Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Golden Samovar

by Olga Wjotas

  I was a tad disappointed. Being sent on a mission had sounded exciting. I had hoped to pit my intellectual wits and physical prowess against some master criminal, perhaps solve a murder or two. Playing matchmaker wasn’t exactly a stretch. But I would still carry out my duties with rigour and precision and make Miss Blaine proud.

  I thought back to the gentle voice and respectful demeanour of the beautiful Sasha. If he were to be Lidia’s husband, I couldn’t imagine that he would stand in the way of her vocation. And the party at Madame Potapova’s would be an ideal opportunity to get them together.

  “Maybe you’ll meet someone nice at the party tonight,” I said.

  Lidia toyed with the lace edging on her cambric handkerchief. “I shall not be attending,” she said in a low voice.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Since I have only just entered society, I was too late to be put on the guest list. Perhaps I would not have been put on the guest list anyway. Only the elite are invited.”

  I could see now why Miss Blaine had chosen me. Lidia was far too self-effacing, but I had the necessary doggedness, diplomacy and acumen to sort things out.

  “Don’t you worry,” I said. “I’ll go round now and get us an invitation.”

  “Is that how people behave in your Scotland?” asked Nanny. “They just turn up on the doorstep without a by-your-leave when they don’t even know you?”

  “They do if they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” I said. “But it’s all right, Nanny. I have a letter of introduction.”

  Nanny sniffed. “Good luck with that.”

  “Please, dear Shona Fergusovna, don’t put yourself in an embarrassing position on my account,” said Lidia.

  “I don’t embarrass easily,” I said. “And I guarantee that once I explain to Madame Potapova that I’m the crème de la crème, we’ll be invited.” It never crossed my mind that there would be no opportunity to explain anything to Madame Potapova.

  “Nanny – please let me go!” cried Lidia, running over to the wee old woman and giving her a hug, expertly avoiding the knitting needles.

  Nanny fixed me with a stare not unlike Miss Blaine’s. “You must chaperone her. No scandal must attach to her. If scandal attaches to her, she will be unable to marry.”

  “Obviously I’ll try to minimise the incidence of scandal,” I said. “Although, is marriage really the be-all and end-all?” Try as I may, the feminism will keep breaking through.

  “Of course it is,” said Nanny. “That is why she hosted the party yesterday evening. That is why she has entered society. It is her duty. She is an heiress with unimaginable wealth. What is she supposed to do with her fortune other than attract a suitable husband?”

  “Travel the world?” I suggested. “Engage in chemical experimentation? Become a professional floor-covering technician?”

  Lidia’s eyes glistened. “A professional floor-covering technician? Is such a thing possible?”

  “Yes,” I said, just as Nanny said, “No.”

  Nanny laid down her knitting to underline the seriousness of the issue. “Only one profession is open to women and that is not one fit for discussion.”

  Lidia turned to me.

  “That may be the case at the moment,” I said. “But there must always be trailblazers and pioneers.”

  Nanny resumed her knitting, unimpressed. “She can have no sort of public life if she is unmarried. If she does not marry soon, she will either have to live in seclusion here at home or enter a convent.”

  “What about me?” I asked. “I’m not married.”

  Nanny sniffed and tugged more wool out of her apron. “You’re a foreigner. Nobody cares about you.”

  I raised my tea glass to her. “Cheers, Nanny,” I said.

  Lidia clutched my arm. “I care about you, dear Shona Fergusovna. You are my true friend. I would love to go to Madame Potapova’s ball, if you would be kind enough to be my chaperone.”

  “I’ll come and get you at eight,” I said. “And if you’re absolutely set on finding a husband, we’ll see what we can do.”

  “But he is already found,” said Nanny. “My little chicken has told me everything about the ball last night and it is clear that there is only one man suitable to be her husband.”

  I have to say I was surprised. If Nanny already knew about the divine Sasha and approved, this was going to be the fastest mission ever.

  “I thought he was a little short,” said Lidia in a small voice.

  “Really?” I said, disappointed that she would be so picky. “I thought he seemed just the right height.”

  “Lidia Ivanovna, you should not be concerned with his height but with the fact that he is a general.”

  “He’s a general?” I said. I knew that plenty of families pulled strings to get their sons prestigious jobs in the military, but it was still startling that such a young man could have risen so high in the ranks. And why on earth did he and the countess feel the need to conceal his status?

  “Yes, a general. And so fortunate that he is newly widowed,” said Nanny.

  “Widowed?” I echoed. This was even more unexpected. He only looked about twenty.

  “You must do everything you can to bring them together,” said Nanny.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “That’s exactly what I was trying to do yesterday, get them together as dance partners, but it didn’t work out.”

  “It did,” corrected Nanny. “It was a most successful dance.”

  “Not at all,” I said. “Lidia only had one dance . . .” I stopped, horrified. “The wee old man? That’s the general? The new widower?”

  Lidia nodded sadly.

  “Nanny, you can’t possibly want her to marry him – he’s half her height and three times her age.”

  Nanny shrugged. “He’s the only suitable match.”

  “What about the gorgeous young man?”

  Nanny’s knitting needles clacked to a halt. “What gorgeous young man?”

  “Lidia, you must have seen him?”

  Lidia lowered her eyes. “I don’t recall,” she murmured. I couldn’t tell whether that meant yes or no.

  “So who is he?” demanded Nanny. “What is his name and position in society?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” I admitted. I wasn’t going to join in the old prince/blue-eyed baroness charade.

  “And you think this – this indefinite person is a better match for my little chicken than a newly widowed general?” said Nanny.

  I bit my lip and stopped myself saying that absolutely anybody would be a better match than the newly widowed general. I needed to keep Nanny onside.

  Lidia drained her glass of tea and tossed her head in an unexpectedly headstrong gesture. “Perhaps I shall not get married,” she said. “Perhaps I shall become a trailblazing pioneer instead.”

  Nanny turned on me. “This is your doing, filling her head with nonsense,” she hissed. “Lidia Ivanovna, you will go to your room and choose a suitable dress to meet the general tonight.”

  Lidia’s brief spark of rebellion was quickly extinguished. “Of course, Nanny,” she said. “What do you advise? The one I got for my twenty-third birthday? Or perhaps the one I got when I was twenty-two?”

  “The navy blue is a less provocative colour than the rose,” said Nanny. “But it’s still rather décolleté. I’ll knit you a fichu to cover yourself up.”

  “Nanny darling, you are too good to me,” said Lidia as she rushed off. She had seemed to capitulate, but as she left, I detected a revolutionary glint in her eye. Nanny was right, it was my fault. I was in danger of sabotaging my own mission.

  I refilled Nanny’s glass with tea by way of apology.

  “I really do want to help,” I said. “I’m sure I could do more if I understood Lidia better. I believe there was a family tragedy? A terrible loss? Which was ver
y distressing?”

  Nanny shot me a sharp look, glanced at the immobile footmen, then gathered up her knitting and packed it away in her capacious apron.

  “We will go to my room. Bring the tea,” she said. A footman opened the double doors for us. I picked up the two glasses and followed Nanny along a thickly carpeted corridor.

  “I put down the carpet to prevent Lidia hammering bits of wood outside my room at all hours of the day and night,” Nanny said.

  She opened the door and I found myself in a fibrillous cocoon. Nanny’s room was bursting with knitting and its accoutrements. Dominating everything was a large wooden yarn winder, which she obviously used to transform the spun yarn into the many hundreds of balls of wool that covered every surface, including the floor. They were a rainbow of colours, which I noted all came from natural dyes. This was another possible clue: the first synthetic dyes, mauveine and fuchsine, were developed in the 1850s. Then again, I could imagine that Nanny was a traditionalist who would have no truck with scientific innovation.

  Alongside the balls of wool were varying lengths of shapeless knitting. Nanny removed some fraying cochineal-coloured yarn off two Nanny-friendly, and therefore extremely low, armchairs. The chairs were upholstered in woad-coloured worsted, and the curtains were pendulous camomile webbing. The plain wooden bed was covered in a quilt made up of multicoloured strands of knitting tacked together.

  Above the bed hung an icon of a particularly fractious-looking female saint wrapped in a long shaggy cloak. Nanny scrambled up to it with the help of handy skeins and gave it a devout kiss.

  “My patron, Saint Volosiya. I dedicate all my knitting to her.”

  “How thoughtful,” I said. “Not that she needs any knitting with that cloak to keep her warm.”

  Nanny’s brows drew together. “That’s not a cloak, it’s her hair. You are not familiar with Saint Volosiya?”

  I confessed this was an atypical gap in my education.

  “Sit!” she ordered.

  I plonked myself down on one of the low chairs, narrowly avoiding banging my chin on my knees.

  Nanny sat opposite me, closed her eyes, and began reciting a story she had obviously told time after time. “The hagiography of Saint Volosiya. Volosiya was a young girl of extreme piety whose hair had miraculous strength. Every day, she would attach her hair to barges and haul them along the Volga, a task that otherwise required eleven men. One day, iniquitous Kipchaks who had taken a wrong turning arrived at the riverbank and demanded that she tow them and their horses to their kurultai.”

  “Terrible,” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure what a kurultai was, but from Nanny’s tone, it didn’t sound like a desirable destination.

  Nanny, her eyes still closed, held up her hand, indicating silence. “Volosiya was an obliging girl, and would have been delighted to help, but unfortunately failed to do so since she could not understand the Kipchak language. The Kipchaks, infuriated by this, decided to tie her by the hair to the tails of three horses and have her torn limb from limb.”

  I forebore to mention that she would simply have been scalped. It’s unwise to apply logic to the stories of the saints.

  “But her hair had such miraculous strength that, instead, it tore the tails from the horses. The Kipchaks tried with another three horses, and another three, but each time with the same result.”

  “Poor horses!” I burst out. I absolutely cannot abide cruelty to animals. “Sorry, Nanny, didn’t mean to interrupt again. On you go.”

  “They brought their last three horses, and this time, instead of tying her hair to their tails, they knitted her hair and their tails together.”

  “So this time, she was torn limb from limb? She became the first martyr of knitting?”

  Nanny opened her eyes and glared at me. “No,” she snapped. “There was an apotheosis. She was raised up to glory, taking the three horses with her as she ascended, the horses neighing in praise as they hung from her miraculous tresses.”

  “And to think people say animals don’t go to heaven,” I said. “That’s a lovely hagiography. Thank you, Nanny. Now, about this family tragedy.”

  Nanny resumed her knitting as though nothing had been said.

  “The terrible loss,” I said, not bothering to raise my voice since I was perfectly aware that Nanny wasn’t deaf. Nanny continued knitting.

  “Which was very distressing.”

  Nanny knitted two and purled two.

  “Oh, come on, Nanny, help me out!”

  Nanny struggled to her feet. “Honestly, Shona Fergusovna! A young thing like you needing an old woman like me to help you out of your chair. I don’t know. Young people today.”

  “It’s just an expression,” I explained. “I mean I want you to talk to me about Lidia.”

  Grumbling, Nanny sat down again.

  “You invited me in here,” I went on. “What was the point if you’re not going to talk to me?”

  “I’m considering,” said Nanny. “You want to know about my little chicken. But what do I know about you?”

  “You already know everything there is to tell about me. I’m Shona from Morningside in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland.”

  “And why have you come here?” asked Nanny.

  “To help Lidia,” I said.

  Nanny increased the tension on the wool.

  “Why?”

  I was getting completely exasperated. “Because that’s my job,” I snapped. “I’m not here on holiday, you know, I’m working.”

  The knitting dropped to the floor. “It’s your job? You’re not just here out of nosiness?”

  I was about to tell Nanny that I had never been so insulted in my life when I remembered that that wasn’t true. But the appalling reminiscence was interrupted by Nanny demanding to know why I was trying to destroy Lidia’s marriage prospects.

  “I mis-spoke,” I said. “If Lidia is to get married, I will be assiduous in bringing it about.” I didn’t mention that I would be getting her married to Sasha rather than the general. “So tell me about the tragedy.”

  Nanny shook her head. “We do not speak of it,” she said. “But since you are here to help my little chicken, I shall tell you what I can. She has only just emerged from mourning.”

  “Following the terrible loss?” I asked.

  “No, I told you, we do not speak of that. She has only just emerged from mourning another terrible loss entirely, the demise of her revered father.”

  “So that terrible loss wasn’t distressing?” I persisted, anxious to gain as full a picture as possible.

  “The loss of her revered father was extremely distressing, almost as distressing at the loss of her saintly mother shortly after the terrible loss of which we do not speak,” said Nanny. “We speak of these two other losses, which is why I am speaking of them. Lidia’s revered father and saintly mother were a most virtuous couple and vastly wealthy. They were anxious that the great name of Chrezvychainodlinnoslovsky should not die out. When Lidia Ivanovna was born, their happiness would have been complete, if she had been a boy.”

  My hackles were on the rise again.

  Nanny, oblivious, continued, “Five years later, their happiness would have been complete, but then came the tragedy of which we do not speak. Lidia’s parents removed themselves from society and never left the house again. Since they no longer spent any money on lavish entertainment, they became even more vastly wealthy. Following the loss of Lidia’s saintly mother and later the loss of her revered father, my little chicken has inherited everything.”

  “What did they die of?” I asked.

  “Grief and melancholy,” said Nanny. If they had never left the house again, I suspected it was more likely that they had succumbed to vitamin D deficiency.

  “Now, I shall give you your instructions for this evening,” Nanny went on. “Lidia is to dance with no
body except the general. Lidia is to talk to nobody except the general and the ladies. Lidia is to keep her knitted fichu across her bosom at all times.” She rootled around and retrieved a ball of yellow wool.

  “The dye comes from onion skins,” she said. “This will go beautifully with her blue dress.”

  I took a breath. “Nanny, I think you’re being a bit unreasonable. Isn’t it better for her to meet a few men before she makes any long-term decisions?”

  Nanny made a slip knot from the onion-coloured wool, attached it to a knitting needle and began casting on.

  “If you’re not able to follow my instructions, then Lidia Ivanovna is not able to go to Madame Potapova’s party,” she said, yellow wool flowing from her needles. “Which is a pity, since I know she would enjoy wearing this fichu.”

  I sighed. “All right. I agree.”

  “You swear?”

  “Never. I believe it’s the sign of a limited vocabulary.”

  Nanny went and took the icon off the wall. “Kiss the image of Saint Volosiya to cement your oath and then if you break it, you will go to hell.”

  “You know I’m not of your faith?” I said.

  “That’s good,” said Nanny. “Better that a heretic should go to hell than one of the faithful.”

  I pressed my lips to the icon. So now I had hell to worry about as well as everything else. But I couldn’t waste time worrying about it. It was now afternoon, and I had to charm two invitations out of Madame Potapova for her party that evening.

  Old Vatrushkin was waiting outside in the drozhky.

  “How did you know I was here?” I demanded.

  He looked puzzled. “I asked a brother coachman.” Then his face creased with anxiety. “Did I do wrong?”

  Lidia was my first priority, but I would try to make time for a crash course in assertiveness for Old Vatrushkin.

  “Perfect timing,” I soothed him. “Take me to Madame Potapova’s.”

  At least I didn’t have to feel guilty about keeping Old Vatrushkin waiting. I had scarcely arrived in search of my party invitation when the widow tumbled to her doom, and I was back out again.