The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy 2)

She stumbled for the door, routed, sick, the taste of him sour in her mouth. His soft, satisfied laughter chased her into the hall when she fled the room.

Vasya cannoned into Varvara the instant she was away, then bent over in the hall, retching.

Varvara’s lip curled. “A handsome lord means to save you from ruin,” she said, the sarcasm sharp. “Where is your gratitude, Vasilisa Petrovna? Or did he have your virtue there beside the oven?”

“No,” Vasya retorted, straightening with a supreme effort. “He—he wants me to be afraid of him. I think he succeeded.” She scrubbed a hand across her mouth and was almost sick again. The hall was full of a beating, eager darkness, only a little repelled by the lamp in Varvara’s hand—although that was perhaps the darkness in her own head. Vasya wanted to press her knees together, and she wanted to weep.

Varvara’s lip curled the more, but she only said, “Come, poor thing, your sister wants you.”

OLGA WAS ALONE IN the workroom. She held her distaff in her hands, turning it over and over, but she was not working. Her back pained her; she felt old and worn. She looked up at once when Varvara led Vasya in.

“Well?” she said, without preamble.

“He asked me to marry him,” said Vasya. She did not come properly into the room, but stood off, in the shadows near the door, her head tilted proudly. “I agreed. He says that if I marry him, he will intervene with the Grand Prince. Have Sasha spared, and you absolved of blame.”

Olga considered her sister. There were dozens of prettier girls in Moscow, better born. Kasyan could not want her for her virtue. Yet he wanted Vasya enough to marry her. Why?

He desires her, Olga thought. Why else would he behave so? And I left her alone with him…

Well, and so? She’s been roaming the streets in his company, dressed as a boy.

“Come in, then, Vasya,” Olga said, irritable with vague guilt. “Don’t hang about the door. Tell me, what did he say to you?” She laid her distaff aside. “Varvara, build up the fire.”

The slave went about it, soft-footed, while Vasya came forward. The fierce color in her face from that morning was quite gone; her eyes were big and dark. Olga’s limbs ached; she wished she felt less old, less angry, and less sorry for her sister. “It is better than you deserve,” she said. “An honorable marriage. You were a breath away from the convent, or worse, Vasya.”

Vasya nodded once, her lids veiled with a sweep of black lashes. “I know, Olya.”

Just then, a roar, as though in agreement, came from outside the prince of Serpukhov’s gates. They had just flung the effigy of Lady Maslenitsa onto the fire; her hair streamed away in torrents of fire and her eyes shone, as though alive, as she burned.

Olga fought her irritation down, trying to keep both the anger and the pity from her face. A sharp pain stabbed through her back. “Come, then,” she said, as kindly as she could. “Eat with me. We will call for cakes and honey-wine, and we will celebrate your marriage.”

The cakes came, and the sisters ate together. Neither could swallow much. The silence stretched out.

“When I first came here,” said Olga, abruptly, to Vasya, “I was a little younger than you, and I was very frightened.”

Vasya had been looking down at the untasted thing in her hand, but now she glanced up quickly. “I knew no one,” Olga went on. “I understood nothing. My mother-in-law—she had wanted a proper princess for her son, and she hated me.”

Vasya made a sound of painful sympathy, and Olga lifted a hand to silence her. “Vladimir could not protect me, for it is not the business of men, what goes on in the terem. But the oldest woman in the terem—the oldest woman I have ever known—she was kind to me. She held me when I wept; she brought me porridge when I missed the taste of home. Once I asked her why she bothered. ‘I knew your grandmother,’ she replied.”

Vasya was silent. Their grandmother—said the story—had come riding into Moscow one day all alone. No one knew where she came from. Word of the mysterious maiden reached the ears of the Grand Prince, who summoned her for sport and fell in love. He married her, and the girl bore their mother, Marina, and died in the tower.

“ ‘You are fortunate,’ this old woman said to me,” Olga continued, “ ‘that you are not like her.’ She—she was a creature of smoke and stars. She was no more made for the terem than a snowstorm is, and yet…she came riding into Moscow willingly—indeed, as though all hell pursued her—riding a gray horse. She wed Ivan without demur, though she wept before her wedding night. She tried to be a good wife, and perhaps would have been, but for her wildness. She would walk in the yard, looking at the sky; she would talk with longing of her gray horse, which vanished on the night of her marriage. ‘Why do you stay?’ I asked her, but she never answered. She was dead in her heart long before she died in truth, and I was glad when her daughter, Marina, married away from the city—”

Olga broke off. “That is to say,” she went on, “that I am not like our grandmother, and I am a princess now, the head of my house, and it is a good life, sweet mixed with bitter. But you—when I saw you first, I thought of that tale of our grandmother, riding into Moscow on her gray horse.”

“What was our grandmother’s name?” asked Vasya low. She had asked her nurse, once. But Dunya would never tell her.

“Tamara,” said Olga. “Her name was Tamara.” She shook her head. “It is all right, Vasya. You will not share her fate. Kasyan has vast lands, and many horses. There is freedom in the countryside that Moscow does not offer. You will go there, and be happy.”

“With a man who stripped me naked before Moscow?” Vasya asked sharply. The half-eaten cakes were being taken away. Olga made no answer. Vasya said, “Olya, if I must marry him to make this right, then I will marry him. But—” She hesitated, and then finished in a rush, “I believe that it was Kasyan who paid the bandits, who turned them loose on the villages. And—the bandit-captain is in Moscow now, posing as the Tatar ambassador. He is in league with Kasyan, and I think they intend to depose the Grand Prince. I think it is to happen tonight. I must—”

“Vasya—”

“The Grand Prince must be warned,” Vasya finished.

“Impossible,” Olga said. “None of my household can go near the Grand Prince tonight. We are all colored by your disgrace. It is all nonsense anyway—why would a lord pay men to burn his own villages? In any case, could Kasyan Lutovich expect to hold the patent for Moscow?”

“I don’t know,” said Vasya. “But Dmitrii Ivanovich has no son—only a pregnant wife. Who would rule, if he died tonight?”

“It is not your place or your business,” Olga said sharply. “He is not going to die.”

Vasya did not seem to have heard. She was pacing the room; she looked more like Vasilii Petrovich than her own self. “Why not?” she murmured. “Dmitrii is angry with Sasha—for Kasyan took up the lie—the weapon I put into his hand. Your husband, Prince Vladimir, is not here. So the two men the Grand Prince most trusts are set at remove. Kasyan has his own people in the city, and Chelubey has more.” Vasya stilled her pacing with a visible effort, stood light and restless in the center of the room. “Depose the Grand Prince,” she whispered. “Why does he need to marry me?” Her eyes went to her sister.