Enchantment (23 page)

Father Lukas said his parts; Ivan and Katerina said their parts, with some prompting, at least for Ivan. Then they drank wine from the same cup, and it was done. The crowd cheered. Father Lukas beamed upon them. His smile was only skin-deep, though. He was not happy. And, if Ivan was any judge of character, neither was Katerina.

Relieved, yes, she seemed to be relieved. As if one great hurdle had been passed. But Ivan knew that this was nothing to her but a marriage for reasons of state. She had grown up knowing such a thing would be needed. He had not. He always expected to marry for love, or at least by his own choice. He had hoped for a bride who would be proud to say the vows with him. This was dismal indeed, to know that she was merely doing her duty to king and country, to God and Daddy.

And tonight. Oh, that was going to be the scene from his dreams. To bed a woman who was only doing it because her people were being held hostage. How is this going to be distinguishable from rape? Ivan had tried reading Ian Fleming once; a friend had lent him
You Only Live Twice
. In one of the early chapters, Fleming had written that “all women love semi-rape.” Ivan was only fourteen at the time, and still not sure that he understood all the nuances of English. But the idea seemed so loathsome to him that even if it were true, he did not want to know it. He gave the book back to his friend unread. To sleep with an unwilling woman—Ivan was not even sure he would be able to perform. That was one difference between the sexes that women never really understood: A woman could just lie there, and the job would get done. But if the man was put off his mettle, so to speak, there was no way to sleepwalk through it.

Can’t wait for tonight.

He just hoped that Sergei had the sense to head for Ivan’s room the moment the wedding was over, and get those parchments hidden. Fortunately, King Matfei was conferring privately with Father Lukas, so if Sergei hurried, he could come back with the book of the Gospels before the priest thought of going to Ivan’s room to get it himself.

It had been clever of Sergei, to think of using the fire as a means of convincing Father Lukas not to look for the parchments. Now Ivan and Sergei had more time to conceal them, and would never have to hear Father Lukas raging at their having defaced the precious manuscripts he was given by Kirill himself.

The surprise was how readily and convincingly Sergei was able to lie. He had to be a practiced liar, to do it so naturally, without a breath of embarrassment. It was a good thing to know about Sergei.

Of course, come to think of it, Ivan had not hesitated to join him in the lie. So much for their being Christians. Though, come to think of it, there was a good long tradition of Christians lying when the need arose, and often when it didn’t. Ivan couldn’t think of a religion that was any damn good at making utter truthtellers out of its practitioners. Maybe the Quakers were truly plainspoken at one time, but even they managed to squeeze out a Richard Nixon after a few hundred years of suppressing their human propinquity for untruth.

Sergei, if you’re going to lie, I’m just glad you’re on my side, and good at it, and smart about which lies are worth telling.

Then it occurred to Ivan: Who told the bigger lie today? Sergei, when he said that the parchments burned up in the fire? Or Ivan and Katerina, when they spoke as if what they were doing was actually a marriage?

He still held her hand in his. Her skin was cool. One of them was sweating so much that their hands were slippery against each other. Ivan was reasonably sure that it wasn’t her.

9

Honeymoon

Nowhere was the difference between the ninth century and the twentieth century clearer to Ivan than when it came to the little matter of the wedding night. Americans in the eighties and nineties had prided themselves on their openness about sex, but to Ivan those open-minded Americans seemed like prudes compared to the ribald—or downright lewd—comments, gestures, and charades that surrounded him and Katerina as they led a huge troop of villagers to the king’s house.

Nor did an R or PG-13 rating seem to be much in evidence, for seven-year-old boys were making obscene suggestions and movements right along with their elders. There was so much of it that after a few minutes Ivan couldn’t even bring himself to be shocked. He was numb.

Numb—that’s just the feeling you hope for on your wedding night.

With all the discussion of his and Katerina’s marriage as an antidote for Baba Yaga’s curse or as a strategic move in the struggle to keep Taina free of the witch’s rule, it all came down to this: Ivan was supposed to perform. But perform what? How? Like any other male American of even minimal alertness, Ivan knew that he was expected to be both masterful and sensitive, that the worst sin he could commit would be to finish before starting—in all the comedies people acted as if it were only slightly less awful than throwing up on the salad—and the second-worst sin would be to find himself unable to start at all.

Or maybe the worst sin of all was this: Ivan had no idea how it was supposed to go. Beyond what you got in health class and dirty jokes and bad movies, he simply had no serious hands-on experience.

All the statistics suggested that the only males who hadn’t had sex by age sixteen were either quadriplegics or insufferable geeks. Ivan was neither—in fact, he was an athlete who had dated a normal amount in high school. And with the time he spent in locker rooms, he had heard all the boastful talk about how often and how manfully all the other guys performed. Only a few, like Ivan, didn’t join in the locker-room brag; but Ivan suspected that the difference between the talkers and the quiet ones wasn’t experience, it was honesty. If these clowns had really treated the girls they dated the way they claimed, why did women not fall over themselves clamoring for more of the miraculous pleasure that these love gods supposedly provided?

Not that
nobody
was getting any in high school. But the statistics in those social-science surveys were such hoke. If those “scientific” results came from teenage boys telling the truth about their sex lives, the scientists should be doing horoscopes or reading palms—they were more reliable. Or so Ivan had said to Ruth once, and Ruth laughingly agreed. She was a virgin, too, and didn’t know any girls who admitted to anything else. There were girls with reputations as mattresses and guys whose reputations as cocksmen Ivan believed, but they were a lowlife fringe that didn’t touch Ivan’s life.

All this he had concluded years before; but there was one complication. About half the time, he didn’t believe it. About half the time, he looked at the people around him and thought, They all know the secret, they’ve all done it. Any girl I marry will have slept with enough men to have some serious expectations, and I won’t know what I’m doing. I’ll fumble around, I’ll give her no pleasure at all, she’ll hate sex with me and within days she’ll have an annulment going, if not a lawsuit for infliction of emotional distress. Or assault and battery.

So it didn’t help one bit that every single person in Taina above the age of six seemed to know all about sex and have inflated ideas about exactly what Ivan’s sexual prowess would be like. The crude comments about how he was going to keep the princess turning on the spit longer than a suckling pig gave him a new appreciation for the Jewish ban on pork. And the children who asked if they could come play in the tent that his erection would make of the bedcovers left him speechless.

It’s all jokes, he told himself. It’s a celebration of life. It’s a holdover from pagan fertility rites.

One thing was sure, though. If somebody talked like this coming out of a wedding in upstate New York, they’d better be drunk or they’d never get another invitation anywhere in their lives.

Through it all, Katerina seemed not to hear a thing. At first Ivan thought she was as embarrassed as he was. But of course that could not be so—she must have attended other weddings in Taina. For all he knew, as a child she had invented some of the ribald jokes now being retold at top volume along the path to the king’s house. Her grim silence had another cause entirely, he was sure. For to her, marrying him was a vile duty forced on her by the needs of her country.

And to him, she was a woman far more magnificent than he would ever have selected for himself.

A thought which made him feel utterly disloyal to Ruth, as if he hadn’t already. Ruth was a pleasant, attractive young woman, but Katerina was heartbreakingly beautiful, translucent with inner glory. Men like Ivan didn’t imagine for a moment that they were worthy of approaching such a woman. In fact, the only men who tried to date such women were the arrogant assholes who thought every woman wanted them to drop trou and let the poor bitch have a glimpse of Dr. Love. Even if Ivan hadn’t known his script from the fairy tales, he certainly would have known that the only way he could ever kiss such a woman was in her sleep.

At long last—and yet far too soon—they reached Katerina’s flower-strewn room and waited while the charivari continued for another few minutes. Ivan even submitted to letting the teenage boys strip off his outer clothing and throw it out the window to the amusement of those who hadn’t been able to fit inside the house.

There
were
limits. No one laid a hand on Katerina. Indeed, she was surrounded by women primping her and whispering to her and glancing pointedly at Ivan from time to time, as if to make last-minute assessments of just how badly he was going to treat her and how to keep herself from screaming her way out of the room. He could imagine them saying, “Just lie there and endure it. It’s the burden of a woman.”

Then the rest were gone. The door closed.

The singing and hand-clapping continued outside their window. The people were waiting. Ivan had vague memories of some culture or other in which the people would expect to be shown bloodstained sheets. But surely that wasn’t ninth-century Russia, was it?

He just wasn’t getting into the spirit of this. Standing there in his linen tunic, he was keenly aware of how unready he was for any kind of sexual performance. He was so utterly unaroused that for the first time in his life, he actually wondered: Am I gay? After all, I did wear women’s clothing.

She looked at him, her face hard-set. Still beautiful, of course. But grim.

“Ivan,” she said. “Come closer so I can talk softly.”

Stiffly he walked toward her. To his horror, the very act of approaching her changed everything. Instantly he became aroused, a fact which his simple linen tunic did nothing to disguise. She glanced down and then looked away—in disgust?

“I’m sorry,” he apologized feebly, wondering what he was apologizing for. When he wasn’t aroused, he had felt the need to apologize for that, too.

She put her hand up to silence him.

Her voice was soft. “There’s a plot to kill you as soon as our marriage is consummated.”

It was amazing how fast his poor libido went slack again.

“We aren’t sure who,” she said. “Sergei overheard the plotters and told Father Lukas, and he warned me, and I’ve been wracking my brain trying to think of what we can do about it.”

The obvious answer, he saw at once, was never to consummate this marriage. He offered the suggestion.

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, excellent plan. Then the Widow gets her way,
and
everybody is convinced you really do belong in women’s garb.”

“All right, then, we hop on the bed and do the deed and then I go out and have them stand in line for the privilege of killing me. It will end the suspense.”

“All the way up here from the wedding,” she said—ignoring him as if he hadn’t spoken—“I’ve been thinking, and I finally reached a conclusion.”

He thought she meant she had reached a solution to the problem. But it was nothing so helpful.

“My father has condoned this. The druzhina would not do this unless they believed they were doing his will. And that means I don’t dare ask for his help in getting you away.”

“Getting me away?” asked Ivan.

“If you and I don’t consummate this marriage, you can’t stay here. Don’t you see? If they’ve decided to kill you after we’re married, but before we know I’m with child, it means they’ve decided to defy the witch’s curse. They have just as much reason to get you out of the way if you
don’t
become my husband. I have to get you back to your own world.”

“Oh,
now
you decide it’s time.”

Her eyes burned through him. “I didn’t choose you. I’ve done my best to help you. I know you’ve done your best as well, but it wasn’t enough, was it? We’ve both failed, and now my people are going to pay the price of our failure. There’s no reason for you to go down with the rest of us. You didn’t know what you were setting in motion when you woke me. You thought you were saving a woman trapped by a bear. You don’t deserve to die for it, even if you aren’t the stuff that kings are made of.”

Ivan had never felt more worthless in his life. But he was going home.

Sergei was glad he had rushed straight to Ivan’s room after the wedding and tucked the parchments under his robe. Thank heaven that Ivan had finally started rolling them up to store them. He was leaving the room when Father Lukas arrived with King Matfei. “Ivan won’t be needing this room now, so you’re welcome to use it until a new church can be built.”

“You’re very kind,” said Father Lukas. “Sergei, there you are. Where is that book of Gospels? It’s the only treasure left to me.”

Sergei felt a pang of guilt over the lie that was causing the priest such grief. But compared to the rage Father Lukas would feel if he knew the truth—that Sergei had written all over the parchments and that he and Ivan had both lied—it seemed preferable to go to hell for these sins later.

Whom would Sergei ever be able to confess these sins to? There was no hope for him, none at all. And now Ivan would be killed and . . .

“Sergei? Are you deaf?”

“Father Lukas, the book of Gospels is on the table. I have to go outside.”

“No, come in with me and help me arrange the room for the two of us to share.”

“Father, it’s already arranged for two.”

King Matfei became irritated. “Sergei, your master told you to—”

Sergei almost obeyed; but the idea of keeping the manuscripts tucked inside his robe while trying to serve Father Lukas was intolerable. Something would happen to reveal the secret. He could not do it. Besides, Father Lukas was not his master.

“Your Majesty,” said Sergei, “I did not know that I, who was born a free man, had become a slave.”

The king’s face flushed with embarrassment. “I did not mean that you were his . . .”

“My master is Jesus Christ our Lord,” said Sergei. “And in the infinite wisdom of God, I find that I am desperate to get outside to void my bowels.”

Father Lukas waved him out. “By all means, go, go.”

Sergei rushed away.

Outside, he looked around. Where could he possibly hide the manuscripts? He thought of hurrying home to his mother’s house, but no, his mother, the poor trusting soul, had apparently befriended Baba Yaga unawares. She could hardly be relied on to keep such a secret as this—she’d confess it first thing to Father Lukas himself.

Is there time to bury it?

There was no place where Sergei had any privacy, no place where he could conceal something and hope that it would remain undisturbed. Should he leave the parchments under a rock in the woods and hope they would still be there when he had a chance to get back to them? He might as well have really put the parchments in the fire as to leave them exposed to the elements like that.

This was all Ivan’s fault, thinking of this mad project in the first place. Now Sergei was going to go to hell for another man’s sin.

Be honest, he told himself. You thought it was crazy but you went along with it. And once you started writing, you warmed to it right enough. It’s not for Ivan’s sake anymore that you want to keep these parchments safe. It’s because you love the way you wrote the stories on them.

Could there be a clearer case of loving your own sins?

Still, Ivan started it. Sergei might have no place to call his own, but Ivan was the husband of the princess. Let him deal with it.

Sergei headed back inside the king’s house. In the corridor, he could hear the voices of Father Lukas and the king; they were still inside Ivan’s old room. If they came out, Sergei would be right back where he started.

The revelers were still chanting and singing and laughing outside the house, but there was no one in the corridor. If Sergei knocked loudly enough to be heard over the noise outside the window, Father Lukas and the king would also hear, and would no doubt come out into the corridor to see who was knocking.

Sergei had no choice. He reached down, pulled the latch of the door, and slipped inside the bridal chamber, closing the door silently after himself. He was careful to keep his eyes to the wall as he fumbled inside his robe to pull out the parchments.

He had half-expected a screech from the startled bride or an exclamation from Ivan, but there was not a sound. Then he heard a chuckle from Katerina.

“Look what God has sent us,” she said.

“You can turn around,” said Ivan.

There stood the princess, fully clothed. And Ivan, in his linen tunic. Nobody naked, thank God. They were standing side by side, looking at him, the princess with amusement, Ivan with consternation.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Sergei. He held out the parchments.

Ivan strode to him, took them. “This isn’t the moment I would have chosen.”

“I didn’t choose the moment,” said Sergei. “The king has given Father Lukas the room you were using. Since you won’t need it now.”