being an enchanted princess, I can bet you'll be put in a... pen for crazy people. And that's the end of the story."
She had no idea what he was talking about. A pen for crazy people? A man taken away for rape? Either he married the woman or was killed for it by the woman's family.
She hadn't really thought of it before - though she should have, she saw that now. His bizarre behavior when he arrived in Taina wasn't a private madness of his own. He came from a mad world, and by crossing the bridge, she had entered into madness. The rules were different here; that's why he came to Taina with strange expectations.
But how much did a Christian woman have to compromise just because she was in a strange place? Her first instinct was: Compromise nothing. God's law is not changed, just because a woman travels from one place to another. It is still a shame for a woman to be naked, still a worse shame for her to put a man's clothing upon her.
And yet... if he told the truth, what then? She was not a whore; should she behave in a way that made people think that she was? That was a kind of lying, wasn't it? And he had not raped her - indeed, he could not rape her, for the vows had been said, and it was his right to use her body as he saw fit. So he was the opposite of a rapist, he was a kind husband who had not forced his reluctant wife, and he even now respected her decency by not eyeing her naked body even though it was on plain display for him. Instead, he was offering her a way to cover herself.
"Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves," said Ivan.
"That would keep us warm for a night," she said. "But we couldn't walk far."
"They covered themselves to hide their nakedness," said Ivan. "They covered themselves with whatever they had available. Here is a piece of cloth with sleeves for your arms and a way to fasten it closed across your body. It may once have been used as clothing by another person, but that person renounces it. It is not his clothing. It is not clothing at all. Here... it's garbage." He dropped the shirt on the ground. "Look!" he said. "A piece of cloth! I wonder what it could be? Look, Katerina, maybe you could use it as a kind of gown."
Was he mocking her with this childish pretense? "Do you think I'm so stupid as to be deceived?"
His face flashed again with anger, but he controlled it, kept his voice calm and measured. "Listen, Katerina. To me, the idea of walking naked into your village was the most shameful, humiliating thing I could imagine. You could not have found a better way of debasing me, in my own eyes. But you told me that this is how it had to be done, in your world, and I obeyed, no matter how hard it was for me. I trusted you."
"This is how the devil talks," she said coldly. "I didn't tell you that you couldn't wear my hoose 'in my world,' I said a decent man wouldn't even try to wear a hoose at all!"
"In your world," he said again, insisting, his voice angrier. "In my world, a decent man would not let his wife - no, any woman that he respected - stand naked before others. It would be the most shameful thing you could do to me - again. Again, because you're always right and nobody else knows anything, again you are determined to shame me."
The vehemence of his tone shook her. "Do you, as my husband, command me to defile myself by wearing this shirt?"
He seemed to despair at this. "In my world a man doesn't command his wife, he persuades her. If he can."
"Then why are you raising your voice to me, if not to command?"
"I obeyed you, when you told me what to do in your world," he said. His voice was soft now, but no less intense.
"Of course you did. I'm the princess of Taina."
"In my world, princesses can stamp their pretty little feet and issue commands to their heart's content, but the only people who obey them are their paid servants. Common people like me pay no attention at all."
These words frightened her even more than his immoral claims about women wearing men's clothing. "Is the world turned