This time my surroundings changed little after the fog of the time-travel had receded. I found myself in a monastery's cell. The place didn't look like a welcome haven of Besson's dreams.

The walls were stone, once white, now slimy with green, and weeping with moisture. It was so dark, that even my eyes barely picked out a narrow bench, of the same stone. Unlike Dmitrii's palace in Uglich, there were no carpets or cushions to ward off cold and damp.

The man who slumped on the bench must have felt all of it in his old bones. His face was so deeply lined it seemed to be carved of a piece of driftwood. Patches of yellowed hair clung to his scalp, but when he smiled, black gaped between four remaining teeth.

But he smiled, and his sunken eyes lit with forbearance as he gazed upon Andrei who knelt in front of him.

Tough old guy! I thought, testing this time-and-space for Besson's presence.

His opinion brushed past my consciousness. Not victim broken by torture, but a martyr for his faith.

"Holy Father," Andrei said. "I beg you to follow me, for I can deliver you to safety in Novgorod. You have many friends there."

"No." The old man lisped through cracked lips. "I received holy communion three days hence and placed my life into the Lord's hands. Let me celebrate Christmas in peace."

"People need your forthrightness, Philip." Hood fell down to Andrei's shoulders, revealing the familiar flush of blonde hair and beard. His eyes glittered in the semi-darkness of the cell—with tears, I guessed.

"The Holy Synod had deposed me, my son, for sorcery and dissolute living. Have you forgotten?"

Andrei shrugged. "Lies."

His gesture was so familiar, I winced. How many times in our lives did we shrug off the official story like that? Seeing a man five hundred years dead habituated to it, stoppered my throat with an unwanted question: how far down the ages do I have to travel for things to stop being so poignantly familiar?

"You were martyred because you dared to remind Ivan the words Metropolitan Makarii spoke when anointing him, a Grand Prince of Moscow, as a sovereign of Russia-in-Entire, the Tsar over all of us," Andrei said.

"Would that he remembered the words as well as I did!" Philip sighed. A smile in his ruined face had a special beauty to it.

A joy bought with suffering is dearly bought, Besson piped up in my mind, but it's as indestructible as the precious gems.

Yeah, I replied. Andrei was on a fool's errand trying to argue with this old priest.

Metropolitan Philip, Besson told me. A saintly martyr.

Thanks, Bessopedia. I'd never met a saint before, but I imagined that at some point, they had the same zeal in their gaze as Philip. Like they had passed his point of no return and only wanted their death to matter.

Animated by an inner fire, Philip's voice rose, as his index finger pointed to the low ceiling. "A Tsar who does not hold to righteousness and the truth, he becomes a tormentor of his people, and no longer their ruler."

The chill must have gotten into his throat from the effort of speaking up, and he coughed to clear the phlegm.

Andrei waited patiently on his knees.

Still hoarse, Philip grated. "Makarii was a man of deep wisdom."

"So are you, Holy Father."

"Alas, the praise is undeserved." Philip rose his hands in a gesture of surrender to the higher authority. Welts from the shackles circled his bony wrists, as if one needed iron to keep a man this old from running. "Were I Makarii's equal, Tsar Ivan wouldn't persist on this unholy course."

Andrei's lips pinched in torment, but determination tilted his chin forward. This wasn't personal. This was a mission. "Laetentur Caeli," he said.

"Да веселятся небеса," Philip repeated in Russian with another smile made more genuine by the web of wrinkles on his cheeks. "I am not yet so far in my dotage that I forgot our great cause. It's in its service that I must stay."

Andrei's head whipped toward the dark part of the cell. "The Tsar is coming. It's now or never, Holy Father!" He lurched forward, as if to grab Philip in arms, like a child. Perhaps he could, because the old man had withered to skin and bone, but Philip closed his eyes and folded his hands for a prayer.

"If the Tsar is coming, it's time for you to leave. Ride to Novgorod at top speed, Andrei. Tell our friends that I will do my duty to our Lord and Savior, and the people."

Andrei rocked forward on his knees, but didn't interrupt. He was taut, remembering every word. His pose screamed at me to do the same. And Besson... Besson would have had, anyway.

"Tell them I must try, and if the Russian Tsar doesn't harken to me, they must ready what can be readied; save what can be saved and leave everything else at Lord's mercy."

Andrei didn't move until Philip had said all he had to say and paused. He came to his feet in a blur of motion, then froze again.

"Leave, for pity's sake." Philip said between wheezing breaths. "Leave, or you will doom innocent souls to save one unworthy man."

Andrei's muscular neck strained as he turned his head toward the door in the dark. His way out. An argument was brewing on his lips, and Philips' crooked fingers shook as if he wanted to sew the younger conspirator's mouth shut. "Laetentur Caeli!" he exclaimed.

The secret password finally spurred Andrei into action. He ran. I expected our shared vision to follow him after he blended with the darkness.

For a second it did.

He opened the door that remained invisible until that moment. Once revealed, the splotches of light from a hallway beyond it illuminated a four-inch thick bar and a ridiculously large lock. The mechanism hung limply, just like the figures of the two guards on the outside of Philip's cell. Andrei paid them no heed, but he bowed to the ground before shutting the door behind him.

My consciousness didn't follow Andrei, but battered against the walls of the cell. Besson remained as well.

"May Lord have mercy on his soul," he said in unison with Philip. They lived many years apart, having never met, yet both of them prayed together.

Not a man of faith, I watched the door behind which Andrei had disappeared.

It was made of oak so thick and had so much leather and felt insulation around its edges, that I hadn't heard a single sound until the orange light fine-lined it again. It wasn't much of a warning.

Then, the hinges screeched, and the door flung inward. It banged the wall like a weightless wicker gate, and a giant man burst into the cell. The torch in his hand waved menacingly, filling my vision with white, orange and red.

I winced, reaching for my temples before I remembered I had neither the head to rub, nor the fingers to rub with.

"Philipka!" the newcomer bellowed. "Prepare to answer for your crimes, reprobate!"

Besson's consciousness shrunk away from the voice and the tall, stooping figure in vast, fur-trimmed robes. He whimpered in my mind, Tsar Ivan! Cross my heart! It's the tsar!

As if I need the introductions!

Philip didn't whimper, despite facing the man who cast the longest shadow in Russia.

He rose from his cold stone seat and clutched his bent back to bow to the Tsar. He seemed even more frail before the man avalanching at him, but his bony hands stopped trembling.

"Tsar-Hope, for all the wrong I'd done, I shall answer to our Heavenly Father. It's not long before I go to meet Him. His realm is within my sight, I urge you to think of your soul's salvation."

Ivan's eyes, black in the dim light, bulged out of their sockets. I didn't recognize his face from the paintings and film, but I recognized the madness written on his features. The artist truly had an epiphany through the ages to guess so well.

"Would you shame me, shameless cur!" Ivan hit the stone floor with the ornate walking staff he carried in his hand.

"Aye," the old man said simply. "My fear of mortal powers is gone. I can speak freely now to warn you, Tsar. Greed and hubris are your downfall, and if you don't temper them, your ancient line will fail."

"Bite off your lying tongue! My line would only break if I listen to the traitors who wish to stab me in the back, crowd my palace and poison the air I breathe with their advice!"

"They do it in the service of goodness," Philip said.

Ivan only waved his wide sleeve in the air. Sable fur on it was so thick, it almost hid his hand.

"They contradict me at every turn, when it was God that put me to rule my domain. I am a descendant of Augustus the Emperor, the descendant of Yaroslav and Ryurik, and by right I am the Prince of Moscow and Kiev, the Tsar and sovereign of Russia-Entire!"

Even though the Tsar's rant had a powerful flow to it, the mention of Kiev startled me. I remembered Ivan for taking Kazan' and pushing the boundaries down Volga all the way to the Caspian Sea, but not his feelings about Ukraine. Probably because he won at Kazan' and never conquered Kiev.

I had an inkling though someone was already revising the next edition to make sure that the younglings would imbue how ancient Putin's war was, ignoring everything that intervened. As if adding centuries to a cause made the bloodletting easier.

If my history book for a very average school was thick and printed in small font, imagine how much they would find in the archives full of dusty pages. In there, if you dug deep enough, you could likely find enough patina to make any bullshit sound venerable.

Thinking of it, I missed some of Ivan's speech, but nevermind. This guy was born for the Age of Twitter and had plenty more left in the can.

"There was one, Ferdinand, who called himself an Emperor—an Emperor, bah! When he's elected by his lessors, rather than inherit his patrimony from his ancestors!—this false Emperor wrote he'd grant me the title of a King, if I put our See under the Pope in Rome. To him I told: 'I'm Tsar.'

"I am Tsar, and ever my forefathers were sovereigns in our domain! Our Lord Jesus Christ ordains I wage war against the godless Tatars and all those who unjustly deny me my patrimony!"

I was drowning in the Tsar's tirade by now, and Besson was out like a light.

The old man Philip didn't flinch. "Look at the ravages you've incurred in the land with wars and rapine. Wouldn't gentle Anastasia, resting now in bliss at Mother Mary's side, have begged you to stop? Repent, O Tsar, repent!"

If Philip hoped that the mention of Tsarina Anastasia would wake something in Ivan's soul, he hit the bull's eyes. But instead of kindness or repentance, Ivan shook with anger and sprayed spittle.

"Don't you dare speak Tsarina's name! You dastardly fiends, you false priests, you lewd obscurantists! You presumed to tell me when to attend my Tsarina to separate us! And when I didn't listen, they poisoned her! Like they'd poisoned my mother!"

His anger mixed with zeal, pushing him over the edge. He was galloping now like a maddened stallion, biting down on the bridle, seeing nothing else out of gleaming eyes. We inherited this state of mind from the wild rides across Asian steppes and from the berserker fury of Northerners. There was no stopping when this mood seized us, be it in love, in villainy, in repentance. Never stopping us.

"Me to repent, me!" Ivan blared. "How dare you blaspheme, cur and lewder!"

The robes that should have weighed a ton with the velvet, the gold embroidery, the pearls and the fur, streamed behind Ivan as if it was gauze as he rushed out of the chamber.

"Lord forgive him." Philip raised his arm to bless the thundering Tsar. The door swung a few times on the hinges, and didn't close all the way. Ivan's roar echoed under the vaulted ceiling of the stone hallway. "Maluta! Skurrratov!"

Ivan's red henchman entered and advanced on Philip, who now knelt almost at the same spot where Andrei had knelt only minutes before. He folded his withered hand together and lowered gray head, while Maluta cracked his knuckles. His face was stoney to prepare for dealing with Tsar Ivan's meddlesome priest.

Malyuta tore the old man away and tossed him disgustedly at the wall. The bones gave out a dry crack of kindling. Old as he was, and at death's door, Philip didn't climb to his feet. He lay in a heap on the cold floor, a broken scarecrow, and cried without shame from pain.

He stopped only when Maluta got within one step of him. "Even for you, with all the innocent blood on your hands, our Lord has atonement. Repent, Grigorii," he whispered.

I gasped. Grigorii? What? Can he see me?

Besson hiccupped and sniffled in my mind: His... his Christening name. Grigorii Skuratov, Prince Bel'skii, and his private name is Maluta.

Great, so I'm the namesake of this ugly butcher! Thanks, Mom and Dad... wherever, whenever you are.

Metropolitan Philip didn't struggle when Malyuta unhurriedly pressed the meaty shoulder into his face. Not until the last, until the senseless convulsions of every living creature clinging to life took over. They were as useless as the squirming of a worm on a fisherman's hook.

As I stared at the smirk, slashing Maluta's blood-red beard, Besson's desire for a power to step into the vision grappled at my consciousness, pushing, pushing...

Stop it! You'd only wind up as a third body on the floor! Or worse, we both would end up bodiless and attached to Maluta bloody Skuratov! My sanity couldn't take it.

I understand.

Once Besson let go of his insane plan, the past day broke into a giant box of puzzle pieces.

The only thing I remembered in the swirl of returning to the space-time Besson inhabited corporeally, was Andrei perched on the monastery's thatched roof, in an improbable position. Then he kissed his cross, sprinted along the ridge easier than could have run on a perfect gym floor, and dove into a headlong leap off its edge.

And that's why he was in Novgorod, not Moscow when the massacre came. He was commanded to go there. For his sake, I hoped he had saved someone there.