She searched her visitor's face. The old lady looked back at her, unblinking, bearing her gaze, showing no sign of guilt or shame—nor of malice or triumph. Only a look of genuine concern. Impossible to imagine that this woman had ever done her harm. It was wicked of Nadya even to have entertained the thought.
Nadya held up the tattered hoose. "Is it wrong of me to tell of this?"
"I don't know what's wrong or right," said the old lady. "The princess seems not to mind. But what of the men who might follow this... person into battle? Will God fight on their side, with such a man as king?"
Nadya thought of her husband. Of the vicious combat that stopped Baba Yaga's army when they first attacked. How defeat looked certain, until King Matfei cried out for his men to have courage, and then plunged headlong into the thick of the battle, beating down every sword raised against him. They could not let such a king risk his life for them, not without companions fighting with equal fervor at his side. It was the king who gave them heart.
What heart would this stranger give to anyone? How many lives would be lost, with him at the front of battle? God forbid there should ever be another war, of course, but if the choice was between war now, while Matfei still ruled, or war later, when this weakling was on the throne, better to fight it now. Let there be no marriage, and let Baba Yaga come in claiming to rule by right; the swords of the men of Taina, led by King Matfei, would show them what Baba Yaga's claims were worth.
"I might tell Father Lukas," said Nadya. "I might show this to my son."
"Might?"
If she did tell, Nadya knew, it would break Matfei's heart, and would shame Katerina. After all, if the princess chose not to tell it, then there must be good reason, mustn't there? Who was Nadya, to speak when the great ones kept silent?
"Maybe," said Nadya.
"Well, do what you will with it," said the old lady. "You've always done right by me. I imagine you'll do right by the people of Taina."
"I'll try," said Nadya.
Ivan woke to see a hooded face looming over him. He cried out and shrank into a corner of his bedstead. Almost at once, though, he realized that his visitor was a young priest. Or monk. Or something.
"Father Lukas?" asked Ivan.
"What?" answered the man.
Ivan realized that he had spoken in Russian. But proto-Slavonic wasn't that different. "Are you Father Lukas?"
"No," said the man. "I'm Brother Sergei. Not a priest at all."
That would explain his native-sounding speech. "I thought all priests came from Constantinople."
"I couldn't be a fighter or a farmer, not with this leg." Sergei lifted his gown to reveal a mismatched pair of legs, the one normal—or perhaps stronger than normal—and the other wizened, twisted, and several inches shorter. "Father Lukas made me his scribe."
"So you read and write? You have the Greek for that?"
Brother Sergei nodded vigorously. "He taught me the letters. Not Greek though, I can't read that."
Can't read Greek? "You mean you read in your own language?"
"Father Lukas taught me the letters."
"What letters? Can you show me?" It was impossible—nobody was writing in Old Church Slavonic, not this far north and west. The Cyrillic alphabet had either just been invented or was about to be, far away at the borders of the Byzantine Empire, and the Glagolitic alphabet was nearly as new and was never that widely used. So what alphabet was Father Lukas teaching?
Brother Sergei collapsed into a sitting position and began to write with his finger on the earthen floor. Impossible as it was, Ivan recognized the figures immediately as the earliest known form of the Cyrillic alphabet.
"A man named Kirill invented those letters," Ivan said.
"I know," said Sergei. "Father Lukas was his scribe." Sergei grinned. "I'm the scribe to the scribe of the great missionary Father Constantine—he only took the name Kirill a little while before he died. Father Lukas says that by serving him as he served Father Constantine, I am only two steps away from holiness."
"Closer than most men, then," said Ivan. But he trembled at the thought: The priest in this place was, or at least claimed to be, personally acquainted with Saint Kirill himself. Which meant that whatever writing was done in this place would be, if Ivan could only take it away from here back to his own time, the oldest Cyrillic writing any man of the twentieth century had ever seen. Not only that, but it was the definitive answer to the historical question of whether it was Kirill himself who invented that alphabet, or his followers who did it after he was dead.
If Ivan could take it back, so many questions could be answered. That was just one more unbearable irony.
"You speak our tongue much better than Father Lukas," said Sergei. "But you still pronounce it funny."
"I grew up speaking a different form of the same language." said Ivan. "Father Lukas grew up speaking Greek."
"So where are you from?"
"Kiev," said Ivan.
Brother Sergei laughed aloud. "I've heard traders from Kiev. They don't talk like that."
"Oh?"
"Most of them are Rus' and speak North-talk anyway, nothing like our language."
"There are a lot of people in Kiev," said Ivan, "and a lot of ways of speaking."
"It must be a wonderful thing, to live in a great city."
"The wonderful thing," said Ivan, "is to be here in Taina."
"Of course it's wonderful to you," said Sergei. "You're going to be king."
Ivan grimaced. "Not much of a king. I'm a poor choice for that."
Sergei shrugged. "There's some who say so. Though one never knows who'll be a good ruler until he wears the crown."
"Well, anyone who thinks I shouldn't be king is right."
Sergei got a sick look on his face. "So it's true, then?"
"What's true?"
"About you wearing Katerina's hoose?"
Ivan could hardly believe word of that had already spread. "Does she say that?"
"She says nothing," said Sergei. "But an old woman found this tattered hoose and showed it to my mother, and my mother recognized it as one that the princess had worn. She didn't feel right about telling anyone but me, not until you had a chance to deny it or admit it." Sergei laid the stained and tattered remnant of Katerina's hoose on the bed.
Ivan didn't know what to say. A flat lie might be the best course, but for all he knew Katerina was behind the story, telling it to discredit him so she would not be forced to go through with the marriage. It wouldn't do any good to deny the story outright; no one would believe Ivan over Katerina.
"Brother Sergei," said Ivan, "I come from a faraway land. I was born in Kiev, but I lived the past ten years in a place even stranger and farther off. And in that land, when a woman takes off her clothing, then it ceases to be women's clothing or men's clothing, it's just cloth. Whatever a man wears is men's clothing while he's wearing it, and whatever a woman wears is women's clothing while she's wearing it. Do you understand?"
Sergei thought for a moment, then shook his head. "You mean that this is a man's hoose?" His tone was scornful.
"I mean that it's nothing but a piece of cloth, stitched in certain ways, and now torn. Though it wasn't torn at all when I last saw it."
Sergei said nothing.
"Sergei," said Ivan, "if I reached out and tore that cross from your neck, that would be theft, wouldn't it? Stealing a cross! What kind of wicked fool would I have to be, to commit such a sin as that?"