by Kim Wilkins
“Stories don’t command coin.”
“Coin doesn’t command happiness.”
Olga laughs darkly. “Nothing commands happiness. Happiness comes willingly to some, and avoids others as she pleases. I have rarely met her.”
Olga stands and returns to the bed, where she nurses the Golden Bear against her bosom. “You have a sweet face,” she says to the bear.
The Secret Ambassador smiles. The face is Olga’s own, although she hasn’t recognised it. “Perhaps you should keep her,” he says.
“No, no,” Olga says. “Though I am glad to have her as my travelling companion.” The rain eases outside and Olga swings her legs over the edge of the bed so that her bare feet can press against the stove. “You should go now, Secret Ambassador. But I hope to see you on my return.”
“You do?”
She waves him away. “Don’t ask for promises of love. I won’t give them.”
The Secret Ambassador leaves, and the bear finds herself happily tucked in the bed of her new mistress.
The Golden Bear is sad to discover that she will be packed away for the long journey to Constantinople. She has enjoyed seeing things and learning things. But she soon realises that being packed away is no impediment; she can still see and hear things, just by closing her eyes. The grand sweep of the Dnieper River, which rolls and tumbles the boat beneath her, is as visible as though she were a crow flying above it. If she thinks hard, she can feel what Olga is feeling, or sometimes hear her thoughts. In fact, as the journey progresses, the bear finds that any mind is open to her and she delights in popping in and out of people’s heads: the merchants, the lesser princesses, the slaves shackled at the ankles.
I can know anything, she thinks, and she knows why the Secret Ambassador carved her mould with a smile. To know anything is a wonderful enchantment.
Olga comes for her on the evening before they are due to leave the boat, finally in safer waters.
“Come, little bear,” Olga says, unwrapping the bear and tucking her under her arm. “Tomorrow you will meet your new master, the Emperor Konstantin.”
Olga sleeps poorly that night, tossing and turning in her narrow bed. She is cold, she is worried. She dreams of little Sviatoslav, home in Kiev, and imagines a monster shaped of attenuated bones and cold shadows slithering across the floor to his bed. Poverty, hunger, helplessness surround her.
On waking, Olga dresses in her finest robes. A roll of gold silk constrains her wild hair. A flame-coloured chiton over a rich green tunic. Shoes of gilded kid. Her rarest fur, shimmering dark brown.
The lesser princesses dance attendance, cooing about her beauty and her grace. She narrows her eyes and draws her lips down in disdain. Any one of these little whores would steal her son from her; she would like to put them all to the sword. She wishes she could have brought her trusted domovoi, but it would be ill luck indeed to take the magic from the fireplace. The gangplank is lowered and the thump shudders through the boat.
Olga emerges from her dark chamber into a perfect warm morning. The sun is far away and high, the blue sky makes her eyes ache. Seabirds circle and a mist of insects catch the sun on their wings. Below her is the golden gate of Byzantium. Two tall pillars of marble support the magnificent arch. A delegation from the emperor awaits them. She takes a deep breath and strides towards land.
The Golden Bear rests in a carved box, but in her magical eyes she can see the narrow paved streets of Constantinople, the mighty sea walls, the monuments and columns. The bear sees a building, three times as tall as Olga’s palace, and knows that Olga is feeling more and more like the barbarian princess she loathes to imagine. The city is simply splendid. Wealth oozes from every intricately sculpted structure, from every merchant who passes in colourful silks, from the women with expensively perfumed hair who stare Olga down, expressing distaste for the stale smell of the fur she wears.
But more embarrassment awaits Olga. The small guard have stopped and now their commander (even he is dressed better than Olga’s interpreters) is ushering Olga and her forty-three travelling companions into a building he calls the Magnaura, just north of the Great Palace.
Up to the terrace they walk, then through the arch into the huge apsed hall.
Olga’s eyes grow as big as the moon.
The hall itself is marbled and tiled with mosaics in colours Olga has only imagined. Gold streaks every surface and one entire wall is decorated with silver dirhams. In Kiev, men would kill each other for a handful of these coins.
Still more. The hall is dotted with gilded trees and in each tree mechanical birds with rare gems for eyes sing perfect tunes. Olga glances around her. Every member of her retinue is agog; the display of grandeur overwhelms them. And Olga knows she must keep her head.
She is led to another arch. Olga takes a deep breath and strides into the reception room.
This room is bright, lit by a window in the ceiling. The walls are bare, to draw attention to the throne in the centre. Up six steps, the throne is guarded by gilded mechanical lions. Konstantin sits, like a god, clothed in dazzling robes. Olga refuses to allow the display of gold and precious gems to crush her. The lesser princesses have already prostrated themselves on the cold floor, along with the merchants, the interpreters, the men of state.
But Olga stands firm, and offers Konstantin only a proud nod. In painstakingly practised Greek, she says, “It is my pleasure to meet you, Emperor.”
A lesser princess hurriedly rises and tries to hand the box with the Golden Bear to Olga. But Olga knocks her back, mutters, “Not now.” She knows she can’t present Konstantin with an odd, uneven bear moulded by magicians.
Konstantin the Purple-Born catches Olga’s gaze. The bear knows that he thinks Olga is, indeed, a barbarian princess. But he is intrigued by her dignity and her hard beauty.
“The pleasure is mine, Princess of the Rus,” he responds. He climbs to his feet, and everybody in the room throws themselves once again on the floor. Except for Olga.
Konstantin smiles at her. Olga smiles back.
By the second day, Olga is invited to dine at Konstantin’s table and to stay in the Grand Palace, a dazzling dream of marble and riches. Olga wonders if she will ever grow used to the wealth which weighs down every surface, every cup and plate. Even the food is rich, leaving Olga night after night with stomach cramps and foul gas.
Olga does not grow fond of Konstantin, though he is clearly growing fond of her. He is a cold man, with fingers like fish fillets and an overly wet mouth. His robes are so stiff that he can barely move, and much of his time and energy is taken up with the religious observances and state duties which have made him boring.
Still, Olga is fascinated by the churches in this city. They are almost as rich as the Grand Palace, with gold cupolas and towering turrets. Most of her mental energy is spent on trying to estimate Konstantin’s wealth, and how she most easily may access it.
At dessert on the fourth night, Konstantin dismisses his ministers and Olga hers. Behind their shoulders sits only one interpreter. The dining hall echoes with the sound of their solitary plates and the unvoiced questions which Konstantin intends to put to her. Food smells hang moist in the air, and Olga cannot bring herself to take even a bite of the layered pastry in front of her.
“What troubles you, Princess Olga?” Konstantin asks, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Are you unwell?”
“I am well enough,” she says, “but I think the dessert has defeated me.”
“Are you so easily defeated?”
Olga carefully withdraws all heat and irritation from her voice. “No, of course not.”
“We have spent days now in negotiation, but I feel I haven’t had a moment to talk with you alone.”
Olga glances around at the interpreter and has to smile. “This is alone?”
“You can be trusted to keep secrets, can’t you?” Konstantin says to the interpreter, a slight man with a patchy beard. He nods. “You see,” Konstantin says, returnin
g his attention to Olga. “We are alone.”
Olga gazes towards the kitchen.
“We could talk about something other than trade,” Konstantin suggests. “Is there anything you would like to know about me? About my empire?”
Olga considers this carefully, and decides that this intimate moment he has fashioned allows her some informality. “Yes, there is,” she says. “I would like to know why you are so wealthy and I am not.”
Konstantin laughs. “That is simple. We worship Christ, and you worship barbarian demons.”
Olga is startled. She has never thought to make this connection. “You mean your gods provide you with all these riches?”
“Our God. There is only one.”
The world stops for a moment as Olga is engulfed in this thought. What had the Secret Ambassador ever given her but a bent bear and a thorough plumbing? No jewels, no gilded birds, no necklaces of silver coins. It is only a little thing to change allegiance, surely. The benefit to her people would be immeasurable. Especially to her son. Those dreamed monsters would finally be driven away.
“Olga,” Konstantin says, his voice dropping to an intimate murmur as he slips into her own language. “Olga, you are beautiful.”
She is distracted. Almost doesn’t hear.
“Olga, I have something important to ask of you,” he says.
Olga fixes him with her hard eyes. “The answer is yes,” she says.
“Yes?”
“Yes, I will convert to Christ.”
Within two weeks, Konstantin baptises Olga himself and proclaims himself her godfather. Until the moment that she is plunged under the water at the mouth of the river, she refuses to talk to Konstantin at all, calling herself unclean and unworthy of his compliments. It is, of course, a strategy. Olga can read Konstantin’s hot passion for her, and wants to hold him off as long as possible. After the baptism, as she sits still wet and shivering on the riverbank in the late afternoon sun, Konstantin outlines to her all of her responsibilities as a Christian woman. She is only half-listening, wondering when the gold and gems will start to be provided by her new god.
“Princess Olga,” he says, at the very last, “there is one more thing that must be finalised between us.”
Olga swallows hard. Konstantin dismisses the richly-robed attendants and takes her hand. In faltering tones, in Olga’s tongue, he says, “I would like you to marry me.”
Marry him? And be Empress of Byzantium? Wealth without measure, and she but a chattel at his disposal. Once Christ started pouring the wealth onto her in Kiev, she wouldn’t need him. She could rule in her own right, at least until Sviatoslav came to the throne. And then her son would be a powerful prince of Kiev, not a half-brother to the next emperor, his own land swallowed into the insatiable gullet of Byzantium.
Olga smiles shyly and gestures for her interpreter to come forward. She watches Konstantin’s face fall as the interpreter delivers her answer. “You have just baptised me and proclaimed yourself my godfather. A Christian woman cannot marry her own father.”
Konstantin’s eyebrows shoot up, and for a moment Olga feels sorry for him. Then she flicks her wet hair over her shoulder and says, “I am cold. I will return to my chamber, and tomorrow we will sail home to Kiev.”
The bear does not yet understand how all these events will impact on her, but finds herself growing afraid while resting in her still-unopened box. The journey home is harsh. The boat nearly sinks in the Black Sea, and the portage route around the rapids is muddy and claims the lives of two men. Olga sits gloomily in her cabin, repressing the urge to perform the sacrifices she would ordinarily have ordered to make their way safe. Instead, she prays to Christ for safety, and for some gold to make into a throne, and for a marble palace. She occasionally peers out of her cabin to swear at the crew for making the journey so miserable and hazardous.
Perhaps this is what the bear is afraid of: Olga has changed. Olga once loved her and thought she had a sweet face, but Olga hasn’t thought of the bear once since her conversion, and the bear worries that she is to become discarded junk with no warm room to sit in.
On Olga’s return, she sleeps a troubled sleep for three nights. On the fourth day, the Secret Ambassador arrives. Olga is not in her chamber when he comes knocking. He finds her instead in the cold state room, sitting on a long bench under the window. The room’s plain timbered walls are dark and high, and the princess’s face is drawn and shadowed.
“Olga?” he says, approaching her.
Olga turns her face away from his offered kiss, and dismisses her guards with a wave. When they are alone, Olga offers him the box.
The Secret Ambassador’s eyebrows twitch, but he shows no other sign of the unease he feels. He opens the box, the bear is inside.
“Take it back,” she says. “Everything has changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have a new god now. His name is Christ.”
A wave of frightened heat washes through the Secret Ambassador’s body. “You cannot have Christ as your god. You are tied to the native magic of your land.”
“I have clear instructions,” Olga responds, her voice cold. “I am to banish all the unclean demons.” She stands, thrusts the box into his hands and begins to pace.
“Who gave such instructions?”
“The Emperor Konstantin. My godfather.”
“Why do you let him command you?”
Olga stops and turns, her eyes blazing. “I command myself,” she shouts, “and I command you. You and your unholy host are a supplement to this land, not its rulers. Men rule here.”
“Olga, you are not a man,” he says, adopting a gentle chiding tone.
“I am as much a man as my husband ever was. As much a man as my son needs for his future to be secure.” Olga comes to rest near the window, and pushes open the shutter. A cold breeze licks in, making the flames in the hearth jump. Her voice remains steely. “Secret Ambassador, you know that I speak the truth. If I tell you to withdraw, you must withdraw.”
“And also the domovoi who keeps your fire burning? And the leshii who helps you fell trees to build houses? And the magic of Mother Moist Earth herself, who makes your crops grow?”
Olga is quiet a long time. The Secret Ambassador waits in the dim room. Finally, he places the box gently on the floor and approaches Olga, tries to slip his fingers over hers on the windowsill.
“Don’t,” she says roughly, pulling her hand away. “My new god will give me better than trees and dirt. He will give me gold and sapphires.”
Irritation overcomes his good sense. “You are a fool,” he spits, seizing her wrists roughly and shaking her.
“You are my servant!” she shouts. “Do as I say. Withdraw all your unclean magic from this land and never again cross this palace threshold.”
“And you will command this even though it may not be the wish of all the Rus. You believe they will stop making sacrifices and performing their native rituals?”
She stares him down. “The Rus are my people to rule.”
The Secret Ambassador takes a step away from her, lifting his hands in surrender. “So be it, Olga,” he says, and the cold note in his voice touches her spine and makes her tremble, “but you cannot banish us entirely. We are of this land as much as you. We will linger behind the veil of men’s thoughts. We will always be there.”
“I don’t care where you are, as long as you aren’t here.”
He raises a finger to hold in front of her eyes. “Tonight, then, in the cold before dawn. If you are awake, you will feel it, like a wave retreating on the sand. And remember, the further out the wave draws the mightier the crash when it returns.”
Olga does not answer as the Secret Ambassador strides towards the door.
“Take your filthy idol with you,” she says, indicating the bear in the box.
“No, it is yours, Olga. A reminder of what you have lost.” Then he is gone, and his footsteps echo down the wood and stone hall.
Olga
’s body relaxes forward, and she crouches on the floor next to the bear. The bear sees tears spill from Olga’s eyes as her shaking fingers come down to touch the bear gently on the belly.
“I loved him,” she says quietly, then takes a breath and glances towards the window. “Christ save us all,” she murmurs, and her voice is lost in the empty room.
Night falls and a cold hush mists across the land. Midnight follows on its heels and everything at the palace grows still. Olga can hear the whoosh and thud of the stove and nothing more. She does not sleep. She draws the furs close around her and stares into the dark room. The smell of pine and woodsmoke hangs in the stagnant air. The hours draw out: one, two, three…
And then it comes, a feeling like the waves withdrawing. If she listens closely, she can hear their whispered roar in her heart. Every pore on her skin shrinks, and a shiver runs across her. Something is moving, reluctant feet are leaving, a buzz of energy is dimming. She closes her eyes and the tide pulls out, tugging on her sinews and veins. The roar intensifies, rushing into her ears. She covers them with her hands, but the sound is in her head, not in the world.
At once, it stops. An emptiness infuses her, and all the muscles in her body are tensed against the tide’s return.
It does not come.
Olga waits a day, two, three. A week. Her body grows more and more tense.
The leshii is not at his cottage. The domovoi is not beneath the stove. But she still hears them sometimes: invisible footsteps in the woods, scuttling noises from her chamber.
Still she waits for the wave to crash back over her.
The world has lost some of its brightness and colour. Only children dream in the old colours. The people feel an emptiness, but it is an emptiness that may soon be filled by the new God.
Olga waits and always remains empty.
How does this tale end? It doesn’t. It hasn’t. Few people live forever, and Olga certainly didn’t. She was followed by her son, and his son, and so on. Christianity found eager hearts to inhabit; believers in the old magic lived alongside them.
