It was to avoid such a conversation with him that she found herself avoiding any conversation with him apart from dinnertime, when nothing private could be discussed. But this silence between them could not go on forever, she knew; she was not surprised when, one afternoon in her father's house, she heard him in the great room, asking a slave which bedchamber was hers.
The slave was no doubt trying to guess which would cause more trouble, to tell or not to tell, and then would have to decide whether to make trouble or not, which was probably the more difficult decision. Slaves were so untrustworthy. And yet life would be impossible if you had to do all that work yourself. When would she have time to look after the people, if she had to spend her time down at the river, washing clothes, or out in the kitchen, preparing dinner?
Anyway, she spared the slave the burden of making a choice. "In here," she called out to Ivan.
He actually stopped to thank the slave, as if the girl had done anything or even meant to do anything to help him. He was still a stranger, would always be a stranger.
Whatever it was he wanted to talk about, she knew she didn't want to discuss it with him. So she preempted him by leaping to a conclusion she knew was false. "I hope you're not thinking of claiming some privilege of intimacy because we're betrothed."
He did not rise to the bait. "Your purity is safe. I only came to ask how I could get some parchment."
Why would he come to her for a parchment? Did he think she had a secret hoard of lambskins and kidskins? "Why would you ask me? Father Lukas asks for the skin of a lamb when he needs something to write on. If he doesn't claim the skin, then it's used by others."
"I know that," said Ivan. "Sergei explained that."
"Then why did you come to me?"
"So you could tell me how I could go about getting a parchment. Or tell me who could teach me how to make parchment out of lambskin."
"And why would you waste time on something like that?" It would hardly raise the knights' opinion of him, if he spent hours parching lambskin.
"Because there's something I want to write down."
Was he serious? "Do you have any idea what you're talking about?" she asked.
"I know how to read and write, if that's what you mean."
"You weren't brought here to be a cleric! Father Lukas will find his own young men and teach them. Like Sergei, who has no other usefulness. But you... to spend your hours writing or making parchment..."
He had been ingratiating up to now, but his temper had apparently been stretched too thin. "What am I supposed to do, then?" he demanded. "Spend all day in the practice field, hearing Dimitri taunt me and watching all the others snicker behind their hands?"
"It takes time, I know."
"It takes years to put on that kind of muscle. I ache all over, and while I'm getting better, I'm a long way from good. It won't hurt anybody if I spend a little time doing things that I'm actually good at."
"But you aren't good at making parchment, if you don't even know how."
"I want to write something."
"Use birchbark. You just peel it off the trees and soak it and press it flat."
"Birchbark doesn't last."
"Neither will you, and neither will Taina, if you don't work at soldiering."
"I know how long it takes to train my body. I've been running all my life, but I was training for the decathlon - "
"The what?"
"A contest. Running, jumping, throwing the... spear. The discus. The... stone. It took years of training until I was competitive. Someday, a few years from now, I might be good enough with the sword to hold my own with the best of them. But not next week or next month."
"But they have to see you trying. They have to see you getting better at it."
"They refuse to see it," said Ivan. "No matter what I do, they laugh. Fine, that's their privilege. But if you think they're going to respect me more by watching me fail, day after day - "
"You're giving up?"
"I just want to write something down!"
She didn't like him speaking to her with such exasperation. As if she were an unreasonable child. "Don't shout at me."
"And what will you do to punish me? I'm already in hell."