The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy #2)(46)

Then she took another swallow of soup and said, “I must return the three peasant girls to their village before I go to Moscow. I promised.”

Dmitrii snorted and quaffed his beer. “Why? There will be folk going out today; the girls can go with them. You needn’t trouble yourself.”

Vasya said nothing.

Dmitrii grinned suddenly, reading her face. “No? You look just like your brother when he has made up his mind and is being polite. Is it that you want the elder girl—what is her name? Don’t look prudish, Sasha; how old were you when you started tumbling peasant girls? Well, I owe you a debt, Vasya. Letting you play the hero to a pretty child is little enough. It is not too far out of our way. Eat. We ride tomorrow.”



THE NIGHT BEFORE THEY left the Lavra, Brother Aleksandr knocked on his master’s door. “Come in,” said Sergei.

Sasha entered to find the old hegumen sitting beside a stove, looking into the flames. An untouched cup sat beside him, and a heel of bread, a little gnawed by rats.

“Father bless,” said Sasha, stepping on a rat-tail just poking out beneath the cot. He heaved the beast up, broke its neck, and dropped it outside in the snow.

“May the Lord bless you,” said Sergei, smiling.

Sasha crossed the room and knelt at the hegumen’s feet.

“My father is dead,” he said, without ceremony.

Sergei sighed. “God grant him peace,” he said, and made the sign of the cross. “I wondered what had happened, to send your sister out into the wild.”

Sasha said nothing.

“Tell me, my son,” said Sergei.

Sasha slowly repeated the story Vasya had told him, staring all the while into the fire.

When he had finished, Sergei was frowning. “I am old,” he said. “Perhaps my wits are failing. But—”

“It is all very unlikely,” finished Sasha shortly. “I can get no more out of her. But Pyotr Vladimirovich would never—”

Sergei sat back in his chair. “Call him your father, my son. God will not begrudge it, and nor do I. Pyotr was a good man. I have rarely seen one so grieved to part with his son, yet he gave me no angry word, after the first. And no, he did not strike me as a fool. What do you mean to do with this sister of yours?”

Sasha was sitting at his master’s feet like a boy, with his arms around his knees. The firelight erased some of the marks of war and travel and long lonely prayer. Sasha sighed. “Take her to Moscow. What else? My sister Olga can take her quietly back into the terem, and Vasilii Petrovich may disappear. Perhaps on the journey, Vasya will tell me the truth.”

“Dmitrii will not like it, if he finds out,” Sergei said. “What if your—if Vasya refuses to be hidden away?”

Sasha looked up quickly, a line between his brows. Outside a hush lay on the monastery, save for a monk’s single voice, raised in plainchant. The villagers had all gone, save for the three girl-children, who would depart on the morrow with Dmitrii’s cavalcade.

“She is as like you as brother and sister can be,” continued Sergei. “I saw that from the first. Would you go quiet into the terem? After all the galloping about, the saving girls, the slaying bandits?”

Sasha laughed at the image. “She is a girl,” he said. “It is different.”

Sergei lifted a brow. “We are all children of God,” he said, mildly.

Sasha, frowning, made no answer. Then he said, changing the subject, “What think you of Vasya’s tale—of seeing a bandit-captain that we can now find no trace of?”

“Well, either this captain is dead or he is not,” said Sergei practically. “If he is dead, God grant him peace. If he is not, I think we will discover it.” The monk spoke placidly, but his eyes gleamed in the firelight. In his remote monastery, Sergei contrived to hear a good deal. Before he died, the holy Aleksei himself had wanted Sergei to be his successor as Metropolitan of all Moscow.

“I beg you will send Rodion to Moscow, if you have word of the bandit-captain after we are gone,” said Sasha, reluctantly. “And…”

Sergei grinned. He had only four teeth. “And now are you wondering who is this red-haired lord that young Dmitrii Ivanovich has befriended?”

“As you say, Batyushka,” said Sasha. He sat back against his hands, then recalled his wounded forearm and snatched it up with a grunt of pain. “I had never heard of Kasyan Lutovich. I who have traveled the length and breadth of Rus’. And then suddenly he comes riding out of the woods, bigger than life, with his marvelous clothes, and his marvelous horses.”

“Nor I,” said Sergei, very thoughtfully. “And I ought to have.”

Their eyes met in understanding.

“I will ask questions,” said Sergei. “And I will send Rodion with news. But in the meantime, be wary. Wherever he comes from, that Kasyan is a man who thinks.”

“A man may think and do no evil,” said Sasha.

“He may,” said Sergei only. “In any case, I am weary. God be with you, my son. Take care of your sister, and of your hotheaded cousin.”

Sasha gave Sergei a wry look. “I will try. They are damnably similar in some ways. Perhaps I should renounce the world and stay here, a holy man in the wilderness.”

“Certainly you should. It would be most pleasing to God,” said Sergei tartly. “I would beg you to do so, if ever I thought I could persuade you. Now get out. I am weary.”