Tsarina

by Patrick, J. Nelle

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “You’re never setting foot in there.”

  Emilia nodded, but her color remained ghostly white. “I’m a countess,” she said. “How can this be happening? Two days ago, I woke up at home, in my bed, clean, and now . . .”

  I didn’t have an answer for her.

  We took a long bridge across the Neva. It was lined with elegant iron streetlamps, covered in curled filigree, almost like oversized candlesticks. I could see the Church on Spilt Blood ahead, and was doing my best not to dwell on it and the prospect of murdered tsars. People were starting to fill the streets now, filtering around Emilia and me. I couldn’t help but wonder where they had to be, exactly, in the middle of all this.

  “How far from the bookshop are we?” I asked. Leo turned around. “I thought you’d been to the bookshop before.”

  “I have,” I said as we reached the end of the bridge and crossed into the mainland. “But you can understand, I don’t frequently arrive on foot.”

  Leo gave me a terse look. “Well, Miss—” he stopped short, realizing using my last name in the middle of an ever-busier street wasn’t wise. I folded my arms, daring him to call me by only my first name. He ignored my stance and continued. “The streetcar drivers are on strike, so unless you want to spring for a private carriage, we can’t afford anything but walking.”

  “Alas,” I said. “I left my purse behind when I was fleeing for my life.”

  “Can’t we take your aunt’s carriage?” Emilia interrupted. I gave her a pitying look—she was wearing my shoes, which I suspected were too large for her. She used me for balance and rubbed her ankle.

  “No,” Leo answered shortly. “Yuri returned it yesterday for me, remember?”

  “And you can’t borrow it again?” I said as Emilia put her foot back down, winced.

  “Not . . . now,” Leo said, brandishing a hand in our direction.

  I stopped. “Your aunt and uncle don’t know you’re a Red, do they?”

  Leo spun around. “I don’t see why it matters, but no. Not everyone is in a position to stand up for what’s right, I suppose.”

  “So tell me this,” I said, ignoring his answer. “Were you ever going to drive us to the train station? Or did you always want to kidnap us?”

  “Did I want to? Does this look like something I want to do?” Leo said, bowing his head as a particularly cruel streak of wind whipped at us, rattling the doors of houses. People leaned into the wind, shivered, then returned to their work as soon as it passed. Leo continued, “I wanted you to tell me where the stupid egg was, so I could go get it while you two went off to Switzerland or Paris or England. And then I wanted the egg to be in the palace, so the others and I could drop you at the train station and be done with you.” He began to walk fast, forging ahead angrily.

  Telegraph lines had been torn down, their posts lying on their sides like fallen trees. At first I thought this was more destruction by the Reds, but then I saw a Romanov flag tied around one. This was the Whites’ doing—they’d destroyed the telegraph lines rather than let the Reds use them. I thought of Russians burning Moscow to the ground once, rather than allowing Napoleon to take it. We aren’t backing down, I thought, not to foreign enemies or monsters from within. I could see down the street that the lines were down all over the city; Leo glanced at me, scowled at my smile.

  “The bookshop is just ahead, I think,” Leo said twenty minutes later, and indeed, the street looked vaguely familiar. There were shops below apartments here, groceries and butchers and similar. Just like Upper Nevsky, most of the stores bore the signs of the riots, with broken windows or torn-down signs.

  “So this claiming ceremony that the mystics perform on the egg,” I asked Leo as we took a right turn. “What is it?”

  Leo shrugged. “Exactly what it sounds like. The egg belongs to the Romanovs until it’s claimed for someone else.”

  “And how does that work? The claiming?”

  Leo gave me a rocky look. “I don’t see how that matters.”

  “Call me curious,” I answered, smiling sarcastically at him.

  He rolled his eyes at me. “I don’t know, actually. We’ll hire a mystic who does when we claim it for Lenin.”

  “And if they won’t help you? You’ll threaten to imprison the ones they love too?” Leo ignored me. “Forgive me,” I said in a simpering voice. “Just trying to understand what the Reds are all about.”

  Leo answered darkly, “The Reds are about equality. About the people ruling themselves. About having votes and voice. Meanwhile, the Whites kill peasants, trample on factory workers—they even murdered Rasputin.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Emilia cut me off. “I’m glad they killed him. He was a horrible drunk,” she said, shivering. We turned to her, seemingly both surprised she was no longer frightened to silence. She looked at us, blinked. “What? He was a drunk and a lunatic and he smelled terrible. He was a completely inappropriate fixture at court. I can’t believe the tsarina kept him around as long as she did.”

  “It was for Alexei,” I said, dropping my eyes to the ground for a moment. “It was all for him.” The tsarina would have done anything for her son, traded her crown and title for his well-being, if that’s what it took. Alexei’s condition made her desperate. While the world saw a shy woman falling victim to a wild mystic, I knew she was a mother going to any length.

  “Do you suppose he told her?” I wondered aloud as we arrived at the street the bookshop was on. Leo and Emilia turned to me, waited for me to clarify. “You say you know for certain Father Grigori was in love with Alexandra,” I said. “Do you think she knew?”

  “No,” Leo said simply. “I think she was too in love with her husband to notice the way his eyes went different when he spoke with her. Despite your own experience, Miss Kutepova, love doesn’t always require two people.”

  “That’s tragic. He died and she never knew,” I said, glancing up at the sky. There were hundreds, thousands of lies about the tsarina and Rasputin that all of Russia heard one way or another, and the singular truth never found its way to Alexandra’s ears. “He should have told her.”

  Leo and Emilia seemed united in their confusion over my pity for Rasputin—and their distaste for him. We were silent as we approached the bookshop. The red and yellow blocks of books came into view through the windows, the place where Emilia’s driver stopped the automobile now occupied by a truck of beets being unloaded for the grocery next door. It seemed astonishingly normal, except—

  “It’s closed,” Emilia sighed, pointing to the door that only came into view once we passed the truck. “Until further notice.”

  “Damn it,” Leo said, looking deflated. He knelt down, looked into the shop; it was nearly impossible to see inside due to the frost on the windows. He rubbed at it as I walked up beside him, cupped my hands to either side of my mouth, and blew against the glass.

  The bit of glass cleared, creating a palm-sized spot to peer through. The shop looked fine from where I stood—nothing out of place, nothing ransacked. But there was no one inside and the bookcases faded into darkness as they stretched farther away from the front windows.

  “That was strange,” Emilia said. I turned to see what she was talking about only to find her pointing at the bookshop window. I stepped back and saw it had defrosted entirely in the brief moment I was looking inside, droplets of water running down the glass like rain. I frowned and ran my finger along a pane.

  “Perhaps they left a stove on?” I said.

  Leo seemed unimpressed with a thawing window; he cracked his knuckles, looking very wrestler-like. “Do you know where the Babushka lives?”

  “No,” I answered. He gave me a pointed look, like I might be lying. “Why would I know where a fortune-teller lives?”

  Leo looked like he desperately wanted to argue with me—though I was beginning to think
that was merely his standard expression—but turned back to the shop. “You have to know something. Did she mention having children?” Leo asked. “A husband? If she lives alone, I suspect she’s on the east side. Plenty of spinsters in that neighborhood.”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, shaking my head. “Did she ever mention children, Emilia?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It never came up.” She stepped to peer into the bookshop herself, grimacing as her boots sunk into the mud by the bricks.

  “What about . . . I don’t know, did she ever mention how far she had to walk to get here?” Leo continued.

  “No,” I said, my voice firmer this time. “She said—she said once that the Neva flooded her house. But that could be anywhere—”

  “When did it flood?”

  “During the last ball. The one where you listened in on me discussing the egg with Alexei,” I answered, folding my arms.

  “That has to be to the south then, below the convent . . .” Leo began to pace, bouncing one hand in the other as he thought. “Tell me anything else she said about where she lived.”

  “She has sunflowers growing in her garden?” Emilia offered.

  “They’re probably dead this time of year,” Leo said. “They usually die in the first frost. Though that would mean her garden is in full sun . . .”

  “You’re a connoisseur of sunflowers?” I asked, hovering between impressed and sarcastic.

  “My family grew them in Samara,” he said, waving me off. “What else?”

  The beet truck pulled away, pumping smoke in our direction. I sighed, looked from the bookstore to the street and back again. “Why don’t we go south of Smolny Convent then? It’s a start,” I said.

  “Is it far?” Emilia asked miserably. I could tell she was even more turned around than I was. She looked at the sky, as if the clouds might offer some direction.

  “Not terribly far,” Leo answered, and I heard something almost like sympathy in his voice—though his face, as usual, remained stony. “A half hour or so. First, I need to check in with the Factory Soviets, so they can send word to Viktor . . .”

  Emilia swallowed. “All right. And if we start now, Natalya and I can still make the four o’clock train,” she muttered, and began walking.

  “Emilia,” Leo called out. She gave him a horrified look, like she expected to hear him say he planned to send her straight to the Fortress.

  “What?” she asked, voice shaking.

  “You’re going the wrong direction,” he said.

  “Of course I am,” she muttered, and rejoined us.

  The sky settled on shades of gray. I stared at the black canal water as we trudged along. I couldn’t stop myself—I pictured Rasputin’s body floating there. They threw him in the water, after his murderers—nobles, people like me—were done shooting, poisoning, stabbing him. The freezing water, in the end, was what killed him.

  He should have told her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Leo stopped by an old apartment building with red banners limply hanging out the windows like great streaks of blood. Emilia and I stood nearly on top of each other in the dingy entry hall as Leo sprang up the first flight of stairs and knocked loudly on a door. A wiry-looking man, the total opposite of Viktor, appeared, leering at us through wire-rimmed glasses, nodding as Leo explained what he was doing there. The entire conversation took mere moments, like this sort of thing were totally normal—perhaps among the Reds, it was. Then a young boy with a smudgy face raced off toward the theater on Vasilevsky Ostrov to deliver the news of our continued submission.

  With that settled, we cut beneath the convent and into the southern marketplace. It was crowded, full of feet and hooves and wooden wheels. Emilia and I clustered nearer to each other to avoid having our toes run over, dodging the eyes of men with hard glares and crooked teeth. There were carts, tents, and makeshift storefronts set up in the streets that at first made it look like a single fat line of humanity. To my surprise, there were few Red banners and armbands—indeed, it looked as if the marketplace was blissfully unaware of the war going on just a few streets over. It was heartwarming to see that not all of Saint Petersburg was against us, and yet frustrating to see they weren’t with us either. Surely they could choose a side?

  Leo ducked and wove into the crowd easily, leaving Emilia and me struggling to keep up. He reached back once, grabbed my wrist to help me around an apple vendor, but I yanked my hand away, glowering at him.

  “Fine. But don’t look so nervous. You’re drawing attention to us,” Leo hissed. I fought the urge to slap him again, focused instead on firming my jaw and moving through the crowd. Strangely enough, if I closed my eyes for a moment, it felt like I was at a ball—swirling, moving people all around me. But it didn’t sound like a ball—there was no laughter. It certainly didn’t smell like a ball either.

  “All right, one block over is the Neva. Her house has to be in this stretch,” Leo said. He pointed with his hand down the strip we were on, but my eyes landed on a cluster of children selling matchboxes. They were bundled up tightly, but their shoes were too small—the ends had been cut off to allow their stocking-clad toes to poke through. The oldest girl was seven, maybe eight, big eyes and quick fingers, flipping matchsticks along her knuckles with practiced skill. I jumped when Emilia suddenly touched my arm, trying to gather my attention. I glanced back at the little girl. Emilia, then Leo, followed my line of sight.

  “Come on, we need to move,” he said, though I heard a note of pity in his voice.

  “Their toes,” I said. “They must be cold.”

  “You can’t help them,” Leo said, shaking his head. “Come on.”

  I didn’t move. Leo sighed, then walked toward the oldest girl. He reached into his pocket and removed a coin, thrust it at her.

  “This for a box of matches and a little information. Do you know where the mystics live in this part of town?”

  The girl smiled. “Easy—three more blocks down then to the right. The houses with all the curtains drawn.”

  “Thank you,” Leo said, and she plucked the coin from his fingers. Leo shoved the box of matches into his pocket, lifted his eyebrows at me.

  “There you go. Let’s move, Miss Kutepova. I have to check in again in thirty minutes. I don’t want to report that you’re giving me trouble.”

  I sighed, not entirely convinced that the proceeds from a single pack of matches would do the girl any good. Still, I followed Leo farther down the road to where the lanes grew wide and the wall of people was less intrusive. There were fewer carts out here, fewer vendors hocking liquors, dried fruits, fish. I peered down the street, frowned—there were dozens of houses here, many of which looked abandoned and all of which had roofs patched so many times they looked like quilts. People hurried in and out of them, mostly dirty children and their world-weary mothers chasing after them.

  We limped along—my feet were blistered and bruised now just as Emilia’s were—until the road split, with one branch leading to slightly nicer houses away from the river and another leading to ever tinier cottages that sat right along the riverbanks. Stray cats wandered back and forth between the buildings, and as the matchgirl promised, most of the curtains were drawn—mystics, I supposed, made most of their money after sunset. It was no surprise, really, that the Babushka’s house flooded: the river lapped at its banks just a few strides away from the nearest homes. Stone walls held the worst of the water back, but I’d seen enough floods to know how easily the water could overcome man’s obstacles.

  Leo craned his neck to look around houses for signs of sunflowers. “They’d have to be in the back,” he said. “There’s not enough morning light here for sunflowers . . .”

  “Surely the Babushka isn’t the only person around here growing sunflowers, though,” I complained as he slunk away from a house when a cranky-looking woman appeared in the window. �
�I see sunflower arrangements everywhere. I bet a hundred houses on this road have sunflower gardens.”

  “No,” Leo said. He didn’t meet my eyes as he spoke, like he couldn’t be bothered to. “Hundreds of people don’t grow them. Most of those flowers you saw came from my family’s farm, or one like it. Every week a man came to pick up batches and batches of them for corsages and bouquets.”

  I blinked. “I suppose it is the tsarina’s favorite flower,” I said. “She’s called Sunny, you know. By her family.”

  “Believe me, I know,” Leo said. “I know everything there is to know about the damn things. Three years running, we couldn’t afford to keep oxen, so my father and brothers and I pulled the plow ourselves, all so the tsarina could have her sunflowers.”

  “No one made you grow them,” I said. Leo laughed, though it hardly sounded like a laugh, and peered around another house as he answered.

  “That’s like saying no one made you borrow a maid’s dress, Miss Kutepova. You did what you had to in order to survive. There—there are a few behind this one. And it looks like there are a couple in the place next door as well.” I poked my head around the side of the house, looked at the wilted, frostbitten sunflowers—keeled over and mostly brown, just the base of their stems still green and clinging to life. The flowers themselves looked uncomfortably like the backs of heads from this angle.

  “It’s the one next door,” Emilia said behind me.

  “How do you know?” Leo asked.

  “She’s short,” Emilia answered, and pointed to the side of the house next door. I frowned, looked back to Emilia; I was pleased to see Leo was equally confused. “The climbing roses,” Emilia said. “She only pruned the bottom.”

  “Clever,” I said, smiling. She was right—there were climbing roses creeping out of the soil right in front of the house. There was no garden here, so they were planted right beside the foundation. The rose vines were bare this time of year, but it was clear the bottom halves were carefully pruned, the thorns there thick and proud. At the top, the vines became leggy and skinny. There was a distinct line where the change occurred—the highest the Babushka could reach.