The prince and his boyars stared with expressions ranging from bewilderment, horror, and rage to sniggering glee and dawning lust.
“A girl, as I said,” Kasyan continued, his reasonable voice at odds with the violent hands. “But an innocent fool, I think, and under the sway of her brother.” His sorrowful glance took in Sasha, kneeling, appalled, held by guards.
A murmur swept through the crowd, out and back. “Peresvet,” she heard, and “Sorcery. Witchcraft. No true monk.”
Dmitrii’s glance slid from her booted feet to her bared breasts. It stopped at her face and lingered there, without feeling.
“This girl must be punished!” cried one of the young boyars. “She and her brother have brought shame on all of us with their blasphemy. Let her be whipped; let her be burned. We will not suffer witches in our city.”
A howl of approval met his cry, and the blood drained slowly from Vasya’s face.
Another voice replied: not loud, but cracked with age, and decisive. “This is unseemly,” it said. The speaker was fat, his beard a fringe, and his voice calm against the gathering rage. Father Andrei, thought Vasya, putting a name to him. Hegumen of the monastery of the Archangel.
“Punishment need not be debated before all Moscow,” said the hegumen. His eyes flicked to the people seething on the riverbank. The shouts were growing louder, more insistent. “These will riot,” he added pointedly. “And perhaps endanger the innocent.”
Vasya was already cold and sick and frightened, but these words gave her a fresh jolt of terror.
Kasyan’s hand tightened on her arm, and Vasya, looking up, saw his flash of irritation. Did Kasyan want the people to riot?
“As you say,” said Dmitrii. He sounded suddenly weary. “You—girl.” His lip curled on the word. “You will go to a convent until we decide what to do with you.”
Vasya had her lips open on another protest—but it was Kasyan who spoke first. “Perhaps this poor girl would be easier with her sister,” he said. “Truly I think she is an innocent in her brother’s wicked plotting.”
Vasya saw the quick malice in his eyes, directed at Sasha. But it did not enter his voice.
“Very well,” said the Grand Prince flatly. “Convent or tower, it is all one. But I will put my own guards at the gate. And you, Brother Aleksandr, will be confined under guard in the monastery.”
“No!” cried Vasya. “Dmitrii Ivanovich, he did not—”
Kasyan twisted her arm once more, and Sasha met her eyes and shook his head very slightly. He put out his hands to be bound.
Vasya watched, shivering, as her brother was pulled away.
“Put the girl in a sledge,” Dmitrii said.
“Dmitrii Ivanovich,” Vasya called again, ignoring Kasyan’s grip. Her eyes watered with the pain, but she was determined to speak. “You promised me friendship once. I beg you—”
The prince rounded on her with savage eyes. “I promised friendship to a liar, and to a boy that is dead,” he said. “Get her out of my sight.”
“Come, wild-cat,” Kasyan said in a soft voice. She no longer fought his grip. He seized her cloak from the snow, wrapped it about her, and dragged her away.
21.
The Sorcerer’s Wife
Varvara was not slow to bring Olga the news. Indeed, she was the first to come clattering into the princess’s workroom, grim with the weight of disaster, snow in her faded plait.
Olga’s terem strained to bursting with women and their finery. This was their festival, there in that close-packed tower, where they ate and drank and impressed each other with silk brocades and headdresses and scents, listening to the roar of the revel outside.
Eudokhia sat nearest the oven, preening dourly. A few admirers sat about her, praising her pregnancy and begging favors. But even Eudokhia’s unborn child could not compete with this famous horse-race. A good deal of furtive, giggled betting had marked the morning, while the pious ones pinched their lips.
Will it be that handsome stripling—Olga’s younger brother—who carries the prize? they asked one another, laughing. Or the fire-haired prince, Kasyan, who—so the slaves say—has a smile like a saint’s and strips like a pagan god in the bathhouse? Kasyan was the general favorite, for half the maidens were in love with him.
“No!” Marya cried doughtily, while the women fed her cakes. “It will be my uncle Vasilii! He is the bravest and he has the greatest horse in all the world.”
The roar of the start seemed to shake the terem-walls, and the screaming of the race wrapped the city in noise. The women listened with heads close together, following the riders by the sounds of their passing.