Sonia had to swallow, and lick her lips, before she could speak. “Why have you brought me here?”
“Because I wish to speak with you.” He stepped back and indicated an open door. Sonia reflected that as she had decided against making a scene on a crowded public platform, it really made no sense to consider one now, in hostile privacy. Despite the trembling in her legs, she mounted the last of the stairs and went into the office. She did not look at Michaelin, but she heard him follow her in, and close the door. Yet they were not alone. When she looked to her right she saw another man standing against the wall. Perhaps the Colonel was afraid she might scratch his eyes out. The other man’s face was also vaguely familiar.
She did not think she had ever been in this room before, but it too had a familiar look. There was a desk and a comfortable chair, and no other furniture; it was not part of the Okhrana’s method to make their victims feel comfortable. But at least there was no inlet for a hose, she saw, remembering the dreadful, piercing stream of water with which she had been tortured twenty-one years ago. Michaelin might have been able to read her mind. “Twenty-one years,” he mused as he sat down. “Do you know, Princess, that you are just as beautiful now as you were then? Perhaps more so. Then you were a trifle scrawny. Now...I like my women to have tits and hams. Give me your handbag.”
Carefully Sonia controlled her breathing as she placed the bag on the desk. Control in all things was vital, until she got out of here. “What do you wish of me?” she asked. “I have committed no crime. Your men said you had a warrant for my arrest. I should like to see it.”
“It is sufficient that I have it,” Michaelin said, and emptied the bag on his desk, flicking through her intimate belongings. “As for crimes, one could say that you committed a crime by being born, Princess.”
“You are out of date,” Sonia told him. “I am no longer a princess.”
“To me, you will always be a princess,” Michaelin said.
“However,” Sonia went on, “I believe I may well be the mother of a prince. I think you should bear this in mind, Colonel.”
“Even the mothers of princes can be charged with offences against the state, Princess, especially in time of war. That is, with treason.” He gestured at some papers on his desk. “I have been keeping an eye on you, Princess. The saying goes that a leopard never changes his spots, and a leopardess even less so.” He picked up the train tickets. “Tell me why you are leaving Petrograd.”
“I am going to visit my son on Bolugayen,” Sonia said. Her legs were starting to grow weary of standing still, but she did not wish to move and suggest fear.
“I do not believe that is the truth,” Michaelin said. “I believe it was your intention to leave Russia.”
“Supposing I were, is that treason?”
“It might be, depending on where you were going to, and who you were going to. Do you realise that every letter posted in Russia today is subject to examination by censors? As is every letter coming in to Russia.” Sonia caught her breath, and frowned as she tried to see what was in the papers. Michelin smiled, and picked one up. “This is a copy of your letter to the woman Cromb. What is it you wrote? We have so much to do together. Oh, the original was sent.” He picked up another sheet of paper. “This is her reply, and this is the original. I thought I had better keep this until you were able to collect it yourself, Princess. Would you care to read it? Oh, and Princess, please do not attempt to destroy it. That would make me very angry. Feodor!”
Sonia stopped herself from looking over her shoulder; she heard the man come to stand immediately behind her. She took the letter from Michaelin’s outstretched hand. It was undoubtedly from Trishka. And what the idiot had written...Michaelin had obviously taken a copy of this one as well.
“What is it she says?” he asked, picking it up. “Ah, here we are...
“I am so looking forward to having you in England, my dearest Sonia. There is so much going on. So much for us to do. You will never believe who called the other day. Vladimir. Or Nicolai as he likes to be known nowadays. Olga was with him; she insists upon calling him by his second name, Ilich. I did not even know they were in England, but I suppose if you are going to lay plots England is safer than anywhere else, although it is all apparently very hush-hush; the authorities do not know they are here, and they are afraid of being arrested should they be found out. Nicolai is in despair. He says he had such hopes of this war, of the proletariat refusing to fight, because those in the opposing ranks would also be proletarians, but both sides would unite to overthrow kings and governments and above all, tsars. Instead they have all gone marching off to war, singing songs! Of course he is right. (When I think of Alexei, lying dead in some ditch — I wonder how that little girl he set up in your place is coping? Aunt Anna writes that she has had a son, whom she has named Alexei, after his father.) But Nicolai still hopes, and dreams. I know he will love to meet you again.”’
Michaelin raised his head. “So, Princess, you will understand that there is no point in attempting any further subterfuge.”
“I have no idea what you are talking about. My sister-in-law invited me to go and stay with her, and I accepted.”
“To meet this fellow Lenin, your old associate in treason.”
“That is not true,” Sonia snapped. “I had no idea Lenin was in England. Mrs Cromb’s letter confirms that. She didn’t know he was in England, either, until he called.”
Michaelin leaned back in his chair. “I am afraid I do not believe you.” He grinned. “To be honest, I do not wish to believe you. I have here sufficient evidence to place you under arrest, and thus, you are under arrest. I was very foolish twenty-one years ago. I saw you then only as evidence against the Bolugayevskis. Now you are again evidence against the Bolugayevskis, but now I know how to appreciate you. Enjoy you. And I am going to do that.”
“I demand to see my advocate,” Sonia said. But now her voice was trembling. “It is my right.”
Michaelin wagged his finger to and fro. “Traitors to the state have no rights.”
“I am not a traitor.”
“You will have to prove that.”
Sonia suddenly felt deathly tired. If she did not sit down she was going to fall down. “Is it possible to have a chair?”
Michaelin looked left and right. “There is no chair. Have my questions exhausted you?”
“I am tired, yes. If you are going to continue questioning me, I would like to sit down.”
“And I have said you may not. But I am a generous man. You may lie down, Princess, if you wish.”
“Are you mad?”
“Lie down!” Michaelin snapped. “Feodor, assist the Princess Bolugayevska.”
Sonia turned. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped. Slowly she dropped to her knees, hesitated there.
“On your back,” Michaelin told her.
Sonia bit her lip to stop herself from screaming. She took off her hat and placed it on the floor, then sat down, and then lay down, her head on the bare boards, staring up at the ceiling. How can this be happening to me? she asked herself. Again. And this time, alone. When she had been arrested, twenty-one years ago, it had been with Patricia. What had happened to them had been terrifying, horrible, but they had been together, even if then they had hardly known each other. Equally, because they had been so savagely ill-treated, it had been a matter of survival; they had not had the time actually to consider their positions, save that she had felt that as she was with the Countess Bolugayevska there had to be an end in sight. She had been wrong, of course. But yet she had had that hope to cling to. Since then she had scaled the very heights, with a hundred servants waiting to do her every bidding. And now she was back to where she had begun. Only without Patricia. But still Michaelin. Who was now kneeling beside her, smiling at her. “Do you know, Your Highness, that I am under instructions not to ill-treat my prisoners? Isn’t that a pleasant thought?” Sonia thought she was going to choke.
Michaelin delicately pushed her
skirts up to mid-calf, and began to unlace her boots. “We are to use gentle persuasion to have the guilty confess their crimes. But do you know...” He pulled the boot off, caressed her stockinged instep. “It is actually more enjoyable, to persuade someone through kindness. They always do confess.” He took off her other boot, again caressed her foot. “Ah, yes,” he said. “The effects of a Siberian winter. You were very lucky to survive, Princess. But I am so glad you did. I think I should inspect this foot more closely. The leg as well. Who knows what other injury you may have suffered?”
He moved with sudden speed, gathering her skirt and petticoat and pushing them up to her thighs. Sonia sat up, and was thrust flat again by Feodor, standing behind her. Her head hit the floor and for a moment she was dazed. She felt Michaelin’s hands on her thigh, pulling garter and stocking down past her knee. “What I am doing,” he explained. “Is searching you. I have not been forbidden to do that, and it is very necessary. Who knows what weapons you have concealed about your person. Or even a bomb?”
Sonia exploded in fear and outrage and attempted to kick him. But he caught her ankle, and forced her legs back down. “If you attempt to do that again,” he said, “I shall call some more of my people in here to hold you down. Do you really wish me to do that?” Sonia panted. “Because you see, I am going to strip you naked, Princess. To search you, you understand. I am going to search you very carefully. Every nook and cranny.” He drew her stocking right off, turned his attention to her other leg, sliding his hands up to the garter and then beyond, to seep beneath the hem of her drawers. “Every nook and cranny,” he said again.
Chapter Eight - The Mistress
The Princess Dowager Nathalie Bolugayevska knew the glow of anticipated pleasures as she got out of her car in the forecourt of Rasputin’s apartment house, and smiled at her daughter. Afternoons with Father Gregory were all they really lived for. And when they had been summoned on a non-regular day, it was even more exciting. Winter had come down with a blast from the north; snow was thick on the ground and even with chains it had taken them nearly an hour to drive from the Bolugayevski Palace to this house, only a few blocks away. The car had slithered to and fro. and such passers-by as were out had scurried to and fro as well to avoid being mown down.
Nathalie thought winter was the best time of the year, in Petersburg — she refused ever to call it by its new name — providing, of course, that one was a princess. Or the daughter of one. Nathalie endeavoured never to see a newspaper, much less buy one or read it. But even she could not be unaware that things were not right with Russia. It was not so much the war. The front had been stabilised along a line stretching roughly from Riga to the eastern end of the Carpathians; this left an enormous amount of Russian territory in German hands, but it was a lot better than what had at one time seemed likely, and with the Tsar himself in command great things were hoped of next year. Of course, people were saying that Russia had suffered more than two million casualties in the first year of the war — some people put the figure as four million — but most of these were prisoners and they would one day be coming home. If they survived the German prison camps. But there could be no escaping the great hunger that was sweeping across the capital, accentuated by the chill. Nathalie made a habit of driving through the streets with the curtains closed in the back of the car, so that she would not have to look at the emaciated faces, staring at her and her furs and her plump, well-fed body. Rasputin liked her plump, well-fed body. As he liked Dagmar’s plump, well-fed body. At eighteen. Dagmar was an only slightly smaller edition of her mother.
Nathalie had not the slightest reservations about prostituting her daughter to the staretz. Physically, there was no reason to have reservations; she knew that Dagmar was still a virgin, however she had become used to a man fondling her body. Morally. there could be no crime involved, as long as one believed in Rasputin’s message. But Nathalie knew she would not have had reservations in any event. Born the daughter of a wealthy Georgian merchant, and of a Circassian mother, she had been brought up in the hot heady atmosphere of Tiblis. Her virginity had been equally well protected, but simply to ensure a good marriage, not for any moral reasons.
And the marriage, when it had come, had been beyond her wildest dreams. True, Prince Peter Bolugayevski had been in disgrace; everyone had known the disgrace had been temporary. True, he bad left her in no doubt that he was marrying her because he had been commanded to do so by the Tsar, that he did not love her, and never would; Prince Peter had been desperately in love with the one woman he could never marry, his Aunt Anna. This had not bothered Nathalie. No wife of a Russian boyar expected to be well treated by her husband, and at least he never beat her. Peter could do what he liked, incestuously or not: she was the Princess Bolugayevska, and as she had been less than half her husband’s age, she would one day surely be the Princess Dowager.
She had not reckoned on having to accompany her husband to Port Arthur, much less that he would die there, in that stupid war with the Japanese. But that would have been entirely acceptable, had she then been able to rule Bolugayen. She had forgotten that Prince Peter had a half-brother, Alexei, who had been a favourite of the Tsar. She suspected that Anna, another favourite of the Tsar, had had a good deal to do with what had followed, the upshot of which had been that while she was undoubtedly the Princess Dowager, entitled to the rank and a commensurate income for life, her daughter had been set aside as the Bolugayevski heir and Alexei elevated to the princedom in her place.
Nathalie could well remember the vicious anger she had felt when that had been made clear to her. She was still angry whenever she thought about it. But she had thought about it less often as the years had rolled by, even if it had been a pleasure to destroy Alexei’s marriage, and to light a candle to mourn his disappearance and almost certain death at Tannenburg. She had then actually given a thought to attempting to regain what she still regarded as Dagmar’s inheritance, but had very rapidly abandoned the idea. She was most certainly not the Tsar’s favourite, and was liked even less by the Tsaritsa. Besides, it would be a tiresome business, and she had actually had everything she wanted, right here in St Petersburg.
She had always been given to self-indulgence. But the pleasures of overeating and getting drunk were entirely passive. She had wanted a lover. In the years immediately following Peter Bolugayevski’s death she had been afraid to take one, engaged as she had been for most of those years in fighting to obtain her daughter’s inheritance. The final rejection of her claim, which might have driven her over the top, had coincided with the appearance of the staretz in St Petersburg. Like most of the Russian nobility, Nathalie was at heart an atheist, only taking part in the country’s endless religious festivals — apart from Sundays, there were ninety religious holidays in every year — because everyone else did. But Rasputin’s coming had almost turned her into a Christian. Rasputin’s version of Christianity, in any event. And thus for seven years she had been utterly happy. He totally satisfied her sexuality, from the sublime, when he caressed her, to the lowest level of obscenity, when he let her watch him mauling other women, including her own daughter. Going to visit the staretz made what was happening in the rest of Russia, much less the rest of the world, quite irrelevant.
As usual, she swept through the antechamber with hardly a glance to left or right at the clamouring women. Anton waited obsequiously to open the door for Dagmar and herself, and they marched into the inner room, where, to her surprise, she found the staretz alone, sitting on his settee, drinking Madeira and obviously drunk. He blinked at her, and then pointed. “I have been waiting for you, Nathalie Alexandrovna.”
“I came as soon as I got your message, Father.” But Nathalie was frowning. “Is something the matter?”
“The matter?” Rasputin gave a huge shout of laughter. “I have a task for you to perform.”
“Of course.” Nathalie started to unbutton her blouse, and nodded to Dagmar to do the same.
“Not that, you silly bitch
,” Rasputin said. “Do you not know that your precious sister-in-law, the Jew who spurned me, has been arrested by the Okhrana?”
“Sonia?” Nathalie smiled. “How interesting. I hope they cram so much broken glass up her ass she never shits again.”
Rasputin finished his wine and tossed his glass to Dagmar, who hurried to the table to refill it. “I want her out of there. Go and fetch her.”
“Me?”
“You will go to see General Bor-Clemenski and tell him that I wish her released, into your custody. I don’t care what she has done or is alleged to have done. You will tell the General that I will take full responsibility for her.”
“Do you suppose he will do as you ask? Or certainly, as I ask?”
“Yes, he will. Firstly because you will tell him that you are acting for me, but that I prefer this informal approach. And secondly because you will tell him that if he does not give you the Princess, I will make formal application for her release through the Tsaritsa, and he will probably find himself sent to the front.”
Nathalie licked her lips. “And, suppose I secure her release, what am I to do with her? Take her home?”
“You will bring her here.” Rasputin took the glass from Dagmar’s hand.
“Even if she has already been reduced to a gibbering wreck?”
“If she has been harmed in any way I will have the head of the man responsible. Make that very clear. But whether she has been harmed or not, you will bring her here. Once I have rescued her from the Okhrana, she will not be able to refuse me. You should explain that to her, before she gets here.”
Nathalie snorted. She had never supposed the staretz could be so much at the mercy of his desires that he would go to this length to obtain a woman like Sonia, when he had the pick of virtually every other woman in Russia. “You do realise that this woman is very nearly forty years old? What are you going to do with a forty-year-old Jewess?”
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