M. Rose - The Secret Language of Stones

“That’s what the key is in the red egg?”

He nodded.

“But what if the red necklace is taken?”

“That’s why I’m explaining it all to you. If the red necklace is taken, the Dowager will be able to find a way to open the green eggs on her own once you’ve explained how it works. Now, let us go outside and show Anna and Grigori the lovely red enamel gift I’ve prepared for the mother of the tsar and the grandmother of his heirs.”

Seeing the necklace, Grigori’s rage turned his cheeks as red as the enamel. The private conversation had angered him. Anna did her best to make small talk and calm him, but it didn’t help.

“We have a long drive ahead of us,” Grigori said to me. And then, with the most meager of good-byes to Anna and his father, he walked out the door. Before I could follow, Anna grabbed me to her and whispered a last bit of advice. When she let me go, Monsieur said, “Bon voyage.” But the words were incongruous with his grave expression of concern.

Every stage of the voyage was difficult. The car Grigori hired was old and the roof leaked in the rain. The roads were rutted and we bumped our way to Le Havre, both of us worried we’d lose a wheel or two.

By the time we arrived, the rain had become a relentless storm that kept the boat in the dock, with all of us on it, for more than four hours before the captain decided it was safe to set sail.

Once we were on the channel, the wind picked up again and Grigori and I huddled in our seats, both of us violently ill. Peppermints or ginger would have helped, but Anna hadn’t packed those. The food she’d prepared went uneaten.

Twice I noticed a businessman, an attaché case in his lap, watching us. The third time, my heart accelerated, and without thinking, I put my hand up to the red egg necklace, fingering one of Monsieur Orloff’s trinkets.

“What’s wrong?” Grigori asked.

I turned to him, faced him completely, so if the man was indeed watching us, he wouldn’t be able to read my lips.

“Don’t look over there. I don’t want him to think I’m talking about him. But there is a man five rows in front of us with his case in his lap. He keeps turning around to watch us.”

“My father has scared you. There’s no one on the boat and no one in Paris who has any idea of what we are doing.”

I knew he was as nervous as I was and just trying to calm me, for all his actions belied his words. He had been inspecting the other passengers when he thought I wasn’t watching. And when he wasn’t scrutinizing people, he was staring out at the channel, worrying the gold signet ring on his left hand. As he continued, I wondered if he was trying to assuage my fears or his own.

“And if anyone did know what we were doing, they wouldn’t care. I know Papa might not think so, but the Bolsheviks have more important things to do than follow a witch and an antiques dealer to a castle on the English coast. They don’t need the Dowager. She’s useless to their cause. If she wasn’t, she would be dead like the rest of them.”

Grigori’s words surprised me. I’d never heard Monsieur or Anna talk with such assuredness about the fate of the tsar’s wife and children.

“So you do believe everyone in the family is dead?”

He looked away from my face, his eyes traveling to the red eggs around my neck. Reaching out, he fingered one and then dropped it, almost reluctantly.

“No, no, I’m not sure,” he said, and looked off to the right, out into the distance.

Grigori’s tell, just as Monsieur had described it. Before, I’d considered this a sign that Grigori was easily distracted. Now I wondered if he’d often been lying.

“But you must have some reason for what you said. What is it?” I asked.

“It makes sense to me, that’s all. Why would the Bolsheviks keep them alive? What better to do with symbols of a corrupt system, as they say.” Grigori spat out the words. Hatred hardening the syllables.

No, his loathing for the revolutionaries ran as deep as his father’s did.

“Enough of this talk now,” he said. “No one is following us. No one is watching us.”

The boat rocked as it hit a swell. We swayed one way and the next. I tried not to but moaned out loud.

Grigori put his arm around me. Cold and scared, I welcomed the comfort. His fingers found the necklace, and he toyed with one of the ruby eggs for a few moments, then let go.

“I’m going to try to sleep.” He closed his arms over his chest. “You should too. You’ll feel less ill with your eyes shut.”

Following his advice, I closed my eyes, but the boat rocked too intensely. That, plus my fears about the man five rows in front of us, kept me awake. Through almost closed lids, I continued to watch him turn to look at us several times more.

Ravaging waves kept tossing the boat as if it were a plaything. My stomach couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to get up; I was going to be sick. I just managed to get to the railing in time. Leaned over. Beneath me the murky green water churned. I gagged. Once. Twice.

And then the boat pitched so far to one side water sprayed on my face. Righting itself, it held steady for a moment and then went down again, sharply, quickly, and I lost my balance. I didn’t care-so sick, the idea of the icy water seemed almost a relief. Falling forward, I watched the waves come closer until arms pulled me back. Away from the inviting sea. I fell backward onto Grigori. When I turned and saw his face, it was etched with worry.

“Thank God,” he said. “I thought…” He broke off, wrapped his arms around me, and held me tight to his chest. “Thank God.”

He’d flirted with me. Befriended me. Shared confidences with me, but until that moment, I hadn’t guessed at the depth of his feelings for me. And it surprised me.

When the boat finally docked, ten long hours after we’d set sail in Le Havre, we disembarked in yet more rain. Even on solid ground I continued swaying, feeling as if I remained on board, still sick, still yearning for the shore beneath my feet even though I had it. Or thought I did.

I don’t think we saw the sun once while in England. From the moment we stepped off the ship, during that first night at a dark, dismal inn, in a room too dirty to take off my clothes, and then all during the long drive to Cornwall, the winds and rain never abated.

Winding through a thick forest dripping with rain and smelling of pine, we rounded a bend and got our first foggy glimpse of Fordingbrook Castle. I sucked in my breath as an overwhelming sense of doom settled upon me. Overhead, seagulls flew, their cries sounding like women weeping.

“Do you hear that?” I asked Grigori.

He listened, frowned. “The birds?”

“Don’t they sound forlorn?”

“As would you be, living in isolation out here on the edge of the earth.”

For that’s where we were. The cliffs jutted out over the sea, and the sea went on forever. The horizon line was nonexistent because of the inclement weather-the gray morass of sky and water continuing on and on with no delineation. This was not a lovely view but rather a bleak impasse, a dire warning not to venture forth, not to pass the boundaries of this place, not to try to soar-not with ideas, not with words-but to stay tethered to the earth.

We climbed out of the car and trudged up to the great gray stone castle, Grigori stumbling on the uneven cobblestones. I wanted to reach out and take his arm, offer him ballast, but would he perceive it as pity? Too proud, he could take umbrage so quickly.

The front door opened, and the majordomo came out to greet us. He looked to be in his seventies but appeared fit. He introduced himself as Briggs and ushered us inside as a fresh-faced young man-too young to go to war and still awkward-picked up our cases and disappeared with them.