XVII: CROWNED WITH RUE
THE priest had placed the taper and the book and the two crowns upon the table in the centre of the chapel, and stood himself before the iconostase awaiting the arrival of the bride and bridegroom. As I entered he looked up and full into my face, and though the light was dim, I drew my breath, expecting a challenge. But he looked at me as one stranger looks at another, and showed no surprise, betraying thus his ignorance of the Boyar Kurakin.
“Are you Mikhail Ivanovitch?” he asked formally, and there was neither interest nor excitement in his tone, though Mikhail Ivanovitch was the more familiar form of Kurakin’s name.
The priest was a young man, tall and thin, and wore the full canonicals of the Greek church. I replied in the affirmative, in my best Russ, knowing that my accent even was a danger. He took no further notice of me, however, but, instead, looked up through the lattice at the czarevna, and that other figure beside her and the dwarf, Maluta. My eyes followed his and I saw Maluta bow, his hand on his heart, and then the Princess Daria walked very slowly to a little wicket that opened on the stair which descended into a corner of the chapel. Sophia,meanwhile, stood at the lattice looking down, and I could see her face in the light of the upper gallery; it was set in rigid determination and deeply flushed.
As for me, the crucial moment had come; I must meet a bride who expected Kurakin. I went across the chapel and waited for her, where we were happily hidden from both the czarevna and the priest by a screen at the foot of the staircase. She came down slowly, though Sophia cried out to her to hasten, and I thought every step cost her a pang, but her white face—never more lovely—told me nothing, and she did not look at me; her hands were clasped before her, her eyes cast down, and her lips moved as if she prayed. Slowly, very slowly, she came down. I dared not speak; I feared the sudden sound of an unexpected voice would startle her beyond her self-control, and again, I did not know—it flashed upon me then that, between the two, she might have chosen Kurakin, but no Russian girl ever had the right to choose, and this thought relieved me. When she reached the foot of the stairs I held out my hand, but, without looking up, she swerved aside, avoiding my touch, and walked—like one in a trance—toward the priest. And I followed, sick at heart at the sight of her agony. The whole passed in a moment, but we were not quick enough for the tyrant behind the lattice.
“Make quick work, batyushka,” Sophia called tothe priest. “I have no time to waste upon them; affairs of high moment call me hence!”
The priest hurried forward and took his place; the taper flared up in a lean red flame in the dusk; there was not even the accustomed offering of fish, fried meat, and pastry. Far off I heard the voice of the mob and the tolling of the bells of Ivan Veliki. I looked anxiously at the girl beside me, but she stood like a statue, frozen in one attitude, her eyes on the ground, her hands wrung so tightly together that I saw the white pressure on the flesh of her fingers, as they locked each other. Her long ungirdled robe was of some soft, pale blue material, and there was the gleam of silver embroidery at the hem and on the edges of the long, full sleeves that fell away from inner ones that outlined her perfect arms, and a white, filmy mantle half veiled her head and face. My heart throbbed heavily against my bosom and I felt my breath come short; I stood there as her bridegroom, and she had not looked into my face.
We were standing on a square of red taffeta, according to the usual custom, but there was no one to hold a canopy over our heads, though the priest gave us two crowns of gold and silver leaves and bade us put them on, and then began to mumble the service rapidly, omitting when he could, stumbling ahead when he dared not condense, and binding us hard and fast, and I followed him as well as I could.Happily, I had stolen in to witness a marriage in the Cathedral of the Annunciation, and was not entirely ignorant of the part I had to play, and the priest heeded me very little; while, fortunately, the uproar in the Red Place served to distract the attention of that one fierce witness behind the lattice.
Having elevated the sacred image above our heads, the priest took my right hand and her left in his, and asked us three times, in a loud voice, if we married of our own free will and consent, and three times I answered, yes. Then, the Princess Daria looked up and her eyes met mine. For an instant I thought that she would cry out or fall in a faint, and so betray me, such wonder and amazement dawned on her face, and some other emotion—whether dismay or not I could not divine. She stood quite still, her pale face grew even more deathly, and for a moment her slender figure swayed like a reed, and I feared the worst, but she recovered her nerve as suddenly and then——
I held my breath; would she repudiate me? Even the priest suspected something unusual; he stopped and looked at us, for she stood gazing at me with a rigid face, but becoming suddenly aware of the pause she turned quietly toward him and, to my amazement, went on with her part of the service, answering his questions in the affirmative without another sign of recognition. A moment afterwards, her hand, icecold, lay in mine, and—I could not help it—involuntarily, I stooped and kissed it, and looking up, encountered a singular expression in her eyes. But I could not read her thoughts; she had a greater self-control than I ever saw before in woman. The priest had joined our hands and he began now to chant the one hundred and twenty-eighth psalm. We should have responded, repeating the alternate verses, but we did not, and he heeded our silence very little. Now and then the noises without drowned his voice and I lost a verse, but much of that psalm was burned into my brain on that day.
“‘For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands; O well is thee, and happy shalt thou be!
“‘Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine upon the walls of thine house.
“‘Thy children like the olive-branches round about thy table.’”
He held our hands united and slightly lifted, and his chant rose shrill and clear:
“‘... Thou shalt see Jerusalem in prosperity all thy life long.
“‘Yea, that thou shalt see thy children’s children, and peace upon Israel.’”
With these words, he lifted two garlands of rue and placed one on her head and one on her shoulders, because Kurakin, being a widower, could not be crowned with rue. I felt her hand quiver in mine ashe pronounced the final solemn, “let no man put asunder,” and raising a great goblet of claret held it out for us to pledge him three times. I drank of it, and she barely touched it with her lips and then the priest emptied the glass and gave it again to me, and I flung it on the floor, breaking it in pieces and trampling it, repeating, as I did so, the saying I had heard in the Cathedral:
“‘May they thus fall under our feet and be trod to pieces who endeavour to sow division or discontent between us!’”
There was a solemn pause. I stood looking down at the shattered glass and the red wine stains on the floor. It was over; the Princess Daria was my wife and I held her hand firmly. She was mine, and mine she should be, against the world; I swore it, in my heart, before that altar.
But I had yet to face the czarevna, or I thought I had, but fortune favoured me. Sophia trusted Kurakin; she did not attempt to come down into the chapel, but spoke to us through the lattice, raising her voice that we might hear her, where we stood.
“Mikhail Ivanovitch,” she said, “take your wife away—out of the palace—if you can; use my signet, if need be, and I have promised to protect her father; he is below in the Golden Hall, and I will send a message to him; the rest I leave to you. I must go down to the czarina; I have lost too much precioustime already. Much happiness I wish you!” she added spitefully, and laughed.
And happily, without waiting for my reply, she abruptly left the lattice; and disappeared in the direction by which she had entered first, which was also a great good fortune, for I had fully expected that she would go by the room where Kurakin was bound, and so discover, at once, the fraud that had been practised upon her.
When she had gone the priest smilingly congratulated me, but, I think, he dared not speak to my bride. He knew, doubtless, that she was an unwilling one—forced marriages were of frequent occurrence in Moscow—and he contented himself with a profound obeisance when I handed him some gold pieces that I had upon me.
Then I turned to the rigid figure at my side. I must get her away, and yet I did not know how far she would consent to be guided by me. In the presence of a third person, though, I did not now fear betrayal. I held out my hand with as easy a manner as I could assume.
“We will go this way,” I said. I was going to call her my bride, for form’s sake, but something in her look froze the words on my tongue.
She would not take my hand, but signified by a gesture that she would follow me and, in this fashion, I, a new-made bridegroom, led the way into thepainted gallery, and then, as the free air of heaven, blowing in through the open casements, touched her face and the light of day shone on her, she stood still and looked at me. And I waited, my heart in my throat—I confess it. But she was not thinking of me, or of herself.
“My father,” she said; “it is my duty to go to him—to save him.”
“So you shall,” I replied, with distant courtesy, “if mortal man can help you. Wait here but a moment; I go for the signet, and to secure your enemy.”
She gave me a keen look and went and leaned on the window, her face like death.
“Go then, sir,” she said bitterly; “it seems I have no choice; though I am a princess!”
I bent low before her.
“Madame,” I said firmly, “you are not only a princess, but you are a queen, and I, your subject to obey and serve you!”
Then I turned to go for the signet and to save her, if I could. And as I passed out of the painted gallery, I saw her still at the window, a beautiful, passive figure, with a colourless face, and eyes that seemed to burn with some suppressed emotion as they followed me—with a look of deep perplexity and doubt.