But the strongest knight, everyone knew, was Dimitri, and so she half-expected to find herself betrothed to him one day. That was the perspective from which she viewed him for many years, each year growing more sure that it would be a very hard thing to have Dimitri as a husband, for he acted bravely, and never delayed for such irrelevancies as thinking through the consequences or wondering if he had the right to decide. She had expected, when the bear chased her to the stone where she lay down weeping, knowing she would sleep either forever or until her future husband awoke her, that if she ever saw another human face again, it would be Dimitri's, bending over her, his lips still cool from the kiss that wakened her, ready to speak the question to which her answer had to be yes.
And in that moment, she had prayed, O Mikola, O Tetka Tila, O Lord Jesus, O Holy Mother, let the purest love awaken me, or the wisest man, but not the strongest knight. Then she realized that she had prayed to Jesus third, not first, and when she spoke to the Holy Mother, it was not so much the Blessed Virgin as her own dead mother to whom she prayed. No doubt this was damnation, and she sank down into sleep, into despair.
Then she awoke, and it was this strange boy bending over her, who was not a knight at all, and not terribly wise either, as far as she could tell. But perhaps his was the purest love.
But she did not have his love. She had only his promise, and that given under duress, and kept reluctantly. Lord Jesus, did I offend thee with my prayer? Forgive me, and let me have the husband who will save Taina from the witch. Even if it is Dimitri. I will do whatever my people need me to do.
And yet this thought also, this prayer at the back of her mind: Art thou not the God of miracles? Then is there not some miracle thou canst bring about to turn this boy Ivan into a knight, and somehow make him wise, and a man, and let him love me?
Ivan sat alone in the tiring-room. Father Lukas was out among the people, doing whatever it is that priests do. Sergei was cleaning out the priest's chamber pot and then washing the priest's clothes, hopefully not in the same water. Ah, how Ivan longed for the twentieth century at times like these. The lush melodies of a flushing toilet—the rush, the swish, the gurgle, the gulp, and then the lingering aftertones, the whispering hiss, and then... silence! The glorious rhythm of a washing machine with an out-of-balance load, knocking and pounding its way across a laundry-room floor! The bucolic life had lost its charms for him somewhere between the fleas and the itchy woolen clothing.
His little plan to record the stories of the people of Taina had come to nothing, foiled by the simple fact that cheap paper hadn't been invented yet, or at least hadn't yet reached Europe, while the birchbark they used for jotting notes on decayed about as quickly as toilet paper. Ivan wracked his brains to remember how and when papermaking had made its way west from China. Would it be three or four centuries he'd have to wait?
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court, my ass. American ingenuity amounted to squat in this place. These people needed a very specific kind of man, and he wasn't it. Katerina was beautiful, but she hated him, which didn't bode well for the marriage. And Ivan simply wasn't interested in living the life that this time and place offered.
There must be other men of his temperament here. What did they do? The men who had no wish to do violence. The men who wanted to learn, to know the answers, to solve mysteries. The men who quickly lost interest in any physical activity that didn't let them think their own thoughts.
The men who hadn't yet grown up.
That's what Ivan had to face about himself. The life he had chosen was a cocoon. Surrounded by a web of old manuscripts and scholarly papers, he would achieve tenure, publish frequently, teach a group of carefully selected graduate students, be treated like a celebrity by the handful of people who had the faintest idea who he was, and go to his grave deluded into thinking he had achieved greatness while in fact he had stayed in school all his life. Where was the plunge into the unknown? Where was the man who would stand against all comers to protect his family, his people?
Easy to say that he was lucky enough to live in peaceful times, that he was never called to war. He was called now, wasn't he? And here he was slacking, avoiding practice with the weapons of this time and place. He was stronger than he let them see; finding himself unskilled when he was used to being a contender, resenting their scorn, he had backed off, had stopped trying. Like a kid who would only try when he knew he could win.
It wasn't childish to follow in the footsteps of a distinguished father, was it?
But his father hadn't stayed in the cocoon. Years before anyone guessed that the Soviet Union would collapse, Ivan's father had decided he had to get his family out. So he declared himself a religious man, let them slice him up, lost his home and his job, risked years of deprivation and harassment, and finally won, taking his family to a new land of freedom. But to do it, Father had given up the idea of ever teaching another class in his native tongue, of ever walking the streets of his native city. Afterward the world changed, so some of these things might be possible again—but Father hadn't known it would happen.
Compared to that kind of risk, what am I? I took the leap, yes, but I didn't like the ledge where I landed—I fought the bear, I kissed the princess, but now I don't want to be king. Well, where in the fairy tales did it ever say that Cinderella had to like being queen, or that Jack got to choose whether to marry the king's daughter or whatever it was that happened to him after he killed the dragon or the giant or whatever the hell he did? When Father got the family to Austria, he didn't say, "Never mind, too scary, let's go back."
OK, so Father couldn't turn back. Neither can I. I've got to do it, so maybe I should get my ass in gear and do it for real.
Ivan stood up, closed the book of the Gospels, and set it aside. Then he took the single parchment sheet of the lexicon and turned it over and set it on top of the other pages Father Lukas had been given by Saint Kirill... The lexicon was blank on the other side. And most of the other sheets also had at least some space on the back. Room for a lot of writing, if it were small enough. Room for Sergei to do all that Ivan wanted him to do.
Except for one small problem. How could Sergei hide it from Father Lukas, if it was written on Father Lukas's own papers?
By dinnertime, Ivan had come up with an answer. As usual, King Matfei listened carefully to the concerns of the boyars before giving the rest of the meal over to the singing of a minstrel slave who had recently been given to him as payment of a debt from another kingdom over the mountains to the west. Ordinarily, Ivan would have listened carefully to the song. But tonight, he leaned to the king and said, "I'm ready to be baptized."
King Matfei raised his eyebrows. "Father Lukas says not."
"Father Lukas judges that I'm not ready to be a priest, and he's right. But am I ready to take the covenant of baptism and confirmation as a Christian? I think so. What more is needed than that I believe in Christ?"
"That's precisely the point on which Father Lukas says you are lacking."
"And I say that I believe well enough for baptism," said Ivan. "Am I a liar, or is he mistaken? I am the only fit judge of what is in my heart, I think."
King Matfei looked off into space, bemused. "A complicated question, now that you put it that way."
"Until I'm married to Katerina," said Ivan, "the kingdom is in danger. What is to stop the Pretender from sending assassins?"
"The high king in Kiev would not allow her to take possession if it were known she had murdered to get the kingdom. More important, though, there are spells that my late wife's sisters added to the curse. If the witch raises a hand against the royal house of Taina, then the curse falls upon the witch herself."