The Girl in the Tower

by Katherine Arden

  “You look dreadful, brother,” said Dmitrii cheerfully. He was eating cakes. The sweat of too much meat and wine ran off his skin.

  Sasha cracked an eyelid. “You’re getting fat,” he retorted. “You ought to go to the monastery and take a fortnight’s fasting this Lent.” When Dmitrii had been a boy in the Lavra, he had often sneaked into the woods to kill and cook rabbits on fast-days. Sasha thought, judging by the look of him, that he might have kept up the practice.

  Dmitrii laughed. His exuberant charm distracted the unwary from his calculating glances. The Grand Prince’s father had died before Dmitrii reached his tenth year, in a land where boy-princes rarely saw adulthood. Dmitrii had learned early to judge men carefully and not to trust them. But Brother Aleksandr had been Dmitrii’s teacher first, and later his friend, when they had lived in the Lavra before the prince’s majority. So Dmitrii only grinned and said, “A night and a day with the snow falling so thick—what can we do besides eat? I cannot even have a girl; Father Andrei says I must not—or at least not until Eudokhia throws me an heir.”

  The prince leaned back on the bench, scowled, and added, “As though there is a chance of that, the barren bitch.” He sat a moment grim, and then he brightened. “Well, you are here at last. We had despaired of you. Tell me, who has the throne at Sarai? What are the generals’ dispositions? Tell me everything.”

  Sasha had eaten and bathed; now he wanted only to sleep, anywhere that was not the ground. But he opened his eyes and said, “There must be no war in the spring, cousin.”

  The prince turned a flat stare onto Sasha. “No?” That was the voice of the prince, sure of himself and impatient. The look on his face was the reason he still held the throne after ten years and three sieges.

  “I have been to Sarai,” said Sasha carefully. “And beyond. I rode among the nomad-camps; I spoke to many men. I risked my life, more than once.” Sasha paused, seeing again the hot dust, the bleached steppe-sky, testing strange spices. That glittering pagan city made Moscow look like a mud-castle built in a day by incompetent children.

  “The khans come and go like leaves now, that is true,” Sasha continued. “One will reign six months before his uncle or cousin or brother supplants him. The Great Khan had too many children. But I do not think it matters. The generals have their armies, and their power holds, even if the throne itself is tottering.”

  Dmitrii considered a moment. “But think of it! A victory would be hard, and yet a victory would make me master of all Rus’. We will pay no more tribute to unbelievers. Is that not worth a little risk, a little sacrifice?”

  “Yes,” Sasha said. “Eventually. But that is not my only news. This spring, you have troubles closer to home.”

  And Brother Aleksandr proceeded, grimly, to tell the Grand Prince of Moscow a tale of burning villages, brigands, and fire on the horizon.

  WHILE BROTHER ALEKSANDR ADVISED his royal cousin, Olga’s slaves bathed the sick man Sasha brought with him to Moscow. They dressed the priest in fresh clothes and put him in a cell meant for a confessor. Olga wrapped herself in a rabbit-edged robe and went down to see him.

  A stove squatted in one corner of the room, with a fire new-laid. Its light did not quite pierce the dimness, but when Olga’s women crowded in with lamps of clay, the shadows retreated, cringing.

  The man was not in bed. He lay folded up on the floor, praying before the icons. His long hair spread out around him and caught the torchlight.

  Behind Olga, the women murmured and craned. Their din might have disturbed a saint, but this man did not stir. Was he dead? Olga stepped hastily forward, but before she could touch him, he sat up, crossed himself, and came wavering to his feet.

  Olga stared. Darinka, who had invited herself along with a train of bug-eyed accomplices, gasped and giggled. This man’s loose hair fell about his shoulders, golden as the crown of a saint, and beneath the heavy brow, his eyes were a stormy blue. His lower lip was red: the only softness amid the fine arching bones of his face.

  The women stuttered. Olga got her breath first and came forward. “Father, bless,” she said.

  The priest’s blue eyes were brilliant with fever; sweat matted the golden hair. “May the Lord bless you,” he returned. His voice came from his chest and made the candles shiver. His glance did not quite find hers; he gazed glassily beyond her, into the shadows near the ceiling.

  “I honor your piety, Father,” said Olga. “Remember me in your prayers. But you must go back to bed now. This cold is mortal.”

  “I live or die by God’s will,” replied the priest. “Better to—” He swayed. Varvara caught him before he fell; she was much stronger than she looked. An expression of faint distaste crossed her face.

  “Build up the fire,” snapped Olga to the slaves. “Heat soup. Bring hot wine and blankets.”

  Varvara, grunting, got the priest into bed, then brought Olga a chair. Olga sank down into it while the women crowded and gawped at her back. The priest lay still. Who was he and where had he come from?

  “Here is mead,” said Olga, when his eyelids fluttered. “Come, sit up. Drink.”

  He drew himself upright and drank, gasping. All the while he watched her over the rim of the cup. “My thanks—Olga Vladimirova,” he said when he had finished.

  “Who told you my name, Batyushka?” she asked. “How came you to be wandering ill in the forest?”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. “I am come from your own father’s home of Lesnaya Zemlya. I have walked long roads, freezing, in the dark…” His voice died away, then rallied. “You have the look of your family.”

  Lesnaya Zemlya…Olga leaned forward. “Have you news? What of my brothers and sister? What of my father? Tell me; I have had nothing since the summer.”

  “Your father is dead.”

  Silence fell, so that they heard logs crumbling in the hot stove.

  Olga sat dumbstruck. Her father dead? He had never even met her children.

  What matter? He was happy now; he was with Mother. But—he lay forever in his beloved winter earth and she would never see him again. “God give him peace,” Olga whispered, stricken.

  “I am sorry,” said the priest.

  Olga shook her head, throat working.

  “Here,” added the priest unexpectedly. He thrust the cup into her hand. “Drink.”

  Olga tipped the wine down her throat, then handed the empty cup to Varvara. She scrubbed a sleeve across her eyes and managed to ask, steadily, “How did he die?”

  “It is an evil tale.”

  “But I will hear it,” returned Olga.

  Murmurs rippled among the women.

  “Very well,” said the priest. A sulfurous note slipped into his voice. “He died because of your sister.”

  Gasps of delighted interest from her audience. Olga bit the inside of her cheek. “Out,” Olga said, without raising her voice. “Go back upstairs, Darinka, I beg.”

  The women grumbled, but they went. Only Varvara stayed behind, for propriety’s sake. She retreated into the shadows, crossing her arms over her breast.

  “Vasya?” Olga asked, rough-voiced. “My sister, Vasilisa? What could she have to do with—?”

  “Vasilisa Petrovna knew neither God nor obedience,” the priest said. “A devil lived in her soul. I tried—long I tried—to instruct her in righteousness. But I failed.”

  “I don’t see—” Olga began, but the priest had hauled himself higher on his pillows; sweat pooled in the hollow of his throat.

  “She would look at things that were not there,” he whispered. “She walked in the woods but knew no fear. Everywhere in the village, people talked of it. The kinder said she was mad. But others spoke of witchcraft. She grew to womanhood, and, witchlike, she drew the eyes of men, though she was no beauty…” His voice fractured, rallied again. “Your father, Pyotr Vladimirovich, arranged a marriage in haste, that she be wed before worse befell her. But she defied him and drove away her suitor. Pyotr Vladimirovich made arrangements to send
her to a convent. He feared—by then he feared for her soul.”

  Olga tried to imagine her fey green-eyed sister grown into the girl the priest described, and she succeeded all too well. A convent? Vasya? “The little girl I knew could never bear confinement,” she said.

  “She fought,” agreed the priest. “No, she said, and no again. She ran into the forest, at night, on Midwinter, still crying defiance. Pyotr Vladimirovich went after his daughter, as did Anna Ivanovna, her poor stepmother.”

  The priest paused.

  “And then?” Olga whispered.

  “A beast found them,” he said. “We thought—they said a bear.”

  “In winter?”

  “Vasilisa must have gone into its cave. Maidens are foolish.” The priest’s voice rose. “I don’t know; I did not see. Pyotr saved his daughter’s life. But he himself was slain, and his poor wife with him. A day later, Vasilisa, maddened still, ran away, and no one has heard anything of her since. We can only assume she is dead as well, Olga Petrovna. She and your father both.”

  Olga pressed the heel of her hand to her eyes. “Once I promised Vasya that she could come live with me. I might have taken a hand. I might have—”

  “Do not grieve,” the priest said. “Your father is with God, and your sister deserved her fate.”

  Olga lifted her head, startled. The priest’s blue eyes were expressionless—she thought she had imagined the venom in his voice.

  Olga mastered herself. “You have braved dangers to bring this news,” she said. “What—what will you have in return? Forgive me, Father. I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name is Konstantin Nikonovich,” said the priest. “And I desire nothing. I will join the monastery, and I will pray for this wicked world.”

  4.

  The Lord of the Tower of Bones

  Metropolitan Aleksei had founded the monastery of the Archangel in Moscow, and its hegumen, Father Andrei, was, like Sasha, a disciple of the holy Sergei. Andrei was formed like a mushroom, round and soft and short. He had the face of a cheerful and dissolute angel, possessed a surprisingly worldly grasp of politics, and kept a table that would have been the envy of any three monasteries. “The glutton cannot turn his mind to God,” he said dismissively. “But neither can the starving man.”

  As soon as the Grand Prince let him go, Sasha made straight for the monastery. While Konstantin prayed in the warmth of Olga’s palace, Andrei and Sasha talked in the monastery refectory over salt fish and cabbage (for it was suppertime on a fast-day). When Andrei had heard the younger man’s tale, he said, chewing thoughtfully, “I am sorry to hear of the burning. But God works in mysterious ways, and this news has come betimes.”

  That was not the reaction Sasha expected; he raised a questioning brow. His hands, a little cracked with cold, lay laced together and quiet on the wooden table. Andrei went on impatiently, “You must get the Grand Prince out of the city. Take him with you to kill bandits. Let him lie with a pretty girl who he is not desperate to get a son on.” The old monk said this unblushing. He had been a boyar before he vowed himself to God, and had fathered seven children. “Dmitrii is restless. His wife gives him no pleasure in bed, and no children to spend his hopes on. If it goes on much longer, Dmitrii will make his war on the Tatar—or someone—as a mad cure for boredom. The time is not ripe, as you say. Take him to kill bandits instead.”

  “I will,” said Sasha, draining his cup and rising. “Thank you for the warning.”

  BROTHER ALEKSANDR’S CELL HAD been kept clean for his return. A good bearskin lay on the narrow cot. The corner opposite the cell-door held an icon of the Christ and the Virgin. Sasha prayed a long time, while the bells of Moscow rang and the pagan moon rose over her snowy towers.

  Mother of God, remember my father, my brothers, and my sisters. Remember my master at the monastery in the wilderness, and my brothers in Christ. I beg you will not be angry, that we do not fight the Tatar yet, for they are still too strong and too many. Forgive me my sins. Forgive me.

  The candlelight danced over the Virgin’s narrow face, and her Child seemed to watch him out of dark, inhuman eyes.

  The next morning, Sasha went to outrenya, the morning office, with the brothers. He bowed before the iconostasis, face to the floor. After he had said his prayers, he went out at once into the sparkling, half-buried city.

  Dmitrii Ivanovich had his faults, but indolence was not among them; Sasha found the Grand Prince already down in his dooryard, apple-cheeked and cheerful, waving a sword, attended by his younger boyars. His pet swordsmith from Novgorod had made a new blade, serpent-hilted. The two cousins, prince and monk, examined the sword with a doubtful admiration.

  “It will strike fear into my enemies,” Dmitrii said.

  “Until you try to club someone in the face with the hilt and it shatters,” returned Sasha. “Look at the thin place—there—where the snake’s head joins the body.”

  Dmitrii considered the hilt again. “Well, try it with me,” he said.

  “God keep you,” said Sasha at once. “But if you are going to break that sword-hilt on someone, let it not be me.”

  Dmitrii was just turning to hail one of his more irritating boyars when Sasha’s voice, continuing, turned him back. “Enough playing,” Sasha said impatiently. “Come, the storm is over. There are villages burning. Will you ride out with me?”

  A call and some commotion from outside the Grand Prince’s gate swallowed Dmitrii’s answer. Both men paused, listening. “A dozen horses,” said Sasha, raising a questioning brow at the prince. “Who—”

  Next moment Dmitrii’s steward ran up. “A great lord is come,” he panted. “He says he must see you. He has brought a gift.”

  Thick lines gathered between Dmitrii’s brows. “Great lord? Who? I know where my boyars are, and none of them are due— Well, let him in, before he freezes to death at the gate.”

  The steward went off; hinges squealed in the bitter morning, and a stranger came through the gate, riding a very fine chestnut and trailing a string of retainers. The chestnut curvetted and tried to rear; his rider’s skilled hand brought him down and he dismounted in a puff of fresh snow, scanning the lively dooryard.

  “Well,” said the Grand Prince, his hands in his belt. His boyars had left off their sparring and gathered, muttering at his back, eyes on the newcomer.

  The stranger considered the knot of people and then crossed the snow to stand before them. He bowed to the Grand Prince.

  Sasha looked the newcomer over. He was obviously a boyar: broadly built and finely dressed, with sloe-dark eyes, long-lashed. What could be seen of his hair was red as autumn apples. Sasha had never seen him before.

  The boyar said to Dmitrii, “Are you the Grand Prince of Moscow and Vladimir?”

  “As you see,” Dmitrii returned coldly. The red-haired man’s tone was just this side of insolent. “Who are you?”

  The startlingly dark and liquid gaze moved from the Grand Prince to his cousin. “I am called Kasyan Lutovich, Gosudar,” he said evenly. “I hold land in my own right, two weeks’ travel to the east.”

  Dmitrii was unimpressed. “I recall no tribute from— What are your lands called?”

  “Bashnya Kostei,” supplied the red-haired man. At their raised brows, he added, “My father had a sense of humor, and at the end of our third starving winter, when I was a boy, he gave our house its name.” Sasha could see the pride in the set of Kasyan’s broad shoulders when he added, “We have always lived in our forest, asking nothing of any man. But now I am come with gifts, Grand Prince, and a request, for my people are sorely pressed.”

  Kasyan punctuated this speech with a gesture at his retainers, who brought forth a filly, iron-gray and so highly bred that even the Grand Prince was for a moment silenced.

  “A gift,” Kasyan said. “Perhaps your guards might offer my men hospitality.”

  The Grand Prince contemplated the mare but said only, “Pressed?”

  “By men we cannot find,”
said Kasyan grimly. “Bandits. Burning my villages, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

  INVITED INTO THE PRINCE’S receiving-room, the horses consigned to oats and the stranger’s men assigned to lodgings, the red-headed Kasyan drank off his beer beneath Dmitrii’s low, painted ceiling while Sasha and the Grand Prince waited with impatient courtesy. Wiping his mouth, Kasyan began, “It started with whispers, a season ago, and thirdhand reports from lost hamlets. Robbers. Fires.” He turned his cup in a hard hand, his glance faraway. “I did not heed. There are always desperate men, and rumor exaggerates. I put it out of my mind when the first snow fell.”

  Kasyan paused again to drink. “I see now that I made a mistake,” he went on. “Now I hear reports of burning at every hand, and desperate peasants come every day, or nearly, begging for grain, or for protection.”

  Dmitrii and Sasha glanced at each other. The boyars and attendants craned to hear. “Well,” said Dmitrii to his visitor, leaning forward in his carved chair, “you are their lord, are you not? Have you helped them yourself?”

  Kasyan’s lips thinned to sternness. “We have gone hunting for these evil men not once, but many times since the snow fell. There are clever folk in my household, fine dogs, skilled hunters.”

  “Then I do not see why you came to me,” said Dmitrii, surveying his visitor. “You can hardly hope to escape the tribute now, since I know your name.”

  “I would not have come without a choice,” Kasyan said. “We have found no trace of these bandits—not even a little—not so much as a hoofmark. Nothing but burning, and wailing, and destruction. My people are whispering that these bandits are not men at all, but demons. So I have come to Moscow,” he finished, with a frustration that he could not hide, “when I would rather have stayed home. Because there are men of war, and men of God, in this city, and I must beg help for my people.”

  Dmitrii, Sasha saw, looked fascinated despite himself. “No trace at all?” he said.

  “None, Gosudar,” said Kasyan. “Perhaps these bandits are not men at all.”