  Nikolai’s head snapped around, all pretense dropped. He crossed the space between them in a single stride and took Inga roughly by the arms.

  “What did you say, girl?”

  “I . . . I said Elen . . . the grand princess . . . has died.” She kept her eyes down, but he held her close to him, looking aggressively down into her face. This meant she could not put her eyes below his chest, which made Inga blush because he wore no shirt. Nikolai’s eyes searched her face, his grip on her upper arms tightening and relaxing over and over again. She wondered what he thought he could find in the contours of her features.

  Nikolai was not especially tall, as men went, but he stood tall enough to Inga’s short stature. Inga claimed fourteen winters now, and had most likely attained her full height. It was nothing to a grown man. Besides, tall or no, Nikolai’s arms were bigger around than her waist.

  Finally he released her, pushing her back from him. Natalya half caught her as she stumbled backward. They both stood, eyes on the floor in front of him.

  “Go about your work.”

  They curtsied as one and hurried in the opposite direction. Thirty feet farther on, they turned the corner, headed for the kitchens, and Inga risked a look back.

  Nikolai did not look at them. He gazed down the corridor toward the Royal rooms, his face deeply lined.

  Even the boyars feared this kind of political upheaval.

  When they entered the kitchen, Bogdan carried a bucket of water toward his pot, which now hung above a well-stoked fire. He’d cleaned up all the broken plates. He stopped when they entered. Their faces must have said a great deal.

  “What is it?”

  The two girls glanced at one another. “Elena is dead,” Inga said.

  Bogdan dropped his bucket. The water spread out over the floor, leeching toward where Inga and Natalya stood. When Inga cut her finger on the broken plates, some of the blood must have remained unseen on the floor. As the water fanned out, a wispy line of red grew out of the place where the plates had broken. It reached for Inga as the puddle grew toward her. She stepped back from the spreading water, and it stopped just shy of where she stood. Natalyla frowned at her questioningly, then at Bogdan.

  They stood silent for a long time. Inga wrapped her arms around herself, unable to control the trembling of her shoulders.