Egg & Spoon

by Gregory Maguire

  Playing plays in the bed nook. A landscape of sere woolen hills. The world outside this window looked artificial, too. Orderly, candied, ready for drama.

  She felt a touch of what Cat would have known as desolation, but shook it off.

  Miss Bristol appeared at the doorway. “Madame summons you. You’ll have been expected to change from your traveling garments. You’d best hurry.”

  She helped with the blue sash and redid the buttons that Elena had done wrong.

  “You are carrying out an errand of madness. I would have your impersonation revealed at once but for its consequences upon my life.” Miss Bristol took out of her pocket the great-aunt’s missing spectacles, which she must have retrieved from Elena’s bedchamber on the train. “Before, I was a hostage to your insolence. Now I am forced to become an accomplice. I hate you.” She set the glasses on the vanity.

  Elena didn’t reply. She ignored the glasses and descended with as much poise as she could manage.

  At the bottom of the flight, a maid stood waiting. She preceded Elena into a parlor and announced her. Elena walked in on toes, for added grace.

  Madame Sophia said, “Ah, and here, Deputy Sub-Lieutenant, is my young charge, Miss Ekaterina Ivanovna de Robichaux, newly arrived from school in London after our unfortunate delay en route.”

  The Deputy Sub-Lieutenant, a man with yellow hair oiled just so, was standing at a mantelpiece with his hands behind his back. He clicked his heels together, bowed, and spoke in English. Elena curtseyed as best she could and replied in Russian, “You have very bright buttons.”

  Madame Sophia’s laughter, perhaps a little forced. “The campaigns of childhood! She has decided to pretend she is not being schooled abroad, and instead has affected a rude country accent.”

  “Perhaps she thinks she can charm the young Prince Anton with it. She has charmed me,” said the Deputy Sub-Lieutenant, posing. His lurid hair is one thing, but he has very little chin to be charming with, thought Elena.

  “Do sit down, both of you,” said Madame Sophia. “Ekaterina, a swallow of sherry, a thimble’s worth? No? Well, mind your posture, my child. I have news for you.”

  The guest’s shoulders were thrown back so far, it looked as if he were trying to pierce the wallpaper. Elena rotated her shoulders like his. She felt that this made her neck more swan-like.

  “I wait to hear the news, ma tante.” She chose simple words that she hoped she wouldn’t mispronounce and perched on the edge of a chair.

  Now that the strain of travel was behind her, Madame Sophia appeared revived. “Our guest reports that the canals of Saint Petersburg are all flooded. Lake Ladoga has spilled its banks. The highland lakes of the Grand Duchy of Finland have risen to form an inland sea. Should this continue, we will all be drowned in our satin sheets, unless we take our rooms on the top flight, with the staff.” She spoke merrily, as if this sounded a great adventure for someone at her ripe old age.

  “Do not frighten the child,” said the Deputy Sub-Lieutenant, deigning to speak in Russian for the sake of household protocol. “Though I do hope you can swim.”

  He chortled. Elena felt a chill up her straight spine. She couldn’t swim.

  The Deputy Sub-Lieutenant continued. “The Tsar has called up soldiers from all the Russias to dig new channels. Canals, lagoons, reservoirs, in the interest of flood control.”

  “But what about the wars?” asked Elena. “Who will conduct them?”

  “There are no foreign wars scheduled at present,” replied the military man with, perhaps, a touch of sadness.

  Elena didn’t understand.

  “All the men we saw from the train,” said Great-Aunt Sophia, “they were soldiers, conscripted by order of the Tsar to help in the emergency.”

  “I see.” Elena twisted her hands in her lap. Then perhaps Luka was here, digging nearby somewhere. She must find out. “Very exciting news.”

  “It’s lucky we have such abundance of strong young men in the Russian heartland, but that’s not the news, ma chérie. With the Neva River flooding beside the Winter Palace, and the ballrooms three inches deep in ice water, other arrangements have had to be made. Wait till you hear! The Tsar has had floating pavilions built to house the festivities. Despite our delay, we’ve arrived just in time. The opening ceremony is tomorrow evening. The Deputy Sub-Lieutenant has delivered our formal invitation. Just think, Ekaterina. Had our crew not repaired that scorched bridge with dispatch, we’d have been late.”

  “Perhaps I will have a sip of sherry after all,” said Elena. They didn’t hear her. The news too thrilling. The Tsar approaching the capital. The great and the good come from throughout Russia, and from many other countries besides. All to meet the Tsar’s godson and distant cousin, Prince Anton Antonovich Romanov. Displays of fireworks, military parades. Fresh fruits from the South of France, and flowers from Holland, and champagnes and whatnot, and the titled families of Europe all sending treasures.

  “We hardly qualify as a noble line,” Great-Aunt Sophia was saying as Elena got up to leave the room, “but we have managed to bring a very special bibelot indeed, all the way from London. The Tsar will be gratified. I shall say no more.”

  In the corridor, Elena put her face in her hands. So close to the Tsar, already, and perhaps to her brother. Yet so close to danger, if Madame Sophia decided to inspect the Fabergé egg for breakage before she had it wrapped up to present to the Tsar of All the Russias.

  Then, from a door under the staircase, Monsieur d’Amboise emerged, arrayed in a formal waistcoat and grey gloves.

  “What are you doing here?” whispered Elena in a whisper.

  “I delivered the luggage, as was my duty,” he replied, neither warmly nor coldly.

  “But … you were to have gotten away as soon as you did that! Nothing could keep you locked in this house. You are the butler, after all — you must have all the keys.”

  “I do keep the keys,” he replied.

  “I don’t understand.”

  In a low voice he said, “I learned from Miss Bristol that you did not flee the train as planned. Thus Miss Bristol had no opportunity to follow you and make her own escape. I could hardly leave her here to face alone the penalties of your loss of courage.”

  “I have plenty of courage,” she said. “But you have the keys. You can both leave, right now. Tonight. Nothing is stopping you. You owe me nothing.”

  “You,” he said, “have begun to think highly of yourself. But you are a child still. What sort of people would leave a child on her own, and in such a mess as you have made for yourself, for us all?”

  “You owe me nothing,” she repeated faintly, “and I owe you nothing. You stay behind by your own choice.”

  He walked away to his next chore. “I have already made that point.”

  The freight train had come to a halt. On the raised track bed, the rails ran between plates of unorthodox lake. Wind-rippled diamonds cut into one another.

  Cat: “They’re taking cargo off the train and putting it on small boats.”

  “Go find out why,” replied the witch.

  “I can’t just climb out of a witch’s house and appear out of nowhere on the tracks and talk to strange men. Anyway, I don’t talk to laborers.”

  “You’re my houseguest, so if I tell you to help, you help.”

  “Houseguest, house cat,” said Mewster, stirring from a half-nap. “Same status. Aren’t you afraid she’d run away?” he asked the witch.

  “Not really. But if she does, so what? She’s only auditing my life; she’s not doing it for credit. She can drop out whenever she likes.”

  Cat passed over her lambswool jacket and settled herself into a belted serge coat that looked as if it had once belonged to a welder. She crossed the threshold of Dumb Doma for the first time in what felt like weeks but was probably mere days.

  Making her way along the side of the freight train, she called out to the first pair of workers within earshot. “Ho there, my good men,” she said. The ph
rase sounded false in her mouth. But she’d never talked to workers before.

  The men were Uzbeks or Kazakhs or Armenians. Their tongue was thick to her ear, but little by little she understood what they were saying. The tracks ahead were underwater, but the cargo was needed immediately. The festival was beginning tonight.

  “Tonight!” exclaimed Cat.

  Yes. Events had been delayed, but they would be delayed no more. The final guests were arriving on a makeshift relay of barges. And the material being transported from the cargo train, firework powder from Novgorod, was needed for the festival’s opening ceremony.

  Cat returned with the news. Baba Yaga paced back and forth with her hands running over her long, trowel-shaped jaw. “So,” she ruminated, “the Tsar of All the Russias won’t let the misbehavior of the world interrupt his schedule any longer. He’ll be busy. It’ll be hard for us to get an audience tonight. But he’s the big daddy. With the snap of his fingers, he can rouse an expedition of discovery and salvage. He may learn what I cannot: why the world is turning so ornery. Assuming his wise men advise him where to look. I don’t have a clue. Navigationally challenged.”

  “Your talent at magic won’t reveal where you might hunt for a clue to the mystery?” asked Cat.

  “Are you drawing attention to my shortcomings? I’m a governess now, remember? I know my place.”

  “Regardless, if the party starts tonight, I need to get this gift to my great-aunt.”

  “You gave that garish knickknack to me, remember? A little house gift.”

  “I gave it to you in exchange for your releasing me. But you didn’t.”

  Mewster harrumphed a little murr-wang, and the witch shot him a dirty look. “Well, Cat, we’ll go now. Both of us. And take the stupid egg and regift it to the Tsar. Why not? For one thing, it doesn’t match my décor, which I like to call Scythian Revival with a touch of shabby-chic Silesian Provincial. For another, the egg is Exhibit A: Firebird Disappearance, as enacted in porcelain.”

  “How are we going to get to Saint Petersburg if the train is stalled and washed up here for good? In any case, I have nothing to wear.”

  “Take your pick, honeybucket.” The witch opened the door to her wardrobe. It exploded, jack-in-the-box fashion, with a tsunami of lace and crinoline, paisley and tartan, purses, stockings, sashes, and little hats capped with feathers and fascinators.

  “What kind of service is this? She’s expected to go barefoot? We’ll take our custom elsewhere!” the witch screamed. The cupboard responded with a veritable hail of shoes; Cat had to hide under the table to keep from being kicked to death by flying footwear. The table legs, however, immediately began to try on the new stock.

  In short order Cat selected two outfits. A demure blue worsted for traveling into Saint Petersburg. Then, if an audience with the Tsar proved possible, a green silk number that fell like a waterfall, all moss and silver.

  “You’ll look like a trollop. That’s probably good,” said the witch. “You know the rules, Mewster. Don’t answer the door to anyone while we’re gone.”

  Regarding the world from the windowsill, the kitten said, “I think the last emergency barque has sailed away.”

  Indeed, the boats had cleared the train tracks and were halfway across the ersatz lagoon, being poled like Venetian gondolas. A few mergansers swam alongside them, quacking for bread.

  “I’m not beat that easily,” said the witch. “Table, kick off those high-heeled slingbacks. We’re going wading.”

  Reluctantly, if furniture can ever be said to exhibit reluctance, the table angled itself out the door of Dumb Doma. It shivered in the westerly breeze, its four knees knocking.

  “So lily-livered. Get in the water,” said the witch. The table tiptoed in.

  “Don’t forget your little hello for the Tsar,” said Mewster, passing along the Fabergé egg. Around the fabulous thing Baba Yaga folded the edges of the nest so it looked like a packet of brambles. “I don’t suppose I can come, too?”

  She didn’t reply. Slamming the door behind her, the witch urged Cat off the stalled flatbed carriage and onto the table, which waded away. It felt like being on a raft, and reminded Cat of punting on the Cam, only without a pole.

  In the daylight, Baba Yaga appeared smaller and less menacing than in her own home. More like a real governess than Cat had expected. Her garb was almost convincing. The clothes were serviceable, not flashy. Her head still looked like a slab of pale granite capped with weeds, but the extremity of her visage seemed less noticeable when set against the width of the whole world.

  Which, Cat had to admit, had a magic of its own that even Baba Yaga’s allure couldn’t match.

  “First things first,” said Cat. She felt it was time to take over a little, if Baba Yaga was going to play the nanny. “We’d better locate my great-aunt and tell her I’m all right. We can show her that the Fabergé egg is safe, too.”

  “So she can unload my gift on the Tsar?” The witch looked miffed, but continued, “Oh, who cares? I hate that thing. Looks like something laid by Andersen’s mechanical nightingale.”

  “I only hope my tante is here and not still looking for me back in Miersk.”

  “I’ll present myself to her with credentials in hand.” Baba Yaga patted her purse.

  “Um,” said Cat. “I already have a governess. Actually.”

  “We can take care of her.”

  Cat and Baba Yaga followed in the wake of the emergency flotilla that had carried the festival fireworks toward the city. Only when Cat turned around to see how far they had come did she notice the stalker.

  “Oh, my. Baba Yaga?”

  “Miss Yaga to you, honeybucket.”

  Cat pointed. The witch turned and bared her teeth. A verst or two behind them, the house was tramping along, splashing like a toddler in a big puddle. Several side sheds had lengthened and narrowed, and they were pushing at the water like oars.

  “When I left home to accept a position in domestic service, I didn’t expect my home to follow,” said the witch. But Cat noticed the change in tone. Baba Yaga wasn’t quite as shrill out in the open air. Maybe she was alarmed at the disobedience of Dumb Doma.

  The flood deepened. The table legs began to kick and swim.

  “I hope Dumb Doma can swim, too,” said Cat.

  “It’s made of wood. It’ll float.”

  “I’ve been meaning to ask. How did it get such large chicken legs?”

  “I was reading a little something by Gregor Mendel about the hereditary characteristics of pea plants. I decided to try a little do-it-yourself genetic engineering in the privacy of my own home. It went rather badly wrong. I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “But I’ve studied Gregor Mendel. My seminar called ‘Great Men of Science and Madame Curie.’ Gregor Mendel did his work only fifty or sixty years ago. According to the stories and your own asides, you’ve been around for a millennium.”

  “And I’ve still got my own teeth.” She gnashed her iron dentures.

  “I mean your house on chicken legs precedes that famous monk by centuries.”

  “Haven’t you figured out anything? I joke when I’m nervous. Leave me alone,” said the witch. “Did you know the great Janáˇcek played the organ at Mendel’s funeral? An improvisation on ‘Pease Porridge Hot.’ We all sang along.”

  When they made landfall, the table lay down on its back and kicked its legs to dry them off. Then it folded its legs underneath its top, which dwindled to the size of an attaché case. A handle sprouted on one side.

  As the izba paddled up near them, Baba Yaga said, “I’m making a house arrest. Dumb Doma, stop in your tracks.” She climbed into her home, cursing. She emerged with a length of rope. “Of all the dachas in all the Russias, I had to get the one with a case of wanderlust.” She tied one end of the rope to the horny talons of one of Dumb Doma’s legs and the other to a lamppost. “If you follow us through the streets of Saint Petersburg, you’ll provoke a riot among the schoolchildren. Now,
wait right here in case we need a quick getaway. Pretend to be a houseboat.”

  “I’d like to come, too,” said Mewster from the doorsill. “I’ve been good.”

  “You know the rules. You have to stay and guard my set of nutcrackers. And don’t eat the hummingbird. And don’t let anyone in.” Then the witch picked up the table by its handle, turned to Cat, and said, “Miss Ekaterina, as your governess, may I propose that it is time to go kick some imperial butt?”

  Apologies here are tended for Baba Yaga’s irreverence. There is nothing I can do about it. She says what she says. I suppose she is the original anarchist. Statements made by characters in this rendition in no way reflect the opinions of the writer. I should have said that earlier, perhaps.

  In any case, Cat was distracted by her own concerns. She hadn’t been to Saint Petersburg since she was seven or eight, and remembered it poorly. Next, to locate her great-aunt’s town house and set the poor woman’s heart at ease. Return the egg to her.

  Then there was the matter of the other girl. Elena. She must have jumped off the train at the earliest opportunity and run home. Cat could ask her great-aunt to send a basket of supplies, maybe medicines for the mother. In her relief at Cat’s return, Madame Sophia would surely rush to help.

  Tonight!” said Madame Sophia. “Go try on your gown, and let me see.”

  Upstairs, Elena became immobilized in a gown heavy as upholstery. It wanted to stand in place when Elena preferred to pace. The fabric was printed with a repeating pattern of some blossom she didn’t recognize. Miss Bristol dismissed it as a chrysanthemum. “A filthy foreign flower.”

  “I like it,” said Elena.

  “Blowsy. Showy. I should have preferred you in prison stripes.”

  Downstairs, surveying the display, Madame Sophia sighed. “Even with my sorry eyes, Ekaterina, I find your hair an ordeal to contemplate. I’d engage a hairdresser to come to us, but every woman in Saint Petersburg is having her coiffure done today. I shall have to take you to someone’s home on the far side of the Fontanka River. It’s a dubious district, but we shall pinch our noses, shan’t we? Go change. I’ll meet you at the front door. Miss Bristol, you’ll join us. I’ll need your beady eye to assess the repair work done to Miss Ekaterina’s tresses. We will require Monsieur d’Amboise as chaperone in case the rabble misbehaves. Given it’s such a fine afternoon. One never knows if Korsikov would sell us to the first mob we meet.”