Inheritance

[Quincunx]

The hired priest brought his rosary up to his lips before entering the manor and strode through the rooms with the cross shielding his mouth. No fires were lit in the first few rooms, but an odor worse than a privy hung heavy in the air. The snow on his black mantle did not melt until he found the doorway of the lesser bedroom, where shabby servants gathered under a curtained icon of Madonna and Child lit with three candles or kneeled at the sides of a blood-soaked bed, weeping. He walked over to the icon and crossed himself, right to left, before moving to the bed and pulling back the upper sheet. Under the sheet lay the empty body of a naked middle-aged woman, already gathering frost on its eyelashes. Shivering, the priest replaced the sheet and demanded, “Where is Vassily?” No one spoke, but some looked at the next doorway, the only one inside the house to be fitted with a door.

 

Into the darkened doorway came a calm-faced woman whose orange hair escaped in all directions from her headscarf. “The master is barely alive. He is waiting for you,” she reported, and beckoned with the hand that did not hold a candlestick. She watched his hired face until he entered the grand bedroom, then knelt with the servants under the cold candles and prayed that the master would not die under his hands. “No,” Lena said softly, when one of the other young servants asked a question with his eyes. “I did not leave him alone. Better not to have the priest realize that,” she nodded, and quickly rose and crossed the threshold from the stink of birth to the smell of impending death.

 

In the windowless room, Lena stood beside the priest and ran the fingers of her right hand in circles over the master’s wrinkled forehead, smudging the oil and creating more friction against muscles racked with tetanus. “So the Church will take care of your lands,” she cooed, “and the Church will take care of your people?” From the darkness on the other side of the bed, someone struck a flint—and legless, voiceless Fyodor, who had sat by the church door for more years than Lena had lived, while his beard crept toward the ground and assumed the duties of his rotting coat, was visible for a moment as his stump of a candle sputtered and died. Silently Lena took the taper from the bedside table, smiled into Vassily’s eyes as his pupils cringed away from the light, and changed the direction of her fingertips to ease the vise-like muscles. “I can care for your child,” she whispered.

 

When his eyes widened again despite the light of the candle, she moved the taper away from him and put her lips to Vassily’s hairy ear; the flame darted upwards, almost setting fire to the priest’s beard as he leaned closer, while Lena confessed some secrets. The master’s eyes came briefly alive. “To my child,” he rasped, forcing the words past his locked jaw and grimacing lips; Lena turned towards the priest and thrust the taper into his face as he opened his mouth to object to the change. “To her! To her! To her!” gasped Vassily in a faint voice, fighting against the constriction of his chest, and Fyodor grinned in the darkness. The priest grasped Lena’s wrist and pulled her away from the bedside, pushing her towards the door and swooping towards the sickbed.

 

Vassily’s feverish eyes shone and he stiffened in one last convulsion. His limbs jumped under the blankets and the room filled with whisperings like dried leaves scraping against each other in the wind. The priest cowered away from the bed, crossed himself, and stared with horror; Lena leaned into the doorway, picked out two strong young men, and directed them with her eyes to carry Fyodor’s chair swiftly out of the great bedroom. After they had left, she spared one backwards glance; the priest had noticed nothing, his eyes locked on Vassily’s face where the very bones seemed to be snapping and shifting under the wrenching muscles. Lena lifted the doorknob to take weight off of the hinges and pulled the door almost shut, then pinched the candle wick and let herself out, leaving the priest alone and fumbling for the flint in a panic.

 

When she re-entered the lesser bedroom, Lena stepped to the opposite corner, thrust the curtain away from the cradle, loosing a shower of frost, and smiled at the bare-headed infant as it cringed away from the cold. One of the old women wedged her chin in front of Lena, snatched at the tapestry, and pulled it shut while the unnamed Vassilivich wailed. “Murderer!” she grunted, putting herself between Lena and the cradle, “he’s too young for this. We haven’t had time to sew him up yet.” As she spoke, the worn chin tugged at the scanty threads of the old woman’s headscarf—Lena thought of a puppeteer’s show that had visited her village—even when the old woman spread her chapped lips into a hateful smile. “Oh, babes die, I know it, but you’ll still hang once his corpse changes. . .”

 

Unruffled, Lena snapped her fingers twice, and a little girl rose from the group praying under the icon, dusted off her knees, and walked to the cradle. Her face was slim and narrowed also by her frizzy hair, her forehead rose abnormally high, and her nose seemed twice as large as it should be. The cold hadn’t put any red into her complexion and her fragile voice carried like the sounds of cracking ice. “He isn’t the one,” she remarked, pushing aside the tapestry with both hands and leaning into the cradle. She reached for Vassilivich and picked him up as the cloth fell around her. The old woman leaned forward and half-lifted the tent, then recoiled and muttered a prayer to the pagans. In the semi-darkness, the little girl’s eyes glowed golden like the falcon’s over his kill, and the body of Vassilivich—still human—drooped from her arms in a parody of the icon on the wall.

 

“I am sorry for your grandson, but only a little,” recited Lena, and the hollow words hung in the air. One of the younger servants sobbed fearfully. “He would not have survived a year if the estate had gone into the hands of the Church—and after that they would have scattered the servants and given this manor to one of their own,” she continued, raising her voice just enough to fill the room and not tickle the ears of the priest closeted with the body of Vassily. “Protect Fyodor, all of you—he witnessed the will which will keep you here and safe. I sent a messenger to the magistrate the day Vassily fell ill, and he will arrive before any other priests do. We must make him believe that the family line was never broken.” Again Lena snapped her fingers twice, and the little girl put the corpse back into the cradle and walked over to Lena with all of the servants’ eyes upon her. “This is Serafima Vassilinva, your mistress.”

 

“Goodbye, mother,” Serafima told Lena. She turned to the old woman, who had crumpled since seeing Vassilivich die, with broken threads and hopes lying on her clothes. “Hello, grandmother,” she said, and held out her hands; the old woman’s face twisted, but she took Serafima’s pale hands in her own. “Please take me in to see my father. I don’t think he wants to be left with just a priest for company.”

[Wyvern]

I really liked the original details that were incorporated throughout this story, as sensory descriptions such as Vassily's bedroom filling with "whisperings like dried leaves scraping against each other" made for a vivid read. The concept of Lena having a servant pose as a member of the family line to make it seem as if it had never been broken was also very intriguing, and seemed like an interesting and original solution to the conflict of inheritence. As always, I greatly admire your approach to writing, as you rarely seem to state facts outright and leave a great deal to the reader to deduce from the narrative.

 

Having said this, after reading through this piece a number of times, I have to say that it leaves me feeling somewhat frustrated and unfufilled. I was confused as to who the protagonist of the story was, as the point of view seems to switch from the priest to Lena to the servant, yet never quite feels universal at any point. Lena ultimately struck me as the central character of the story, but I never picked up on what her relationship to Vassily or the household was, since she doesn't seem to be related to the Vassilivich family and actually comes off as fairly bitter towards them in her comments. More frustrating to me were certain details that were added but never resolved or hinted at, such as the secrets that Lena whispers to Vassily before his death (then again, if this was meant as an introductory post to a longer story, these resolutions still could be coming). Another thing that struck me was that certain sentences seemed a bit jumbled and overburdened with dependent clauses, which is something that I'm often guilty of in my own writing. I normally love your style and the way you structure your words, but sentences such as "From the darkness on the other side of the bed, someone struck a flint—and legless, voiceless Fyodor, who had sat by the church door for more years than Lena had lived, while his beard crept toward the ground and assumed the duties of his rotting coat, was visible for a moment as his stump of a candle sputtered and died." struck me as confusing and overburdened with phrases, and could probably be split up into several sentences for a bit of clarity.

 

Anyway, this still struck me as a very ambitious piece of writing. Thank you for posting and sharing it. I apologize for taking so long in leaving a comment on it, but felt it merited several reads before reaching a verdict. Normally, your writing initially confuses me, then leaves me feeling incredibly rewarded after several reads through. Unfortunatly, this piece simply left me confused.