The Midnight Court

by Jane Kindred

  She hadn’t really expected any other answer. Love returned his disdain in equal measure. “Then if I could have a hot shower and some clean clothes, I won’t bother you further.”

  His brow furrowed with annoyance. “Why you need clean clothings? Is wash every week.”

  She studied his perplexed expression. “You really have no idea.” Love pulled back the apostolnik and showed him the caked-in blood and the lump like a broad skipping stone beneath the deep cut on her scalp.

  The monk’s face blanched and he forgot about the angelic tongue completely as he touched his fingers to her head. “How did this happen?”

  “How do you think?”

  He shook his head, his eyes troubled. “Mr. Zey-us? But he is God’s messenger. Why would he harm you?” Kirill’s troubled expression changed to one of dread as Love fixed him with her stare, uncompromising. “No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t have. Besides, I thought you…he told me…”

  “If he told you anything happened between us with my consent, he’s a liar.”

  A look of horror seized Kirill and she thought he might actually collapse under the weight of his dawning understanding. He pulled the woolen skufia from his head and held it to his chest, his hands twisting the fabric. “I sent you to him. I waited while he—” Kirill crossed himself and lowered his beryl blue eyes with shame. “I beg your forgiveness, Sister Lyubov.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I should not have let this happen in God’s house.”

  Love wondered whether God would be less offended if she’d been assaulted somewhere else, but she kept her mouth shut.

  Kirill pulled on his beard, clearly agitated by the cognitive dissonance of his predicament. “I will bring you a clean podryasnik and apostolnik when I can get the washroom free. Your…other g-garments—” He stammered and blushed. “I can’t get.”

  Love nodded and studied his woven sandals beneath the hem of his robe.

  “I beg your forgiveness.” His voice went even quieter. “I thought he only meant to talk to you. And then when he told me you—” Kirill swallowed as if he couldn’t complete the thought. “I judged you. The Lord would not have done such a thing. And I punished the little one for a sin I had ascribed to you. Pomilui mya greshnago.” Have mercy on me, a sinner. Love didn’t know whether he was speaking to her or to God. “I will come again when is possible.” He had returned to the angelic tongue. “I pray for you, Sister Lyubov.”

  Love sighed as he left her. He could pray all he liked. Unless God came to him in a vision and told him to let her go, it was of little use to her.

  The monk surprised her with a hot bath when he took her to the large washroom later. The eremites bathed in the frigid water of the islands to be closer to God, and her last few baths had been quick dunks, scrubbing as fast as she could, while she gave Ola only sponge baths to keep her from catching cold. But Kirill had apparently boiled and hauled water from the kitchen to fill the tub for her. Love asked him to take Ola with him so she wouldn’t see the bruises, and Kirill complied with a grave expression.

  He left clean clothes on a stool inside the washroom and told her to leave what she was wearing on the floor. “I will burn it,” he said vehemently.

  When Love undressed, she left her underwear folded in the pile.

  Afterward, instead of taking them back to the cell, Kirill announced they were going for a walk. He led her out onto the grounds and Love shivered in surprise at the sharpness of the autumn wind as they strolled past the ancient stone buildings within the walled kremlin.

  “How long have I been here?” she asked Kirill in angelic under her breath.

  “Yesterday was the Feast of the Nativity of Mary.”

  Love remembered the feast from her school days and counted back. Six weeks. She looked up at the sky she’d only seen from the narrow hole in her cell wall for more than a month. It was a stunning blue, as if the world had been turned upside down and she was looking at the ocean. They’d just passed the equinox. The days would be getting swiftly shorter now.

  “Are you letting us go?”

  Kirill’s eyes reflected profound conflict, searching hers as if she could tell him the answer. “I…I must trust in God’s will.”

  “You can’t believe any of this is God’s will.”

  Ola struggled to get down, but Love was afraid she might trip in the tall grass and hurt herself on the ancient brick and stone of the venerable buildings.

  “No, sweetheart,” she murmured. “You can’t get down.”

  Ola pointed insistently toward the glimpse of sea over the wall. “Mama.” She hadn’t asked for Anazakia in weeks. She was adamant now, patting Love’s shoulder and pointing as if Love didn’t understand this simple request. “La go Mama.” It was the first sentence she’d put together spontaneously with herself as the subject.

  “No, Ola. We can’t go to Mama right now.”

  Ola began to cry, reaching with both arms toward where she believed her mother to be, as if she recognized the sea over which they’d come and remembered Anazakia was on the other side of it. “La go Mama,” she wailed, squirming miserably in Love’s arms. Love felt like a monster for refusing her.

  “We must go in.” The monk was apologetic but firm.

  Love looked toward the stone path leading out of the walled enclosure, wondering if she could make a run for it, or if any tourists were still outside the fortress who might hear her if she screamed.

  Kirill gave her a look of warning. “You will only frighten the child.” He took her by the arm and steered her swiftly through a nearby door. The short walk in the fresh air was over.

  Ola was inconsolable. Back in their room, she cried for hours, and nothing Love did to try to distract her had any effect. She kept repeating her new sentence as she sobbed against Love’s neck, until Love herself thought she might cry. Outside their small window, the first storms of autumn were rolling across the island in heavy sheets of rain.

  Sedmaya: Hall of Echoes

  from the memoirs of the Grand Duchess Anazakia Helisonovna of the House of Arkhangel’sk

  On the morning after I’d seen the syla, I left Arkhangel’sk without saying good-bye. I knew Belphagor would attempt to dissuade me, and I couldn’t bear the thought that Vasily would not.

  I left a note saying only that I was going to St. Petersburg in search of Ola. There was no point explaining where I was bound. I would only be reinforcing Belphagor’s suspicion that I was losing my mind.

  I borrowed one of Love’s telephones and I left its number, promising to contact them if I found any sign of Ola or the three who’d taken her. I wasn’t quite sure how to use the little box, but I could find someone to show me if the need arose. I took the lighter coat I hadn’t worn since we were last in St. Petersburg and left the heavy winter clothes of Arkhangel’sk behind. Because I couldn’t make my way about by confounding the unwary or using sleight of hand as Belphagor did, I also took the stash of ruble bills he kept in a tin in the kitchen.

  It was easy enough to slip past the Nephilim before daylight. As oppressive as their presence was, they were watching for anyone trying to get in, not one of us trying to get out.

  In case they thought to pursue me, I’d decided to take a route they wouldn’t expect, and I found one using Love’s computer. Besides the train that had brought us here, there was really only one other possibility for travel out of Arkhangel’sk—I would have to fly by airplane. On such a flight, Ola had disappeared into the unknown, and I felt compelled to take the same journey to be near her in spirit. No one would be looking for me on a flight to the Solovetsky Islands. From there, I could take the ferry to the town of Kem, as Love and the Nephilim had, and board a different train altogether to St. Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo. It was a roundabout way to get where I was going, but it would do.

  The flight by airplane was nothing like soaring by wing.

  With a handful of hours to wait between arrival on Bolshoi Solovetsky and the departure of the ferry, I wandered the island
, touched by its haunting beauty. The walls of the kremlin surrounding the great monastery had been built with the massive stones found at hand, and they rose above the grassy hills as if from the center of a giant emerald within the sea. Above them, the silvery wooden tiles of its cupolas pointed the way toward Heaven. There were still late-summer visitors here, clustering in tour groups and boating along the canals connecting the island’s lakes, but it wouldn’t be long before these waterways would be frozen over, as would the sea itself.

  From one of these tour groups, I heard a child crying, and it sounded so like Ola that my heart leapt. I ran to the sound, unable to control the irrational swell of hope and maternal anxiety, and found myself inside the kremlin walls. Black-clad monks crossed paths here with tourists in large, organized groups, while others wandered on their own, as I did, but there was no sign of the crying child.

  I was being foolish. It was impossible that the acolytes of the god of Men could be harboring a stolen infant within these walls. The Malakim, in any case, wouldn’t have hidden her away. It was Aeval who wanted Ola, and they would be mad to delay so long in this part of the world, even if the Grigori were preventing them from getting her to Heaven. Still, as improbable as it was, I was not quite able to shake the idea that Ola could be here somewhere.

  Telling myself I was only curious about the place, I circled the grounds along the cobbled walks, scanning the ancient walls. The whitewashed chapels and living quarters nestling against the backdrop of the stone towers of the fortress and the azure blue of the sky possessed a serenity that was inexplicably heartbreaking. Throughout the enclosure, along grassy paths worn smooth by the soft soles of their sandals, the monks went about their business with silent reverence, and yet from time to time I could swear I still heard a crying child.

  On the far side of the complex, the place seemed deserted. I studied the small, high windows of the monastic cells as the chilly wind streamed my hair across my face. Under the eaves of one of these dormitories, a wall cobbled together of ancient brick masonry and the massive stones of the island held a low, recessed arch. Within it, an iron door stood unguarded.

  My heart began to pound. The door seemed to compel me, and I approached it. With a tentative grip, I turned the latch, and it opened with effort. A cloistered, musty smell with a hint of incense met me as I stepped inside and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. At my feet, a narrow stone staircase descended below the ground. I no longer heard the crying, but then the thick walls had a muting effect.

  “Devushka.” The soft voice behind me nearly made me topple down the steps. An elderly monk put a gentle hand on my shoulder to steady me as I turned. “This is not allowed, devushka. You must find your group. The monastery is closing to visitors now.”

  I blushed and gave him a respectful bob of my head. “Izvinite. I must have gotten turned around.” I hesitated. “It’s just that I thought I heard—”

  An indignant wail interrupted me, and in the arch of the passage across from us, a young, toddling boy stomped his feet in the grip of a tantrum as his mother smacked his bottom. It was then I recognized that the crying I’d heard had been that of an older child and not an infant, and here was the most likely source. The realization hurt my heart and I hurried away to keep from dissolving into tears of my own, my wild, preposterous hope dashed to pieces against the stones.

  While there was still time before I had to catch the ferry, I wanted to stand on the spot where Ola had last been seen—the spot where Belphagor had watched her disappearing into the distance in Vashti’s arms. I took the dusty road through the village near the monastery toward the western shore of the island, passing through a quiet birch wood shrouded in mist and dotted with late season wildflowers, until I came to the deserted stretch of beach Belphagor had described south of the harbor.

  I stood on the rocky shore, the wind whipping at my summer coat, and tried to imagine where Love and the Nephilim had been bound after Kem. The train might have taken them anywhere—but why? Why take her if they didn’t mean to deliver her to Heaven or demand a ransom? Not knowing where she’d gone was killing me, but not knowing why…it was the question that haunted my dreams.

  The deep jewel of the ocean was empty and still as glass, offering no answers. While I waited, storm clouds rolled in over the arctic waters, turning the sky the color of steel.

  By the time I left Solovetsky on the ferry, rain was coming down in sheets. It drove us swiftly toward the shores of Kem, and with the cold, wet wind at our backs, we reached the small seafaring town in less than three hours. I waited nearly as long for a tram to take me to the train station, wishing now I’d brought the winter coat instead. At the station, only platzcart tickets were available to St. Petersburg. I found myself at length in a crowded car where there were no private compartments, only rows of open sleeping berths for the long ride through the stormy Russian night.

  The rule of the platzcart seemed to be that sleeping was optional, and in fact might be considered rude. Travelers shared bottles of vodka, having apparently started on them some time ago, sitting together in loud groups of spontaneous parties among the bunks, with little regard to whose bunk the party moved to. To be polite, I drank a bit of vodka when it was offered to me, but I was feeling chilled from the rain, and I didn’t want to let down my guard with so many strangers around me. I’d learned my lesson upon my first experience with the favored spirits of this world.

  I rolled over in my bunk after a few hours and pretended to sleep to avoid further socializing, but it seemed as if the motion of the train were still the motion of the choppy arctic sea.

  By morning, I was shivering and feverish, and by the time we arrived in St. Petersburg that afternoon, the provodnitsa nearly had to carry me from the train. Though I had no idea what I meant to do once I got there, I had to reach Tsarskoe Selo. The metro line that would take me to the elektrichka into the suburban parks of Tsarskoe Selo was adjacent to the train station, and I somehow managed to stumble onto the right car and exit at the right station in order to make the five o’clock train. It was standing room only, and I clung to a post near the door as commuters pushed past me, grumbling.

  “Suka,” someone muttered as I stumbled against the other standing passengers when the train lurched forward. My grip slipped from the post, and the words coming from the angry faces around me dissolved into a meaningless lake of sound.

  “Open up, now, devushka. Just a little swallow.” A sharp-tasting liquid was poured into my mouth, burning as it went down, and I coughed and choked. “There she is, now. She’s coming around.” Anxious faces peered down at me. They were faces I didn’t know.

  “Where’s Helga?” I pushed away the spoon being held to my mouth. “I want my nurse.”

  “Maybe we should take her to the hospital after all.”

  “The note says to keep her here. No authorities.”

  My head felt heavy and I was burning up beneath a smothering layer of covers. I tried to push them off and sit up, but soft hands urged me down and covered me again.

  “Lie still, devushka. You need to rest.” An ice-cold cloth was laid against my forehead, and I tried to pull it off.

  “Leave me alone, Maia!” Two years younger than Maia, I’d shared a room with her since infancy, and she was forever playing tricks on me.

  “Stop fussing.” Maia placed the cloth on my forehead again and held my hand away as I tried to remove it. “You’re very ill.”

  I opened my eyes and tried to focus, though my lids felt as though they were on fire. It wasn’t Maia’s clover honey curls but my sister Ola’s darker ones, like rich amber, that hovered over me. I closed my eyes again as her face began to blur.

  “Ola,” I murmured. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. I had a terrible dream.”

  …

  The four of us tumbled in the snow at the foot of our mountain at Aravoth, laughing as our skirts tangled together. The silver trays we’d stolen from the kitchen of the hunting lodge had
slipped from beneath us as we slid down the embankment; only Tatia had managed to hold onto hers, but she was sliding on her stomach behind it as it carried her down. Maia threw a snowball at Tatia, who was resting against Ola’s stomach, and it struck her square in the face. With a shriek, Tatia scrambled over Ola to put snow down Maia’s coat into her bodice.

  “It wasn’t me!” Maia laughed as she squirmed away. “Nazkia did it!”

  Tatia’s carefully pinned hair, clumped with snow, hung over her face beneath her fur cap as she scrambled back up the hill to me. I tried to climb away, my fur muff hanging from one hand, but Ola pinned me down and held me while Tatia filled my bodice with icy snow and I shrieked at the cold. Maia was laughing in delight at a safe distance below us.

  “You’d better not sleep tonight, Maianka!” I squealed from beneath my grinning tormentors.

  Ola’s cap had fallen off and tumbled toward Maia, and Maia grabbed it and filled it with snow, clambering up the hill to pull it down over Ola’s ears.

  “You devil!” Ola shrieked and let go of me, and I took advantage of the opportunity to pull her down into the bank of snow by the knees, with my arms about her skirts. Tatia happily switched to tormenting Ola, and the three of us packed her bodice while she struggled, laughing too hard to put up a good fight. “Stop!” she gasped. “I’m a married woman. Show some respect!” She squealed helplessly as Tatia began to tickle her.

  Tatia was merciless. “I’m sure Kae will warm you up back at the lodge, little missus!”

  “No doubt.” Laughing, Ola tried to scramble away while Maia and I grabbed for her feet. “You’d have to bury him in the snow to cool his blood.”

  “Virginal ears!” I cried in mock dismay, hands to the sides of my head.

  “Poor little Nazkia!” Maia abandoned Ola to pounce on me. “You mustn’t speak of hot blood in front of the baby, Ola! She’s never been kissed!”

  “Quick, cool her down!” cried Tatia. “Before she has a fit!” They fell on me once more, and I struggled in vain while my older sisters covered me in a pyramid of snowballs, drenching me to the core as the flakes began to fall on us once more.