The Mirrored World: A Novel

by Debra Dean

  The legend goes that five hundred years ago, a city of golden-domed churches stood there. This was in the time of Batu Khan, when his barbarous warriors swarmed across the land, setting fire to every village and town, slaying without mercy old men and mothers, and sweeping up children onto the backs of their horses to be sold into slavery. Even the great Kiev was laid waste, its churches and libraries burnt, its streets turned to rivers of blood, and not a single person spared to mourn the dead. Then Batu Khan turned his army towards the city of Kitezh. In anticipation of the coming terror, the people built no fortifications and made no preparations to defend their city but instead prayed fervently to God to spare them.

  It is said that as the Mongol horde approached the walls of the city, fountains of water sprouted from the ground around them. Khan’s army retreated and watched from a remove as God caused the city to be swallowed into a deep lake.

  Many pilgrim to Lake Svetloyar to pray and to drink from these waters. Holy persons have sometimes reported seeing the lights of the invisible city glimmering in the black depths or hearing, faintly, the tolling of bells and the murmured prayers of the ancient inhabitants. There are even stories of pilgrims who have gone there and never returned, or they have disappeared for a time and then reappeared on the banks of the lake with no memory of where they have been.

  That evening, we processed down to the water, where hundreds of candles had been set adrift and twinkled in the summer dusk. We knelt in the damp grasses and turned to watch Her Imperial Majesty take the final steps of the pilgrimage. On her left was Count Razumovsky and close by, Ivan Ivanovich Shuvalov. At the edge of the water, Razumovsky helped the Empress to kneel onto a carpet. Her confessor said the prayers and then, dipping a goblet into the lake, held it for her to drink. When she had drunk, she held a plump hand out, not to Razumovsky but to Ivan Ivanovich. He handed her onto her throne, which had been carried from Petersburg, and she rested her tired feet on a stool.

  Across the dark water came the high note of a hand bell, icy and ethereal. Then another bell and another, and beneath these sounds, a slow, upwelling chant. The hum of whispers occasioned by Her Imperial Majesty’s slighting of her favorite fell away, and all eyes turned towards the water. The Empress had commissioned a song to be written for the occasion of our arrival. I knew that Andrei, with the choir, was installed on a barge tethered somewhere off the shore to sing it, but peering into the gloaming I could not discern the source of the music. It was as though a fissure had opened up, sonorous and deep, and was breathing out the sounds of the ancient city, and the even more ancient sounds of the earth itself. Whales and beetles, grass pushing up through the soil, the slow exhalation of mountains and tides, the buzz of everything, living or not, swelling and contracting and pulling the soul down into its music.

  A chorus of supplications rose to the heavens. Save us, O merciful Lord, they sang, in this our time of trouble. And the waters began to rise and to turn back the barbarians, who fell away in fear and awe. The waters filled the streets and crept up the walls of the houses, rising above the roofs, and still the voices could be heard praising God. One by one, the domes of the many churches disappeared until the Mongol’s last sight of the city was a gold cross hovering above the water. The voice of the choir grew triumphant. It extolled the long line of holy ones from Kitezh to our present mother, Elizabeth, whose prayers had sheltered Russia from its enemies. At the end of time, the choir sang, this golden-domed city would rise up again, a new kingdom on earth. The hand bells accompanying the choir rang out and then died. We on the banks strained to hear the last tones melting into the silence.

  As the choir sang, Xenia had clasped my hand hard. Tears had shone in her eyes, and they had a bright, ecstatic look. Now, the courtiers stirred to life and began to talk amongst themselves, but she remained still and as vacant in aspect as one in a trance.

  “The choir sang as I have never heard them,” I said to her.

  She did not answer, though she was usually happy to hear the choir praised, making no distinction between this and praise of Andrei in particular. People hurried past us, heading back up the rise to where a supper had been laid on long tables in the open air. At long last, like a person returning from a great distance, she blinked and her eyes took in her surroundings.

  “The choir sang as I have never heard them,” I repeated. Still caught in reverie, she nodded.

  She was uncommonly quiet for the remainder of the evening, and not even Andrei’s merriness roused her from her distraction. He expressed concern that the journey had overtaxed her. “Are you unwell?” he asked.

  “No, no, I am fine. It is . . .” She scanned the air for more words but did not find them. “Do you not feel it?”

  “What?”

  “That our lives are shadows. You, me, all this, it does not mean a thing.”

  He was at a loss how to answer.

  “No, that sounds horrible, I am not expressing it well. What if the lake, the trees, the heavens, everything we can see, is a forgery, like painted scenery? Lovely as it is, what if it is not real and there is something else?”

  With a little shake of her head, she fell back into silence. She was quiet and more distractible the next day, but she gradually returned to herself once we had left Lake Svetloyar and come home again.

  The Metamorphoses Ball

  Chapter Five

  With each passing season, my father grew less willing to assume the expenses attendant on my being out in society, and my prospects dimmed a little further. I can fix no moment when expectation gave way to anxiety. Where once I had wondered at intervals whether the husband in my future might be kind or cruel, as the years passed I found myself thinking less about his character and fearing only that he might not exist. It was akin to awaiting the arrival of a distant guest to a party: in the whirl of other guests, his absence may not even register at first, and when it is noted, there is perhaps only a slight vexation at the person’s lateness. But as time goes on, this vexation changes to apprehension and then distress, until his absence casts a longer shadow than his presence might ever command.

  In the winter of my twentieth year, the matter came to a head. At the same time that my brother went into the Guards, my father was retired from it. Freed from his service to the crown, he was now able to remove his family from the city and live out his remaining years on his own land.

  Going with them would settle my fate—my father’s estate was on the Kashinka River, six days’ journey from Moscow, and there were no eligible men in the vicinity. Aunt Galya proposed that I stay behind with her under the roof of her elder daughter. I cannot guess whether my aunt had anticipated Nadya’s answer when she made the suggestion, but Nadya was indignant. She had already to contend with Kuzma Zakharovich’s wretched daughter and her own mother, and now she should take in a cousin as well? Her sister had no burdens, she countered; why should not Xenia do her share?

  Andrei and Xenia showed great kindness in making me welcome, even insisting that it was I who would be doing them a service by keeping Xenia company when she could not travel with Andrei. And so, I went to live with them.

  My things were sent ahead, and when I arrived, I learnt that she had put my bed in the upstairs room next to hers. This room had been kept unfurnished in expectation of children. Now, the door stood open, and I saw beyond the threshold that a curtain had been made for the window, my personal linens were already unpacked in the wardrobe, and the icon that had guarded my sleep since birth hung in the corner. I demurred, saying that I should be content to sleep with the servants, but Xenia shook off my protests.

  “Nonsense. If it’s bad luck to buy the cradle before the child, maybe it’s just as bad to keep a room empty.” Her manner was so easy that I didn’t guess at the time what this kindness must have cost her.

  The first year of their marriage had passed without any sign of a child, and then a year became two and then three. In the fourth year, she had got with child but her womb would not hold it an
d it was lost before it quickened. She rarely spoke of her disappointment, but after I moved into their house I came to sense that it was never far from her thoughts. She kept in her room a little icon of Saint Paraskeva, who gives children to barren women, and a candle was kept lit before it. Each month, when her blood came, she was prone to tears over the littlest things.

  The Imperial family was also waiting on the Grand Duchess to produce an heir for the throne. From the start of their marriage, the Empress had insisted that the ducal couple should be locked together in their bedchamber each night, like prisoners, so that they might get a child. One of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting whispered that in this enforced privacy, Peter spent all night playing with his tin soldiers, lining them up in formation across the wide plain of their bed and engaging them in mock battles, or sawing on his violin whilst the Grand Duchess tried to sleep.

  As time ticked on, the Empress was observed to be increasingly impatient and irritable towards her. She accused Catherine of conducting an affair and set spies on her to report her every move. The Grand Duke, meanwhile, showed no interest in his wife and flirted openly with the Princess of Courland, who was hideous and seemed to have nothing to recommend her save that she would speak in German with him.

  It was rumored that in the end Her Majesty had given up and looked the other way so that Catherine might take a lover. Shortly after, she was with child. Rumors were thick that Sergei Saltykov was the father. If true, the child’s parentage became moot, for in May Catherine miscarried whilst traveling. Though she had made every effort to please her husband and her Empress, this grave failure could not be offset by any amount of charm.

  Of course, I was not privy to any of this directly but heard it through Xenia, who heard it from I know not whom. Xenia felt a heightened sympathy for the Grand Duchess, and took Her Highness’s sorrow as her own. Every conversation turned to the loss of this child and would end in tears. The Grand Duchess’s circumstances merited sympathy, certainly, but hardly so extreme a response; in truth, I felt she became a bit tiresome on the subject.

  We were dining one evening at the house of one of the Roslavlev brothers, a captain in the Izmailovsky Guards, and the buzz about the table concerned a Mademoiselle Shavirova, one of Catherine’s ladies-in-waiting, who was thought to be the Grand Duke’s most recent infatuation. That afternoon and in the presence of the Grand Duchess, the two of them had sat with their heads bowed together and giggled through most of the concert.

  It is safe to say that no one at the table cared for the Grand Duke, but though tongues were loosened by a good deal of wine, they were not so loose as to say a word outright against him. Instead, their mirth was directed at the mademoiselle, who was, it was agreed, the least attractive of the Grand Duchess’s ladies. Someone ventured the opinion that love could not possibly be this blind. Another agreed that it was not love but spite against Catherine for her attentions to Saltykov.

  This is the way of life in Petersburg—even the lowliest person in society watches the court from whatever his distance and follows the rivalries and intrigues like a sporting match—but Xenia could not treat the gossip as mere diversion. When someone at the table said that the Grand Duke must surely be deprived of his wife’s affection if he sought solace from such a toad, Xenia spoke as if she were defending her own honor.

  “Does this not better prove that his wife is deprived of a child through no fault of her own?” She clutched her napkin so fiercely that her hand shook.

  The hour was late when we left, and we had all drunk too much. The three of us stumbled into the dim interior of the hired carriage, and Xenia and I plucked pillows from beneath our skirts and fashioned little nests for our heads. Andrei slouched onto the opposite bench and was lost up to the waist beneath the foamy horizon of our skirts. As soon as I was off my feet, I was overcome by the groggy weight of my limbs. Reaching above my head, Andrei opened the pane of the carriage lamp and blew out the flame. The carriage’s interior disappeared.

  I let my eyes close. The carriage lurched forward, and behind my lids the world rolled and swayed, my blood sloshing like a tide with the rocking of the carriage. I listened to the sounds of the carriage rattling, the steady drum of hooves, the creak of the wheels beneath us. I was faintly aware of low voices.

  “My God, Xenia. Such a rash tongue.”

  “I could not help myself. To think how she must suffer.”

  “It’s bad, I’m sure. Still, I’m not inclined to suffer for her in exile. We’d make poor martyrs, you and I. At least I should.”

  “Forgive me.” Her voice broke. “I want only to please you, and I am such a disappointment.”

  “No, no. Not ever.” Andrei’s voice gentled. “You are as close to heaven as I am likely to get.”

  “How could you not be disappointed?” she insisted. “I’m empty.”

  “It will come. Give it time.”

  She wept in soft, ragged breaths. “I pray. I search my heart. Why cannot I . . .”

  “Darling.” His voice thickened. “Hush.” There was a long silence—just breathing—and a rustle of silk like dry leaves.

  “She will wake,” Xenia whispered.

  He hushed her again. Something brushed against me. I opened my eyes but saw nothing. And then the moon sailed out from the clouds and silvered the velvety darkness into forms: one white breast, freed from Xenia’s bodice and Andrei’s profile poised over it. His head closed over her, and he began to suckle like an infant. Xenia’s eyes were closed, her pink mouth slack, and I thought she might be asleep, except that she whimpered softly and sucked in her breath. Or perhaps this was me, for Andrei lifted his head. I clamped my eyes shut, shame flushing through me. When next I dared to steal a look, he had receded back into the dark. Xenia’s breast was tucked back into its corset, but her fingers stretched out blindly, catching air, opening and closing like a sea flower. She sighed, lolled to her side, and curled into herself. Andrei began to hum some air I did not know. If you look on me fair, he warbled, I shall not fear to die. And I shall not want more Heaven than what is in your eye. The notes lingered lazily between the throb of blood in my ears. This poor sinner only prays to be kissed to Paradise.

  Perhaps she knew I had heard them. The next morning, she told me that she had been to a priest some weeks earlier. As she spoke, she held one hand in the other and absently dug a thumbnail into the soft flesh of her palm.

  “I begged him to pray for me, to cure me of my barrenness.”

  A practical man, the priest had first asked her whether she had sat on the ground as a child, for the cold might have made her infertile. No? That was good, he said. And did she ever lie with her husband on Saturdays or holy days? Xenia had replied that they refrained when it was right to do so. Well then, the priest pursued, when they did succumb, did she take pleasure from it?

  “I had to confess that I could not help myself.” She studied her palm and made another mark.

  Here the priest found his answer: this barrenness was God’s punishment for her lust. The act of fornication was evil, even between husband and wife. The only justification for this act was the children that came from it; without them, the soul remained stained. The cure was to repent of her sin and in future to avoid tempting her husband to his own damnation.

  In desperation, she had proposed to Andrei that they should keep separate beds. But he could not be made to share her remorse and had laughed at the priest’s suggestion. If they kept themselves chaste, how might they get children?

  “I am so weak, Dasha.” She looked confusedly at her hands, and her eyes filled. “Even at my soul’s peril, I cannot bring myself to stop.”

  It may be that God looks with forbearance on such sinners. Night sounds from behind her door announced her continued failures, but within a few months of our conversation, I noticed that she had tied an acorn to the delicate cross and chain at her throat. Our peasant women wear them to assure an easy confinement. She did not speak of her expectation directly, though, for fea
r of bringing ill luck, nor would she suffer anyone else to. When she told her servant Marfa that her bodices should need to be let out, she answered the old woman’s happy tears with childish insistence that she was only growing large on sweets; when she was sick to her stomach one morning and Marfa tried to soothe her by saying that this predicted a boy, Xenia spit thrice over her shoulder and ordered Marfa from the room.

  Its presence swelled nonetheless, and though she forbade acknowledging the child, Xenia could not keep her hands from straying to her belly. Out of doors, she rested them there as though to shield the child from strangers. If her back or her feet ached, she would smile tiredly and say that it must be gout giving her trouble. She was more changeable than even she had been before, by turns gay and apprehensive. Then one day her labor was upon her.

  A bed was prepared on the floor of her room and the midwife sent for. When this gaunt old woman arrived with her daughter, a copy of the mother but for a strawberry across her cheek, she sent everyone else from the room. For long hours, we waited in the passage, and so that her labor might be easier we pretended not to hear the moans coming from behind the closed door. She called out for Andrei, but he had gone downstairs because he could not bear anymore to hear her pain. Just after midnight, the midwife’s daughter came out and handed me a packet of herbs.

  “Boil this in water, and bring it back in the pot.”

  “Is she dying?” The sounds had become so terrible that it seemed no one could live through such agony.

  The woman nodded to the herbs. “The willow and figwort will help her. Go on.”