Brother Sergei nodded vigorously. "He taught me the letters. Not Greek though, I can't read that."

Can't read Greek? "You mean you read in your own language?"

"Father Lukas taught me the letters."

"What letters? Can you show me?" It was impossible—nobody was writing in Old Church Slavonic, not this far north and west. The Cyrillic alphabet had either just been invented or was about to be, far away at the borders of the Byzantine Empire, and the Glagolitic alphabet was nearly as new and was never that widely used. So what alphabet was Father Lukas teaching?

Brother Sergei collapsed into a sitting position and began to write with his finger on the earthen floor. Impossible as it was, Ivan recognized the figures immediately as the earliest known form of the Cyrillic alphabet.

"A man named Kirill invented those letters," Ivan said.

"I know," said Sergei. "Father Lukas was his scribe." Sergei grinned. "I'm the scribe to the scribe of the great missionary Father Constantine—he only took the name Kirill a little while before he died. Father Lukas says that by serving him as he served Father Constantine, I am only two steps away from holiness."

"Closer than most men, then," said Ivan. But he trembled at the thought: The priest in this place was, or at least claimed to be, personally acquainted with Saint Kirill himself. Which meant that whatever writing was done in this place would be, if Ivan could only take it away from here back to his own time, the oldest Cyrillic writing any man of the twentieth century had ever seen. Not only that, but it was the definitive answer to the historical question of whether it was Kirill himself who invented that alphabet, or his followers who did it after he was dead.

If Ivan could take it back, so many questions could be answered. That was just one more unbearable irony.

"You speak our tongue much better than Father Lukas," said Sergei. "But you still pronounce it funny."

"I grew up speaking a different form of the same language." said Ivan. "Father Lukas grew up speaking Greek."

"So where are you from?"

"Kiev," said Ivan.

Brother Sergei laughed aloud. "I've heard traders from Kiev. They don't talk like that."

"Oh?"

"Most of them are Rus' and speak North-talk anyway, nothing like our language."

"There are a lot of people in Kiev," said Ivan, "and a lot of ways of speaking."

"It must be a wonderful thing, to live in a great city."

"The wonderful thing," said Ivan, "is to be here in Taina."

"Of course it's wonderful to you," said Sergei. "You're going to be king."

Ivan grimaced. "Not much of a king. I'm a poor choice for that."

Sergei shrugged. "There's some who say so. Though one never knows who'll be a good ruler until he wears the crown."

"Well, anyone who thinks I shouldn't be king is right."

Sergei got a sick look on his face. "So it's true, then?"

"What's true?"

"About you wearing Katerina's hoose?"

Ivan could hardly believe word of that had already spread. "Does she say that?"

"She says nothing," said Sergei. "But an old woman found this tattered hoose and showed it to my mother, and my mother recognized it as one that the princess had worn. She didn't feel right about telling anyone but me, not until you had a chance to deny it or admit it." Sergei laid the stained and tattered remnant of Katerina's hoose on the bed.

Ivan didn't know what to say. A flat lie might be the best course, but for all he knew Katerina was behind the story, telling it to discredit him so she would not be forced to go through with the marriage. It wouldn't do any good to deny the story outright; no one would believe Ivan over Katerina.

"Brother Sergei," said Ivan, "I come from a faraway land. I was born in Kiev, but I lived the past ten years in a place even stranger and farther off. And in that land, when a woman takes off her clothing, then it ceases to be women's clothing or men's clothing, it's just cloth. Whatever a man wears is men's clothing while he's wearing it, and whatever a woman wears is women's clothing while she's wearing it. Do you understand?"

Sergei thought for a moment, then shook his head. "You mean that this is a man's hoose?" His tone was scornful.

"I mean that it's nothing but a piece of cloth, stitched in certain ways, and now torn. Though it wasn't torn at all when I last saw it."

Sergei said nothing.

"Sergei," said Ivan, "if I reached out and tore that cross from your neck, that would be theft, wouldn't it? Stealing a cross! What kind of wicked fool would I have to be, to commit such a sin as that?"

Sergei waited, listening but not willing to concede anything.

"But what if I came upon the cross in the forest. Or under a stone. Then to find a cross would be... what, wouldn't it be a miracle? A gift from God?"

"Are you saying you found this hoose and didn't know what it was?" asked Sergei.

"I'm saying that if a man doesn't know something's a sin, and does it, and as soon as he finds out it's a sin, he stops doing it, then is he a sinner?"

Sergei leaned back against the timbered wall. "I'll have to think about that," said Brother Sergei. "I'll have to ask Father Lukas."

Ivan leaned down and wrote his own name in the dirt, in Cyrillic characters. Then he wrote: "never wanted to be king."

Sergei studied the writing for a moment. Then he rubbed out the name and wrote his own in its place, and erased "king" and replaced it with the word "scribe." He looked up at Ivan, and when he was sure Ivan was looking back at him, he touched his own crippled leg. "When the things you want are taken from you, then you do the things that are left for you to do."

"If you tell this story, of my wearing women's clothing, will it change things so I don't have to marry Katerina?"

Sergei shrugged. "If Jesus came tomorrow, would he heal my leg?"

"I think he would," said Ivan, "if he could."

"But I think he's not coming," said Sergei.

So, what did that mean? That Sergei wasn't going to tell about the hoose?

"Come with me," said Sergei. "Father Lukas wants to teach you in preparation for your baptism."

Ivan reached down and erased Sergei's name and the word "scribe," and replaced them with "Ivan" and the word "Christian."

Sergei grinned, erased "Ivan" yet again, and again replaced it with his own name. But he let the word "Christian" stand.

Ivan shook his head ruefully. "We don't get to choose the world we live in, do we?" he said to the scribe. Only later did he realize what a stupid thing he had said. For he had chosen this world. Not knowing the consequences, it's true, but still he took Katerina's hand and followed her across the invisible bridge to Taina, instead of returning home over the bridge that he alone could see. That was more choice than Sergei ever got. But this young man was making the best of it.

"Will you help me learn what you have learned?" asked Ivan.

"You already read and write," said Sergei. "Though you make some of the letters oddly."

There was no point in explaining further. "Take me to Father Lukas, then." He stood up to leave and only then remembered that his only clothing was the king's cloak. "Except that I'm naked," he said.

Sergei pointed to a pile of cloth at the foot of the bed. "They must have brought it in while you slept."

Ivan pulled the robe of a monk over his head. Not how he would have expected them to dress a future king, or the fiancé of a princess. But just right, if they thought of him as a cleric. Was the clothing an insult? Or merely the only thing they had that they could be sure would fit a man so much taller than any of the others in this place?

Father Lukas's church was not large, but it was solidly built, and there was room enough inside it for at least a hundred villagers—standing, for no space was wasted on benches in Orthodox churches—and a tiring-room behind and to the right of the altar. There were two old women kneeling before an icon on a side wall, but whether they were praying or whispering to each other Ivan could not begin to guess. Another thick peasant woman was lighting a candle before another icon. She was not the first—the place was aglow with the flames of faith. No sign of Father Lukas.