Rusalka

CHAPTER 2

PYETR WAKED with the scent of hay and horses in his nostrils, and felt the pain that came whenever he waked, but the night was past, dusty sunlight shafted through the chinks of logs and the pain, thank the god, was finally bearable. He was afraid to move and start it again. He lay there thinking about moving, he listened to sounds: the horses doing bored, horsely things, the tavern waking up, distant shouts from mistress Ilenka—Sasha, she was calling, take both pails, you lazy lout! A cock crowed somewhere in the neighborhood.

Then he began to remember why he was lying here on his face in the straw, and remembered that the tsar’s law was looking for him, that old Yurishev was irrevocably and truly dead, gone from Vojvoda where he had lived all Pyetr’s life, and Yurishev’s fool retainers were claiming witchcraft—It was all too absurd: he remembered Yurishev’s shocked face in that moment that they had scared each other, and thought it likely old Yurishev had never used a sword in his life. Probably the shock had frightened the old man into his grave, on the spot—and as for witchcraft, good god, Pyetr Illitch Kochevikov could hardly afford a two-kopek charm to ill-wish the old miser, let alone hire some foreign sorcerer powerful enough to strike a man dead on the spot—because certainly no wizard who had ever set up shop in Vojvoda could do a thing like that.

Not at least any of the local ilk, who held forth in cramped little shops and collected and dispensed the town’s gossip for coin. If there were genuine wizards, Pyetr thought, there were certainly none in Vojvoda. What had happened was an old man dying, and Yurishev’s guards protecting their reputations. Probably one man had offered that inspired excuse to the inquiring magistrates, and the rest had immediately taken up on it, that was the truth of what had happened last night. Pyetr Kochevikov believed in human weakness far more than he believed in wizards, human weakness being everywhere evident and sorcery being a matter, like the Little Old Man who should ward the stables, of people’s absolute will to believe in other people’s responsibility.

He had profited from it. Now that same human frailty bid fair to hang him—or give him shorter shrift than that. The watch would run him through without a beg-your-pardon, Pyetr Illitch… for fear of themselves dropping dead like old Yurishev.

He had to get out of Vojvoda, that was the only safety he could count on now, and to do that he had to pass the town gates—

—where, one supposed, the drowsing gate watch occasionally did their jobs and paid attention to who came and went. With a supposed murder in town, they might very well be looking for him to leave, and there was certainly no chance of getting out in broad daylight, as it was beginning to be. So there was nothing for him to do but hide in The Cockerel’s stable until dark and take his chances then—providing that he could walk, which, he discovered as he tried to sit up, was by no means certain.

And his wound hurt, god, it hurt, although nothing—nothing so bad as it had done last night.

“Are you all right?”

Pyetr grabbed the nearest stall rail to pull himself up. But it was only Sasha Misurov silhouetted in the doorway, buckets in hand, and he let go and sank down against the post.

“I brought you an apple,” Sasha said. “And a bit of bread.” He lifted one of the buckets he carried. “The water’s clean. It only goes into the troughs.”

“Thanks,” Pyetr said, not cheerfully, regretting the breakfast table at The Flower, and his own bed and his belongings and his horse in the stables—as good as in the rnoon, all he owned. And none of his friends wanted anything to do with him—which left only The Cockerel’s boy, who was, the whole town knew, odd—cursed with ill-luck from his birth, the tongue-clackers said, rumors Pyetr Illitch had afforded the same credulity as he afforded wizards, wise women, or tea leaves. The boy’s parents died in a fire, the culmination of a series of disasters which everyone recalled had begun the day the boy was born—

Look out, people would say in The Cockerel nowadays, bumping each other’s elbows, if young Sasha put his nose into the tavern proper, spill a drop for the House-thing, there’s the neighborhood jinx with us—

He had done it in jest himself, he and his friends.

And if he was tempted on that sudden thought to reflect that his own affairs had certainly gone wrong in young Sasha’s presence-Call him a fool, but if he had had luck anywhere in Vojvoda last night, it had been here, in Sasha Misurov’s company.

“How are you this morning?” Sasha asked, squatting in front of him. Sasha fished the bread and the apple from inside his coat and gave them to him.

“Better,” Pyetr said, remembering snatches of the night, Sasha bandaging his wound and sitting with him whenever he waked. Or maybe Sasha regularly slept in the stable. It was possible, given the relatives’ stinginess with the boy.

“They’re saying,” Sasha said, “that you broke into the boyar Yurishev’s house last night.”

He blinked, stopped with the apple on the way to his mouth. “Visiting a friend,” he said. “I’m not a thief.”

Of course, he thought, the lady and the lady’s rich relatives would come out with the charge of burglary. Never let it be said the boyarina Irina was anything but the grieving widow.

“They’re saying—you were hired to bring a spell into the house.”

“Bring a spell—”

Sasha looked acutely uncomfortable.

“I didn’t,” Pyetr said with a sinking heart. “—But that’s what they’re saying, is it?”

“That it had something to do with old Yurishev’s business, that somebody hired a wizard and the wizard hired you to bring a spell inside the house, and that was why he died.”

“Oh, good god,” Pyetr said.

“The thieftakers are looking for you. They were here, I don’t know if you heard last night.—Dmitri Venedikov is your friend. Or Vasya Yegorov. I could take a message to them.”

He remembered ’Mitri shoving him away, and that recollection stung as much as it frightened him, “No,” he said.

“They’re rich,” Sasha objected. “They could help you.”

So, then, there was the explanation of why Sasha helped him: the boy said it—rich friends, maybe even a little favor for somebody like Sasha Misurov.

Sasha was, since last night, wrong about the hope of rich friends, more the pity for them both.

“Why?” he asked Sasha, between bites of the winter-withered apple. “Why risk the watch for me?”

Sasha shook his head as if he was still thinking about that.

“Not that I’m not grateful,” Pyetr said.

Sasha kept looking at him, till Pyetr wondered if his wits were altogether collected. Finally Sasha said: “What will you do if you don’t go to your friends?”

“Oh, of course they’ll help,” Pyetr said. “They’ll know what’s going on, don’t doubt that. They just don’t need to know where I am right now—in case somebody asks, so they can swear they don’t know. But they’ll settle it. They have influence. All I have to do is stay here, out of reach of the watch.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know how long, a few days. I can’t walk, Sasha Vasilyevitch! If you did go to my friends and anything went wrong, if the watch should get word of it before they can do anything with the magistrates, they’ll kill me on sight, no trial, no court, nothing of the sort. You know that’s the truth. The safest thing is for me to stay here till my friends can work things out. I can stay hidden, I don’t need anything, only a place to sleep, maybe a little to eat, but I don’t even ask that—”

Sasha was frowning more and more, and Pyetr found himself suddenly down to pleading with The Cockerel’s stableboy, who owed him nothing, and who might, if greed got the better of him, go straight to ’Mitri and tell ’Mitri where he was hiding.

And if ’Mitri rebuffed him… there were other places Sasha Vasilyevitch could go to sell his information.

“I’ll get you food,” Sasha said with a very worried look. “But people come and go here. How long do you think it will take?”

“Surely,” Pyetr said, trying to bargain the most time he dared, “surely no more than four days.”

Sasha stared at him, not at all happy.

“All right,” Sasha said finally.

After which Sasha moved a horse out of the endmost, darkest stall, and piled up forkfuls of straw in its corner. Then Sasha helped him up and helped him walk that far and sit down, all of which put him out of breath.

“Pull the straw over you,” Sasha said.

It itched; but it offered some warmth, better than the drafts in the aisle. Sasha covered the pile with horse blankets, put his bread in his hand and set beside him a grain-measure of water he had saved from the horse pails. That was the comfort he had.

He thought about ’Mitri when Sasha had done his chores and gone, and he grew angry, and angrier; and he thought about the boyarina Irina, who, like Dmitri, had her wealth and her reputation to save—

He thought about Sasha, who probably was out for gain too. Who in this world was not?

But at least one could understand a boy who simply wanted to better himself. Pyetr Illitch Kochevikov had started life that way, Ilya Kochevikov the gambler’s son, Ilya Kochevikov the foreigner to Vojvoda, who had been all too well acquainted with the town watch in his life, and who had died, no one knew by whose hand, for reasons no one precisely knew but everyone in town was willing to speculate.

One would have thought, Pyetr mused bitterly, that after twelve years or so one might have lived down his father’s sins. One might have thought that one’s friends were one’s friends, to rely on in the bad times as well as the good.

’Mitri and the rest of them had their fathers to fear, that was the way the world worked: they would save themselves, god forbid they risk anything for somebody not precisely their own kind—Thai was what they would be saying. His friends would sit in the tavern and mutter together how terrible it all was.

Especially they would mutter, once they learned the extent of the charges against him.

How could we have trusted him? they would say. And: Breeding will tell, after all. He was amusing. Now he isn’t. Poor fellow…

Perhaps—the thought turned Pyetr cold, and made the bread dry in his mouth—perhaps the lovely, lonely Irina had had a notion how at one stroke to rid herself of a husband and find a scapegoat for it.

No one in Vojvoda would be on Pyetr Illitch’s side against those odds, and there was no town within range of Vojvoda’s gossip that would ever be safe for him.

So to comfort himself he thought about the farthest places he knew, about the Southern Sea, fabled Kiev, and the great river, and he made plans about Vojvoda’s gates and how he could slip past the watch there. More to the point, he wondered whether the silver in his purse could bribe a stableboy to help him—or how wide and how lavish young Sasha’s expectations of reward might grow if the boyar’s relatives made public offers.

Irina’s relatives, if young Sasha could possibly figure that matter out, were very likely the ones who would bid highest to be sure he died without a trial.

The same ones who had lodged the witchcraft charge—would want no question of his guilt.

Everywhere one looked in spring, there was mud; mud constantly found its way onto the walks when some slightly wandering foot trod off and onto the logs again; and when mud got onto the walks, mud tracked onto aunt Ilenka’s wooden floors.

All of which meant buckets of water, and a stiff brush, and a daily thorough washing of the split logs, which made more mud beside the walks.

Sasha had objected that plain fact to aunt Ilenka. Sasha had said that if the walks were three logs wide instead of two there would be fewer missteps and less mud. But aunt Ilenka was not strong on reasons. Aunt Ilenka wanted the walks and the porch and her floors scrubbed, and he scrubbed, since if there was not that to do, aunt or uncle would find something else for him to do, or maybe—it was always possible—they might not find something else for Sasha Vasilyevitch to do, which his aunt and his uncle had begun to wonder about in his hearing.

He was ten years older than the boy his aunt and uncle had taken in, when all the town had said no good could come of him. He was fifteen, tall and still growing, all elbows and knees and feet; and he feared someday, when he had made some inconvenient mistake, uncle Fedya might look carefully at him and see a boy who could, uncle Fedya would say, fend for himself hereafter. Fedya Misurov could certainly say he had gotten ten years of charity from the family, and (as Fedya had once said) the neighborhood trade that came to The Cockerel was an easy-going lot, sorry for a five-year-old boy with no parents and charitably willing to ignore his living there as long as he stayed out of sight, so long as he was on The Cockerel’s premises and not their own, so long as the only damage they ever witnessed in or around The Cockerel was spilled drink and the occasional broken mug.

But just let one extraordinary thing happen, uncle Fedya had warned Sasha severely, the very day he had arrived, let there be a fire in the kitchen or let somebody’s horse be injured in the stable, and immediately everyone in town would recall there was a particular reason The Cockerel should have luck like that.

So uncle had generally kept him out of sight of the customers, uncle had put him to sweeping after hours or to carrying water or to mucking out the boarding stable, uncle had told him be prudent, and Sasha had been as prudent as he knew how to be. Sasha was careful of the horses, careful of the dishes he washed and the pails he carried, careful of latches and locks and the stall doors, careful of lamps and oil jars and aunt Ilenka’s rising bread and the stack of firewood by the ovens. Sasha cleaned and scrubbed and never broke a dish or left a gate unlatched—

But the reputation for luck stayed with him.

Or maybe worse than that.

He knew the gossip, knew what some of his parents’ neighbors had said about him when his parents had died. Even uncle Fedya and aunt Ilenka had insisted that was not so, that he was not to blame for the fire, else they would not have taken him in: uncle Fedya and aunt Ilenka had taken risks for him, risks to their reputation and risks to their business, which, they had pointed out to him, were not necessarily bound to continue, let him think of that any time he thought that they had treated him shabbily.

Most of all he tried not to ill-wish anyone, at any time, because he dreamed about the fire, he dreamed about his parents’ voices screaming inside the house, he dreamed about the woman next door saying, The boy’s a witch—

His father had beat him once too often, the neighbor woman had said, and the house had burned down…

Sasha put his back into it, as uncle Fedya would say, scrubbed until he could stop thinking about that old woman. He scrubbed and rinsed and scrubbed and rinsed till the walk was clean and the muddy ground beside the logs was standing in puddles.

“Well,” someone said from behind him, and he recognized that someone before he ever glanced back over his shoulder at elder cousin Mischa, who had come out in his fancy clothes. Mischa was going up the street to The Doe, where he was courting the tavern keeper’s daughter: Sasha had heard Mischa saying as much this morning in the kitchen.

He gathered up his brush and his bucket and moved aside on the walk. There was room enough for two. But Mischa found a way to shoulder him off to stand in the mud.

Mischa thought that was sport. “Clumsy oaf,” Mischa said.

Sasha did ill-wish Mischa sometimes, but only in little ways. He dared not think overmuch, now, for instance, of Mischa and his finery landing in the mud, directly after one of Mischa’s little pranks: accidents of that kind were dangerous to his reputation and to his welcome with uncle Fedya and aunt Ilenka.

But he furtively hoped for such an accident later, somewhere on the way to The Doe, perhaps involving a very large puddle.

He was afraid when he caught himself at that, afraid to grow angry with Mischa, afraid to think about laying hands on his cousin and flinging him into the mud himself.

Most of all he was afraid that what the neighbors had said about him could be true, and that, without even wanting Mischa to come to lasting harm, he could do what he feared, the same as they said Pyetr Kochevikov had conspired with someone to do to the boyar Yurishev.

Pyetr had asked him forthrightly why he had helped him in the first place. That was easy, Pyetr having done him no harm, and Pyetr seeming in desperate need of help—

Until the watch had come to the gates saying that Pyetr was involved in sorcery—

Then Sasha had wanted to stand very far in the shadows and not have anybody anywhere remember that he existed.

Now—now, he had helped Pyetr Kochevikov, he had brought him food, he had helped him hide from the law, and when he had heard the charge he had known in his heart that Pyetr was not guilty of what they said—not Pyetr the prankster, not Pyetr, who could do such outrageous, wonderful things and get away unscathed—Pyetr never did real harm to anyone. There was never malice in his jokes. Pyetr and murder were unthinkable together.

And Pyetr and sorcery—

If they could believe that of Pyetr Illitch, then they could believe it of anybody; and if the thieftakers found out who had been hiding Pyetr—then people all over town might remember all sorts of things about The Cockerel’s stableboy, and nobody was going to ask whether it was true or not.

Sasha wanted Pyetr Illitch to leave, now, immediately: that was all he could think of for a solution; but Pyetr refused, Pyetr said he had to have more time, and he personally had no idea what to do with a man so weak he could hardly walk. There was no throwing him out, even if he could hope the watch would never discover who had hidden a fugitive from them for a night and a day. He could think about sending Pyetr away, simply telling Pyetr he had to go and making sure that he got out The Cockerel’s gate before anyone saw him. He could tell himself that he ought to do it before something terrible happened to the whole household, because they were not responsible for Pyetr Kochevikov, even if he was innocent, and he was responsible to uncle Fedya and aunt Ilenka, who had sheltered him when nobody else would—

But he had not the heart to see Pyetr Illitch caught and killed.

He wished he could think of something.

He wished none of this had happened.

But that kind of wish never worked.