The soldier pouted. “Oh. The secret beau. I might have known. I’d hoped you wanted to gossip with me about all this houp-là.”
“I wouldn’t waste your time, but my question isn’t frivolous.”
He drew himself up into military strictness, though at his most erect, he still looked the runt of the company. “I doubt I can supply the answer you require. But I’ll try.”
She felt her cheeks coloring and expected the soldier was getting the wrong idea. Yet she couldn’t tell him she was asking about her brother, because Mademoiselle Ekaterina de Robichaux didn’t have a brother. “The boy’s name is Luka Maximovitch Rudin. He comes from the village of Miersk. That’s in the oblast of Tyer, south of here.”
“I know neither the fellow nor the location. However, I could send an envoy to hunt for the answer to your question, if it can be found easily.” The soldier’s face became more impassive than ever.
“I’d be glad if you did. Shall I shall meet you back here?”
“I may not still be at this post. But if I find out anything, I shall see that the information is registered here for your retrieval.”
“You are too kind.” Elena nodded her head. She felt like Miss Bristol, starchy and opinionated.
“I hope I’m able to locate news of your … your acquaintance. Next, please.”
Back in the shadows of the great-aunt, Elena flumped upon the love seat. She felt exhausted already. The great-aunt said, “I hope you’ve eaten enough not to faint. The dancing will begin soon, I expect.”
“I’m hardly undernourished these days. But I’m not inclined to dance.”
“Oh, I am so sorry. But I have been filling up your dance card. You will dance.”
Elena looked at the great-aunt and shook her head in objection. Before Madame Sophia could remonstrate further, a burst of singing shot out across the waters. Forty bearded Russian monks standing on a separate barge were droning in voices lower than Elena would have thought possible. All throughout the pavilions, everyone said “Ohhh!” A few messy starbursts, outlines of peony blossoms in gold and purple light, exploded in the sky — so these are fireworks, thought Elena. The fancies bloomed but faded too fast. She held her breath. Would that their stars could fall all the way to the water, surrounding us in light … what they might suggest to us!
But then the boom of their thunder made her think of rushing horse hooves, of double lightning spilled upon the steeple and striking the trestle bridge. All the trouble of a season sprung loose from the annual schedule.
“The Tsar approaches,” said Madame Sophia. “Haul me to my feet, Ekaterina. Even at my tough old age, hoary at the temple and hairy at the chin, I stand for our blessed guardian.”
The witch and the girl paced to keep warm, trying to think what to do.
Cat: “I am worried out of my skin about my great-aunt.”
“Stay in your skin; it gets sloppy otherwise, and I didn’t bring a pail.”
“But if she’s not here in Saint Petersburg, she may still be looking for me in the forests around Miersk. And what if she found Elena on the train and accused her of conspiracy to steal the gift for the Tsar? What trouble Elena would be in. And who knows what wrath ma tante might have called down upon the villagers of Miersk?”
“I never got the sense you cared a whisker about your so-called friend. So why should you care about those lumpen people that spawned her?”
Cat shrugged. The truth was too simple and ugly to say out loud. In the few hours since she’d been released from the spell of Dumb Doma, the memory of that good doctor, the ancient nursemaid, Elena’s sick mother — it had all taken a firmer hold. Those folks had come to seem as much like a family as any she had ever known. She didn’t have a strong basis for comparison.
The witch picked at a whitehead on her nose, trying to agitate it into greater repugnance. “Don’t romanticize the rurals. Those villagers wanted to turn you out of their cozy little Heritage of Serfdom village display.”
“They have a right to protect themselves. What other rights do they have?”
“Oh, so now you’re going to prattle like a whining broadside circulated in a student ghetto? I’ll amuse myself in song.” Baba Yaga began to warble:
“Sunrise, sunset.
Unwise, upset,
Peasants gotta sing.
Nothing’s so bad it can’t be funny,
Nothing’s so good it doesn’t sting.
Sunrise, sunset,
Uprise? Not yet.
Peasants sing away.
Justice is scheduled for tomorrow.
Business as usual today.”
“Very funny,” said Cat. “I think you’re nervous.”
“I sing to drive my cares away. So go away already.”
Cat kept still. All the trouble into which she’d plunged Elena! So what if Baba Yaga was right — Cat really hadn’t given Elena much thought. There was still time. Maybe. Where was that child now? What if she’d leaped off the train, hurt herself, starved in the woods? Or been attacked by a beast the way Cat herself had been herded and hounded by — well, by a terrifying kitten?
“Let’s go to the railway station and see if we can find out any information about my great-aunt’s train,” suggested Cat. A place to start, anyway.
Off they went, clopping and splashing, two pedestrians navigating through the display of imperial muscle. “They don’t make cities like they used to!” the witch fussed. “All this mausoleum marble, all these bronze swans and other municipal gewgaws. What are they trying to prove?”
It occurred to Cat that Baba Yaga was less comfortable when lost in a throng than when she was queen of her own superior society out in her secret woods.
Yet her disguise seemed to hold. To Cat she still had a face as high as a medieval shield, but the passersby on foot and in carriage didn’t turn their heads to gape. Children stared, but children always stare. Baba Yaga stuck her tongue out at them, but that was a simple curse. More than once she received a curse in return.
The doors of the Vitebsky terminal were closed. ALL RAIL SERVICE SUSPENDED DUE TO FLOODING, said a sign. No one answered their knocking.
As night began to fall, Baba Yaga got directions to the Winter Palace from a beggar huddled near a fire in a brazier. “At the very least,” she said to Cat, “we can walk in and ask the Tsar if he knows about the missing Firebird.”
“At the very least,” replied Cat, “we can deliver the present to the Tsar that my great-aunt brought from Paris. Then, if the authorities have accused Miersk or Elena of theft or conspiracy, they’ll have to let the charges drop.”
“You maintain a juvenile belief in due process. Still, I’m in the mood for a party. Or a dust-up.”
Behind a soldiers’ barracks, shivering in the cold, Cat changed into the gown that Baba Yaga had magicked up for her. Baba Yaga didn’t adjust so much as a button on her governess uniform. “I am getting to like this martinet drag,” she admitted. “It brings out my inner Mary Poppinskaya.”
“It’s not too late to call upon the Tsar?” asked Cat.
“You said the fireworks were for this evening. If he hasn’t invited friends in to watch, he’ll be sitting in front of the fire in his comfy slippers with his slobbering borzois nearby. He’ll be grateful to grant an audience to a subject like you.”
“And you.”
“I am not his subject.”
When they approached the river, they caught sight of the pavilions. So: This was the grand festival. Not in the palace, but outside. The Tsar wouldn’t be home answering his doorbell; he’d be here, presiding. And they were punctual. By the time they approached the checkpoint, most of the revelers had arrived. The pavilions were filled with hundreds of the lofty guests, their laughter skimming upon the icy wind.
“Name?” asked the guard. It was the Deputy Sub-Lieutenant.
Cat gave her name. The man regarded his manifest and turned a few pages. Then he stroked his waxen moustaches and said, “You’d better remove yours
elf before I have you arrested.”
“What is the meaning of this?” asked Baba Yaga.
“Miss Yaga,” said Cat to the witch. “Please. Not above your station.”
“What are you talking about? My station is at the top of Chomolungma! Move aside. Let me at this regrettable bit of sour sausage. His hair is unnatural. A crime against the Crayola company.”
“You’ll have to excuse my governess.” Cat kicked the witch, silencing her. “She’s overexcited at the prospect of this festival. Can you check again? I’m sure there is some mistake. I’ve come all the way from London.”
“If you don’t have papers to press your suit, I must assume you’re giving a false name. I wouldn’t care to take into custody a young woman as neatly turned out and well-spoken as you, but I suspect you are a rebel of some sort. Begone before you leave me no choice.”
“But I have used my own name. I do insist that I am the great-niece of Madame Sophia Borisovna Orlova.”
The officer checked the list again and shook his head. “Madame Orlova and her ward have already been admitted.”
“Fraud,” said Baba Yaga, hopping on one foot and then the other. “Fraud and chicanery, naked flimflammery, charlatan trickery, knickknacking knavery!”
“But we have a present — a present from Paris!” Cat hardly knew how to proceed. In London, she could plead painful shyness and blush a gentleman into submission; in Paris, she might flirt, up to a point. But she didn’t remember the best strategy for getting her way in Russia. Bribery?
The soldier was impassive. “Judging by your crony’s discomposure, either she has to use the comfort chamber or your gift is a bomb with a lighted fuse.” He pulled out a whistle and blew upon it. Just at that instant, though, the fireworks and the bass singers began, respectively, to explode and to rumble, and all heads turned to the sky. In the mêlée, Cat turned away from the entrance desk, pulling Baba Yaga by the horny hand.
“Why are you giving up? I can take young Colonel Sunovavitch!” cried the witch. “Both hands tied behind my back! I’ll comfort chamber him.”
Cat muttered, “If we press our cause, my great-aunt will be summoned to answer questions. For all we know, she’d be charged with harboring an enemy agent under a false alias. At least we know she’s here.”
“If someone’s impersonating you, someone could be impersonating her, too. Or maybe your doddery aunt has scared up another great-niece.”
“With the same name? Anyway, I have no cousins. But it couldn’t be Elena Rudina — she hasn’t the … the …”
“The moxie.”
“The wit. But how are we going to find out?”
They looked upriver and downriver. From the eastern approach, perhaps launched off the Palace Embankment by the Summer Garden, and guarded by a line of ships from the Russian navy, a barge was emerging. Lit by smoking torches, it fluttered with pennants. The gold of Russian wheat, the crimson of Russian beets. The blue of Ural valleys and white of refined Ural salt.
In the center of an armored guard of forty soldiers with rapiers aloft stood the Tsar of All the Russias.
A magnificent sight. I well remember, through both my working eyes. I had been watching from the Winter Palace. No one had thought to invite me to the party, but I was coming closer to involvement in this mishap.
From the western approach, nearer the sea, another rank of great ships stood shoulder to shoulder. An impenetrable hedge of naval might. Access to the pavilion across the water, from upriver and down and also from the northern armlet of the Neva River, was blocked.
“We are lost,” said Cat.
“Fiddlesticks,” said Baba Yaga. She put down the briefcase she’d been carrying and said, “Excuse me, I see the establishment is full. But surely you have a little table for two somewhere?”
The table unfolded itself. Its legs reappeared. Happily enough it walked into the river. Baba Yaga stepped upon it and beckoned to Cat. Then the tabletop became a raft. Under a sky of pyrotechnic explosions, as the table legs churned the waters of the river, the girl and the witch floated toward the festival from which they’d been turned away.
Every head turned to regard the advent of the emperor.
The Tsar stood upon a podium behind a rank of forty soldiers with rapiers, who held box formation, facing outward in four directions.
He was dressed in the Prussian style: tight leggings in high boots, a snug waistcoat glinting with knots of gold braid. He was made to look taller by the crown of slender silver finials studded with jewels, from which a pouf of purple velvet emerged. His beard was clipped tight in the modern European style.
The roar of the crowd nearly eclipsed the cannon sound of the fireworks. Trying to sing over the racket, the bass choir became hoarse, but that didn’t matter — few notice hoarseness in a bass voice.
“Oh, my,” said Elena, rising with all the others at the progress of the imperial barge.
Madame Sophia: “Worth the trip from London, assuredly? Worth missing a month or two of walking two abreast about the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens? With Susanna what’s-her-name?”
“Worth more than I can say.”
“What is her name? I forget.”
“I can’t think — it’s the Tsar!” This was the first time Elena had been asked to supply information that Cat would know and she didn’t. The luck of timing was with her, though. When the Tsar hies into view, all attention rivets to him.
The barge tucked against the eastern end of the floating court. The Tsar appeared at the head of a carpeted gangplank. The fireworks sputtered to a halt. The basses rested their tonsils. The Tsar said a few words to open the festival. No doubt they were magnificent words, but few could hear what he said.
Then he stepped onto the pavilion at the opposite end of the chain from the treasury. The hum of comment began to blur the air.
Elena: “What’s going to happen next?”
“I don’t know,” said Madame Sophia. “Why don’t you get a plate of food, Ekaterina? It could be hours before we’re summoned for an audience. Or we could wait all night and find the Tsar has suddenly decided to retire, and we’ll all be called back tomorrow evening. I can’t predict, but you need to keep up your strength.”
“I don’t think I could eat a thing.” A remark Elena hadn’t often made.
“Ma chérie. Any eligible gentleman of breeding knows that she who flirts before her marriage may well flirt after it. Ask Tolstoi. But few men are interested in women who are too demure to look at them. Child, you will have your whole life to examine those shoes. For now, pick up your chin. You will never be so young as you are tonight. Live this evening fully. The slippery moment will pop like a bubble soon enough.”
Elena supposed there was some truth to what Madame Sophia said, even if she thought she was speaking to the real Ekaterina, not to an impostor.
She looked at the great-aunt and replied, “Your advice is sound.”
“Besides, with my eyes, these days I can’t tell a white diamond from a black bean. I want you to regale me with descriptions of all this when it is over.”
Elena glanced this way and that. She hadn’t learned the rare language of Paris couture. She couldn’t tell an Empire waist from an S-curve hourglass. Frankly, she didn’t know passementerie from pastrami. Her crammed education on board the train had covered only so much.
But under assignment, she began examining the dignitaries. Some grey-bearded and beribboned, others clean shaven and foppish. Black evening coats. Military men in dress uniform so trim they looked as if they would squeak if poked.
And the confident maidens and their stale mothers and beaky chaperones. A catalog of net worths, or net needs, in jewels brokered or borrowed. Diamonds, opals, pearls.
As she watched the crowd flow by, Elena tried to make an inventory of costumes for Madame Sophia. Gowns with fringe. Gloves with buttons to the elbow. Bodices of beaded jet. What else would the great-aunt want to picture?
Hats. Platforms for fruit, r
ibbons, and feathers from the birds of every continent.
And the shoes. And fans. And boas. And purses. And parasols.
She grew dizzy trying to name the colors she saw. Ivory, amethyst, oyster, cabernet. Gold silk, silver bead, copper thread.
In trying to drag these visions into rich language, Elena suffered a perversity of the soul. It came upon her like a cramp: sudden, sharply. She found herself missing the chromatic scheme of home. The thousand browns of forest bark. The blues of cloudless January mornings. The whites of winter, from new snow to pale ice.
And then the first greens of the year. New ferns in old bracken. Fresh emerald needles on venerable conifers. All the colors from that shocking rash called springtime.
But Elena gave up. More colors in the world than words to name them.
Is it odd that thinking of color, of all things, should have released her homesickness at last? I think I understand. As I’ve mentioned, my own sense of color has become compromised. In any case, Elena suddenly saw the rank of pavilions as if from a distance: as arrayed in a bed nook, say, a certain play of elegance, nothing more. And in recalling the palette of her ordinary world, she was attacked by nostalgia: faces of Miersk bloomed. In value and light, they eclipsed even the fireworks that had announced the advent of the Tsar.
The doctor, Peter Petrovich, with his sour-jelly cheeks. What would he name this day? Pinch Yourself to Make Sure You’re Not Dreaming Day?
And old Grandmother Onna, that scorched soul, a bole loosed from a chestnut tree, refusing to rot, refusing also to root. Chased by the winds of her mild detachment from one house to the next, dispensing slightly deranged attention and comfort. Taking care of Elena’s mother.
Her mother.
Elena wiped the corner of her eyes with the tips of her pinkies, flicking away wet, and diverted her attention to Luka and Alexei instead. Luka. That was why she was here, why she’d braved so much. Standing here in this floating market-garden of prospective brides, at last she felt snapped free of the perilous spell.