A murmur travels that sounds like men remembering they have spines. A woman from the kitchens, hair tied in a scarf my grandmother might have owned, takes a broom. An elder removes his jacket, folds it over a pew, and kneels to gather glass with the gravity of a man receiving communion. A lawyer with theology on his tie rolls his sleeves and carries bodies to the yard with three dock men who know how to lift without theater.
"Misha," I say, and he appears with blood on his knuckles and iron that remembers grief. "Seal the catacombs. Two men at each staircase. Count heads. No heroics in the tunnels."
"Yes," he answers.
"Sasha," I say, and he is there with a knife he has cleaned and holstered because we stand in a church. "Aleksandr lives. Keep him bound. He will be tended, and he will keep silence. Move him to the side parlor, not the sacristy. I will not have politics near the chalice."
He nods, mouth flat, eyes hot, discipline like a furnace that accepts any fuel. "Da." He signals two men to lift Aleksandr. Aleksandr curses under his breath and looks at me as if expecting a farewell. I give him a gaze that holds nothing he can spend.
I lift my eyes to the colored glass. Saint Nicholas breaks into three fractured rivers of blue that still pour light. I move through that light like a bell ringer checking ropes.
"You," I tell a cousin from Worcester, "find Anton in the workshop. He has tin and putty. He will panel the broken window until the glaziers arrive. Tell him to secure the break and protect the icon wood."
"You two, Ilya and Petya," to the boys who run errands and think no one knows their names, "take these blades for wax. Lift first, then cloth. Don't smear a year into the stone."
Dmitri watches and says nothing. Yelena crosses to him and lifts a brow. She already has a tin of clean linen, a bottle of vodka, a vial that smells of calendula. "Pressure will do," she says, calm as a nurse at dawn, placing the vodka in my hand. My fingers remember. I cut his sleeve, flush the wound, fold linen and pack the depth, and hold firm and even. He stands and doesn't flinch. Yelena knots the bandage flat and true, then slips a second wrap to fix the arm against his ribs.
"Hold," she says. He holds. The red eases to a stubborn pulse.
I nip two loose threads from the wrap with Yelena's small scissors, tuck the ends flat, and smooth the cloth once. "Enough for now," I murmur. He doesn't thank me. He doesn't need to. In a single motion, he steps half in front of me without crowding. With him at my side, the cathedral belongs to us again.
The stories return softly. My great-grandfather, in a village easy to miss on a map, kneeling in a church with no floor, only packed earth, holding a candle for a wedding where the priest wore patched sleeves and still brought heaven down. My grandmother crossing herself with dough on her fingers and calling it holy. My mother laughing in a parish hall and silencing two men with one look before a joke could turn to gossip. Anatoly built this altar instead of buying another boat and called it a debt to God that money could not settle. We are not pretty people. We remember what rooms are for.
I go to the iconostasis and lift the fallen chain of the censer. I gather ash with my hands. My lips sting with salt and old smoke. Father Gavril lifts the Gospel. Yelena brings warm water and lemon oil. I hold the cloth while he wipes ash from the cover. The gray lifts, returning the gold. Father Gavril hums a hymn under his breath, a tune that always felt like a road you can walk in the dark and still find the door.
Night claws at the clock and drags it slow. Men carry ladders. Boys carry linens. Women carry hot tea in enamel mugs. Ash leaves by the shovelful. The tile under the rail shines. Candle stubs retire. New wicks stand to attention. The censer hangs straight again and waits.
I stand in the center aisle and feel the house pull itself together like a man after a fight, counting fingers, touching bruises, finding a laugh under the blood. This is what we are when no one is filming. This is the mistake Sergei keeps making. He thinks a house is a ledger and a chair. He doesn't understand that a house is a cathedral and a kitchen and a thousand hands that throw themselves between a knife and a child because a grandmother once said this is the only way to live.
I return to the pew where my father lies. Yelena has straightened him. She has placed his hands over his chest, the father's pose of a man who once knew how to hold. Father Gavril has set a small candle near his right shoulder. The flame stands like a sentinel. I kneel and set my forehead to my father's knuckles. The ring presses my skin. It will press again when I wear it or when I bury it. I don't argue with God. I ask for two things. Courage. Clarity. Tonight, they are the same.
I stand. My cheeks are wet. I wipe them with the back of my hand the way a girl does. I don't replace the tears with a smile. Dmitri waits at the rail. His eyes don't demand anything from me.
"Before sunrise," I say to the room, "the crowns will be polished with a new cloth, the table set for the Vigil, the choir fed with tea and honey."
I find Misha. "Rotate the guard outside. Any man leaving post receives hot soup. Keep lenses turned from the icons." To Sasha, "Watch the inner door and the aisle. Two men on the rail. Keep tongues still near the incense." I turn and let the house hear the line it needs. "This family will meet at dawn standing."
I walk to Dmitri. He meets me halfway.
"Are you steady?" I ask. It is not about pain. It is about resolve.
"Yes," he says.
I hold his gaze and let the gathered see what they came for and did not expect to witness.
"If we are going to be crowned," I tell him, "let it be at dawn. Let them see us bleed and still choose love."
29
DMITRI
Incense and lamp oil hang in the nave, resin-sweet over cold stone. Iron is gone from the rail. Lemon and hot water have done their work, yet the floor keeps a thin memory the way a scar keeps a story. The tin panel that held the broken window through the night is gone. New glass nests in fresh lead, seams still bright from the glazier. Morning pushes through it in bands of color, cobalt on the flagstones, carmine across the rail, gold climbing the pillars. Shadows lattice and lift as the flames move. I touch my shirt once at the shoulder where the bandage rides under cotton, then let my hands fall. The old cross under my collar is cool against skin that still remembersby honor and pain.
The vow is older than last night. I read the line at the chapel steps.To honor her heart above ambition.That sentence waited for me when I was a boy with empty pockets and a spine built from orders. She stood withThe Book of Vowsopen, and I traced the words with her, slow and true, the way a man points to the only door that leads home.
We spokepracticethen. Now they are not practice and not ornament. The red thread will be tied again, but it has already chosen its work. We will circle the table three times, and the house will hear what my bones know. Vows make this roof hold winter.
They come.
