seconds the string quartet resumed their song and the crowd huddled in groups to discuss the gunman’s assault, looking strangely out of place in their Persian clothes.
We lost Karina in the crowd and Afon rushed to us, his face pale against his deep blue uniform.
“I am taking Agnessa home,” he said. “She had to be revived with smelling salts. I only have room for the two of us.”
He hurried off, pushing through the crowd, with only a glance back at me.
“Will Peter know to come early to get us?” I called after him.
“I’ll be back as fast as I can,” he shouted back over his shoulder.
Soon, with the festive mood broken, guests started for the gilded doors and the musicians packed their instruments. Eliza and I joined the great crush of the crowd moving down the red-carpeted stairs, now muddy as the streets, wet with muck from Persian boots and shoes.
At the bottom of the stairs an American woman I recognized brushed by us through the crowd and I touched her arm. “Princess Cantacuzène.”
She turned, a tall, handsome woman with kind, expressive, dark eyes, beautifully turned-out in a deep emerald and gold coat trimmed in sable. An American by birth, her husband, Prince Mikhail Cantacuzène, was a decorated general in the tsar’s army and a regular at court.
“Sofya.” She took my hand in hers. “Just dreadful, that shooter. With all the tsarina has been through.”
We joined the crowd, spilling out into the rainy night. As one motorcar came and went, I searched the night for our coachman.
Princess Cantacuzène leaned closer and I caught the scent of jasmine and ylang-ylang. “I would drop you at home but our coach has not arrived, either. The roads are flooded.”
“We could take the tram,” Eliza said.
“Princess Cantacuzène, Countess Speransky Grant, may I introduce Eliza Woolsey Mitchell Ferriday of New York?”
“Lovely to meet you,” Eliza said. “Grant?”
“President Grant was my grandfather. Under better circumstances we will compare notes. But for now, I doubt any of us are getting home anytime soon.”
A friend of Agnessa’s, Count von Orloff, wedged his turbaned head into our little circle. A small, thin-faced man, he’d taken the Persian costume directive seriously. In his ostrich-feathered turban, embroidered, thick, velvet coat, and with kohl makeup lining his eyes, he could have been mistaken by an actual Persian as one of their own.
“The tram is the reliable way home,” the count said. “I hear the rain has closed two streets.”
“I never ride trams at night,” I said. “And besides, they cannot pass on flooded roads, either.”
The musicians rushed by us toward the tram stop, instruments in hand.
“Look, half the party is catching the tram,” the count said. “The rain will keep the hooligans away. Only a cat hates rain more than they do. And besides, I will protect you all.”
Princess Cantacuzène pulled me close. “The Cossacks are guarding these trams on the Nevsky.”
A bad feeling grew in my belly as we followed the crowd to the tram stop, but it was a short walk and the rain-slicked, red tram soon came along.
The conductor stepped down from the rear platform, a bearded man in a black, belted uniform tunic and pants and knee-high boots, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder. From his chest hung paper tickets of all colors for the different routes. He helped each of us up the single step into the tram and then pulled a rope, which rang a bell up front near the driver.
“Yellow tickets, next stop!” he called out as the car set off.
What a relief to make it onto the brightly lit car. The princess, Eliza, and I found room near the driver, who stood at a big red wheel. We sat on the long, slatted, wooden seats that ran lengthwise along the walls of the interior, and shook the rain from our clothes.
The princess handed the conductor sterling for our fares.
“You’re lucky,” the tram driver said to us over his shoulder. “This number four is still running all the way to the Neva. It’s my last run though. Things are bad outside the city.”
Halfway down the tram sat the cellist, an older man with a pronounced widow’s peak and sad eyes, his instrument clamped between his legs. He pulled from his pocket a bottle of the Arak from the party and passed it around the tram. The violinist, a younger man with graying hair, squeezed his violin chinpiece between neck and shoulder and played a rousing chorus of Katyusha, which had been my mother’s