follow the rules of the arrangement, knowing Taras would indeed be quick. The old taxman would not make it even halfway to town.
CHAPTER
4
Eliza
1914
How quickly it all happened, there on the tram. The bandit turned and slashed his blade, remarkably sharp for such a crude-looking knife, down the length of my thumb. I didn’t feel it at first, but the blood came fast and thick and flooded Madame Lamanova’s white brocade coat. What would Grandmother Woolsey do? Apply pressure?
I sat stunned and light-headed as my fellow passengers rose up against the bandit. The driver himself received a wound to the leg as he forced the man’s knife to the floor, where Princess Cantacuzène pounced upon it and held the bandit at bay. The conductor and violinist helped hold the terrible man but he wrestled free.
“Grab him!” the driver shouted as the man melted into the foggy night just as the Cossacks arrived on their small horses. Though dressed in their dark blue everyday uniform coats lined with red, not their famous scarlet dress coats, they were a rare sight to see, circling the tram, skirts flying. The whole thing was quite exhilarating, almost worth the stitches, and I might have enjoyed it despite my gaping wound had dear Sofya not been traumatized. She hovered over me, face drained of color. How close she’d come to not only losing the emerald necklace, but her life.
The tram driver telephoned Sofya’s house and a gaggle of my fellow passengers accompanied us to the Streshnayva’s townhouse, on the front steps of which every servant and family member stood waiting, lights ablaze. Even Mr. Streshnayva rose from his sickbed.
They lingered while my old friend Dr. Abushkin, his hair fresh from the pillow, still spiked about his head in the German style like hedgehog quills, made a great fuss of cleaning the wound, announcing to all that if not for him I would surely lose the use of my hand.
The next morning the incident was in the newspaper, The Petersburg Sheet, which Sofya translated for me. The headline read AMERICAN HEIRESS STABBED ON TRAM DURING STRIKE, which was surprisingly accurate for the sensationalist newspaper, except for the heiress part, arguably an exaggeration.
* * *
—
THE VIOLENT STRIKES ENDED by July eighteenth, returning St. Petersburg to normal, and I continued to enjoy the city by day with my hand bandaged with a length of gauze that could have reached to the moon and back. Sofya and Luba were excellent tour guides and we spent many lovely nights on their roof deck admiring the stars, but by July’s end I was ready to leave.
I’d spent nearly six weeks with the Streshnayvas and been offered every comfort: the house, with its large, well-appointed rooms and the quantities of flowers and handsome silver, a view of the wide Neva River running by my bedroom window, and my own little Russian maid. But I missed my family and also could not help feeling terribly uneasy. The talk of war escalated and though the tsar had suppressed the strikes, every day the discontent of the people grew, while the Streshnayvas chose not to see it.
On my last day Sofya and Luba accompanied me to the Nikolayevsky railway station. I was planning to leave the way I came via France and beat the war if it started. I wore my newest acquisition, a famous Orenburg shawl of goat hair and silk, so thin and finely woven it would pass through a wedding ring, yet large and warm when shaken out to full size.
We rode down fashionable Nevsky Prospekt, a second carriage following with valet and two house servants. The street looked abandoned, as the September streets often did in Paris, with society away. But as we neared the station the real St. Petersburg emerged, the streets teeming with beggars, panhandlers, chimney sweeps, and women in vivid peasant dress. Men huddled in groups, holding up hand-lettered placards and red flags that said Surrender your guns, bourgeois! and All land for the peasants. It sent my heart pounding while Sofya and Luba barely noted it.
According to the newspapers, the people’s rebellion was gaining momentum but the Streshnayvas and friends adopted a curious denial of the flames rising around them. The tsar seemed oddly disconnected from his people and the tsarina showed no love of them at all. Surely the royal couple would save themselves in case of a successful revolution, but what would happen to Sofya? I suggested they repair to Paris and ride this all out,