The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

Vasya sank onto a bench, naked in the warmth, and allowed herself, for the first time, to cry. Biting her fist, she made no sound, but she wept until the spasm of shame and grief and horror had eased. Then, gathering herself, she raised her head to whisper to the listening air.

“Help me,” she said. “What should I do?”

She was not quite alone, for the air had an answer.

“Remember a promise, poor fool,” said Olga’s fat, frail bannik, in the hiss of water on stone. “Remember my prophecy. My days are numbered; perhaps this will be the last prophecy I ever make. Before the end of Maslenitsa it will all be decided.” He was fainter than the steam: only a strange stirring in the air marked his presence.

“What promise?” Vasya asked. “What will be decided?”

“Remember,” breathed the bannik, and then she was alone.

“Damn all chyerti anyway,” said Vasya, and closed her eyes.

Her bath went on for a long time. Vasya wished it might last forever, despite the soft, crude jokes of the guards, clearly audible outside. Every breath of the oven’s steam seemed to wash away more of the smell of horse and sweat: the smell of her hard-won freedom. When Vasya left her bath, she would be a maiden once more.

Finally Vasya, birth-naked and sweating, went into the antechamber to be doused with cold water, dried, salved, and dressed.

The shift and blouse and sarafan they found her smelled thickly of their previous owner, and they hung heavy from Vasya’s shoulders. In them she felt all the constraint she had shaken off.

Varvara plaited the girl’s hair with swift yanking hands. “Olga Vladimirova has enemies who would like nothing better than to see her in a convent, when her babe is born,” she growled at Vasya. “And what of the babe itself? Such shocks its lady mother has had since you came. Why could you not go quietly away again, before making a spectacle of yourself?”

“I know,” Vasya said. “I am sorry.”

“Sorry!” Varvara spat with uncharacteristic emotion. “Sorry, the maiden says. I give that”—she snapped her fingers—“for sorry, and the Grand Prince will give less, when he decides your fate.” She tied off Vasya’s plait with a scrap of green wool and said, “Follow me.”

They had prepared a chamber for her in the terem: dim and close, low-ceilinged, but warm, heated from below by the great stove in the workroom. Food waited for her there—bread and wine and soup. Olga’s kindness stung worse than anger had done.

Varvara left Vasya at the threshold. The last thing Vasya heard was the sound of the bolt sliding home, and her swift, light step as she walked away.

Vasya sank onto the cot, clenched both her fists, and refused to weep again. She didn’t deserve the solace of tears, not when she had caused her brother and sister such trouble. And your father, mocked a soft voice in her skull. Don’t forget him—that your defiance cost him his life. You are a curse to your family, Vasilisa Petrovna.

No, Vasya whispered back against that voice. That is not it, not it at all.

But it was hard to remember exactly what was true—there in that dim, airless room, wearing a stifling tent of a sarafan, with her sister’s frozen expression hanging before her eyes.

For their sake, Vasya thought, I must make it right.

But she could not see how.

OLGA’S VISITORS DEPARTED AS soon as the excitement was over. When they had all gone, the Princess of Serpukhov walked heavily down the steps to Vasya’s room.

“Speak,” Olga said, as soon as the door swung shut behind her. “Apologize. Tell me that you had no idea this would happen.”

Vasya had risen when her sister entered, but she said nothing.

“I did,” Olga went on. “I warned you—you and my fool of a brother. Do you realize what you have done, Vasya? Lied to the Grand Prince—dragged our brother in—you will be sent to a convent at best now; tried as a witch at worst, and I cannot prevent it. If Dmitrii Ivanovich decides I have had a hand in it, he will make Vladimir put me aside. They will put me in a convent, too, Vasya. They will take my children away.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

Vasya’s eyes, wide with horror, did not leave Olga’s face. “But—why would they send you to a convent, Olya?” she whispered.

Olga shaped her answer to punish her idiot sister. “If Dmitrii Ivanovich is angry enough and thinks I am complicit, he will. But I will not be taken from my children. I will denounce you first, Vasya, I swear it.”

“Olga,” said Vasya, bowing her shining head. “You would be right to. I am sorry. I am—so sorry.”

Brave and miserable—suddenly her sister was eight again, and Olga was watching her with exasperated pity while their father thrashed her, resignedly, for yet another foolishness.

“I am sorry, too,” Olga said then, and she was.

“Do what you must,” Vasya said. Her voice was hoarse as a raven’s. “I am guilty before you.”

OUTSIDE THE HOUSE OF the prince of Serpukhov, that day passed in a glorious exchange of rumors. The heave and riot of festival—what better breeding-ground for gossip? Nothing so delicious as this had happened for many a year.

That young lord, Vasilii Petrovich. He is no lord at all, but a girl!

No.

Indeed it is true. A maiden.

Naked for all to see.

A witch, in any case.

She ensnared even holy Aleksandr Peresvet with her wiles. She had mad orgies in secret in the palace of Dmitrii Ivanovich. She had them all as she liked: prince and monk, turn and turn about. We live in a time of sinners.

He put a stop to all that, did Prince Kasyan. He revealed her wickedness. Kasyan is a great lord. He has not sinned.

Gaily the rumors swirled all through that long day. They reached even a golden-haired priest, hiding in a monk’s cell from the monsters of his own memory. He jerked his head up from his prayers, face gone very pale.

“It cannot be,” he said to his visitor. “She is dead.”

Kasyan Lutovich was considering the yellow embroidery on the sash about his waist, lips pursed in discontent, and he did not look up when he replied. “Indeed?” he said. “Then it was a ghost; a fair, young ghost indeed, that I showed the people.”

“You ought not to have,” said the priest.

Kasyan grinned at that and glanced up. “Why? Because you could not be there to see it?”

Konstantin recoiled. Kasyan laughed outright. “Don’t think I don’t know where your mania for witches comes from,” he said. He leaned against the door, casual, magnificent. “Spent too much time with the witch-woman’s granddaughter, did you; watched her grow up, year by year, had one sight too many of those green eyes, and the wildness that will never belong to you—or to your God, either.”

“I am a servant of God; I do not—”

“Oh, be quiet,” said Kasyan, heaving himself upright. He crossed over to the priest, step by soft step, until Konstantin recoiled, almost stumbling into the candlelit icons. “I see you,” the prince murmured. “I know which god you serve. He has one eye, doesn’t he?”

Konstantin licked his lips, eyes fastened on Kasyan’s face, and said not a word.

“That is better,” said Kasyan. “Now heed me. Do you want your vengeance, after all? How much do you love the witch?”