12
Novgorod, 1242. On the ice of Lake Chud under the command of Prince Alexander Nevsky the army of glorious Great Novgorod routed the mail clad Teutonic Knights. But two months later, as it was still rejoicing over its victory and welcoming the spring, terrible events occurred in the city.

The corpse of a young woman rose to the surface of the Volkhov River. She had either thrown herself into the river or there had been some unfortunate accident; in any case, there were no wounds on her body and her face, peaceful in death, had a divine beauty. Her long, wet hair was streaked with gold, as if a symbol of her former passion. In her clothing they discovered a letter scratched onto birch bark. The nearly washed-out letters declared that the drowned woman was the nun Mariya—the Mariya who had disappeared from the convent two years earlier.

Ah, Ilya, how I wanted to meet with you! Each time I heard that you were looking for me, I trembled under the burden of the sin that ruined me. I tried even harder to seclude myself in an undiscoverable place.

I no longer have the strength to go on. Life is so bitter that I care not what will happen to me. From the day when I no longer knew whether my child—my beloved, priceless child—was a child of God or of the devil, my life became unbearable.

The church prohibits people from taking their own lives. But for me it’s the only way to cleanse myself of sin before the Lord God. Is that arrogance? Acting as if I were a pastor myself. But I am a daughter of Novgorod. The daughter of a free city. And, before God, I with all my sins will take my life with my own hands.

Ilya, Ilya. My protector and hope. I pray for your success in battle, for the eternal well being of glorious Novgorod. Though I am a great sinner, though I am breaking a commandment by killing myself, God the Father will sense my sorrow and know my thoughts.

Ilya, Ilya, long did I wait for you,
But our encounter came too late.
I am steeped in sin and go to face God’s judgment.

O earth, you are mother and father to me!
I entrust my child to your care.
Though conceived in sin, of the Russian earth
He was born—for happiness and not for suffering.

On that day in one of the churches the icon of Mary, the holy Mother of God, cried tears of blood. The Novgorodians saw it as a miracle and they gave thanks: the Mother of God was mourning the men killed in battle.

On the same day Joseph, the village elder, was found with a dagger in his chest. As he lay dying in agony, people had only one thought—that he had killed himself in fear of a just punishment for his criminal plan to seize the post of posadnik for himself with the help of the Teutonic Knights. But soon the joy of spring and victory made everyone forget the two deaths.

Moscow in the summer. Savva’s skyscraper stood on the outskirts of the city. After searching the entire city, his secretary Ivan brought Aurora—no, Mariya—to Savva’s office. Ivan left the boss’s office with a sigh of relief. Thank God he had found her. Let the boss decide what to do.

The door has hardly closed behind her back when Mariya took out a gun she had hidden on her and pointed it at Savva.

“I hear you’re the one who killed my husband Alliluyev, right?”

From the other side of the desk, without even moving, Savva raised his eyes and gave Mariya an evil look.

“You’re Aurora. What’s the matter? You think I killed one of your people? You’d better give me back my child.”

Mariya shuddered at the sound of his voice and stared at his face and hands. The past flowed into her head in a rush. Rising from the very bottom of eternity, whirling dark memories formed into a maelstrom whose unbridled force literally split Aurora’s mind. The waves of the Volkhov River, the waves of the Moskva River—memories of a thousand years… Child of God? Or child of the devil? No, but not of this guy!

“Savva! You’re Savva!”

With a howl Aurora’s cramped fingers squeezed the trigger. A flash and a bang. On the polished floor lay the body of Savva Iosifovich, a bullet in his chest. Beside him lay Mariya—no, Aurora—killed by a bullet in the back that the guard who ran in had fired. Ivan Nepomnyashchy stood over them, frozen like a statue. It’s the end. No matter what I do, it ends strangely.

At that moment the cathedral bells began to chime the hour. They sounded like the triumphal ringing of the bells in ancient Great Novgorod honoring its victory. They seemed to be celebrating Russia’s redemption from a thousand-year curse.