The Lives of Saints

by Leigh Bardugo

  SANKT MATTHEUS

  A beast was terrorizing a town on the edge of the permafrost. Children were snatched right before their mothers’ watching eyes, and men were slaughtered in the fields.

  Some said the beast was a bear, some a pack of wolves. Others claimed it was a tiger that had escaped a noblewoman’s menagerie. The town elders offered a reward and many local hunters went into the woods, but none returned with a pelt to show for their trouble, and many did not return at all.

  The townspeople wrote to the king to ask for aid, and he sent the best of his hunters, a giant of a man named Dag Ivar. Ivar and his men arrived in a great procession of coaches, swords, and crossbows. Dressed in heavy coats of wool and velvet and the pelts of beasts they’d slain before, they took up residence in the town’s finest home. Ivar and his men swore that they would catch the beast and send its skin back to the king before the winter was out.

  But their first venture into the woods was fruitless, as was the second, and the third. The traps they set remained untouched. They followed tracks that seemed to vanish and spent hours walking in circles.

  Ivar merely laughed. If the beast wished for a challenge, then a challenge it would have. The hunters dressed as women, since the beast had been known to attack women traveling alone. They tried luring the monster with the still-fresh bodies of its most recent victims. They painted the trees with pig blood.

  Days passed and no kill was made. Meanwhile, a young girl went to fetch eggs from the henhouse and was torn apart, pieces of her limbs found in a damp cloud of bloody chicken feathers. Three schoolchildren vanished on their way home—there one moment, then gone, leaving nothing behind but the echoes of their cries.

  Soon the townspeople were mocking the great hunter. They stood outside his lodgings, dressed in cheap imitations of his fancy furs and velvet cloak, howling in the early morning hours.

  Tired of their abuse, Dag Ivar petitioned the king to return home. These people were heathens and undeserving of the king’s attentions; surely the beast that preyed upon them was just punishment for their devilish ways. But the hunter did not receive a letter back. Instead, on the next mail coach, a holy man arrived, a monk known as Mattheus.

  “I will go talk to the wolves,” he told Dag Ivar, and into the woods he went.

  The hunter laughed heartily and promised to bury him with much ceremony—if they could find the remnants of his body. Mattheus had no fear. He knew the Saints went with him.

  When the monk had been in the woods less than an hour, he spotted a gray shape moving between the trees. The wolf stalked closer, moving in circles, her yellow eyes like sullen moons in the gathering dark. Mattheus did not shy away. He had packed his bag with meat and salt fish, and he offered the wolf food from his own hand.

  Now, had he not been so holy, who knows what might have happened. But because he was a good man and beloved by the Saints, the wolf approached and did not simply devour him where he stood. The creature sniffed the meat, cautious lest the food be poisoned, and at last, ate from Mattheus’ palm. They sat for awhile, Mattheus feeding the wolf and talking of events from his journey.

  After a fair time had passed, he said, “You have eaten many people from the town, and they wish to hunt you to your death.”

  “They may try,” said the wolf.

  “I fear the wolfhunter will set fire to the woods to salve his pride.”

  “What am I to do?” said the wolf. “My children must eat too.”

  Mattheus had no answer, so he did what he could. Every day, he went into the woods with prayers upon his lips and food in his hands, and every day he sat with the wolf and eventually her pups.

  The wolves were well fed and so the killings stopped. The townspeople could till their fields and their children played near the woods without fear.

  But the wolfhunter Dag Ivar could not walk down the street without people laughing at him. He ranted and raged, and when he could bear the snickers and jeers no longer, he strode to the center of the town square to denounce Mattheus. He claimed the holy man was in league with the beasts and had drawn them to the village in the first place.

  The good people of the village set the hem of the wolfhunter’s fine velvet coat alight and chased Dag Ivar down the road and out of town. Mattheus continued to visit with the pups until they were grown wolves themselves. They came when he called, lay at his feet, thumped their tails when he told them stories. Their pups were tame in the very same way, and took to guarding the doorways and hearths of the village their grandmother had once terrorized.

  These were the first dogs, and this is why Sankt Mattheus is the patron saint of those who love and care for animals.

  SANKT DIMITRI

  Dimitri was the son of a king but wished he had been born otherwise. From his early days, he wanted only to contemplate the works of the Saints and study scripture rather than statecraft.

  When the time came for him to assume his responsibilities as a future ruler and to find a bride, he begged his parents’ pardon and informed them that he had no intention of marrying or of ever assuming the throne. He would give his life over to piety and prayer.

  The king had no other heirs, so he and his wife tried every manner of persuasion—some kind, some cruel—to reach their son. Always, Dimitri met their arguments and attacks with the same calm refusal. He would not take a bride. He would not wear a crown. He would have the life he’d chosen and no other.

  At their wits’ end, the king and queen ordered their only son locked in a tower, vowing that he would be denied food until he agreed to wed and become the prince he was meant to be. Each day, the queen knocked on the door to the tower, and each day Dimitri told her that he would not come down. She offered him sweets and savories, dishes he’d loved as a child, meats roasted with spices from faraway lands, but Dimitri always replied that he needed no sustenance but faith.

  This went on for more than a year. The queen and king were certain the servants were sneaking their son food, so they ordered the door sealed up and guards placed beneath the tower window. No one came or went, and yet still Dimitri refused to emerge.

  At last the queen demanded that the tower be opened so that she could see her son. When the guards broke through the door, they found a skeleton sitting at Dimitri’s desk. It cheerfully waved to the queen and invited her to pray with him. The queen ran screaming from the tower, and the king and all their servants followed.

  Sankt Dimitri, patron saint of scholars, may be praying there still.

  SANKT GERASIM THE MISUNDERSTOOD

  At a young age, the monk Gerasim took a vow of silence, and he kept to it for over fifty years, never speaking a word. In his seventieth year, he bid his brother monks goodbye and set forth from the monastery where he had lived his entire life. He made a pilgrimage across the True Sea and saw many strange places and extraordinary things.

  When he returned, the duke who owned the land where the monastery stood ordered that Gerasim appear before him and tell the court of his journeys and the wonders he had beheld. But Gerasim would not break his vow.

  The duke and his wife were not pleased and called for the abbot, who begged Gerasim to speak, telling him that otherwise, the monastery might forfeit the goodwill of their landlord and the monks might lose their home. He promised that the Saints would forgive him for breaking his vow of silence.

  But Gerasim had not spoken since he was fifteen. He had been at the monastery many years before the abbot and had long since forgotten the use of his tongue. Still, he did not want his brothers to lose their home. He gestured for paints and brushes to be brought to him, and there, in the grand hall of the duke’s home, he painted a mural that stretched from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. It showed the prairies and ports of Novyi Zem, the crowded harbors of Kerch, the mists and stony shores of the Wandering Isle. It showed creatures of every shape and size, orchards blooming with unfamiliar fruit, men and women in all manner of dress and finery, and in the very last corner, the duke’s gracious p
alace. Gerasim painted himself and the abbot standing before the duke and duchess—both the nobleman and his beautiful wife dressed in gold.

  It was said the Saints guided his hand, for no single man could create a work so fine as that. The colors glowed as if lit by sunlight, and the clouds seemed to move across the painted sky.

  But in the end the duke and the duchess did not care for the way they had been depicted and ordered Gerasim executed. He died without ever speaking a word, not even to plead for his life.

  The monks were commanded to leave their home and the monastery was destroyed, its stones used to build a new wing of the duke’s palace. Ten years later, while the duke was hosting a lavish feast, an earthquake struck. Neither the old palace nor the new wing were harmed, not a stone shaken—except for the wall bearing Gerasim’s mural. It collapsed, killing the duke and the duchess and all their guests, burying them beneath the old monk’s wonders.

  Gerasim is known as the patron saint of artists.

  SANKTA ALINA OF THE FOLD

  A countess lost her husband in one of Ravka’s many wars. He’d been a high-ranking officer and should have remained far from the fighting, but emboldened by drink, he’d ridden his great white stallion along the front, taunting the enemy, looking for a fight. He’d gotten a bullet to the head instead. His horse had been found many miles from the battlefield, grazing beside a gentle stream. The nobleman was found there too, long since dead, his body hanging from the saddle, one foot still caught in a stirrup.

  The countess buried her husband, and as was fashionable in some circles, she decided to convert her summer home into an orphanage for the many children left parentless in times of war. The house was painted palest apricot, its roofline and windows edged in gold leaf. From its rose gardens, you could see the wide stretch of a lake and the other elegant homes dotting its shores and, in the distance, the thick forests of the lower Petrazoi.

  The orphans came to this magical place covered in dirt and lice, and those from the border towns arrived with ghosts in tow—memories of raids in the night, homes set to the torch, mothers and fathers gone suddenly silent and cold. The pretty house on the lake seemed an impossible haven full of good food and watched over by a beautiful new mother who wiped their faces clean and dressed them in new clothes.

  It was true that they were made to work for their keep, but that was to be expected. The countess had no servants, and so it was left to the children to scrub the floors, stoke the fires, tend the garden, mend the clothes, prepare and serve the meals. The children were to tell no one of the work they did.

  Once a week, the countess would dress her favorite orphans in matching apricot velvet and they would pile into the elegant boat she kept moored at her private dock. They would row out to the center of the lake, where all the residents of the elegant summer homes would gather to drink champagne and gossip. The children would sing when commanded to and tell of their wonderful, pampered lives when asked. “How lucky you are!” the noblewoman’s friends would say, and the children, desperate to please their new mother, would agree.

  But at night, huddled in their beds in the dormitory, they would whisper to each other, Be careful. Be careful. Or Mother will take you to the garden. Because when a child displeased her or sang off-key or complained that he was hungry, sometimes that child would vanish in the middle of the night.

  “Loving parents came to claim little Anya!” the countess said one day when Anya was gone from her bed. “Now do not make me wait for my bathwater.”

  Klava did not believe a word of it. In the night she’d woken, roused by some sound, and gone to the window. Amid the roses, she’d seen the countess with a lantern in hand, leading Anya down past the hedge maze to a door in the garden wall. This was the way with all the orphans who disappeared.

  The truth was that the countess had no money. She hadn’t the means to pay servants or keep up the house. She certainly didn’t have the money to feed a dozen orphans. And so, occasionally, she would sell one off to a wool merchant who traded frequently with Ketterdam in both legal and illegal goods. She didn’t know where the children went and she didn’t worry too much over it. The wool merchant seemed a kindly sort, and he paid well.

  Little Klava knew none of this. But she knew that loving parents did not skulk about like thieves to fetch their children under cover of darkness. And no one was ever permitted at the apricot house, so how would anybody have seen Anya or the other children and decided to claim them? She felt certain that whatever happened beyond the garden wall was not good.

  Summer dragged on and the sun beat down on the grounds of the apricot house, turning the roses brown. The noblewoman’s mood grew more prickly as she sweated through her gowns. She took the orphans out to the lake less and less. “You’re boring,” she told them. “Why would my friends want to see you again?”

  One morning, three new children arrived at the orphanage—two brothers and a sister, all with silvery blond hair and leaf green eyes. “How alike you are!” the countess exclaimed, happy for the first time in weeks. “Like little dolls. We must have you fitted for new clothes and take you out on the lake.”

  Klava watched as the countess turned her cold gaze on the other orphans, the boring, tiresome orphans who did nothing but eat her food and disappoint her. Klava knew it was time to run.

  That night, when the house was dark and quiet, Klava told the other orphans she intended to escape the noblewoman’s house.

  “Where will you go?” they asked. “What will you do?”

  “I’ll find work,” Klava replied. “I’ll live in the woods and eat berries, but I won’t wait for her to make me vanish. I only need to reach the other side of the forest. There’s an old farmhouse there and a widow who knew my parents. She will help me.”

  Klava urged them to come with her. She warned the pretty new children that the noblewoman would one day tire of them too. In the end, they decided they would all make their escape.

  Out the window the orphans went, one by one, dressed in their apricot velvet, bundled in the blankets from their beds. They went out to the lake and piled into the boat, and they rowed it across the water to the woods. But just as they were entering the trees, they heard shouts of alarm, the barking of dogs. The countess had discovered they were missing.

  The children ran, deeper and deeper into the woods, the night crowding in around them as branches snagged their clothing and thorns stung their skin. Klava pushed on, her heart pounding and tears in her eyes, sure there would be no mercy if they were caught, terrified that she had led her friends to their doom—for the darkness was impenetrable now and she knew she had lost her way. They would never reach the other side of the forest. They would never find the farmhouse and salvation.

  Through her panting breaths, she prayed to Sankta Alina, a defiant girl, an orphan herself, who had driven back the darkness of the Fold and united Ravka. “Alina the Bright,” she whispered, “daughter of Keramzin, slayer of monsters, save us.”

  No sound came, no gentle words of guidance, no chorus of trumpets to lead them on, but through the trees, the orphans saw a gleam of light—violet and blue, red, green, and gold: a rainbow in the night.

  Klava followed the arc of the rainbow through the darkness and on to the farmhouse, where the orphans pounded on the door and woke the old widow who lived there. She was startled but happy to see Klava, and she welcomed them all inside. She hid the orphans in the root cellar, and when the countess arrived with her dogs, the widow said she had seen no one the whole night and had been sleeping soundly. The countess was, of course, free to search the property.

  The hounds whined and the noblewoman ranted, but the orphans were nowhere to be found. The countess was forced to return to her empty summer home, and without free labor to maintain it, the place soon fell into disrepair, the rosebushes inching closer and closer until they had consumed the house entirely. It’s said the countess was trapped inside and became more thorns than woman.

  Some of the orphans
journeyed from the farmhouse to seek their fortunes elsewhere, but Klava stayed to help the widow work her fields, and each night she said prayers of thanks to Sankta Alina, patron saint of orphans and those with undiscovered gifts.

  THE STARLESS SAINT

  A young man lived in Novokribirsk, on the very border of the Shadow Fold. His name was Yuri, and his parents had sent him to live with his uncle, where he could work on the dry docks and make some kind of living. Truth be told, they were delighted their peculiar son had found employment. Yuri had taught himself to read and seemed happiest in communion with the texts he borrowed from anyone willing to lend him a book. While his parents thought it was all well and good to talk of myths and fables and tales from the past, none of that would pay the rent, and they feared Yuri would talk his way into a monastery, leaving his parents to the mercy of time and age.

  The work in Novokribirsk did not suit Yuri. He was tall enough, but narrow as a willow switch. His eyesight was poor and he had always been clumsy. The strong men who worked the dry docks—building and repairing sandskiffs, loading and unloading cargo—mocked Yuri’s fumbling ways, the wheezing of his narrow chest, the fogged lenses of his glasses.

  It might not have been so bad if Yuri’s uncle had some patience or kindness in him, but he was the worst of them. When Yuri dropped a box or lagged behind the other workers, his uncle would smack him hard across the back of his head. When Yuri’s mumbled prayers disturbed him, he’d stick out a foot and Yuri would go tumbling. At home, his uncle’s hands often became closed fists. He laughed when Yuri walked to church on Sundays and said the Saints had no interest in a man who could not work for a living.

  But Yuri knew the Saints were watching. Each morning and each night, he prayed to them and vowed to give his life over to their worship if they would only free him from his uncle’s cruelty and let him devote his life to study. During the long days working the docks, he whispered psalms and prayers to himself, and in Novokribirsk’s grand chapel, he endeavored to teach himself liturgical Ravkan. In the quiet of the church’s little library, he would lose himself in the old stories of the Saints, his fingers turning the pages in a kind of meditation, the shadows creeping over his shoulders.