Worldbuilding Prompt #1006 - The Funeral of Ivan Sergeyevitch

This post was inspired by a prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #1006 - Funeral.

Naturally I twisted it a little, as my first thought was to recall the Russian custom in the 18th and 19th centuries. When a man was conscripted, his family held a funeral for him, because the term of service was so long and the mortality rate so high that it was unlikely the man would ever return home, even assuming he wanted to.

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

It had been fifteen long, hard years. Ivan had slogged through dust, rain and snow. Enough miles to go around the world. He'd worn out hundreds of pairs of shoes, and would have worn out more if the supply wagons had kept up. But he knew how to wrap cloth around his feet and march on it all day. He'd fought in half a dozen major battles, and innumerable skirmishes. He'd been wounded six times, and considered himself lucky.

Now, the latest war had ended and he had been discharged. Not because his time was up, but because his country had lost the war and had to pay an indemnity to the victors. There was no money. His accumulated pay had been converted to worthless paper. He was left with the uniform he stood up in and a handful of copper coins. He'd sold his gorget to buy food on the way back home.

Home.

He barely remembered the place. A nameless village deep in the hinterland, across a hundred leagues of steppe, woods and grassland. But he'd found it, by instinct and luck more than skill. It had taken him months to walk all the way back there.

He realised when he paced slowly down the dirt track leading to the log houses that he couldn't remember which one he'd been born in, even though it was clear nothing new had been built here in decades. The place was timeless.

So he knocked on the first door he came to. An old woman opened the door, looking at him with suspicious eyes.

"Yes, Major ? What do you want ?"

"Good day to you, I wonder if you could point me to the house of Sergey Ivanovitch and his wife ?"

The woman cackled. "Sergey is long dead, that good-for-nothing. I'm surprised anyone remembers him. Did he owe taxes or something ? But Beata still lives in his house, the fifth one down the street."

That was easy enough; there was only one road in the village, if you could dignify a rutted track with that title. So Ivan thanked the woman and walked to the fifth house, quite a distance as the buildings were widely spaced with vegetable gardens between them.

He knocked on the aged but beautifully carved wooden door. It was answered by another old woman, even older than the first.

"Oh... I'm... sorry, I must have made a mistake," he stuttered. "I was looking for Elizabeata Sergeyeva, but I must have the wrong house."

The ancient woman looked at him through bleary eyes. "I'm Elizabeata. But if you've come about my Sergey's debts you're too late, my young major. He died five years ago."

Ivan's heart stopped. This woman couldn't be, could she ? His mother would be in her forties, not a withered old crone.

"I'm Ivan...." he said, at a loss.

"Ivan ?" she looked at him, then more closely. Panic filled her eyes. "You can't be Ivan. My son is dead ! He died fifteen years ago !"

"But it is me, mother. I've come home !"

The woman grabbed the besom from behind the door, thrusting it at him bristles first. "Begone, evil spirit ! Ivan had his funeral the day the soldiers took him. I have no son, and no husband. I live alone with my cat, and that's how it should be. Now go ! You're a cursed ghost ! Go away you evil devil dressed as a man, before I call the priest to cast you out and the hetman to beat you out !"

With tears streaming down his face, Ivan fled.

He stopped at the end of the road, beside the village's church. Like everything else here it was built of logs, but it had been plastered, with red ochre painted walls and grey-green onion domes.

Outside he was surprised to see a platoon of dragoons. Their uniforms were a darker green than his worn old one, and cut closer. He guessed that was what was fashionable now. An economy measure disguised as style.

Over the weeping of mothers and girlfriends, he could hear the sergeant's voice. "Come on, we've got a quota of twenty to fill. The Empire is at war again, and the army has to be rebuilt. If you don't pick your best score of lads, we'll pick them for you."

Ivan knew what he had to do. He called out to the recruiting sergeant.

"You want a man who knows how to follow the colours, who knows how to fire a musket, and to give and take orders ? You want a man who knows the drill and can teach it to your recruits ? I've already had my funeral, and it only leaves one home for me. Take me and spare one of these village boys."