The Bear and the Nightingale(34)

“No! But…” Anna felt hot and cold at once. She wanted to look into his face again but did not dare. She looked at the floor instead and saw the faint shadow of his foot, incongruously bare beneath the heavy robe. At last she managed a whisper:

“But they aren’t—can’t—be real. No one else sees…I am mad; I know I am mad.” She trailed off, then added slowly: “Except sometimes I think—my stepdaughter Vasilisa. But she’s only a child who hears too many stories.”

Father Konstantin’s gaze sharpened.

“She speaks of it, does she?”

“Not—not recently. But when she was a little girl sometimes I thought…Her eyes…”

“And you did nothing?” Konstantin’s voice was supple as a snake and well-tuned as any singer’s. Anna quailed under his tone of incredulous contempt.

“I beat her when I could and forbade her to talk of it. I thought, maybe, that if I caught her young enough, the madness wouldn’t take hold.”

“Is that all you thought? Madness? Did you never fear for her soul?”

Anna opened her mouth, closed it again, and stared at the priest, bewildered. He stalked toward the center of the iconostasis where a second Christ sat enthroned, surrounded by apostles. The moonlight turned his gold hair to gray-silver, and his shadow crawled black across the floor.

“Demons can be exorcised, Anna Ivanovna,” he said, not taking his eyes from the icon.

“Ex—exorcised?” she squeaked.

“Naturally.”

“How?” She felt as though she were thinking through mud. All her life she had borne her curse. That it might just go away—her mind wouldn’t compass the notion.

“Rites of the Church. And much prayer.”

There was a small silence.

“Oh,” Anna breathed. “Oh please. Make it go away. Make them go away.”

He might have smiled, but she couldn’t be sure in the moonlight.

“I will pray and think on it. Go back and go to sleep, Anna Ivanovna.” She stared at him with big stunned eyes, then whirled and blundered toward the door, feet clumsy on the bare wood.

Father Konstantin prostrated himself before the iconostasis. He did not sleep at all the rest of the night.

The next day was Sunday. In the green-gray dawn, Konstantin returned to his own room. Heavy-eyed, he flung cold water over his head and washed his hands. Soon he must give service. He was weary, but calm. During the long hours of his vigil, God had given him the answer. He knew what evil lay upon this land. It was in the sun-symbols on the nurse’s apron, in that stupid woman’s terror, in the fey, feral eyes of Pyotr’s elder daughter. The place was infested with demons: the chyerti of the old religion. These foolish, wild people worshipped God by day and the old gods in secret; they tried to walk both paths at once and made themselves base in the sight of the Father. No wonder evil had come to work its mischief.

Excitement rolled through his veins. He’d thought to molder here, in the back of beyond. But here was battle indeed, a battle for mastery of the souls of men and women, with evil on one side and him as God’s messenger on the other.

The people were gathering. He could almost feel their eager curiosity. It was not yet like Moscow, where people snatched hungrily at his words and loved him with their frightened eyes. Not yet.

But it would be.



VASYA TWITCHED A SHOULDER and wished she could take off her headdress. Because they were in church, Dunya had added a veil to the heavy contrivance of cloth and wood and semiprecious stones. It itched. But she was nothing compared to Anna, who was dressed as though for a feast-day, a jeweled cross round her neck and rings on each finger. Dunya had taken one look at her mistress and muttered under her breath about piety and gold hair. Even Pyotr raised an eyebrow at his wife, but he held his peace. Vasya followed her brothers into church, scratching her scalp.

Women stood on the left of the nave, before the Virgin, while men stood on the right, in front of the Christ. Vasya had always wished she could stand next to Alyosha so they could poke and fidget during the service; Irina was so small and sweet that poking was not rewarding, and anyway Anna always saw. Vasya locked her fingers behind her back.

The doors at the center of the iconostasis opened, and the priest came out. The murmurs of the assembled village drifted into silence, punctuated by a girl’s giggle.

The church was small, and Father Konstantin seemed to fill it. His golden hair drew the eye as even Anna’s jewels could not. His blue gaze pierced the throng like knives, one at a time. He did not speak at once. A breathless hush spread like sound among the people, so that Vasya found herself straining to hear their soft, eager breathing.

“Blessed is the kingdom,” said Konstantin at last, his voice washing over them, “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit now and ever and unto ages of ages.”

He didn’t sound like Father Semyon, thought Vasya, though the words of the liturgy were the same. His voice was like thunder, yet he placed each syllable like Dunya setting stitches. Under his touch, the words came alive. His voice was deep as rivers in spring. He spoke to them of life and death, of God and of sin. He spoke of things they did not know, of devils and torments and temptation. He called it up before their eyes so that they saw themselves submitting to the judgment of God, and saw themselves damned and flung down.