The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Ah, my bright lights, it would all be nothing—I’ve happened to hitch all sorts, what’s bad is that you’re the count’s. Though I’m a priest, his ferocity frightens me. Well, all right, let it be as God grants—just add one more, even if it’s a clipped one, and hide here.”

Arkady gave him a sixth gold piece, a whole one, and the priest then said to his wife:

“Why stand there, old woman? Give the girl a skirt at least, or some coat, it’s shameful to look at her—she’s all but naked.”

And then he wanted to take us to the church and hide us in a trunk of vestments. But the priest’s wife had just started dressing me behind a screen, when we suddenly heard someone ring the bell.

XIII

Our hearts both froze. But the priest whispered to Arkady:

“Well, my bright light, you clearly won’t get as far as the trunk of vestments, but quickly get under the featherbed.”

And to me he says:

“And you, my bright light, go here.”

He took and put me into the case of the clock, and locked it, and put the key in his pocket, and went to open the door. And we can hear there are many folk, and some are standing by the door, and two are already looking in the windows from outside.

Seven of the pursuers came in, all from the count’s hunters, with bludgeons, and hunting crops, and rope leashes in their belts, and with them an eighth one, the count’s majordomo, in a long wolfskin coat and a high peaked cap.

The case I was hiding in was all lattice-like openwork in front, hung with thin old cambric, and I could see through it.

And the old priest was in a fright, seeing how bad things were. He trembled before the majordomo, crossing himself and crying out all in a patter:

“Ah, my bright lights, oh, my shining lights! I know, I know what you’re looking for, only I’m not guilty of anything before the most serene count, truly, not guilty, not guilty!”

And he crosses himself and points his finger over his left shoulder at the clock case where I’m locked up.

“I’m done for,” I thought, seeing him perform this wonder.

The majordomo also saw it and says:

“It’s all known to us. Give me the key to that clock there.”

But the priest waved his hands again:

“Oh, my bright lights, oh, my shining ones! Forgive me, have mercy: I forget where I put the key, I forget, by God, I forget!”

And all the while he’s patting his pocket with the other hand.

The majordomo noticed that wonder as well, took the key from his pocket, and unlocked me.

“Get out, my dove,” he says, “and your mate will soon show himself.”

But Arkasha already showed himself: he threw the priest’s blanket on the floor and stood up.

“Yes,” he says, “there’s clearly nothing to do, the game is yours—take me to be tortured, but she’s not to blame for anything: I abducted her.”

As for the priest, all Arkady did was turn and spit in his face.

The priest says:

“Do you see, my bright lights, what profanation is done to my dignity and my fidelity? Report it to the most serene count.”

The majordomo replies:

“Never mind, don’t worry, it will all be accounted to him,” and he ordered that Arkady and I be led away.

We were put in three sleds, in the first the bound Arkady and some hunters, and me under the same escort in the last, and the rest of them went in the middle one.

Wherever we met folk, they all made way for us, thinking maybe it was a wedding.

XIV

We galloped very quickly, and when we spilled into the count’s courtyard, I couldn’t even see the sled Arkasha was taken in, but me they took to my former place and kept putting question after question to me about how long a time I had found myself alone with Arkady.

To all of them I said:

“Oh, no time at all!”

Then what had been assigned to me by fate—not with my dear, but with my worst fear—I did not avoid, but when I came to my little closet and had just buried my head in the pillow to weep over my misfortune, I suddenly heard terrible moaning from under the floor.

In our wooden building it was arranged that we, the girls, lived on the second floor, and downstairs was a big, high-ceilinged room where we studied singing and dancing, and everything from there could be heard upstairs. And the fiendish king Satan put it into those cruel men’s heads to torture Arkasha right under my room …