The Boat of a Million Years

IX. Ghosts

Did smoke rouse her? Bitter in her nostrils, sharp-edged in her lungs, at first it was all that was. She coughed. Her skull flew asunder. The shards fell back with a crash. They ground against each other like ice floes on a lake under storm. Again she coughed, and again. Amidst the noise and the sword-blade hurt she began to hear a crackling that loudened.

Her eyes opened. The smoke savaged them. Through it, blurily, she saw the flames. That whole side of the chapel was coming ablaze. Already the fire licked up to the ceiling. She could not make out the saints painted there, nor any icons on the walls—were they gone?—but the altar abided. As the smoke drifted and the half-light leaped, its bulk wavered in her sight. She had a wild brief sense that it was adrift, would soon reach her and crush her under its weight or else float away forever on the smoke.

Heat billowed. She crept to hands and knees. For a while she could not lift her head. It was too heavy with pain. Then something at the edge of vision drew her in a slow shamble. She slumped above and groped after comprehension.

Sister Elena. Sprawled on her back. Very still, more than the altar was, altogether empty of movement. Eyes open, firelight ashimmer in them. Mouth agape, tongue half out of it, dry. Legs and loins startlingly white against the clay floor and the habit pulled up over them. White flecks likewise catching the light across her groin. Blood-spatters bright on thighs and belly.

Varvara’s insides writhed. She threw up. Once, twice, thrice the vomit burst forth. The surges ripped through her head. When they were done, though, only the foul taste and the burning left in her, more awareness had awakened. She wondered in a vague way whether this had been the final violation or a sign of God’s grace, covering the traces of what had been done to Elena.

You were my sister in Christ, Varvara thought. So young, oh, how young. I wish you had not been in such awe of me. Your laughter was sweet to hear. I wish we could sometimes have been together, only the two of us, and told secrets and giggled before we went to prayers. Well, you have won martyrdom, I suppose. Go home to Heaven.

The words wavered over pain and throbbing and great swoops of dizziness. The fire roared. Its heat thickened. Sparks danced through the smoke. Some landed on her sleeves. They winked out, but she must flee, or else burn alive.

For a moment, weariness overwhelmed her. Why not die, here with little Elena? Make an end of the centuries, now when everything else had come to an end. If she breathed deeply, the agony would be short. Afterward, peace.

Sunlight struck long, brass-yellow, through haze and whirling soot. While she wondered about death, her body had crawled out the door. Astonishment jolted her more fully back to herself. She swung her gaze to and fro. Nobody was nigh. Mostly wood, the cloister buildings were afire all around. Somehow she got to her feet and stumbled from them.

Beyond the enclosure, animal wariness took hold. She crouched back down, next to a wall, and peered. Monastery and nunnery stood a distance from the town, as was usual. The religious should have found shelter behind the defenses. They had not had time. The Tatars arrived too soon, were there, horses between them and safety. They scrambled back and beseeched the Virgin, the saints and angels. Presently some of the wild men came to them, yelping like dogs.

It made no difference, Varvara saw. Pereyaslavl had fallen. No doubt the Tatars stormed it before they troubled about the house of the Virgin. A monstrous black cloud rose from its walls, up and up into the sky, where it broke apart into smears across eventide purity. Flames stabbed into view beneath. They tinged the gloom with restless red.

She remembered dimly how the Lord went before the Israelites as a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. Did His voice roar like the pyre that had been Pereyaslavl?

Here and there across the rolling farmlands, villages burned too, smaller darknesses taking flight. The Tatars seemed to be assembling near the town. Squads galloped through grainfields toward the main body of horsemen. Warriors afoot herded captives along, not many—but then, Varvara saw, the invaders were no huge army, not the locust swarm of rumor, several hundred perhaps. They weren’t steel-clad either, it was mostly leather and fur on those stocky forms, now and then a blink but that was likelier off a weapon than a helmet. One at their van bore the standard, a pole from whose cross-arm hung—tails of oxen? The mounts were just ponies, dun-colored, shaggy, longheaded.

Yet these men had come as a runaway blaze over the land, driving all before them or trampling it down. Even cloister dwellers had heard, years ago, how the Pechenegs themselves fled to the Rusi, begging for succor. Riders who attacked like a single dragon with a thousand thunderous legs, arrows that flew like a sleetstorm—

Otherwise the countryside reached green, outrageously peaceful, eastward from the sun. Light streamed into the Trubezh, so that the river became a flow of gold. Flocks of waterfowl winged toward the marshes along its shores.

Yonder is my refuge, Varvara knew, my one tiny hope.

How to reach it? Her flesh was a lump of pain, splintered in places with anguish, and her bones were weights. Nevertheless, with the fire at her back, go she must. Knowledge made up for awkwardness. She could advance a bit, freeze, wait till it appeared safe to gain a few more feet. That meant a long time till she reached her goal, but time remained to her, oh, yes. She choked off a crazy laugh.

At first a cloister orchard gave concealment. How often had these trees blossomed amazing pink and white in spring, rustled green in summer, offered crisp sweetness in autumn, stood skeletally beautiful against winter’s gray, for her sisters and her? The number of years was lost somewhere in Varvara’s head. Certain of their people flitted through, Elena, shrewish Marina, plump and placid Yuliana, Bishop Simeon grave behind his huge bush of beard—dead, today or years since, ghosts, she herself perhaps dead too but denied quietness, a rusalka creeping back to its river.

Beyond the orchard was pasture. Varvara thought for a while she would do best to wait among the trees for nightfall. Terror whipped her onward. She found herself slipping along more and more snakishly. Skill returned, indeed it did, when you had gained it in your girlhood. Before Christ came to the Rusi, and for generations afterward, women often ranged the forest as freely as men. Not the deep forest, no, it was dark, trackless, a place where beasts and demons prowled: but the verge, where sunlight reached and you could gather nuts and berries.

That lost greenwood felt closer than the cloister. She had no recollection of what happened after the enemy drew near the sanctuary.

At a sudden thudding, she went flat in the grass. Despite utter weariness, her heart banged and a thin singing lifted between her temples. It was well she had not stayed in the orchard. Several Tatar horses trotted among the trees and out onto the slope. She glimpsed one rider clearly, his broad brown face, slant slit eyes, wispy whiskers. Did she know him? Had he known her, back in the chapel? They passed close by but onward, they had not noticed her.

Thanks welled in her breast. Only later did she recall that they had not been to God or any saint but to Dazhbog of the Sun, the Protector. Another ancient memory, another strong ghost.

Dusk softened horizons by the time she reached the marsh for which she aimed. Fitful reddenings still touched the smoke of Pereyasiavl; the outlying villages must be entirely ash and charcoal. Tatar campfires began to twinkle in ordered clusters. They were small, like their masters, and bloody.

Mud oozed cool over Varvara’s sandals, between her toes, up her ankles. She found a hummock where the grass was merely damp and sank down, curled onto its springiness. Her fingers dug into the turf and the sod beneath. Earth, Mother of All, hold me close, never let me go, comfort your child!

The first stars glimmered forth. She grew able to weep.

Thereafter she pulled off her clothes, layer by layer. A breeze nuzzled her nakedness. Having left the garments bundled, she pushed through reeds till she waded in the stream. Here she could wash out her mouth and gullet, drink and drink. The water was slow to reach every parched finger-end. Meanwhile she crouched and scrubbed herself, over and over. The river laved, licked, caressed. She squatted and opened her loins to it. “Make me clean,” she begged.

Light of stars and the Heaven Path gleamed off its current, enough for her to find her way back. She stood on the hummock so the breeze could dry her. That made her shiver but didn’t take long. Her lips quirked for a moment— cropped hair was a legacy of the cloister, useful tonight. Afterward she took up her clothes, and nearly retched. Now she caught their stench of sweat, blood, Tatar. It took almost the last of her strength to put them back on. Maybe she couldn’t have, were it not for the overlay of smoke-smell. Another legacy, another remembrance. She must keep covered against the night chill. Though she had never been sick in her life, she might well be too weakened to stave off a fever.

Slumping back onto the hummock, she dropped into a half-sleep wherein ghosts gibbered.

Dawn roused her. She sneezed, groaned, shuddered. However, as brightness lengthened across the land, the same cold clarity waxed within. Cautiously moving about her hiding place, she felt the stiffness work out of her joints, toe aches dwindle. Wounds still hurt, but lesseningly as day wanned them; she knew they would heal.

She kept well down amidst the reeds, but from time to time ventured a look outward. She saw the Tatars water their horses, but the river blotted up any filth before it reached her. She saw them ride from horizon to horizon. Often they returned with burdens, loot. When the shifting masses at camp chanced to part before her eyes, she spied the captives, huddled together under mounted guard. Boys and young women, she supposed, those worth taking for slaves. The rest lay dead in the ashes.

She still lacked memory of her last hours in the cloister. A blow to the head could do that. She had no wish for the knowledge. Imagination served. When the raiders broke in, the religious must have scattered. Quite likely Varvara seized Elena’s hand and led her, a dash into the chapel of St. Eudoxia. It was small and offside, without treasures, the devils might overlook it. Of course they hadn’t.

But what then? How had Elena died? Varvara—well, she dared hope she had fought, forced three or four to hold her down by turns. She was big, strong, a survivor of much, used to looking after herself. At last, she guessed, a Tatar, maybe when she bit him, smashed her head against the floor. Elena, though, Elena was slight and frail, gentle, dreamy. She could only have lain where she was while the thing went on and on and on. Maybe the last man, seeing what his fellow did to punish Varvara, had grinned and done the same to Elena. It killed her. Did they take her companion for dead also, belt up their breeches, and go? Or did they simply not care?

At least they hadn’t used knives. Varvara would not have outlived that. Indeed, while her skull seemed amply hard, she might not have roused in time to escape, save for the vitality that kept her ageless. She should thank God for it.

“No,” she breathed, “first I thank You for letting Elena die. She would have been broken, haunted all her days, hounded all her nights.”

Further gratitude slipped her mind.

The river and the hours muttered past. Birds clamored. Flies buzzed thick as smoke, drawn by her stinking garb. Hunger began to gnaw. She recollected another old skill, lay belly down in the mud by a backwater that some drifted brushwood had formed, waited.

She was no longer alone. Ghosts crowded close. They touched and tugged at her, whispered, beckoned. At first they were horrible. They took her against her will, drunken husbands and two different ruffians who had caught her during the years when she wandered. With a third she had been lucky and gotten a knife into him first. “Burn in hell with those Tatars,” she snarled. “I outlived you. I shall outlive them.”

Yes, and the memories of them. If nothing else, she would humble the new ghosts as she had overcome the old ones. It might take years—she had years—but at last the strength that had kept her alive this long would again make her able to live gladly.

“Good men, come back to me. I miss you. We were happy together, were we not?”

Father. White-bearded Grandfather, from whom she could wheedle anything. Elder brother Bogdan, how they used to fight but how splendid he later grew, before a sickness ravaged his guts and tore him down. Younger brother, yes, and sisters, who teased her and became dear to her. Neighbors. Dir, who kissed her so shyly in a clover meadow where bees buzzed; she was twelve years old, and the world wobbled. Vladimir, first of her husbands, a strong man until age gnawed him hollow but always gentle with her. Husbands later, those she had liked. Friends who stood by her, priests who consoled her, when sorrow returned to her house. How well she recalled ugly little Gleb Ilyev, but then, he was the first of those who helped her escape when a home turned into a trap. Oh, and her sons, her sons, grandsons, daughters and granddaughters too, great-grandchildren, but time took them away. Every ghost had a face that changed, grew old, finally was the mask that the dead wear.

No, not quite every one. Some she had known too fleetingly. Strange, how vivid remained that trader from abroad—Cadoc, his name? Yes, Cadoc. She was glad she had not watched him crumble—when? Two hundred years, more or less, since their night in Kiyiv. Of course, he might have perished early, in the beauty of his youth.

Others were misty. Certain among them she was unsure of, whether they had been real or were fragments of dreams that had clung to memory.

With a splash and splatter, a frog jumped from among the rushes, onto the brushwood. He settled himself, fat, green-white, to lurk for flies. Varvara stayed moveless. She saw his attention turn from where she lay. Her hand pounced.

He struggled, cool and slippery, till she knocked him on the head. Then she plucked him apart, gnawed and sucked his meat off the bones, cast them into the river with muttered thanks. Ducks bobbed in midstream. She could have shed her clothes, slid into the water, swum carefully underneath to seize one by the legs. But no, the Tatars might glimpse it. Instead, she grubbed sedges of a kind with edible roots. Yes, the forest skills lived on in her, had never really faded.

Otherwise— She supposed it was a growing despair, a sense of her soul slipping from her, that brought her to the sanctuary. No, that wasn’t the whole reason. She had said too many farewells. In the house of God was refuge that would endure.

Surely there was peace, around her if not always within. The lusts of the flesh refused to die, among them the wish to feel again a small warmth in her arms, a small mouth milking her. She reined them in, but then sometimes they kicked up mockeries of the Faith, memories of old earthy gods, longings to see beyond walls and fare beyond horizons. And petty sins too, anger at her sisters, impatience with the priests and the endlessly same tasks. Nonetheless, on the whole, peace. Between the chores, the chafings, and the puzzled search for sanctity were hours in which she could bit by bit, year by year, rebuild herself. She discovered how to order memories, have them at her beck rather than let them fade to nothing or else overwhelm her with their many ness. She tamed her ghosts. f A wind made the sedges rustle. She shivered likewise. What if she had failed? If she was not alone in the world, was the common fate of her kind to go mindless and perish helpless?

Or was she in truth alone, whether blessed or damned? Certainly the cloister had no record of such folk, ever, since the Methuselan morning of the world. Not that she had told anybody beforehand. The caution of centuries forbade. She came as a widow, taking the veil because the Church encouraged widows to do so.

To be sure, when the decades slipped by and her flesh continued young—

Noise thrust into the marsh, shouts, whinnies, drumbeats. She scuttered to look. The Tatars had trussed up their loot and marshalled their ranks. They were departing. She saw no captives, but guessed they were bound astride pack horses with the rest of the baggage. Smoke still blew thinly : out of the blackened, broken walls of Pereyaslavl.

The Tatars were headed northeasterly, away from the Trubezh, toward the Dniepr and Kiyiv. The great city was a day’s march in that direction, less on horseback.

O Christ, have mercy, were they off to take Kiyiv?

No, they were too few.

But others must be raging elsewhere across the Russian land. Their demon king must have a plan. They could join together, resharpen swords blunted by butchery, and go on as a conquering horde.

In the house of God I sought eternity, passed through Varvara. Here I have seen that it also has an end.

I too?

Yes, I can die, if only by steel or fire or famine or flood; therefore someday I shall die. Already, to those among whom I was ageless, those that live, I am a ghost, or less than a ghost.

First the nuns, later the monks and secular priests, finally the layfolk began to marvel at Sister Varvara. After some fifty years, peasants were appealing to her for help in their woes and pilgrims arriving from places quite far. As she had feared from the outset, there was no choice but to tell her confessor the truth about her past. With her reluctant leave, he informed Bishop Simeon. The latter planned to inform the Metropolitan. If they did not have an actual saint in the cloister of the Virgin, and Sister Varvara said she could not possibly be one, they had a miracle.

How was she to live with that?

She would never have to. The bishop, the priests, the believers were dead or fled. The annals of the cloister were burned. Anything elsewhere was likewise destroyed, or soon would be, or was doomed to molder away forgotten now when people had so much death to think about. A memory of her might linger in a few minds, but seldom find utterance, and it would die with them.

Had the Tatars come as God’s denial, His decision that she was unworthy—or as His release from a burden no child of Adam should bear—or was she, defiled and torn, nonetheless so full of worldly pride that she dared imagine she mattered?

She clung to the hummock. Earth and sun, moon and stars, wind and rain and human love, she could understand the old gods better than she understood Christ. But they were forsaken by man, remembered only in dances and feasts, fireside tales and fireside spirits; they were ghosts.

Yet lightning, thunder, and vengeance forever walked the skies above Russia, be they of Perun or of St. Yuri the dragonslayer. Varvara drank strength from the soil as a babe drinks milk. When the Tatars were out of sight, she sprang to her feet, shook her fist after them, and shouted, “We will abide! We will outlast you, and in the end we will crush you and take back what is ours!”

Calmer, then, she removed her clothes, washed them in the river, spread them on a slope to dry. Meanwhile she cleansed herself again and gathered more wild food. Next morning she sought the ruins.

Ash, charred timber, snags of brick and stone lay silent under heaven. A pair of churches were left, foul with soot. Inside them sprawled corpses. The slain outside were many more, and in worse condition. Carrion birds quarreled over them, flying off with a blast of wingbeats and shrieks whenever she approached. There was nothing she could do but offer a prayer.

Searching about, she found clothes, shoes, an undamaged knife, and such-like needs. Taking each, she smiled and whispered, “Thank you” to its owner’s ghost. Her journey would be hard and dangerous at best. She did not mean it to end until she had reached the kind of new home she wanted—whatever that was.

In the dawn that followed, before setting forth, she told the sky: “Remember my name. I am Varvara no more. I am again Svoboda.” Freedom.