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There was a small silence.
“Oh,” Anna breathed. “Oh please. Make it go away. Make them go away.”
He might have smiled, but she couldn’t be sure in the moonlight.
“I will pray and think on it. Go back and go to sleep, Anna Ivanovna.” She stared at him with big stunned eyes, then whirled and blundered toward the door, feet clumsy on the bare wood.
Father Konstantin prostrated himself before the iconostasis. He did not sleep at all the rest of the night.
The next day was Sunday. In the green-gray dawn, Konstantin returned to his own room. Heavy-eyed, he flung cold water over his head and washed his hands. Soon he must give service. He was weary, but calm. During the long hours of his vigil, God had given him the answer. He knew what evil lay upon this land. It was in the sun-symbols on the nurse’s apron, in that stupid woman’s terror, in the fey, feral eyes of Pyotr’s elder daughter. The place was infested with demons: the chyerti of the old religion. These foolish, wild people worshipped God by day and the old gods in secret; they tried to walk both paths at once and made themselves base in the sight of the Father. No wonder evil had come to work its mischief.
Excitement rolled through his veins. He’d thought to molder here, in the back of beyond. But here was battle indeed, a battle for mastery of the souls of men and women, with evil on one side and him as God’s messenger on the other.
The people were gathering. He could almost feel their eager curiosity. It was not yet like Moscow, where people snatched hungrily at his words and loved him with their frightened eyes. Not yet.
But it would be.
VASYA TWITCHED A SHOULDER and wished she could take off her headdress. Because they were in church, Dunya had added a veil to the heavy contrivance of cloth and wood and semiprecious stones. It itched. But she was nothing compared to Anna, who was dressed as though for a feast-day, a jeweled cross round her neck and rings on each finger. Dunya had taken one look at her mistress and muttered under her breath about piety and gold hair. Even Pyotr raised an eyebrow at his wife, but he held his peace. Vasya followed her brothers into church, scratching her scalp.
Women stood on the left of the nave, before the Virgin, while men stood on the right, in front of the Christ. Vasya had always wished she could stand next to Alyosha so they could poke and fidget during the service; Irina was so small and sweet that poking was not rewarding, and anyway Anna always saw. Vasya locked her fingers behind her back.
The doors at the center of the iconostasis opened, and the priest came out. The murmurs of the assembled village drifted into silence, punctuated by a girl’s giggle.
The church was small, and Father Konstantin seemed to fill it. His golden hair drew the eye as even Anna’s jewels could not. His blue gaze pierced the throng like knives, one at a time. He did not speak at once. A breathless hush spread like sound among the people, so that Vasya found herself straining to hear their soft, eager breathing.
“Blessed is the kingdom,” said Konstantin at last, his voice washing over them, “of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit now and ever and unto ages of ages.”
He didn’t sound like Father Semyon, thought Vasya, though the words of the liturgy were the same. His voice was like thunder, yet he placed each syllable like Dunya setting stitches. Under his touch, the words came alive. His voice was deep as rivers in spring. He spoke to them of life and death, of God and of sin. He spoke of things they did not know, of devils and torments and temptation. He called it up before their eyes so that they saw themselves submitting to the judgment of God, and saw themselves damned and flung down.
As he chanted, Konstantin pulled the crowd to him until they echoed his words in a daze of fascinated terror. He drove them on and on with the supple lash of his voice until their answering voices broke and they listened like children frightened during a thunderstorm. Just as they were on the verge of panic—or rapture—his voice gentled.
“Have mercy on us and save us, for He is good and the Lover of mankind.”
A heavy silence fell. In the stillness, Konstantin raised his right hand and blessed the crowd.
They trickled out of the church like sleepwalkers, clutching one another. Anna had a look of exalted terror that Vasya couldn’t understand. The others looked dazed, even exhausted, the trailing ends of fearful rapture in their eyes.
“Lyoshka!” Vasya called, darting over to her brother. But when he turned to her, he was pale like the others, and his gaze seemed to meet hers from a long way away. She slapped him, frightened to see his eyes blank. Abruptly Alyosha came back to himself and gave her a shove that should have put her in the dust, but she was quick as a squirrel and wearing a new gown. So she writhed backward and kept her feet, and then the two were glaring at each other, chests heaving and fists clenched.
They both recovered their senses at the same time. They laughed, and Alyosha said, “Is it true then, Vasya? Demons among us and torments in store if we do not cast them out? But the chyerti—is he talking about the chyerti? The women have always left bread for the domovoi. What care has God for that?”
“Stories or no, why should we cast out the household-spirits on the word of some old priest from Moscow?” snapped Vasya. “We have always left them bread and salt and water, and God was not angry.”
“We have not starved,” said Alyosha hesitantly. “And there have been no fires or sickness. But perhaps God is waiting for us to die so that our punishment might never end.”
“For heaven’s sake, Lyoshka,” Vasya began, but she was interrupted by Dunya calling. Anna had decreed a meal of special magnificence, and Vasya must roll dumplings and stir the soup.
They dined outside, on eggs and kasha and summer greens, bread and cheese and honey. The usual cheerful muddle was subdued. The young peasant women stood in knots and whispered.
Konstantin, chewing meditatively, wore a glow of satisfaction. Pyotr, frowning, swung his head here and there like the bull that scents danger but has not yet seen the wolves in the grass. Father understands wild beasts and raiders, thought Vasya. But sin and damnation cannot be fought.
The others gazed at the priest with terror and a hungry admiration. Anna Ivanovna glowed with a kind of hesitant joy. Their fervor seemed to lift Konstantin and carry him, like a galloping horse. Vasya did not know it, but in the silence of the nave after all the people had gone, the priest had thrown that feeling into his exorcism, thrown it all, until even a man without the sight would swear he could hear devils crying out and running for their lives, out of Pyotr’s walls and far away.
THAT SUMMER, KONSTANTIN WENT among the people and listened to their woes. He blessed the dying and he blessed the newborn. He listened when spoken to, and when his deep voice rang out, the people fell silent to hear him. “Repent,” he told them, “lest you burn. The fire is very near. It is waiting for you and for your children, each time you lie down to sleep. Give your fruits to God and God alone. It is your only salvation.”
The people murmured together, and their murmurs grew more and more fearful.
Konstantin ate at Pyotr’s table every night. His voice set their honey-wine rippling and rattled their wooden spoons. Irina took to putting her spoon against her cup, giggling to hear them click together. Vasya abetted her in this; the child’s gaiety was a relief. Talk of damnation did not frighten Irina; she was too young.
