Rosa and the Veil of Gold

by Kim Wilkins

  “I know, I saw.”

  “The separation of spirit and flesh weakens her. We haven’t been able to stop it yet. I sometimes think we never will. I sometimes think she’ll die.”

  Rosa thought about all the photos of Nikita in Elizavetta’s room, and wondered what Ilya made of them. “How long have you been married?”

  “Nearly a year.” He was staring into his coffee cup. Rosa sensed he left much unsaid, but she reminded herself to be patient, that intense curiosity would have him running out the door in twenty seconds.

  “Ilya!” Anatoly’s voice, outside, near the hives.

  Ilya jumped from his chair. “I have to go.”

  Rosa pushed him back down. “Don’t be silly. He’ll see you if you leave now.” She climbed onto the bed and opened the window. Anatoly was in a long overcoat, calling for Ilya by the hives. The evening had deepened, and he was nearly all in shadow.

  “Anatoly!” she called. “Have you lost something?”

  He turned, peered towards her. “Someone, Rosa. Have you seen Ilya?”

  “No,” she said guilelessly. “Maybe he’s gone for a walk in the woods.”

  Anatoly hesitated a moment, and she could feel the needling pressure of his mind seeking out hers, scouring it for the truth. But nobody kept secrets better than Rosa. “You’re right,” he said. “He likes to walk in the woods on windy nights.”

  He turned and set off around the garden. Rosa closed the window.

  Ilya smiled at her nervously. “You’re not afraid of him.”

  Rosa thought about Anatoly as she’d just seen him outside, all in black, a bear of a man with shadowy eyes and a grizzled beard. “No. Not really.”

  “It’s good for me to see somebody who isn’t afraid of him. Luda is afraid of him. Makhar is afraid of him. I see that you are not and it gives me heart.”

  “He hasn’t done anything to frighten me.” She settled on the bed, arranging her pillow behind her back and stretching out her legs, and wondered if this was true. Today, when he’d opened her mail, that had frightened her. The ease, the confidence with which he violated her simple right to privacy. Such a small act, really, but so telling. “What has he done to frighten you?”

  Ilya shrugged and didn’t say anything further. Although he seemed uncomfortable, he wasn’t hurrying to run away. He stared into the middle distance, occasionally sipping his coffee. Rosa found herself admiring his profile, imagining her fingers slipping around the back of his warm neck and up into his hair. What beautiful hands he had: long, tanned fingers, strong and square.

  “We can look after each other,” she said. “You and me.”

  “That would be nice,” he said. “This family is…claustrophobic. I’m glad you came.” He wouldn’t meet her eye, and she felt a keen stab of desire for him. She wanted to climb across his lap and crush his mouth with hers.

  “How did you meet Elizavetta?” she asked instead, crossing her ankles demurely.

  “I met Anatoly first. He knew my father. He needed somebody to help with the last summer harvest and my father owed him money. A deal was struck. If I came to work for three months, Anatoly would cancel my father’s debt.” The wind rattled over the roof and Ilya’s eyes went up, his shoulders tensed.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just wind. Go on.”

  “The moment I saw Elizavetta I knew I didn’t want to return to my own family,” he said. Then he chuckled. “It was already getting very crowded. I have six brothers.”

  “Are you the eldest?”

  “The youngest. None of them have left home. I blame my mother’s cooking.”

  Rosa leaned forward. “You’re the seventh son?”

  “Of a seventh son, actually,” he said, smiling self-consciously. “I know. I’m supposed to be—”

  “Overflowing with magic,” she finished for him. “Yet you say you’ve never felt anything?”

  “No.”

  “It may be latent. You may need to grow it.”

  “Anatoly expressed the same astonishment, but he tested me and said there’s definitely nothing there.” He waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t mind. I don’t want such a burden.”

  Rosa turned this over in her head.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I met Elizavetta and we fell madly in love and were married very soon after.”

  “Madly in love,” Rosa said, keeping the scepticism out of her voice. “That’s nice. You’re still madly in love?”

  “Yes,” he said quickly, then, “I mean…”

  Rosa let the silence sit for a moment, then said, “What do you mean?”

  “Her illness has taken its toll. We aren’t close. We haven’t…we don’t share a marital bed.”

  “And she has eleven pictures of Nikita on her dresser,” Rosa added. “Don’t forget that.”

  “I never expected to replace Nikita,” he said with a downward turn of his mouth. “She feels a lot of guilt over his death.”

  “Then it was her fault?”

  A long pause. Rosa waited it out. If he answered, then a new intimacy would have been forged between them.

  It was worth waiting for. “She shot him accidentally,” he said. “Nikita was hiding in the woods—sulking by all accounts—and Anatoly handed her the gun while he tied his shoelace. The safety catch was off, she bumped her elbow, the bullet left the barrel. Sixteen feet away, Nikita was sitting behind a tree. The bullet passed through a knothole, cracked through the other side and lodged in his brain. He died on the way back to the farm.”

  Ilya knotted his right hand into his left and sent his gaze towards the window. Did he regret telling her the family secret? It was impossible to tell.

  Rosa slid off the bed. “I might put the heater on,” she said. “Will you stay for another coffee?”

  “I haven’t finished this one.”

  She found the heater and plugged it in. “It’s because I can’t smoke. I drink coffee instead. Nine or ten cups a day.”

  “How do you sleep at night?”

  “That certainly hasn’t been a problem,” she said, switching the kettle on again. “I sleep like the dead. I wake up tired.”

  “I do too,” he said. “I think maybe it’s the quiet out here, so far from the traffic.”

  Rosa finished making her coffee then sat on the floor in front of the heater, her feet stretched towards the bars. “I don’t know if I trust Anatoly,” she said.

  “I think he’s worth trusting.”

  “Do you think he liked Nikita?”

  “I know he didn’t. Elizavetta told me that they fought all the time.”

  “I don’t trust him,” she muttered again, but Ilya didn’t respond.

  The wind picked up outside, and Ilya pulled himself to his feet. “I’m going out to the woods.”

  “It will do you no good. If Anatoly can’t get rid of him—”

  “I feel better if I do something. Besides, Anatoly is looking for me.”

  She saw him to the door, taking his arm gently just before he left. “Ilya,” she said, dropping her voice to a whisper, “you say you’ve been married to Elizavetta a year. How long since you’ve shared a bed?”

  His eyes met hers, and he looked bewildered and ashamed. “I’ve…we haven’t…” He shook his head and peeled her hand from his arm. “That’s not a question to ask me, Rosa,” he said. “I have to go.”

  She closed the door after him regretfully. She had rather hoped to peel all his clothes off him and tumble him into her bed. Her desire for him grew stronger the more annoyed she became with Anatoly. A few hot bouts of lovemaking would certainly make being stuck at the farm more bearable. Instead, she returned to the heater, picking up her package. It was long and flat and silent, where she had been expecting a rattling box of objects. She tore off the paper and found inside three exercise books and a note from Vasily.

  Rosa, this is all I could find. I hope it holds what you’re looking for, but I can’t understand a word of it. V.

  Rosa put
the letter aside and opened the first book, immediately seeing what Vasily meant. The letters were familiar, but it was another language. Not a single word jumped out at her as being recognisable.

  “Damn,” she said, quickly flicking through the other books. They were all equally useless to her. Her mother had written everything in a secret code.

  Rosa had the car keys in her pocket as she left her guesthouse later that night, but still didn’t know whether she intended to use them. Her nerves and thoughts were ringing and jangling against each other, and she didn’t yet want to succumb to sleep. Ilya’s visit had made her feel many things, mostly desire and suspicion. So, as she left to have a cigarette in the woods, she still wasn’t sure why she was going to the car. Perhaps to hide it, to try her magic once again. Perhaps to drive it, to leave the Chenchikovs behind.

  Two steps outside the gate, and a shadow on the edge of her vision caught her attention. Anatoly himself. He sat with his back against the brick wall, gazing into the woods. He hadn’t seen Rosa yet, and in this unguarded instant, she saw all the weight of his despair sitting heavily on his shoulders.

  She shrank back into the shadows, watching him for a few moments. It wasn’t possible for her to pass without him seeing her, yet she didn’t want to return to her guesthouse. Anatoly was unaware of her presence. Rosa’s gaze divested him of his usual power. Here was a sad fat man, with a bulbous nose and a straggly beard. Not the spark-eyed magic creature she normally saw.

  Boldly, she approached him. “Anatoly,” she called.

  He started, then when he recognised Rosa in the dark, he gathered himself, ran a hand through his beard, but made no move to stand up. “What are you doing out here?” he said sternly. “You should stay in your guesthouse, you should—”

  “I’m having a cigarette and, anyway, there are no secrets now.” She crouched next to him and lifted his left hand, which was lacerated and still bleeding from the zagovor. “I know what you’re doing out here. I’ve already seen what you don’t want me to see.” Gently, she traced her fingertip through the blood. A man never seemed more alive than when he bled, when it was made evident that he was not a machine of moulded parts.

  The wind rose in the trees and whipped her hair across her face. He sucked in his breath in response to her touch. “I would do anything to make my daughter well again,” he said softly.

  She dropped his hand, and sucked the blood off her fingers. It fizzed like sherbet on her tongue. “I know that,” she said. “I believe it.”

  Long seconds passed as they gazed at each other. Shadows crawled across his skin as the trees moved around them.

  “I need a cigarette,” she said, rising.

  “Rosa, don’t be out too late. It isn’t safe. You have lessons with Makhar in the morning.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” she called. Her lighter flared into life and she exhaled into the sky. “I’m the least of your problems.”

  As she headed into the woods, she thought about Anatoly. A man of power and magic, a man with the ability to fulfil his will through force. How little trouble it would be for such a man to hand his daughter a loaded gun, then make certain the trigger jumped. How little trouble to find another, more suitable, son-in-law and then drain him of his precious latent magic. More than that: how little trouble for him to convince Rosa he was helping her, and then siphon off her magic to help only himself.

  Days were turning to weeks, and soon it would be a month. Rosa knew he was never going to let her cross the veil.

  So, was she going to run away? Back to St Petersburg, to Uncle Vasily? She wouldn’t give up on Daniel, of course. She would find somebody else to help, somebody who danced obediently to the tune of Vasily’s money. But how long to find that person? Anatoly had said there were only twenty-seven like him left in Russia. And how long, if ever, before Rosa could feel magic in her joints again?

  Her cigarette was a tiny orange beacon in the dark. The keys rattled in her pocket and she had nearly decided by the time she arrived in the section of the woods where she had left the car. Then the decision was taken from her hands.

  The car was nowhere to be seen.

  “Ah, Anatoly,” she said under her breath. Now she understood his casualness with her about hiding the vehicle. He had wanted to come out here and do it himself, so that Rosa couldn’t find it. So that Rosa couldn’t leave.

  She turned. The wind whipped her hair and sent her scarf flapping behind, and a clutching sensation possessed her lungs, as though a trap was being closed on her.

  SIXTEEN

  Are we not all trapped, though, Rosa? Is not every sentient being, from the meanest beetle to the humblest child, to the wealthiest Mir folk, to the most powerful of Skazki magicians—me, Papa Grigory, who can roam freely in the minds of others and cannot die—are we not all caught in a trap of our own making? All of us desire. Desire drives us to satisfy ourselves. And our satisfaction is often found in a snare of conditions and obligations.

  Rosa will come. Spend no moment of your concern on her. She will come. I expect her in little more than a week. I look forward to her arrival very much. I still have some hope that her friends will lose themselves and the bear without her assistance, but they have been shrewd and fortunate so far. Leaving their fate to chance would be foolish. I need Rosa, and Rosa needs me. I will tell you something you may not have guessed: since the moment that bear re-entered our world, I have not rested easy.

  Of course, I would never let Totchka sense my concerns. I like her world to be made of sunlight and smiles. She sleeps now. It is late at night and I find I don’t need as much sleep as I grow older. We share a lovely bedtime ritual: when she grows sleepy, I lie next to her on the bed and stroke her dark hair and sing to her. She watches me and watches me, holding her eyes open as long as she can, holding onto wakefulness and togetherness as though they are the only two things in all existence which matter. Then sleep catches her, her eyelids flutter, and she slips away.

  Should I glance over at her now, I would see her soft cheek and the fall of her dark hair. They are the only things exposed to the firelight. The rest is safely under blankets, burrowed among pillows. Her breathing is slow and soft; the fire crackles gently and I rub my tired knuckles. The moon is hiding behind clouds tonight. It has rained for days out there, but we are warm and dry in here. I am almost perfectly content. The bear is the only thing which troubles me.

  Are you surprised? Did you think I felt fondly towards the bear because of our long association?

  Then you must understand: it is not the bear I fear. It is what’s inside her. Does that puzzle you? Good. Tales should be full of puzzles.

  I promised you more of her stories. The Golden Bear has seen all the intrigues of history, ours and Mir’s, and how those histories have knotted and slipped and knotted again.

  Imagine for a moment that you share some of her memories. What moments would burn brightest? It is hard to say because images and music, scents and sensations, wash over her constantly, entwined with the endless noise of human voices as they love, argue, grieve and plot against each other. The years come and go. She sits and she watches the to and fro of time, and sometimes she sleeps for long years because the frantic procession of Mir folk tires her.

  Then, one day, she wakes and wonders why she has woken.

  It’s the bells.

  Ringing out into the cold sky, the clang and chime of bells, some warm and resonant, others sharp and musical. Intricate patterns and rhythms pealing over the snow-laden Cathedral Square and, even further beyond the Kremlin, out over the timbered streets of Moscow and down the hill to the river.

  The bear listens and knows that something wonderful must be happening. From her shadowy corner in the Terem Palace’s Cross Chamber she ranges out in her mind’s eye and follows the bells all the way to the Cathedral of the Assumption. Solemn men sing as the bells ring in a cacophony of importance and the crisp frosty sky shivers. Inside, the dark spaces are lit by dazzling wheels of candles str
ung up high which glint off the gilded doors and illuminate the painted saints on the columns and walls. Deep mullioned windows let in a little of the grey daylight. On a carved wooden throne at the centre of it all, wearing a fur-and-gold cap encrusted with gems, is Russia’s new Tsar, Ivan the Fourth.

  Despite the solemnity of the ritual, the mood in the crowded cathedral is one of joy and relief. The grand-duke’s son, now seventeen, is old enough to be crowned and take over the rule of Russia in his own right. The bear surveys the crowd, sees the bearded faces of the noblemen—the boyars—who surround the throne. Two faces command the bear’s attention.

  The new Tsar, Ivan, who is tall and spare, with long hands and a thin pointed beard, brows arched like a bat’s wings, and a long hooked nose. He is very young, but has the bearing of a man much older. The bear has seen him before, of course. They live together at the palace. Today, dressed in his official robes and wearing the Crown of Monomakh, Ivan looks every inch the grand Tsar, the autocrat, the man who will lead his people with a hard hand and will one day be called Ivan the Terrible, Ivan the Awesome, Ivan the Purifying Storm. The bear wonders if Ivan will now relinquish his childhood pleasures, and stop throwing dogs from his third-floor window or unleashing his ungovernable temper on his servants.

  The other face which is conspicuous to the bear is one that she has not seen for many years, but one she is not surprised to recognise. The Secret Ambassador, dressed like the other boyars in his stiff brocade kaftan, watches proceedings with a passive gaze. He is thinking about the separation of the worlds, and how the two might be once again tied.

  Since Olga ordered Skazki to withdraw, things have changed. The Church has a clawhold in the minds of Russian people and many of the old ways have been diluted or abolished. Yet life in this harsh land is more suited to pagan thought, so most folk still hold onto scraps of the old rituals and beliefs. The Secret Ambassador is anxious to ensure that the old ways don’t slip from their minds completely. Some of the boyars have been talking about Ivan’s intention to marry very soon. He has called for every virgin of marriageable age in Moscow to be brought before him for consideration. The Secret Ambassador sees in this an opportunity to reunite Mir and Skazki, for Skazki blood to be intertwined with the rulers of Russia.