The Girl in the Tower (Winternight Trilogy #2)(64)

Marya put her nose in the air. Clumsy in her skirts, she swung a leg over and sat down, plop, on the horse’s withers. “No,” she said. “I’m not.”

But she squeaked and clutched at the horse when he sighed and shifted his weight. Vasya grinned, climbed the fence, and settled in behind her niece.

“How are we going to get out?” Marya asked practically. “You didn’t open the gate.” Then she gasped. “Oh!”

Behind her, Vasya was laughing. “Hang on to his mane,” she said. “But try not to pull it.”

Marya said nothing, but two small hands took a death grip on the mane. Solovey wheeled. Marya was breathing very quickly. Vasya leaned forward.

The child squealed when the horse took off: one galloping stride, two, three, and then with a tremendous thrust the horse was up and over the fence, light as a leaf.

When they landed, Marya was laughing. “Again!” she cried. “Again!”

“When we return,” Vasya promised. “We have a city to see.”

Leaving was surprisingly simple. Vasya concealed Marya in her cloak, staying a little in the shadows, and the gate-guard leaped to draw the bar. Their business was keeping people out, after all.

Outside the prince of Serpukhov’s gates, the city was just stirring. The sound and smell of frying cakes laced the morning silence. A group of small boys were playing on a snow-slide in the violet dawn, before the bigger boys came to sweep them aside.

Marya watched them as they rode past. “Gleb and Slava were making a snow-slide in our dooryard yesterday,” she said. “Nurse says I am too old for sliding. But Mother says perhaps.” The child sounded wistful. “Can’t we play on this slide here?”

“I don’t think your mother would like it,” Vasya said, with regret.

Above them, the rim of sun, like a ring of copper, showed its edge above the kremlin-wall. It coaxed color from all the brilliant churches, so that the gray light fled and the world glowed green and scarlet and blue.

A glow kindled also in Marya’s face, lit by the new sun. Not the savage exuberance of the child racing around inside her mother’s tower, but a quieter, more joyful thing. The sun set diamonds in her dark eyes, and she drank in all they saw.

Solovey walked and trotted and loped through the waking city. Down they went, past bakers and brewers and inns and sledges. They passed an outdoor oven, where a woman was frying butter-cakes. Obeying hungry impulse, Vasya slid to the ground. Solovey approved of cakes; he followed her hopefully.

The cook, without taking her eyes from the fire, poked her spoon at the stallion’s questing nose. Solovey jerked back indignantly and only just remembered that rearing would unseat his small passenger.

“None of that,” the cook told the stallion. She shook her spoon for emphasis. The top of his withers was well over her head. “I’ll wager you’d eat the whole pile if you could, a great thing like you.”

Vasya hid a smile, said, “Forgive him; your cakes smell so good,” and proceeded to buy an enormous, greasy stack.

Mollified, the cook pressed a few more on them—“You could use fattening, young lord. Don’t let that child eat too many”—and, with an air of great condescension, even fed Solovey a cake out of her own hand.

Solovey held no grudges; he lipped it up gently and nosed over her kerchief until the cook laughed and shoved him away.

Vasya mounted again and the two girls ate as they rode, smearing themselves with grease. Every now and again Solovey would put his head around, hopefully, and Marya would feed him a piece. They went along slowly, watching the city come awake.

When the walls of the kremlin heaved up before them, Marya craned forward, openmouthed, bracing her two buttery hands on Solovey’s neck. “I’ve only seen them from far away,” she said. “I didn’t know how big they are.”

“I didn’t either,” Vasya admitted. “Until yesterday. Let’s go closer.”

The girls passed through the gate, and now it was Vasya’s turn to draw a wondering breath. On the great open square outside the kremlin gates, they were putting up a market. Merchants set up their stalls while men bellowed greetings and blew on their hands. Their brats ran about, calling like starlings.

“Oh,” said Marya, her glance darting here and there. “Oh, look, there are combs there! And cloth! Bone needles, and saddles!”

All that and more. They passed sellers of cakes and wine, of precious wood and vessels of silver, of wax, wool, taffeta, and preserved lemons. Vasya bought one of the lemons, smelled it with delight, bit into it, gasped, and handed the thing hurriedly to Marya.

“You don’t eat it; you put a bit into the soup,” said Marya, smelling the thing cheerfully. “They must travel for a year and a day to get here. Uncle Sasha told me.”

The child was peering about her with a squirrel’s eager interest. “The green cloth!” she would call. Or—“Look, that comb is made like a sleeping cat!”

Vasya, still regretting the lemon, caught sight of a herd of horses penned on the south side of the square. She nudged Solovey over for a look.

A mare bugled at the stallion. Solovey arched his neck and looked pleased. “So now you want a harem, do you?” Vasya asked under her breath.

The horse-drover, staring, said, “Young lord, you cannot bring that stud so close; he will have my beasts in an uproar.”