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for more than a year. When it finally took place, thousands of peasants were trampled to death during the celebrations in a panic over food. Nicholas assumed the grand ball being thrown in his honor would be canceled out of respect for the victims of the tragedy, but it wasn’t, and he was counseled to attend in order not to offend his French hosts. The incident was variously used to prove the ill-fated nature of Nicholas’s reign and the heartlessness of autocratic rule.”
    “In any case,” said Mr. Hardie, “the ship isn’t as big as some, and the owners wanted to give it a grand name in order to make up for the size. Still, she was well fitted out and should have turned a handsome profit…” Here Hardie’s voice petered out and he lost the thread. He began to grumble about working for nothing and shipowners who thought fancy titles would do the work of sense, but then he must have caught himself being overly loquacious, for he abruptly told us that eventually the vessel was “sold to an American chappie who knew how to make the bleedin’ bucket pay.”
    Mary Ann liked to hear about anything to do with marriage, so she asked Mr. Sinclair if Nicholas’s marriage to Alexandra had been grand. “I only know that it took place in the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg,” Mr. Sinclair replied, “and the Winter Palace is grand enough.” On hearing this, Mary Ann nudged me, and whispered, “The ship was made for you, Grace. Your name is Winter, and you were just married!” Even though Henry had been in London on business and had only decided to take me with him at the last minute—because, he said, he couldn’t bear to leave me and because he wanted to get married beyond the clutches of a mother who sounded more and more to me like a giant hawk—it made me feel both chosen and doomed to think that the Empress Alexandra had been created especially for Henry and me. In the days to come, I would fabricate for myself a fantastic imaginary place called the Winter Palace, where Henry and I would live. It had cool rooms that led onto sunny verandas and arched windows that overlooked sweeping emerald lawns. It inhabited the architecture of my mind, and I spent hours exploring its corridors, changing the details of its malleable design as I went.
    For the trip out, Henry had chosen a small packet steamer. We were as yet unmarried, and although we told the captain we were husband and wife, Henry wanted to avoid meeting anyone he knew until the knot had been tied, which we did not have time to do before we sailed. Henry thought it would be fun to pretend we were of modest means and said that we would replenish our wardrobes in London. I didn’t tell him that I had no wardrobe to replenish, and I laughed to think that I was now only pretending to be poor!
    There were seven other passengers on the packet boat, but only one other woman. We all ate with the captain, family style, and served ourselves from big platters that were passed from one end of the table to the other. On one occasion, the talk turned to women’s suffrage, and the other woman was asked what she thought. “It’s not something I dwell on,” she said, flustered to be the center of the conversation, which usually excluded the two of us. I found myself saying, “Of course women should vote!” with an air of great conviction, not so much because I had any strongly held opinion on the matter as because I believed the other men were callously using the other woman to prove some point of their own. Later, Henry said proudly, “I guess you set them straight.” But for the most part, Henry and I said little, saving our voices for the times we were alone.
    When Mr. Hardie had finished speaking, other people started telling their particular stories about the explosion and making guesses about what had caused it. There was a difference of opinion about whether the explosion had caused the boat to start sinking or whether it had been a secondary effect. “A