my left hand, I reached over and found the purse that I always carried, tied, as it should be, to my belt. I ripped it loose, and I handed it to this man. He merely looked at it. Then he drew himself up, offended, and he stepped back.
He seemed then to become part of a deliberate picture with the house. I saw the house. I saw the hand-carved furniture, the pride of the family which had done it, the hand-carved wooden crosses and candlesticks which held the many candles. I saw the painted symbols decorating the wood frames of the windows, and the shelves on which fine homemade pots, kettles and bowls were displayed.
I saw them all in their pride, then, the entire family, the women with the embroidery, as well as those with mending, and I remembered with a lulling comfort the stability and the warmth of their daily life.
Yet it was sad, oh, woefully sad, compared to the world I knew!
I stepped forward and I held out the purse again to him, and I said in a muffled voice, still veiling my face:
"I beg you to take this as a kindness to me and that I might save my soul. It's from your nephew, Andrei. He is far, far away in the land to which the slave traders took him, and he will never come home. But he is well and must share some of what he has with his family. He bids me to tell him which of you lives and which of you is dead. If I do not give you this money, and if you don't take it, I will be damned to Hell."
There came no response from them verbally. But I had what I wanted from their minds. I had all of it. Yes, Ivan was alive, and now I, this strange man, was saying that Andrei lived too. Ivan mourned for a son who not only lived but prospered. Life is a tragedy, one way or another. What is certain is that you die.
"I beg you," I said.
My uncle took the proffered purse but with misgivings. It was full of gold ducats, which would buy anywhere.
I let my cloak drop and I pulled off my left glove, and then the rings that covered every finger of my left hand. Opal, onyx, amethyst, topaz, turquoise. I moved past the man and the boys, to the far side of the fire, and laid these respectfully in the lap of the old woman who had been my Mother as she looked up.
I could see that, in a moment, she would know who I was. I covered my face again, but with my left hand, I took my dagger from my belt. It was only a short Misericorde, that little dagger which a warrior takes into battle to dispatch his victims if they are too far gone for salvation and yet not dead. It was a decorative thing, an ornament more than a weapon, and its gold-plated scabbard was thickly lined with perfect pearls.
"For you," I said. "For Andrei's Mother, who always loved her necklace of river pearls. Take this for Andrei's soul." I laid the dagger at my Mother's feet.
And then I made a deep, deep bow with my head almost touching the floor, and I went out, without looking back, closing the door behind me, and hovering near, to hear them as they jumped up and crowded about to see the rings and the dagger, and some to see to the lock.
For a moment, I was weak with emotion. But nothing was going to stop me from what I meant to do. I didn't turn to Marius, because it would have been craven to ask his support in this, or assent to it. I went on down the muddy snowy street, through the sludge, towards the tavern nearest to the river, where I thought my Father might be.
I had rarely entered this place as a child, and then only to summon my Father home. I had no real memory of it, except as a place where foreign people drank and cursed.
It was a long building, made of the same rude unfinished logs as my house, with the same mud for mortar, and the same inevitable seams and cracks to let in the dreadful cold. Its roof was very high, with some six tiers to shed the weight of the snow, and its eaves too dripped with icicles, as had those of my house.