She sighed. “I do love the life of the dachniki.”
Agnessa slid Tum-Tum’s silk bootie onto his front paw. “This is not a weekend house, Luba. This is an estate—”
“An estate in need of plumbing,” Luba shouted to the trees.
Agnessa looked out her window. “And ice cubes.”
Luba pulled an orange from her own basket, tossed it out the window, and turned to face Agnessa with a smile.
Agnessa slumped in her seat. “Luba. You spoiled girl.”
Luba shrugged. “What a nice surprise it will be for someone. I do it all the time. The local people suffer from a lack of vitamins, which causes scurvy.” She clasped the windowsill with both hands and hung her upper body out of the window. “The gate! I see the gate!”
Home was an estate named Malen Koye Nebo, “Little Heaven,” which the tsar had years ago given to Father as a reward for devoting himself to the imperial family’s finances day and night. Surrounded by uninterrupted expanses of the tsar’s imperial fir forests and flat, boggy steppes—vast, open marshes covered in tall grasses—it was a hunter’s paradise, strictly controlled by our dear gamekeeper Bogdan.
In the mid-1800s, the estate had served as laundry and stable for the tsar’s rope factory and had been converted to a home. The fence, a masterwork of black iron spears, just tall enough for a deer to leap over, extended around the house and outbuildings and had once kept intruders from stealing the tsar’s horses. Each spear stood firm, tipped with a sharp diamond. The gates were almost twice as tall, topped with an archway of iron leaves entwined about brass letters that spelled Father’s favorite phrase, Welcome to Heaven.
“Slow your gallop!” called the coachman as we neared the gates, Afon riding at our side. Two guards stood at attention, members of the tsar’s palace grenadiers, men who served the tsar well enough to earn honorary roles. They stood dressed in the autumn uniform of their ranks, a dark blue suit covered with gold bars down the chest, and holding a musket over one shoulder. The tsar loaned us the same two, Aleks and Ulad, for years.
The carriage slowed and Afon returned the men’s salutes. Luba held her hand out to Aleks, the older, more amiable one.
He reached up and took her hand in his. “Welcome home, my lady.”
The horses stamped the ground, impatient as the rest of us to get home.
“You may open the palace gates, my good man,” Luba said with a smile.
Each guard pushed his full weight against half of the gate. Once each reached its full arc, the men stood at attention and the horses pulled onward.
We again picked up speed and were less than a verst from the house when there came a great moaning sound echoing through the trees and the coachman slowed the horses.
Luba sat down next to Father and slapped her hands to her cheeks. “Look!”
I turned my gaze to the woods and found a pack of men—four or five—surrounding a large brown bear, in the usual way hunters capture a bear alive to be displayed in the circus or the fair.
One poacher sat astride the poor beast and struggled to affix a leather muzzle to its snout while the others held him by whips with balls at their tips, which they’d looped around his neck. The animal continued his pitiful moan, clacked his teeth in that terrible way bears do, and thrashed about as the men jumped to avoid his claws.
At the sound of our carriage drawing nearer the men dropped their whips and scattered.
I could barely breathe as Max tried to lunge past me to see the bear. I snatched him back and tucked him between Agnessa and me.
Afon drew his pistol and fired at the retreating men. Luba held Father’s hand as the horses snorted and heaved against their harnesses. The fog of gunpowder clouded my view of the woods and when it cleared the men were gone.
“Dear God,” Father said, his face drained of color. “Recognize them?”
Agnessa placed a cold hand on mine. “How did they get past the gates, Ivan?”
Freed from his captors the bear lunged across the road in front of us, dragging the leather muzzle, one whip still looped about his neck.
“He’s free!” Luba cried.
Afon bent down and peered into the carriage. “All well?” he asked with a forced smile.
My heart thudded so hard against my chest I could only nod.
“Don’t worry,” Father said. “Bogdan will get on this.”
Agnessa sat, stunned. “There’s only so much one decrepit gamekeeper can do, Ivan.”
Father rested one hand on Agnessa’s knee. “Nothing will happen to us with Afon by our side. But I’m afraid we all must be more careful now—”
Agnessa smoothed Max’s curls as the carriage lurched forward, the horses still skittish. “Careful? These are imperial woods. Those men should be hanged.”
“We just need to be more vigilant,” Father said.
Luba stood and leaned out the window. “I can see the roof!”
“And we can see your underthings,” Agnessa said, her voice brittle. “Sit down at once.”
Father pulled his metal box from beneath the seat and clutched it to his chest.
Luba leaned farther out the window. “Everyone’s out front—Bogdan, Raisa…”
I gathered my gloves and tried to calm myself before greeting the servants.
After all, there was little one could do to change what God had in store for us.
CHAPTER
6
Varinka
1916
The night the countess visited our izba on the outskirts of town to have her fortune told, the wolves were quiet. Smart animals, wolves. They know when they’ve met their match.
Darkness fell and I dressed Mamka in a clean nightdress for the countess’s reading. She sat in the bed Taras crafted for her out of birch logs, which stood next to the whitewashed oven Papa had forged, tall and wide as an elephant, which took up the whole back wall of the room. I slept atop it, the best bed in any izba, warm from the fire below.
Since Taras had hunted down the old taxman two years before and gotten our coins back we still had a little good fortune. Like a dying flower that tries to bloom one more time, Mamka recovered some strength and started sewing and telling fortunes again. The taxman had no good luck though. He lay somewhere in the forest, fallen to Taras’s knife.
Luck could not help our roof, though, the thatch black with age; and the cold rain at night caused it to leak in places. Autumn had come to our woods just outside Malinov and our breath came in white vapor. The oven was making quick work of the last of our birch logs and the room was cold, but the tallow candle on her bedside table showed Mamka’s forehead shone with fever. She pulled at the neck of her nightdress and gulped air. Maybe consumption, an old midwife had said the week before, charging extra for a night visit. Maybe not.
I combed Mamka’s hair, long and waved about her shoulders, and helped her slip into a bed jacket of her own making, the silver embroidery down the placket some of her best work. I placed a pearled headdress on her head, her own mother’s kokoshnik. How the sickness had aged her. Though not yet forty years old she looked at least ten years older there in the shadows, but the hollows under her cheekbones gave her a regal look. That made sense since her father had come from a good family, had been a respected teacher, and had even seen the royal yacht.
Mamka held up one hand. “Don’t get too close, lyubov.”
“Hush. Save your strength for the reading. And don’t forget to ask the countess if I can work for her.”
“You’re better off staying safe here with me.”
I stepped away from the bed. “I can’t stay cooped up forever.”
“Don’t be cross, Inka.”
I knelt by the bed and took her hand in mine. “I imagine she pays a good wage.”
What was it like in the estate? Images of stylish ladies like the tsar�
��s daughters, the grand duchesses, floated before me. Their white dresses. Leather shoes.
“Please may I go?”
“Perhaps.” She stared at the flickering candle. “Maybe they need kitchen help?”
“Ask. She will say yes if the reading is good.”
Mamka folded her arms across her belly. “I’m afraid, Inka.”
“This will be the last reading, I promise, no matter what Taras says.”
“Stay close?”
“Of course.”
The rain grew louder on the roof. Would it leak on our special guest?
I set a cup of boiled milk on the bedside table for the countess and placed our one chair close to the bed, but just far enough away for our visitor to think she might escape contagion. Predicting the future for clients had become harder on Mamka, for as she grew older the visions became more vivid, too real, but people came all week looking to have fortunes told and the money helped us buy food.
“My cards…” Mamka said, patting the bed around her.
I took her grand oracle cards, tied with a red cord, from my pocket. They felt good, smooth and worn, French cards: Cartomancie Française, but written in Russian. Each card was a little colored masterpiece and, best of all, rarely wrong. I handed them to her and she held them to her breast.
I placed the linden plank on which Mamka performed her marvels across her lap, then lit a lump of frankincense and watched smoke curl up through the rafters, past the dried herbs hanging there. She felt it encouraged the spirits. It encouraged the clients, too, since the scent covered the sweet odor of sickness. Why do people risk death just to peek at their future?
Taras, who took care of us in his own way, waited in the shed and watched it all through his favorite crack in the wall. He had lived there for as long as I could remember; sleeping among the tools Papa had taught him with, so clever, until he went away for two years to prison in Siberia, a place that had changed him in every bad way possible.
A jangle of bells, a coachman’s Whoa!, and a woman’s voice came all at once outside and I hurried to the door. I heaved it open and the candle flame grew brighter, as if it expected the guest, then settled. Outside our door the troika came to a stop and the two black horses pawed the ground. In the back of the open carriage sat a lady in a sable hat, up to her neck in a polar bear fur rug.
The countess.
The coachman threw off the rug and she stepped down and through the doorway, dabbing her handkerchief at the wet little dog in her arms. As she passed, I almost reached out to caress the thick fur of her sable shuba. What a coat it was, deep red, the beads of rain collected there glittering in the candlelight.
A servant in a green jacket took his place near the door as the countess stepped to the beautiful corner, the saw-toothed shelf in the eastern corner, which held Mamka’s little village of icons painted on wood. The glow of the red oil lamp above caught the silver foil of the Madonna and child and St. Winnoc, who protected Mamka against fever. The countess made a little bow to the saints, and then made her way toward Mamka’s bed, the heron feather in her hat bouncing as she walked.
The candle threw her shadow high along the wall and teased the diamonds at her ears and throat to life. And her boots. I watched the countess’s hem closely for a glimpse now and then of them—pearl gray kid stitched with silver threads. The very ones Grand Duchess Tatiana wore, pictured in a magazine. I pulled at my skirt to cover my own woven birchbark shoes.
The countess forged ahead to Mamka’s bedside, the tiny brown dog clutched to her bosom. As she passed me, I bent at the waist in a deep bow, clasping my apron to hide the holes.
I stepped to the head of Mamka’s bed as she sat up straighter and extended one hand toward the countess, a ghost of her manners from her time at court, when she’d visited her cousin, a lady-in-waiting there. If she hadn’t fallen for poor Papa she might still be there.
“Zina Glebova Kozlov Pushkinsky, Your Grace,” Mamka said with a cautious smile. Of course, we were all named Pushkinsky, the lower classes living in that district.
The countess paused and then reached one pink-kid-gloved hand and shook Mamka’s in the briefest way.
“I was not told I’d be attending a sickbed,” the countess said, slowly, in Russian. She waved away wolf lard smoke from the candle.
“I’m sorry, Countess Streshnayva,” Mamka said in her prettiest French. “I didn’t know I’d be feeling so poorly.”
The countess stared at Mamka for a second, then answered in French. “Certainly, you of all people should have seen it coming.” She let out a funny little laugh.
“Please sit,” Mamka said.
“I was told you’re a crystal seer—have you no ball?”
She expected a dark woman with bells on her shoes?
Mamka smiled at her. “I cannot start until you sit, Countess.”
The countess cast her gaze about the room and then, ever so slowly, lowered herself onto the edge of the chair. “No samovar?”
“No, Countess. Taken for taxes. We tried to get it back but it had already been sent to the city.”
Mamka kept her voice steady but we had both ended up crying on that terrible day.
The countess brushed raindrops from her sleeve. “One must pay taxes after all.”
Mamka nodded to the bed stand. “No tea, but the boiled milk is for you.”
The countess plucked up the cup, held it to the dog’s snout and he produced little lapping sounds as he drank.
My gaze went to the planked wall of Taras’s shed where just a wisp of white breath escaped from the crack between the boards. Please don’t come out and ruin it all.
“Do I know you?” asked the countess as she lifted the lorgnette she wore on a chain and looked Mamka over.
“Well, actually, Countess, my father taught in the city—you may have known of—”
The countess dropped her lorgnette. “Pardon my haste, but do get on with it.”
Mamka gathered the neck of her nightdress in one pale-as-ivory fist. “Please. Before we start I would like to say that I ask for no money in payment.”
“Well, that is a first.”
“Instead, would you find a place on your staff for my daughter, Varinka, here? She is a hard worker.”
I stood straighter.
The countess glanced at me. “Oh, this is most inappropriate.”
“She’s pretty, is she not?” Mamka asked. “And I’ve schooled her well. She has read widely and knows all the saints. Every Greek and Roman god and goddess. I taught her and my husband’s young apprentice French. She took to the language well.”
“I prefer men serving in the dining room.”
“Kitchen help? A dairymaid? She has a way with children.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen—”
“And unmarried?”
Mamka just looked down at her hands and the blood rushed to my cheeks. Every peasant girl in the village had been married by fifteen. My life would never be like theirs.
“Does she bathe on Saturday?” asked the countess.
“Every day. And she speaks good French. Taught her myself.”
“Really? Well, I don’t see why not. It’s impossible to get good help out here in the wild.”
Mamka reached out her hand to the countess. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”
Me? Work for the countess? What was this dining room? Would they let us have leftover food from that room? I would wear a uniform and see their clothes up close and maybe wear perfume?
“I’ll send word when I need her,” the countess said, ignoring Mamka’s hand. “And I will pay five kopecks if this reading is good. I’m no miser.”
Mamka smiled. “Good, then.” With the burst of energy she always showed at the beginning of a reading, she pulled the cord from the deck, peeled o
ff one card and smoothed it onto the plank. I stood on my toes to see it, for this was my favorite part.
“The first card tells your past.” She set down the fish card, upon which a glistening pink carp jumped from a blue sea.
Mamka smiled and stole a quick glance at the countess. “The fish is a very good card. It is a strong symbol of wealth.”
The countess frowned. “Wealth? A blind man could see that. My husband is a cousin to the imperial family, so of course you see wealth.”
“The next card will tell the present,” Mamka said. She pulled another card from her deck and slid it onto her plank. It was the child card. One of my favorites, it held a little boy in a feathered cap running with a hoop and stick.
“A new family member has joined you,” Mamka said. “With you for two years now.”
The countess breathed in a quick gasp of air and then pulled a fan from her sleeve and snapped it open with a crack. “This is true. Though he came too soon. What more?”
“Well…”
The countess shimmied her chair closer to the bed. “Out with it. I insist.”
“It’s a child, a boy.”
A child! Envy curled around inside me. How lucky this countess’s daughter was to have a baby boy.
The countess fanned herself vigorously, causing the candle flame to run away.
Mamka looked heavenward with a radiant smile, like one of her martyred saints painted on gilded board. “He was born on a bed of poppies under a silver sky.”
“This is true,” the countess said. “The bedsheets bore red flowers; the canopy of the bed was silver. You truly are gifted! Now tell me when there will be another birth.”
Mamka set the deck of cards on the plank, her brow creased. “And that is all. I’m tired.”
Was she getting one of her bad feelings?
The countess snapped her fan closed and tucked it back up her sleeve. “But I came all this way on flooded roads. A mangy wolf chased me half the way.”
“The wolves are hungry. Your gamekeeper kills all the elk—”
“And I ruined my boots in your mud. You’ll tell me nothing of the future?”
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