“Yes, village feuds. People can indeed get nasty, hemmed in by themselves all their lives. And then, pagan fears prey on them. Do they imagine you’re unlucky, cursed by a witch perhaps, just because you’ve had many sorrows? May God now, at last, prosper your life.”
So Gleb had told truth, while holding back truth. A trader skill. For an instant, Svoboda wondered about him. They got along well together, she and he. They could do more than that, if this marriage scheme fell through. Let the priests call it sin. Kupala the Joyous would not, and maybe the old gods did linger on earth … But no. Gleb was already gray. Too little time remained for him that she could bring herself to hurt the wife whom she had never met. She knew how loss felt.
Having eaten, and Olga gone back to a housewife’s work, Svoboda sought her room. She unpacked, stowed her possessions, and wondered what to do next. There had always been some task, if only to spin thread. But she had left the things of home behind, with home itself. Nor could she just sink into blessed idleness, savoring it, or into sleep, as countryfolk were apt to when the rare, brief chance came. That was not the way of a headman’s daughter, wife to a man of weight.
Restlessness churned in her. She paced the floor, flung herself onto the bed, bounced up again, yawned, glowered, paced anew. Should she go help Olga’s household? No, she wouldn’t know her way about. Moreover, Igor Olegev might well think it demeaned his bride. If anything was to come of that. What was he like? Gleb called him a good fellow, but Gleb would never see him from a woman’s side, not even well enough that what he said of Igor’s looks called forth anything real for Svoboda.
St. Yuri, there on the wall, she could at least take the measure of, gaunt, big-eyed— She knelt before him and tried to ask his blessing. The words stuck in her throat. She had been dutiful but not devout, and today proper meekness was beyond her.
She paced. Decision came slowly. Why must she stay penned between these walls? Gleb had told her to be careful, but she had often gone alone into the woods, fearless of wolf or bear, and taken no harm. Once she caught a runaway horse by the bridle and dragged him to a stop, once she killed a mad dog with an ax, once she and her neighbors crowded into the stockaded town and stood off a Pecheneg raid. Besides, while the hours dribbled away here, life pulsed out there, newness, wonder. The bell tower shone tall…
Of course! The church of the Holy Wisdom. There, if any place, she could feel prayerful; there God would hear and help.
Yes, surely.
She threw a cloak on, pinned it fast, drew up the hood, glided forth. Nobody could forbid her to leave, but it would be best if she went unnoticed. She did pass a servant, maybe a slave, but he gave her a dull glance and continued scrubbing out a tile stove in the main room. The door closed behind Svoboda. The street swept her off.
For a while she wandered, shyly at first, then in a daze of delight. Nobody offered her any rudeness. Several young men did stare, and a couple of them grinned and nudged each other, but that just made her tingle. Now and then somebody jostled her by chance. It was less often than eartier, the ways were less thronged, as the sun sank westward. Finally she got a clear sight of the cathedral and steered by it.
When she saw St. Sophia full on, she caught her breath. Sixty paces long it was, she guessed dizzily, rising white and pale green in walls and bays, arched doorways and high glass windows, up and up to, yes, ten domes in all, six bearing crosses and four spangled with stars. For a long time she could only stand and look. At last, mustering courage, she went on past workmen who were adding to the splendor. Her heart thudded. Was this forbidden? But besides priests, commoners went in and out. She passed the entrance.