Anastasia Romanov: The Last Grand Duchess #10 (6 page)

Six sections of the wall opened, and from each of them a small figure emerged.

Four girls and one boy.

They were all dressed similarly, in white sailor suits.

“It's them,” Felix whispered.

“Who?” Maisie whispered back.

“The Grand Duchesses and the Tsarevich,” Felix said.

One of the Grand Duchesses had her hand outstretched.

In it was an alabaster envelope with a ruby for its seal.

Great-Uncle Thorne took it from her. When he touched the ruby, the top of the envelope sprang open.

“A note,” Great-Uncle Thorne said.

He carefully took the alabaster letter inside it and held it out for Maisie and Felix to see.

In blue as blue as the lapis lazuli, were the words:

 

HELP ME

Chapter Five

THE IMPERIAL PALACE AT LIVADIA

“I
'm not going,” Felix said, goose bumps shooting up his back.

At the same time, Maisie said, “Let's go!”

Great-Uncle Thorne put the note back in its little envelope and the envelope back in the Grand Duchess's hand.

As soon as he did, everything happened in reverse:

The five Romanovs went behind the walls.

The walls swiveled and became mirrors.

The mirrors reflected hundreds of peacocks as the bejeweled gold one appeared, crying its cry.

The mirrors swiveled and became lapis lazuli walls.

The peacock strutted, opening and closing its tail.

The peacock disappeared beneath the lapis floor.

The butterfly-wing doors swung shut, their gold borders fading into the egg.

The dark, dull sapphire swung back into its place.

A small sigh sounded.

The three of them stared at the egg. Then at one other. Then back at the egg.

“You will put one hand here,” Great-Uncle Thorne told Maisie, placing the handle of the trunk in her hand.

“And one hand here,” he continued, placing her other hand on the egg.

“And
you
,” he said to Felix—

But Felix stepped back, away from Great-Uncle Thorne and Maisie.

“No,” he said. “I can't.”

“You must,” Great-Uncle Thorne said sternly.

Felix shook his head.

Or at least he tried to. His whole body was trembling so much that he couldn't tell if he had shaken his head enough to say
no
again.

“Felix,” Maisie said.

“That note said,
Help me
,” Felix reminded his sister.

“All the more reason to go,” Great-Uncle Thorne told him.

“All the more reason to stay in my nice, safe bed,” Felix countered.

“Poppycock!” Great-Uncle Thorne said.

And with that he grabbed Felix, hard, by the hand, placed Felix's hand on the egg, and just like that, they began to tumble.

Felix looked up into a bright blue sky, against which white minarets rose.

Minarets, Felix knew, were on mosques.

And mosques were Muslim.

And, he thought unhappily, Imperial Russia was Russian Orthodox,
not
Muslim.

So he hadn't landed in Russia at all, he realized with growing fear. He'd landed maybe in the Middle East, a place whose history he knew nothing about.

Felix sat up.

Before him lay a little village of whitewashed houses perched on a slope. All the information Alex Andropov and Great-Uncle Thorne had given him on Russia had not included anything like this.

The sound of pounding hooves thundered behind him, and Felix turned to see an army of men in white pants and embroidered jackets with what looked like black bushes on their heads. Bearded and dark, the men passed on their horses without any notice of Felix.

But a female voice said, “Boy? What are you doing?”

Felix saw a pair of dark eyes peering at him over a black veil that covered most of a girl's face. Her hair was bright red, and her gauzy clothes a color blue that made Felix think of that lapis lazuli.

“I think I'm lost,” he said.

“You aren't Tartar,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Tartar?
Felix thought. No one had mentioned that. He wondered who the Tartars were and why he'd landed with them instead of with the Tsar.

“No,” Felix said. “I'm not.”

One thing Felix had to admit, it smelled really good here. Like flowers and fruit trees. In fact, the slopes were awash in purples—lilacs and wisteria and other plants he couldn't recognize. The girl in front of him had a basket filled with plump red strawberries. As she studied his face, she ate one, and then another.

Felix took a deep breath.

Beneath the smell of flowers, he could smell the salty air near the ocean.

“Where am I, anyway?” he asked.

“Between Yalta and Sevastopol,” she said.

Felix sighed. Neither of those places sounded familiar. How would he ever find Maisie now?

“How did you get here?” the girl asked, cocking her head with curiosity.

Felix remembered Alex Andropov bragging about the Trans-Siberian railroad.
Russia built their railroad faster than any country in Europe,
he'd boasted.

Felix grinned. “Train,” he offered.

The girl frowned. “The Tsar forbade the railroad from coming here,” she said.

“He did?” Felix asked.
What does Alex Andropov know, anyway?
he thought.

“Except for the one track from Simferopol,” she added.

Felix grinned again. “Yes, that's the one I rode on.”

“And to get here from the train in Sevastopol, you took . . . ?”

She waited.

Felix took a deep breath, stalling. His nose filled with the smell of sea air.

“A boat,” he said. “I took a boat.”

She considered this.

“That must have taken hours,” she finally concluded.

“Yes,” Felix agreed. “Hours.”

“And you traveled this far because . . . ?”

Felix tried to think of an answer.

“The Tsar,” he said, vaguely.

“For the opening of the palace at Livadia?” she said, surprised.

“Yes!” Felix said gratefully.

Livadia. Great-Uncle Thorne had told Felix and Maisie all about it.

Relief swept over Felix. He was in Crimea.

Maisie saw white. Blinding, beautiful, endless white.

She squinted against the brightness to try to better see what she was looking at.

A palace
, she realized. A palace that reminded her of the palazzos she had seen in Florence, Italy, when she and Felix had met Leonardo da Vinci. For a moment, Maisie worried that things had gone terribly wrong and she'd somehow ended up with this steamer trunk and Fabergé egg in Florence.

The egg.

Maisie held it awkwardly in her hand.
This won't do at all
, she thought.

She opened the trunk, and for an instant it seemed that the things inside shifted. Maisie blinked.

No, of course they hadn't moved. She scolded herself for her overactive imagination.

She focused her attention back on the trunk and found a piece of delicate white lace inside. Unsure what its real purpose was, Maisie took it out and wrapped the egg in it, tying the corners together to form a little bundle. At least it would be safer that way.

Again she turned her attention to the white stone palace.

Had she landed back in Florence?

But no, she decided. Although the enormous white mansion with the columns and balconies looked like it might be in Florence, there was also something very different here. For one thing, Maisie could smell the ocean in the slight breeze. For another, she could just make out high posts topped with gleaming gold eagles off in the distance. And there was so much land stretching out in every direction that Maisie felt certain the city of Florence was nowhere nearby.

In fact, as she dragged the heavy trunk toward the white mansion, she was confident there wasn't a city anywhere around here. The place felt serene, isolated . . .
royal
, Maisie thought.

“Would you like some help with that?” a girl asked.

Maisie looked around but saw no one.

The girl laughed.

“Up here!” she shouted.

Maisie turned her gaze upward until it landed on a girl with strawberry blond hair and a dirty white dress sitting on the high branch of a tree.

“Hello!” Maisie called to her.

“Hello yourself,” the girl said, cheekily.

Maisie knew that the royal family had loads of servants, and this girl in the dirty dress must be a servant's daughter. Or perhaps a servant herself.

“So, would you like some help?” the girl asked.

“Yes!” Maisie said.

Maisie watched as she moved to a lower branch and swung from it to another and another until she dropped to the ground, almost directly in front of Maisie.

The girl's cheeks were pink and her blue eyes shiny.

She bowed dramatically.

“At your service,” the girl said.

“Thanks,” Maisie said. “This thing is heavy.”

The girl looked around. “Where's your carriage?” she asked.

“Gone,” Maisie answered quickly.

“The footman left without helping you with your trunk?” the girl said, disapprovingly.

Maisie shrugged.

The girl took the handle on the other end of the trunk and hoisted it up, grunting.

“What do you have in here? A body?”

“Just enough clothes to last a while,” Maisie answered.

“You're here for the opening party, I assume,” the girl said.

“Yes,” Maisie said, searching her mind for where she might be.
Not St. Petersburg
, she decided.
It would be colder there. The Finnish coast? No. There would be a yacht, not a mansion.

She smiled to herself.

Crimea. Definitely. On the Black Sea.

“People are coming from everywhere,” the girl said, and Maisie detected a bit of awe in her voice.

“I've come from America,” Maisie said, boastfully.

“America!”

The girl paused to study Maisie.

“They don't have royalty there, do they?” she asked, as if that was a very strange thing.

“No. We have a president.”

“Does he live in a palace?” the girl asked.

“Not exactly. He lives in the White House,” Maisie told her. “But the White House is big.” Maisie laughed. “Though not as big as
this
white house.”

The girl was delighted with that. “Yes!” she said. “
This
white house has one hundred and sixteen rooms!”

She pointed to the palace.

“All four facades are different,” she said. “Isn't that creative?”

The girl took up her end of the trunk again, and she and Maisie continued toward the palace.

“What happened to your king when the government changed?” the girl asked Maisie.

Maisie shuddered, remembering what was going to happen to this royal family.

“We never had a king,” she told the girl. “When we became independent from England, we decided to have a president.”

“How odd!” the girl said.

When they reached the palace, the girl put down the trunk, motioning for Maisie to do the same.

“I'll get someone to take it from here,” she explained.

They walked through a large rose garden, the smell of the flowers so heavy and sweet that it was almost too much to breathe in.

Glass doors led into a large, blindingly white dining room.

Almost immediately a beautiful woman with red-gold hair piled on top of her head and a loose, flowing white dress with lace at her throat and hem swept into the room. At the sight of the girl, she looked horrified.

“Why, you're filthy!” the woman exclaimed.

The girl grinned at her.

“I've climbed almost every tree in the south grove,” she said proudly.

“The priests are arriving soon,” the woman said. “You must get a bath immediately.”

The woman's gaze swept over Maisie.

“And who are you?”

“Maisie Robbins,” Maisie said politely, and surprised herself by curtsying.

Maisie produced the letter of introduction and handed it to the woman.

“Yes, yes,” she said, barely glancing at it. “We'll get you and your . . .”

Her eyes settled on something written there.

“You and your brother settled,” she said.

“You've got a brother?” the girl said happily.

“Felix,” Maisie said.

“And where is he?” the woman asked.

Maisie had practically forgotten about Felix. Where was he?

“On his way,” she said.

“Fine, fine,” the woman said, tossing the letter on the long dining-room table. Above it, an elaborate chandelier glittered in the bright sunlight.

Something caught the woman's attention.

“Is that for me?” she asked, her eyes widening.

Before Maisie could answer, the woman had taken the lace-wrapped Fabergé egg from her.

Slowly, she untied the knot that held the corners together and let the lace fall away to reveal the egg.

“It's lovely!” the woman gasped, holding it up so that the sunlight caught the shine of all the jewels. “And . . . it's made by Fabergé, isn't it?”

Maisie nodded.

“You Americans do bring the most decadent hostess gifts,” the woman said. “Thank you. And thank Mr. Pickworth for us.”

Who's us?
Maisie wondered.

She thought this woman might be the head of the household, in charge of the servants and the kitchen. Surely she should
not
have the egg.

“Does it have a surprise inside?” the woman was asking Maisie.

Maisie swallowed hard. She didn't know whom the egg was for, but the treasure was never for an adult. This woman, whoever she was, couldn't take the egg.