Enchantment (18 page)

“I know that,” said Ivan. “Sergei explained that.”

“Then why did you come to me?”

“So you could tell me how I could go about getting a parchment. Or tell me who could teach me how to make parchment out of lambskin.”

“And why would you waste time on something like that?” It would hardly raise the knights’ opinion of him, if he spent hours parching lambskin.

“Because there’s something I want to write down.”

Was he serious? “Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?” she asked.

“I know how to read and write, if that’s what you mean.”

“You weren’t brought here to be a cleric! Father Lukas will find his own young men and teach them. Like Sergei, who has no other usefulness. But you . . . to spend your hours writing or making parchment . . .”

He had been ingratiating up to now, but his temper had apparently been stretched too thin. “What am I supposed to do, then?” he demanded. “Spend all day in the practice field, hearing Dimitri taunt me and watching all the others snicker behind their hands?”

“It takes time, I know.”

“It takes years to put on that kind of muscle. I ache all over, and while I’m getting better, I’m a long way from good. It won’t hurt anybody if I spend a little time doing things that I’m actually good at.”

“But you aren’t good at making parchment, if you don’t even know how.”

“I want to write something.”

“Use birchbark. You just peel it off the trees and soak it and press it flat.”

“Birchbark doesn’t last.”

“Neither will you, and neither will Taina, if you don’t work at soldiering.”

“I know how long it takes to train my body. I’ve been running all my life, but I was training for the decathlon—”

“The what?”

“A contest. Running, jumping, throwing the . . . spear. The discus. The . . . stone. It took years of training until I was competitive. Someday, a few years from now, I might be good enough with the sword to hold my own with the best of them. But not next week or next month.”

“But they have to see you trying. They have to see you getting better at it.”

“They refuse to see it,” said Ivan. “No matter what I do, they laugh. Fine, that’s their privilege. But if you think they’re going to respect me more by watching me fail, day after day—”

“You’re giving up?”

“I just want to write something down!”

She didn’t like him speaking to her with such exasperation. As if she were an unreasonable child. “Don’t shout at me.”

“And what will you do to punish me? I’m already in hell.”

“Taina is the most beautiful place, filled with good people!”

“They may be good to you, but all I get from them is resentment and scorn. I didn’t ask to be here. You
demanded
that I stay, for your sake and for theirs. Well, I stayed, and I’ve tried to do what you asked—no, what you commanded—but now that it’s clear that I’m not going to live up to your expectations, let’s just agree it was a mistake and let me go home!”

“No,” cried Katerina.

Calmly Ivan began removing his clothing.

“What are you doing!” she demanded. “I told you not to expect to claim any marital privileges—”

Ivan stopped. “I don’t want
your
body, I want mine. I’m here as a slave, so I’m going to dress like one.”

“You’re not a slave! You’re my fiancé.”

“No, I’m sorry, that’s simply a lie. A fiancé would be your equal, a man you loved, a man who was going to be your husband. But you don’t even speak to me, you avoid me and everyone sees it. I’m shamed after every meal, when you go off and leave without a word to me. I’m not here because you want to marry me, I’m here because I’m the tool you need to hold on to your kingdom. I’m like a milk cow, only I’m not giving enough milk. So what do we call a man who is forced to work against his will at tasks he hates, to benefit someone else while he’s treated with contempt by everyone around him? If he’s a captive and he can’t escape and has no hope of ever getting his freedom? What is he, but a slave?”

“I didn’t choose you,” said Katerina. “You chose yourself.”

“So my mistake was saving you, is that it?” he said softly. “You’d rather have waited another thousand years asleep than be stuck with me, is that it?”

“We could have waited a few months more.”

“You should have posted a sign,” said Ivan. “Don’t fight the bear and kiss the princess unless you’re very good with sword and battleaxe. Oh, but wait, a sign would have been useless. The kind of man you want wouldn’t know how to read anyway.”

He said it with such scorn that she realized: He feels contempt for people who can’t read.

“
I
know how to read,” she said. “But I haven’t yet thought of a way to make the Widow’s army disappear by reading them to death.”

“In my land, it is Taina that has disappeared. Utterly forgotten, because no one wrote a word about it. I want to write the story of this land, and hide it somewhere that someone will find it in the future, and read it, and know that this land existed, and who you were. I’m trying to save Taina from oblivion.”

“You fool!” she said. “We don’t want to be remembered! We want to
survive
.”

“And I’m no help to you, am I,” he said coldly. “So take me back. Let me cross that bridge to my own world.”

She could see how miserable his situation was. And how little she had done to make it better. But she could not let him leave. Not yet. “As soon as we’re married.”

“How can I say this without breaking your heart, Fair Princess? I don’t want to marry you.”

This was the conversation she had been trying to avoid. These were the words which, if he acted on them, would ruin everything. She flailed about for some way to turn him away from this decision. “If you didn’t want to marry me, you shouldn’t have asked me.”

“There was a bear,” he reminded her. “And you told me to ask you.”

“You asked me and I said yes. It was an oath. Are you a man of no honor?”

“Ask the knights who mock me, the women who laugh at me behind their hands. I have no honor here for keeping my word.”

“A man like you
has
no word to keep,” she said.

She regretted the words as soon as she said them. His face closed off, as if he had moved beyond anger. “You know nothing at all about men like me.” He turned and left her room.

She wanted to call after him, to say, “There
are
no men like you!” But she would not shout like that in her father’s house. Besides, she wasn’t even sure what she meant by it. That he was not a man? No. He
was
a man, she knew that, a man to be admired in many ways—just not in the ways that mattered to the people, not when judging a man who might be their king.

What a stupid, miserable way to start a marriage. Where was the respect she owed to her husband? The slaves had heard the argument, and no doubt dozens of others as well. Word would pass through Taina and the people would scorn Ivan even more, for the princess had set the example of showing him disrespect under her father’s roof.

Why had she behaved that way? All her life she had cultivated iron self-control, to keep silence when others shouted, to say nothing when others rattled on, to be content with stillness even when no one else was speaking, and all eyes turned to her. But this man provoked her beyond endurance.

And why is that? she wondered. Why does he have such power over me? I should despise him for being a weakling when I needed a kingly man. But instead I’m angry because he doesn’t . . . because he doesn’t love Taina as much as I do. Because he doesn’t want to be king. Because he doesn’t want to be my husband.

Because I want him to respect me and love me, and all he wants is to get away from me and my kingdom. The one man in the world who wouldn’t like to be married to someone like me, and he’s the one God brings to me. A husband who thinks he’s being treated like a slave.

And he’s right. He’s a captive here, and instead of trying to win his heart, his loyalty, I’ve hidden from him. As a result, I have only his fear and resentment. I’ve worried because the people are not accepting him as their future king, but
I
haven’t accepted him, and he has not accepted me. I’ve said the words of the promise, but haven’t acted as if he were going to be my husband. But
he
has kept
his
word, doing his best to accomplish all the tasks I set for him.

Who is the one without honor?

Dimitri’s scorn for Ivan on the practice field and her own disrespectful attitude were surely playing into Baba Yaga’s hands. Indeed,
that
was the sort of thing that Baba Yaga loved to do—to sow seeds of discontent and dissension among her enemies, so no one trusted anyone, so people hated those they should follow and clung to those they should hate.

Katerina resolved that she would from this moment forward treat Ivan with respect. Where he was ignorant, she would simply teach him, without letting anyone see her surprise or dismay at what he did not know. And she would do her best to help others see his virtues.

She would talk to Dimitri, too, and persuade him to work more respectfully with Ivan. Though how she would soften that tough old bird, she had no idea. Dimitri had been a figure of awe in her life since her childhood. When her aunts had told her about Baba Yaga’s curse, Katerina asked them, “Who will save me from my enchanted sleep?” and Tetka Retiva answered, “The strongest knight,” and Tetka Moika said, “The wisest man,” and Tetka Tila said, “The purest love.” Katerina thought the purest love must have been her mother, who was dead, and the wisest man was her father the king, or perhaps Father Lukas, neither of whom, upon waking her, could wed her.

But the strongest knight, everyone knew, was Dimitri, and so she half-expected to find herself betrothed to him one day. That was the perspective from which she viewed him for many years, each year growing more sure that it would be a very hard thing to have Dimitri as a husband, for he acted bravely, and never delayed for such irrelevancies as thinking through the consequences or wondering if he had the right to decide. She had expected, when the bear chased her to the stone where she lay down weeping, knowing she would sleep either forever or until her future husband awoke her, that if she ever saw another human face again, it would be Dimitri’s, bending over her, his lips still cool from the kiss that wakened her, ready to speak the question to which her answer had to be yes.

And in that moment, she had prayed, O Mikola, O Tetka Tila, O Lord Jesus, O Holy Mother, let the purest love awaken me, or the wisest man, but not the strongest knight. Then she realized that she had prayed to Jesus third, not first, and when she spoke to the Holy Mother, it was not so much the Blessed Virgin as her own dead mother to whom she prayed. No doubt this was damnation, and she sank down into sleep, into despair.

Then she awoke, and it was this strange boy bending over her, who was not a knight at all, and not terribly wise either, as far as she could tell. But perhaps his was the purest love.

But she did not have his love. She had only his promise, and that given under duress, and kept reluctantly. Lord Jesus, did I offend thee with my prayer? Forgive me, and let me have the husband who will save Taina from the witch. Even if it is Dimitri. I will do whatever my people need me to do.

And yet this thought also, this prayer at the back of her mind: Art thou not the God of miracles? Then is there not some miracle thou canst bring about to turn this boy Ivan into a knight, and somehow make him wise, and a man, and let him love me?

Ivan sat alone in the tiring-room. Father Lukas was out among the people, doing whatever it is that priests do. Sergei was cleaning out the priest’s chamber pot and then washing the priest’s clothes, hopefully not in the same water. Ah, how Ivan longed for the twentieth century at times like these. The lush melodies of a flushing toilet—the rush, the swish, the gurgle, the gulp, and then the lingering aftertones, the whispering hiss, and then . . . silence! The glorious rhythm of a washing machine with an out-of-balance load, knocking and pounding its way across a laundry-room floor! The bucolic life had lost its charms for him somewhere between the fleas and the itchy woolen clothing.

His little plan to record the stories of the people of Taina had come to nothing, foiled by the simple fact that cheap paper hadn’t been invented yet, or at least hadn’t yet reached Europe, while the birchbark they used for jotting notes on decayed about as quickly as toilet paper. Ivan wracked his brains to remember how and when papermaking had made its way west from China. Would it be three or four centuries he’d have to wait?

Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s court, my ass. American ingenuity amounted to squat in this place. These people needed a very specific kind of man, and he wasn’t it. Katerina was beautiful, but she hated him, which didn’t bode well for the marriage. And Ivan simply wasn’t interested in living the life that this time and place offered.

There must be other men of his temperament here. What did they do? The men who had no wish to do violence. The men who wanted to learn, to know the answers, to solve mysteries. The men who quickly lost interest in any physical activity that didn’t let them think their own thoughts.

The men who hadn’t yet grown up.

That’s what Ivan had to face about himself. The life he had chosen was a cocoon. Surrounded by a web of old manuscripts and scholarly papers, he would achieve tenure, publish frequently, teach a group of carefully selected graduate students, be treated like a celebrity by the handful of people who had the faintest idea who he was, and go to his grave deluded into thinking he had achieved greatness while in fact he had stayed in school all his life. Where was the plunge into the unknown? Where was the man who would stand against all comers to protect his family, his people?

Easy to say that he was lucky enough to live in peaceful times, that he was never called to war. He was called now, wasn’t he? And here he was slacking, avoiding practice with the weapons of this time and place. He was stronger than he let them see; finding himself unskilled when he was used to being a contender, resenting their scorn, he had backed off, had stopped trying. Like a kid who would only try when he knew he could win.