CHAPTER SIX
How Prince Ivan met Mar’ya Morevna, and what he later learned concerning ears and mirrors
Leading his horse by the bridle, they escorted Ivan around the edges of the battlefield instead of straight across. Soldiers were working their way through the bodies, recovering spent arrows, discarded swords, and all the other things for which the Tatars had no further use. Ivan shuddered, thinking that they were also killing the wounded: but when he summoned enough nerve to look more closely, he realized there were no wounded left to kill. Under such a hail of arrows as had fallen here, there could only be the dead.
“Your liege lady fights fierce battles,” he said to the leader of the escort.
The captain, a grizzled man with a beard as silver-grey as a badger’s pelt, glanced at him and smiled slightly. It was the weary expression of someone who had also fought fiercely, but with the tolerant amusement of a soldier who had heard inconsequential nervous chatter many times. “These were fierce enemies,” he replied, “and their intentions for her people and her land weren’t something any ruler would permit.”
“But they were Tatars!” said Ivan. “Three thousand of them!”
“That they were.” He seemed surprised that anyone could think it made a difference to Mar’ya Morevna. “And now they’re dead Tatars. Best kind.”
Ivan fell silent, feeling that if he was the only person still impressed by the Tatars’ reputation, he was heavily outnumbered and should give up. Certainly he felt much more at ease with this escort than the last one; at least they had the courtesy to keep intrusive spearpoints from his person. He looked around some more and ignored the corpse-strewn battlefield as best he could, although it took effort not to stare in horror at what some archers did to get their arrows back.
Far more pleasant was the war-camp of white tents towards which he was being guided, though its location was rather a surprise. After much perseverance, Guard-Captain Akimov had taught him something of the other side of war, about forage rations, and the disposition of an army and its baggage train on the march and in battle. It was the boring part, with no place in descriptions of the boyaryy in their shining armour astride noble steeds that neighed and pranced and shook their manes, but never kicked or bit anyone except their master’s enemies – and never needed fed or groomed or shod or mucked out, either.
Very little of that teaching had stuck in Ivan’s head; he had always preferred the sparkle in the story to the elbow-grease from which the sparkle came. But one thing he did remember was that camp and battlefield were kept well apart, in case an enemy raiding party might leave their opponents without food, fresh horses or a place to sleep.
These white tents with their gold tassels and banners set up along the far edge of the field showed either ignorance of war, which was nonsense given what had happened to the Tatars, or arrogance in the face of superior odds, which was unlikely since the camp was twice the size the Tatar bok had been…
Or a demonstration that Mar’ya Morevna planned her battles so completely that the risk of raiding enemies didn’t arise. The proof of that was scattered all around.
The escort stopped in front of a pavilion finer than the rest and the captain went inside while Ivan sat quietly in Burka’s saddle and admired the pavilion’s richness. Its tasselling and fringes had the deep lustre of things spun from solid gold and, though there was only the barest movement of air, the banners overhead were of silks so delicate that they rippled with slow waves like the deep Ocean-sea.
A servant came out with a golden cup that held not kvas or kumys or even wine, but the sort of good brown ale to slake thirst and ease weariness that might have been drunk by the old North people, his ancestors. Ivan took the cup and turned to face the unseen eyes he suspected were watching him from within the shadows of the pavilion.
“Mar’ya Morevna, fairest Princess in all the Russias,” he said, “I pledge you health and wealth and long life!” Then he drank with such a will that when he gave the cup back to the servant it was empty. He heard laughter, and hands clapping in approval of his feat, and Mar’ya Morevna came out of her tent to greet him face to face.
That was when a fist of icy fire clenched around Prince Ivan’s chest. It squeezed the air out of his lungs so that he couldn’t breathe, and it squeezed the blood out of his heart so that it surged up to his brain, drowning the buzzing of the ale with a thunder like the beating of a demon drummer. It felt as if he was enchanted and, if so, Ivan had no wish to resist. He could see Mar’ya Morevna smiling at him, and the looks her guards exchanged with one another, but Ivan could really, truly see only one thing that mattered.
All that had been said concerning Mar’ya Morevna fell far short of the truth.
Though a small, cool part of Ivan’s mind knew he hadn’t met enough others to be so certain, the heated remainder had no doubts. She was indeed the fairest Princess in all the Russias, but the words of her title described no more than that and did her appearance no justice. The beautiful Tsarevna was like a precious ikon made all of burnished gold and silver, jewelled with sapphires and steel so that she was like the sky and snow of Mother Russia.
Her hair had been braided and caught up beneath her helm, but now it hung free across her armoured shoulders, pale against the silvery polished iron like the noon sun on snow. All her wars and her campaigning had left no mark on her more than golden skin blushed like a setting sun on snow. Her eyes had the bright blue of sapphire gems and the dark blue of the Ocean-sea, and though she was as stately as any queen, and as forbidding in her armour as any warlord, she smiled as sweetly as any woman that a man could love.
Prince Ivan looked at her, and loved her, and was lost.
Mar’ya Morevna glanced at the half-dozen guards who still surrounded Ivan and dismissed them with a wave of her hand. “This man,” she said, “is not my prisoner.”
“No, Tsarevna Mar’ya Morevna.” Ivan replied, and bowed gracefully low in his saddle. “I am your prisoner. Your beauty has made me so, as swords and spears could not.”
“Then health and wealth and long life to you,” she said, grinning at his courtly speech. “Where does the good God lead you? Is it a journey travelled by your will, or against it?”
Ivan grinned in return and shook his head, still dazed with Mar’ya Morevna’s beauty, but with a question heard so many times in the folktales he loved he was on familiar ground again. The proper reply came as naturally as his next breath. “Brave men travel nowhere against their will!”
“And glad I am to hear it.” Her blue eyes rested on him again, the eyes of a sorcerer’s daughter seeing more than most, and she smiled like someone one reaching a decision not unpleasant. “Then if your purpose is your own and you have no need to hurry anywhere, climb from your horse to eat bread and salt with me.” The beautiful Tsarevna studied Ivan again, clearly liking what she saw. It was plain even to those without sorcerer’s eyes that Ivan also liked what he was seeing. “And it would please me,” said Mar’ya Morevna, softly as falling silk, “if it pleased you, to visit me in my tent and perhaps rest a while…”
*
Tsarevich Ivan Aleksandrovich visited her tent later that same afternoon. He went in, and for a long time neither he nor Mar’ya Morevna came out again, so it was evident to every man and woman in the Tsarevna’s host that she was…
That they were…
Discussing matters of concern to both of them.
Ivan’s visit lasted two nights, and two days, and the most part of a third, and if he rested a while or not at all, that was also a matter of concern to himself and Mar’ya Morevna. But to no one else.
Whatever had or hadn’t happened during those two nights, when their liege lady emerged from her tent Mar’ya Morevna’s army could see she loved Prince Ivan just as much as he loved her. If confirmation was required, it was provided without a doubt when she ordered her secretary and her personal chaplain to begin the weeks of preparation needed for a marriage ceremony of special magnificenc
e. Then she summoned her captains and commanders and let it be known her present campaign against the Tatars was ended – not so much, thought many, because Manguyu Temir’s horde had been defeated as because Mar’ya Morevna now had something pleasant to occupy her time.
Kanonarch Protodeacon Sergey Strigunov had been chaplain to Mar’ya Morevna since before she inherited her father’s lands and sceptre. He justified remaining in the service of a known enchantress with the knowledge that neither the lady nor her father had done anything but good with the powers and wisdoms at their command, and now he hastened about her latest bidding.
Sergey was a wise priest with a proper respect for his lady – and for her temper and the placement of his head, which he preferred to keep securely on his neck. For those reasons he had never lectured Mar’ya Morevna on the advantages of marriage or the disadvantages of leading armies into battle, but it pleased him to see her settle down. He was more reluctant to assume she would behave like a proper wife and mother, and in that Kanonarch Protodeacon Sergey Strigunov showed his wisdom yet again.
Letters of invitation went out, by messengers on swift horses and by other means. They were kindly worded for the most part, to Ivan’s family in Khorlov and to his three sisters and their husbands, wherever they might be. Other letters, less kindly but most correct, went to the Princes of Kiev and Novgorod, inviting them to the wedding in one phrase but advising against too much ambition in the next.
The wedding was as splendid as might be expected for the fairest Princess in all the Russias, and all the Russias were there. Both Great Princes of Novgorod arrived together, riding side by side on white horses. Neither Boris nor Pavel Mikhaylovich trusted the other to stay behind, and neither trusted what the other might say if alone in such company as came to this wedding. With them and watching them was Yuriy Vladimirovich, who had ridden from Kiev to see with his own eyes what manner of woman Khorlov’s heir was taking as his wife. All had heard Mar’ya Morevna’s name before as a commander of armies, but only to be smiled at and then dismissed as the quaint indulgence of a spinster past marriageable age, who gave herself fine titles and commanded the captains of her army to claim their orders came from her.
The reality, as they discovered, was somewhat different.
Tsar Aleksandr arrived with Tsaritsa Ludmyla and High Steward Strel’tsin on the same day as his daughters and their husbands, and for some hours afterwards there was a deal of talking, laughing and even some tears. The Tsar’s eyes were torn between the beauty of his son’s bride, and the strength of her armed host as it drew up in battle array on the meadows beyond her kremlin. As he watched with Dmitriy Vasil’yevich by his side, both old men gained a deal of pleasure from the frustrated rage that blackened Yuriy Vladimirovich’s face.
To Ivan, the ceremony was a rich, confused tapestry of sounds and scents and colours with some parts recalled more clearly than others: the many blessings and signings with the twin and triple candles; the smoke and heavy perfume as censers of solid gold swung back and forth; the soaring sweetness of the choir; and the oktavist great-bass of Hieromonk Nafaniel who led the anthems in a majestic voice that ran in the very bones of those who heard it.
But most of all he remembered Mar’ya Morevna’s hand in his, and the warmth and softness of it, and the unaccustomed tremor in the voice of a warrior lady as she spoke her responses. He remembered the stinging in his eyes that came from more than just the incense smoke, and the cool weight of the golden wedding ring that had been his great-grandfather’s, brought from Khorlov by his own father. Now it gleamed on Mar’ya Morevna’s hand, as her ring gleamed on his.
The rest had been like any of the other three weddings he’d attended, except that it was he and not someone else who left as the festivities reached their height, and it was he who was the butt and not the source of the old crude jokes that surface at such times. The jokes, and the food, and the drinking, all reached their end at last, but Ivan didn’t see them end.
Instead for him there had been candle-light, and soft warmth, and a shared cup; there had been darkness, and movement, and the quick sound of breathing not his own; and at the end of it all there had been content, and an end to loneliness.
And there had been sleep with his own dear wife cradled in his arms.
*
Mar’ya Morevna came up the steps of her kremlin two at a time, paused at the top to take off her armoured gloves and helmet, then strode through the great doors, acknowledging the salutes of her guards with a wave of one hand as she went looking for her husband.
He was in the library, consulting maps in an attempt to chart his journey from Khorlov, and finding that either all of the cartographers had been wrong or drunk, or he had travelled a much greater distance than had passed beneath his horse’s hoofs. Given that he’d been keeping company with his sorcerous in-laws, whose kremlins were never in the same place two days running, it was possible the cartographers had been right and sober all along. He glanced up as the door was opened, then smiled and put the maps aside the better to embrace his wife.
Ivan had long since stopped wondering how he fell in love so fast, and long stopped suspecting some spell had been involved, for the more he thought about the matter the more he realized he was following what seemed to be the custom of his family. Katya, Liza, Lena, and even their father the Tsar if truth be known, had all recognized their wife or husband in the first moments of meeting, and needed no more questions after that. After almost three months of marriage, Ivan knew he was following yet another family custom, in that he had never been happier.
He kissed Mar’ya Morevna and hugged her tight, but when they released one another, Ivan looked at her with his head quirked on one side, eyeing her armour and her sword. He reached out one hand and tapped his fingertips against her breast, nails clicking across the rings of mail so fine that making the rings, then weaving them into a clinging, lustrous fabric of steel, represented half a year of someone’s life.
“Pretty enough,” he said, “but scarcely the most ladylike of garments. Why do you still lead your armies in person?” It was a question he had often pondered, but just now thought to ask. “There must be any number of skilled captains from the Emperor’s service in Byzantium.”
“Perhaps. But to them guarding my realm is just a source of pay, whereas to me it’s a duty handed down by my father, God give him good rest.” She crossed herself, as did Ivan. “These people are my people, mine to rule, and protect to the utmost.” She smiled, knowing her reply sounded too like what it was, a thing carefully rehearsed against the day it would be needed. “Is your question answered?”
“Halfway.”
Mar’ya Morevna groaned and rolled her eyes, but continued to stroke her fingers through and through Ivan’s fair hair as he poured wine, only stopping with a small, friendly tug when he held out the cup to her. She drank from it, slowly and thoughtfully, gazing at him all the time from above the rim. At last she put the cup aside, went to the door of the library, turned its key, and smiled. “Then help me out of these unladylike iron garments,” she said, “and after that, if you still want to, ask me the other half.”
*
A little time went by, and then a little more, before Prince Ivan went back to the library door and unlocked it again. He turned, folded his arms, leaned back against the door and said, “Now answer me the other half.”
Mar’ya Morevna finished lacing up the doeskin shirt she wore beneath her armour, then looked at her husband and raised her eyebrows. “I suppose I should have expected you’d be persistent in this matter.” She smiled saucily at him. “You certainly are in others.” She sat down and swung her booted feet up onto a convenient table. “So ask the other half, or how can I reply?”
“Simple enough. Where did you learn to lead an army?”
“Simple indeed. My father taught me the theory, then hired captains to teach me the practice.”
Ivan smiled, shaking his head in disbelief. “I had to ask, hadn’t I?” he sa
id. “Very well, beloved, you win the match.”
“But…?” said Mar’ya Morevna, sipping her wine. “I know you: you’re not finished with the questions yet. There’s a ‘but’ hiding somewhere in that handsome head.”
This time Ivan laughed out loud and struck his hands together. “All right, you win the match, and gain an extra point!” He came over to the table and rescued the last measure of wine for himself. “But – there, happy now? – but why would a father train his daughter to lead armies in the first place?”
“My mother died bringing me into the world,” said Mar’ya Morevna, making the sign of the life-giving cross, “and my father wasn’t such a man as would marry again. He said he’d been as happy as he had any right to be, and it would do no honour to Mother’s memory or that happiness if he took another wife. So there were no other children. No sons. I was his only child, so I grew up to be both daughter and son. By the time I became ruler of this realm, I knew better than most men of my age how to command in the field. So there seemed no reason why I shouldn’t.” She emptied her cup and set it down. “It seems I have a certain talent for it.”
“So I saw,” said Ivan, remembering a Tartar horde served as they had served so many others. “And who will you be fighting next? Unless I’m mistaken about all the training I’ve seen this past few days…”
“Observant one,” said Mar’ya Morevna. “I go to finish what was started on the day we met.”
“More Tatars?”
“The rest of Manguyu Temir’s horde. Remember what you suspected, that they were raiding for profit, not preparing the ground for invasion?” Ivan nodded his head. “You were entirely right. The khan had half a tuman under his command, five thousand men in all. We know where the remaining two thousand are, and where they’ll be in three days.” Mar’ya Morevna closed her fist. “Then I’ll avenge what they did to the towns and people in my care.”
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