arm on his spade handle, and surveyed the woods. “I have a bad feeling, Sofya.”
“Father told the count he can only bring two trunks. He may take all day, repacking.”
“From my kitchen help I hear things. The pantry boys say there’s talk of another revolution.”
“The tsar—”
“The tsar’s a fool. He’s handing this country to the Reds. And this time they’re organized. Targeting the peasants with radio broadcasts. They can’t read but they can listen. Posters with no words, to sway the illiterate. If Lenin comes back the first thing he’ll do is ban the newspapers that oppose him, mark my words.”
“We’re leaving tomorrow, for goodness’ sake.”
“It may already be too late.”
“If you stop making them that apple cake we’ll be on our way. The count lives for it.”
“There’s a bad element here now. I don’t like it. I would have left a long time ago.”
“What is stopping you?”
“You’re not safe here. If the documents come today we should go tonight.”
“They wouldn’t have threatened my mother if she were still here. She threw a party for the villagers every year on her name day in June. They all slept out here and she held a lottery for them, baked them special cakes herself.”
Cook scanned the distant forest. “You don’t understand, Sofya. No one is safe anymore.”
* * *
—
LATE THAT AFTERNOON I rode off the property, my last ride with Jarushka for some time. I needed to get away from Agnessa so I could sit in a bower, think, and tend to last-minute details. She interrupted me so often, barking at the servants to pack with care and sew jewels into the linings of our traveling coats. I was assigned the emerald necklace Father had given our mother on their honeymoon. I felt the hem of my jacket, the platinum heavy there.
All day Agnessa had sat in the zala trying to calm the count, plying him with Father’s best brandy.
The count swirled the brandy in his glass. “The Bolsheviks hate us. How many revolutions do we need to understand that? I hope you’re taking all the silver. It may not be here when you get back.”
“Bogdan will watch the house while we’re gone,” Agnessa said.
Settled on a mossy mound in the woods, I ate some brown bread and cheese Cook gave me for the ride, wrote a letter to Eliza, and pulled Afon’s latest, most precious letter from my rucksack. Mail service was spotty and even Father’s couriered Ministry packets had dwindled to one per week.
Even if your parents are reluctant, Afon wrote, take Luba and Max away from Malinov immediately.
Afon wrote that the fighting was intense, but the details were censored in black ink. How I hated those black streaks. We knew from the newspapers that the worst fighting was in Verdun, France, on the western front, at the crossroads of Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany. Where was Afon’s regiment? He hinted they were close to Poland.
I willed him far from Verdun.
On the ride back to the house, I bent low over Jarushka’s neck, tearing through the brush. Cook’s five o’clock dinner bell tolled in the distance proclaiming my tardiness.
Darkness descended as I rode, my jacket unbuttoned, the cool wind dancing around the inside of my linen shirt. As I neared the house Jarushka slowed, then startled and sidled. Something moved near the far barn, darkened figures. Surely, I was imagining things. Without Afon at home, how I jumped at every little thing.
As the lights of the house came into view I calmed. Agnessa and Father would be worried about me, but I was ready to go, my trunks already reduced to necessities only.
Dismounting in the barn, I hugged Jarushka about the neck and she nuzzled my side. It was the last time I would ride until she was sent along to meet us in Paris. I left her with her nose in a bucket of oats and stepped to the back door of the house, brushing dust from my jodhpurs as I walked.
I barely tapped the back door with my crop and Raisa unlocked it and bobbed a little curtsey.
I held out my hand and Raisa removed my one glove, then the other. “What a ride that was. Is Varinka here?”
“Yes.” Raisa leaned close and whispered. “And your father asked me three times where you were. I told him out for a walk, may God bless me.” She crossed herself.
I hurried on toward the dining room and passed Cook, hands on hips, hair slicked back, his blue eyes deep with concern.