Кэтрин Арден - The Girl in the Tower

“At least send word to Father Sergei,” Sasha said. “He loves me well.”

“That I will do,” said Andrei, but he was already walking away.

THE BELLS RANG OUTSIDE, the footsteps passed, the rumors swirled. Jagged, incoherent prayers rose to Sasha’s lips and broke off again, half-voiced. Dusk had melted into night, and Moscow was drunk and cheerful under a blaze of new-risen moonlight when footsteps sounded in the cloister, and Sasha’s door rattled.

He got to his feet and put his back to a wall, for what good it would do.

The door opened, softly. Andrei’s fat, anxious face showed again in the gap, beard bristling. Beside him stood a sturdy young man in a hood.

An instant of disbelieving stillness, and then Sasha strode forward. “Rodion! What do you here?” For Andrei carried a torch in one anxious hand; by its light Sasha saw his friend’s face worn all to rags, a mark of frostbite on his nose.

Andrei looked angry, exasperated, afraid. “Brother Rodion has come hotfoot from the Lavra,” he said, “with news that concerns the Grand Prince of Moscow.” A pause. “And your friend, Kasyan Lutovich.”

“I have been to Bashnya Kostei,” put in Rodion. He was looking uneasily at his friend, in the cold and narrow cell. “I rode two horses to death to bring you the news.”

Sasha had never seen such a look in Rodion’s face before. “Come in, then.”

He was in no position to command, but they entered the cell without a word and fastened the door behind them.

Rodion proceeded, softly, to tell a tale of dust and bones and horrors in the dark. “It deserves its name,” he finished. “Bashnya Kostei. The Tower of Bones. I do not know what manner of man is this Kasyan Lutovich, but his house is no dwelling for a living man. And if that weren’t enough, it was Kasyan who—”

“Paid Chelubey to pass himself off as an emissary, to get his men into the city,” finished Sasha, thinking with a pang of Vasya. “I know. Rodya—you must leave at once. Do not say you’ve seen me. Go to the Grand Prince. Tell him—”

“What emissary? Kasyan paid those bandits to burn villages, ” Rodion interrupted. “I found their agent in Chudovo, their go-between to buy their blades and horses.”

Rodion had been busy. “Hire bandits to burn his own?” Sasha asked sharply. “To profit in girls?”

“I suppose,” said Rodion. His frost-nipped face was grim.

Andrei stood silent near the door.

“Perhaps Kasyan used the burning to lure the Grand Prince out into the wild so that the impostor might slip in the easier,” Sasha said slowly.

Rodion’s glance shifted between Sasha and Andrei. “Am I too late in my errand? I see some evil has touched you already.”

“My own pride,” said Sasha, with a ghost of dark humor. “I misjudged my sister and Kasyan Lutovich both. But enough. Go. I do well enough here. Go and warn—”

A clamor cut him off. There came a flaring of torches, shouts from the gate, the sound of running feet and slamming doors.

“What now?” muttered Andrei. “Fire? Thieves? This is the house of God.”

The noise gained in pitch; voices shouted and answered one another.

Muttering, Andrei heaved himself through the door, turned back to bolt it, then hesitated. He gave Sasha a dark look, not entirely unfriendly. “Do not escape in the meantime, for the love of God.” He bustled off, leaving the door unlocked.

Rodion and Sasha looked at each other. The rushing darkness, flickering between the torches, stippled both their tonsured heads. “You must warn the Grand Prince,” said Sasha. “Then go to my sister, the Princess of Serpukhov. Tell her—”

Rodion said, “Your sister’s child is coming. She has gone into the bathhouse.”

Sasha stilled. “How do you know?”

Rodion bowed his head. “The priest, Konstantin Nikonovich—the one that knew her father at Lesnaya Zemlya—he received a messenger, and left to minister to her. I heard as I was coming.”

Sasha turned away sharply, looking down at hands bruised still from that day’s fighting. They would not call a priest to a laboring woman unless her end was near. That he—that cold-handed creature—should be with my sister dying… “God keep her, in life or death,” said Sasha. But in his eyes was a flash that would have had the prudent Andrei panting back to treble-bolt the door.

The noise without had not diminished. Over the clamor suddenly rose, clear and incongruous, a voice that Sasha knew.

Sasha thrust Rodion aside with a well-placed shoulder and flew down the corridor of the cloister, pursued by his friend.

VASYA STOOD IN THE DOORYARD just behind the gate, wearing a dirty cloak, hands folded before her, looking pale and unlikely in the nighttime monastery. “I must see my brother!” she snapped, her light voice a counterpoint to the angry rumbling all around.

Dmitrii’s guards, who had stayed more for Andrei’s good beer than to watch Sasha’s bolted door, groped blearily for their swords. Some of the monks had torches; all of them looked outraged. Vasya was at the center of a growing crowd.

“She must have climbed the wall,” one of the guards was stammering defensively. He made the sign of the cross. “She appeared out of nowhere, the unnatural bitch.”

The wall had been built more to preserve the sanctity of the monks’ devotions than to keep out the determined. But it was reasonably high. Gathering himself, Sasha stepped into the ring of torchlight.

Cries of startled anger met him, and one of the guards tried to put his sword to Sasha’s throat. Sasha, barely looking, disarmed the man with a twist and an open palm. Then he was holding a sword in his bare fist, and all the monks fell back. The men-at-arms groped for their own blades, but Sasha barely saw them. There was blood on his sister’s hands.

“Why have you come?” he demanded. “What has happened? Is it Olya?”

“She lost her child,” replied Vasya steadily.

Sasha seized his sister’s arm. “Is she alive?”

Vasya made a small, involuntary sound. Sasha remembered that Kasyan had also gripped her there, when he stripped her before the people. He let her go slowly. “Tell me,” he said, forcing calm.

“Yes,” said Vasya fiercely. “Yes, she is alive, and she will live.”

Sasha let out a breath. Great arcs of pain shadowed his sister’s eyes.

Andrei pushed his way through the crowd. “Be silent, all of you,” said the hegumen. “Girl—”

“You must listen to me now, Batyushka,” Vasya interrupted.

“We will not!” replied Andrei in anger, but Sasha said, “Listen to what, Vasya?”

“It is tonight,” she said. “Tonight, when the feasting is at its pitch, and all Moscow is drunk, Kasyan means to kill the Grand Prince, send Moscow into chaos, and emerge triumphant as Grand Prince himself. Dmitrii has no son; Vladimir is in Serpukhov. You must believe me.” She turned suddenly to Rodion, who stood behind the monks. “Brother Rodion,” she said in that clear voice. “You have come quick to Moscow. What brought you in haste? Do you believe me, Brother?”

“Yes,” Rodion said. “I have come from Bashnya Kostei. Perhaps a week ago I would have laughed at you—but now? It is perhaps as you say.”

“She is lying,” said Andrei. “Girls often lie.”

“No,” said Rodion slowly. “No, I do not think she is.”

Sasha asked, “You left Olya to come to me? Surely our sister needs you now.”

“She threw me out,” said Vasya. Her eyes did not leave her brother’s, though her voice caught on the words. “We must warn Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

“I cannot let you go, Brother Aleksandr,” broke in Andrei, desperately. “It is as much as my place and my own life are worth.”