“Dressed as a boy?” Olga demanded.

Her brother set his jaw. “Dressed as a boy,” he said.

“And what,” Olga demanded, “am I to tell my husband?”

“Now that,” said Sasha, turning for the door, “is entirely up to you. If he returns, I would strongly advise that you tell him as little as possible.”

16.

The Lord from Sarai

When he left his sister, Brother Aleksandr went at once to the monastery of the Archangel, tucked in a compound by itself, apart from the palaces of princes. Father Andrei welcomed Sasha heartily. “We will give thanks,” decreed the hegumen. “Then you will come to my rooms and tell me all.”

Andrei was no believer in the mortification of the flesh, and his monastery had grown rich as Moscow itself had, with the tax of silver from the south, and with the trade in wax and furs and potash. The hegumen’s rooms were comfortably furnished. His icons stared down in massed and disapproving ranks from their sacred corner, clad in silver and seed pearls. A little chilly daylight filtered in from above, and faded the oven’s flames to wavering ghosts.

Prayers said, Sasha dropped gratefully onto a stool, pushed his hood back, and warmed his hands.

“Not yet time to sup,” said Andrei, who had gone south to Sarai in his youth and still remembered, wistfully, the saffron and pepper of the Khan’s court. “But,” he added, considering Sasha, “exception can be made for a man fresh from the wild.”

The monks had cooked a great haunch of beef that day, to thicken their blood before the great fast; there was also new bread and a dense, tasteless cheese. The food came and Sasha fell on it single-mindedly.

“Did your journey go so ill?” asked Andrei, watching him eat.

Sasha shook his head, chewing. He swallowed and said, “No. We found the bandits, and slew them. Dmitrii Ivanovich was delighted. He has gone to his own palace now, keen as a boy.”

“Then why are you so—” Andrei paused, and his face changed. “Ah,” he said slowly. “You had the news of your father.”

“I had the news of my father,” Sasha agreed, setting his wooden bowl on the hearth and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His brows drew together. “So have you, it would seem. The priest told you?”

“He told us all,” said Andrei, frowning. He had a bowl of goodly broth for himself, swimming with the last of the summer’s fat, but he set that reluctantly aside and leaned forward. “He told a tale of some wickedness—said that your sister was a witch, who drew Pyotr Vladimirovich out into the winter forest against all reason—and that your sister, too, is dead.”

Sasha’s face changed, and the hegumen misread it entirely. “You didn’t know, my son? I am sorry to cause you grief.” When Sasha did not speak, Andrei hurried on, “Perhaps it is better she is dead. Good people and wicked may come from the same tree, and at least your sister died before she could do greater harm.”

Sasha thought of his vivid Vasya riding her horse in the gray morning and said nothing. Andrei was on his feet. “I will summon the priest—Father Konstantin—he keeps much to himself. He prays without cease, but I am sure he will take time to tell you all. A very holy man…” Andrei was still flustered; he spoke as though caught between admiration and doubt.

“No need,” said Sasha abruptly, rising in turn. “Show me where this priest is, and I will go to him.”

They had given Konstantin a cell, small but clean, one of several kept for monks who wished to pray in solitude. Sasha knocked at the door.

Silence.

Then halting footsteps sounded within, and the door swung open. When the priest saw Sasha, the blood left his face and washed back again.

“God be with you,” said Sasha, wondering at the other man’s expression. “I am Brother Aleksandr, who brought you out of the wilderness.”

Konstantin mastered himself. “May the Lord bless you, Brother Aleksandr,” he said. His sculpted face was quite expressionless, after that one involuntary spasm of frightened shock.

“Before I renounced the world, my father was Pyotr Vladimirovich,” said Sasha, coldly because doubt had wormed in: Perhaps this priest has spoken true. Why would he lie?

Konstantin nodded once, looking unsurprised.

“I hear from my sister Olga that you have come from Lesnaya Zemlya,” Sasha said. “That you saw my father die.”

“Not saw,” replied the priest, drawing himself up. “I saw him ride out, in pursuit of his mad daughter, and I saw his torn body, when they brought him home.”

A muscle twitched in Sasha’s jaw, hidden by his beard. “I would like to hear the whole story, as much as you can remember, Batyushka,” he said.

Konstantin hesitated. “As you wish.”

“In the cloister,” said Sasha hastily. A sour stench—the smell of fear—drifted out from the priest’s narrow room, and he found himself wondering what it was that this Father Konstantin was praying for.

PLAUSIBLE. THE TALE WAS so plausible—yet it was not—quite—the same story Vasya had told him. One of these two is lying, Sasha thought again. Or both.

Vasya had said nothing of her stepmother, save that she was dead. Sasha had not questioned that; people died easily. Certainly Vasya had not said that Anna Ivanovna died with their father…

“So Vasilisa Petrovna is dead,” Konstantin finished with subtle malice. “God rest her soul, and her father’s and stepmother’s, too.” Monk and priest paced the round of the cloister, looking out onto a garden all gray with snow.

He hated my sister, Sasha thought, startled. Hates her still. He and she must not come face-to-face; I do not think boy’s clothes will deceive this man.

“Tell me,” Sasha asked abruptly. “Did my father have a great stallion in his stable, bay in color, with a long mane and a star on his face?”

Whatever question Konstantin had been expecting, it was not that. His eyes narrowed. But—“No,” he said, after a moment. “No—Pyotr Vladimirovich had many horses, but not one like that.”

And yet, Sasha thought. You fair snake, you remembered something. You are telling me lies, mixed with truth.

As Vasya did?

Damn them both. I want only to know how my father died!

Looking into the priest’s gray-hollowed face, Sasha knew he would get no more from him. “Thank you, Batyushka,” he said abruptly. “Pray for me; I must go.”

Konstantin bowed and made the sign of the cross. Sasha strode down the gallery, feeling as though he had touched a slimy thing and wondering why he should feel afraid of a poor pious priest, who had answered all his questions with that air of sorrowful honesty, in a deep and glorious voice.

VASYA WAS SCRUBBED TO her pores by the efficient Varvara, who was perfectly in her mistress’s confidence and perfectly unflappable. Even Vasya’s sapphire pendant only elicited a scornful snort. There was something naggingly familiar about the woman’s face. Or maybe it was only her briskness that reminded Vasya of Dunya. Varvara washed Vasya’s filthy hair and dried it beside the roaring stove in the bathhouse. “You ought to cut this off—boy,” she said drily, as she braided it up.