SERPUKHOV—Currently a town that sits about sixty miles south of Moscow. Originally founded during the reign of Dmitrii Ivanovich to protect Moscow’s southern approaches, and given to Dmitrii’s cousin Vladimir Andreevich (Olga’s husband in The Girl in the Tower). Serpukhov did not get town status until the late fourteenth century. In this novel, despite Olga’s being the princess of Serpukhov, she lives in Moscow, because Serpukhov, at this time, consists of little more than trees, a fort, and a few huts. But her husband is often away, as he is throughout The Girl in the Tower, managing this important holding for the Grand Prince.

SNEGUROCHKA (DERIVED FROM THE RUSSIAN SNEG, SNOW)—The Snow-Maiden, a character who appears in several Russian fairy tales.

SOLOVEY—Nightingale; the name of Vasya’s bay stallion.

TEREM—The word refers both to the actual location where highborn women lived in Old Russia (the upper floors of a home, a separate wing, or even a separate building, connected to the men’s part of the palace by a walkway) and more generally to the Muscovite practice of secluding aristocratic women. Thought to be derived from the Greek teremnon (dwelling) and unrelated to the Arabic word harem. This practice is of mysterious origin, owing to a lack of written records from medieval Muscovy. The practice of terem reached its height in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Peter the Great finally ended the practice and brought women back into the public sphere. Functionally, terem meant that highborn Russian women lived lives completely separate from men, and girls were brought up in the terem and did not leave it until they married. The princess whose father keeps her behind three times nine locks, a common trope in Russian fairy tales, is probably derived from this actual practice.

TONSURE—The ritual cutting of hair to indicate religious devotion. In Eastern Orthodoxy this often means cutting four pieces of hair in a cruciform pattern. In Eastern Orthodox monasticism, there were three degrees of dedication, represented by three degrees of tonsure: Rassophore, Stavrophore, and the Great Schema. In The Girl in the Tower, Sasha has taken his vows of Rassophore but has hesitated to go further, because the vows of Stavrophore include a vow of stability of habitation (i.e., to stay in your monastery).

TRINITY LAVRA (THE TRINITY LAVRA OF SAINT SERGEI)—Monastery founded by Saint Sergei Radonezhsky in 1337, about forty miles northeast of Moscow.

TUMAN—Mist; the name of Sasha’s gray horse.

VAZILA—In Russian folklore, the guardian of the stable and protector of livestock.

VEDMA—Vyed’ma, witch, wisewoman.

VERST—In Russian, versta (the English word verst derives from the Russian genitive plural, which is the form most frequently used in conjunction with a number). A unit of distance equal to roughly one kilometer, or two-thirds of a mile.

VLADIMIR—One of the chief cities of medieval Rus’, situated about 120 miles east of Moscow. Its founding is said to date from 1108, and many of its ancient buildings are still intact today.

ZIMA—Winter; the name of Vasya’s filly.

To Dad and Beth

with love and gratitude