Next moment, the postern opened amid a flurry of shouting. A servant with yellow hair strode without diffidence up to the Grand Prince, trailing Dmitrii’s bewildered retainers in her wake.

“What is this?” Dmitrii demanded, staring.

“That is my sister’s body-servant,” said Sasha. “Varvara, what do—”

Varvara had a bruised cheek, and her expression chilled him to the marrow.

“Those people you hear,” Varvara snapped, “have broken the gates of the palace of Serpukhov. They killed the bay stallion that Vasilisa loved”—here Sasha began to feel the blood draining from his face—“and they have dragged off the girl herself.”

“Where?” said Sasha, his voice remote and terrible.

Beside him, Dmitrii was already calling for horses, for men-at-arms: “—Yes, even if they are wounded, get them on horses, it cannot wait.”

“Down,” said Varvara, panting. “Down toward the river. I fear they mean to kill her.”

VASYA WAS NEARLY SENSELESS with the mob’s fists, her clothes torn and bloodied. She was borne along, half-dragged, half-carried, and the world was full of noise: shouting, a cold, beautiful voice controlling the crowd, and the word, endlessly murmured—Father. Batyushka.

Down, they were going downhill; she stumbled in the hardened slush of the street. Hands—many hands—scoured her body; her cloak and letnik had been ripped away, leaving her in her long-sleeved shift, her kerchief gone, her hair falling about her face.

She was barely aware of it. She was locked in a single memory: the impact of a club, a blade, the shock that ran through her own body. Solovey. Mother of God, Solovey. As the mob raged, all she could see was the horse, lying in the snow, all the love and the grace and the strength broken and muddied and stilled.

More people were tearing at her clothes; she knocked one groping hand aside, and a fish-smelling fist struck her across the face, bringing her teeth together. Pain like stars exploded on her mouth; the neck of her shift tore. Konstantin’s even voice remonstrated, too late, with the crowd. They drew back, a little chastened.

Still they dragged her downhill. All around was torchlight, throwing sparks across her sight. “Finally frightened?” Konstantin murmured to her under his breath, his eyes bright, as though he had bested her at some sport.

She hurled herself at him a second time, in a rush of rage that swallowed up her pain.

Perhaps she was trying to get them to kill her. They nearly did. Konstantin let the crowd punish her. A gray fog slipped slyly over her sight, but still she did not die, and when she came back to herself, she realized that they had borne her past the gates of the kremlin. Now they were in the posad, the part of Moscow that lay outside the walls. Still hurrying; they were going down to the river. A little chapel loomed up. They paused there for a swift debate. Konstantin spoke, though she caught only a word here and there.