The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy 1)

Konstantin had never seen Vasya so. In the house, she was grave and wary, careless and charming by turn, all eyes and bones and soundless feet. But alone, under the sky, she was beautiful as a yearling filly, or a new-flown hawk.

Konstantin forced his face to coldness. Her people offered him beeswax and honey, begged him for counsel and prayers. They kissed his hand; their faces lit when they saw him. But that girl avoided his glance and his footstep, yet a horse—a dumb beast—could charm that light from her. The light should have been for him—for God—for him as God’s messenger. She was as Anna Ivanovna named her: hard-hearted, undutiful, unmaidenly. She conversed with demons and dared to boast that she’d saved his life.

But his fingers itched for wood and wax and brushes, to capture the love and loneliness, the pride and half-blossomed womanhood written in the lines of the girl’s body. She saved your life, Konstantin Nikonovich.

Savagely, he quelled both thought and impulse. Painting was for the glory of God, not to glorify the frailty of transient flesh. She summoned a devil; it was the finger of God that saved my life. But when he tore himself away, the scene was burned on the backs of his eyelids.

IT WAS VIOLET EVENTIDE when Vasya came into the kitchen, still flushed with the day’s sun. She seized her bowl and spoon, claimed a portion for herself, and took it to the window. The twilight greened her eyes. She tore into her food, pausing from time to time to glance out into the long summer dusk. With stiff, deliberate steps, Konstantin placed himself beside her. Her hair smelled of earth and sun and lake-water. She did not look away from the window. The village was starry with well-tended fires; a faint half moon soared in a cloud-fretted sky. The silence between them stretched out, amid the bustle of the crowded kitchen. It was the priest that broke it. “I am a man of God,” Konstantin said, low. “But I would have been sorry to die.”

Vasya gave him a swift, startled glance. A ghost of a smile showed in the corner of her mouth. “I don’t believe it, Batyushka,” she said. “Did I not rob you of your quick ascent to heaven?”

“I thank you for my life,” Konstantin went on, stiffly. “But God is not mocked.” His hand was suddenly warm on hers. The smile left her face. “Remember,” he said. He slipped an object between her fingers. His hand, roughened with the scythe, slid over her knuckles. He did not speak. Suddenly Vasya understood why the women all begged him for prayers; understood, too, that his warm hand, the strong bones of his face, were a weapon, to use where the weapons of speech had failed. He would get her obedience thus, with his rough hand, his beautiful eyes.

Am I as great a fool as Anna Ivanovna? Vasya threw her head back and pulled away. He let her go. She did not see his hand tremble. His shadow wavered on the wall when he walked away.

Anna was stitching linens on her stool by the hearth. The cloth slipped to her knees and, when she stood, fell unheeded to the floor. “What did he give you?” she hissed. “What was it?” Every spot and line stood out on her face.

Vasya had no idea, but she lifted the thing for her stepmother to see. It was his wooden cross, with the two reaching arms, carved of silky pine-wood. Vasya gazed at it in some wonder. What is this, priest? A warning? An apology? A challenge?

“A cross,” she said.

But Anna had seized it. “It’s mine,” she said. “He meant it for me. Get out!”

There were several things Vasya might have said, but she settled on the safest: “I am sure he did.” But she did not go; she took her bowl to the hearth, to charm more stew out of Dunya and steal a heel of bread from her unwary sister. In a few minutes Vasya was dabbing her bowl with the crust and laughing at Irina’s bewildered face.

Anna did not speak again, but neither did she take up her sewing. Vasya, for all her laughter, could feel her stepmother’s burning stare.

ANNA DID NOT SLEEP that night, but paced from her bed to the church. When a deep, clear dawn replaced the blue summer midnight, she went to her husband and shook him awake.

Never once, in nine years, had Anna come to Pyotr of her own will. Pyotr seized his wife in a very businesslike choke before he realized who it was. Anna’s hair straggled, gray-brown, about her face, and her kerchief hung askew. Her eyes were like two stones. “My love,” she said, gasping and massaging her throat.

“What is wrong?” Pyotr demanded. He slipped from his warm bed and hurried into his clothes. “Is it Irina?”

Anna smoothed her hair, straightened her kerchief. “No—no.”

Pyotr dragged a shirt over his head and did up his sash. “Then what?” he said in no very pleasant tones. She had startled him, badly.

Anna trembled, her eyelids downswept. “Have you noticed that your daughter Vasilisa is much grown since last summer?”

Pyotr’s movements faltered. The infant day threw lines of pale gold across his floor. Anna had never taken an interest in Vasya. “Has she?” he said, bewildered now.

“And that she is grown quite passably attractive?”

Pyotr blinked and frowned. “She is a child.”

“A woman,” snapped Anna. Pyotr was taken aback. She had never contradicted him before. “A hoyden, all arms and legs and eyes. But she will have a good dowry. Better to see her married now, husband. If she loses what looks she has, she might not marry at all.”

“She will not lose her looks in the next year,” said Pyotr curtly. “And certainly not in the next hour. Why rouse me, wife?” He left the room. The nutty tang of baking bread gladdened the house, and he was hungry.

“Your daughter Olga was married at fourteen.” Anna followed him breathlessly. Olga had prospered since her marriage; she was become a great lady, a fat matron with two children. Her husband was high in the Grand Prince’s favor.

Pyotr seized a new loaf and broke it open. “I will consider the matter,” he said, to silence her. He took a great ball of the steaming insides and filled his mouth. His teeth ached sometimes; the softness was not unwelcome. You are an old man, Pyotr thought. He shut his eyes and tried to drown his wife’s voice with the sound of chewing.

THE MEN WENT TO the barley-fields at daybreak. All morning, they scythed the rippling grass with great howling strokes, and then they spread the stalks to dry. Their rakes went to and fro with a monotonous hiss. The sun was a live thing, throwing its hot arms over their necks. Their feeble shadows hid at their feet, their faces glowed with sweat and sunburn. Pyotr and his sons worked alongside the peasants; everyone worked at harvest-time. Pyotr was jealous of every kernel. The barley had not grown so tall as it ought, and the heads were thin and poor.

Alyosha straightened his aching back and shielded his eyes with a dirty hand. His face lit. A rider was coming down from the village, galloping on a brown horse. “Finally,” he said. He put two fingers in his mouth. A long whistle split the midday stillness. All across the field, men put aside their rakes, rubbed grass-ends from their faces, and made for the river. The deep green banks and the chuckling water gave a little relief from the heat.

Pyotr leaned on his rake and pushed the wet, grizzled hair from his brow. But he did not leave the barley-field. The rider was coming nearer, galloping on a neat-footed mare. Pyotr squinted. He could make out his second daughter’s black braid, streaming behind her. But she was not riding her own quiet pony. Mysh’s white feet flashed in the dust. Vasya saw her father and swung an arm in salute. Pyotr waited, scowling, to reprove his daughter when she came nearer. She will break her neck one day, that mad thing.