Rusalka

CHAPTER 1

THE WINTER dwindled in amber evenings and daytime haze: snow melted, puddles multiplied. Icicles dripped and crashed daily into the last snow-banks, with alarming sounds of breakage.

A particularly large one lingered where water ran off The Cockerel’s west porch, but it was not ice that shattered, it was aunt Ilenka’s butter-churn, when Pyetr Kochevikov rode his horse up onto the porch to reach it.

Sasha Misurov, his hands encumbered with buckets, watched in astonishment as the icicle fell, the horse thundered off the boards, skidded onto the split-log walk and off onto the mud, all four legs miraculously whole—and aunt Ilenka came flying out of the kitchen waving her spoon and calling on the Sun, the tsar, and all his magistrates.

“Pyetr Kochevikov! Look at my porch! Look at my walk! Oh, god—” Aunt Ilenka saw the churn with the milk dripping off the porch, and grabbed up her broom from the corner.

“Look out!” one of the young men cried. “Look out, Pyetr! You’re in trouble now!”

The broom swung, Pyetr took his horse out of the way, doffed his cap and bowed, and the young ruffians—the second and third sons of rich families in Vojvoda, such were Pyetr Kochevikov’s familiars—howled with laughter, pulling their horses back to afford the battle room.

Aunt Ilenka cornered Pyetr between the stable, the courtyard wall, and the bathhouse. Pyetr jumped his horse over the bathhouse bench and thumped back across the split-log walk, throwing up mud that spattered her from head to foot.

Eyes flew wide, aunt Ilenka grasped her broom for a renewed assault, but the hooligans were fleeing the yard now with a spatter of mud, a small shower of coin—”For the churn!” Dmitri cried, to the riders’ laughter; and with a second flourish of the cap: “For the drink!” Pyetr cried, flinging more coin—and missed riding into The Cockerel’s sign by the stableyard gate only by lying back flat in his saddle, whooping with laughter.

A last spatter of mud hit the fence as the ruffians rode away.

Sasha set down his buckets, ran and picked the silver out of the mud of the gateway and took it to aunt Ilenka, who was no more pleased than one could expect.

“Hooligans!” aunt Ilenka cried. And with a swipe of her broom at Sasha’s legs: “Clean this up!”

As if it was his fault. But most things were. He was unlucky, was Sasha Misurov; and if aunt Ilenka’s grandmother’s churn was broken and the butter was gone and Pyetr Kochevikov and his rowdy, well-born friends made a shambles of the tavern yard, why, look to Sasha’s luck, the more so since he was standing there like a fool. Thank the god for Dmitri Venedikov’s patching things up or aunt Denka would have taken the broom to him in earnest.

And uncle Fedya…

Uncle Fedya might have said, finally, after ten years’ patience, “Why do we keep the boy?”

Pyetr himself had no concerns. He had a belly full of drink, a fine horse he had won yesterday at dice, he had friends with connections close to tsar Mikula himself, and girls and women doted on Pyetr Kochevikov for his looks and his wit, all of which fortune was so accustomed he only scarcely remembered the times he had been hungry, and almost never remembered he had relatives in the town, since none of them had spoken to him for years except to borrow money.

He had not been, so to say, born to wealth. But he looked to gain it.

He had not been born to manners, but he had a ready wit and a rare ability to imitate, and the second sons and the third and seventh born, who had no prospects and less responsibility in many a noble family of Vojvoda, found, Pyetr Kochevikov an antidote, that was what he called himself: an antidote to ennui and a cure for too much seriousness.

As, this evening, riding away from The Cockerel, Vasya said, “Join us at the inn,” and Pyetr winked and said, grinning, “I have other business.”

Vasya understood, Vasya gave him a wink back, but foolish Ivan said, “What business?” so Vasya and Andrei took off their caps and hit him.

“Only,” said ’Mitri, “the rascal won’t name the lady.—Who is this, that our Pyetr prefers to dice?”

Pyetr said, archly, “A gentleman doesn’t tell,” and rode off at a brisk pace through Vojvoda’s High Market Street, to stable the newly acquired horse at The Flower, where he lodged, and to buy a handful of sweetmeats—

Since, the weather warming, old Yurishev was off gambling with his elderly cronies, the fair and entirely delightful Irina was, her maid had sworn, entirely unoccupied.

So Pyetr took himself around to the lady’s garden gate, and climbed by the bathhouse roof up to the lady’s stairs, and so up to the upstairs balcony and the door, which the same maid swore would be, by moonrise, unlocked.

A scant few moments later Pyetr Kochevikov was leaving the front of the house, by a second floor window not till then unshuttered, and old Yurishev himself, sword in hand, was pelting down his garden path and around the side of his house, shouting, “Help, the watch! The watch!”

Pyetr fell as he landed on the muddy street, scrambled up and attempted the stables at The Flower, but old Yurishev’s retainers came around the west side of the house and herded him back toward the east.

As their master came panting around the east corner with his sword leveled.

“Oh, damn!” Pyetr cried, slid to a scrabbling halt, writhing aside from the point, and, putting his foot on one of lady Irina’s herb pots, Pyetr fell, yelled, and rolled wildly to rescue himself from Yurishev’s frenzied thrusts.

“I have you!” Yurishev cried, stabbed again and a third time as Pyetr rolled and scrambled for his feet, and shutters flew wide up and down the street. “Villain!”

Pyetr staggered among the remnants of the herb pots, felt something hit his side, looked down at the improbable sight of old Yurishev’s sword hilt against his waist, and looked Yurishev in the face, the two of them locked in a dreadful moment of shock. He yelled aloud as Yurishev jerked the blade back through.

Perhaps the shock of the moment lingered on Yurishev. Pyetr staggered and clutched his side, spun about and ran before the retainers could stop him, across the street and into The Flower’s stable court—bound for the back gate and the lane.

He caught his breath in the dark, leaning against the other side of The Flower’s gate, and heard the search rampaging through the stableyard, a hunt which had the stable and his room in the upstairs of the inn yet to search.

So he started off, no brisker in his walk than any other homeward stroller, his heart thumping from the fright and the running. He felt no pain yet from his wound, felt no great amount of bleeding against his fingers, which encouraged him to hope that the wound had only caught the flesh above his belt and gone straight through—it would hurt in the morning, but it was of no great consequence, and surely would not even hamper him three days hence.

Damn the old man! he thought. Damn Irina, who had not even had the grace to call out a warning of ambush, who had not had the spine to advise him through her maid that her husband was forewarned. Probably Yurishev had confronted her and Irina’s resistance had collapsed entirely. Irina might tell her husband everything, Irina might claim the god knew what—

He saw riders pass at the end of the road, the search spread now to the streets and lanes. “He’s gone out by the back way!” he heard one rider say to another group. Then the thief-bell started, a pealing that brought other shutters open all along the lane where he was.

He kept to the shadows, then took a shortcut through a garden, which set a dog to barking. He began to run, terror lending him the strength to sprint the three more blocks to The Doe, and finally collected himself to stroll into The Doe’s lantern-lit stableyard with a calm face and pay the stableboy there to take a message to ’Mitri in the common room—”Because I have to talk to him,” he said, and added, lest the boy fear he meant some harm to ’Mitri: “A message from his sister—” hoping that no word had come there yet, and that the boy would take no alarm at his shortness of breath and his shaking hands. “Hurry, boy!”

The boy went in; ’Mitri came out with him, and as the boy pointed to the shadows where Pyetr waited, Pyetr walked forward, feeling a weakness in his knees now that he was within reach of help, feeling the first pangs from the wound, front and back.

“You’re bleeding,” ’Mitri exclaimed.

“Old Yurishev’s men,” Pyetr said. Out of shame, he skirted around saying it had been Yurishev himself. “The lady was under compulsion, I’m sure—”

He came close to fainting then, quite of a sudden. He caught at ’Mitri.

’Mitri shoved his hands off, stepped clear of him, unwilling, perhaps, to be taken in.

“It’s not a joke, ’Mitri!”

“Is that the commotion in the streets? Yurishev’s guards? They saw you?”

The thief-bell was still ringing. One could hear it all over Vojvoda.

“They saw me, they’ve clipped me in the side, for the god’s love, ’Mitri, don’t be a prig, I need a place to stay till this settles…”

“Not with me! Go find some place, stay away from me! I can’t afford trouble like this!”

Pyetr stared at ’Mitri in shock. “Then Vasya will—”

“Not Vasya either!” ’Mitri said. “That’s the thief-bell, do you hear it? Get out of here!”

“I’ll ask him myself,” Pyetr said, about to go straight into the inn, but ’Mitri caught his shoulder and pulled him about so hard the pain of his side caught him and almost bent him double.

“No,” ’Mitri hissed, his face stark and terrified in the lantern light. “No! We have nothing to do with you in anything like this! Yurishev’s wife, my god! Dueling with Yurishev’s guards, man—His cousin is in the court!”

“Your sister is the tsarevna’s—”

“Leave my sister out of this! Mention me, mention her name, mention my father’s name to the watch and I’ll have your heart, Pyetr Kochevikov! Get away from me! Get out of here!”

’Mitri fled back for the light of The Doe’s stableyard porch, and Pyetr stood staring after him in the same shocked bewilderment in which he had looked Yurishev in the face. His knees began to shake beneath him. Perhaps it was the diminution of his confidence that began to take his strength, perhaps it was that he had taken blow after blow tonight, and he had measured his strength only to get to the inn and his friends and now he had no idea where to go.

Only he must go somewhere. The stableboy had seen him.

The boy knew that he had had business with ’Mitri, and if he brought trouble down on ’Mitri and ’Mitri’s father took a hand then he had no hope at all.

He went out the stable gate, ducked down the lane, and heard the thief-bell stop. Good, he thought, breathless and dizzy, good, maybe the furor is dying down.

Or the thieftakers had come, and a wider hunt had begun.

He walked, felt new blood leaking through his fingers, and from time to time heard no sound but the pounding in his ears. The pain in his back and his side made it hard to think at all.

But his eyes made out the street—and knew the doorway and the gate farther on, that it offered at least a hope of refuge.

He walked as far as the public well and then into the gate and inside, down the log walk, reeled off to stand in the mud of The Cockerel’s stableyard, hearing laughter behind the light-seamed shutters of the tavern, singing and dancing and the voice of Fedya Misurov himself calling out for another jug from the cellar.

His legs carried him away from that. Fedya Misurov would side with Yurishev, Yurishev would have the magistrates in his pocket; and he thought, seeking the dark of the stable, Only let me sit down a while…

… because he was not thinking clearly, and he thought that if he could lie down a while in the dark, on the straw, he could regain his breath and his wits and think what to do or where he could go, or perhaps—

—perhaps make free of the horses stabled here, and absent himself from Vojvoda a while. He had been born in Vojvoda, he had grown up in its streets, and other places were only stories he had heard from ’Mitri and Vasya and his friends; but he was sure there were places to go, he had his winning ways and his cleverness and he was sanguine about his chances—

If only the pain would stop, if only he were not bleeding his life out.

He lay down mostly on his face in the straw, heard the horses moving and snorting their alarm at his presence and the smell of blood in the dark, but the singing in the tavern would drown that, and he lay there resting, kept telling himself that the blood was not coming so hard now that he was lying still, that it hurt a little less.

But he was mortally afraid, because he knew he was lying to himself: blood was still coming and he was close to fainting when the horses moved suddenly and a voice said, “Whoa, Missy, what’s the matter?”

He thought there was a light near him. He thought that he heard someone walking in the straw, and that it was Yurishev’s men and they would kill him.

But it was a boy who held a lantern over him, it was young Sasha Misurov, who stood there with a shocked, frozen stare, and asked him, foolish question, what he was doing there.

“I’m dying,” Pyetr snapped, and tried to move, but that was a mistake. He fell down on his face in the straw, and screamed when the boy tried to pull him over.

“I’ll get my uncle,” Sasha said.

“No!” Pyetr was able to say, with the straw moving against his face, with his heart beating hard and his breath scant. His whole body was exploring the new limits of the pain and trying to discover whether lying like that was better or worse. “No—just let me rest here a while. Don’t call your uncle. I’ve got some trouble. You don’t want him involved. I’ll just rest, I’ll be on my way in an hour or so…”

“You’re bleeding,” the boy said.

“I know that,” Pyetr said between his teeth. “Have you any bandages?”

“For horses.”

“Get them!”

The boy went away. Pyetr lay on his face in the straw trying to gather the strength to get up again, perhaps to walk up the street and find a place to sit awhile. Perhaps he could get the boy to collect his horse at The Flower-No. They were searching the streets. They would have told everyone, searched his room at the inn—

The boy came back to him, the boy knelt down with a rustle of straw and said, “I’ve brought some water, and some salve—”

Pyetr bit his lip, worked at the knot of his belt as he was lying, face-down and panting in the straw. Finally, when he had the knot loose: “Do what you can, boy. I’ll owe you for this.”

The boy was careful, pulled the belt free, pushed up Pyetr’s shirt and took in his breath.

“Don’t gawk!” Pyetr said. “Bandage it!”

The horses snorted and moved, riders thumped into the muddy yard outside with a great blowing of horses and a ringing of the stableyard bell.

“Ho,” someone yelled. “Watch!”

“Wait!” Pyetr said. But the boy sprang up and left him, running, and Pyetr got up on his knees and his elbows, lost his breath to the pain, and rested bent over with his head on his arms for two or three deep breaths while he heard the boy and the riders exchange salutations, and heard the riders say,

“Have you seen Pyetr Kochevikov?”

He despaired until the boy said, faintly and distantly, “No, sir.”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes, sir, he was here today.”

“Has anyone come around here?”

“No, sir, not except they went inside…”

“Check it out.”

Pyetr drew deep breaths and told himself he had to take the pain and get up and hide himself in the shadows, that even if Sasha Misurov held to his story, they might well search the stable. He gave a heave of his arms and his back and got himself upright, stood up, reeled sidelong and fell, thinking, Fool!—before he landed on his side.

He held back the outcry. He let his breath go. He could not get another for a moment, or see anything past the haze, except he heard deeper voices in the yard, Fedya Misurov’s voice saying, “What did he do?”

“Murder,” came the answer. “By sorcery.”

“Who?”

“The boyar Yurishev himself. Master Yurishev caught him in his upstairs hall, at his wife’s door, and chased the wretch into the street before he fell dead—”

No! Pyetr thought to himself. They’re lying!

“If you see him,” the man said, “take no chances. There was no mark on the victim.”

Men die, Pyetr thought. The fools! He was an old man!

And he waited in bitter anticipation for Sasha Misurov to speak up and say, I know where to find him—because there was no reason Sasha should not. The stakes had risen much too high for a stranger to risk for anyone.

But the riders took their leave and rode away.

God, he thought, is the boy still out there?

Perhaps Sasha was inside the tavern, perhaps it would still happen, the boy would hear and tell Fedya and Fedya would say Run after them—

But he heard the elder Misurov say, “Lock the gate tonight.” and young Sasha say, not so far from the stable wall, “Yes, uncle. I will.”

Pyetr let go the straw he clenched in his fists and felt his last strength leave him, so that tears leaked from his eyes. Every breath was edged with the pain in his back and his side.

He saw the boy come back into the stable, saw him break into a ran to reach him. The boy said it had been the town watch looking for him, asked him to keep still, said he would bandage the wound and take care of him—

Pyetr had no idea why.