Rusalka by C. J. Cherryh
Sasha pulled the string. The bar came up inside, and the door swung in when he pushed it.
“Hello?” Sasha called out, for fear of startling someone sleeping and perhaps a little deaf. He stood there in the doorway, looking about him at the firelit shelves and the bed and the table and the general clutter of small pots and herb bunches and bits of rope and tackle, all casting shadows from the small fire in the hearth. Warmth and the smell of food gusted out at them. “Hello, anyone? We’re looking for hospitality.”
“Or whatever we can get,” Pyetr muttered at his shoulder, and pushed him across the threshold, himself in no good way to stand. Sasha flung an arm about his left and helped him across to the warmest place in the cottage, the hearthside, where someone’s supper simmered in an iron pot.
It smelled like fish stew. It smelled wonderful. Pyetr was intent only on sitting down there on the warm stones, but Sasha swung the pothook out a little to put his finger in and taste a little. It was indeed fish stew, with turnips.
Pyetr rested back against the fireside with a groan and leaned his head back, saying, “All I own for a drink, boy. Do you find any?”
Sasha felt a pang of doubt about that—kitchen-nipping being a sin of one magnitude and searching the house like a burglar being quite another.
But Pyetr’s condition was excuse enough for pilferage, he was sure. He filled the washing bowl from the water barrel by the door and washed the dirt off his own hands, spattering little pockmarks into the old dirt on the board floor. There was no cloth to dry his hands, and he wiped them finally on his muddy shirt, hearing in his imagination aunt Ilenka’s stinging complaint of this cottage, its debris, its dust-But it was wonderful. It was with its rustic clutter rich as a tsar’s palace in terms of things they needed; and he laid eyes on a bowl and took it back to the fireside, dipping up a little of the stew for Pyetr, and kneeling to put it into his hands.
“I’m looking for the drink,” he said. “Eat what you can.” He thought then that if he was borrowing stew for two people, he ought to add a bit to it, so he pulled down a couple more large turnips from the strings, found a knife on the table and diced them up fine, added a bit more water, a little bit of salt—a touch of dillweed and savory were what it wanted, he decided, after one and the next tastings that amounted to several mouthfuls.
He found the dill hanging in a bunch from a rafter, crushed it in his hands and tossed it in and stirred it; and took a bowl for himself before he swung the hook back full over the fire to boil.
Pyetr had finished his, down to scouring the bowl and licking his finger; and Pyetr said, wistfully, “Can you find that drink at all?”
“I don’t know.” Sasha set his stew down on the hearth and investigated jugs one after the other, staggering, he was so tired, and afraid he might crack one, his hands were so unsteady. He found mostly oils of various sort, and once something that made him sneeze; he was anxious about meddling with things that smelled more like poisons than cooking oil. Untidy housekeeping, he reasoned to himself; simples; poisons to kill vermin: The Cockerel’s shed held such things. Aunt would never approve them in the house; but, then, The Cockerel had too many hands in the kitchen to be proof against mistakes.
He found the trap in the floor, a cellar as dark and cellar-smelling as he feared it would be as he got down on his knees and gingerly peered inside. He could see nothing but the wooden steps, the wooden floor below, the hint of jars along the wall, hanging bits of rope and such…
It was plainly thievery he was contemplating; and there were warders in a house, no matter what Pyetr believed. The hair prickled on his nape as he eased his way down the narrow steps into the damp, cool air, only five or so steps down into the musty dark, a short search of the shelves down below. He found jugs of likely shape, took one into his arms, unstopped and sniffed it.
Indeed. No doubt about this one. No poison and no noxious oil.
He heard something then on the far side of the cellar, a small scratching that might be vermin.
He did not fly up the steps; he was calm and brave and quietly whispered, reasoning with himself that no House-thing was going to object to a jug of vodka if it had not objected to the door opening:
“Please excuse me. My friend really does need it. We’re not thieves.”
He poured a little on the floor for the House-thing, if it was listening. Then he scrambled up the steps and let the trap down gently, his heart thumping with fright.
He felt the fool, then. Talking to rats, Pyetr would say—he wished Pyetr would say, and show some liveliness; but Pyetr looked much beyond jokes at the moment, his dirty, stubbled face lined with pain and patience.
“I’m hurrying,” Sasha said. He found a bowl on the kitchen table and poured, and brought it to Pyetr; he spied a pile of quilts in the corner by the bed and brought them to Pyetr too, heaping them around him against the warm stones while Pyetr drank, cupping the bowl in dirty, bloody hands and looking so weak and so miserable—as if Pyetr was suddenly beginning to sink, the way sick people would when their strength ran out and fever set in.
Someone had to do something soon, he thought. He had doctored horses enough to know that, but the thought of dealing with a wound going bad all but turned his stomach. He hoped for the ferryman returning, hoped he would know better what to do; but at least he could have hot water ready for compresses, and if there was only wormwood and sweet oil somewhere in the house that was a start on things.
So he put water to heat on a second pothook, and sat down a moment with his bowl of cooling stew—not even his sore throat and the prospect in front of him could discourage him from that. Pyetr at least seemed happier and more comfortable, placidly watching him.
But Pyetr looked to be in pain for a moment. Sasha watched him, the spoon in midair. Pyetr said, “It’s all right.” And extraneously, a line between his brows: “What’s in the cellar?”
“I don’t know, stuff. Jars. Turnips.” He almost said, rats; he wanted something to distract Pyetr from his misery, which was what he thought Pyetr wanted. He was afraid, making light of things: it went against his nature. He made the effort, nonetheless. “Something went bump. I came up.”
“I thought you did,” Pyetr said muzzily, and the line left his brow, as if he had been worrying about his quick run up the steps, but, then, he was a little drunk. “Not the owner, then.”
“No,” Sasha assured him, waiting for Pyetr to make some gibe about bogles, but the line came back to Pyetr’s brow and Pyetr’s lips made a white line.
That finished Sasha’s appetite. “I’ve got some water warming,” he said. “Want to wash?”
Pyetr seemed to agree with that. Sasha got up and got a cloth and soaked it for Pyetr to wash his face and hands. And carefully then, delicately, Pyetr not objecting, he worked Pyetr’s coat loose.
Blood soaked the shirt beneath it, repeated old stains and a large, bright new one.
“Wounds do that,” Pyetr said confidently. But Pyetr looked both sick and worried at the sight of it.
“Another drink?” Sasha asked.
Pyetr nodded. Sasha fetched him one, and Pyetr sipped at it slowly, resting his head back against the stones while Sasha untied his belt, pulled up his shirt beneath his arms, and tried to work the bandaging loose.
“Ow!” Pyetr gasped suddenly, and drink slopped from the bowl onto his stomach and rolled down; some had spilled on the bandaging. “Oh, god,” Pyetr moaned, while it soaked in, “oh, god—” He went white then and all but fainted against the fireside stones. He could not hold the bowl any longer. Sasha took it from his hand and Pyetr sank back against the wad of quilts, broken out in sweat.
Sasha’s own hands were shaking. It was a worse wound than anything the horses had ever done to themselves. It was far worse than he knew how to deal with, and he knew absolutely nothing other to do than to soak the bandage free.
“A little tender,” Pyetr gasped, between breaths. “Just let it alone tonight. Morning’s soon enough.”
“It’s going bad,” Sasha said, shivering despite the fire beside him.
“Wounds always get a little fever. It means it’s healing.”
“Not with the horses,” Sasha said. “I’d soak it in warm water and pack it with herbs.”
Pyetr shook his head. “We don’t know who owns that pot of stew. If you go at that again I won’t be fit for anything, and I don’t think that’s—”
Someone was walking outside. Someone slowly stumped up the log walk and Sasha’s heart began to beat with a heavy thump-thump-thump as Pyetr groped after his sword. “Get me on my feet,” Pyetr said, and Sasha, finding no other protection for them, put his shoulder under Pyetr’s good side and heaved, desperately, while Pyetr flailed out after the stonework and got a grip on the mantle.
The bar lifted, the door swung back, and a skinny, thin-bearded old man in a ragged cloak stopped still in the open doorway, firelit against the dark.
“Bandits!” the old man said, indignant. “Thieves!” He had a scowl like a carved devil’s, and he had a stout staff in his hand which he showed every disposition and capability of using.
“No!” Sasha cried, holding Pyetr by the arm half for fear of Pyetr using that sword and half because he was all that was holding Pyetr on his feet. “Please, sir! We’re not thieves. My friend is hurt.”
The old man shifted his grip on his staff and glared at them—one eye seeming better than the other, those hands on the staff gnarled with age but strong enough, with two sharp butt-end blows, to do for a boy and do terrible damage to a man in Pyetr’s condition.
“Drop the sword!” the old man ordered, staff poised. “Drop it!”
“I think we’d better,” Sasha pleaded with Pyetr, whose weight was heavy on his shoulder. “Pyetr, it’s his house, we’ve nowhere to go, do what he says!”
“Drop it!” the old man said again, and angled the butt of the staff perilously toward two unprotected skulls, while Pyetr ebbed slowly, helplessly toward the floor, banging his head on the stones of the fireplace as he sank.
Quite, quite unconscious.
Sasha let him to the quilts and looked up at the old man, past the butt of a staff that trembled a scant arm’s length from his face. “Sir,” he said, trying not to let his teeth chatter, “my name is Alexander Vasilyevitch Misurov. This is Pyetr Illitch Kochevikov, from Vojvoda. We’re not thieves. Pyetr’s hurt. We were coming through the forest—”
“No one honest comes through the forest.”
“We ran away!”
“At his age.” The staff made a threatening jab. “Tell the truth.”
“He was in love with a lady and the lady told lies about him and her husband stabbed him; and I helped him get away.”
“And steal my food and my blankets and make free of my house!”
“Money,” Pyetr murmured, with a weak move of his hand. “I’ve money. Give it to him.”
“Money! What’s to buy here? Do you see anybody? I fish the river and I break my back in my garden and you offer me money!” He poked Sasha’s shoulder with the staff, poked it twice with an attitude that reminded Sasha most uncomfortably of a wife at the town market. “On the other hand—” The staff lowered, thumped against the floor, and Sasha glanced from that point of impact up to the old man’s face, thinking he had never seen a grin like that except on a carved wolf, or eyes like that except on painted devils.
“On the other hand—you don’t have the look of thieves.”
“No, sir. I promise you.”
“Do you know how to work, boy?”
“Yes, sir,” Sasha said on a breath. It sounded like a bargain, it sounded like food and shelter and of a sudden he had at least a small hope for them both.
Except he did not like the old man taking hold of his arm and pulling him up to his feet, or staring him in the eyes until he had the feeling he could not look away. The old man’s fingers were strong. His eyes were watery and dark and they let nothing go that they examined.
“Do you follow instructions, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pyetr tried to sit up, and the staff came down, clang! on the sword Pyetr reached for at their feet.
Sasha dropped to his knees between that stick and Pyetr’s skull; and stayed there, his heart pounding.
But of a sudden the fire hissed, stew boiling over apace.
“Get that!” the old man said. “Fool!” And Sasha jumped for it, wrapped his sleeve over his palm and pulled the pothook around to rescue the stew from the heat, as the old man collected Pyetr’s sword from under the heel of his staff, took it across the room and swept the scraps of the turnips from the table with the sword edge.
“I see. You eat my supper, you steal my stores—”
“I only added more turnips, sir, it seemed with two more of us—”
“I’ll have my supper,” the old man said, kicked the bench up to the table, set his staff and Pyetr’s sword against the wall, and thumped the table between them with his bony knuckles. “Boy!”
“He’s crazy,” Pyetr whispered, trying without success to push himself up against the stones. “Be careful.”
“Boy!”
Sasha grabbed a bowl from the untidy stack, grabbed up the ladle and filled it full from the pot, brought it and a spoon to the old man, and while he ate, poured him a little drink into a second bowl.
“Knew where that was, did you?” the old man snarled. “Thief!”
“I beg your pardon, sir.” Sasha made a nervous little bow, and stood with his hands behind him while the old man took a sip.
The old man’s wispy eyebrows lifted a little and came down again. “What did you do to this?”
“Salt, sir. Just salt. A little dill. It—” But it seemed presumptuous to say it had needed it. Sasha shut his mouth and bit his lips.
The eyebrows moved again, not in so profound a frown this time. The old man took another and a third spoonful and seemed quite pleased with it. He had a drink, a fourth spoonful, and finally he picked up the bowl and drank it dry, leaving pale drops on his wispy beard.
“Another,” he said, thrusting the bowl toward Sasha’s hands.
Sasha filled it again; and the old man took his spoon to it.
“Walked clear from Vojvoda,” the old man said without looking up.
“Yes, sir.”
“Him too.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stabbed in Vojvoda.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stubborn fellow.”
“Yes, sir.”
The old man let his fist fall onto the table. “My name is Uulamets. Ilya Uulamets. This is my house. This is my land. Only my word counts here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I take it you want your friend taken care of.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Food, doctoring, that kind of thing.”
“Yes, sir—If you can, sir.” Sasha was at once hopeful and very uneasy. It was much too fortunate. “Do you know doctoring? I’m good with horses, I—”
The old man rapped on the table, and took another spoonful. “Doctoring, herbs, what you like, boy, trust me I know what I’m doing. But there’s a fee for my services. There’s a fee for what you eat and what your friend eats, supposing he survives. There’s a fee for my blankets and my fire and the nuisance he poses me. You I have use for. Shut up,” he said, the instant Sasha opened his mouth. “Do as you’re told and don’t be a bother to me or I’ll turn you both out in the cold and the drizzle, and how will your friend fare then, hmmm?—How do you think he’d fare?—Die, wouldn’t he?—Would you like that?”
“No, sir,” he said, and swallowed at a lump in his throat.
“Keep that crazy man away from me,” Pyetr called out from the fireside behind him. “Let me alone. I don’t need his help.”
“Please don’t listen to him,” Sasha said. “He’s fevered. He’s been fevered for days.”
“I don’t need his help!” Pyetr shouted, and made to get up.
“That old man’s crazy,” Pyetr whispered furiously. “Keep him away from me, that’s all, I’m all right—”
“I’ll watch him,” he said, but Pyetr just leaned the shoulder of his bad side against the stonework and said,
“He’s not touching me.”
While the old man, Uulamets, slopped more vodka into his bowl and got up from his bench and rummaged on a nearby shelf, found a bottle and poured a blackish liquid into the same bowl—medicine, as Sasha supposed, watching the old man bring it toward them.
“I’m not drinking that,” Pyetr said.
“This is for the pain,” Uulamets said. “There will be pain.” He made then as if to pour it on the floor, and Sasha sprang up with a cry and righted the bowl, which Uulamets let him have.
“Please,” Sasha said to Pyetr, kneeling down again, offering it. “Please drink it.”—Because there was nothing else to do and no one else to ask and no other hope but the old man’s medicines, with the fever starting to set into the wound. “You’ll die, else.”
Pyetr frowned, reached after the cup of black stuff. He tossed it off in a single mouthful and gave a sudden shudder, as if it tasted as bad as it looked, then glanced around where Uulamets was clattering about in a cupboard, with a rattle of knives.
“What’s he doing?” Pyetr asked. “Boy—what’s he after?”
Sasha did not want to answer. He saw what Uulamets was taking from the cupboard, the array of knives and bowls and pots and boxes, and he felt Pyetr sinking against his arm and heard him saying, “Stop him, boy, for god’s sake, don’t let him cut on me—”
But one had to, sometimes, horse-doctoring, Sasha understood that. He held on to Pyetr as carefully as he could until Pyetr’s head dropped and Pyetr went half-dazed, he laid him out and helped Uulamets cut away the bandages.
“They’re stuck, sir,” he said, wiping his nose quickly on his sleeve. “Please, be careful.”
“Do you tell me my business? Boil water. Hot! Make yourself useful.”