Rusalka

CHAPTER 3

THE BOY came in the evening with a couple of small boiled turnips and a big piece of bread, which Pyetr was very glad to see. The Cockerel’s kitchen had been smelling of baking bread all morning and of stew all evening, with the coming and going of patrons, footsteps on the walk, shouts and banging of The Cockerel’s door, to remind a hungry, hurting man that other people were enjoying a much happier evening.

At least no one had come in for any of the horses, thank the god, and Pyetr had felt himself at least the better for a few hours of uninterrupted sleep—until hunger had set in and he would have been glad to contemplate yesterday’s little saucer of bread and sour milk on the stall gatepost, which somebody’s black and white cat had gotten after breakfast.

Sasha broke off part of the bread and put it in the saucer first off; and poured a little of their drink on it—for the Old Man of the stables, one supposed, and not for the cat—which probably had its daily round of barns and stables and doorsteps. It had certainly looked well-fed.

“They’re talking in the tavern,” Sasha said, between nibbles of his own bread. “There’s a reward on you. From the boyarina and her family.”

Pyetr felt his stomach upset. “So. How much?”

“They say”—Sasha’s voice took on a tone of true respect—”sixty in silver.”

“I can’t say I’m insulted.”

Sasha looked uncertain then, as if something of the bitterness had gotten through; or as if he thought he should not have brought that up, here, alone with him.

Why did he say? Pyetr wondered. To find out whether my friends can bid higher?

“Why would they think that about you?” Sasha asked. “About the sorcery—why would they think that?”

Is he afraid of me? Pyetr asked himself then, as an entirely new territory opened to him with that idea. Is that why you haven’t gone to the law, boy?

“Maybe I know a sorcerer,” Pyetr said.

“Who?”

This was the boy who put out saucers of milk for the barn-warder, who, even if one pointed out that the cat had gotten them, would say, as the old folk would, that the cat did not get the saucer every time.

“I wouldn’t be smart to say, would I?”

Sasha bit his lip, frowning, and Pyetr felt no safer considering the deep distress he saw on the boy’s face. He had no clue which direction to go, now, or what might gain the boy’s help or what might send him running headlong for the watch.

“If you know a sorcerer like that,” Sasha said, “why doesn’t he help you?”

Perish any thought that Sasha Vasilyevitch was dull-witted.

“I don’t believe you did it,” Sasha said. “I think the boyarina’s relatives did. I think they’re lying. His relatives were saying Yurishev knew you were coming to the house and he set up a trap—but now they’re not talking to the magistrates, they’re not seeing anybody—and the boyarina’s maid hanged herself, they found her this morning. They’re saying she helped you—”

God, Pyetr thought, they’ve killed that poor girl—

“People are scared,” Sasha said.

Pyetr raked a hand through his hair.

“If there is a sorcerer,” Sasha said, “did he do that too?”

“There is no sorcerer!” Pyetr cried. “I was seeing Yurishev’s wife. Yurishev set up a trap and caught me and he must have had an attack of some kind; but if Yurishev’s family proves adultery, the wife’s dowry is forfeit, and her relatives want it back. They’ve had bad times lately. They need that property. Yurishev built the mill on it! And now they’ve murdered the poor maid. Do you think they won’t murder me—or anyone else they think might testify for the Yurishevs? It’s money involved, Sasha Vasilyevitch, and they’re quite willing to kill you as well as me. Don’t mistake it!”

Sasha looked appalled.

“My friends are doing all they can,” Pyetr said. “But it takes time. They have to get appointments. They have to meet with people. In the meanwhile—what you have to do is find me some clothes.”

“Clothes!”

“I’m all over blood and mud. If I had clean clothes and a cap or something, someone who walked in here might not look twice at me. Something bulky, something like your uncle would wear.”

“My uncle!”

“Nothing good. Old clothes. Rags.—Maybe a loaf of bread, while you’re at it…”

Sasha looked as if his supper were sitting uneasy on his stomach.

“It might be a good thing for everyone,” Pyetr said, “if I could get out of Vojvoda for a fortnight or so—and I need your help, Sasha Vasilyevitch.”

The boy went silent. Somebody was walking outside.

“Somebody’s coming!” Sasha whispered. “Cover up!”

Pyetr moved for his corner and raked handfuls of straw over himself. Sasha flung the horse blankets over him and got up and walked away. Pyetr could hear the gentle breakage of straw, the soft opening and closing of the stall.

“What are you doing?” somebody said.

“Having my supper,” Sasha said. “Resting for a moment.” He was appalled. Mischa stood in the stable aisle, covered head to foot with mud.

He did not want to ask why. He simply felt sick at his stomach, the anger of the morning gone and nothing left in him but a profound horror, his secret misdeed come home to him—

Thank god I didn’t wish worse, he thought.

“Don’t stand there with your mouth open,” cousin Mischa said. “Fool! I can’t go inside like this! Get me some water and get me some dry clothes, hear me?”

“I’ll be right back,” Sasha said, and took out running, out the stable door, down the walk, up onto the porch and inside the box of a hallway between the kitchen and the main part of the inn. Straight back, behind the stairs and behind the kitchen led him to Mischa’s room, which was latched only when there were strangers in the tavern. He pushed the door open, snatched clothes off the peg and ran out again.

“Where are you going, Sasha?” aunt Ilenka’s voice pursued him. “Alexander Vasilyevitch, what are you doing?”

He stopped in the outside doorway, bounced on one foot. “Mischa fell in a puddle,” he said, and was out the door before aunt Ilenka could say anything.

Steps came closer to the stall. Pyetr refrained from breathing any larger than he had to, for fear of making any motion in the straw and the blankets.

The walker stopped. Someone else was coming at a run. In a moment: “I’ve got the clothes,” Sasha’s voice said. “Here.”

“I need the water first, fool!”

“I’m getting it,” Sasha said. There was the rattle of a bucket. “I’ll be right back. You can start getting undressed.”

Footsteps left, running. Footsteps walked back up the aisle.

Pyetr held his breath again, heard the advance of the footsteps, heard swearing, heard the rattle of the stall gate as it swung inward. For a moment he could not determine what was going on with the small creaks and grunts, until he realized Mischa Misurov was pulling off his boots, starting to do what Sasha had said.

O my god, Pyetr thought, suddenly putting a cold, wet Mischa Misurov together with the convenience of a pile of horse blankets on the straw in the corner of the stall.

As the footsteps came up to him and his shelter vanished with a snatch of Mischa’s hand and an unwelcome flood of lantern light.

Mischa yelled and leaped back, Pyetr gasped and lurched for his feet, grabbing his sword, and Mischa Misurov yelled for help and banged his way past the stall gate, out into the center aisle.

“Help!” he yelled, mostly naked, running and slipping barefoot in the straw. “It’s him! It’s him!”

Pyetr banged his own way out of the stall, sword in hand, overtook him with a pain that shortened his breath, tried to lay hands on him without running him through, but he missed both chances, bent double with the pain as he lost his grip. Mischa plunged out into the dark of the yard, yelling and howling that he was beset.

“Damn,” Pyetr gasped, and ran for the door as Sasha came dashing in, no bucket, nothing in his hands, terror on his face. “Stop the fool!”

“I tried!” Sasha cried.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” Pyetr said, and grabbed him. “Get me a horse!”

“There isn’t time!” Sasha cried. “Come, come on!”

Sasha offered conviction and a direction. Pyetr had neither. He yielded to the pull on his arm and ran in the direction Sasha pulled him, out the west door toward the tangled area of the hay-shed and the garden.

“Fool!” he said, pulling back at the sight of the fence, hearing The Cockerel’s thief-bell start to ring, hearing doors beyond the stable bang open and a score of men shouting for weapons and the watch. “This is a dead end!”

“No,” Sasha said, and he committed himself to the boy and kept going, across the scattered skirt of the haystack, around behind it and up to a corner where The Cockerel’s fence failed to meet that of its neighbor.

Sasha squeezed through.

“Easy for you!” Pyetr gasped, and tore his shirt doing it, left skin from his right arm on the boards, but the sounds of pursuit reaching the stable lent him strength. He ignored the pain and ran, half-doubled, the hand that held the sword pressed against the stitch in his side, while Sasha Misurov led him a fox’s course through the neighbor’s garden, out the neighbor’s gate onto the lane that ran behind The Cockerel.

The bell was ringing, the shouts continued, and by now Pyetr was running blind, not knowing whether it was his eyes that were fading or only the shadows where they were.

“Where are we going?” he panted finally, slowing, because his sense of direction told him they were going across the hill, not down it.

Sasha gasped, waving his hands, got out: “Dmitri Venedi-kov.”

“No!”

“Who, then? Where?”

Pyetr gulped a mouthful of air. “The gate,” he said. “The town gate. That’s all there is left. I’ve got to go away for a while—”

The haste ebbed out of Sasha. He drew two or three breaths before he said, “What are we going to do, then? Where are we going to go?”

“We” was the fact. He realized that suddenly. There was no way, considering how the blankets had been piled, that he could have gotten into that corner with the blankets atop by his own efforts. The thieftakers would know he had had someone at The Cockerel helping him, and Fedya Misurov was only fortunate it was a Misurov who had raised the alarm, or all the Misurovs would be involved.

“I don’t know,” he confessed to the boy. “Let’s just get to the gate, do you mind? Then we’ll see what to do.”

There was a stickiness on his side. He felt his shirt clinging to his skin and hoped that it was sweat that did that. The pain was less. Or the thumping in his ears distracted him from it.

He wandered a bit as they started off. He found his sword sheath and put the weapon away, to make them a little less conspicuous. By now dogs had added their barking to the noise a street away.

“We needed the horses,” he muttered. “We could have gotten across town if we’d had time for the horses.”

Sasha was doubtless scared out of words. Sasha said nothing, only walked beside him down one twisting lane and the next, downhill, while he tried desperately to think of sources for horses or clothing less conspicuous. Other thoughts kept edging in—thoughts like being caught, thoughts like himself being skewered and the boy who had helped him being run through on the spot or snatched up in the quarrels of the Yurishevs—

That the boy should slip them out of this by blind luck and the eel’s course they had run getting this far—was much too much to ask. Pyetr had the most uncomfortable feeling that Sasha expected something extraordinary of him, something like the hairbreadth tricks he was notorious for in the town—

But that was a Pyetr Kochevikov without a terrible pain in his side. There was no joke about this, not in the least.

He felt of his bandaged side, rubbed his fingers and felt a slight dampness. It hurt less now than it had in the night. He thought that might be a bad sign.

And he was quite well out of tricks, out of friends, out of everything but the few coins in his purse—of which Sasha had kindly declined to rob him.

Then the wits began to work again.

“Wait, boy,” he said, seized Sasha by the shoulder, set Sasha’s back against a fence, and said, “I have an idea.”

Then he hit Sasha across the jaw. Sasha bounced off the fence and started to slide to his knees, but Pyetr grabbed his shirt and hauled at him. “Sorry,” he said.

“Help,” Sasha Vasilyevitch cried, running breakneck for the gate. “Help me! Murder!”

The gate-guards stood up straight, snatched up their pikes and their lantern, and held up the light as Sasha ran up to them, with the thief-bell still clanging away up the hill.

“God,” one said, seeing his face, catching hold of his arms.

“They’re killing my uncle!” Sasha cried. “The murderer—his helpers, there’s at least three of them! I’m Sasha Misurov, from The Cockerel, and my uncle Fedya—We were trying to catch this man, they found him in our stable—He ran and we ran after him before the watch could come and we caught up with him, but there were more of them—They’re killing my uncle, oh, please—”

“Calm down, boy, calm! Where is he?”

“Up there!” Sasha pointed a trembling hand toward Ox Street. “My uncle, oh, they’re killing him, please, run, stop them! There’s at least three of them!”

The guards left at a run.

Sasha Vasilyevitch ran up to the tall gates of Vojvoda, lifted the iron latch of the small parley-gate in the shadow of the arch and shoved it open, terrified that Pyetr was not going to show up, that something disastrous could have happened since their courses had parted. Pyetr was bleeding, he had confessed it—Pyetr could have fallen, could be still back on Market Street, and he might be alone here, free of Vojvoda, but with no idea where he should go or what he should do after that. Pyetr was the one who knew, all of it was Pyetr’s plan, except to tell the guards at the gate that it was Pyetr and not robbers—and if Pyetr did not come now he had no idea where he should go or how he should live.

But somebody came running up behind him just as he got the gate open, just as the bar swung up with a terrible clang.

“Move,” Pyetr said, hoarse and panting.

Sasha slipped through into the dark of the road and it was Pyetr who had the presence of mind to shut the gate after him, after which the bar thumped down.

“It locked itself again!” Pyetr breathed. “That’s luck!”

Sasha hoped that it was. He was wishing hard enough, much harder than he had ever wished to make Mischa come to grief.

He was shaking at the knees and wishing he had a heavier coat, here in the wind, and suddenly thinking that he wanted to be back in the kitchen of The Cockerel, he wanted to sit down next to the oven where it was warm and he could never do that again, never go home, never see his own bed again, never see the horses or the stable or any of those things that made up all his days—and he had trouble thinking to move at all, except that Pyetr took him by the elbow and pulled him along to the left, where the road ran along the wall.

Pyetr was breathing too hard to talk; Sasha was too lost to have any opinion: his lip was cut, his jaw ached, the guard had clearly been appalled at the sight of his face, and he did think that Pyetr might have spared him the second and the third blow.