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