Enchantment (17 page)

I’m no King David, killing a man so he can hide the shame of stealing his wife. When I kill, it is for the good of others.

But I’m still a murderer, Matfei told himself, refusing to hide from what he had done. I have killed with my mouth. There is no mercy in me. What difference now, between me and Baba Yaga?

There
is
a difference, something inside him shouted. Please, Jesus. Please, some god, some wise man, show me what it is.

Sergei didn’t like the way people were talking about Ivan. Mother swore that she told no one but Father Lukas in confession, and Sergei knew that Father Lukas never betrayed the secrets he learned that way. Yet the rumor was abroad, that Ivan was a man who dressed in women’s clothes. No one quite believed it, or something would have happened already. But no one completely disbelieved the story, either. Not even Sergei.

No, that wasn’t so. Sergei knew that Ivan was strange—but it had nothing to do with him prancing around in the princess’s hoose, as the old lady had told Mother. Ivan’s strangeness was something else. He didn’t care about the things that mortal men cared about. With Baba Yaga panting to invade Taina, with a wedding coming up with the beautiful Katerina, with Father Lukas trying to probe his soul, with all of Christianity to learn in a few days, Ivan acted like these things didn’t even matter. All he wanted to do was study the manuscripts. And not the Gospels, either. Ivan insisted on studying the working papers, the lexicon that Father Lukas had brought with him, the one written by the hand of Kirill. It was as if Ivan thought Kirill was Christ, as if these papers were a sacred relic. He only touched them by the edges. He refused to let Sergei fold the parchments, or even roll them up. “Store them flat,” he said, or tried to say, stammering in his strange language until Sergei finally got what he meant and taught him the right words. He was careful with the Gospels, too. But he wasn’t any more careful with them, and they contained the words of Christ. It made no sense.

But nothing about Ivan made sense. When they were supposed to be studying Christian doctrine, Ivan would listen for a few minutes, then begin to ask Sergei to tell stories. And not stories about Jesus and the apostles, either. He wanted stories about witches and sorcerers. About Baba Yaga. About Mikola Mozhaiski. About kings and queens, about lost children and wolves in the woods. Stories that grandparents told to frighten children on winter nights. Stories that mothers told to frighten their children into staying indoors at night, or to keep them from wandering into the woods by day.

And now, in the middle of Sergei’s feeble effort to tell him that bad rumors were being spread about him, Ivan interrupts as if he didn’t even care, and he says, “I need you to write these down.”

“Write what down?”

“These stories. The story you just told me. About Ilya of Murom.”

“But . . . these stories aren’t true. At least, not in the same way that the Gospels are true.”

Ivan shook his head. “But the stories are important. In my land, these stories are different. Changed. Lots of things about Mongols and Cossacks and tsars.”

These were words that Sergei didn’t understand. Except
tsar
, which was the title of one of the high officials of the Roman Empire, but why would stories about tsars have anything to do with Ilya of Murom?

“So your version of the story, it’s older,” said Ivan. “It’s . . . clean.”

“But why write it down? Everybody knows this story.”

“Not in my land.”

“Then
you
write it down.”

“I can’t.”

“You write faster than I do.”

“Sergei, if I write it down, people in my land will think I made it up. But if it’s in your hand—”

“Father Lukas says I have a bad hand. He won’t let me copy anything on parchment, he says it’s a waste of precious lambskin.”

“But I say your handwriting is excellent for what I need. Not fine copywork like the Gospels. But a simple telling of the tale. It does need to be parchment, though.”

“Where will I get parchment? I have no flock of sheep, and if I did, I’d need the skins for clothing, not for writing.”

“If I get you the parchment, you’ll write the stories?”

“If Father Lukas lets me.”

“He won’t let you,” said Ivan.

“If you already know that, how can you ask me to do what my priest forbids?”

“He hasn’t forbidden it.”

“But you said—”

“I haven’t asked him.”

“Then he might allow me.”

“Do you think he would?”

“No.”

“Then why ask?”

“You mean . . . keep it secret from him?”

“Yes.”

“Lie to him?”

“Has he ever asked you whether you write down the stories of the villagers?”

“No.”

“Why would he now?”

“I can’t think why he would.”

“Then you’ll never have to lie to him.”

Sergei thought about this. “It doesn’t feel honest.”

“These aren’t Father Lukas’s stories,” said Ivan. His voice grew intense now, though softer. “These are
your
stories, and the stories of your family, your neighbors, your friends.”

“I don’t have any friends,” said Sergei. “They’ve never liked me.”

“But it’s your village.”

Sergei shrugged.

“I can tell you, Sergei, that unless you write these stories down, the priests will have it all their way. Only the histories they want to write, and never the true histories, either. Always twisted to make every king look like a Christian, and every defeat look like a victory. Your people will be forgotten. No one will even know there was a land called Taina. But if you write these stories, I can promise you that your land will never be forgotten, these stories will live forever.”

“But I’m with the Church now, Ivan,” said Sergei. “You can’t ask me to oppose the writings of the priests.”

“Not
oppose
them, Sergei. What you write won’t erase a single word of their chronicles.”

“Where would you get parchment?”

Ivan laughed. “I’m betrothed to the princess. Do you think I can’t get parchment if I want it?”

Sergei could hardly understand what he meant. “What difference would that make? Being betrothed to the princess?”

“I can ask the king for parchment. He won’t deny me.”

“But . . . where would he get parchment?”

Ivan looked as if he couldn’t comprehend the idea. Yet the words were simple, weren’t they?

“He’s the king,” said Ivan at last.

Sergei couldn’t think of what this might mean.

“He can do what he wants,” said Ivan, explaining.

“We can all do what we want,” said Sergei. “But killing a lamb or a kid and using the skin for parchment—you have to have something very important to write.”

“Even the king?”

Now it began to dawn on Sergei what Ivan was assuming. “Oh. In your land, kings can do whatever they want. Like the emperor in Constantinople.”

“We don’t have kings.”

“Then why don’t enemies invade your land and take it away?”

Ivan laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “We have armies. We just don’t have kings.”

“If you have armies,” said Sergei, “why are you such a bad soldier?”

Ivan looked surprised.

“Well,
that
can’t be kept secret,” said Sergei. “Everyone sees how you can hardly swing a sword. How thin you are.”

“I was never in the army,” said Ivan. “There are many people in my land, and only some of them become soldiers. I was . . . one who reads.”

“And that’s all?”

“And sometimes I write about what I read.”

“So you copy manuscripts?”

“No, I write
about
them. I describe them.”

“Why would you do that? If someone can’t read the manuscript, how can they read your description of the manuscript?”

“It doesn’t matter what I did in my land. I can’t go back, can I?”

“Which is why it makes no sense for me to write these stories. You can’t take them to your land, so how will they get there?”

“We’ll bury them.”

“
Bury
them?”

“Bury them very carefully. In a way that will keep them dry. So that someone can dig them up in a thousand years.”

“I don’t understand anything you say,” said Sergei. “Burying a parchment in my land won’t get it any closer to yours.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“Unless your land is underground,” said Sergei.

Ivan laughed. “No, Sergei, I’m not from hell.”

“Then from where? Heaven?”

“I’m no angel, either.”

“I wondered. Your skin is so smooth. You have hands like a baby.”

Ivan looked at his hands as if for the first time. “I wish I could fly, though. That would be convenient.”

“You’re not a saint, either?”

Ivan rolled his eyes.

Sergei realized something, having seen Ivan look at his smooth hands. “You’ve never even helped with a harvest, have you?”

“No. In my land we . . . we have . . . I don’t know the words. But very, very few people help with the harvest.”

“It must take them forever to scythe the grain.”

“No, no, you see, the scythes run by themselves.”

“So you’re a sorcerer!”

“No, it’s not sorcery at all, it’s more like . . . when you pull a cart, you don’t have to pull each wheel, you pull the whole cart and the wheels come with it. We just have better carts. They pull themselves.”

Sergei had to laugh. “Now you’re just lying to me to make fun of me.”

“No,” said Ivan. “My land is strange, though, compared to here. But another way of looking at it is, Taina is strange to
me
. All the years I was growing up, it never occurred to me that there might come a day when my life might depend on how I handled a broadsword or a battleaxe.”

“We’re alike, though,” said Sergei. “I’m a terrible soldier. All I’m good for is reading and writing. And washing up.”

“And I can’t even do that.”

“You can, though. Write all you want.”

“No,” said Ivan. “I make my letters wrong.”

“I saw you make some letters I’d never seen before. Like this one.”

With his finger, Sergei drew the letter III’ on the table. At once Ivan seized his hands and held them tightly.

“Don’t ever make that letter again,” he said.

“How could I? I don’t even know how it sounds.”

“Just don’t use it. You shouldn’t. It would change everything. It would make the record unclean. Forget it. Put it out of your mind.”

Sergei nodded his understanding. So . . . he had inadvertently learned a powerful rune from a land of sorcery. He would have to keep this in mind. Someday he might have to use this rune. For despite Ivan’s warning, Sergei was not about to forget something that was so dangerous and disturbing. In all his life, Sergei had never known how to do anything that would frighten anyone. It was an interesting feeling. He liked it.

For a while, Katerina was able to fool herself into believing that things were going well—that Ivan was earning the respect of the knights and other men by his hard work on the practice field, and that Ivan’s obvious decency and concern for others, as exemplified by saving Lybed from choking, had won the hearts, or at least the patience, of the women of Taina. But gradually she realized that the absence of negative comment about Ivan did not mean there was approval or even tolerance. Instead, it meant that no one was talking to
her
about Ivan. It was a bad sign, not a good one. People had never shut her out before. She had assumed that she could bring him into the community; instead, he might well be dragging her out.

But what point was there in discussing this with Ivan? She couldn’t think of a thing he could do more than he was already doing. She knew he didn’t want to become a Christian, but he was preparing to do it. She knew he had no interest in being king, let alone soldiering, but he was working hard at it every day. If she told him her fears, it would only discourage him, and she’d have to listen to more insistence that she take him back to the enchanted place and lead him across the bridge so he could go home.

She tried to imagine what it would be like to be in his place, cut off from family, trapped in a situation not of her devising. In fact, that’s precisely what had happened to her when she was chased by the bear and ensorceled into sleeping for however many months or centuries it was. But of course she had slept through it, while Ivan had to be awake through his time of estrangement. And her exile had ended with return. Would his?

It was to avoid such a conversation with him that she found herself avoiding any conversation with him apart from dinnertime, when nothing private could be discussed. But this silence between them could not go on forever, she knew; she was not surprised when, one afternoon in her father’s house, she heard him in the great room, asking a slave which bedchamber was hers.

The slave was no doubt trying to guess which would cause more trouble, to tell or not to tell, and then would have to decide whether to make trouble or not, which was probably the more difficult decision. Slaves were so untrustworthy. And yet life would be impossible if you had to do all that work yourself. When would she have time to look after the people, if she had to spend her time down at the river, washing clothes, or out in the kitchen, preparing dinner?

Anyway, she spared the slave the burden of making a choice. “In here,” she called out to Ivan.

He actually stopped to thank the slave, as if the girl had done anything or even meant to do anything to help him. He was still a stranger, would always be a stranger.

Whatever it was he wanted to talk about, she knew she didn’t want to discuss it with him. So she preempted him by leaping to a conclusion she knew was false. “I hope you’re not thinking of claiming some privilege of intimacy because we’re betrothed.”

He did not rise to the bait. “Your purity is safe. I only came to ask how I could get some parchment.”

Why would he come to
her
for a parchment? Did he think she had a secret hoard of lambskins and kidskins? “Why would you ask
me
? Father Lukas asks for the skin of a lamb when he needs something to write on. If he doesn’t claim the skin, then it’s used by others.”