by Kate Elliott
“Stanislav Vershinin,” she said aloud, she was so surprised. “What has happened to him?” And, she wondered to herself, why have I been called in to see to him? He looked ill, battered, and possibly as if he might yet die.
The healer, a hardy woman in her fifties, looked up from the paste she was pounding in a shallow bowl. “He was with the guard that went to Urosh Monastery, Sister,” she said, speaking to Tess in the formal style.
It took Tess a long time to assimilate this information. An old man cut away the trouser leg from Vershinin’s left leg, revealing the festering wound, scabbed over but still infected. The apprentice brought an iron pot and set it on a tripod next to the Vershinin lad. Truly, Tess thought, gazing down at the young man’s pale face, his closed eyes, he could not have been more than two years older than Vasha. The old man began to clean the wound with the hot water, and that brought the young man awake. He yelped. A second apprentice handed him a strip of leather and he bit down on it, his eyes tearing while the old healer dabbed the pus and dirt off the wound and probed delicately at it with a tiny spatula, cleaning out the infected cut. Vershinin passed out. When the old healer was done, the woman sealed the wound with paste and then bound it with cloth.
“That may save it,” she said aloud, “but it’s badly infected.”
Vershinin’s eyes fluttered open. He searched the tent, found Tess, and focused on her, blinking madly. “Alive,” he said hoarsely. He licked his lips and tried again. “Bakhtiian was alive, but very bad. Badly wounded. He was a prisoner.”
At once, Tess knelt beside him. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, so erratically that she felt dizzy. “What khaja did this?”
“His name… Prince Janos. He married the khaja princess.” He licked his lips again, and the healer gave him some of the boiled water to drink. “But it was not him. Not the khaja prince. Sakhalin betrayed us.”
“Sakhalin!” That came from Kirill, who turned at once and left the tent, running.
“What of the others? You escaped. Did anyone else? What of Bakhtiian?”
Vershinin seemed to have found his strength, what there was of it. “Konstans Barshai was killed in his place.”
“In his place?”
“The khaja prince thought Barshai was Bakhtiian. He killed him. A few of us were spared by the princess’s hand. Katerina Orzhekov. Vladimir the orphan. The Kolenin cousins. The two boys.” He blinked, eyes rolling, trying to remember something.
“Let him rest,” said the healer.
“No,” he said. “I must tell the rest. Bakhtiian lived, but he was badly wounded. We were all taken prisoner and we traveled, west. West. A little south. We made a plan, the other guardsmen and I. I fell behind, and the khaja soldiers grew tired of my slowness and sold me as a slave to farmers. From there I escaped.”
“Good God,” exclaimed Tess. “And made your way here.”
“How else to get the word out? He betrayed us, the bastard. The khaja prince did his bidding and took the others. He would have killed us all except for the intercession of the woman.”
“But Bakhtiian was still alive, when you left them?”
Vershinin shook his head. “Still alive, but dying, or close enough. He could not even walk. I don’t know what happened to him. He was with the boy.”
“With Vasha?” What difference did it make who he was with if he was dying, but she grasped for each scrap of information as if enough scraps might together form a real and solid body of Ilya, surviving.
Vershinin took some more water but did not reply.
“Where did Prince Janos take them? Do you know where they were headed?”
“To his stronghold, I think. I don’t know.”
“Let him rest,” said the healer. “Or he will not have the strength to fight off the infection. He has done enough.”
“You have done enough,” said Tess to the young man, patting him on the hand. And his look, when she said it, burned her to the heart: That awful loyalty that they all gave to Bakhtiian, of their own free will. That terrible desire to prove their worth, to be part of his glorious enterprise, to win fame and to blaze in their own right, a true rider of the jaran.
She left them. She felt numb. Crossing the camp to her awning, she felt each step like the hammer of death, beating down to sound Ilya’s fate: dying, dying, dying. Not even able to walk.
At the awning, they waited, the ten chief captains and ten guardsmen.
“We find a khaja guide and we ride for the stronghold of Prince Janos,” she said, hearing her voice from a distance, as if someone else was speaking. “I want Andrei Sakhalin. Kirill, you will bring me Andrei Sakhalin.”
“I will bring him to you,” he agreed. “I will need a thousand troops.”
“Take two thousand. As for the rest, we ride west southwest. As soon as camp is broken, we ride. Leave an honor guard of five hundred men to protect Vershinin until he is able to move again.”
They moved, scattering to obey her commands. She just stood there, toting up numbers in her head: two thousand with Kirill, five hundred with Vershinin…that still left her seventeen thousand riders and archers. That ought to be enough to crush this khaja prince and get the prisoners back.
“Tess,” said Kirill softly. He had remained behind. The sun rose behind him, glinting in her eyes so that she could not really see his face. It was blurred by tears, but that was only the glare of the sun. She blinked them back ruthlessly. “I told you. Ilya is too damned tough for any khaja to kill.”
“Go,” said she brusquely.
He went.
But the truth was, it was worse, knowing that he had been alive. But not even able to walk.
“Ah, gods,” she breathed, the words torn from her by a wrenching agony so strong that she staggered.
“Aunt, are you ill?” asked one of the young archers, her hovering escort, steadying her.
Dying, Vershinin had said. It would have been easier just to know that he was dead. It was worse not knowing. It hurt too much to hope.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
As Far Above as Angels
JAELLE WOKE TO THE muffled sound of weeping. Sitting up, she was at first bewildered. As she shifted, she sank farther into the unimaginable luxury of a feather bed. A feather quilt slipped around her legs and hips. How had she come into such riches? Then she remembered. She heaved herself out of bed and slowly felt her way across the floor to the servant’s bed, where Princess Katerina slept. The coals glowed a dull red in the darkness.
“My lady… Katherine…” She said it softly, daringly, and reached out to touch the other woman’s hair.
Katerina snuffled and stilled, caught a few sobs, and then began to cry in earnest. “I want to go home,” she gulped out.
Jaelle stroked her hair. But the act made her nervous, because she liked it so much, sitting here close to Katerina, feeling her breath against her arm and the warmth of her body close to her own, separated only by their linen undershifts.
“I don’t want to be a slave.”
For some reason, Jaelle thought of her own mother, who had seemed content enough as a favored slave in a nobleman’s house. She had been safe. Or had thought she was, Jaelle thought bitterly. Except it was her daughter who had been sent away, not her. But her master could have sold her away at any time. “It is terrible to live on the sufferance of others,” she said finally.
“You do understand,” breathed Katerina, catching Jaelle’s hand in a tight grip. She had strong hands. Jaelle could see her face only as a deeper shadow in the shadowed chamber, lit by the banked fire and a faint nimbus of light from the moon and the torchlit walls of the castle.
Jaelle tried to pull her hand away. “You should sleep in the lady’s bed,” she said, as she had said every night in the thirty days they had been here. “It isn’t fitting that—”
“I hate that bed,” said Katerina, but whether because it was truly too soft, as she claimed, or because it somehow represented her imprisonment to Janos, Jaelle did
not know.
“May I get you something to drink?”
“No. Just stay with me here. Lie down with me here, Jaelle. I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Jaelle did not want to lie down next to Katerina on the narrow bed. She, too, was afraid.
“I’m afraid of becoming a captive.”
“You already are.”
“Not in my heart.”
“Do you care for Prince Janos?” The thought made Jaelle abruptly angry.
“No. But how long will I have the strength to hold against him, if I am held prisoner here for the rest of my days? I hate the khaja.”
Jaelle heard Katerina’s voice catch again, fighting off tears. She lay down beside her and put her arms around her. “I will be here,” she said, and wondered at herself, that she might comfort a princess. Katerina buried her face against Jaelle’s neck and said nothing more, just held on to her. After a while, she fell asleep, but Jaelle could not sleep, not with Katerina so close. She had shared a bed with other women often enough, in inns along the caravan route, waiting for a new hire. It wasn’t unknown for women to take lovers among themselves, as a salve against the impersonal attentions of the endless parade of men who used them and then discarded them when their destination was reached or they wanted a new face, as a way to get pleasure without the risk of pregnancy, as comfort against the hard world and the censure of both the church and decent folk. Jaelle’s heart trembled within her; like a bird cupped in iron hands, she feared what it meant to love another person, whether it be Katerina or Stefan, what did it matter? She knew only that love was itself a kind of slavery. It bound you to others with chains as heavy as those wrought in the armorer’s forge. She had survived this long by staying free.
For the first time in years she thought of the child. Lady forgive her, but she had been having her courses for not over a year herself when the child had caught in her; she was herself truly still a child. She hadn’t known what to do, not like now, with six winters of experience of the caravan roads behind her. Now she knew where to find the wisewomen from whom to purchase herbs and suppositories, who knew what to give a woman to drink and where to press so as to rid her of a pregnancy that would prove dangerous not just to her body but to her livelihood.
She had not known those things then. She had still been a slave at the mines, hauling water and dirt. What kind of life was that for a child, for a child bearing a child? She had run away, only it was worse away, there being not even the pittance of bread and soup they gave the slaves, there being not even the surety of a roof over her head. Then the merchant had found her, begging on the streets not five days after the baby had been born, and had offered her employment, thinking her young and pretty, under the dirt. Thinking her childless.
For the first time in six years, held in arms that wanted nothing from her but comfort, she wept.
Katerina woke. “Jaelle. Shhh. What is it? What’s wrong?” She kissed her on the cheeks, like a mother might kiss her child, taking onto herself the tears.
“God has marked me. I have sinned grievously. Ah, God, it never truly mattered to me before.”
“What is sinned? What didn’t matter?”
Jaelle bit down on her tongue and stifled her tears. She could not afford to be vulnerable. Katerina did not press her. She seemed content with Jaelle’s presence. After a while, soothed by the warmth of the jaran woman’s body next to hers, Jaelle fell back to sleep.
In the morning Katerina seemed oddly heartened. When Lady Jadranka made her morning visit, Katerina agreed to visit the church with her and receive the sacrament, more, Jaelle supposed, out of boredom than a true interest in salvation. Lady Jadranka had perhaps forgotten that Jaelle adhered to the anointed church, or perhaps she had simply never been told, but Jaelle was allowed to attend as well.
While Katerina was led forward to the main altar, Jaelle knelt before the altar of Our Lady Pilgrim in a side alcove, a forlorn and dark corner, a trifle dusty, here in the north where the false church reigned and the priests neglected Her worship. Jaelle folded her hands before her chest and prayed for forgiveness for her sins. Behind, she heard the priest droning the sacramental liturgy and she smelled like a starving woman the fragrant and holy perfume of the wine that is the blood of the sundered Lord and the freshly baked loaf that is His body made whole by the gift of God’s mercy and by the grace of His Sister, the Pilgrim, ever exalted for the constancy of her faith. Her mouth watered, though she had eaten of bread that morning.
A person moved into the alcove beside her. To her surprise and chagrin, Princess Rusudani knelt beside her on the stone floor, hands clasped. For a long time the princess gazed at the pale visage of the Pilgrim, whose sloe eyes stared earnestly and forgivingly at her supplicants. Rusudani’s lips moved soundlessly in a prayer. At the main altar, the priest and his deacons began the sonorous chant of the Bath of Healing, which even such heretics as these northerners could not omit from their service. Though Jaelle took comfort in the presence of the Pilgrim, still, this northern church depressed her because it was so plain, without any bright images, and so dim. Candles flickered around the altar, illuminating the mystery of the Pilgrim’s healing hands and Her serene expression, ever aloof from the world and yet ever bound to it in her wandering.
Jaelle shuddered. Bakhtiian had been on the trail of a heretic, a man who claimed that the Pilgrim wandered the world again and that angels had been sighted in the heavens, heralding the return of Hristain. Was it true? Or was this imprisonment their punishment for listening to the whispers of the Accursed One?
“Jaelle,” said Rusudani suddenly in a low voice, “I do not know who else to ask, but I think you may have heard of such things in the life you led before.” Her hands were not clasped but clenched before her, and her face was pale, lips thin with some overpowering emotion. “How may a woman bind a man to her?”
From the alcove, Jaelle could not see the main altar, where Katerina knelt with Lady Jadranka. Had Rusudani fled from the confrontation? But she remembered the two women being friendly before. There had been no antagonism between them while Rusudani traveled with the jaran. But Rusudani had not been married then, and Katerina had not been shut away to serve as Janos’s mistress.
“I am not a wisewoman, to know of such charms,” said Jaelle slowly, measuring her words, “but in any town there is always a herbwoman. There must be one such here.”
“I dare not speak of this to Lady Jadranka.”
“Of course not, my lady.” Of course not, if Rusudani judged that for some reason Lady Jadranka had chosen to champion Katerina’s cause with her son and Rusudani wished to keep his affections for herself. Yet, glancing at Rusudani, Jaelle noted that the princess wore a new gown and a wimple sewn of fine dyed linen in a blue that suited her eyes. Surely this finery came to her out of Lady Jadranka’s charity. If Jadranka wished to press Katerina’s suit, why would she dress her daughter-in-law in a gown that was sure to attract her son’s eye? “You must tell one of your waiting women to go down into the town and ask for—”
“I cannot trust them. You must do it, Jaelle.”
At what price? What if it hurt Katerina? But refusing might win Rusudani’s enmity. If Jaelle helped Rusudani now, then if there was trouble she could hold this knowledge in reserve; the church frowned on the use of charms and sorcery, and Rusudani had just come out of the convent.
“God forgive me,” Rusudani murmured, as if in response to Jaelle’s thought. “I was pledged to wed Hristain, not any mortal man, though I had not yet taken my vows. I wished with my whole heart to serve only God. What is this that has taken hold of me? The pleasures of the flesh have seduced my body away from the contemplation of God’s holy mystery, and now I yearn for the marriage bed with as much fervor as before I yearned for the sacrament. Why is God punishing me in this way? Have I faltered in my love for God in any way? Why has he visited me with this longing? I have done nothing wrong. I have not sinned. Yet when I see him, my hands tremble and my h
eart catches in my throat and in my mouth I taste the sweetness of honey poured as if from the lips of Hristain Himself. God forgive me.”
She turned her eyes away from the Holy Pilgrim and gazed at Jaelle. Rusudani wore, on her face, such an expression of misery conjoined with joy that Jaelle felt pity for her. How had it come to this, that she, a common whore, might feel pity for a great lady, a princess, who was as far above her as the angels were above mortals? Except in this fashion, that all men were equal before God, who judged them by what He found in their hearts, that all were equal before the Holy Pilgrim, who succored each and every one who knelt before her, regardless of his station in life.
“I would help you if I could, but the princess Katerina and I are locked in Widow’s Tower. By the order of Prince Janos.”
“My husband fears that his father will take her away if he discovers that she is in captivity. But Janos is gone from here. Surely Princess Katerina must want something from the market? I will speak to Lady Jadranka about it. I will ask her to send you to the market in the town.”
This did not sound like a woman who considered Katerina to be her rival. Jaelle was even more confused. Rusudani looked abruptly radiant.
Indeed, strangely enough, she was not looking at Jaelle at all. She was looking past her, out between two columns toward the doors of the church. There, Lady Jadranka ushered Katerina outside into the glare of the noonday sun. Her voice carried clearly.
