Noreen Doyle - excerpt - "The Dovecote"

Noreen Doyle

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The Dovecote Onto the porch roof on which I sit my old Baba throws crumbs of bread, hoping perhaps that like the birds I will eat a bit of her poison and fall. No one can reach me here beside the dovecote, least of all my old Baba, though she wails through the house and threatens to set it afire. Ah, my old Baba is angry with me! "Don't listen to the songs of little birds, Pigeon! They tell only pretty little lies to us daughters of Eve. Go to the priests and read the Word of God. Anything else is the devil's trick, Pigeon!" Most often she calls me "Pigeon" rather than "Zorievna," particularly when she is angry. And most particularly when she catches me at the dovecote, where I am really not supposed to be. Though I have seen seventeen summers full and ripe and soon will wed a Boyar's son, Mother and Father fear that I will eat my Baba's poisoned bread as if I were a baby! Usually I am careful to sit here unseen so they will not scold me for writing about what I overhear at the dovecote. But while crawling out onto the roof today I dropped pages from my Annals, and she found them lying on the floor below the window. Ah! Now she picks up those pages around which she has been dancing all this time. Yes, she can read, my old Baba. "Volos! Svantovit! Pyerun!" she cries, shaking the pages in two fists. "Do you know who they are, Pigeon? Gods, heathen gods of war. War is a thing for heathen men" -- I should add that she, like Princess Olga of Kiev, is a Christian now -- "and for foolish heathen men at that! Pray that Stribog Grandfather of Wind will catch you when you fall! It's no coat of little birds you're wearing, Pigeon!" Such noise from my old Baba! She wails like a widow, which is, after all, her due, but I can scarcely hear anything else. That makes recording these Annals a little harder. Nonetheless, I will try to write down what I overhear here at the dovecote. There is a little chatter about Volos, Svantovit and Pyerun, and perhaps a little more about Stribog Grandfather of Wind. # Likely you know of the white snake whose flesh gives to anyone who eats it knowledge of the many tongues which existed long before the Tower of Babel, those of beast and of bird. Most take it for a folktale. They are half-true about that. There were (and still are) white snakes in the world, but any man or boy, be he prince or be he peasant, who tastes of its flesh will know nothing more than the taste of snake. We daughters of Eve, and we alone, may acquire the speech of bear and deer, of eagle and dove, for two generations, or even three. One day such a white snake invaded the dovecote belonging to Sergey Leskov, the Varangian Boyar of Terkligrad. His son Vasilko had married a girl named Dmitrievna whose duty it was to tend the dovecote. She saw that snake frightening the pigeons belonging to her father-in-law and called for help. The Slav wetnurse who suckled Dmitrievna's little son Iurii heard this commotion and came running to the aid of her mistress. The wetnurse killed the creature with a large wooden spoon and to ease Dmitrievna's fear told the Tale of the White Snake. Well, Dmitrievna thought much about that! She was cunning; her cunning had won her the heart of a Boyar's son who lived in a handsome house with many hearths and the kinds of beautiful things Dmitrievna loved so much. What more might her cunning be able to obtain if she knew the tongues of animals! Dmitrievna convinced the wetnurse to eat a little bit of the serpent. Truly, she wanted only to see if it was poison, because you cannot always trust a folktale to be accurate in its details (as I have already told you). The wetnurse neither sickened nor died. So Dmitrievna herself ate a bigger piece. She would have eaten the entire snake then and there had Sergey and Vasilko not arrived home. They divided the rest of creature between themselves and ate it. It did them no good, of course, because they were certainly not daughters of Eve. Because Dmitrievna had not eaten all of the snake she found herself able to understand only the birds of the air. This was quite enough, however. It made her privy to many secrets which helped the campaigns of her father-in-law. In the spring of the year 6450 (as these Christian Greeks reckon it) the birds could not help Sergey, and he died. His son Vasilko Leskov became Boyar of Terkligrad and burned his father's corpse along the banks of the Don. Vasilko had much work to do as Boyar. For all his wars, and for all the help of Dmitrievna's pigeons, Sergey had left much unfinished business along his eastern borders, to which Vasilko was determined and forced to put an end. So, while spring was yet new and winter snow still more than memory, Vasilko called together every pomeshchik from whom he or his father was owed service. "The barbarian Khazars have retreated from your lands," these men said. "Let them be. Let us make war on the Pechenegs." Next Vasilko took council from his wife. Dmitrievna was as shrewd as any Greek and even a little more so, thanks to the white snake. She tended the dovecote and sent her birds far and near. Each evening they bore home news of the countryside. Dmitrievna learned from them that the barbarian Pechenegs were making no trouble. The barbarian Khazars, however, were waiting to test the mettle of the new Boyar. Having heard this from his wife, Vasilko decided that he would have to continue his father's war, rather than start a new one of his own. Being neither more nor less costly than any his forefathers had fought (or his descendants would fight after him), this war was one for which Vasilko had to pay. Dmitrievna's pigeons could not much help in that matter; they told her so themselves. So each pomeshchik told Vasilko stories of how Sergey had done this. My Baba does not know if these stories are true. For all my inquiries, neither do I. Yet I will relate them here, so that you may judge for yourself. Once Sergey went to the Greeks with promises to send them every Khazar woman that was captured, so the Greeks might sell them at Constantinople to repay Sergey's debts. Once he went to the Arabs with promises to send them every Khazar stallion, mare and foal that was captured, so the Arabs might sell them at Baghdad to repay Sergey's debts. Once he went to Igor, Prince of Kiev, to request arms for his men in exchange for whatever the Prince might like. Dmitrievna did not care for any of these plans at all. "Dear husband and glorious Boyar," she said, "what is the use of coming into grivnas and precious things which one must then give away almost as soon as they come into hand?" Knowing every Byzantine art and the tongue of every fowl, she suggested that he raise the tribute exacted from his Slav villagers. "The pigeons say the harvest will be good this year. Make the Slavs pay one third of all their labors and one third of all their jewels for the duration of the war," she said. "Then you need repay no one at all." Vasilko liked her idea very much. So it was done. No villager gave protest, since everyone believed that the Khazars would be even harsher masters than any Varangian Boyar. One third might be a lot, but not so much as the Khazars would demand if they ruled the countryside. Blacksmiths donated fine blades and horseshoes for the Boyar's army. Farmers fed the Boyar's men turnips from their cellars and bread from their ovens. Clothiers made coats without any thought of cost, and trappers brought beaver pelts with which to line them. Merchantmen and their wives gave up silver grivnas and small jewels. A horse was sacrificed in the sacred grove to Volos, another to Svantovit, and yet a third to Pyerun. With things in such order Boyar Vasilko rode out to meet the heathen Khazars. Everything Dmitrievna learned at her dovecote she would set down on a silver band fastened about the bird's leg. The pigeon would then fly to Vasilko and his army. With pigeons as his spies and Dmitrievna as his interpreter, the Boyar knew the barbarians' every move. After the last battle the Khazars lay strewn about the field like fish caught and laid to dry along the Don. Vasilko rode home with his pomeshchiks beside him, victorious but with a heavy heart. This had been a successful campaign, but costly. He had lost many horseshoes, coats, turnips, bread-loaves and blades. The grivnas which had poured in from his Slav merchants were pledged to other merchants who sold things Vasilko's peasants could not make. These other merchants would take the coin in hand, bow to the Boyar and go away, leaving Vasilko with nothing. In the lands through which they were passing Slav peasants sang to Mati-Syra-Zemlya Moist Mother Earth. Vasilko saw a blacksmith setting tines in a ploughman's harrow, and a merchant and his wife going about their business with silver grivnas and little jewels jingling about them. The Boyar began to wonder what of this would be his again, now that he had finished his war. He had spent one third of all the labors and one third of all the jewels of his Slav peasants for his war, and wanted more to bring home to his lovely wife. He did not want it to pass out of hand so quickly! But now, he thought, there was no war and it could all stay in their beautiful house at Terkligrad. The Boyar's heart was marked with greed. read the rest of the story in the May/June 2007 issue of Century					Historical fantasy short story Century No. 2, May/June 2005 "a complex sequence of events . . ." -- Mark R. Kelly, Locus, July, 1995 ". . . a sense of satisfying completeness." -- Mark Rich, Tangent 11, Summer, 1995 other excerpts: Ankhtifi the Brave is dying. Callum's Feast The Chapter of Bringing a Boat into Heaven The Chapter of Coming forth by Night The Chapter of the Hawk of Gold The Execration Horizon The Rope Shadow of the Pyramid Trading Places

©2007 Noreen Doyle