Doctor Who_ Bunker Soldiers - Martin Day [25]
‘Are you well, my lord?’ asked Yevhen.
‘I have head pains and a feeling of dizziness,’ explained Vasil.
He indicated the sheep’s horn of medicine. ‘It is derived from a wort of some kind. I have found that, on occasion, it works when prayer does not.’
Yevhen drew him to one side, away from the prying ears of the soldiers close to the door. ‘I am sorry I had to ask to see you here,’ he whispered.
Vasil looked around him with distaste. ‘I had heard that the governor wished to limit the movements of his advisers:.’ he said. ‘A particular shame for you, being trapped in so gloomy a place.’
‘It leaves me isolated from the preparations. The governor clearly expects me to do nothing but talk!’
‘Whereas you are a man of action,’ noted the bishop. His eyes were full of sly innuendo. ‘There is doubtless much you would wish to do... or perhaps have already done...’
Yevhen caught the implication of his words. ‘That may be so,’ he said defensively. He paused, wondering how best to draw the information he wanted from Vasil. ‘You know, of course, that the young male traveller is in prison?’
Vasil nodded. ‘Yes. Poor Taras.’ The bishop chuckled.
‘Rumour has it that he was killed within the confines of the cathedral.’
‘Nonsense, of course,’ said Yevhen.
‘Of course,’ said Vasil. ‘He was found by the Church of the Virgin, was he not? It is no small distance from the cathedral catacombs to the church.’
‘The catacombs?’
Vasil smiled. ‘The dead man was a friend of yours, no?’
‘I have known him for some years,’ said Yevhen. ‘I wonder...’ he added cautiously. ‘I wonder what will happen to the murderer while he is in prison...’
Vasil straightened, as if signifying that he had said quite enough and that even Yevhen’s allusions were becoming too blunt. ‘Some things are known to God alone,’ he said, and turned smartly for the door.
As darkness fell, the house descended from hysterical sobbing to near silence. Elisabet listened intently as the boys struggled to find peace underneath heavy blankets; only the dogs that curled at their feet seemed immune to the stresses the family had experienced that day.
It had struck Elisabet as peculiar that Taras had not returned the previous night, but it was not without precedent. In happier times – times before the devilish Tartars swept into Europe –
Taras had had a reputation as something of a wastrel, frequenting taverns and places of ill repute until well into the morning. Sometimes, when he finally returned, having spent money they did not have on the ale she could still smell on his breath, they would argue, in harsh, clipped whispers for fear of waking the children. He would always win her round, blaming Yevhen for his late return and talking animatedly of some scheme, some plan, that would make things better for them.
How she wished he was here with her now. She would rather argue with him for all eternity than spend the last few months of her life as a widow.
Word had arrived just before midday that her husband had been found, and that he was dead. Elisabet had been working, as usual, in the governor’s kitchens. She had assumed that Taras had been drunk and had ended up sleeping in a gutter or perhaps in the bed of the one of the whores who frequented the east side of the city. In a moment, as the soldier stammered out the awful truth, her world, and all its preconceived notions of future happiness, had come crashing around her.
She could not remember much from the hours that followed, bar that she would never have believed her capacity for tears. Each time she thought she was in control of her melancholy, she would glance at her dumbfounded children and the crushing sadness would descend again.
As she put the boys to bed, she had been telling herself over and over again that, if she truly believed in the Christ, she would one day be reunited with Taras in a far, far better place – a place not under threat from the horsemen of the very Devil himself!
She wondered if the grief she felt would be as nothing to