Excerpt: Silver, Iron, Wood, and Stone

Every night since the attack, Katerina Aleksandrovna had awakened in time to say the Midnight Office, and since she had a bed to herself tonight, she was able to get up and pray it with the appropriate prostrations. When she lay back down, she remembered how hard it had been to get up for Midnight Office her first few weeks as a postulant, and how twice she had even slept through the knocking on her cell door. But now she was so rested after scarcely any sleep that sleeping again after the Midnight Office felt luxurious, like sleeping in a featherbed from three hours after sundown to three hours after sunup had felt when she was still a princess living in the palace in the capital city, with no decisions to make except input on who might be a good husband.

A good husband - Katya's heart felt like it had closed up as she remembered the months of listening to descriptions of suitors, how she had wished she could enter a monastery, but knew that with her lack of brothers, it was important to produce a son as quickly as possible. And there had been a cousin of nobility, Zhelyazko Stepanovich, who had owned a large estate, who was reputed to treat his serfs well - so well, in fact, that they had encouraged villagers who owned their own land to come live on the estate, where in lean times they would be supported.

And she had looked from a tower window at the man, and found him attractive to gaze upon, and had spoken with him with her aunt and younger sister present, and had found him intelligent to speak with. And he had promised that he would provide a library for her to the best of his abilities.

And they had wed, and Katya had cast aside her dream of entering a monastery and even looked forward sincerely to bearing him sons. That had been in Eighthmonth; in Twelfthmonth of that same year, he had taken sick, and she had stayed with him, bringing him cool broth and fresh milk to drink, wiping his forehead when he was too hot to sweat, reciting psalms to him when he could not sleep.

But before the end of Firstmonth he had died, his face twisted with his agony. Katya had known at that point that she was not pregnant, had seen in the death of her Zhelsha a judgement against her decision to marry rather than enter a monastery. And with her father's permission she had gone to the monastery between the rivers and requested to become a novice.

She had to wait for a year after her husband's death even to become a novice, staying at the monastery as a guest. On the second day of Secondmonth, the year after Zhelyazko Stepanovich died, on the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, she became a novice; but now she had to wait either until the Pentecost after she had been a novice for a whole year, or the Pentecost after she turned twenty-one, whichever was later, before she could even be asked by the abbot to join the monastery. She became a novice in the year of Our Lord one thousand one hundred eighty-nine; she turned twenty in Sixthmonth of that same year. But then in Thirdmonth of that year, that very month of that year, the year of Our Lord one thousand one hundred ninety, the monastery had been destroyed - and now it seemed that with her sisters dead, she would have to marry again.