The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

Astiza’s Story

M
y husband apologizes for the dangerous task we’ve agreed to, but it’s rekindled our energy. I’ve locked away my worry and kept the Tarot cards unturned. I’m wary of ambition, but Ethan says—or hopes, promises, yearns—that our luck has finally changed. We all needed rest after reaching St. Petersburg from the terrors of Bohemia, but now we’re enlisted in a gamble that might set us up for life. As a result, Ethan’s mood is feverish. Sketches litter our apartment. Our servant Gregor has been sent for odd supplies. My husband has scouted his objective with a telescope, taking Harry to allay suspicion. His enthusiasm infects my own. Men are easiest to live with when employed, brightest when challenged, and bravest when dared. Our mission is quite mad, which means it’s exactly the sort of thing that fits our eccentric family. Our child Horus helps. Czartoryski is inquiring for a suitable corpse. I work with rubber, silk, and thread.

It was my visit to St. Petersburg’s island fortress that set our plan in motion. I was surprised by the invitation of the pretty tsarina, but Elizabeth has retained a close relationship with Adam Czartoryski who befriended us. All sense opportunity in our era’s tumult. Napoleon’s royalist foes call their nemesis “the torrent” because he’s flooded the world with change, and everyone hopes to ride the current to their advantage.

I rose early and in the local fashion scrubbed my face with ice, on the Russian theory that this trial makes a woman’s cheeks rosy. Honey and ash are used to brush teeth. When a lieutenant of the tsarina’s guard called at our apartment at ten, my husband had already left to take Horus to the sled ramps of St. Petersburg. These are elaborately roofed and decorated platforms eighty feet high, with stairs at one end and a long ramp on the other that is sprayed to make ice. Sleds whiz down at terrifying speeds. I won’t try it, but Horus isn’t afraid to ride in Ethan’s lap. Our boy is thrilled that winter is embraced here. The Russians enjoy skating in line, snapping the snake to accelerate the endmost skater. Their winter sleigh rides are swifter than summer carriages, because river ice is smoother than any road. The inhabitants throw snowballs, build snowmen, hunt, fish through the ice, and warm themselves in saunas and steam baths.

Horus also begs to see the pit fights between bears and dogs, but I told my husband to forbid this barbarism and he promised to obey. I never entirely trust those two—what sensible wife and mother would?—but their sledding was a welcome recess from watching my boy.

“This is an unannounced outing,” the escorting officer instructed as I put on my coat. “Her majesty’s sleigh is waiting nearby in an enclosed courtyard.”

Our boots squeaked in the snow as we trudged, St. Petersburg’s winter oddly reminding me of the Egyptian desert. The dry powder is like sand. The canals and rivers are frozen as hard as ancient pavers. The cold is sharp as the sun. In both places, breath burns the lungs.

We went through a gate. The door of a covered sleigh opened. Elizabeth lifted a polar bear pelt and beckoned me beside her, a finger to her lips. As I sat, she snugged the fur around our hips. With the crack of a whip and song of sleigh-bells our team trotted into a street, down a ramp, and onto a frozen canal, our shoulders jostling as the sleigh swerved. Lace on the glass windows worked with frost to hide the tsarina’s face from the public. She turned to face me, still pretty as porcelain at twenty-seven years old.

“Priestess! Are you prepared to tell my fortune?”

“If it will truly amuse you, tsarina. The trouble with sharing the future is that many find they would rather not have known it.”

“I promise to accept fate bravely if you promise to be honest.”

“I’ll tell you what I see.”

“What method do you prefer?”

“There are a dozen ways to forecast. The physiognomy expert Johann Lavater contends we can tell past and future by simply studying the face. One’s character, personality, and destiny are molded into its shape and lines. Your face is angelic, tsarina. That suggests good fortune.”

She laughed. “What a flatterer you are!”

“This is not true of all pretty women, whose less symmetrical faces betray worry, jealousy, or greed. Your features are good.”

“Only good and not perfect?” She was teasing.

“This world does not permit perfection,” I risked.

“Neither does court gossip! You’re not just a seer, you’re a truth teller. A formidable combination.”

“At personal peril, tsarina. Historically, many fortune tellers have found it wisest to bend the truth to prevent execution.”

“Don’t worry, I only imprison.” Her amused tone was much lighter than at the reception.

“I’m relieved.” We both smiled.

“Seriously, continue with the truth. A royal has difficulty differentiating between truth and flattery, and between friends and seducers. The fate of the mighty.”

“The fate of everyone. All of us want things from each other.”

“Especially love. Now. Would you like a teacake?”

“I actually have another means of fortunetelling that uses your cake.”

“Oh my. I hope the baker knew.”

I reached into my satchel as we glided beneath several bridges and emerged onto the broad white Neva, its ships and boats frozen in place until spring. St. Petersburg is built on an archipelago on the Gulf of Finland and so water serves as the city’s highways. Light snow was falling this day, making the city a fairyland. The Winter Palace and Admiralty were foggy bergs, and across the river was the glacier of the new Stock Exchange. The Peter and Paul Fortress was a softened gray mesa punctuated by the steep golden spire of the cathedral in its middle. That bell tower rose four hundred feet, highest in the city. Instead of the usual onion domes, Peter the Great had chosen a Dutch-style steeple as sharp as a needle.

We aimed for the fortress pier, which was somewhat disquieting since the fort also serves as a prison. Was the Tsarina really joking?

“What test?” Elizabeth prompted.

I brought out a goblet and flask and poured water. “This is liquid from the Fountain of Epidaurus in Greece, where people flocked to Asclepius the Healer.” The water was actually from our neighborhood well here in St. Petersburg, but truth can be embroidered. “In ancient times, people would come to the fountain pool and cast bread to see if it floated or sank.”

“And what did each result portend?”

“Try it first. Toss in a bit of cake.”

The fragment bobbed as I expected. Always rehearse your magic.

“It floats. Good fortune, again.”

She glowed. “You are the most delightful companion!”

“And I’m thrilled you believe my prophecies. So many doubt these days. My own husband, a Franklin man, likes to tell the story of an ancient army which came upon an augur watching a bird in a tree. The prophet said that birds fly closest to heaven, and thus reflect the gods’ will. So the general gave the fortune-teller a coin to tell which way the army should go. The augur explained that if the bird flew onward, the army should advance on the enemy. If the fowl flew the other way, the army should retreat. If it flew toward the other cardinal points, the army should go that way.”

“What did the bird do?”

“Nothing. It wouldn’t fly. Thousands of men sat to wait. Finally an impatient lieutenant took up his bow and shot the animal dead. ‘What are you doing?’ the general cried. ‘If that bird was so prophetic,’ the lieutenant replied, ‘why didn’t he foresee
that.’”

Elizabeth smiled. “So you don’t really believe our games.”

“On the contrary, tsarina. I am
not
a Franklin man and, as much as I love my husband, I don’t always agree with his skepticism. Like many men, he’s blind to mystery. It seems to me that fortune is determined largely by chance, that the world has an order that implies divine intelligence, and that any sensible person thus recognizes both destiny and free will. I tell this amusing story to be fair, but I tell fortunes because they come true.”

“So the signs still seem positive?” I’d made her anxious.

“If I’m reading them correctly.”

We sleighed a moment in silence, me gambling that I’d deepened our relationship with honesty. I’ve encountered enough powerful people to know that they are just that, people. Marriage at fourteen to sixteen-year-old Alexander eventually turned the German princess Louise of Baden to Elizabeth, Tsarina of Russia, but ruling is a heavy fate. Many of the great are melancholic, and Elizabeth is no exception. Her dynastic union with the tsar is, by all reports, joyless, each finding romantic partners elsewhere. Her tyrannical mother-in-law still intimidates the tsar. Alexander’s wanton mistress takes pride in Elizabeth’s humiliation. So when the tsarina’s gaze strayed sideways to look down the river, her pretty lips sagged. She’s in a gilded prison.

“I think I trust you,” she finally decided. “So this outing is our secret, and we’re both tempting fate. Here, hold my hands for warmth and tell me how you met your infamous husband.”

“I was a slave in Egypt,” I began, knowing the admission jolts the listener. To be born fortunate doesn’t interest people, but to rise above low station intrigues them. “But before Ethan freed me I was educated by my Egyptian master.”

“Favored for your beauty?”

“Not in the way people assume. My elderly owner showed no romantic or sexual interest. He longed for companionship. He appreciated my looks as a man appreciates a flower, but he courted my mind.”

“An unusual master, and a fortunate slave.”

“It came to pass that my master was shooting at Bonaparte in Alexandria during the French invasion, and I was reloading his guns. Master was killed by a cannon shot and Ethan found me in the rubble. At first I assumed him a conquering mercenary with a man’s idea of repayment, but he, too, actually listened.”

“You must be able to seduce with words.”

“I recognized Ethan’s good character before he recognized it himself. We eventually fell in love along the Nile.”

“How romantic!” Elizabeth sounded wistful. “Like Antony and Cleopatra.”

“There was no royal barge, I assure you. We eventually had to separate, but I was pregnant with our son. Fate in the form of pirates reunited us, and destiny has driven us since. Just recently he rescued me again, or I rescued him—I suppose it was both. And then the tsar invited us to Russia. Your court has been very kind.”

She laughed. “Surely you’re the first to ever say that!”

“You listen too, tsarina. I’m flattered.”

“What stories swirl around you, Astiza! You’ve been called a fortune-teller, a priestess, a sorceress, a witch, a philosopher, and a seeker.”

“I’m proudest of being a mother.”

“Which I envy. My own daughter, Maria Alexandrova, was a child of love.” She meant her child by Czartoryski, not the tsar. “But she died at little more than a year old.”

“There’s no greater tragedy.” I squeezed her hands under the fur.

“So now I’m going to tell you a secret.” The tsarina squeezed back. “I may be pregnant again. Can you confirm it with your powers?”

“I have no powers. I know only what I’ve learned from reading. Nor am I a midwife or doctor. But I share your excitement, tsarina. I hope your suspicion is true.”

“Women understand, don’t we?”

“If we’re wise.” I wondered who the father was this time. Her captain? “Is this why you’ve asked me here? I can’t cast a fortune for the unborn.”

“No, no. I simply trust you with this secret, as one mother to another. A favorable fortune suggests my suspicion is true. Can you look at my palm and see if it says anything about this pregnancy?”

I was again reluctant. I prefer not to deliver bad news, and had promised to tell the truth. But I’d trapped myself in her sleigh. I brought out her right palm and studied its lines. These can be interpreted a hundred different ways, and yet her heart line actually intrigued me. I bent to examine it more closely and then looked into her eyes. “Nothing about a baby, but one pattern is suggestive, tsarina.”

She was rapt. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure if you should know, and certainly no one else should.”

“Is it bad?”

“I wouldn’t say so, but your reaction will be your own.”

“Oh, please tell! You’ve made me so curious.”

I took a breath. “Someday you’ll be reunited with an old lover.” That’s what the lines said, and I was certain they meant Czartoryski.

“What? Who?”

“You cannot get names from a palm, tsarina.” A small lie.

“Oh my.” She sucked in her breath, eyes suddenly far away. Yes, we don’t forget love easily. “What a marvelous day this is. I was right to enlist you.”

“Enlist me in what, tsarina?”

“You’ll see. And I want to show you another mother, the God-bearing mother, so you understand Russia. And then something quite different that could change history. God sent you to us, I think.”

The sleigh coasted to the fortress’s Nevsky Gate. Elizabeth told her footmen to wait and we climbed snowy steps, sentries peering down from the rampart above. We walked the pier and passed though a tunnel in the thick wall to the grounds inside. Soldiers snapped to attention as rigidly as Horus’s lead toys, but otherwise the huge fortress, star-shaped like a snowflake, seemed hushed and deserted this snowy morning. Its stone was frosted, and its parade ground was an unmarked blanket. Built against the far walls were the cells of the empire’s most dreaded prison.

I expected a guard of honor for such an esteemed visitor, but we walked across the fortress courtyard alone, two monks swerving as if we were forbidden. “I’ve given orders to be ignored,” the Tsarina explained. This of course was impossible; soldiers gaped and several loped in all directions to warn of our presence. But the absence of the usual phalanx of attendants and guards clearly exhilarated Elizabeth, even as it made me feel more responsible for her. She wore bright blue boots on the slippery cobbles, the fur hem of her coat swishing the snow as we walked. Flakes hemmed it like diamonds. The bottom of her purple dress stained the color of wine from the wet. She held her mouth slightly open, like a little girl wanting to taste the snow.