Darker Jewels (12 page)

“Worse than before.” It was not a question; both men knew how dangerous their position was.

“Yes. She very nearly woke while I was with her.” He cracked a single, sad laugh. “I should have been more alert. But her dream was sweet, and she gave herself to her joy. She was magnificent and I was as much filled with her passion as I can be when they sleep. Afterward I thought... I thought she was ready to release me to deeper sleep. I was not aware of her need for companionship as well as passion. As I started to leave she clung to me, not for gratification but loneliness.” He shook his head again, more slowly; he thought fleetingly of Estasia in the days before she lost herself in religion. There had been an echo of her longing in Ludmilla tonight. “Perhaps I ought to have anticipated it, planned, but—” He shrugged.

“Were you recognized? Did she know who you are?” asked Rothger, keeping his voice emotionless with effort.

“How could she? She has only seen me in dreams, and then her vision of me was masked by her desire for another. If she supposes—” He broke off and when he went on he sounded weary. “Even if she has heard of me, she would never assume that I have heard of her. How could I? She is a Russian boyarina, living a sequestered life and not part of the outer world.” He stared down into the dense shadows of the lower floor. “It would have ruined her to be found with me. Worse than ruined—they’d kill her for it.”

“And you,” Rothger pointed out.

“At least they might have some reason to kill me,” Rakoczy said quietly. “By their lights I have done a thing deserving death. But she? She has only had a dream. To die for that...” He looked away before going on. “I had to induce sleep in her again, and wait until she was lost in another dream before I could leave without risk.”

“You mean without risk of discovery by her,” said Rothger.

“Um.” He made a fatalistic gesture.

After a brief silence, Rothger said, “Can’t you make some arrangement within this household?”

“Foreigners are not supposed to keep concubines,” said Ra- koczy. “It smacks too much of the Golden Horde. And I am hardly in a position to arrange a marriage. Even if there were a woman in this household for my . . . benefit there is the danger she might tell her confessor something that would prove to be embarrassing.”

“Would that be any riskier than what you are doing now?” asked Rothger, letting the question hang between them.

“You mean that the accusations of a woman might be ignored? Why would I want such a woman? Or she me.” Rakoczy got slowly to his feet, swinging his shoulders as if to work stiffness out of them. “Still, you might be right.” He looked down at the ruin of his kontush. “Do you think this can be repaired?”

‘Til make sure the servants don’t see it. Set it aside and I’ll look at it in the morning; if there’s any doubt, you decide,” said Rothger, accepting the lack of answer he had received. He, too, rose. “Do you want to bathe, or sleep?”

“Bathe,” Rakoczy said at once. “I can feel mud drying on me.” He went a few steps upward, then said, “I wonder why it is that I find this earth so offensive yet my native earth is anodyne to me.” He expected no answer and was surprised when Rothger spoke.

“You seek sustenance and nourishment, as do all living things.” He faltered. “You need touching and more than touching. You are bound to life.”

Rakoczy wore a wry smile now. “I deserve to hear my own words given back to me. Very well. I accept them. I won’t foist any more of my maundering on you, not tonight, in any case.” He tossed his fiir hat to Rothger. “We can save this, at least.” Rothger caught the hat. “Your clothes: what happened?” He indicated the tears in the kontush.

"Oh, nothing worrisome.” His smile faded. “One of the carvings on the lintel snagged me as I was leaving. The roof was steep and the purchase poor; I mistimed my jump.”

“Both tears from the lintel? The hem
and
the sleeve?” asked Rothger in reserved disbelief. “The cut on the sleeve is cleaner.” “Suggesting a blade, is that if” Rakoczy met his manservant’s steady blue eyes with his dark ones. “There are robbers in every city in the world. One had the folly to come after me.” He looked away. “They will find him in the river, if they bother to look for

him, and if he has hot drifted beyond the city walls on the current. He didn’t drown; his back is broken.” As he said this last, his jaw tightened in distaste.

“He had a knife,” said Rothger.

“An axe, actually.” He turned toward the lamp and for the first time Rothger saw a long gash on Rakoczy’s right cheek.

“An axe,” he repeated.

“One of those long-bladed ones, like a short pike.” He touched the edge of the cut where blood had caked. “It will heal.”

“And you are certain he was a robber?” Rothger asked as if the question meant nothing more than a quibble about proper dress.

“What else would he be?” Rakoczy countered, not challenging the question but not willing to accept the underlying reason Rothger had asked. He turned his small hands palms up to show that there was little he could do in any case.

Rothger said only, “I will see that the bathhouse is heated.”

“Thank you,” said Rakoczy, turning to regard Rothger, his expression rueful. “On top of the rest, I have been churlish. And you have been good enough not to tax me with it. Let me apologize. For all I have said nothing, I have noticed.” He was almost at the top of the stairs, the injured half of his face lit by the lamp, his wound black in the light.

With a slight bow, Rothger went down the stairs toward the rear of the house where the bakery and bathhouse were located.

By the time the bathhouse was heated the sky overhead was pale grey, the sun a brilliant smear in the massing clouds. The household was already up, the two cooks busy in the cavernous kitchen where the banked coals of the open hearths were prodded to life before the ovens were fired. Another three servants put plank tables up for the workmen employed to finish the interior of the house; the carpenters were expected to arrive as soon as first Mass was over.

Rakoczy knew that he was being watched, that all his activities were monitored by his servants as efficiently as if they were all paid spies; he remembered to bless the ikon of Archangel Gavril before entering the bathhouse. Once inside he removed the enveloping, hooded robe and stood naked in the cramped dressing area. The wan morning light showed the wide, white swath of scars from beneath his ribs down to the base of his pelvis; the scars of his death-wounds were the last scars to mark his flesh; no injury since then had left any lasting talisman on him.

The bathhouse was one of the few places in the house where he had been able to put his native earth beneath the floor, and the solace he felt as he walked into the steamy bath room was more from the presence of his native earth than the caress of the heat. He lowered himself into the deep, square mb, sinking up to his waist before his feet touched the bottom planks. With a silent sigh, he settled into a comer of the mb and leaned back, letting the sitting wedge support him. It was not as large or as elegant as the baths he had had at his Roman villa, but it was better than he had hoped for in Moscovy. Gradually the ache eased from his compact body.

His bedchamber was small and austere as a monk’s cell, his bed hard and narrow, little more than a thin mattress atop a trunk filled with his native earth. Rakoczy returned there in his hooded robe, leaving the damp impression of his small, high-arched feet on the stairs. Restored in the bath, he lay back in comfort on his bed with a single lined blanket for warmth. In a short while his dark eyes closed and his breathing slowed.

The third Mass of the day was finished when Rothger came to rouse Rakoczy, standing by his bed while the exiled Count returned from that dreamless depth that seemed almost a twin to death.

He woke quickly and completely, passing from one state to the next without so much as a yawn. “When is Godunov expected?” Rakoczy asked as he sat up. He had set his Dutch watch on a red lacquer chest of ancient design that stood just outside his bedchamber door.

“He is supposed to be here within the hour,” said Rothger, watching Rakoczy closely. “You are better,” he approved as he inspected Rakoczy’s face. “The gash is little more than a scratch.”

“All the easier to account for its disappearance,” said Rakoczy as he rose. “I suppose the kontush will have to be turned into rags.”

Rothger nodded, noticing how Rakoczy anticipated him. “I’ve done it already. The sleeves were sectioned for the carpenters and carvers, for rubbing the wood with beeswax. The back was cut in half and given to the priests at Saint Alexander’s, to make into smocks for poor children.” The kontush used a great deal of fabric in its pleats.

“Very good,” said Rakoczy as he drew on the fine Italian camisa with the narrow ruff on a standing collar Rothger brought. He rubbed the cloth between his fingers before fastening the rosettes at the wrists, enjoying the superb softness the weavers had achieved. “How many of these do I have left?”

“Five,” said Rothger, offering him the deep red woolen dolman and a wide silver belt to go over it. “I’ve brought the red leggings as well.”

“Excellent.” When he had finished buttoning the ten cabo- chon garnets into their loops, he fastened the belt around his waist, taking care to center the link with the eclipse emblem. He reached for the leggings next, and as he pulled them on, he watched Rothger with attention. “What is it?”

Rothger adjusted the mente he held, smoothing the black- velvet-and-silver fabric. “I was thinking about Lo-Yang. I remember how much had to be left behind because foreigners were suddenly suspect.”

“And you think something of the sort can happen here,” said Rakoczy, standing with his leggings in place. “If it is any consolation, I know how you feel.”

“It isn’t much consolation,” said Rothger, not quite amused. “But I am relieved that you are aware of the dangers.”

Rakoczy reached for the mente and eased it on. “And you question the decision to come here.” He cocked his head toward his manservant. “Aside from curiosity about the place, where would you have preferred? Would it have been safer to remain in the Carpathians, waiting for the Ottomites to find us? For it is certain they would. It would have led to greater slaughter, and I’ve had more than my share of that.” His dark eyes, usually enigmatic, shone with loathing at the thought. “I’ve had more war than I can stomach. Would it have been wiser to venture to Italy? The Pope might have a few questions to ask me if I returned there now. Or France? There’s still a price on my head in Troyes and the Catholics are looking for an excuse to declare war on the Huguenots. How long will it be until the streets are ankle-deep in blood? Or the German States? Half of them are already at one another’s throats. Do you think it would have been wiser to visit Olivia in England? Or cross the ocean to the New World?” He secured the last of the lacings and patted them. “Satisfactory?”

“As always,” said Rothger.

Rakoczy nodded, his expression distant. “You think that I ought to have refused the summons of King Istvan, or refused to be part of this embassy.” He reached for his boots—black, with thick soles and heels lined with his native earth, decorated with red leather stitching—tugging on the right one first, a habit left over from Rome, fifteen hundred years before.

“I think you would have been able to, if that was your wish.” Rothger said this without approval or condemnation, his manner not quite deferential.

“Do you.” Rakoczy considered this while he slipped two jeweled rings onto each one of his middle fingers. Sapphires and amethysts set in gold smoldered on his small, beautiful hands. “I suppose I might have,” he said at last, quite seriously.

Rothger said nothing as Rakoczy ran an ivory comb through his hair, then remarked, “The second athanor is almost ready to put into use.”

Understanding took the sting out of Rakoczy’s remoteness. “Good. Czar Ivan will want another sapphire or amethyst before the week is out; that has been his pattern.”

“It would be useless to say that presenting gifts to the Czar adds to your danger, would it not,” Rothger ventured as he offered a short bow. “I’ll be certain the cooks have something ready to serve Godunov.”

Rakoczy’s smile this time was singularly gentle. “I am grateful. Believe this.” Both of them knew that his thanks were for more than one service.

Boris Godunov arrived to be met with an extensive, makeshift display of fruit and pastries set out in the main reception room, the second room in the house to be completed. Not all of the ceiling had been painted, but Rakoczy was pleased to show Boris the sketches the artists had made.

“Very satisfactory,” Boris pronounced after he had completed the ritual of blessing the household ikons of the Archangel Gavril and Saint Feodossi of the Caves, as he looked at the representation of the Four Evangelists. His manner was cordial and forthcoming, qualities Rakoczy had rarely encountered among the boyars. “Your selection of Saint Feodossi is most interesting, for a Saint from Kiev honors both Russia and Poland. Apt; very apt. It is the same throughout. Acceptable to any Moscovite but with a foreign flavor to it. Very elegant.” He made a sweep of his arm, indicating the reception room and the dining room beyond. “You have done a great deal.”

“The workers have done a great deal,” Rakoczy corrected him affably. “I have paid them.”

“Admirable modesty, as well.” Boris reached over and snagged another spiced pastry filled with apples. “These are excellent. Are you sure you wouldn’t like one?” As he took a bite, he added, “You men from the West are too thin. We Rus know that thinness is ugly and take care to avoid it.” He patted his own girth—quite moderate by Russian standards—as if to make the point more clearly.

“I have observed it is often a matter of custom, what is beautiful and what is ugly,” said Rakoczy, wanting Boris’ attention shifted to other matters. “There are those who do not prefer red to other colors, and some who favor woolens to silk. One man rides horses with white markings, and another spurns them. For every man who chooses fair women, there is one who would rather have dark ones.”