14.

The City Between Rivers

“Well,” said Dmitrii, with relish, when the forest had swallowed Katya’s village and they rode again on unmarked snow. “You have played the hero, Vasya; all well and good. But enough of coddling children; we must hurry on now.” A pause. “I think your horse agrees with me.”

Solovey was bucking amiably, pleased with the sun after a week of snow, and pleased to have the weight of three people off his back.

“He certainly does,” Vasya panted. “Mad thing,” she added to the horse in exasperation. “Will you attempt to walk now?”

Solovey deigned to come to earth, but instead of bucking, he pranced and kicked until Vasya leaned forward to glare into one unrepentant eye. “For heaven’s sake,” she said, while Dmitrii laughed.

They rode until dark that day, and their pace only increased as the week wore on. The men ate their bread in the dark and rode from first light until shadows swallowed the trees. They followed woodcutters’ paths and broke trail when they had to. The snow was crusted on top, a deep powder beneath, and it was heavy going. After a week, only Solovey, of all the horses, was bright-eyed and light of foot.

On the last night before Moscow, darkness caught them in the shelter of trees, just on the bank of the Moskva. Dmitrii called the halt, peering down at the expanse of river. The moon was waning by then, and troubled clouds smothered the stars. “Better camp here,” said the prince. “Easy riding tomorrow and home by midmorning.” He slid off his horse, buoyant still, though he had lost weight in the long days. “A good measure of mead tonight,” he added, raising his voice. “And perhaps our warrior-monk will have caught rabbits for us.”

Vasya dismounted with the others and broke the ice from Solovey’s whiskers. “Moscow tomorrow,” she whispered to him, with jumping heart and cold hands. “Tomorrow!”

Solovey arched his neck, untroubled, and shoved her with his nose. Have you any bread, Vasya?

She sighed, unsaddled him, rubbed him down, fed him a crust, and left him to nose about for grass under the snow. There was wood to chop, and snow to scrape away, a fire to build, a sleeping-trench to dig. The men all called her Vasya now; they teased her as they worked. She had found, to her surprise, that she could give as good as she got, in the coin of their rough humor.

They were all laughing when Sasha returned. Three dead rabbits swung from his hand and an unstrung bow lay over his shoulder. The men raised a cheer, blessed him, and set the meat to stewing. The flames of their campfires leaped bravely now, and the men passed skins of mead and waited for their supper.

Sasha went to where Vasya was digging her sleeping-trench. “Is all well with you?” he asked her, a little stiffly. He had never quite settled on a tone to use with his brother-who-was-really-his-sister.

Vasya grinned roguishly at him. His bemused but determined effort to keep her safe on the road had eased her gnawing loneliness. “I’d like to sleep on an oven, and eat stew that someone else made,” she said. “But I am well, brother.”

“Good,” said Sasha. His gravity jarred after the men’s jokes. He handed her a little stained bundle. She unwrapped the raw livers of the three rabbits, dark with blood.

“God bless you,” Vasya managed before she bit into the first. The sweet-salt-metal life taste exploded across her tongue. Behind her Solovey squealed; he disliked the smell of blood. Vasya ignored him.

Her brother slipped away before she finished. Vasya watched him go, licking her fingers, wondering how she might ease the growing worry in his face.

She finished digging, and sank down onto a log drawn near the fire. Chin on fist, she watched Sasha as he blessed the men, blessed their meat, and drank his mead, inscrutable, on the other side of the flames. Sasha spoke no word when the blessings were done; even Dmitrii had begun to remark how silent Brother Aleksandr had been since the Lavra.

He is troubled, of course, Vasya thought, because I am dressed as a boy, and I fought bandits, and he has lied to the Grand Prince. But we had no choice, Brother—

“Quite the hero, your brother,” said Kasyan, breaking into her thoughts. He sat down beside her and offered her his skin of mead.

“Yes,” replied Vasya, with some sharpness. “Yes, he is.” There was something almost—not quite—mocking, in Kasyan’s voice. She did not take the honey-wine.

Kasyan seized her mittened hand and slapped the vessel into it. “Drink,” he said. “I meant no insult.”

Vasya hesitated, then drank. She still had not gotten used to this man: to his secret eyes and sudden laughter. His face had perhaps paled a little, with the week of travel, but that only made the colors of him more vivid. She would meet his glance at odd moments, and fight down a blush, though she had never been a girl for simpering. How would he react, she sometimes found herself wondering, if he knew I was a girl?

Don’t think of it. He will never know.

The silence between them stretched out, but he made no move to go. To break it, Vasya asked, “Have you been to Moscow before, Kasyan Lutovich?”

His lips quirked. “I came to Moscow not long after the year turned, to rally the Grand Prince to my cause. But before that? Once. Long ago.” An arid suggestion of feeling just tinged his voice. “Perhaps every young fool goes seeking his heart’s desire in cities. I never went back, until this winter.”

“What was your heart’s desire, Kasyan Lutovich?” Vasya asked.

He gave her a look of good-natured scorn. “Are you my grandmother now? You are showing your small years, Vasilii Petrovich. What do you think? I loved a woman.”

Across the fire, Sasha’s head turned.

Dmitrii had been making jokes and watching the stew like a cat at a mouse-hole (their rations did not suit his appetite), but he overheard and spoke first. “Did you, Kasyan Lutovich?” he asked interestedly. “A Muscovite woman?”

“No,” said Kasyan, speaking now to the listening company. His voice was soft. “She came from far away. She was very beautiful.”

Vasya bit her lower lip. Kasyan usually kept to himself. He was silent more often than speaking, except that he and Dmitrii sometimes rode side by side, passing a companionable wineskin. But now everyone was listening.

“What happened to her?” asked Dmitrii. “Come, let us have the story.”

“I loved her,” said Kasyan carefully. “She loved me. But she disappeared, on the day I was to have taken her away to Bashnya Kostei, to be my own. I never saw her again.” A pause. “She is dead now,” he added, sharply. “That is all. Get me some stew, Vasilii Petrovich, before these gluttons eat it all.”

Vasya got up to do so. But she wondered very much at Kasyan’s expression. Nostalgic tenderness, when he talked of his dead lover. But—just for an instant, and right at the end—there had been such an expression of baffled rage that her blood crept. She went to eat her soup with Solovey, resolving to think no more of Kasyan Lutovich.

WINTER WAS STILL DIAMOND-HARD, full of black frosts and dead beggars, but the old, rigid snow had begun to show its age on the day Dmitrii Ivanovich rode back into Moscow beside his cousins: the monk Aleksandr Peresvet and the boy Vasilii Petrovich. With him also were Kasyan and his followers, who, at Dmitrii’s urging, had not gone home.

“Come, man—come to Moscow and be my guest for Maslenitsa,” said Dmitrii. “The girls are prettier in Moscow than in your old tower of bones.”

“I do not doubt it,” Kasyan said wryly. “Though I think you wish to secure my taxes, Gosudar.”

Dmitrii bared his teeth. “That, too,” he said. “Am I wrong?”

Kasyan only laughed.

They rose that morning in a fine spitting haze of snowflakes and rode down to Moscow along the vast sweep of the Moskva. The city was a white crown on the dark hilltop, blurred by curtains of blown snow. Her pale walls smelled of lime; her towers seemed to split the sky. Sasha could never still a leap of his heart at the sight.

Vasya was riding beside him, snow in her eyebrows. Her smile was infectious. “Today, Sashka,” she said, when the first towers came into sight, thrusting above the gray-white world. “We will see Olga today.” Solovey had caught his rider’s mood; he was almost dancing as they walked.

The role of Vasilii Petrovich had grown on Vasya like skin. If she did tricks on Solovey, they cheered her; if she picked up a spear, Dmitrii laughed at her clumsiness and promised her teaching. If she asked questions, they were answered. A hesitant happiness had begun to show in her expressive face. Sasha felt his lie the more keenly for it, and did not know what to do.

Dmitrii had taken to her. He had promised her a sword, a bow, a fine coat. “A place at court,” Dmitrii said. “You will attend my councils, and command men, when you are older.”

Vasya had nodded, flushed with pleasure, while Sasha looked on, gritting his teeth. God grant Olya knows what to do, he thought. Because I do not.

WHEN THE SHADOW OF THE GATE fell on her face, Vasya drew a wondering breath. The gates of Moscow were made of iron-bound oak, soaring to five times her height and guarded above and below. More wondrous still were the walls themselves. In that land of forests, Dmitrii had poured out his father’s gold, his people’s blood, to build Moscow’s walls of stone. Scorch marks about the base gave credit to his foresight.

“See there?” said Dmitrii, pointing at one of these places. “That is when Algirdas came with the Litovskii, three years ago, and laid siege to the city. It was a near-fought thing.”

“Will they come again?” Vasya asked, staring at the burned places.

The Grand Prince laughed. “Not if they are wise. I married the firstborn daughter of the prince of Nizhny Novgorod, barren bitch that she is. Algirdas would be a fool to try her father and me together.”

The gates groaned open; the walled city blotted out the sky. Bigger than anything Vasya had ever heard of. For a moment she wanted to flee.

“Courage, country boy,” said Kasyan.

Vasya shot him a grateful look and urged Solovey forward.

The horse went when she asked, though with an unhappy ear. They passed through the gate: a pale arch that echoed the sound of people shouting.

“The prince!”

The call was picked up and carried about the narrow ways of Moscow. “The Grand Prince of Moscow! God bless you, Dmitrii Ivanovich!” And even, “Bless us! The warrior-monk! The warrior of the light! Brother Aleksandr! Aleksandr Peresvet!”

Out and out the cry rippled, borne away and back, torn up and re-formed, whirling like leaves in a tempest. People ran through the streets, and a crowd gathered about the gates of the kremlin. Dmitrii rode in travel-stained dignity. Sasha reached down for the people’s hands and made the sign of the cross over them. Tears sparked in an old lady’s eyes; a maiden raised trembling fingers.

Beneath the shouts, Vasya caught snatches of ordinary conversation. “Look at the bay stallion there. Have you ever seen his like?”

“No bridle.”

“And that—that is a mere boy on his back. A feather, to ride such a horse.”

“Who is he?”

“Who indeed?”

“Vasilii the Brave,” Kasyan put in, half-laughing.

The people took it up. “Vasilii the Brave!”

Vasya narrowed her eyes at Kasyan. He shrugged, hiding a smile in his beard. She was grateful for the sharp breeze, which gave her an excuse to pull hood and cap closer about her face.

“You are a hero, I find, Sasha,” she said, when her brother came riding up beside her.

“I am a monk,” he replied. His eyes were bright. Tuman stepped easily beneath him, neck arched.

“Do all monks get such names? Aleksandr Lightbringer?”

He looked uncomfortable. “I would stop them if I could. It is unchristian.”

“How did you get this name?”

“Superstition,” he said, tersely.

Vasya opened her mouth to pry the tale out, but just then a troop of muffled children came capering almost under Solovey’s hooves. The stallion skidded to a halt and half-reared, trying not to maim anyone.

“Be careful!” she told them. “It’s all right,” she added to the horse, soothingly. “We’ll be through in a minute. Listen to me, listen, listen—”

The horse calmed, barely. At least he put all four feet on the ground. I do not like it here, he told her.

“You will,” she said. “Soon. Olga’s husband will have good oats in his stable, and I will bring you honeycakes.”

Solovey twitched his ears, unconvinced. I cannot smell the sky.

Vasya had no answer to that. They had just passed the huts, the smithies, the warehouses and shops that made up the outer rings of Moscow, and now they had come to the heart of the city: the cathedral of the Ascension, the monastery of the Archangel, and the palaces of princes.

Vasya stared up, and her eyes shone in the towers’ reflected light. All the bells in Moscow had burst into pealing. The sound rattled her teeth. Solovey stamped and shivered.

She put a calming hand on the stallion’s neck, but she had no words for him, no words for her delighted astonishment, as she learned all at once the beauty and the scale of things made by men.

“The prince is come! The prince!” the cries rose louder and louder. “Aleksandr Peresvet!”

All was movement and bright color. Here stood scaffolding hung with cloth; there, great ovens smoking amid piles of slushy snow; and everywhere new smells: spice and sweetness, and the tang of forge-fires. Ten men were building a snow-slide, heaving blocks and dropping them, to hilarity. Tall horses and painted sledges and warmly bundled people gave way before the prince’s cavalcade. The riders passed the wooden gates of noble houses; behind them lay sprawling palaces: towers and walkways, haphazardly painted, and dark with old rain.

The riders halted at the largest of these gates, and it was flung open. They rode into a vast dooryard. The crush grew thicker still: servants and grooms and shouting hangers-on. Some boyars, too: broad men with colored kaftans, and broad smiles that did not always reach their eyes. Dmitrii was calling greetings.

The crowd pressed closer, and closer still.

Solovey rolled a wild eye and struck out with his forefeet.

“Solovey!” cried Vasya to the horse. “Easy now. Easy. You are going to kill someone.”

“Get back!” That was Kasyan, hard-handed on his gelding. “Get back, or are you all fools? That one is a stallion, and young; do you think he won’t take your heads off?”

Vasya looked her gratitude, still grappling with Solovey. Sasha appeared on her other side, pushing people away with Tuman’s brute strength.

Cursing, the crowd gave them space. Vasya found herself at the center of a ring of curious eyes, but at least Solovey began to settle.

“Thank you,” she said to both men.

“I only spoke for the grooms, Vasya,” Kasyan said lightly. “Unless you’d like to see your horse split more skulls?”

“I’d rather not,” she said. But the instant warmth was gone.

He must have seen her face change. “No,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

She had already dismounted, dropping down into a little pool of wary faces. Solovey had settled, but his ears still darted forward and back.

Vasya scratched the soft place beneath his jaw and murmured, “I must stay—I want to see my sister, but you—I could let you go. Take you back into the forest. You needn’t—”

I will stay here if you do, interrupted Solovey, though he was trembling, lashing his flanks with his tail.

Dmitrii flung his reins to a groom and dropped to the ground, his horse as unmoved by the crowd as he. Someone thrust a cup into his hand; he drank it off and pushed his way to Vasya. “Better than I expected,” he said. “I was sure you’d lose him the second we passed the gates.”

“You thought Solovey would bolt?” Vasya demanded indignantly.

“Of course I did,” said Dmitrii. “A stallion, bridleless and no more used to crowds than you? Take that outraged look off your face, Vasilii Petrovich; you look just like a maiden on her wedding night.”

A flush crept up her neck.

Dmitrii slapped the stallion’s flank. Solovey looked affronted. “We will put this one to my mares,” said the Grand Prince. “In three years my stable will be the envy of the Khan at Sarai. That is the best horse I have ever seen. Such a temperament—fire, but obedience.”

Solovey turned a mollified ear; he was fond of compliments. “Better a paddock for him now, though,” Dmitrii added practically. “He’ll kick my stable down otherwise.” The prince gave his orders, and then added aloud, “Come, Vasya. You will bestow the beast yourself, unless you think a groom might be able to halter him. Then you will bathe in my own palace, and wash off the grime of the road.”

Vasya felt herself turn pale. She groped for words. A groom sidled near with a rope in one hand.

The horse snapped his teeth, and the groom dropped hurriedly back.

“He doesn’t need a halter,” said Vasya, a trifle unnecessarily. “Dmitrii Ivanovich, I would like to see my sister at once. It has been so long; I was only a child when she went away to marry.”

Dmitrii frowned. Vasya wondered what she would do about bathing, if he insisted. Say she was concealing a deformity? What sort of deformity would make a boy—?

Sasha came to her rescue. “The Princess of Serpukhov will be eager to see her brother,” he said. “She will want to give thanks for his safe arrival. The horse can stay in her husband’s stable, if you permit, Dmitrii Ivanovich.”

Dmitrii frowned.

“Perhaps we should leave them to their reunion,” said Kasyan. He had handed over his reins and stood sleek as a cat in the middle of the tumult. “There will be time enough for putting the beast to mares, when he is rested.”

The Grand Prince shrugged. “Very well,” he said in some irritation. “But come to me, both of you, when you have seen your sister. No, don’t look like that, Brother Aleksandr. You are not going to ride with us all the way to Moscow and then cry up monkish solitude as soon as you have passed the gates. Go to the monastery first if you wish; flog yourself, and cry prayers to heaven, but come to the palace after. We must give thanks, and then there are plans afoot. I have been too long away.”

Sasha said nothing.

“We will be there, Gosudar,” Vasya interjected hastily.

The Grand Prince and Kasyan disappeared together into the palace, talking, followed by servants and by jostling boyars. Just at the doorway, Kasyan glanced back at her before disappearing into the shadows.

“THIS WAY, VASYA,” SAID SASHA, shaking her from contemplation.

Vasya remounted Solovey. The horse walked when she asked, though his tail still swished back and forth.

They turned right out of the Grand Prince’s gates and were instantly caught in the swirl of the moving city. The two riders rode abreast beneath palaces taller than trees, across earth turned to muck, the dirty snow pushed aside. Vasya thought her head would twist off from staring.

“Damn you, Vasya,” said Sasha as they rode. “I begin to have sympathy for your stepmother. You might have pleaded sickness instead of agreeing to sup with Dmitrii Ivanovich. Do you think Moscow is like Lesnaya Zemlya? The Grand Prince is surrounded by men all vying for his favor, and they will resent you for being his cousin, for leaping over them to land so high in his good graces. They will challenge you and set you drunk; can you never hold your tongue?”

“I couldn’t tell the Grand Prince no,” replied Vasya. “Vasilii Petrovich wouldn’t have told him no.” She was only half-listening. The palaces seemed to have tumbled from heaven, in all their sprawling glory; the bright colors of their square towers showed through caps of snow.

A procession of highborn ladies passed them, walking together, heavily veiled, with men before and behind. Here blue-lipped slaves ran panting about their business; there a Tatar rode a fierce and stocky mare.

They came to another wooden gate, less fine than Dmitrii’s. The door-ward must have recognized Sasha, for the gate swung open immediately, and they were in the dooryard of a quiet, well-ordered little kingdom.

Somehow, despite all the noise at the gates, it reminded her of Lesnaya Zemlya. “Olya,” Vasya whispered.

A steward came to meet them, soberly garbed. He did not turn a hair when confronted with a grubby boy, a monk, and two weary horses. “Brother Aleksandr,” he said, bowing.

“This is Vasilii Petrovich,” said Sasha. A hint of distaste rippled his voice; he must be deathly weary of the lie. “My brother before I became a brother in Christ. We will need a paddock for his horse, then he wishes to see his sister.”

“This way,” said the steward after an instant’s startled hesitation.

They followed him. The prince of Serpukhov’s palace was an estate in and of itself, like their father’s, but finer and richer. Vasya saw a bakery, a brewery, a bathhouse, a kitchen, and a smoking shed, tiny beside the sprawl of the main house. The palace’s lower rooms were half-dug into the earth, and the upper rooms could be accessed only by outside staircases.

The steward took them past a low, neat stable that breathed out sweet animal-smells and gusts of warm air. Behind it lay an empty stallion-paddock with a high fence. It held a little, square shelter, meant to keep off the snow, and also a horse-trough.

Solovey halted just outside the paddock and eyed the arrangement with distaste.

“You needn’t stay here,” Vasya murmured to him again, “if you do not wish to.”

Come often, the horse said only. And let us not stay here long.

“We won’t,” Vasya said. “Of course we won’t.”

They wouldn’t, either. She meant to see the world. But Vasya did not want to be anywhere else just then, not for gold or jewels. Moscow lay at her feet, all its wonders ready for her eyes. And her sister was near.

A groom had come up behind them, and at the steward’s impatient gesture, he let down the bars of the paddock-fence. Solovey deigned to be led inside. Vasya undid the stallion’s girth and slung the saddlebags over her own shoulder.

“I will carry them myself,” she said to the steward. On the road, her saddlebags were life itself, and she found now that she could not relinquish them to a stranger in this beautiful, frightening city.

A little mournfully, Solovey said, Be careful, Vasya.

Vasya stroked the horse’s neck. “Don’t jump out,” she whispered.

I won’t, said the horse. A pause. If they bring me oats.

She turned to say as much to the steward. “I’ll come back to see you,” she said to Solovey. “Soon.”

He blew his warm breath into her face.

Then they left the paddock, Vasya trotting in her brother’s wake. She looked back once, before the curve of the stable quite obscured her view. The horse watched her go, stark against the white snow. All wrong, that Solovey would stand there behind a fence, like an ordinary horse…

Then he disappeared, behind the curve of a wooden wall. Vasya shook away her misgivings and followed her brother.