Chapter 5: The Bloody One

There was an interruption of Danka’s studies from the end of September until the end of October. The Church staff, like everyone else in the country, had to put forth all of their energy into harvesting and preserving food for the winter. The men hauled bushels of firewood and charcoal, along with fruit, vegetables, and vinegar to the women’s residence throughout the month. The women toiled to convert fruit into preserves and pickle as many vegetables as possible. Danka was familiar with the fall harvest routine, but it was nice to have a large well-supplied kitchen as a workspace and decent food and seasonings as ingredients.

In the middle of October Danka received a nickname from the Temple’s top Clergywoman.

Among the students and penitents, she was the only one that had no qualms about slaughtering animals. Danka’s lack of sympathy towards livestock served her well in a household of squeamish companions: every time someone showed up with an animal the others were very happy to turn over the task of killing it to the newcomer. Chickens, rabbits, sheep, pigs ... it didn’t matter. The young peasant was quick with the knife or the cleaver and the animal was dead before it had a chance to realize what was happening.

Danka received her nickname on an occasion when the Senior Priestess visited the residence, immediately after she had killed and gutted three pigs. The penitent was a savage sight at the moment, standing with a large knife and her body and face completely covered with blood. She immediately knelt, but the Priestess was so amused that she ordered her to stand up and return to work.

From that moment, Danka was known as “the bloody one” instead of “the new visitor”. Receiving an identity from the Senior Priestess was an important accomplishment, because it demonstrated that the Clergy members had fully accepted the new penitent as a member of their community. She was not “new” anymore. The danger of anyone questioning her Public Penance had long passed.

The coming winter became more of a hardship for the penitents as November passed and the weather became increasingly colder. The seminary students put on their dresses, but the penitents did not have that option. No matter how cold it was outside, they were prohibited from wearing any clothing. In theory the restriction included shoes, but in reality none of the Clergy were so cold-hearted that they would force penitents to walk around in the snow with no protection for their feet. Danka still had her boots and for the first time in four months was allowed to put them on.

Danka’s world shrunk considerably after the first snowstorm. She and the other penitents spent as much time as possible in the kitchen, the only warm spot in their residence. The only other place to go was the study room, which had a fireplace. So ... when she was not working, Danka read the books that the seminary student had assigned.

“The bloody one’s” lessons resumed after the fall food-preserving rush had ended. The seminary student was as determined to teach as the penitent was to learn. She had mastered basic reading, so now it was time to move on to calligraphy, arithmetic, and the use of the abacus. During December, the penitent’s mornings were split between the three topics. She enjoyed arithmetic and learning the abacus, but hated calligraphy. Her clumsy hands rebelled against the art of fine writing, so the penitent decided to ignore writing and concentrate on math. By the end of the year Danka had mastered adding and subtracting.

The seminary student was not pleased. She was determined to force the penitent to learn how to write cursive, because Danubians did not consider a person was truly literate without having that skill. She came up with a plan to force Danka, on her own, to want to switch over from writing block-letters to formal script. The winter solstice and new year were approaching, along with Christmas. (The Old Believers were not enthusiastic about celebrating Christmas, but there also were True Believers living in Starivktaki Moskt, so the Temple included Christmas in the December celebrations to keep everyone happy.) The multiple celebrations meant that lots of hymns and announcements had to be written on parchment and passed around. The seminary student volunteered to write out a portion of the announcements and tasked “the bloody one” to assist. Danka was directed to write page after page of lyrics. For several days she struggled to keep up writing in her usual block letters. Certainly her ability and comfort writing block letters increased with all that practice, but she was unable to keep pace with anyone else. She regretted not having learned calligraphy as she watched the seminary student and her companions write out page after page with relative ease. As Danka labored in frustration, the trainee glanced at her with an expression that clearly stated: “Now you can see why knowing how to write is important. This time, I’m not going to offer to teach you. When you are ready, you will have to ask.”

Finally Danka did break down and asked to restart the calligraphy instruction. While the change of attitude was too late to help her during the preparation for the December festivities, she was determined that the following year she would not have to go through the embarrassment again.

She paused. The following year ... was she planning to still be with the Temple that far into the future? So ... what would the following year bring for “the bloody one” ... the girl with the knife ... the outcast ... the former peasant? Where would her Path in Life take her?

The new year came and went. The final round of religious festivities was followed by several feasts that offered “the bloody one” the chance to try several foods she had never tasted before, including imported nuts, dates and figs. There was endless singing, poetry readings, and listening to music. For the first time in her life, Danka actually had fun during the end-of-the-year holidays.

Considering her alternatives, she began the new year under seemingly ideal circumstances: she was well-fed, living in a safe place, and rapidly making up for her deficient upbringing. The final task of learning how to write cursive was daunting and hugely frustrating, but she forced herself to push forward, knowing that her mentor had gone through great effort to obtain parchment and ink for her practices. The winter passed with her sequestered in the reading room, painfully writing over paper that already was covered many times over with letters from previous practices, or working on the new mathematical topics of multiplication and division.

When she was not practicing, Danka was reading. She now had the ability to read directly from the holy books of the Danubian Church. She memorized some Psalms from the Christian Old Testament, as well as key passages from the Book of the Ancients and the Book of the True Path. She could read the text from hymns, which helped her during the Temple’s singing practices. In March, Danka’s mentor handed her a book that described all of the important places in the Duchy, including areas in Lower Danubia that had been lost to the Ottoman Empire. Danka didn’t have a clue what the Ottoman Empire was, so the apprentice handed her another book about Danubia’s history. Now, this truly was amazing, being able to learn about different times and different places without actually going there.

The descriptions of cities like Danubikt Moskt, Sumy Ris, and Rika Chorna made “the bloody one” anxious to see them. They sounded like fascinating places, with all those people and stuff to look at.

“The bloody one” didn’t think about how quickly nine months had gone by until her mentor started talking about the upcoming celebration of the March equinox. She tasked the penitent with producing copies of the Senior Priest’s sermon, along with hymns and various announcements related to the day’s events. Danka was reluctant to assume such an important task with her writing skills still not completely developed, but the student responded: “You will serve the Creator as I have instructed, I will be satisfied with your work, and that’s the end of it. Why learn if you’re not planning to use your skills to serve the Creator?”

So, for several days, Danka slowly and laboriously copied the text as instructed. She didn’t produce her copies at a fast pace, but that was not a concern for her mentor. When she finished, the student looked over the sheets and congratulated Danka.

“You are now literate. You can read and write. Your Path in Life will demand that you work on your skills and improve, but my part is finished.” Then she added: “We will go before the Senior Priest. I want to show him that you have completed this portion of your Path in Life.”

A few minutes later, Danka nervously knelt beside her mentor in front of several Clergy members. When the two women knelt upright, the student handed her ward’s papers to the Senior Priest. After examining them, he addressed “the bloody one”.

“You declare before the Creator these papers are the product of your efforts?”

“Yes, Senior Priest. It is my handwriting.”

The Priest handed the penitent a copy of the Book of the True Path and instructed her to read several paragraphs he chose at random. Danka complied and read aloud. He directed his attention to his student.

“You have done well, Apprentice. Your student is indeed literate and you have pleased the Creator and the Church with this tasking. You may consider it completed.”

“Thank you, Senior Priest.”

“The bloody one” now understood the trainee’s motive for teaching her was not completely altruistic. As part of the requirements for taking vows, all Danubian Clergy apprentices were required to teach at least one completely illiterate person how to read and write.

When they left the Temple, the apprentice noted Danka’s disillusioned expression. She understood why the penitent would be upset, upon realizing it was not out of friendship that she had spent so much time teaching her. The apprentice also knew how, as a future Priestess, she needed to respond.

“Penitent, you will understand that whatever emotion you felt for me was displaced. I am not the one who gave you the opportunity to read. That opportunity came from the Creator. I was merely the Creator’s instrument to fulfill the Divine Purpose in your Path in Life. If you wish to express gratitude, you should go into the Temple and give thanks to the Creator.”

The equinox celebrations included the annual Blessing of the Crop Seed, in which all of the nearby farmers brought in a portion of the seed they wanted to plant for an official blessing from the Senior Priest. The event also was an opportunity for the Church to pass out experimental seeds, both for plants which had been cross-bred and for imported plants that were entirely new. The Church maintained several experimental farms around the Duchy where penitents and apprentices worked with plant-breeders to find better crops and farming techniques for the country’s farmers.

The experiments incorporated an important part of the Old Believers’ theology. The Creator had prepared the Earth for humans long before giving life to the Ancients, who were the ancestors of humanity. The Ancients were all-knowing, but their descendents rebelled against them and the Destroyer forced the younger generation to forget everything they had learned from their parents. The Creator recalled all of the Ancients to the Realm of the Afterlife. The Creator then commanded it would be up to the humans left on the planet to recover that lost knowledge, to learn how the Earth worked and how best to live in it. As a result, the Danubian Church was much more open to scientific discovery than its counterparts in the rest of Europe. To the Danubian Church, every new understanding of how a scientific process worked brought humanity closer to the Knowledge of the Ancients and ultimate redemption. Crop experimentations that resulted in better food were especially important for recovering what was lost in “humanity’s great rebellion”.

The return of warm weather also meant the return of the male penitents, most of whom had wintered with their families. Leading them was a very handsome, and very pompous young man dressed in new clothing and riding a horse. Danka noted the apprentice’s disapproving look when the young man knelt in front of the Senior Priest. More shocking was a very faint hiss, so quiet that only Danka could hear it. It was very obvious the trainee did not like him.

The apprentice later explained the young man was the son of the Senior Priest and that his name was Bagaturckt. “He’s traveled all over: Vienna, Warsaw, Florence, Berlin, and in one of those foreign cities the Destroyer broke his soul. That man is lustful, proud, and greedy. He’s everything we are not supposed to be. The Senior Priest is a fine man, but the Destroyer blinds him every time he is around Bagaturckt.”

“Bagaturckt didn’t study for the Priesthood?”

“He can’t. The children of Clergy members cannot become Clergy themselves. That protects us from the vices of the nobility and keeps the Church open for everyone, not just a few favored families. When you behold a dishonored tool of Destroyer like Bagaturckt, you can understand that policy is wise, very wise indeed. Bagaturckt would bring the Destroyer into the heart of the Temple if he could take vows.”

“You ... you really hate him, Apprentice?”

“I do. We are not supposed to hate, but I hope the Creator understands that my hatred of Bagaturckt is quite justified.”

As the weather became warmer, the apprentices put away their dresses and resumed their summer-time lives of constant nudity. The exception was Danka’s mentor. Her dress was in sorrowful condition, but she kept wearing it. The same was true for her fiance: his robe was threadbare and torn, but he did not seem worried about preserving it for another winter.

The reason became obvious when the apprentice cheerfully announced that she and her fiance were getting married on the last day of April. The very next day Danka’s mentor and her husband would be ordained as Clergy members. (May 1st was the traditional day that the Danubian Church ordained Priests and Priestesses, while June 21st was the traditional day new apprentices entered seminary studies.)

The wedding was simple and humble, as demanded by Danubian Church protocol. The only people present were the Senior Priest and his wife. The couple was married in their apprentice outfits: there was no special dress for the apprentice. The only other person present was Danka, who the apprentice had selected to hold a bouquet of flowers and her wedding jewelry. The couple exchanged vows on their knees. They stood up and Danka handed the traditional Danubian marriage jewelry to the groom: a silver ring, a silver necklace, and a silver hairpiece. The new husband took the items one-by-one and placed them on his wife and clergy partner. The entire affair was over in less than half an hour. The couple disappeared for the rest of the day to consummate their marriage.