gaining ground at the Battle of Somme with their new secret weapon: the tank.
Agnessa leaned toward me, sending a wave of carnation and ylang-ylang my way, which put me off my oeufs en cocotte. “I visited that fortune seer last week, you know.”
“So that’s where you went. Such a waste of time—”
“Her name was Zina and she…” She pulled me closer. “She said little Max would cross water four times.”
“Fortune-telling is the work of charlatans, Agnessa.”
Afon reached for a piece of black bread. “Can she tell me what regiment I’ll be assigned?”
“I know it’s bad luck to try and see the future, but she is quite famous. The best people come from all over to see her. She told Roksana Petrovana she would pass a stone and it came out of her that very night.”
“Let’s talk about your name day, Agnessa,” I said. “Father arranged quite a gift.”
She leaned closer. “The way I look at it, little Max crossed water once in going to America when you were pregnant with him. The second time was when your water broke and he was born. And he crossed a third time sailing back.”
“Do we really—”
“So that leaves one more crossing.”
A cold shudder went through me, strange for such a warm day, and I gathered Max closer. I would get Maxwell in my arms where he would stay for the entire summer and not so much as look at a washbasin. I couldn’t live through another accident. Max’s hand had slipped out of mine when he was just learning to walk and he fell and cut his chin deeply. Agnessa ran about the house crying as Father sent for the doctor and I used my skirt to stem the flow of blood.
I felt Max’s chin for the scar and felt, with a pit in my stomach, the ridge there.
“And then she looked like she’d seen the bowels of hell and refused to continue.”
“I hope you paid her well,” Father said with his gaze on his newspaper. “Sensitives can put a hex on you.”
“Did you ask her if there will be another revolution?” Luba asked, exchanging smiles with Afon.
Agnessa smoothed the tablecloth. “The tsar’s troops will put down any revolt. It’s his divine right to rule, though he doesn’t seem to be doing much of that.”
I shifted in my seat. Such bad manners for Agnessa to mention the tsar’s name at the table, but since she started it, I dove in. “It’s terribly unfair the tsar keeps twenty-one palaces, when his people are starving.”
Luba forked a beef kidney and eyed it. “The soldiers are hungry, too. Barely fed some days, isn’t that right, Father?”
“Luba, go study your French, this instant,” Agnessa said.
“Right away,” Luba said. She stayed where she sat and read the book in her lap.
“Think the tsar will keep Fena’s House open when we’re gone?” I asked Father.
Agnessa sat up straighter. “Must we talk about that place on my name day?”
Though my home for impoverished women was widely considered a worthy cause, Agnessa loathed talking about it or anything else connected to my mother.
“I will write the Ministry and ask them to oversee it,” Father said. “In the meantime we must take precautions here.”
“True,” Agnessa said. “The villagers love us, but one never knows. Watch them come take over this place and make us all corner tenants.”
“Father has been kind to them,” I said.
“Just hope the imperial forces guard the emerald mines,” Agnessa said.
Afon stood. “Perhaps we should show Agnessa her gift?”
Luba sat up straighter, causing the little red bell, which hung from a cord about her neck, to issue a gay little jingle. “Time for the surprise?”
She must have been caught speaking Russian again, hence Agnessa’s punishment: wearing the “devil’s bell.” Little did Agnessa know Luba liked the bell and considered it a badge of honor for, though French and English were more fashionable, Russian had been our Mother’s language of choice.
Agnessa pulled Tum-Tum closer. “The only gift I want is a train straight to Paris.”
Father stood and stepped to Agnessa’s chair. “Just a few more days, my love. I am tying up loose ends with the Ministry. You should begin packing, only the most necessary items.”
“And fold up our tent like Bedouins and leave with nothing?”
“Once Afon goes, we must move quickly. We can return once it’s safe.”
Agnessa held a cube of cheese under the dog’s snout and he turned his head away. “Could we proceed with the gift? I have much to attend to. Six courses for Max’s name-day