Coronets and Steel (39 page)

He paused in the act of picking up the papers he’d dropped on his desk and gave me a brief smile. “Cerisette only wishes you
canaille.
” Before I could figure out how to answer that, “Meanwhile you’ve been cooped up without getting to see anything. Shall I take you over to the palace and show you Queen Maria Sofia tomorrow afternoon?”

“So there’s no sinister Tony minions lurking about?”

“Oh, they’re out there, but not around the palace.”

“I’d love to go. I’ve already seen Maria Sofia’s portrait once,” I said. “But I’d like to see her again. Take note of her hairdo, since I’ve got to figure out how to copy it myself, as my maids seem to have taken the year off.”

He was still smiling, more than the dumb joke warranted, then said, “See you tomorrow.”

I
DON’T KNOW what I expected to find in Milo’s journal after Gran’s departure. Like Alec said, there was no more emotional drama than there was magic. I still kept at it. The journal changed considerably over the decades after the war. The human side of Milo—the shy, reserved, extremely well-read man devoted to duty, always thinking about the country even when running from the Russians (and Alec was right, Kilber
did
save his life several times)—vanished, replaced by a series of mission statements.

It was so detached it was nearly inhuman. By the time I reached the end, I wondered if hints of love or laughter, much less magic, were present by their absence. Milo didn’t even mention anything as innocuous as music, though there was that enormous collection of LPs in the library, and Mina had said he was as good a piano player as Gran, and they’d played long duets together.

The last entry I read was a thoughtful, closely reasoned essay based on experience, addressed to “Marius.” An adult Marius, though I knew he wrote it after Alec’s birth. It began with the duties of a king then moved on to a list of Dobrenica’s prioritized needs—with reflections on the state of the Soviet government and what he thought would be its future.

I was impressed with the farsightedness, but as I closed it, I wondered what it was like to grow up with such a person as a father. I had this vivid image of a smart, lonely boy with books as his constant companions. His dedicated, austere, universally admired father would be too busy with crucial governmental duties to ever take him to a soccer game or to a movie.

I was replacing that last journal when I heard the noise of an arrival, which was the delivery of the masquerade ball gown Aunt Sisi was loaning me, along with its accoutrements: silver high-heeled, jewel-buckled shoes à la Cinderella; a fantastically lovely petticoat with yards of stiff tulle and lace that could have been worn alone and been admired; a headdress of pearls and feathers; a brocade fan; the mask was a scrap of lace with seed pearls sewn on.

She included a note saying that if the gown needed alteration, she could send a seamstress over. The shoes would be too difficult to replace on such short notice, but if they did not fit I could wear Ruli’s silver sandals.

The dress was a
Robe à l’Anglaise a la polonaise.
It was a struggle to deal with the zillion hook-and-eyes at the back of the tight, stiff bodice. I could understand how a maid had been indispensable.

When I got a look at myself in the mirror, I almost fainted.

The gown was ice-blue brocaded silk satin, with a cream-colored taffeta skirt beneath the huge polonaise swoops. Both were embroidered in silver. The elbow-length sleeves and the low square neckline were edged with pearls and heavy lace. The result was that I looked like Cinderella.

The shoes were tight, but with silk stockings they would be bearable for a night. They were too perfect with the gown.

I danced around the room, loving the whoosh of the wide skirt, until Madam A. tapped at my door to announce Alec’s arrival.

“Tell him I’ll be down in five!” I yelled.

I wrestled my way out of the dress, sat down and scribbled a note to Aunt Sisi, saying that the dress fit fine. Then I raced down the stairs, resetting my hair clip as I ran.

Alec was waiting in the hallway. “You know, you can sit down in your own house,” I greeted him.

“Let’s go,” he replied, smiling.

“Aunt Sisi sent the gown for the masquerade ball tomorrow night.” I sighed happily as we walked out into the hazy sunlight. The lawns and flowerbeds were all deep with color, and huge sky-reflecting puddles pooled in the streets. “I was trying it on.”

“And? Does her gown meet with your approval?”

“It’s gorgeous. I can hardly wait for tomorrow.” I looked at the red Fiat waiting. “What happened to the green machine?”

“This car is easier to drive on the old back streets. And the mountain roads.”

“Bright colors on purpose? So animals and people and the occasional other car can see ’em?”

“And hear them.” He started the car.

“Thought so. Tony’s ride is red, too. Do you know if Aunt Sisi ever wears costume jewelry?”

“Costume jewelry?”

“You know, fakes. Like, to wear with costumes. That Queen Maria Sofia dress is beautiful, but the broad expanse right here,” I smacked my collarbone, “looks bare without any sparklies. Would she be insulted if I asked?”

He turned the car up a back lane into the palace complex, then shot me a humorous look. “She would,” he said with conviction. “She’d be offended if a guest to her dinner table wore false jewelry in her presence. I’ve a collection of family jewelry, and no female relatives to use it. Would you like a necklace? I’ve got half a dozen of them. Two old. The rest newer. All very sparkly.”

“The real McCoy?”

“Yes.”

“No thanks.” I shook my head. “Much as I’d enjoy putting something like that on, the thought of having to replace an irreplaceable heirloom would haunt me all evening, and
nothing
is allowed to spoil my night at a masquerade ball in a real, licensed and patented royal palace.”

He pulled up behind a wing of the palace and parked. “So you took the palace tour?” He opened a discreet side door, which led into a plain white-plastered hallway.

We were in the servants’ quarters—which we didn’t get to see on the tour. It took a crown prince to gain access to them, a thought I found funny. “Sure. How else was I going to see this place?”

“You expected to move about inconspicuously, and to leave unremarked after your purpose was accomplished?”

He didn’t say
visit,
he said
purpose.
Cravenly I overlooked it as we trod up a flight of stairs. “Yep. You’d said Ruli was rarely in the country, and when she was she only hung out with the blue bloods, and I thought it impossible anyone would associate me with Gran. I had doubts about the whole thing being connected with me in the first place. But that sure changed when I saw the portrait. And then the nursery. And five minutes after that, Aunt Sisi found me.”

“Nursery? This way.” He opened the door down another plain hall.

“The mural. Gran used to tell me Fyadar stories, and that was the scene of a lot of ’em. Did you ever read any of the Fyadar comics and stories made by schoolkids under the Germans and the Soviets?”

“Yes.” He glanced at me with that expression of mild inquiry. “Milo brought me back a few children’s stories in Dobreni when I was small, to encourage my learning of the language. And my first friends here showed me some of the smuggled books when I was around thirteen.”

“Did you like the comic books?”

He shrugged. “They were part of home. I read a few. But after a dozen or so I was disgusted to discover that you could tell where the story was going by the mountain it was set on.”

“The mountains,” I breathed. “I wondered about that.”

He opened an unmarked door and we stepped onto the parquet floor that stretched gracefully between two grand stairways. I remembered following the tour along the marble floor below, peeking in through the doors at the grand ballroom.

“Leaving aside the question of otherworld inhabitants, no matter how cynical and sophisticated he or she becomes, you will never completely convince a Dobreni that the mountains don’t have distinct personalities. Certain valleys are believed to be better for herbs, others for the breeding of sheep. Makes for obscure jokes.”

“Speaking of jokes, you once told me that Devil’s Mountain got its name from bad weather. After what I’ve been through what I want to know is, what’s it really known for? Devils?” I laughed.

“I already told you. Vampires.”

I gave a snort of disbelief. “I don’t believe it.”

“All I can say is that I have never seen any. However.” We had walked along the parquet past two high paneled doors. Alec opened the third door as he said, “My father thinks he might have. Here we are.”

“What?” I squawked, staring around the high-ceilinged rococo gallery. “He never said anything about
that
in the journal.”

“Only evidence of what he could see—what he could prove—went into the journal. He’s deeply devout, but you never saw a reference to attending Mass, either. Faith is not proof, it is . . . faith.” He opened a door to a familiar long gallery. “Here we are.”

Down one side was a row of tall windows that overlooked the garden. Every available foot of wall space between and on the long wall across from them had been covered with various sizes of portraits.

Alec waited patiently, surrounded by the silent eyes of our ancestors as I took it all in.

Dsarets predominated, though twice in the nineteenth century the rulers were Ysvorods—and there, in a late-Renaissance frame was another Ysvorod king. Grigorian was his name. “Your family have a title when not throne-warming?” I asked over my shoulder.

Alec had opened a window and was sitting in it. “Domitrian. Dukes of.”

“Ah.” More Ysvorods; it appeared they’d had control for most of the Middle Ages. These portraits were so stylized, after the fashion of the time, that all one got a faithful impression of was the clothes.

The last of the early Ysvorod kings caught the eye partly because he was (despite the artist’s valiant attempts to draw attention away from the fact) enormous, emphasized by a fondness for pink satin slashed with crimson puffs.

“That guy.” I pointed. “Don’t tell me he was a pious monk-type.”

Alec laughed. “Good old Thaddeus was exactly what he looks like, a dedicated gourmand. He was the only ruling Ysvorod to marry a von Mecklundburg—you notice they are the only family who Germanized their names, back in the 1600s—but no children resulted, so the throne went to the Dsarets. It was after that marriage that the Swedes invaded us.”

“So how—” I stopped.

Maria Sofia Alexandria Elisabeth Vasa Dsaret smiled benignly down at me.

“Where are her kids?”

“She had several daughters, and finally one son. Here—” He tipped his chin toward the opposite corner, where a ringletted lady reclined in a filmy white gown on a sylvan background. Curly black hair, slanty black eyes, Mediterranean coloring, arms plump and rounded after the Directoire fashion; she had the crooked smile, charming and insouciant. I’d seen her before, along the staircase at Aunt Sisi’s.

“Daughter?”

“Daughter-in-law, Aurélie de Mascarenhas. She’s the one who brought your name here, though it reverted to the Latin form, Aurelia. Many family stories about her. Beautiful, ambitious, opinionated. The crown prince wouldn’t marry anyone else. Championed by the queen, despite some questions about her background. Sofia must have seen herself in young Aurélie, who came here straight from Napoleon’s court, where some hinted the upstart went to meet another upstart.”

“So her pedigree wasn’t pure?” I asked, doing air quotes on the word ‘pure.’

Alec opened a hand. “The queen vouched for her, so that was that. Family legend has it Napoleon made a pass at her. Perhaps he did. She was much sought after in Paris and Vienna. Some say England, too. That was painted when she married the crown prince. Her daughter married into the von Mecklundburgs, which is where they get the black eyes and that crooked smile.”

“Wow,” I said, staring slowly around the room. “My relatives. No wonder people pay a fortune to have their genealogies traced—it’s amazing to look at them and see resemblances to one’s self and one’s relatives. Like this fellow. He’s definitely got The Face.”

I pointed up at a stiffly posed slender young man wearing a nineteenth-century military tunic with sashes and braid and epaulettes. He looked like a somber Tony, with the same pale hair, but with light brown eyes. No hint of the crooked smile.

“That’s your great-great-grandfather. Painted a year after his twin was killed in a duel up in the eastern mountains. He married another of Old Sofia’s descendents. It’s their child who was your grandmother’s mother.”

I sighed. “I wish I’d been a good tourist and brought a camera. I’d love to show these to Mom.”

“Why don’t you let her come see for herself?”