In ten minutes, it seemed that the entire household was in the library: family, servants, staff, many straight from the dinner table, a few already in nightshirts and robes. Adi didn’t see the duchess and her son anywhere, though it was difficult to be sure. Everyone was talking at once, and it was impossible to say what they were on about. It was as if she were sitting in the middle of a train station.
“Would everybody be quiet for—everyone, QUIET!”
Adi looked around. There was George standing up on the sofa, yelling above the din.
It took a moment, but the noise settled.
“What is going on here, George?” cried several people.
“Okay, Thomas.” George gestured for Thomas to climb up on the sofa next to him. Thomas stayed put on the floor and cleared his throat.
“All right, this is what—”
“Louder!” someone in the back yelled. Thomas continued a bit more forcefully.
“What I’ve heard—from Uncle Herbert, who’s just returned from Basel, and via telephone, from George’s cousin, Augustin Canclaux, who is in Paris; around midday today, in Sarajevo, Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were shot. And killed.”
The room went dead silent. A large woman next to Adi (Aunt Effie, perhaps), gasped and grabbed the arm of Adi’s chair to steady herself. People began murmuring all over the room.
“There are reports,” Thomas continued, “of a hand grenade being thrown. But Augustin’s understanding is that a young Serbian man fired a handgun, killing the royal couple. Not sure when they died; there are differing reports on that.”
“It’s 1870 all over again!” someone said.
A pair of sisters, faces covered in lotion, their eyes huge, collapsed onto the sofa. A little man with a tiny dog in his arms reassured the animal that everything would be fine, but tears were spilling down the man’s cheeks.
Adi looked around. What was happening? What happened in 1870?
The woman holding on to Adi’s chair began to moan and sway. Adi rose to give the woman her seat—the aunt fainted right into her arms.
About to topple under the weight, Adi heard, “Come on, Effie, not just here.” George grabbed the woman and danced her over to the sofa, dropping her into a gaggle of other aunts.
The noise level was rising. Arguments were breaking out all over the room. A man in his pajamas started shouting that he had dreamed that this was going to happen. People started weeping.
“Come on,” George said to Adi. They elbowed their way through the crowd toward the door.
George tapped Thomas on the shoulder and pointed to Uncle Henri. Thomas grabbed Henri by the arm. The four of them piled out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind them.
“Good lord!” said Uncle Henri, catching his breath, “Hardly hear myself think in there.”
“But, Uncle Henri,” said George, “this won’t go that far, will it? They’re all first cousins, after all.”
Who are first cousins? thought Adi. What in heaven’s name was going on here? She looked to George and Thomas, pointing to the door.
“You might want to explain to the young lady why everyone is losing their heads in there,” said Uncle Henri, his formidable mustache and eyebrows making up for being the only hair on his head.
Adi nodded.
George looked over to Adi. “How much do you know about European politics?”
Adi held her fingers apart, just a little.
“Well—the archduke—the man who got shot—he’s the heir to the Austrian throne. Did you know he was the heir? Well, he was in the city of Sarajevo. Which is down south.”
“Capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” added Thomas. “Across the water from Italy. You should start with the Franco-Prussian War,” he said to George. “Bismarck, unifying the German states and all that.”
“She’s confused enough. And that was forty years ago. She wants to know why the archduke—”
“The late archduke,” Thomas added.
“—was visiting Sarajevo when he was—” George held his finger to his temple and made a bang sound.
Uncle Henri slapped him on the head.
“I said, explain it—not put on a farce! Some respect, please! Even if the man was a swine.”
“You do it then,” said George. “It’s complicated.”
“I suppose it is,” said Henri, stroking his mustache. “All right. Somebody get me a drink and I’ll try to explain. Come with me, young lady.”
He offered Adi his arm and led the way down the hall. The two young men followed.
“Treaties,” said Uncle Henri. “It’s all about the treaties. All these countries in Europe have agreements to support one another, in case someone declares war on them. That is what’s going to cause the trouble!”
“But no one’s declared war yet, have they?” asked George.
“Not as far as I know,” said Uncle Henri. “But the Germans, and, honestly, everyone else has been talking about it for years.”
They came to some stairs.
“Is anybody else hungry?” said George. “I’m starving.”
“Didn’t you just eat?” said Thomas.
“I guess. I was kind of distracted.”
“All right. I’ll get the drink for Henri,” said Thomas. “But quit it with the garlic. No one wants all that garlic in an omelet.”
George looked to Adi. “You didn’t eat much at dinner. And I threw away your dessert.”
Adi shook her head no, then realized she was hungry. Ravenous, really.
She made a sign with her fingers, a circle and then a cracking motion.
“Good. How do you want them?” George said. “Scrambled? Poached? Henri. How ’bout you?”
They went down the stairs until they came to the kitchen and passed through what must have been an acre of stoves, pitch-black, cast-iron, under a low ceiling.
• • •
While George cooked, Uncle Henri carried on with his discourse, stopping only to take a nip from his cognac. (Adi had hardly been able to look at the bottle.) He’d sat himself down upon one of the stoves, indifferent to the soot on his trousers.
“So you see, young lady, the reason that this business with the archduke is so bad is that because of all the trouble they’ve been having for the last few years in the south of their empire, Austria is looking for any excuse to go down there and regain control.”
George handed her a piece of red pepper. “And the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne is a pretty good excuse.”
“So.” Uncle Henri held his palms out. “In this hand, you’ve got Austria, Germany, and the Ottoman Empire. Maybe Bulgaria. Who knows what Italy will do. Right? In the other hand, you have Russia and France and the British and us, of course. They all”—he made fists with both hands—“have treaties with one another. If Austria declares war with Serbia, everyone will line up on one side or another.” He slammed his fists together. “Bam!”
Adi loved this, though she knew terribly little about European politics and history. She remembered when her father used to say “Politics is not a fitting subject for women to discuss.” Which made Mother laugh, seeing as she was the one who had taught him everything he knew of Indian politics.
Henri let out a heavy sigh. “The irony, as George was saying, is that the monarchs of all these countries are related—every one! First cousins, most of them.” He nodded to their “chef.” “Georgie here as well.” George flipped an omelet and grinned.
“But why won’t that keep them from fighting?” asked Thomas.
Henri took Adi’s hand and gave it a kiss and hopped down from the stove.
“Well, that was the idea, marrying all these families together.” He swatted at the soot on his pants. “Unfortunately, these days the generals are in charge. They don’t care that Queen Victoria was everyone’s grandmother.”
Uncle Henri took a sip from his glass and shook his head as if, in the saying of it, these things had become all too real to him. With a little bow to Adi, Henri said, “Now, my dear, that’s enough of doom and gloom.” She smiled and bowed in reply.
George slid the last omelet onto a plate.
• • •
They took their late supper at a long, well-worn table off the kitchen, joining several of the scullery crew. One of them offered to get George a glass of whatever dark ale they were having. George leaned his face against his hand and smiled. “Another time, lads.” He took a bite of his eggs and looked at Uncle Henri. “So, what is going to happen?”
Uncle Henri shrugged. “I’d like to say everyone is going to sit down and work out their differences like adults, but you may have noticed there are precious few of them about. However, I’m betting you and I and a few others are going to need to be off to Paris—tomorrow, next day at the latest.”
Adi was sleepy but not so much that she missed this. She looked to George. He was studying his plate.
“We have one too, don’t we, Henri? A treaty, I mean.”
“That’s right, Georgie,” he said with little enthusiasm. “Made by your father, with France, when he wasn’t all that much older than you are now.” Henri nodded to Adi, not noticing the look of alarm in her eyes. “Not that anyone much cares what we do, we are but a flyspeck on the map. Unfortunately, we’re a flyspeck just south of Alsace and Lorraine—two territories the French lost to Germany in 1871. The French want them back very badly.”
George looked over to Adi. She was trying to be brave, trying not to look as if she thought her problems were comparable to a European war.
But they were—to her.
Somewhere out there, who knows where, the boys were counting on her.
She clutched her watch tightly to her mouth. It was all she could do not to scream and yell. She should be doing something! Anything!
Pushing away from the table, wiping tears from her face, she ran through the kitchen and up the stairs. These ridiculous shoes! She kicked them off. Down the corridor she went, until she found a door leading out into a garden and an orchard beside the house.
She ran through the trees. The moon had long set; the only light was from the fireflies that had come out in force. The leaves and branches whipped past her, until the cool grass and the night air began to calm her.
Coming to the high wall at the edge of the trees, she put out her hands to touch the moss-covered stone. Leaning her forehead against the wall, she heard steps through the grass behind her, slowing to a walk.
George stood for a moment and then came over and leaned a shoulder against the wall next to her.
Adi studied him in the faint light. He lifted his glasses up and brushed the hair out of his eyes. They stood quiet, listening to a cricket fiddle its tune. George reached out his hand and pulled at a loose curl along the side of Adi’s neck.
“Bad timing,” he said.
She wasn’t sure what timing he was talking about. Meeting each other when she couldn’t speak? A war starting when she was trying to find her brothers? It didn’t really matter. It was all pretty terrible.
She was about to start crying again, though she really didn’t want to. George leaned in—Adi saw fireflies reflected in his glasses. He kissed her lightly on the lips, once, and again.
For just a second it all stopped, there was peace and silence, there was nowhere to go, nothing to do, no riddle, no war, no tomorrow.
They looked at each other a few inches apart, sharing the same atoms of air. He was about to kiss her again when they heard Thomas calling through the trees. She put her hand against his chest.
George took her by the hand. They walked back through the apple trees to the house.