The Witches of St. Petersburg

‘Do you have it?’ asked Militza walking into the crepuscular kitchen. Brana stood up. Her pinched face was bound in a tight grey handkerchief and she reached into the pockets of her long, black cotton skirt to retrieve a perfect white egg. She proffered it.

‘Freshly stolen?’ asked Militza.

‘From right underneath her feathered belly,’ came Brana’s grinning reply.

‘Shall I do it?’ asked Militza, deftly picking up the warm egg between her thumb and forefinger. Her long fingernails curled around the edge of its shell as she held it expertly up to the candlelight.

‘Go on,’ shrugged Stana. ‘I am a little out of practice and you were always so much better at it than me.’

‘Are you ready?’ asked Militza, looking at the round-faced lady’s maid.

Sitting at the end of a long wooden table in the centre of the room, its walls festooned with copper cooking pots and pans, were the elderly housekeeper, two younger housemaids and Natalya, Stana’s lady’s maid, who was nervously clasping her hands and licking her plump lips, a round bulge protruding out from under her skirts. She must be six months gone, at least.

‘Oh, I’m more than ready, I’m excited, Your Imperial Highness,’ she said, fluttering her sandy eyelashes. ‘Honestly, I don’t mind either way.’

‘But you’d like a boy?’ suggested Militza, sitting down.

‘Just so long as it’s healthy,’ said Natalya, giggling anxiously. ‘I have heard your mother doesn’t need eggs – she can tell what sex a child is just by looking at your belly!’

Militza fixed her with a dark stare. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I did,’ interrupted Stana. ‘But my sister is just as talented.’ She patted her maid’s pink hand to reassure her. ‘She predicted my Sergei and Elena perfectly.’

Militza could feel a wave of irritation. Why was Stana always so indiscreet? The maid didn’t need to know about their family, their business. Ever since the wedding the sisters had deliberately decided to keep their ‘customs’ to themselves. And although there was an embryonic movement amongst the more enlightened at the fringes of St Petersburg society, it was not so long ago that witches were being hounded, ducked and burnt. Women still had to make cakes and hold ‘phantom’ tea parties, even if they were going to do something so rudimentarily primitive as tasseomancy – reading tea leaves. So both she and Stana had to be careful to protect themselves. They had not survived along with generations of other wise women without the use of their substantial wits. In fact, they had both so overtly and wholeheartedly converted to the Russian Orthodox faith on the eve of their marriages that no one could possibly question their piety or probity.

Militza would have admonished her sister then and there had she not been so anxious to get on. She was worried that Peter might return and she’d been warned by him before not to get involved with the servants. Quite apart from the fact that it was unseemly for a woman of her position ever to venture below stairs, it was dangerous to tell the servants too much of anything, he insisted. That way gossiping lies.

‘Well, let’s see, then, shall we?’ asked Militza, cracking the egg swiftly down on the edge of the white plate. Everyone stared as she forced her sharply filed thumbnails through the fissure in the shell and pulled them apart. The egg broke and spilt its bloody contents all over the plate. In silence, the maids watched the writhing gasps of the premature chick as it slithered around on the cold plate in its own womb sac. Unable to breathe, its unformed eyes still firmly glued shut, its pale beak frantically opened and closed as it panicked and snatched at the air. Its puny legs and soft-boned feet skidded back and forth on the smooth porcelain until, eventually, its brief life and struggle was over and, as its beak shuddered open one last time, it died.

Natalya glanced across at the shocked faces of her friends, covering her own mouth with her hand to prevent herself from vomiting. The wave of nausea was immediate. She had not really thought through what she had asked. It was supposed to be a bit of fun, something to while away the boredom of a cold, grey afternoon, finding out the sex of her unborn child, but she certainly had not expected anything quite so visceral.

‘Poor chick,’ she whispered.

But neither Stana nor Militza appeared to notice the servants’ reactions. Accustomed to such sights since early childhood, they were more intent on finding out the sex of the bird. Militza picked up the flaccid chick and, turning over its soft body, she pressed her thumb hard between its legs.

‘Boy,’ she announced. She nodded down at Natalya’s stomach. ‘Congratulations.’ She smiled before dropping the dead bird back down on the plate.

‘Well done! A son!’ added Stana, giving Natalya’s broad shoulder a small squeeze.

Natalya promptly burst into tears.

‘I really must go,’ declared Militza, anxiously glancing up at the wooden clock above the large open fireplace. ‘The Grand Duke will be home soon.’

*