“I swear by my soul, my God and His terrible last Judgment, to suffer the knout, the fire, the axe, the block, every torture, even death, rather than forsake the Holy Faith, and also to relate to no one, neither to my confessor nor my father, whatever I will hear or see here. I will not deliver thy secret to the enemy, nor give the kiss of Judas. Amen.”
When he ended he was led to a bench and the bandage was removed from his eyes.
He saw a large low room; holy icons stood in the corner. Before them numerous lit tapers; the whitewashed wall was marked with dark spots of damp; water penetrated through the cracks between the black tarred planks.
The air was as close as in a vapour bath. Circles of iridescent light surrounded the flames of the candles, the benches along the walls were occupied by men on one side, and women on the other, and all were wearing the same white tunics, cotton stockings and no boots.
“The Queen, the Queen,” they reverently whispered. The door opened and in came a tall, slender woman in a black dress with a white handkerchief on her head. All rose and bowed low to her.
“Akoulína Makejevna, the heavenly Queen,” Mitka whispered to Tichon. The woman went up and sat down under the icons, herself resembling an icon. All began to go up to her and bow before her, kissing her knee.
Yemelian took Tichon to her and said:—
“Baptise him, mother. He is new.”
Tichon knelt and looked at her: she was dark, no longer young, about forty, with little wrinkles in the corners near her dark eyelashes; her black thick eyebrows were almost grown together, and she had a slight black down on her upper lip, “quite like a Tzuigane or a Circassian,” he thought. But when she looked at him with her large, soft, black eyes he realized how beautiful she was.