It was a momentous question, and on it hung the fate of my daring enterprise, on that—and on the Princess Daria. But there was no time to pause; I must win or lose. I had staked all upon the venture—life itself—and, without another thought, I opened the door and entered the chapel.
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 to the 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——