Anastasia Romanov: The Last Grand Duchess #10 (3 page)

The silence forced Felix back to reality.

Alex stared at Maisie for what seemed a very long time.

“Luchshe sprosit, pochemu vy govorite na russkom yazyke?”
he said finally, not taking his eyes off Maisie.

Chapter Three

FABERGÉ

“I
couldn't help it!” Maisie insisted as she and Felix headed back to Elm Medona from Alex's house. “Hearing about a whole family getting murdered kind of upset me, okay?”

Even after Alex had asked Maisie:
Luchshe sprosit, pochemu vy govorite na russkom yazyke? (
which meant:
A better question is why do you speak Russian?
), Maisie had tried to pretend that she didn't speak Russian.

“What a disaster,” Felix moaned as they turned onto Memorial Boulevard.

“Big deal,” Maisie said. “So he thinks I know a little Russian.”

“A little?” Felix said. “You understood Babushka and then you responded to what she said. That's not a little. That's actually speaking Russian.”

“Who cares, though?” Maisie said. “Alex Andropov isn't going to tell anybody, is he? He has fewer friends than I do.”

“It just draws attention to things we'd rather not have people know about. That's all,” Felix explained, frustrated. Why couldn't Maisie admit this could be a problem?

They walked along Memorial Boulevard in silence, each lost in his and her own private thoughts.

Maisie couldn't stop thinking about the Romanov family: the Grand Duchesses and the Tsarevich all held prisoner, all murdered. Did they know what was in store for them?

After Felix calmed down about his sister, his thoughts turned to Alex Andropov and this blood disease he suffered from. Here was a kid in his grade, a kid he passed a million times in the hallway, and Felix had never once paid any attention to him or his problems. Felix knew Alex missed a lot of school. But Bitsy Beal had told him that Alex's father was a billionaire and that the family often went away on their private jet or yacht. Leave it to Bitsy Beal to get it completely wrong! The Lloyd Edward House on Spring Street was obviously not the home of a billionaire. And Alex spent all those missed days of school in hospitals or at home in bed. Suffering, Felix remembered with a shudder.

Felix broke the silence. “I'm going to be friends with Alex,” he said firmly. “He shouldn't be so alone.”

“Do you think he's really a descendant of the Romanovs?” Maisie asked. “I don't. I think it's a story his grandmother or someone made up to make him feel better about his illness.”

“Why do you always have to think the worst of people?” Felix said. “Maybe he is a Romanov. Maybe he would be Tsar if things had turned out differently.”

Maisie laughed at the idea.

“Right. Tsar Alex of Newport.”

“He wouldn't be in Newport if there hadn't been a revolution,” Felix reminded her. “He'd be in Russia.”

Maisie stopped walking right in front of Felix, blocking his path.

“Why do
you
always think the
best
of everyone?” she demanded.

“I don't know,” Felix admitted. “But I'm glad I'm that way.”

He nudged his sister aside and continued toward Bellevue Avenue and Elm Medona.

Reluctantly, scowling, Maisie followed him. When they left the Lloyd Edward House, Alex had looked so sad.
Maybe I'll come to your house sometime soon,
he'd said. Of course Felix had told him that was a great idea, and Maisie was probably going to have to be super nice to Alex for the rest of middle school.

When Maisie and Felix turned onto Bellevue Avenue, Felix paused.

“I have the weirdest feeling,” he said, looking right and then left and then behind them. “Like we're being followed,” he added.

“Why would anyone follow
us
?” Maisie asked.

Felix shrugged. “I thought I heard footsteps behind us, but then when I turned around, no one was there.”

Maisie glanced behind them, too, just to satisfy her brother. And of course the street was empty.

The mansions there stood sentry over the street from behind tall stone walls and ornate wrought-iron gates. Compared to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg or the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, the Newport mansions were not so grand, Great-Uncle Thorne had told them. Maisie couldn't imagine even more enormous, fancier places than the mansions here on Bellevue Avenue. But if Great-Uncle Thorne had his way, she'd see them for herself soon enough.

A butler opened the enormous front doors of Elm Medona, and Maisie and Felix walked inside. But Felix paused in the doorway and spun around quickly, as if he would find someone standing there. But all he found were the towering elms and the low, almost eerie whistle of the wind.

“There's so much to be done!” Great-Uncle Thorne said impatiently as soon as Maisie and Felix got home.

He had been pacing in the foyer ever since three fifteen, when he had expected them to return. It was now almost six.

“Your mother's going to walk in the door any minute, and then we'll have to have dinner, creating yet another delay in opening the egg. And you two lallygaggers don't show up for three hours!” he continued.

“We've been studying Imperial Russia,” Maisie told him, which was, in fact, mostly true.

Felix smiled at his sister's excuse. “Preparing,” Felix added.

“You always tell us to prepare, don't you?” Maisie asked sweetly.

Great-Uncle Thorne glared at her from beneath his voluminous eyebrows.

Aiofe appeared in the foyer, looking confused. Her black-and-white maid's uniform, complete with the odd poufy bonnet she wore, seemed hastily put on, a bit lopsided and crooked.

“I thought Maisie and Felix were going to be home hours ago,” Aiofe explained. “I had their snacks ready at three thirty, but now . . . well . . . the staff ate them.”

“That's all right,” Felix told her. “We've had a lot to eat this afternoon.”

“
Blini
and
pirozhki
,” Maisie said to Great-Uncle Thorne, who glared harder.

“So, I'm excused?” Aiofe asked hesitantly.

“Yes! Go!” Great-Uncle Thorne thundered.

As Aiofe scurried off, Great-Uncle Thorne raised his eyes to the ceiling and groaned, “I'm surrounded by nincompoops!”

He lowered his gaze, landing it right on Maisie and Felix.

“You two,” he muttered, shaking his head, “follow me.”

“Where are we going?” Felix asked nervously. After what he'd learned today about the fate of the Romanovs and revolution, this was not a trip he was eager to take.

“The Map Room!” Great-Uncle Thorne said, slapping his own forehead. “Isn't that where we've been trying to go ever since your mother barged in on us?”

Maisie and Felix followed him up the Grand Staircase. But halfway up, Great-Uncle Thorne stopped.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“Who?” Maisie said, confused.

“Why are you bumfuzzled?” Great-Uncle Thorne bellowed.

“Bumfuzzled?” Maisie repeated.

Great-Uncle Thorne raised his arms in the air and barked, “The Ziff twins! Where. Are. The. Ziff. Twins.”

“Buenos Aires,” Felix answered.

“Argentina? They've gone to Argentina?”

“Their father was sent there,” Felix explained.

“CIA,” Maisie added.

Great-Uncle Thorne's face twisted and contorted with indecision ever so briefly.

“Onward!” he finally announced.

Then he turned around and began up the stairs again, pounding his walking stick against each one as he climbed.

Maisie and Felix walked with Great-Uncle Thorne through the long corridor outside his room, Great-Aunt Maisie's, and a suite of guest rooms. They didn't usually come down this far, since Maisie had insisted they go inside every guest room months ago. Even she got bored with them eventually. Each room was spacious, with a sitting room and oversize bathroom. The beds were so high that small footstools were provided so the guests could climb up into bed. And each room had a color theme: lavender, aqua, sea-foam green, lemon yellow, eggshell. The bedspreads and pillows, the small sofas and wingback chairs, the towels, and even the soaps were all in that room's particular color. For all the whimsy and quirks of the rest of Elm Medona, the guest rooms—though fancy with gold-trimmed this and silver-accented that—were remarkably dull.

Now Great-Uncle Thorne was leading Maisie and Felix farther than they had ever ventured, past the Lavender Room, the Aqua Room, the Sea-Foam-Green Room, the Lemon-Yellow Room, the Eggshell Room. He flung open the next door, and a cloud of dust exploded from it.

Great-Uncle Thorne sneezed, waving his hands to clear the air.

“No one has been in here for quite some time,” he said.

“I guess not,” Maisie said.

From the doorway, the three of them stared into the Map Room.

Dust motes danced in the light that came through the row of tall windows that made up the far wall. The other three walls were murals of the continents, each country painted in bright colors, each river a vivid blue, the mountain ranges dark green and snowcapped, the oceans a shimmering turquoise.

Maisie recognized some of the countries Mrs. Witherspoon had talked about this morning in class. She saw Rhodesia and Abyssinia and the Belgian Congo on the continent of Africa.

“My goodness,” Great-Uncle Thorne said in a low voice. “This room has been closed off for years, since Maisie and I studied geography and history over there.”

He pointed to two wooden desks in the center of the room, facing the mural of Europe.

“My goodness,” he said again, his voice even softer this time.

Great-Uncle Thorne stepped inside, almost reverentially, and walked over to the desks. Maisie and Felix watched as he traced something carved into the top of one of them, his face wistful. He dipped his finger into a hole in one corner, then held it up to examine.

“The ink,” he said. “All dried up.”

Slowly, he lifted the top of the desk.

Great-Uncle Thorne gasped when he peered inside it.

Maisie nudged Felix to follow her into the Map Room, but he hung back. Something about the way Great-Uncle Thorne looked made Felix feel like they should stay out here. But of course Maisie marched right over to Great-Uncle Thorne.

“Old notebooks,” she said, also peering inside.

Carefully, Great-Uncle Thorne lifted a pale blue notebook from inside the desk.

Maisie saw T
HORNE
P
ICKWORTH
written on the cover, and beneath it W
ORL
D
H
ISTORY AND
G
EOGRA
PHY
.

Felix watched as Great-Uncle Thorne opened the notebook and began to read to himself, his lips moving ever so slightly.

After what seemed a long while, Great-Uncle Thorne closed the notebook and lowered the top of the desk, once again tracing something carved in the wood there.

“It seems like yesterday,” he said to himself.

Maisie watched his finger as it traced the shape of a heart. Inside that carved heart were the letters
TP
+
PM
.

“Great-Uncle Thorne!” Maisie said. “That's you, isn't it?
TP
is Thorne Pickworth!”

Great-Uncle Thorne, maybe for the first time since Maisie had known him, blushed.

“But who's
PM
?” Maisie asked.

“Penelope Merriweather!” Felix blurted from the doorway.

“Oh!” Maisie said. “You've loved her forever!”

“Poppycock,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, but he smiled as he said it.

Maisie turned her attention to the other desk. Although nothing was carved there, Great-Aunt Maisie had drawn a picture that covered the entire top of her desk. The colors were so faded that it was difficult to make out the images. But slowly, as Maisie stared at it, they began to take shape. A wooden roller coaster. A Ferris wheel. A boardwalk. Blurry figures on what appeared to be a beach with a wave washing up against it.

“Coney Island!” Maisie exclaimed.

Great-Uncle Thorne sighed.

“Yes,” he said begrudgingly, “that's Maisie's drawing of Coney Island. I'm glad to see the thing fading away.”

“That's where she met Harry Houdini,” Felix said.

“The beginning of the end,” Great-Uncle Thorne said with another sigh.

Finally Felix walked into the room, too. Almost immediately he caught sight of an enormous globe in the corner. The globe stood taller than him, taller than Great-Uncle Thorne, and so wide that Felix wouldn't be able to fit his arms around it. What really struck him, though, even more than the sheer size of the thing, was how part of it was in shadow and part was in light.

Felix blinked.

“Hey!” he said. “This globe . . . It's . . . spinning!”

Great-Uncle Thorne let out a whoop.

“Still? After all these years?” Great-Uncle Thorne said with delight.

He went and stood beside Felix to watch the globe turn almost imperceptibly on its axis.

“Is it rotating like we are?” Maisie asked as she joined them in front of the globe.

“Exactly,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, nodding.

He walked right up to the globe and picked up a long wooden pointer like Mrs. Witherspoon used, except even longer.

“So it's six thirty here in Newport, Rhode Island,” Great-Uncle Thorne said, pointing to the speck on the east coast of the United States, “and we've still got some light. But over here in . . . Let's see . . .”

He walked around to the other side of the globe and grinned, pointing the pointer.

“In Paris it's after midnight and therefore, completely dark.”

“How is it doing that?” Felix asked.

“Only Phinneas Pickworth himself could explain that, I'm afraid,” Great-Uncle Thorne said. “He brought this home from Florence, Italy, on one of his expeditions. I can't believe the old thing is as good as new.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Maisie caught sight of Imperial Russia stretching across the wall nearest her.