deterrent for our enemies, and I think-”
“I do not care what you mean or think. I only care that you obey.” The strannik rounded on Darger. “I will see your prince. There is a service he must do me.”
“Regrettably, that’s not possible.” “Nor do I care what you regret. He must take me to Moscow.”
“It simply cannot be done.”
“It will be done.” Koschei’s eyes blazed. “Moscow is the second Babylon, and this city of whores and heretics must be cleansed-with the word of God if possible, but if not, then with fire!”
Surplus gestured toward the sickroom. “What my friend means is that the ambassador is not conscious. The doctors are with him now. But he is gravely ill, and I fear they can do him little good.”
“Oh?” In three strides, Koschei was in the sickroom and had pulled shut the door behind him. Two voices rose in protest, but if the wanderer made reply, Arkady could not hear it. For several minutes the voices clamored louder and more agitatedly until suddenly the strannik emerged again, hoisting the doctors up by the napes of their coats, so high that their feet struggled and failed to reach the ground. One after the other, he threw them out the front door. Then he fetched their bags and threw them after. Magog bemusedly closed the door on the two. “They are impious men,” Koschei said. “You can expect no good from them.”
“Good pilgrim, I must protest!” Surplus cried. “Those men were needed to heal the ambassador.”
“The power to heal him belongs to God alone, and from what I have seen of the ambassador, I do not think that Mighty Gentleman will deign to do so.” Koschei unslung his pouch and dropped it at his feet. “Yet I have medicines of my own, and I know much about the human body that your doctors do not. If you wish, I have every confidence that I can return this lost soul to consciousness for a time, so that he might put his affairs in order.”
Darger and Surplus looked at one another. “Yes,” said one of them. “That would be desirable.”
By now, Arkady was finding the conversation almost unbearably tedious. The Pearls required flowers! There was a girl who perhaps-he was ashamed to admit it, even to himself-still had reason to think he was romantically attached to her, and her mother grew the finest roses in town, great hedges of them. They would neither of them miss a few dozen, provided he was careful not to cut many from the same area.
As he edged out the door, he heard the strannik say, “This will take some time. I will require your patience and your silence.”
The town was much quieter when Arkady returned an hour later. So was the house. The gapers and onlookers had all retired for the night and there was only one dim lantern burning on the ground floor. On the front stoop, a small glowing coal and the smell of tobacco identified a great hulking shadow as a Neanderthal sitting guard, smoking a pipe. Yet the second floor was ablaze with oil lamps. The Pearls were apparently too excited by their release from the confines of the caravans to sleep. He could hear a sudden peel of girlish laughter, and then the screech of a heavy piece of furniture being drawn across a bare wood floor. The soft sound of bare feet ran swiftly from one side of the house to the other.
“Your papa’s staying with the neighbors, kid. The ones around to the rear,” the Neanderthal said. “You might wanna join him.”
“Thanks, I’ll… I’ll do that.” He put down the armload of flowers. “These are the roses they wanted. That the Pearls requested, I mean.”
Casually, then, he walked away and around the corner of the house, as if he were going to the Babochkins. He stood in the shadows waiting until he heard the guard knock the ashes from his pipe, gather up the roses, and go indoors. Then he went to the oldest and largest of the oaks. Nimbly, he climbed up it and took his station deep within its leaves, where he could see into the second floor.
Arkady’s fingers bled from dethorning the roses, but his hands still smelled of their attar. He held them up to his nose and his heart soared nonetheless.
For a long, enchanted timeless time, Arkady spied on the Pearls. Much later, he would learn their individual names and personalities: laughing Aetheria, shy Nymphodora, mischievous twins Eulogia and Euphrosyne, solemn Olympias, and scornful Russalka. Their ringleader, Zoesophia, he had already seen. They wore…Well, who was Arkady to say that they wore too little clothing? Their mothers certainly would. But not he. If the clothes were flimsy and habitually revealed their ankles, their stomachs, and their long white arms, and occasionally hinted that further revelation was at hand…Well. That was all Arkady could say.
Their activities, it had to be admitted, were nothing like the fantasies he had conjured up in his mind. They played checkers and whist and charades. Nymphodora arranged the roses he had given the Neanderthal to deliver (and to Arkady’s dismay, pricked her finger on a lone thorn he had inexplicably missed), while the twins sang traditional Russian songs from sheet music they had found in a chest by his mother’s piano, and Olympias played accompaniment on the balalaika with such skill that when she put it down and remarked, “Not bad for the first time,” Arkady blinked in astonishment.
But which one was his love?
In an agony of delight and despair, he stared fixedly at each Pearl whenever she jumped to her feet and ran to fetch something, hoping to identify her by her walk.
And then, at last, a serene vision of beauty floated to the window, a single thornless rose tucked behind one ear. She lifted her chin up to the moon, extending the line of a neck that was as pure and beautiful as any line Pushkin had ever written, and as she did the light from a nearby candle sconce flashed on an eye as green as jungle fire.
Arkady caught his breath.
Then the corners of her eyes wrinkled up with amusement. And he knew: It was her, it was her, it was her!
“You may as well reveal yourself, young man. I can hear you breathing and smell your pheromones.” She looked straight at him.
Arkady stood. As in a dream, he wobblingly walked forward along the branch, one foot before the other, until he was so close to the girl he could almost but not quite have reached out and touched her with an outstretched arm. There he stopped.
“Whatever are you doing, perched up in a tree like a bird?”
“In a magical moment I’ll remember forever,” Arkady said, “I raised my eyes and there you were-a fleeting vision, the quintessence of all that’s beautiful and rare.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
Emboldened, Arkady added, “My voice, to which love lends tenderness and yearning, disturbs night’s dreamy calm, as pale at my bedside burning, a taper wastes away. From my heart there surge swift words, streams of love, that hum and sing and merge and, full of you, rush on, with overflowing passion.” He stretched out that arm that still could not reach his beloved, and she took a hasty step backward. “I seem to see your eyes, glowing in the darkness, meet mine… I see your smile. You speak to me alone. My friend, my dearest friend… I love… I’m yours… your own.”
Giggles erupted, and, with a sudden jolt, Arkady realized that five more of the Pearls had crept up behind his beloved and stood listening silently while all his attention was on her and her alone. Now, seeing their amusement, he flushed with embarrassment, and they burst into outright laughter.
Zoesophia, who had been lost in a book, suddenly snapped it shut and strode forward, scattering all the Pearls but one before her. “You’ve had your fun, Arkady Ivanovich-for who else could you possibly be?-but now it is time my girls were abed. Aetheria, come away from the window.”
Aetheria turned back pleadingly. “Please, Zoesophia. The young man spoke so well. I would like to give him a small favor in return.”
“You may not so much as lift a finger to do so.”
Aetheria bowed in acquiescence. Then she curled one leg up behind herself and with delicate toes plucked the flower from her ear. Languidly, the rose descended behind her. Slowly her torso rose upright again. Then, with a snap of her knee, she flung the flower to the back of her hand. Without using her fingers, she lofted it out the window.
Startled, Arkady reflectively snatched it from the air.
When he looked up again, Zoesophia had slammed the shutters closed.
Arkady had climbed up the tree a man in love. He climbed down it in the throes of passion.
Above, he could hear Zoesophia clap her hands, gathering the Pearls about her. “Page fifty-five of your
