“Goodness,” Eugenia whispered. “While we were in our provinces, half of St. Petersburg lost its mind, and now they fancy themselves a greenhouse.”
I snickered and immediately felt better. My mother had drifted off to greet some people she recognized, leaving me in Eugenia’s uncompromising care. I expected a round of introductions and perhaps some dancing — the orchestra was tuning itself, with low melodic yowls of violins and shy exhalations of trumpets — but instead, Eugenia steered me toward the far end of the ballroom, where a clump of royal blue uniforms betrayed the presence of the emperor and his Polish wife.
He was sitting in a tall chair, not a throne by any means, but imposing enough to suggest it; his wife, a stately woman with watery eyes, sat next to him, with everyone else standing in a semicircle. General Pestel, much older than I remembered him, smiled at Aunt Eugenia.
She nodded, but her eyes and her glare were for the emperor alone. In his blue uniform jacket and white trousers, he looked like an elderly officer; his wig, desperately out of style, gave him an appearance of vulnerability — so light and fine, like the fuzz on a duckling. His pale blue eyes looked past me and at Eugenia, and I could have sworn that for a moment he looked… not fearful exactly, but apprehensive.
“Dear Countess Menshova,” he said to her. “How good it is to see you! And this”—he nodded at me, smiling beatifically—“must be the Trubetskaya girl… I mean, young lady.”
I curtsied and blushed.
“Indeed,” Aunt Eugenia said, frowning. “A daughter of one of your officers, still waiting for you to wake up and perhaps do something useful with your reforms.”
At that moment, I rather resented Aunt Eugenia dragging me into the imperial circle of attention with such a pronouncement. “I… ” I stammered.
This was clearly not about me, as the emperor did not even glance in my direction. “Countess,” he said. “There is no reason for you to be unhappy — your niece will not be hampered by the inheritance laws. You yourself have not been so encumbered.”
“I was lucky not to have competition from male heirs,” Eugenia parried. “But even then, if it weren’t for my father’s kindness and forethought, the Menshov lands would be in the hands of some cousins thrice removed.”
The emperor shrank deeper into his chair, looked very old, and murmured something conciliatory. By then, those who were queued behind us waiting to pay their respect to the emperor had clustered closely around us, and I found myself quite mortified, the center of a sizeable crowd that surrounded Eugenia, me, and the emperor with his retinue. Even I knew this was not a proper way to make one’s debut.
Aunt Eugenia drew closer, her bony finger in his face. “You better fix those laws so that I never see another deserving woman tossed out of her house and sent to live with her relatives,” she said.
“But my dear,” the empress said. “Most women are not equipped to run an estate. Why, just look at your own sister.”
A terrible smile spread across my aunt’s features; she no longer looked plain but petrifying, a Fury of old come to avenge the crimes committed against widows and orphans. “Please do not fault my sister for not knowing the things she was never taught,” she said, still addressing Constantine, “and I shall never fault your brother for not learning what he was taught.”
I could not help but notice that one of the officers, wearing an especially ostentatious pair of epaulettes, turned crimson. I pegged him for Prince Nicholas.
But Eugenia was not yet finished with the emperor. “That reminds me,” she said. “You’d best make sure your university starts accepting young ladies, to better prepare them for the rigors of governance. Then you can change the law with no worries.”
With that, she turned abruptly, her black skirt swirling, and dragged me along with her. The silence behind us was all the more profound as the orchestra started playing the first bar of a waltz, a waltz, I realized, I would never dance, because now I was the niece of the crazy Countess Menshova who — unorthodox even in her youth — had finally fallen off her rocker in her dotage, and spoke of governing as if it were her birthright. Elizabeth and Catherine the Great notwithstanding, everyone seemed to agree that Eugenia was too bold, and they whispered and stared at us. I could not stop blushing.
My mother, oblivious as always, wandered over to us, and smiled at me. “Look at that,” she whispered proudly. “All the eyes are on my little duckling.”
Before she had a chance to insist that I should go and dance with some nice young man or another, two officers approached us.
“Countess Menshova,” one of them said. “The emperor is concerned that the excitement of the season has reflected poorly on your nerves — he fears you are overwrought. Perhaps you would be more comfortable at home.”
The other said nothing, but his posture indicated that if Aunt Eugenia did not leave, he would not hesitate to forcibly exorcise her from the premises. We had no choice but to follow this polite but firm advice.
“Come along, Sasha,” Eugenia said. “Apparently, age and wisdom do not always nest together.”
Before that day, I had never considered that dying of embarrassment was not just a figure of speech but a distinct possibility.
Chapter 2
The rest of the season went slightly better — I had an opportunity to meet several young women close to my age, from the families of Golitsyn and Obolonsky, Lermontov and Muraviev — all old families, which shared history with mine. There were balls and there were visits, tea, walks, and carriage excursions. The young women were neither mocking nor particularly kind to me, and I suspected that the rumors of Eugenia’s outburst would die if only I could let them. As it was, every time I walked into a room and people stopped talking, I suffered a long spell of blushing and mortification, convinced they were talking about her — about us.
Meeting young men was especially vexing: most of them managed to be simultaneously terrified and scornful of my aunt, and while I suspected that my looks would not detract from the appeal of my future titles and fortune, the mere idea I was related to Eugenia made me, if not a monster in their eyes, then something at the very least deeply unpleasant, like a toad or a water snake.
We stayed in St. Petersburg through most of the winter, and I watched the black Neva waters grow at first a lattice and later a carapace of green ice, turning into a gigantic chrysalis suspended between the gray stone walls, and I wondered if any of the submarine boats were caught under it.
That year, it did not snow until December, and until then the frozen cobbles sung under the thick soles of my winter boots, and I wrapped myself in my coat, while drinking in the sights. I still preferred my solitude, going for walks whenever the wind ceased cutting like a knife, and the damp cold off the Finnish Gulf retreated, allowing the sun to shine.
Anichkov Bridge quickly became a favorite destination thanks to the savage though immobile life of its rearing horses. I could stand and look at them for hours on end; it was a childish conviction, but I believed at times that the moment I would turn away they would spring to life, their muscles knotting and sliding under their stone skin, and thunder away down the embankment, and then I would feel a fool for having turned my back on them. Thus compelled, I stared at them until the cold stung my eyes with bristling tears and my hands grew numb; I stomped my feet to keep warm and stuffed my mittened hands into my sleeves. In retrospect, I recognized this behavior as the first sign of my willingness to search the world for the unusual, a quality foreign to both my mother and my aunt. Yet, it was the latter who furnished me with the opportunity to realize this secret potential.