Sister Pelagia and the Red Cockerel by Boris Akunin Page A

camp-fire, whinnying fearfully and flicking their ears.
    Pelagia could not help recalling the Zavolzhian tales about all sorts of evil spirits in the forest: about the bear Babai, who took girls for his brides, about the fox Lizukha, who appeared in the form of a fair maiden and lured young lads and even family men away forever. According to the Zavolzhian legends, the most terrible creature of all was the man-wolf Struk, with eyes of fire and huge teeth of iron: people frightened their children with him so that they wouldn’t wander far into the forest. Struk’s jaws belched fire and smoke and he didn’t run at all, he hopped across the treetops like a lynx, and if he fell and hit the ground, he turned into a dashing young fellow in a gray caftan. God forbid that you should ever meet a mouse-gray man like that in the forest.
    In the town, these ancient legends seemed to be the naïve and endearing creations of the national spirit, or—as people said more and more often nowadays—folklore, but in the Forest, with an owl hooting funereally and a pack of wolves howling in the distance, it was easy to believe in both Babai and Struk.
    And there could be no doubt at all that the Forest was alive, that it was listening to you and watching you, and that this glance was unfriendly, even hostile. Pelagia sensed the oppressive gaze of the forest on her back and the nape of her neck. Sometimes, indeed, she sensed it so keenly that she glanced around and furtively crossed herself. It must be truly terrifying to be all alone in the forest thickets.
    Fortunately, she was not alone in the Forest. The expedition fitted out by Sergei Sergeevich was six in number, not counting the corpse.
    Striding along at the front, tapping vigorously with his staff, was the guide—the district sergeant major; behind him came Dolinin himself, riding on a sturdy light bay relinquished to the important visitor by the district police officer; then the body, packed with straw and lumps of ice, lying in a box on a cart accompanied by two guards. The small caravan was concluded by a wagon covered with tarpaulin, carrying the provisions and the baggage. The Zytyak driver sat on his box, with Pelagia sitting beside him, stoically enduring the jolting over the potholes and the monotonous chanting of her broad-faced neighbor, and the acrid smoke of his birch-bark pipe.
    The holy sister glanced around fearfully, all the while feeling amazed at herself. How had it happened that she, a quiet nun and the headmistress of a convent school, came to find herself in this remote wilderness, among strangers, accompanying the body of a scandalous false prophet? Truly wondrous are Thy ways, O Lord. Or it could perhaps be put differently—the nun had been afflicted by temporary insanity. The energetic investigator from St. Petersburg had turned her head and bewitched her.
    THEY HAD DISEMBARKED from the steamer Sturgeon in Zavolzhsk. Sergei Sergeevich had not detained any of the passengers, not even the Foundlings, since he had a definite suspect—the passenger from cabin 13.
    Pelagia had been astounded that Manuila’s followers expressed no desire to accompany their adored prophet’s body on its final journey, but continued on along their own way, to the Holy Land. Dolinin’s comment concerning this was as follows: “Being a prophet’s a thankless kind of job. Croak, and no one gives a damn for you anymore.”
    “But it seems to me, on the contrary, that this man, whoever he might be, has done his job,” said the holy sister, interceding for Manuila and his mangy flock. “The word has outlived the prophet, as it rightly should. Manuila is gone, but the Foundlings have not been diverted from their path. And, by the way, I don’t know why they call themselves that.”
    “They say that Manuila sought them out among men,” Dolinin explained. “He found them, picked them up out of the stinking filth, swaddled them in white garments, and bestowed the blue stripe on