But though this were so, and I am still assured that it was, the Regent was none the less determined that his Highness should have every opportunity to choose for himself a better or fairer consort than Vera Kurbatof, if such could be found; and for this reason she was most strict and most severe in her dealings with the maidens brought to the terem for inspection and selection—that none should escape before inspection, or should employ arts by which they might render themselves less attractive in appearance than nature had made them. For there were some who did not hesitate to disfigure themselves by staining their teeth, scratching their faces, or affecting a limp, in order to escape the being chosen. These back-holders were the minority, of course, and very few at that; for the greater number were content to throw everything else to the winds if only they might reach the highest place and be called Tsaritsa. Doubtless those few who were unwilling to be chosen were they whom Love had so securely entangled in his net that the poor fluttering things had lost their heads and were unable to see salvation except in struggling for freedom.
Thus some preferred, as I say, to disfigure themselves, and a few tried to escape; and among these latter was a fair maiden, Doonya Meschersky, who was so terribly in love with her lover, Kostromsky, that they could not wait upon events, but must needs take destiny into their own hands and attempt in clumsy fashion to shape their own ends.
This Kostromsky was a desperate and determined swain. Doonya, like other unwilling candidates, had been forced by her father to enter into competition with her peers; but Kostromsky swore by all the saints that he would see to it the Tsar should not reap where he had tilled, and the two devised a plan of escape which they endeavoured to carry out when Doonya had been but two days a prisoner in the terem.
Doonya fell ill, or seemed to, having first bribed the old nyanka, or nurse, who was in charge of her dormitory to declare that she had taken an infectious malady, and was therefore a danger to all the rest. The old nurse ran crying through the terem that Doonya Meschersky had taken the fever and must be removed at once, and away ran a messenger for her own doctor, who was to be found, said Doonya, at a certain address.
This leech was of course Kostromsky, who was impatiently awaiting the summons, and accompanied the messenger back to the palace in hot haste.
‘The nyanka is right,’ he said, upon seeing Doonya, who made a show of raving and tossing upon her bed; ‘this is the first stage of the blood fever—the Barishnya must be removed immediately.’
Whereupon Doonya was wrapped in coverings and carried by the doctor himself out of the dormitory and down the stairs which led to the street. But unfortunately the Regent and Galitsin met the party upon the stairs, and her Highness would know what ailed the girl and who was this that carried her away.
The nyanka replied that a calamity had happened: here was a poor Barishnya taken with fever of a dangerous and infectious kind and must be moved, said this good doctor, before others were tainted with it.
‘And who is this good doctor, and why was not the Court physician summoned?’ asked Sophia.
‘She would see no leech but her own!’ said the nyanka, weeping and crossing herself. ‘Poor lamb, that might have been chosen Tsaritsa but for this sad infection——’