Free Angel on the Square by Gloria Whelan

like chips of ice, but we were warm and snug, wrapped in bearskin robes, our feet resting on little stoves that held heated coals.
    Mama and the Empress remained at home, but the Tsar accompanied us, bringing with him a brace of Cossacks to ride alongside his troika. There was no formality. The girls and Alexei called out to the Tsar as if he were just an ordinary papa.
    “See the moon shadows on the snow, Papa,” Marie called.
    “Yes, yes, my dear, like stripes on the zebra we saw in the zoo.”
    At such a moment as that, or later that evening when the Tsar sat and read to us in his pleasant, soft voice, or when he played a game of dominoes with Alexei, careful to let Alexei win, I felt if I told him about the boys and girls who picked rags, he wouldfind a way to help them. Then I remembered how angry Stana had been with me when I had tried to tell her. I could not help recalling Misha’s words: “The Tsar prefers to close his eyes to such matters.”

CHAPTER SIX
A VOYAGE ON THE STANDART
    Spring–Summer 1914
    In May the Tsar and his family made their usual trip south to their palace in the Crimea. There, on the Black Sea, it would already be summer. “Everything will be in bloom,” Stana said.
    I believed her, for already armfuls of lilacs and roses, sent north by railway from the Crimea, filled the palace. Mama and I would not go along, but soon after the imperial family returned, we would accompany them on their private yacht for a cruise. I kissed all the girls good-bye, giving two kisses to Stana, whopromised to let me read all about the trip in the diary she kept.
    Mama and I returned to the Zhukovsky mansion. Although things were more comfortable, and the teas included cakes and sweets, I missed my new family. When I heard the scripture read at St. Isaac’s, I blinked away tears of loneliness at the prophet Isaiah’s words: “Kings shall be thy nursing fathers.” I had begun to think of the Tsar as a father.
    It was only when Misha, on a week’s vacation from the military academy, joined us that I cheered up. I hardly recognized him. His blond curls had been clipped. His cadet’s uniform made him look older and gave him a soldierly bearing. Mama was delighted and kissed him warmly on both cheeks.
    I was a little intimidated and hung back until he grinned and said, “Well, Katya, have you been so surrounded by handsome palace guards that you have no kiss to spare for me?”
    At that I knew I had my old Misha back. I threwmy arms about him and tried to crowd into an hour the telling of all the things that had happened to me since I had last seen him. It was only when we were alone after dinner that I gave him a chance to talk about himself. “Tell me what the academy is like,” I begged.
    “Up at five in the morning, cold baths, cold porridge, cold tea. We sit in a classroom, and besides mathematics, languages, and military law, we learn how to move great armies about as if they were chessmen. In the afternoon we make our horses jump over fences, and then we run at one another with bayonets.”
    “It sounds horrible.”
    “Actually it was not so bad until recently, when our instructors began to take it all a little too seriously. They want us to be prepared. There is a rumor that our class will be graduated a year early.”
    “What do you mean prepared? Why should you be graduated early?” I asked.
    He gave me a condescending look. “Have youlearned where Serbia is in your geography lessons?”
    “Don’t patronize me, Misha. Of course I know where it is. It’s all the way at the bottom of Europe, where Greece and Italy are, near the Adriatic Sea. It’s next to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.”
    “Good enough. I can tell you your beloved Tsar knows where it is. The Tsar has been making mischief down there, encouraging the Serbs to cause trouble for Austria. There is talk that the Tsar is giving money to support the Serbian terrorists.”
    At once I was on the defensive. “Impossible. I don’t