Free Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin Page A

in our province. I’ll take your pawn.”
    “What about your queen?” Bubentsov asked in surprise, but immediately took the queen with no hesitation. “Your protectors will be gobbled up in exactly the same way, and in the very near future, too. I shall be needing an experienced man of the law, Mr. Berdichevsky, someone well acquainted with the local conditions. Think on it. This has the whiff of a great career about it, even perhaps not purely in the field of jurispridence, but that of canon law. Even your Jewishness is no hindrance there. Many pillars of ecclesiastical law have been drawn from your nation, and even now the converted Jews include some of the most zealous propagators of Orthodoxy. And give some thought as well to the consequences of stubbornness.” He waved the captured queen eloquently. “After all, you have a family. And I have heard that another addition is on the way.”
    Desperately afraid, and therefore avoiding raising his eyes from the board, Matvei Bentsionovich mumbled: “I beg your pardon, sir, but, first, you are in checkmate. And second”—he spoke these words almost in a whisper, with a powerful tremor in his voice—“you are a scoundrel and a base individual.”
    As he said it he squeezed his eyes tightly shut, recalling all at once the double duel, and his twelve children and the addition that was on the way.
    Bubentsov laughed as he looked at this brave soul’s pale face. He glanced around to make sure that there was no one nearby (there was not), gave Matvei Bentsionovich’s long nose a highly painful tweak, and left. Berdichevsky twitched his nostrils, depositing two cherry-red drops on the chessboard, and made an unconvincing attempt to overtake his insulter, but the tears welling up in his eyes veiled everything in a rainbow-colored mist. Matvei stood there for some time and then sat back down.
             
    AND NOW ALL that remains is for us to tell you about the retinue of the unusual synodical inspector, for in their own way this pair were no less colorful than Vladimir Lvovich himself.
    As his secretary he had with him Provincial Secretary Tikhon Ieremeevich Spasyonny, the same respectable-looking gentleman who had nodded so amiably through the window of the black carriage. From this official’s surname, which means “saved,” and even more from his behavior and conversation it was clear that he came from the priestly estate. They said that Konstantin Petrovich had moved him close to his own person by advancing him from the rank of simple sexton—evidently he had spotted something exceptional in this modest junior clergyman. In the synod Tikhon Ieremeevich held a low, insignificant, and poorly paid post, but he was frequently honored with confidential tête-à-têtes with the chief procurator himself, so that there were many, even among the hierarchs, who were a little afraid of him.
    This lowly official, as quiet as a mouse, had been attached to Bubentsov as the eye of the church authorities, who preferred to keep a check even on those they trusted. At first he had performed his duties conscientiously, but by the time the aforementioned carriage arrived in Zavolzhsk, he had fallen completely under the spell of his temporary superior and become his unquestioning minion, evidently having come to the conclusion that no man can serve two masters. How Vladimir Lvovich won him over we do not know, but we imagine that for such an inventive and talented man it was not a very difficult task. Tikhon Ieremeevich remained true to his trade, only instead of spying on and nosing things out against Bubentsov, he now did so exclusively for his benefit—it is quite possible that being a man of far-seeing intelligence, he had identified some advantage to himself in such a change of vassalage. Though he was short, with a habit of constantly pulling his head down into his shoulders, Spasyonny possessed clawlike hands on unnaturally long arms that hung down almost as far as his