“Who can say what was in his mind?” Master Cheng folded his hands inside his sleeves. “Traveling to each vassal, collecting tribute, being feasted and entertained for a month or more—he considered the expense to them sufficient to deplete their resources, so that no armies might be raised against him. And indeed, you will note that a mere twenty men and their servitors have come to you. They are not the ones with an army. You are.”
Finally freed of the offending necklace, she threw it onto the carpets. It was the hour when she went to see her son, and did not wish to frighten him by appearing in all her glittering golden finery. “An army,” she observed, “is a man’s weapon, Master Cheng.”
“Of a certainty. And there are no men here.” He smiled.
Only a mother, and one who could never be a father. It hovered on her lips to ask why he had lingered in Kyiv these many years; surely after experiencing the marvels of stately Athens and proud Rome and mighty Mikligardur in his travels with the silk trade, her city was pitiful in contrast. Those places blazed brighter than the sun; Kyiv was nothing more than a hearthfire by comparison—a fire likely to sputter and die if she did not guard it against the Drevlianians.
Yvor had asked Cheng once if he did not desire to go home to Serica. The old man shrugged, smiled, and replied that he feared he was too decrepit to survive the journey, and even if he did reach the Silk Lands, he had been hopelessly corrupted by his years in the vulgar West. Besides, he added with a twinkle in his tilting black eyes, he enjoyed looking at golden-haired women far too much never to look at one again.
“Tribute and armies,” Cheng sighed, startling her from her thoughts. “An inconvenient and wasteful method of governing, if I may say so, Most Gracious. Building a nation from twigs and twine, when stone is required.”
She shrugged. “It was always done that way. Is there a better?”
He only looked at her, amusement dancing in his black eyes. He had taken to watching her this way in the weeks since Yvor had been killed: watching her, waiting for her to be clever.
She thought of her first effort at such cleverness, and how he had actually laughed with glee and approval of her plan, and all at once tribute and armies and wood and stone came together and made elegant sense.
“From now on, keep them here,” she heard herself say. “Let them go back to their own lands rarely, so they cannot make mischief. Root in them the desire to live as a prince does: in a house of stone, in a city encircled by stone, not cramped in a village of wood. They will build a city of stone for me, Cheng. They will spend their substance on that, and on pretty things to put inside their new houses, not on armies.”
“The Most Gracious One is wise.” He bowed to her, and once more she marveled at the satisfaction it gave her to earn his admiration. It was, she thought suddenly, even better than her father’s smile.
She finished twisting her thick fair braids atop her head and secured them with a dragon-headed pin that had belonged to her husband’s kinswoman, the Queen of Denmark. She composed her face into lines that spoke of happiness and humor, not anger and anxiety. “Come,” she said to Master Cheng, “we’ll go upset the nurses by keeping Sviatoslav awake late into the night. And you shall show him another magic.” The prospect cheered her, and she wagged a finger playfully at the old man. “But not the one with the pigeons again!”
“They’d just fed,” he protested, eyes dancing, “or they would not have messed the carpets.”
“Your own master should have taught you how to make manure vanish,” she teased. Then, grimly: “It would have been useful right now.”
The fourth evening of the Drevlianians’ stay, a feast was given. She had ordered constructed a large wooden hall, caparisoned in bright bolts of silk and warmed by iron braziers, and so thickly strewn with carpets that the floor of pine planks was completely covered. Sumptuous food was served by the prettiest of her pretty blonde slaves. Strong liquor flowed like spring snowmelt into immense silver-mounted drinking horns, and down the throats of her guests.
She had inspected the hall that morning. For so hasty a project, it was all quite beautifully built and decorated. She said this, exchanging glances with Master Cheng, and smiled.
As the guests feasted, she stayed upstairs watching her son wear himself out shrieking with delight as Master Cheng wielded magics complex enough to entertain a shrewd, clever child. At length the old man excused himself, much to the boy’s dismay. She sat up late with Sviatoslav, soothing him to sleep in her lap, listening to the crackle of the hearthfire. There was a peace about it, despite the dread hovering nearby, for in these hours she was nothing grander or more elaborate than the mother of a beloved son. Other mothers sat near other fires tonight, rocking children to sleep throughout great Kyiv. And it seemed to her that she had been correct in her imaginings, and that the city was a hearthfire in itself, warmly glowing, as welcoming as a mother’s gentle arms.
Mother Of All Russiya.
Gazing into the flames that defended her from cold and darkness, she turned her mind to the new wooden hall beyond her windows, and heard the music change from the old heroic ballads that always accompanied feasting to tunes suitable for dancing. The slaves would now be departing one by one, until only Drevlianians remained. They roared out drinking songs, fists pounding on tables, making plates and bowls skitter. Boots stomped on the pine planks beneath those tables and in the cleared spaces where agile young men danced off the excess energy of plenteous horns of wine. In her mind she saw it all. Saw, as well, just outside the wooden hall, an old man with strangely tilting black eyes making a gesture, and muttering a few words, and reaching most delicately with magic always young.
From her son’s rooms she heard the screams begin. She heard the crack and splinter of a million flimsy kindling twigs beneath heavy boots as the flooring beneath the carpets lost its bewitchment and became what it truly was. She heard the crash of bodies and tables and benches and iron braziers as they all fell into a pit twice as tall as a man. She heard the hissing of ripped silks, the cracking of white skulls, and the final great sound like thunder as the walls woven of switches as slender as snakes collapsed atop the pit, smothering all within, burying them alive.
She smiled then, and nodded, and stared into the hearthfire, rocking her son in her arms.
But that night she dreamed of snakes.
“They are not all dead,” she told Master Cheng the next day. “Some of those who killed my husband yet live.”
He took some moments to respond to her words. “Short of attacking Iskorosten—”
“If I must.” She paced, fingers fidgeting with the ends of her long golden braids. She did not feel clever. She could not command her brain to brilliance. She only knew that she could not use a man’s weapons; she was no warleader to general an army. They would expect her to use a woman’s weapon, and she was no Empress of Rome to wield poison. Magic stood before her in the shape of an old man—but she must be clever, and tell him how it ought to be done.
She stood before the hearthfire and stared into it, seeking among the identities others had provided her: daughter, wife, mother, Grand Princess. And she found her answers in all of them. In the fire.
There was only one way to be sure that a snake was dead.
Some weeks later, her envoy stood among the shocked and grieving Drevlianians and told them: “The Grand Princess is afraid, my lords. This horrible tragedy, this terrifying accident that took so many strong, proud lives—she is only a woman, my lords. Pity her in her solitude! Her father of glorious name is dead, her brave husband also, and her son is a child of but five summers. Therefore she begs that you send to her all your wisest men, the best men who govern Drevliania, for she is in dire need of your learned counsel.”
They came. They actually came. She watched and hid her delight as they marched grimly into the stone-walled courtyard, fully a hundred of them, all in armor and all warriors. They were dark and stocky and full-bearded, and each possessed an axe, a sword, and a
knife that never left him, not even when he slept. And they were angry. Gods, so angry.
Their new warchief, son of the old, stalked up to her on the steps of her residence where she stood ready to receive them. “We will stay here,” he told her without preamble, “within stone walls. Your hall is large enough to house us. There will be no more accidents. We will stay here.”
The clamor of their armor and weapons as they milled around her hall throbbed daily, nightly, in her brain. And in her dreams, while she slept and was vulnerable, their axes and swords and knives became yet more snakes, with iron fangs that sank into her son’s small body.
“Highness,” said Sveneld on the fifth afternoon, just before another session of “counsel” with her guests, “it has not escaped my notice that these assassins yet live.”
She rounded on him furiously, ready to tear out his eyes with her fingernails. Nearby, Master Cheng folded his hands meekly within his sleeves and bent his head. She knew he was hiding a smile.
When she spoke, her voice emerged gentle as swansdown. “They will not be living much longer. They will pay tribute, Sveneld, believe me— and after this, the days of tribute are over.” This one last tribute that would rid her of snakes.
For she had discovered a new weapon—not a man’s or a woman’s or a magician’s, but the weapon of a mother. Master Cheng had done more than smile when she had told him of her plan. He had done something he had never done before, not even in her husband’s honor: he went down on his knees, arms in their green silk sleeves spread wide as wings, and touched his forehead to the cold stone floor.
The great lodya in which her father had sailed to Mikligardur was brought by her command from its place of honor by the river. Made from the hollowed-out trunk of a single mighty oak, the lodya’s planking was as fresh as the day Grand Prince Helgi had stood among its oarsmen on his triumphant return home. The lodya had seemed huge to her when she was a little girl; she realized as she watched it being dragged carefully into the stone courtyard that it would of course appear smaller to her now, for she was a woman grown, with a whole country to worry over.
The mast was raised, the square sail unfurled. As the men worked, they sang the song of Grand Prince Helgi’s great victory over proud Mikligardur, and how he had forced Emperors to pay for the food and shelter of every merchant of Russiya who came to the city thereafter. She waited, smiling, for her favorite part: The Emperors also had to provide as many baths as the Rus wished. It was always the hardest part to sing, for no one could keep from laughing: the lyric described hundreds of Greeks sweating and cursing as they hauled and heated water day and night for the gleefully fastidious Rus.
That night she stood on the steps of her home, arrayed in her finest silken robes and every jewel she owned, watching the commotion in the courtyard as all was readied for a celebration. Forty years it had been since Grand Prince Helgi’s triumph over proud Mikligardur, and she intended to commemorate the occasion most impressively. These Drevlianians would be reminded that it had been a Varangian who had won such a great victory. They would remember why they had begged a Varangian to come and rule over them.
They were encouraged to climb onto the lodya, every one of them, and the pretty blonde slaves made sure each had a brimming horn of liquor. Sveneld had not been happy about allowing them access to the ship, but she merely shook her head and told him to have patience. He was especially disturbed that she gave orders for all the Kyivan soldiers to leave their weapons in their barracks. Again she was adamant. She was the Grand Princess, and it was her people’s duty to obey.
She stood on the highest step, watching the Drevlianians drink and laugh. Master Cheng glided silently to her side. She glanced at him, and he smiled at her, and made a subtle gesture with his long, thin fingers.
Below them, every one of a hundred torches ranged about the courtyard sprang to fiery life.
And everyone in the courtyard gasped like a child taking its first breath.
She had seen Cheng do this before, but never on such a scale as this. The courtyard blazed bright as noonday. The Drevlianians’ hands went to their sword hilts. She eyed Master Cheng sidelong. He gave her an innocent smile.
As she had planned, with the darkening of the sky and the lighting of the torches, a powerful male voice began to chant. On the gray stone walls of the courtyard, shadows began to flicker. They might have been cast by the torches. The dancers filed in and the warriors calmed down, leaning on the ship’s railing to enjoy the show.
Prince Helgi, mighty in name, eternal in glory, forty springs are gone,
Yet we remember, will always remember, the splendor of your triumph.
It was difficult to watch Master Cheng at the same time she watched the courtyard. She felt rather than really saw his fingers twitch periodically, sensed rather than truly heard his voice whisper strange words.
Two thousand lodya he sailed, only to find the harbor of Mikligardur
Blocked by vast chains; the cunning Greeks thought victory theirs.
Yet Grand Prince Helgi was of a cunning even greater than the Greeks’.
The fire-lit dancers swarmed about the courtyard. The shadows on the walls outlined brick towers bristling with warriors. No one believed the shadows torch-flung now. Fear rippled through the arrogant Drevlianians who had murdered a Grand Prince. But the fascination of it held all who watched in silent thrall.
The warriors leaped from their lodya like wolves leap from their lairs,
Within sight of proud Mikligardur, beneath its very walls.
The Greeks came forth, soft sheep in their thousands,
To be slaughtered, devoured, only white bones left on the shore.
Suddenly a deafening roar went up from her own people, a bellow of proud victory as Grand Prince Helgi’s army destroyed the shadows of the Greek host. At her side, Cheng trembled and whispered.
The warriors of Russiya knew not defeat, nor weariness, nor pain.
Prince Helgi hung his mighty shield on the gates of vanquished Mikligardur,
Then sailed him home with golden treasure and silver plunder
And gems enough to make a mountain; see them now,
Gracing his daughter’s sweet white throat, her slender supple arms.
The shadows vanished, and all the torches save one were extinguished— and that one lit only her as she stood on the steps, alone now. From her neck and wrists and ears and fingers and body shimmered jewels of a hundred different colors, set in gold or silver or stitched into her robes. She stood unmoving, unsmiling. Nearby, out of the bright torchlight, Master Cheng was breathing heavily with effort.
All glory to Grand Prince Helgi, he of the cunning and courage and might,
His word-fame will live forever among the hearthfires of Kyiv, Mother of All Russiya!
Helgi’s ship flared to light, spitting fire. Sparks caught and clung to Drevlianian clothing. Thick dark hair burned. The wooden handles of axes ignited; leather sword-sheaths blazed; embroidered sashes that held long knives turned to searing belts of flame. All the fire in the world devoured the screaming men in the lodya. The stench of charring flesh was horrible. Olga watched, thinking that in their agony the men were very like snakes—writhing, wicked snakes, burning alive. It was the only way to make sure they were really dead. Soon all that was left of Drevlianian strength and pride was the scorched metal of their axes, swords, and knives. Men’s weapons, useless against the power of her fire. Great Mother Kyiv’s warm hearth had become an inferno.
Master Cheng sank to the stones at her side. She knelt, taking his frail shoulders in her hands, and whispered his name. He smiled slightly, fingers daring to touch her hair.
“Living gold,” he murmured.
And all at once she knew why the old man had lingered in Kyiv all these years. She knew, and suddenly his strange, wizened face with its tilting black eyes was beautiful.
By dawn the ship and the men trapped on it were ashes, and Master Cheng was dead.
For hi
m, she used her army to destroy the Drevlianian city of Iskorosten. Her little son Sviatoslav accompanied her, guarded closely by the warchief Sveneld and the steward Asmund, who loved the boy dearly and together made a wiser and better father than Yvor could have been. Sviatoslav was allowed to cast the first spear against the enemy. The weapon of a man, wielded by a valiant little boy, put such fierce heart into the warriors that they forgot that it was a woman who had ordered them into battle.
Iskorosten was taken. Most of its citizens were killed, and the rest were handed over to Olga’s druzhina as slaves. On the day Iskorosten fell, Olga put upon her ear the Tears and the Blood, and relinquished the jewels only when her son came of age. Sviatoslav then set out on his own wars of conquest, while his mother continued to rule. She was a wise and clever Grand Princess who reorganized the state and abolished the annual tribute. To Kyiv came the highest nobles of all the tribes, and until they built their own stone dwellings they slept in wooden houses—and flinched violently at sudden flames, at cracking twigs. She laughed to herself each time she heard of this, but she made sure that Kyiv became a city made more of stone than of wood: Mother of All Russiya, her hearthfire warm and welcoming.
Olga died in July of the year 969, having been twelve years baptized into the Christian faith—which, for her motherly care of her country and her guidance of her people to the Church, made of her the beloved Saint Olga of Kiev.
She never dreamed of snakes again.
Author’s Note
Although Olga’s methods are of my invention, she really did avenge her husband and protect her son by having the Drevlianian emissaries buried alive and burned alive. The detail of the trench beneath the houses is accurate, as is the description of the boat and the conquest of “Mikligardur”— Constantinople—by Olga’s father. He died after stepping on a poisonous snake. The tale of the founding of Kyiv is one of the oldest historical legends of Russia. It probably stems from the mingling of three settlements, for which there is much archaeological evidence, that existed within the present-day city. At Iskorosten, Sviatoslav did throw the first spear. A contemporary account by an Arab chronicler made note of the earring he wore as an adult: pearls and a ruby. His son became the most celebrated of the Grand Princes of Kyiv: Saint Vladimir the Great. Through him, Olga was the ancestor of the kings of Poland, Hungary, France, Spain, and England.
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