Aarne plucked his hat from the floor. “Might I take your coat? I’m afraid I should take that crossbow as well. If only for your comfort.”

He handed Aarne the crossbow and began the operation of shrugging off the enormous, stained greatcoat. With it came, attached by white canvas straps, his mittens, and into his pockets he tucked the broken and torn and fingerless inner gloves.

Hugo was left in his grotesquely oversized trousers, his Shackleton boots, and a filthy jacket that was far too tight. He thought of the great houses in Grosse Pointe, how his mother had prepared for an invitation that never came to dine with the merchants in oil and rubber and automobiles. He was living not just her dreams, but beyond her dreams’ broadest, most glorious horizons. With this smugness (oh, the letter he would write Mother) came a wave of terror. These women were not social climbers. This was actual aristocracy, the system America had fled in order to admire from a safe distance.

As ever, there was something about that old blue blood that stymied the new. Hugo was flummoxed. He wanted to say something witty, but the only jokes he could think of hinged on regicide.

He was watched with great interest; the princesses had never seen an American before. Ever since their parents had fled to the New World, they had pinned great maps of the wild continent in their rooms, and as time had passed and their prospects dimmed, the word itself, “America,” meant both the promise of heaven and a curse.

That Aarne had found Americans were actually in the village seemed like the best of God’s blessings; they had spent most of the day discussing what their coming American soldiers might be like. When they learned there was just one, but he was definitely American, he took on Goliath-like proportions. Vasilisa, the youngest, was prone to ecstatic speculation about his brutality: he would wear chaps, and brag about having murdered many Indians. Anna, the eldest, suggested this was unlikely. Having, of the three, best grasped the sense of noblesse oblige, she explained to her sisters that if he wanted to, the soldier who saved them could crawl on all fours like Igor the Fool and walk a chicken on a leash. It had been unfortunate to lie about Bolshevik attackers, but he was going to save their lives if all was considered on a larger scale.