Rosa and the Veil of Gold (9 page)

Still, Olga is fascinated by the churches in this city. They are almost as rich as the Grand Palace, with gold cupolas and towering turrets. Most of her mental energy is spent on trying to estimate Konstantin’s wealth, and how she most easily may access it.

At dessert on the fourth night, Konstantin dismisses his ministers and Olga hers. Behind their shoulders sits only one interpreter. The dining hall echoes with the sound of their solitary plates and the unvoiced questions which Konstantin intends to put to her. Food smells hang moist in the air, and Olga cannot bring herself to take even a bite of the layered pastry in front of her.

“What troubles you, Princess Olga?” Konstantin asks, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue. “Are you unwell?”

“I am well enough,” she says, “but I think the dessert has defeated me.”

“Are you so easily defeated?”

Olga carefully withdraws all heat and irritation from her voice. “No, of course not.”

“We have spent days now in negotiation, but I feel I haven’t had a moment to talk with you alone.”

Olga glances around at the interpreter and has to smile. “This is alone?”

“You can be trusted to keep secrets, can’t you?” Konstantin says to the interpreter, a slight man with a patchy beard. He nods. “You see,” Konstantin says, returning his attention to Olga. “We are alone.”

Olga gazes towards the kitchen.

“We could talk about something other than trade,” Konstantin suggests. “Is there anything you would like to know about me? About my empire?”

Olga considers this carefully, and decides that this intimate moment he has fashioned allows her some informality. “Yes, there is,” she says. “I would like to know why you are so wealthy and I am not.”

Konstantin laughs. “That is simple. We worship Christ, and you worship barbarian demons.”

Olga is startled. She has never thought to make this connection. “You mean your gods provide you with all these riches?”

“Our God. There is only one.”

The world stops for a moment as Olga is engulfed in this thought. What had the Secret Ambassador ever given her but a bent bear and a thorough plumbing? No jewels, no gilded birds, no necklaces of silver coins. It is only a little thing to change allegiance, surely. The benefit to her people would be immeasurable. Especially to her son. Those dreamed monsters would finally be driven away.

“Olga,” Konstantin says, his voice dropping to an intimate murmur as he slips into her own language. “Olga, you are beautiful.”

She is distracted. Almost doesn’t hear.

“Olga, I have something important to ask of you,” he says.

Olga fixes him with her hard eyes. “The answer is yes,” she says.

“Yes?”

“Yes, I will convert to Christ.”

Within two weeks, Konstantin baptises Olga himself and proclaims himself her godfather. Until the moment that she is plunged under the water at the mouth of the river, she refuses to talk to Konstantin at all, calling herself unclean and unworthy of his compliments. It is, of course, a strategy. Olga can read Konstantin’s hot passion for her, and wants to hold him off as long as possible. After the baptism, as she sits still wet and shivering on the riverbank in the late afternoon sun, Konstantin outlines to her all of her responsibilities as a Christian woman. She is only half-listening, wondering when the gold and gems will start to be provided by her new god.

“Princess Olga,” he says, at the very last, “there is one more thing that must be finalised between us.”

Olga swallows hard. Konstantin dismisses the richly-robed attendants and takes her hand. In faltering tones, in Olga’s tongue, he says, “I would like you to marry me.”

Marry him? And be Empress of Byzantium? Wealth without measure, and she but a chattel at his disposal. Once Christ started
pouring the wealth onto her in Kiev, she wouldn’t need him. She could rule in her own right, at least until Sviatoslav came to the throne. And then her son would be a powerful prince of Kiev, not a half-brother to the next emperor, his own land swallowed into the insatiable gullet of Byzantium.

Olga smiles shyly and gestures for her interpreter to come forward. She watches Konstantin’s face fall as the interpreter delivers her answer. “You have just baptised me and proclaimed yourself my godfather. A Christian woman cannot marry her own father.”

Konstantin’s eyebrows shoot up, and for a moment Olga feels sorry for him. Then she flicks her wet hair over her shoulder and says, “I am cold. I will return to my chamber, and tomorrow we will sail home to Kiev.”

The bear does not yet understand how all these events will impact on her, but finds herself growing afraid while resting in her still-unopened box. The journey home is harsh. The boat nearly sinks in the Black Sea, and the portage route around the rapids is muddy and claims the lives of two men. Olga sits gloomily in her cabin, repressing the urge to perform the sacrifices she would ordinarily have ordered to make their way safe. Instead, she prays to Christ for safety, and for some gold to make into a throne, and for a marble palace. She occasionally peers out of her cabin to swear at the crew for making the journey so miserable and hazardous.

Perhaps this is what the bear is afraid of: Olga has changed. Olga once loved her and thought she had a sweet face, but Olga hasn’t thought of the bear once since her conversion, and the bear worries that she is to become discarded junk with no warm room to sit in.

On Olga’s return, she sleeps a troubled sleep for three nights. On the fourth day, the Secret Ambassador arrives. Olga is not in her chamber when he comes knocking. He finds her instead in the cold state room, sitting on a long bench under the window. The room’s plain timbered walls are dark and high, and the princess’s face is drawn and shadowed.

“Olga?” he says, approaching her.

Olga turns her face away from his offered kiss, and dismisses her guards with a wave. When they are alone, Olga offers him the box.

The Secret Ambassador’s eyebrows twitch, but he shows no other sign of the unease he feels. He opens the box, the bear is inside.

“Take it back,” she says. “Everything has changed.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have a new god now. His name is Christ.”

A wave of frightened heat washes through the Secret Ambassador’s body. “You cannot have Christ as your god. You are tied to the native magic of your land.”

“I have clear instructions,” Olga responds, her voice cold. “I am to banish all the unclean demons.” She stands, thrusts the box into his hands and begins to pace.

“Who gave such instructions?”

“The Emperor Konstantin. My godfather.”

“Why do you let him command you?”

Olga stops and turns, her eyes blazing. “I command myself,” she shouts, “and I command you. You and your unholy host are a supplement to this land, not its rulers. Men rule here.”

“Olga, you are not a man,” he says, adopting a gentle chiding tone.

“I am as much a man as my husband ever was. As much a man as my son needs for his future to be secure.” Olga comes to rest near the window, and pushes open the shutter. A cold breeze licks in, making the flames in the hearth jump. Her voice remains steely. “Secret Ambassador, you know that I speak the truth. If I tell you to withdraw, you must withdraw.”

“And also the domovoi who keeps your fire burning? And the
leshii
who helps you fell trees to build houses? And the magic of Mother Moist Earth herself, who makes your crops grow?”

Olga is quiet a long time. The Secret Ambassador waits in the dim room. Finally, he places the box gently on the floor and approaches Olga, tries to slip his fingers over hers on the windowsill.

“Don’t,” she says roughly, pulling her hand away. “My new god will give me better than trees and dirt. He will give me gold and sapphires.”

Irritation overcomes his good sense. “You are a fool,” he spits, seizing her wrists roughly and shaking her.

“You are my servant!” she shouts. “Do as I say. Withdraw all your unclean magic from this land and never again cross this palace threshold.”

“And you will command this even though it may not be the wish of all the Rus. You believe they will stop making sacrifices and performing their native rituals?”

She stares him down. “The Rus are my people to rule.”

The Secret Ambassador takes a step away from her, lifting his hands in surrender. “So be it, Olga,” he says, and the cold note in his voice touches her spine and makes her tremble, “but you cannot banish us entirely. We are of this land as much as you. We will linger behind the veil of men’s thoughts. We will always be there.”

“I don’t care where you are, as long as you aren’t here.”

He raises a finger to hold in front of her eyes. “Tonight, then, in the cold before dawn. If you are awake, you will feel it, like a wave retreating on the sand. And remember, the further out the wave draws the mightier the crash when it returns.”

Olga does not answer as the Secret Ambassador strides towards the door.

“Take your filthy idol with you,” she says, indicating the bear in the box.

“No, it is yours, Olga. A reminder of what you have lost.” Then he is gone, and his footsteps echo down the wood and stone hall.

Olga’s body relaxes forward, and she crouches on the floor next to the bear. The bear sees tears spill from Olga’s eyes as her shaking fingers come down to touch the bear gently on the belly.

“I loved him,” she says quietly, then takes a breath and glances towards the window. “Christ save us all,” she murmurs, and her voice is lost in the empty room.

Night falls and a cold hush mists across the land. Midnight follows on its heels and everything at the palace grows still. Olga can hear the whoosh and thud of the stove and nothing more. She does not sleep. She draws the furs close around her and stares into the dark room. The smell of pine and woodsmoke hangs in the stagnant air. The hours draw out: one, two, three…

And then it comes, a feeling like the waves withdrawing. If she listens closely, she can hear their whispered roar in her heart. Every pore on her skin shrinks, and a shiver runs across her. Something is moving, reluctant feet are leaving, a buzz of energy is dimming. She closes her eyes and the tide pulls out, tugging on her sinews and veins. The roar intensifies, rushing into her ears. She covers them with her hands, but the sound is in her head, not in the world.

At once, it stops. An emptiness infuses her, and all the muscles in her body are tensed against the tide’s return.

It does not come.

Olga waits a day, two, three. A week. Her body grows more and more tense.

The leshii is not at his cottage. The domovoi is not beneath the stove. But she still hears them sometimes: invisible footsteps in the woods, scuttling noises from her chamber.

Still she waits for the wave to crash back over her.

The world has lost some of its brightness and colour. Only children dream in the old colours. The people feel an emptiness, but it is an emptiness that may soon be filled by the new God.

Olga waits and always remains empty.

How does this tale end? It doesn’t. It hasn’t. Few people live forever, and Olga certainly didn’t. She was followed by her son, and his son, and so on. Christianity found eager hearts to inhabit; believers in the old magic lived alongside them.

The bear was carted about from household to household, a treasured chattel of the princely family. She was wise and formed no further attachments, recognising that she was fated to outlive all whom she met. The Rus flourished for hundreds of years, and then the Mongols came, and with them blood and ash and the crushing of bones. Whole cities were put to the sword, and the bear saw it all and her heart grew colder. We cannot remain forever in the dreamy innocence of childhood. Knowledge comes to us. Indeed, we seek it out.

And knowledge changes us.

The Golden Bear saw many things, and books could be filled with her experiences. But a good storyteller always knows to select only the tales which are important to his ending. Let it be known
simply that the Golden Bear survived the Mongol onslaught by the devices of a wily slave who hid her in his shack in the cold northern woods, and whose family treasured her until she was taken as tribute by Vsevolod of the Large Nest, ruler of Moscow. And there she remained for many centuries, and witnessed many things, including the rise of a prince named Ivan, surnamed the Terrible.

But that is a story for another time.

So you see how one world became two, and I will tell you now the traditional names for these two worlds.

Mir.
The world where Uncle Vasily lives, where cars and trams stalk roads of tar, where giant machines can fly and rulers govern from staterooms rather than armed on horseback.

And
Skazki.
The world of stories. It is believed that all our magical demons—the leshii, the russalki, Morozko the frost demon, and the child-eating witch Baba Yaga—only exist in stories. Skazki is a cruel and bitter place. It is also a place where your own death cannot find you; only a death not-your-own. Have I confused you? I’m sorry, I do not mean to.

But surely, by now, you know where Rosa’s lover is.

“You withdraw into crimson twilight,

In endless circles.

I hear a tiny echo: distant footsteps.

Are you near or far, or vanished into the sky?…

Do you draw close, burning,

In endless circles?”

ALEKSANDR BLOK

Rosa’s body was stiff with indecision; she didn’t know which way to turn her head, which path to set her feet upon.

“Rosa Petrovna?” The Ukrainian leaned against his car, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses.

Rosa turned. “I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“Have you lost someone?”

She considered Daniel and Em’s car, so empty and so indifferent. “I have lost him more than once,” she said under her breath, then turned to the driver. “Wait for me a few minutes.”

“As you wish.”

Rosa opened her small leather backpack and rummaged in it for her keys. Daniel had accidentally given her the spare key for the hire car. A cursory check of the car’s tyres told her they were all intact. She let herself in and searched the back seat, unzipping the suitcases and ploughing through the borrowed clothes. She popped the boot and searched that too. The bear wasn’t here. Daniel and Em had taken the bear with them.

Or the bear had taken Daniel and Em with her.

Rosa slotted the key into the ignition. It started on her first try. She put the car into gear and drove it a little way up the dirt road. The brakes were fine; the gears were fine; the steering was fine. There was absolutely nothing wrong with this car. So why had they abandoned it? They had packed up the bear and locked the car before they left, so Rosa presumed they weren’t forced out by thieves or murderers.

She backed up again, and got out, leaned on a crooked pole.

“You can go,” she said to the Ukrainian driver. “I’ll be fine from here.”

“Vasily said you’d need a lift back to St Petersburg.”

“Tell Vasily I’ll call him soon.”

The Ukrainian driver shrugged and pulled her suitcase from the car. He slid back into the driver’s seat and, within moments, he had disappeared down the narrow rutted road.

She packed the car and started it again, driving for a few minutes over muddy potholes until she reached the end of the road, marked by a rusted dead-end sign. Beyond were untidy spruce and birch, their long branches crowding out the daylight. Rosa parked the car and got out. Again she was unable to decide what to do next. Search the woods for hours? She already knew Daniel wasn’t here. The fog in the mirror had told her that. She felt helpless and tiny, an insubstantial speck in the enormous reach of Russia. And beyond.

Her second sight twitched, and she locked the car and tried to discern from which direction it came. The day was very still. Clouds had moved over the sun, and Rosa could hear birdsong, faint and far away. Somewhere to the west and north, a tickle in the atmosphere. She ducked around the sign and started walking.

Bracken crunched beneath her feet. She followed her second sight into the woods, then down a rocky gully. The sky dimmed. A plane went by, high overhead, the drone of its engines making tuneless but strangely hypnotic music as it disappeared into the east. She walked the gully a little way, then came back up a rise and into slightly sparser trees. Beyond them, the woods opened out into a rolling field.

Rosa caught her breath, squinting towards the sky. She felt strange and frightened, standing on the edge of this field. The beckoning sensation, an itch behind her forehead, originated here. Her raw ability was not enough to pin it down, nor to cast her mind beyond it to find Daniel. She leaned against a tree and tried to focus, letting her second sight open. Out there…colours and sounds, indistinct from one another. Smoky blue and violet, the faintest whisper of voices. A veil, lighter than a summer breeze.

Rosa left the cover of the trees. A cold sensation slivered over her. The veil was just a few feet ahead. She held her breath and strode towards it, through it, but nothing happened. She was still in the same field on the same summer morning.

Puzzled, she reached out her fingers to touch the veil. Her second sight opened, but the shimmers were pale. The morning sun fractured the magic. Daniel and Em must have crossed at night, when unseen forces were stronger.

Midnight would be her friend. At midnight, the veil was thinnest. She could wait in the car until then.

Rosa sighed, turning on her heel.

The hulking figure of a man stood directly behind her.

She screamed, he seized her arm, wrenched at her wrist, then dashed for the trees.

Rosa looked down to see that he had torn her mother’s charm bracelet from her wrist.

“Hey, give that back!” she shouted, and took off after him.

The man had the advantage. While Rosa had to keep an eye on sudden drops and rocky ground, he flew over it with an ease that demonstrated he knew the area well. But she was light and young, reckless and determined. The clouds blackened and threatened rain, but still she ran, thrilling to the thundering of her heart. The dark figure was always just ahead of her. Then, abruptly, the ground sloped away ahead and he disappeared over the edge. Rosa skidded to a halt at the top of the ridge.

The man stood at the verge of a still lake, which was about a hundred feet across. Tangled weeds and skinny flowers grabbed at his boots. He held the bracelet in his right hand, over the water.

“That was my mother’s,” she said. “It’s worth nothing to you. Give it back.”

He smiled and shook his head. She made her way down the slope. Gravel slid beneath her feet and she wondered how he had managed to get over the ridge so quickly and easily. She picked her way down, and he stood motionless, waiting for her. Her heart was frightened, but she was not.

Finally she stood on flat ground, ten feet away from him.

“Don’t come any closer,” he said in a quiet, yet resonant voice. He was easily sixty, with dirty grey-streaked hair, a shaggy beard and stained clothes. His eyes were hooded and dark.

“I just want my bracelet back.”

“I’ll be keeping it.”

She took a step and he dangled it over the water again. “Stay where you are or I’ll throw it in the lake. You’ll never find it.”

“Give it back.”

“I will. Eventually. Not now.”

“It’s worthless to you.”

“You don’t know that.” He shook it gently, and the charms chimed against each other. “I’ll keep it safe for as long as you stay with me, but when you leave I’ll give it back.”

Rosa was puzzled. “Stay with you?”

“At my home.”

“I’m not coming to your home. I’m not staying with you.”

“You are, because I have what you want.”

“Only because you stole it.”

“Not the bracelet,” he said, smiling. “I have knowledge.”

Rosa felt her skin shrink from him. Her body wanted to run, but she wouldn’t let it. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come home with me.”

“No thanks, granddad. You’re not my type.”

He raised his eyes to the sky and, as if he had directed it, the sun broke from the clouds, bathing him in light. Rosa was momentarily startled by the sunlight, almost didn’t notice the strange sight before her.

Then her eyes, perceiving something unnatural, were drawn to the ground at his feet.

He cast two shadows.

“You’re a
volkhv
?” she gasped.

“I can’t let you wear this bracelet at my home,” he said.

Rosa was wary and puzzled, but recognised that her resistance was already faltering. She had read about powerful magicians like this man and, although she had always believed in them, had never thought she would be lucky enough to meet one.

“What makes you think I’m coming to your home?” she said.

“My daughter Elizavetta is sick. We need an employee to help with the family business.”

Rosa shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

He ambled towards her. She stood her ground, despite her trepidation and amazement.

“Come,” he said, “you will have your own lodgings. You will be warm and comfortable.”

She shrugged off his insistent fingers. “No. Explain what you mean. Explain who you are.”

“I am Anatoly Dimitrov Chenchikov and, yes, I am a volkhv. You are a silly girl with a foreign accent and a pitifully weak magic bracelet. You hope to cross the veil. You cannot.”

“How do you know I can’t? My friend did.”

He smiled. “Ah, so now the mystery deepens. Someone you love has crossed the veil. How?”

Rosa didn’t tell him about the bear. “I don’t know.”

“We shall find out together. You have a piddling trickle of second sight. I will show you how to use it.” He nodded. “There are twenty-seven crossings in all of Russia, and twenty-seven guardians nearby. You were lucky to find me. Don’t let this opportunity slip through your fingers.”

Rosa’s heart leapt with excitement, but still she hesitated. “Why can’t I have my bracelet back?”

Anatoly chuckled. “For the same reason you aren’t allowed to use your mobile phone on an aeroplane. You’ll get it back eventually. After the journey.” He extended his hand, a fatherly gesture. “Come, girl. It will be an adventure.”

An adventure.
Rosa knew she had to stay nearby until midnight anyway. In the meantime she may as well see where the volkhv lived. She took a deep breath and reached out. His palm was rough and dirty, and now she was close to him she could smell stale sweat. “I’m Rosa Petrovna Kovalenka,” she said.

“I know. It was written on the suitcase you left in the blue car. My son-in-law, Ilya, has already taken your things to our home.” He led her firmly around the lake and back up a gentle slope into the dark woods. “Come, Rosa. You have much to learn.”

Anatoly kept hold of her hand as they moved through the woods. Rosa remained silent, memorising the route through the trees so she could make the return journey later. Maybe Anatoly could teach her something, maybe he couldn’t. He was certainly a powerful magician and she might need his assistance. Finding Daniel was uppermost in her mind; to see the place he wandered and to bring him home safely.

“There is our farm,” he said in a quiet voice as a brick fence, painted white, came into view. There was a gate in the fence, also white, high and arched with iron doors. The paint was peeling and discoloured, the grass grew long, giving the impression that nobody had lived here for a long time. Anatoly finally dropped her hand, and felt in his pocket for keys. “We are careful always to lock the gate, so remember that if you leave. There are precious things within.”

“What kind of things?” Rosa asked.

“Bees,” he said with a smile, jingling the keys merrily. “We’re honey farmers.”

Rosa was struck by the practicality of this. She had had a romanticised notion that a volkhv and his family might live isolated from the world, conjuring bread and wine from rocks and water but, of course, they had to survive the same as anyone else. They had to have money for the markets and for schoolbooks.

When they arrived at the gate, Anatoly turned her to face him. “Rosa, I could feel you nearby since you arrived this morning, and I came for you quickly. My family think you are a new employee, here to help with the business until Elizavetta recovers. There is no reason for them to believe otherwise. Do you understand?”

“Okay,” she said indifferently, shrugging. She had no intention of staying beyond midnight. “Let me ask you some important questions first.”

“You may ask only three questions.”

“Is my friend…is Daniel in danger?”

His hooded eyes lifted to the sky. “It’s hard to say. He may be. Is he clever?”

“Yes.”

“Then he will probably be safe for a while.”

“How long before I learn how to cross the veil?”

“As long as it takes, Rosa. It would be dangerous to go unprepared.”

“A day?”

He laughed. “No. Longer.”

Rosa grew frustrated. “A week?”

“No more questions.”

“What’s beyond the veil?”

His voice became hard. “No more questions. You are here to give my son Makhar his daily lessons, and in spare moments you will help my wife with the bottles and labels. You understand?”

Rosa bit back a retort. She was nobody’s nanny or housekeeper. But she sensed that Anatoly would only give her what she needed if she went along with him. “I understand,” she said. “When can I be alone with you again?”

He took her hand and caressed her fingers gently. Rosa felt a cold shiver of mixed revulsion and anticipation. “No…more…questions.”

Anatoly released her, ran his hand once over his beard, and opened the gate. Rosa followed him into a neatly maintained, shady garden. The family home was an old timber cottage painted pale blue, with tidy beds of herbs and flowers lined up along the path. Anatoly indicated off to the right. “Behind the house are the hives, down towards the stream is the old outbuilding. We’ve made it into a guesthouse. That is where you will stay.”

They walked up the front path. Rosa noted the sun symbol above the door, the bunches of stinging nettle hanging over the windows, the cross painted on the jamb: wards against magic. She felt a prickle of excitement. To be immersed in this world, where enchantments were real and not dismissed as superstitions…

Anatoly pushed the door open, calling out that he was home. Rosa stood in a large room. A kitchen and a dining table took up one half; the other half was decorated as a living room with bright curtains, a faded sofa, and an ageing television set stacked with magazines. The welcoming smells of honey and baking bread overlaid a less pleasant smell—damp, or rottenness. The floor felt slightly tacky under her shoes. A narrow hallway led off towards other rooms. All the timber was unpainted, making it feel as if she stood inside a treehouse. A woman at least twenty years younger
than Anatoly came gliding down the hall towards them. Rosa assumed it was his daughter, until Anatoly introduced her as his wife.

“Who’s this?” she said suspiciously, her nose wrinkling as though she had smelled something bad.

“This is the young woman I mentioned before I went out. She has come to help until Elizavetta is recovered.”

“And I told you that I didn’t want any help.” The woman had a wide face, with prominent cheekbones and flared nostrils. Her hair was very fair, but her eyes were dark and sharp.

“Ah, pish! You can’t manage everything on your own, and you don’t speak English and this young woman does. Makhar must keep up with his lessons.”