“But what will I do?”
“Go search high and low, and see if you can find the golden Firebird. If you can inch forward and clip one of his tail feathers, you can make a wish and put all your problems to rights.”
Another devotee of folk magic? Or was she being sardonic? “I need some advice I can use.”
“Advice? Don’t waste your energies fretting. The morning is wiser than the night, my ducky. The train will be back in the station by dawn. If not, you’re welcome to starve with the rest of us. But don’t worry. If it gets too much for you, just outside this cottage is a convenient well. A more efficient method to drown yourself is hard to find. Splish-splash.”
Cat thought of the drowned daughters of Miersk. Perhaps that had unsettled the old woman’s mind.
The desolation followed Cat into her sleep. She was in an unrecognizable world that bore almost no resemblance to the world she knew. Even though the world she knew was wide indeed. The Happyweather School for Young Ladies in Kensington, London. The boulevards and bistros around her great-aunt’s Paris apartments near Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where Cat spent the shorter of school breaks. The Manhattan town house where her parents sometimes lived; she had been there once. And scraps of Moscow, and Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean, and Biarritz on the cold Atlantic.
The landscape of her dreams, though, resembled her known world only to the extent that the sky was still above the earth. Everything else was so imponderably different that, tossing and waking for a moment, she could find no words to describe the differences, and drifted off to sleep again on a sort of raft of dread. A raft that threatened to overturn, and make her the next drowned girl of Miersk.
Miss Bristol, one of life’s pests, was at the bolted door again. She knocked and said something in a language — French, English, Italian — Elena didn’t know or care to know. In a voice made throatier by her weeping, she replied in Russian, “Go away.”
“I see,” editorialized Miss Bristol in Russian. “You are speaking the mother tongue out of some benighted sense of association with your little serf friend. Very well. Your dinner is on the rolling cart. Your great-aunt excuses your attendance at the dinner table for this evening. I have persuaded her you are ill. I should recommend that as you have your meal in silence, consider your cruelty in depriving your great-aunt of your company.” She sniffed a long elastic sniff, as if a bit of damp material in her sinuses couldn’t decide whether to drop or be sucked into her brain. “Conduct your toilet with care, and say your prayers before retiring. I shall see you in the morning. I am still suffering with the very cold you seem to have, or else I should insist you come bid me good night.” She coughed convincingly and moved away.
Elena waited for full silence — silence heard over the noise of the iron horse dragging its carriages along the rails. She would make a second attempt to escape.
When she guessed it was safe, she unbolted the chamber door and opened it a crack. In the corridor she found a little table on wheels. The top was bordered with brass rods to keep things from sliding off. A blue plate with a gold rim sat centered in the middle of a thick white cloth. A dome, its handle in the shape of a disgruntled swan, covered the plate.
Elena dragged in the cart and bolted the door again.
She gripped the swan and lifted the dome. The most heavenly smell in the world clouded up in soft rounds of steam. For a moment she couldn’t see; her eyes were watering almost as much as her mouth. She swiped at the steam as if opening the curtains on a miracle.
She ate the food so fast she couldn’t stop to think what it was. Flaps of pale simmered meat of some sort and peeled, unblemished potatoes, cut into chunks and boiled till their hard edges were blunted. Two small perfect onions so identical that one could wear them as earrings. Ha. She’d never thought of earrings before in her life. But, oh, the fragrance. Spooned over everything, a sauce of gravy and cream and some aromatic herbs. A crisp pillow of bread, a scoop of butter melting upon it. A glass of water with some wine mixed in.
Elena ate and drank everything in three minutes.
She licked the plate and then the inside of the dome as far as her tongue would reach. Minutes later she threw up into the basin in the corner. But her stomach was more satisfied than it had been since — since ever.
The dinner revived her. She was braver, ready to make her escape. At the moment, the train was keeping a serious pace. Sooner or later, it would have to slow down at some station, to take on water or tinder. Or other passengers.
While waiting, Elena peered in a cupboard and found a dozen clean and perfect outfits. Full skirts and less full skirts, bodices attached or separate, shawls and ribbons, bonnets and shoes. Items she couldn’t name or imagine how to wear. A bleached blue parasol with imbecilic ruffles. Some matching shoes with the same ruffles.
She was so far from home now. Who knew if she might meet strangers in the forest? To appeal to their sense of obligation, she would exchange her own rude clothes for some of Cat’s. The items looked to be the same size, or near enough, for Elena to wear.
She undressed, pushed her commoner’s threads out the window into the dark, and chose a crinkly beige frock with crimson trim.
Elena in the mirror. Her calves shone back at her, shocked. But with her hair brushed, in this half-light of dusk, she could almost pass for Cat.
She put her hands to the back of her head and tried to heap her hair up top, the way Cat wore hers. The resemblance was even stronger. The nape of her neck felt naked and shaming; she endured that.
She prowled. Opened drawers. Books, diaries, a bottle of ink, a few pens made of polished wood. Opened low china jars filled with a flowery powder. Sniffed vials of liquid that smelled like heaven but tasted like poison. Perfume, perhaps. She washed out her mouth again.
She looked under the bed, where she’d stashed the ornate box in which the Fabergé egg belonged. Nothing else under the bed. No trapdoor under the carpet. No hatch in the ceiling. No turn screw to undo the bars on her window. No way out.
With every moment spent nuzzling the luxury in which Cat lived, Elena saw more clearly the danger into which she’d stumbled. Before she could become paralyzed by temptation, though, she felt the train respond to the resistance of brakes. The carriages jolted.
She glanced out the window. The world had gone mauve and silver, indistinct in the dusk. The light behind her in the chamber cast a gold reflection only a few inches deep. She saw her hand at the edge of the curtain, mirrored. She put her hand out flat against the glass to touch a glass hand from the other direction.
Now or never, she thought, and gathered her courage. The passage looked empty, and the door to the parlor was closed. Perhaps the others were eating an evening meal. She slipped to the transept and reached one of the outer doors. Through the high slit of glass, she could see the tracks describing a gentle curve. The halftone twilight was partly because of fog, though fog is not a winter phenomenon in Russia. They must be passing through a steppe of some sort, she thought. A grassland worn into flatness by the wind. She slid open the door and leaned out as the train slowed further to enter a curve. Ready, steady …
The world shifted, as worlds will do when you travel. A turning wind parted the mists. Elena discovered a double train. An upside-down train, its reflection. An iron horse rolling along on the wheels of its overturned cousin. The tracks laid out on clusters of pilings.
The mists were the result of evening light upon water, and the lake was broader than any prairie Elena could imagine. It might not be deep — it could not be deep — but there was no telling, and six feet deep was too deep.
Elena couldn’t swim. Ever since her friends — ever since her father — she’d never been able to look out across a stretch of pond without feeling that it had the hands of devil-maids waiting to drag her under. She could not jump now.
Still, she got to her knees and inched herself forward until her head and some of her shoulders were cantilevered out the train door.
/> She didn’t know what she wanted to look at. Perhaps, as this vacant fog-scape seemed so otherworldly, she might see her drowned father below the surface of the still, still water.
Whether that was a nightmare hope or a sweet terror, she couldn’t tell. In any case, his face didn’t appear. However magical the world might be, the dead do not regularly return.
She saw her own face. At least she thought it was her own face. From this distance, Elena was examining her own expression of surprise. Without a shawl of the sort she usually wore in Miersk, with her hair piled up, Elena saw again that she looked like Cat.
Not exactly. But close enough. Put that together with the wonderful smart clothes that fit so well, and from a distance, someone who only knew them a little might not be able to tell them apart.
She sat up, stunned at the possibilities.
Maybe the world had gone magic on this endless stretch of water. Perhaps she shouldn’t try too hard to escape the train. It was, after all, going to Saint Petersburg. To the Tsar. Once it arrived, she might emerge from the bedchamber and slip away from Cat’s family and minders.
This was an opportunity, not a curse. She’d told the old doctor she would go see the Tsar. And here she was, keeping her promise by accident, not design.
She pulled herself back into the carriage, closed the door, stole to her chamber. The cloudy coverlet settled over her with comfort and warmth as if approving her revised strategy.
So. That’s our heroine. Snoozing away. I suppose you could say she has initiative. You have to give her credit for trying to make good of her dilemma. That’s the beginning of heroism, the decision to try.
It was morning, of sorts. The air seemed heavy with cold dust. The invalid in the bed twitched her hand once or twice. Had she just murmured “Elena”?
Cat sat up on her pallet. That superstitious old crone with her eyes rolling in opposite directions was nowhere to be seen.
So Cat went over. The sick mother’s eyes were near to closed. She couldn’t lift her hand, but she slid it along the coverlet. Cat didn’t care to touch a dying person, or any person who was so poor and unkempt, but her hand reached out anyway and let the woman feel the warmth of her clean, well-manicured fingers. The woman gripped Cat’s hand, not tightly. “Elena.” Not even a whisper, just a half-breath.
Cat couldn’t speak. She didn’t return the squeeze. But she didn’t pull her hand away either.
“You rest,” said Cat at last. “I’ll fix you a petit déjeuner.”
She patted the woman’s hand again and then set it down farther away from her, like a paperweight on a desk. She stood up. She wasn’t Elena and had not tried to pretend she was, but the sick woman seemed comforted anyway. Soon her eyelids stopped fluttering and just stayed still.
Cat realized that she wouldn’t know if Natasha Rudina had just died. She’d never seen death close up. The breathing was so shallow that it might not be breathing at all anymore.
She just couldn’t tell. She turned and made her way to the door. When she opened it, she came upon a surprise.
The old woman, Grandmother Onna, stood on the threshold with her back to the chamber. Her arms were folded, a posture of belligerence. The doctor rocked back and forth on his feet next to her, wringing his hands in distress. “But you don’t know what you are saying,” he insisted.
In the muddy lane, facing them, stood some other women of the village. Silent, staring. A few of them carrying young children, several accompanied by rickety old fathers or uncles with pox or palsy. The women were shoulder to shoulder. Cat thought they looked like fishwives at Bermondsey or Les Halles, ready to start slapping their enemies with spoiled trout. “Peter Petrovich Penkin,” said one of the women, “get out of our way. This isn’t a question of medicine, so your opinion is of no account.”
“It’s a matter of public safety,” he replied. “She is only a child. I can’t let you abuse her.”
“We’re the ones who need safekeeping. She’s an intruder. She must go.”
“I tell you, the train will come back for her. Why wouldn’t it?”
“Here I am,” said Cat, more bravely than she felt. “What is the matter?”
The doctor turned. “Well, good morning. This is Grand Inquisition Day, I fear. They think your presence here puts all of them in danger. That they — me too, I suppose — will be accused of kidnapping. That our sorry life will get sorrier, and we will die in prison, or be rounded up and shot, and our homes set on fire. Finish Me Off Day, I suppose. Aren’t they a cheerful sort, our village goddesses. You can hardly blame them, Russian luck being what it is.”
Cat could see the bare tracks off to one side. “Why hasn’t the train come back yet?” she asked.
“So it can kill us all?” The agitated spokeswoman shifted her baby to her other hip, the better to have a fist to shake at Cat.
“So I can be rescued. You won’t be persecuted. I can promise you that. You will be rewarded for keeping me safe.” Cat spoke slowly and clearly. She could tell her accent was too polished for this population.
“Oh, we’ll keep you safe, all right,” growled the leader. “Safely silent. When they come back, you won’t be able to point to us and tell lies.” She picked up a stone. The baby clapped and wanted one too, though probably only to put in its mouth. Breakfast.
“Don’t be rash,” said Grandmother Onna. “It will be a simple exchange. The train will return and exchange Elena Rudina for their little lost fairy princess. We’ll bargain. The train has more food on it than we have seen in our village in a month. This is a godsend, the one we’ve been praying for.”
“You’re growing mad with hunger,” said the doctor to the gathered mothers and wives. “Understandable, but beware. You’re not thinking with love and with concern. What if this pesky girl were your own daughter, lost?”
But the mention of lost daughters only agitated the women further. “Who has concern for us?” cried the spokeswoman. The others nodded and cursed. “Did those visitors share of their abundance with us? With such little kindness they showed us then, why should we expect it later?”
“Sweet nameless child of the train,” continued Peter Petrovich to Cat, “go get your things and wait on the station platform. The kind of reasoning I want to present to these good women I must deliver in language unsuitable for your ears.”
Cat returned to Elena’s hut. She pulled on her lambswool. Moving softly, she wrapped the fabulous Fabergé egg in an old towel and tied that bundle into a worn apron. She knotted the strings to turn it into a satchel. Then she slung it over one shoulder. At least the villagers didn’t know what a valuable item she carried with her.
Everyone was silent as she slipped back into the sunlight. She walked with her head down as if in single file in her London school yard. She was afraid someone might throw one of those stones when her back was turned. She was less afraid of being hurt than she was of hearing a stone crack the delicate egg.
When she got to the train station, she didn’t stop. She just walked along the side of the tracks. She took the direction that train had taken. She kept the same steady pace with which she walked in Kensington Gardens for her daily exercise, two by two next to taciturn Susanna von Stockum, her marching partner.
She didn’t need that busybody doctor’s help. She didn’t care about that old biddy’s advice. On her own, she would hail the conductor of the train as it returned for her. She could do this anywhere north of here.
Before anyone noticed, she was leaving Miersk behind. The last thing she heard was the doctor cajoling the small crowd toward charity to strangers, who were still having none of it.
Finish Me Off Day. She almost laughed.
Elena didn’t know where she was, or that she was waking up, until she heard her own voice saying, “What? What do you want?”
Then she opened her eyes and remembered. The cunning little bedroom was still rocking. A magical, diffuse light filtered past the edges of the draperies.
She reali
zed that she’d been responding to a summons. She’d forgotten behind which door she was sleeping. She’d thought it was the one-room home in Miersk, with her mother and brothers, and maybe even her father still, slumbering adjacent.
Through the locked door, the voice of Monsieur d’Amboise: “You are insisting on speaking in Russian. Again.” More amused than angry. “You were late for breakfast with your great-aunt. Bad habits, Mademoiselle. Shall I bring it to you on a tray?”
She panicked, and put her arm up to her face, and found her teeth nibbling on the perfect sleeve of the perfect dress that fit, well, perfectly. Though it had wrinkled overnight. “No,” she said. The shortest response she could think of.
“You do not sound like yourself. Perhaps you have the same cold that has forced Miss Bristol to take to her bed for the day?” Monsieur d’Amboise seemed a bit tight in that comment, as if he disapproved of Miss Bristol, or perhaps of colds.
She thought to say, “I am not myself today.”
“Very well. Still, I cannot bring your croissant if you do not return my cart.”
The cart. Yes. “I’ll put it outside the door in a moment,” she ventured.
“Your voice is husky indeed. I shall bring lemon and honey with your tea. I suppose you have a swollen throat, too. I shall let your great-aunt know that you will join her presently.”
“I need to stay here today,” she said.
“You need, just once in a while, to do what you’re told,” he replied. “After I finish with your breakfast, I must go forward to confer with the conductor and the engineer about our progress. We have a lot of lost time to make up if we are not to arrive late for the proceedings. I will be engaged with the engineer and his charts for most of the morning. With Miss Bristol indisposed and taken to her bed, you will have to distract your great-aunt in cards, reading, or conversation. At her age she cannot be expected to amuse herself.” There seemed a whole history of resentment in that remark. But how neatly compressed, Elena noted.