Rosa and the Veil of Gold (21 page)

The Secret Ambassador waits a few moments, then Ivan says, “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you about Stasya.”

Ivan takes his elbow in a sudden expansive mood. “Come with me. Let me show you how great God’s love for me is. For all of this,” he gestures around, “is my vision, and my doing.”

The Secret Ambassador allows himself to be led up gloomy corridors which lead nowhere but to other corridors. The walls are close and the ceiling closer, for the Secret Ambassador is very tall. Somehow, this maze of passages divides and rejoins and sews all the towers and chambers together. The air is stale and the Secret Ambassador is put in mind of the kind of half-waking dream of enclosure which troubles him in the early mornings. Everywhere,
masons and builders work in noisy groups, their tools and voices echoing, filling the chambers.

“Is it not beautiful?” Ivan says, running his fingertips over the wall as a child might.

“It is certainly very impressive.”

“These corridors remind me of being born. Do you remember being born? Or are your kind hatched from opened graves?”

“I have no recollection of my birth.”

“I do. A bloody affair it was, lots of yelling.” Ivan stops in front of a deeply recessed window, flanked with decorated columns. A shaft of sun lights his hair, and the Secret Ambassador notices streaks of grey. “You know what I shall do the moment this cathedral is finished?”

The Secret Ambassador smiles, holding his hands apart in a puzzled gesture. “I have no idea.”

“I will jab a burning poker in the eyes of the architect,” Ivan says, feigning the action, “so he can never build another equal in magnificence.”

The Secret Ambassador stifles a laugh, for he knows that Ivan is serious. “Your will is final. That is why I wish to speak to you.”

“About Stasya?” Ivan says. “What is it?”

“You must resume your duties as a husband,” the Secret Ambassador says, always mindful that Mir folk speak in coy euphemisms.

“Why? Why do you care if I stick her, or my cousin’s cow?”

“She must bear more children.”

Ivan shakes his head. “No, Secret Ambassador. The babies are making her sick. Another one may kill her.”

“It can’t. She isn’t being honest with you. She was created to bear children.”

“I’d believe her lies before yours.” His voice dropped to a mutter, “Even if you are both sorcerers.”

“She has foreseen little Ivan’s death. Fedor is an imbecile. Who will rule Russia once you are gone?”

“Pah! Little Ivan is as robust as a summer pig. Her worries are only dreams fashioned from too much grieving. Even if he does die, my daughter Evdoxia may yet bear many fine children.”

“Do you want all to rest on her shoulders?”

Ivan slaps the Secret Ambassador’s arm with the back of his hand. “I won’t listen a moment longer.”

“You must listen—”

“Go! Go back to your land of violet mists. It is not your time any more. Leave us to be who we will become.”

The Secret Ambassador withdraws through the maze. He has more reasons to worry than he has admitted to Ivan or Stasya. Among the boyars, at meetings and dinners and state gatherings where he insinuates himself, he hears talk of murder.

Suspicion of Stasya grows apace. Fedor’s birth has thrown fuel on the flames, for who gives birth to an imbecile child but an unclean mother? The Secret Ambassador doesn’t fear for Stasya: he still believes she is immortal and will withstand any poison they can give her. It is the children he fears for. Enemies at court who despise Stasya would see her children murdered. Every shred of his hopes to unite the worlds would perish with them.

The Secret Ambassador has not yet told this to Stasya. He may not fear for her life, but he fears for her heart. She is not the woman she was. She has become fettered by love and by her fear of loss. There is nothing for it, though. He must tell her. He must ensure that at least one of her children survives.

It is a warm July morning and Stasya plays with her three little ones, spread out in happy chaos across the pale hazelwood floor of the royal bedchamber. Their giggles and shouts continue as the Secret Ambassador takes their mother aside for his long explanation.

As she listens, fear runs in Stasya’s veins because she knows he speaks the truth. She knows she has enemies who would see her dead, but she had never considered that they would wish her children dead too.

“What do you suggest?” she asks. Her throat is constricted and her skin tingles.

“Fedor is simple. Ivan would never let go little Ivan. But Evdoxia is healthy and may bear many children to carry on the line. We could send her away from the palace.”

“Worse! Those who plot against me would perceive my reasons for the separation. They would know I suspected them. They would find her and kill her.”

“We could change her name. Pretend she has perished like your other babies. The Zakharin family would take her in, just as they claimed you when you first crossed over to Mir.”

Stasya gazes at her children on the other side of the room. The little girl lisps an admonition to her older brother; he has grasped one of her chubby arms too roughly. He drops her arm, laughing at her temper. Stasya shakes her head in wonder. “You cannot mean to take from me my only living daughter.”

“You know she cannot stay here.”

Stasya ponders this for days and weeks. All around her she sees enemies. Rumours and whispers about plots to poison her, to poison her children, her husband. She wants at least one of her babies to live, and not for the reasons the Secret Ambassador proffers. Stasya hardly cares any more whether the schism between Skazki and Mir is irreversible. She knows now she can never go back: that she is doomed to die like a mortal woman. No, she wishes only that one of her children may live a long and happy life, bear children of her own and grow old in the company of those she loves.

So she agrees to the Secret Ambassador’s plan.

There are many tears on the day the little girl is taken from her mother. Evdoxia, still too small to understand, is easily consoled when given the Golden Bear as a poppet. But as the Secret Ambassador throws on his cloak and prepares to leave with the child, Stasya closes an icy hand around his fingers.

“You see now what you have asked of me, Secret Ambassador? I have given my freedom. I have given my child. Do not presume I will also give my life to your cause.”

“Why do you persist with this nonsense? You are immortal.”

“I fear I am all too mortal,” she replies, her hand slipping from his.

For the first time, the Secret Ambassador feels a twinge. He doesn’t understand how it can be so, and yet Stasya does look frail. He lays over her image another drawn from his memory: of a robust coal-haired goddess in snakeskin and fur, and sees that too much has changed.

“I will return,” he says urgently. “Once I have the child settled with her new family, I will return for you. Tell everyone the
little girl has died. It doesn’t matter if they don’t believe you. We can go back to Skazki. You’ll be safe from their whispers and schemes.”

Stasya takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Goodbye, little one,” she says, touching her daughter’s hair. “I will see you again soon. I presume I’m not forbidden to visit?” She raises an eyebrow at the Secret Ambassador.

“Of course you may visit. As soon as she has settled in.”

Evdoxia is renamed Xenia and placed in the charge of the Zakharin family, where she becomes the intended for their son, Fedya Nikitich Romanov. When the Secret Ambassador attempts to return to the Terem Palace, however, he finds his way barred. The Tsar has forbidden him any further audience with Stasya. He is to return to his own lands and not come again.

The Secret Ambassador now fears for Stasya’s life. It is within his power to remove her soul from her body and prevent her death, but he is frustrated in every attempt to see her. He hears of her death by poisoning just a few months later.

And so the Secret Ambassador learns a great lesson, but great lessons do not restore to us the ones we care about.

I expect that you wonder how long I will hold you up with stories of past times. Patience now. It all signifies. When the end comes, I want you to know enough that you may understand me. Perhaps even to forgive the things that I have done.

Let me summarise for you quickly.

The Golden Bear stayed with the Romanov family and watched as Stasya’s daughter bore six children and lived to seventy-five years. One of those children, Mikhail, developed an obsessive fondness for the bear and toted it about with him everywhere, as though it whispered secrets to him which he could not live without.

After Stasya’s death, Ivan became impossible: as though his wife had been a weight upon his temper. All his rages were set free, his suspicions became obsessions, and only cruel acts soothed his thundering madness. Within one generation, folk began to think fondly of Stasya and of her family. So when Ivan died, having killed one of his sons and leaving only a mindless fool behind, the boyars imagined the Romanovs as rightful heirs to the throne.
Of course, the insistence of the Secret Ambassador, with his subtle magic and his wolfish eyes, played their part.

This is how Mikhail, veins replete with his grandmother’s Skazki blood, became the father of a dynasty of Tsars who would rule in Mir for centuries. And thus the worlds became tied a little closer. Mir folk practised a dual faith: praying to their God, and indulging the old ways. Was this enough for the Secret Ambassador? No, for he was stubborn and steely, and longed for life the way it had been lived before Olga. He would stop at nothing to unite Mir and Skazki, even if it meant taking on Petr the Great.

But that is a story for another time.

Ah, I have so many stories to tell. I have often wondered if my body and my mind are made of stories, that nothing about me is real: I consist only of tales told over and over until they have solidified, grown warm and started to breathe.

But, of course, stories are part of all of us, Skazki folk as well as Mir folk. Our tales are the very essence of self-knowledge; of how we remember ourselves. Rosa believes this, I am certain; she casts herself in a thousand vivid stories so that she doesn’t fade to grey and slip into shadow. Shall we return, now, to her tale?

Or perhaps the tale of the man she loves? Yes, let us see how Daniel fares as he wanders among the folktales of his childhood, and sees no happy endings anywhere.

“At least we won’t go thirsty.”

Em scowled at Daniel. “Is that meant to be a joke?”

“Just trying to see the bright side.”

Em scanned the area. For two and a half days they had wandered in and out of woods and fields in a vaguely north-easterly direction. Although the sky had now cleared to silver-violet, the rain had left the ground sodden. Since this morning, they had been wading ankle-deep in marshland. She was hungry and tired, and this misery was compounded by the clouds of midges and mosquitoes which hung about her, tickling her nose and stinging her cheeks and flying suicidally into her mouth whenever she attempted to speak.

Just a few days ago she had believed she might freeze to death. Now it was more certain that she would starve. Their bumbling attempts to catch a rabbit had resulted only in waking a tiny, owl-faced wood demon which chased them for two hours before giving up on them. He had probably decided they smelled too bad to eat. Their furs were mouldy and rank, their bodies filmed in dried perspiration and mud.

She glanced at Daniel. More than two weeks since they had left civilisation, and he’d only been able to grow a sparse beard. His cheeks and upper lip were still bare. Em found herself by turns irritated with him then overwhelmingly grateful he was here with her. At the moment she was irritated. His fear and despair had hardened into sarcastic cynicism.

“Look, mushrooms!” she said, spying a ring of mushrooms a hundred feet ahead of them.

“Or are they toadstools?” Daniel muttered.

“Let’s look closer.”

They approached the fairy ring and Em found herself thinking about mushrooms fried in butter, served next to fluffy scrambled eggs with crisp bacon. The mushrooms in front of her, however, were anaemic white and covered in fine yellow powder.

“They look poisonous,” Daniel said.

“Do you know for sure?”

“No, I’m not an expert on wild mushrooms. Looks like you got lost with the wrong guy. Lucky you—”

“Shh, Daniel. I liked your endless complaining better than this ridiculous sarcasm.”

He drew down his eyebrows. “And I liked your poker face better than your bitch face.”

Em turned to admonish him, but found herself giggling. “Did you just call me ‘bitch face’?”

The corners of Daniel’s mouth turned up and he repressed a laugh. “Yes, I did.”

She snorted a laugh, which set Daniel off, bending over in belly-aching laughter. She joined him, not really enjoying the hot-faced hysteria, but unable to stop it.

When she’d calmed, Daniel was fiddling with the knot under his shirt that held the bear close to his body. “Something to eat, Em? Some mouldy bread?”

“Is there much left?”

The sling fell free and Daniel withdrew the golden bear. She wore only a narrow skirt of bread now, covered in mould and spattered with mud. Slowly they had chipped away at her protective outer layer until protecting her seemed a ridiculous thing to do when they were so dizzy with hunger they could barely walk.

“We need to eat,” Daniel said. He was already tearing the remaining bread from the bear and dividing it into two. Em noted he saved the smaller chunk for himself.

“No, Daniel, you’re bigger than me. You should have the larger piece.”

“That’s very kind.”

“It’s just practical.”

They sat down on a flat rock, munching on the lifeless bread. It tasted like the back of an old refrigerator, but Em chewed and swallowed and wondered when she might eat again. It would take weeks for them to starve, wouldn’t it? By then, surely, they would have found something to eat. Perhaps they would have even found the Snow Witch, and she would have sent them home. Em sighed and pulled her feet up on the rock. She slipped off her sodden shoes and bared her toes to the weak sun. They were wrinkled and white. In all likelihood, she and Daniel would never meet the Snow Witch; they would meet their deaths first. Em didn’t know what else they could do apart from moving forward, trying to catch a few hours of oblivion each night, then moving on the next day.

Daniel finished eating and started to stow the bear back under his shirt. “Why are you always so practical?” he said as he fastened the bear close to his body.

Em was confused. The question almost didn’t make sense. “Because it makes life run better.” A noise among the reeds caught her attention. A thud and a rustle.

Daniel’s head snapped around, alert.

“Rabbit?” she whispered.

“Giant rabbit,” Daniel said without a smile. “Don’t want to see a rabbit that big.”

The noise again, closer. Em was pulling on her shoes in an instant.

“Which way do we run?”

Daniel indicated a hundred yards ahead. “Towards those trees. Better chance of hiding.”

“For him too.”

“We’re open targets out here. Come on.”

They hit the ground and ran for the trees. Em caught a shape in the corner of her eye: hulking and black. She pushed herself forward, trying to keep up with Daniel, fighting down dizzying hunger.

In the trees they slowed, but didn’t stop. Five minutes passed. Daniel grasped the trunk of a tree and paused. Em crouched next to him, catching her breath. The ground was sodden; bracken layered thick in the undergrowth. A chorus of insects buzzed and clicked around them, a perfect soundtrack to the itching physical discomfort and the ripe damp smell.

“Did we lose it?” she asked.

“I don’t know if it even saw us.”

“I saw it. Him. Big and black.”

Daniel cocked his head, listening. “Can’t hear anything.” He helped Em to her feet. “You’re okay?”

She nodded, swallowing a pant. “Yep. I’m good.”

They turned, and in the same second a black shape stepped out from behind a tree trunk. He made a noise, like a cry of discovery. “Ah!”

Em screamed, Daniel turned to run. The black creature flung his hands out and a jet of salty, oily ink shot into their faces. Em couldn’t see anything. She heard Daniel fall to the ground with a groan. She palmed her eyes, stumbled.

Then she was swept up, flung backwards over the beast’s shoulder. “No! Put me down!” she shouted. His arm was an iron grip around her knees. Daniel was conspicuously silent over the other shoulder as the creature began to run. Her sight resolved again, and she watched helplessly as the marshy woods disappeared behind her, upside-down.

Daniel felt himself coming up out of darkness. He tried to cling to it. The darkness, though cold and frighteningly blank, was predictable. Wherever consciousness was taking him, he was certain it was difficult and unpleasant.

My head hurts
, he thought. And was surprised to hear the words out loud.

“Daniel?”

He opened his eyes. Em knelt a few feet away, stripped down to her Mir clothes. He looked at himself, and saw he was the same. His furs were gone; the pack with their moleskin was gone. With a quick feel, he discovered that the bear was still strapped against his body under his clothes.

“Where are we?” he said, sitting up uncertainly. “Is it a cave?” The air was stale and dank and…some other scent. Fishy. It smelled like fish.

“In a cave on the river’s edge,” Em said. “You must have got more of the ink in your eyes than I did. It knocked you out. I watched which way we came.”

“Who brought us here?”

“I still haven’t seen his face, but he’s big, all dressed in black, with a bushy black beard. He took our furs to dry them, he said. The pack is somewhere back at the marsh, so thank God we moved our valuables when we did.” She slapped the rock in front of her. “He put this here so we can’t get out.”

Daniel looked around. The ceiling of the cave was low, only three or four feet. It was dry but very cold. He heard a flapping sound, and turned to see a net full of fish dumped at an outer edge. They were still alive, choking on air.

“Fish?”

“His catch, he said.” Em turned back to the mouth of the cave, where she was peering through a narrow crack. “We’re part of it.”

“Part of what?”

“His catch. We’re to wait here and die like the fish, then he’s going to eat us.”

Daniel groaned. His stomach burned with fear and hunger. “How can you be so calm?”

“Because we’ll take longer than fish to die. As soon as he returns, I’ll offer him some gold to set us free. I wanted to wait until you were conscious, so I didn’t have to carry you out like a sack of potatoes.”

“Potatoes…” Daniel said.

“Mashed with butter and chives.”

Daniel eyed the flapping net. “Deep-fried chips with battered fish.”

Em sat back on her haunches, feeling in her pocket where she had stored the gold for safekeeping. “We’ll be down to one piece of gold after this,” she said.

“Maybe we’ll find the Snow Witch soon. The fisherman might be friendly.” Daniel pulled out the crumpled packet of cigarettes he had bought when they left Vologda.

“You aren’t going to smoke at a time like this,” Em said, irritated.

He opened the packet. Within were eight mashed cigarettes, which had been soaked then dried again. “No. But if he’s what I think he is, then these might come in useful.”

“Oh?”

“You didn’t happen to see his feet?”

“They were bare. I only had a glimpse of them.”

“I bet he has extremely long toes,” Daniel said, calling up from memory Nanny Rima’s stories about water spirits. “I think he’s a vodyanoy. A fisherman demon. He won’t just leave us here to die, Em, he’ll drown us when he’s ready. He has a house on the bottom of the riverbed. He’ll want to take us there.”

“And the cigarettes?”

“A vodyanoy is vicious and unforgiving, but he’ll love tobacco.” Daniel began ripping the filters off the cigarettes and casting them onto the cave floor.

Em turned back to the crack of daylight. “Ah, he’s there.”

Daniel crawled over to join her, peering out. Sitting among the reeds, dangling his net in the water, was the black-haired creature they had met in the woods.

“Should we call him over?” Em said.

“You do it.”

Em gave him a wry smile, then turned to the opening. “Hey! Vodyanoy! Come here, I want to make a deal with you.”

The creature turned. Despite his hulking figure, he had a human face smothered under his enormous black beard. He stood and approached, and Daniel could see his features were mottled with algae. The skin around his temples and jaw was dry and almost scaly. His glassy, protuberant eyes fixed on them through the gap above the boulder.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“We have gold,” Em said.

“Well give it to me.”

“Not for nothing. You have to let us go and promise not to drown us.”

He scowled. “Is it much gold?”

“A gold earring. Finely made and beautiful. On your ear it would gleam like the sun,” Daniel offered.

The vodyanoy scratched his greasy hair. He shrugged. “I suppose it’s a fair deal.” He leaned forward and grunted the boulder aside, then barred the way with his hand outstretched. “The gold first.”

Em dropped the earring onto his palm.

“Ah,” he said, holding it up to look through it. “Very pretty.” He pushed it through his earlobe and a squirt of black blood popped out. “Go on, then. Go away.”

They climbed out of the cave and into the mottled sunshine on the riverbank. “Do you know where the Snow Witch lives?” Em asked, dusting herself off.

“I’m not answering any questions. Not without more gold.”

“What about tobacco?” Daniel said, offering a cigarette.

The vodyanoy took the cigarette curiously, sniffed it deeply. The hairs in his nostrils twitched, and an almost-seraphic smile came to his face. He nodded. “I’m Bolotnik,” he said. “Your names?”

“Em and Daniel,” Daniel said, chancing a glance at the creature’s toes. They were as long as his fingers. “We’re from Mir. We’re lost and we’re looking for the Snow Witch.”

Bolotnik screwed his face up. “Snow Witch…Snow Witch…Can’t say I know of her.”

“Are you certain?” Em said. “East and east and north a-ways?”

“Ohhh,” said the creature, nodding with dawning understanding. “Oh, the Snow Witch. Yes, yes. You’re too far north now. You need to go south a-ways.”

“She’s south of here?”

“No, she’s north of here, but you have to go south to go around the Dead Forest. Not a man or beast can survive in there. It’s full of revenants. All those in the history of Mir who have died an unfortunate death gather there.”

Em and Daniel exchanged glances. The Dead Forest. “That’s a lot of revenants,” Em said.

“I was just going to fry up some fish,” Bolotnik said. He peered at Daniel hopefully. “If you’ve got another of those sticks of tobacco, you can join me.”

Daniel’s mouth grew moist. “Oh, yes,” he said.

“Wait, wait,” Em said. “Don’t you live on the riverbed? We can’t follow you down there.”

“No, I’m banished from home for two days. I’m in trouble with my wife. Too much vodka with the swamp spirits.” He waved a dismissive hand. “You don’t want to hear of it. I’m cooking up here on the surface tonight.”

“Well then,” Em smiled. “We’d be delighted.”

Bolotnik was ambivalent about their company. He made them sit at least six feet away from him, citing the fact that they smelled like Mir and he couldn’t eat with that smell around. Em was grateful for the distance, because he glanced at her across the fire from time to time with a barely disguised expression of desire. She wasn’t sure if he wanted to eat her or rape her, but Em was keen to avoid either possibility.

The fish was wonderful. She and Daniel both ate beyond politeness, leaving the vodyanoy with raised eyebrows, gathering the net with his latest catch protectively against his side.

“We need more information,” Em said, licking her fingers and repressing a burp. “Would you help us?”

He shrugged. “It’s not in my nature to help Mir folk, but nor is it in my nature to go back on a deal. As long as I keep the gold, as long as there’s tobacco for me, I’ll help.”

Daniel counted out his last few cigarettes and handed them to Bolotnik, who hid a pleased smile.

“The Snow Witch,” he said. “Tell us everything you know.”

“She lives in the north, on the crystal lake in a grand palace.” He peeled some tobacco and popped it into his mouth. “She rages all day and all night against her family, who she believes forsook her in an hour of need. She’s hideous to behold. Most people have to turn away.”