by Boris Akunin
First her teeth began chattering, then her shoulders began shuddering, and things became really bad when she lost the feeling in her hands. She could tell quite clearly what would happen next: Her fingers would open, releasing their grasp on the trunk, and the unfortunate rider would be thrown into the River, but this time she would have no strength left to struggle against the current.
That was exactly the way things would happen, because no other outcome was possible.
There was only one decision she could take, a terrifying one. Throw herself into the water and try to reach the bank before her muscles stiffened completely. But which way should she swim—to the right or to the left? She had fallen into the River from the high left bank, but how much time had passed since then she could not tell. She could easily have been carried out into midstream, or all the way over close to the right bank. She would not be able to swim for long. If she chose the wrong direction, it was the end; her soul would join the saints in heaven. Well, then, if that was the way things were, the Lord must have decided to summon his handmaiden Pelagia. It was shameful for a nun to be afraid of death. If the grim reaper suddenly leapt out from around the corner like a thief in the night and blew his hot, stinking breath in one’s face—then it was forgivable to feel frightened. But if one had time to prepare oneself and gather one’s courage, then to be afraid of death was a foolish sin.
The nun slid resolutely into the water on the left side of the tree trunk and pushed off hard from it with her feet. The current here was not so furious—obviously the narrow channel had been left behind and the River had emerged onto the flat plain. Swimming in total darkness without knowing where she was going felt strange, and soon Pelagia could not tell if she was maintaining the correct direction or had gone astray. Her arms and legs performed their work rhythmically, but the long shirt was a terrible hindrance, clinging to her knees. Should she remove it? Pelagia imagined the River casting her body up on the bank: naked, with her hair loose. Oh no. If she was to drown, she would drown in her shirt.
All the signs were that she was going to drown. Her arms barely obeyed her any longer, and still there was no shore to be seen. Forgive me, Lord, Pelagia thought wearily. I honestly did everything that I could. She turned over on to her back and surrendered to the will of the current. Her only regret was that she could not look up at the sky—it would have been good to see at least one little star before she went, but that was impossible.
When her head and shoulders ran up against something unyielding, Pelagia did not immediately realize it was sand.
SHE COULD NOT see the bank, but she could touch it with her hands.
And that was what Pelagia did: She went down on her knees and stroked the cold, sodden ground with her palms. After praying in thanks for her miraculous deliverance, she wrung out her shirt and sat down, hugging her shoulders. It was still not clear where she was and which way she ought to walk. The rain continued for a while and then stopped. The nun wrung out her shirt again and in an attempt to get warm began jumping up and down on one leg and then on the other. She sat for a while, hopped about for a while, sat, hopped about—and her shirt was a vague white silhouette, stretched out on a snag embedded in the silt.
As she jumped up and down yet again, slapping her sides loudly, the nun suddenly noticed that the darkness had grown less dense. There was the edge of the water, and a dead seagull on the sand, and if everything beyond that was fused into a single mass, it was not because of the night but because of the tall cliff that towered up above the narrow strip of water. If she strained her eyes she could make out the top of the cliff and the gray sky above it.
Pelagia squatted down in fright. God forbid that some insomniac should come out for a stroll in the cool freshness before dawn, look down from the bank, and see this scene: a naked witch with her hair loose jumping up and down and waving her arms in the air. It would be absolutely dreadful.
As she pulled on her cold, wet shirt, she thought for the first time about her situation. First, she had no idea where the current had carried her—perhaps there was no human habitation here at all. And second, even if the area was inhabited, everything was still far from simple. It was hardly appropriate for a nun to appear in front of people like this.
She walked to and fro under the cliff and spied out a faintly visible path that led upward. The incline was steep and every now and then her feet trod on sharp stones, so that Pelagia looked down more than up, but when she did throw her head back to check whether she still had far to go, she gasped. There was a strange white object standing at the top of the cliff, something she had not been able to see from below: tall, elegant, static. The nun thought that the shape of this strange object seemed familiar. She walked a little higher, looking upward now instead of down at her feet.
A pavilion. With short white columns, decorative iron railings, and a rounded top. A familiar pavilion—the same one from which she had so enjoyed observing the River from the Drozdovka park.
Pelagia could not decide immediately if it was a good thing that the current had carried her to Drozdovka. Of course, people whom she knew would be more willing to help than strangers, but the shame she would feel in front of them would be even greater.
The trees standing in the park were soaking wet and dismal. There was a white mist floating up from the ground, still quite thin, but gradually thickening. It was chilly and damp. And there was still a long time left before the real dawn came. What should she do?
Pelagia ran, hopping and skipping, toward the house, her teeth chattering. She could wait it out somehow until the morning, and then Tanya or one of the other women servants would come out of the house, and she could call them quietly. There was nothing else that she could do. She couldn’t go bursting into the house of the general’s widow in the middle of the night in such a dreadful state, with her ginger hair all matted and tangled.
She squatted down beside the bathhouse. She tugged at the door—a pity, it was locked, it would have been a lot warmer inside. Out in the open air she had become completely chilled, and her jumping had not helped.
And then the nun remembered about the gardener’s hut. That definitely could not be locked.
She ran back along the alley. Her damp shirt clung repulsively to her legs.
There was the little house. And yes—the door was not locked.
Pelagia went into the dark shelter. Treading cautiously so as not to step on anything sharp, she made her way into a corner and sat down. At least it was dry; for that, many thanks, Lord.
Little by little it grew light. She could see the cracks in the planking walls, the tools: rakes, spades, hoes, an axe, mattocks.
Mattocks? What had Naina Georgievna said? A live aspen and a mattock?
What did it mean?
Since she had nothing else to do, Pelagia began turning the strange words over and over in her mind. It must mean that the photograph called “Rainy Morning” showed some kind of mattock and an aspen tree. Alive. But what other kinds of aspens were there—dead ones?
The young woman must have been raving as she died. But no—the words had been spoken in reply to a question asked by Pelagia.
There were plenty of aspens in the park, every one more alive than the last.
But again, no! The nun whistled out loud. One was certainly not alive—the one beside which poor innocent Zakusai was lying after he was murdered. Perhaps the princess had been talking about that little tree? Had she been saying that in the photograph it had still been alive? But what was so unusual about that, and what had the mattock to do with it?
Pelagia could not go on sitting there, consumed as she was by a fever of speculation. And why should she stay where she was, if she could go and look?
She clambered out of the hut and trotted to where the withered little tree protruded from the ground. Everything was familiar in the park, the twilight and the mist were no hindrance to her, and a minute later the nun was standing beside the memorable English lawn, with the dead aspen cri
nging beside it.
What was its secret?
Pelagia squatted down and touched the wrinkled leaves, ran her palm down along the smooth trunk. What was this disturbed earth here, by the roots? Ah, yes, that was where Zakusai had been scraping at it with his paws.
But no, surely a puppy could not have dug up so much earth?
The nun put her nose down close to the earth as she examined the hollow.
She remembered how on the very first day the gardener Gerasim had said that the little scamp Zakusai had been taught to eat earth by his father and grandfather. Could that have been here?
If one looked closely, even the grass on this side of the aspen was different from the grass all around—shorter and sparser.
What could the dogs have been interested in here?
Pelagia took a splinter of wood and started scrabbling at the earth—it yielded reluctantly. The work would go quicker if she ran back to the hut for a spade.
And that was what she did, except that she did not take a spade, but a mattock; it would be handier to dig with.
She spat on her hands the way that the workmen had done when they laid the water main to the episcopal see, then swung, hit, and scraped. Then again, and again. The work went quickly. By about the tenth stroke, Pelagia stopped shivering—she had warmed up. The mist swirled above the grass, rising from her ankles up to her knees.
The blade sank into something crunchy, like a cabbage. Pelagia tugged the blade out, and hanging on it was something round and dark, about the size of a child’s head. Because her wits were numbed and there was a strange ringing sound in her ears, the nun did not immediately realize that it was precisely that—a child’s head: yellowish-purple, with the light hair clumped and the eye sockets sunken in mourning.
With a sudden gasp, Pelagia flung the mattock and its nightmarish prize away so abruptly that she slipped on the damp earth and tumbled into the pit that she herself had dug. As she climbed out, wailing softly, she grabbed hold of a cold, slimy root, which promptly slid smoothly out of the earth.
And then Pelagia saw that it was not a root at all, but a hand—hairy, with blue fingernails and a little stump where the ring finger ought to have been.
At this everything went dark before the poor nun’s eyes, because there is, after all, a limit to human endurance and, thanks be to God, Pelagia did not have to suffer any more frights—she suddenly went limp and slid down onto the bottom of the pit in a dead faint.
CHAPTER 10
A Borzoi Pup
WHEN SHE OPENED her eyes, Pelagia saw the vault of heaven hanging low above her, dark blue, studded with faint, motionless stars and supported, as described in the ancient books, on four pillars. This confirmed that Corpernicus had been wrong, which did not surprise the sister in the least, but even made her feel rather glad. Suspended above where she lay was the immense face of His Grace Mitrofanii—gray-bearded, handsome, and sad. Realizing that he was actually the Lord God of Hosts, Pelagia felt even more delighted, and yet she was surprised at her own blindness: How could she have failed to realize something so simple and obvious earlier? It was also suddenly clear that all of this was a dream, but it was a good dream that boded well. Perhaps it was even prophetic.
“What are you gawking at, you scandalous creature?” asked the Lord of Hosts, in the way that God was supposed to talk, with apparent strictness but with love, too. “You have profaned the most honorable episcopal bed with female flesh, such as it has never known in all its days, and you lie there smiling. How am I going to sleep now? I shall probably be tormented by worse temptations of the flesh than Saint Anthony. Look out, Pelagia, or I shall hand you over to the consistory court for indecency—that will teach you. A fine bride of Christ: Lying there covered in mud, soaking wet, almost naked, and in a pit with those revolting objects! Would you be so kind as to explain to me, your foolish pastor, how you ended up there? How did you guess that the heads of the murder victims were buried at that very spot? You can talk, can you?” Mitrofanii leaned down lower in alarm and set a pleasantly cool hand on Pelagia’s brow. “If it is hard for you, then do not talk. Your forehead is all wet. The doctor says it is the fever following a severe shock. You have been unconscious for more than a day. You were carried in people’s arms and driven in a carriage, and all the while you were just like Sleeping Beauty. What on earth happened to you, eh? You can’t say? All right, don’t talk, don’t talk.”
It was only then that the nun guessed the riddle of the pillars and the vault of heaven. It was the canopy above the old bed in the bishop’s bedchamber: brocade stars sewn on the blue velvet.
Pelagia felt very weak, but not all unwell—the exhaustion was a pleasant sensation, like after swimming for a long time.
But I was swimming, she remembered, and for a really long time, too.
She moved her lips and tried her voice. It came out slightly hoarse but clear: “Ah-ah-ah.”
“What, what’s that you say?” the bishop fussed. “Tell me, what shall I get for you? Or shall I call the doctor?”
And he leapt to his feet, ready to run for help.
“Sit down, Your Grace,” Pelagia said to him, cautiously feeling her aching shoulder muscles. “Sit down and listen.”
And she told the bishop about everything that had happened, beginning with the “investigative experiment” and right up to her terrifying excavation, the mere memory of which set her voice trembling and brought tears to her eyes.
Mitrofanii listened without interrupting, only intoning “Lord God in Heaven” or “Son of God” and crossing himself at the most critical points.
But when the nun had finished her account, the bishop went down on his knees before the icon of the Savior hanging in the corner and recited a brief but fervent prayer of thanksgiving.
Then he sat on the bed and, with his eyelashes fluttering rapidly, said: “Forgive me, my little Pelagia, for sending you into such horrors. But I shall never forgive myself, power-loving tyrant that I am. No intentions of good stewardship supported by a bishop’s crook can justify laying such a burden on any Christian soul, let alone upon the weak shoulders of a woman.”
“It offends me to hear talk of the weak shoulders of a woman,” said the nun angrily. “I should like to see what man could swim that far along the River in such a storm, and at night, too. And as for those good intentions and the crook, you should not be so free with them, either. Where in the Scriptures does it say that we should yield to the evil spirit without a battle? I think that would be the worst possible thing. You would do better, Your Grace, to tell me what you have discovered here, while I was lying in a faint. You said ‘heads’? Are they the same ones that were supposedly carried away as a gift to Shishiga? I really only saw one, and a severed hand as well. Where did the hand come from?”
“Wait, wait, don’t hurl so many questions at me all at once,” said Mitrofanii, putting his open hand over her mouth. The bishop’s fingers had a pleasant smell of book bindings and incense. “There was a second head in the pit; you did not dig quite far enough to find it. There was clothing, too. Yes, the heads are the same ones, from the bodies cast up by the River last month. And the identities have now been established—from the hand with one finger missing. Do you remember that the dead man’s arm was cut off at the wrist? Evidently it was cut off deliberately in order to make identification difficult, because it bore too distinctive a feature.”
“Ba boo ad dy?” Pelagia lowed through his palm, meaning, “But who are they?”
The bishop understood her.
“The merchant Avvakum Vonifatiev from the Glukhov district and his nine-year-old son, the boy Savva. The merchant came to see Donat Abramovich Sytnikov to sell a stretch of forest and disappeared. He was not missed at home, because he had told his wife that he was leaving her forever and would not be coming back. They did not get along; she was a lot older than he was. Apparently Vonifatiev wished to use the money he received to start a new life somewhere else. But things did not work out th
at way…It has been established that Sytnikov bought the forest for thirty-five thousand and paid Vonifatiev on the spot, in cash, after which the father and son set out on foot, even though the hour was late. Sytnikov says that he offered them his britzka, but the merchant refused. He said that he would take a troika at the coaching inn in the nearby village of Sholkovo, but no one at Sholkovo ever saw Vonifatiev. Of course, the police took Sytnikov in for questioning, but I think that he is innocent. He is too rich a man to take such a sin on his soul for the sake of thirty-five thousand. Or perhaps he was tempted by the devil of greed—anything can happen. But that is not the point…” Mitrofanii’s eyes glittered ardently. “The important thing about all this is that…”
He removed his hand from Pelagia’s lips in order to raise a finger in triumph, and the nun immediately made use of the freedom of speech that this gave her: “…that Inspector Bubentsov is in a fine mess,” she said, concluding the sentence for Mitrofanii.
The bishop smiled. “I was about to say ‘the satanic machinations have been confounded,’ but you, my daughter, have expressed it more precisely. The Vonifatievs were killed for money, there was no human sacrifice involved, and there is no site for the worship of Shishiga. Bubentsov had no reason to harass the unfortunate Zyts. His entire investigation and his Extraordinary Commission are not worth a bent penny. This is a gift from God to all of us. Manifested to us through you, through your talents and your bravery. Our imp of mischief has been undone. Now he will go away empty-handed and receive a severe reprimand from his protector for such an embarrassing fiasco.”
“He will not leave,” Sister Pelagia declared with quiet resolution. “And he will not receive any reprimand.”
Mitrofanii clutched his pectoral cross in his hand.
“What do you mean, he will not leave? And he will not get any reprimand? Why not? What is he going to do here now?”
