Rosa and the Veil of Gold

by Kim Wilkins

  And so she does, with a lump of lead in her heart. Stasya’s fourth child, little Ivan, is doomed to be killed by his father. Her sixth child, Fedor, is half-witted. But the one between them, her only living daughter, Evdoxia, brings her great joy. She is healthy and bonny, and Stasya finds a measure of peace at last in her company. Long days are spent in the royal bedchamber, learning to read and write, singing songs, lining up the poppets as soldiers, or children or women at plough. Sometimes the four of them spill out into the palace for long hiding games, or to hear their voices echoing between the vast stone walls and up the narrow stairs. Always, always, Stasya is aware she must have more.

  She miscarries and miscarries and miscarries again, and it becomes clear that these three children are the only ones left. Ivan is not concerned: he has two male heirs, even if the youngest is simple. Ivan does not listen to Stasya’s warnings about little Ivan’s death at his hands. He laughs and says, “What nonsense! As if I would lift my hand against my own son.”

  The Secret Ambassador is less confident.

  “If you have seen the future, and little Ivan doesn’t survive to become Tsar, then we have to rely on Fedor who is a fool and cannot govern.”

  “What about Evdoxia?” Stasya says. “She would be clever and fair.”

  “She is a girl. The Russian people aren’t yet ready to see a woman rule them in her own right. No, you must have another.”

  Stasya is weary at the thought, too weary to pace the fifty feet of the bedchamber. She sits heavily. Her joints ache and she is troubled by constant stomach pains.

  All of this from agreeing to spend sixty short years in Mir. Had she known what bearing human children would do to her, she would have refused the Secret Ambassador’s request: that visit seems so long ago it may have belonged to someone else’s life. “I cannot have another child. My womb won’t quicken. I believe I am ill and I fear that I may die.”

  “You cannot die. You are a god.”

  “How certain of that are you?” she asks, standing and leaning against a pillar of the bed. A breeze creeps through the window, setting the tapestries dancing. “I suffer illness and pain. I grieve for all my dead babies…” She swallows a sob. “I am not invincible, Secret Ambassador. Another child would kill me. My husband no longer takes his pleasure with me for fear of it.”

  The Secret Ambassador shakes his head irritably. “Mokosha,” he says, calling her by her old name, “you are formed for fertility, for childbirth, for bearing fruit endlessly. I cannot believe what I hear.”

  “Then believe what you see, Koschey,” she snaps, turning her tired face up to him. “I have aged. I lose my beauty. Are these not signs enough that I am not now what I once was?”

  The bear feels a twinge of sadness, knowing that Stasya is right. She will pass on, as every other man, woman and child.

  Unmoved, however, the Secret Ambassador takes his leave. He is determined. There is one thing he knows about Mir society: if a wife won’t comply, a husband may be appealed to.

  Ivan is a roamer, often throwing on a workman’s cloak and disappearing into anonymous crowds away from the affairs of state. The Secret Ambassador suspects where he may find the Tsar today. A grand cathedral is being built across the square in celebration of his victory over the Tatars. Ivan is obsessed with it, and interferes with the painters and masons and architects until they despair of finishing anything unimpeded. The Secret Ambassador ducks under the low thresholds and arches, scanning the faces of the workmen who bustle in and out of shadow, in and out of hearing. Eventually, he finds Ivan standing at the bottom of a twisted staircase gazing at a half-finished fresco of saints. Around it, a byzantine floral pattern is painted on a white background. The smells of paint and earth are strong, and Ivan’s cloak is musty.

  “Ivan,” says the Secret Ambassador.

  Ivan turns. The angle of his neck has grown more pronounced with age, giving him a hunched, expectant look. “I should cut your throat for not addressing me as your Great Lord, Tsar and Grand Duke.”

  “I am not of your world. I am not your subject.”

  Ivan laughs. “My wife tells me you cannot die anyway. That you store your soul outside your body and make yourself invincible.” Ivan’s eyes are already returning to the fresco.

  “Do you believe your wife?”

  “She’s probably full of lies, most women are. But I don’t care what you are, for I am blessed by God and I know you cannot harm me.” His voice drops to a malevolent whisper. “Those who are afraid of witches are always those who fear that God will forsake them.”

  The Secret Ambassador waits a few moments, then Ivan says, “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you about Stasya.”

  Ivan takes his elbow in a sudden expansive mood. “Come with me. Let me show you how great God’s love for me is. For all of this,” he gestures around, “is my vision, and my doing.”

  The Secret Ambassador allows himself to be led up gloomy corridors which lead nowhere but to other corridors. The walls are close and the ceiling closer, for the Secret Ambassador is very tall. Somehow, this maze of passages divides and rejoins and sews all the towers and chambers together. The air is stale and the Secret Ambassador is put in mind of the kind of half-waking dream of enclosure which troubles him in the early mornings. Everywhere, masons and builders work in noisy groups, their tools and voices echoing, filling the chambers.

  “Is it not beautiful?” Ivan says, running his fingertips over the wall as a child might.

  “It is certainly very impressive.”

  “These corridors remind me of being born. Do you remember being born? Or are your kind hatched from opened graves?”

  “I have no recollection of my birth.”

  “I do. A bloody affair it was, lots of yelling.” Ivan stops in front of a deeply recessed window, flanked with decorated columns. A shaft of sun lights his hair, and the Secret Ambassador notices streaks of grey. “You know what I shall do the moment this cathedral is finished?”

  The Secret Ambassador smiles, holding his hands apart in a puzzled gesture. “I have no idea.”

  “I will jab a burning poker in the eyes of the architect,” Ivan says, feigning the action, “so he can never build another equal in magnificence.”

  The Secret Ambassador stifles a laugh, for he knows that Ivan is serious. “Your will is final. That is why I wish to speak to you.”

  “About Stasya?” Ivan says. “What is it?”

  “You must resume your duties as a husband,” the Secret Ambassador says, always mindful that Mir folk speak in coy euphemisms.

  “Why? Why do you care if I stick her, or my cousin’s cow?”

  “She must bear more children.”

  Ivan shakes his head. “No, Secret Ambassador. The babies are making her sick. Another one may kill her.”

  “It can’t. She isn’t being honest with you. She was created to bear children.”

  “I’d believe her lies before yours.” His voice dropped to a mutter, “Even if you are both sorcerers.”

  “She has foreseen little Ivan’s death. Fedor is an imbecile. Who will rule Russia once you are gone?”

  “Pah! Little Ivan is as robust as a summer pig. Her worries are only dreams fashioned from too much grieving. Even if he does die, my daughter Evdoxia may yet bear many fine children.”

  “Do you want all to rest on her shoulders?”

  Ivan slaps the Secret Ambassador’s arm with the back of his hand. “I won’t listen a moment longer.”

  “You must listen—”

  “Go! Go back to your land of violet mists. It is not your time any more. Leave us to be who we will become.”

  The Secret Ambassador withdraws through the maze. He has more reasons to worry than he has admitted to Ivan or Stasya. Among the boyars, at meetings and dinners and state gatherings where he insinuates himself, he hears talk of murder.

  Suspicion of Stasya grows apace. Fedor’s birth has thrown fuel on the flames, for who gives
birth to an imbecile child but an unclean mother? The Secret Ambassador doesn’t fear for Stasya: he still believes she is immortal and will withstand any poison they can give her. It is the children he fears for. Enemies at court who despise Stasya would see her children murdered. Every shred of his hopes to unite the worlds would perish with them.

  The Secret Ambassador has not yet told this to Stasya. He may not fear for her life, but he fears for her heart. She is not the woman she was. She has become fettered by love and by her fear of loss. There is nothing for it, though. He must tell her. He must ensure that at least one of her children survives.

  It is a warm July morning and Stasya plays with her three little ones, spread out in happy chaos across the pale hazelwood floor of the royal bedchamber. Their giggles and shouts continue as the Secret Ambassador takes their mother aside for his long explanation.

  As she listens, fear runs in Stasya’s veins because she knows he speaks the truth. She knows she has enemies who would see her dead, but she had never considered that they would wish her children dead too.

  “What do you suggest?” she asks. Her throat is constricted and her skin tingles.

  “Fedor is simple. Ivan would never let go little Ivan. But Evdoxia is healthy and may bear many children to carry on the line. We could send her away from the palace.”

  “Worse! Those who plot against me would perceive my reasons for the separation. They would know I suspected them. They would find her and kill her.”

  “We could change her name. Pretend she has perished like your other babies. The Zakharin family would take her in, just as they claimed you when you first crossed over to Mir.”

  Stasya gazes at her children on the other side of the room. The little girl lisps an admonition to her older brother; he has grasped one of her chubby arms too roughly. He drops her arm, laughing at her temper. Stasya shakes her head in wonder. “You cannot mean to take from me my only living daughter.”

  “You know she cannot stay here.”

  Stasya ponders this for days and weeks. All around her she sees enemies. Rumours and whispers about plots to poison her, to poison her children, her husband. She wants at least one of her babies to live, and not for the reasons the Secret Ambassador proffers. Stasya hardly cares any more whether the schism between Skazki and Mir is irreversible. She knows now she can never go back: that she is doomed to die like a mortal woman. No, she wishes only that one of her children may live a long and happy life, bear children of her own and grow old in the company of those she loves.

  So she agrees to the Secret Ambassador’s plan.

  There are many tears on the day the little girl is taken from her mother. Evdoxia, still too small to understand, is easily consoled when given the Golden Bear as a poppet. But as the Secret Ambassador throws on his cloak and prepares to leave with the child, Stasya closes an icy hand around his fingers.

  “You see now what you have asked of me, Secret Ambassador? I have given my freedom. I have given my child. Do not presume I will also give my life to your cause.”

  “Why do you persist with this nonsense? You are immortal.”

  “I fear I am all too mortal,” she replies, her hand slipping from his.

  For the first time, the Secret Ambassador feels a twinge. He doesn’t understand how it can be so, and yet Stasya does look frail. He lays over her image another drawn from his memory: of a robust coal-haired goddess in snakeskin and fur, and sees that too much has changed.

  “I will return,” he says urgently. “Once I have the child settled with her new family, I will return for you. Tell everyone the little girl has died. It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe you. We can go back to Skazki. You’ll be safe from their whispers and schemes.”

  Stasya takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Goodbye, little one,” she says, touching her daughter’s hair. “I will see you again soon. I presume I’m not forbidden to visit?” She raises an eyebrow at the Secret Ambassador.

  “Of course you may visit. As soon as she has settled in.”

  Evdoxia is renamed Xenia and placed in the charge of the Zakharin family, where she becomes the intended for their son, Fedya Nikitich Romanov. When the Secret Ambassador attempts to return to the Terem Palace, however, he finds his way barred. The Tsar has forbidden him any further audience with Stasya. He is to return to his own lands and not come again.

  The Secret Ambassador now fears for Stasya’s life. It is within his power to remove her soul from her body and prevent her death, but he is frustrated in every attempt to see her. He hears of her death by poisoning just a few months later.

  And so the Secret Ambassador learns a great lesson, but great lessons do not restore to us the ones we care about.

  I expect that you wonder how long I will hold you up with stories of past times. Patience now. It all signifies. When the end comes, I want you to know enough that you may understand me. Perhaps even to forgive the things that I have done.

  Let me summarise for you quickly.

  The Golden Bear stayed with the Romanov family and watched as Stasya’s daughter bore six children and lived to seventy-five years. One of those children, Mikhail, developed an obsessive fondness for the bear and toted it about with him everywhere, as though it whispered secrets to him which he could not live without.

  After Stasya’s death, Ivan became impossible: as though his wife had been a weight upon his temper. All his rages were set free, his suspicions became obsessions, and only cruel acts soothed his thundering madness. Within one generation, folk began to think fondly of Stasya and of her family. So when Ivan died, having killed one of his sons and leaving only a mindless fool behind, the boyars imagined the Romanovs as rightful heirs to the throne. Of course, the insistence of the Secret Ambassador, with his subtle magic and his wolfish eyes, played their part.

  This is how Mikhail, veins replete with his grandmother’s Skazki blood, became the father of a dynasty of Tsars who would rule in Mir for centuries. And thus the worlds became tied a little closer. Mir folk practised a dual faith: praying to their God, and indulging the old ways. Was this enough for the Secret Ambassador? No, for he was stubborn and steely, and longed for life the way it had been lived before Olga. He would stop at nothing to unite Mir and Skazki, even if it meant taking on Petr the Great.

  But that is a story for another time.

  Ah, I have so many stories to tell. I have often wondered if my body and my mind are made of stories, that nothing about me is real: I consist only of tales told over and over until they have solidified, grown warm and started to breathe.

  But, of course, stories are part of all of us, Skazki folk as well as Mir folk. Our tales are the very essence of self-knowledge; of how we remember ourselves. Rosa believes this, I am certain; she casts herself in a thousand vivid stories so that she doesn’t fade to grey and slip into shadow. Shall we return, now, to her tale?

  Or perhaps the tale of the man she loves? Yes, let us see how Daniel fares as he wanders among the folktales of his childhood, and sees no happy endings anywhere.

  SEVENTEEN

  “At least we won’t go thirsty.”

  Em scowled at Daniel. “Is that meant to be a joke?”

  “Just trying to see the bright side.”

  Em scanned the area. For two and a half days they had wandered in and out of woods and fields in a vaguely north-easterly direction. Although the sky had now cleared to silver-violet, the rain had left the ground sodden. Since this morning, they had been wading ankle-deep in marshland. She was hungry and tired, and this misery was compounded by the clouds of midges and mosquitoes which hung about her, tickling her nose and stinging her cheeks and flying suicidally into her mouth whenever she attempted to speak.

  Just a few days ago she had believed she might freeze to death. Now it was more certain that she would starve. Their bumbling attempts to catch a rabbit had resulted only in waking a tiny, owl-faced wood demon which chased them for two hours before giving up on them. He had probably decided they smelled
too bad to eat. Their furs were mouldy and rank, their bodies filmed in dried perspiration and mud.

  She glanced at Daniel. More than two weeks since they had left civilisation, and he’d only been able to grow a sparse beard. His cheeks and upper lip were still bare. Em found herself by turns irritated with him then overwhelmingly grateful he was here with her. At the moment she was irritated. His fear and despair had hardened into sarcastic cynicism.

  “Look, mushrooms!” she said, spying a ring of mushrooms a hundred feet ahead of them.

  “Or are they toadstools?” Daniel muttered.

  “Let’s look closer.”

  They approached the fairy ring and Em found herself thinking about mushrooms fried in butter, served next to fluffy scrambled eggs with crisp bacon. The mushrooms in front of her, however, were anaemic white and covered in fine yellow powder.

  “They look poisonous,” Daniel said.

  “Do you know for sure?”

  “No, I’m not an expert on wild mushrooms. Looks like you got lost with the wrong guy. Lucky you—”

  “Shh, Daniel. I liked your endless complaining better than this ridiculous sarcasm.”

  He drew down his eyebrows. “And I liked your poker face better than your bitch face.”

  Em turned to admonish him, but found herself giggling. “Did you just call me ‘bitch face’?”

  The corners of Daniel’s mouth turned up and he repressed a laugh. “Yes, I did.”

  She snorted a laugh, which set Daniel off, bending over in belly-aching laughter. She joined him, not really enjoying the hot-faced hysteria, but unable to stop it.

  When she’d calmed, Daniel was fiddling with the knot under his shirt that held the bear close to his body. “Something to eat, Em? Some mouldy bread?”

  “Is there much left?”

  The sling fell free and Daniel withdrew the golden bear. She wore only a narrow skirt of bread now, covered in mould and spattered with mud. Slowly they had chipped away at her protective outer layer until protecting her seemed a ridiculous thing to do when they were so dizzy with hunger they could barely walk.