The Witches of St. Petersburg

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  “And so handsome,” interrupted Militza. She looked across towards the lake at her approaching sister. “I remember him dancing with Stana at the Nicholas Ball. He was so dashing and fun. I will never forget how his eyes lit up when he smiled.”

  “Nicky’s been in his rooms, sitting at his desk, the door closed since yesterday. He keeps taking little jokes out of his box and reading them.” Militza looked confused. “Nicky used to write down Georgie’s best jokes and put them in a box. He has been reading them constantly since we got the news, laughing and crying to himself.”

  “Maybe I can help him?” offered Militza.

  “Oh, I am so sorry!” declared Stana, rushing over to Alix and kissing her on the backs of her hands. “It is such a shock.” She sighed loudly. “I feel as if I have been struck by lightning. How is the tsar?”

  “I haven’t seen him this way since . . . the tragedy,” replied Alix, sniffling into her handkerchief.

  “Khodynka Field?” blurted Stana before immediately covering her mouth with her hand.

  Regretful, she looked quickly from the two nannies to the tall Cossack bodyguard who was standing in the shadow of the tree. Everyone shifted uncomfortably. The tragedy of Khodynka Field, where nearly fifteen hundred peasants were trampled to death in the sudden rush for the free beer, gingerbread, and enameled cups, all presents from the tsar to celebrate his and Alix’s coronation, was not something ever mentioned in polite company, let alone in front of the tsarina.

  “That was slightly different,” suggested Militza, glancing around.

  “Trampled running for free beer and a cup. It would be pathetic if it weren’t so awful.” Alix looked up, with an air of slight defiance. “And I know you warned us—or at least the ghost of Nicky’s father did. And I know that Nicky should never have gone to the French ambassador’s ball that night. You warned us about that too. I know. But his uncles were so very insistent that we show the monarchy was undiminished. It was such a terrible mess. But what’s done is done. It’s all so very silly.”

  “No one blames you.” Stana smiled at the weakness of her lie.

  The three women fell silent; the stiff atmosphere was broken by the cries of Maria as she rooted at the breast for more milk.

  “You see!” declared Alix, looking down at the tiny red-faced baby, her short legs rigid with indignation as she inhaled deeply before letting out a loud wail. “I can’t even get this right. Orchie dearest . . .” she said, turning towards the rug.

  “Your Imperial Majesty,” replied the rotund Mrs. Orchard.

  “Please could you take her to one of the wet nurses? All this grief has made me run out of milk!”

  Mrs. Orchard gathered the crying baby from Alix’s breast and disappeared off towards the Alexander Palace.

  “Mama, it is so hot!” yawned Elena, flopping down on the rug.

  Elena’s likeness to her father irritated Stana. “Have some iced lemonade,” she suggested, indicating to the small picnic table and chairs to the right of the rug.

  “Isn’t there anything else?” complained the girl. “I’m not fond of lemonade.”

  “Miss Eagar?” said Alix, sounding slightly exasperated. “Can you take the children boating on the lake?”

  “Oh, yes please!” squealed Sergei, jumping up and down and tugging at the woman’s skirts. “Please, Miss Eagar.”

  “Calm down, Sergei!” she ordered, her long thin finger in the air. “Follow me, quietly now, down to the lake.” She smiled stiffly before nodding at the tsarina.

  “Take Ivan,” added Alix, gesturing towards the bodyguard. “He can row the boat for you.”

  As the children, Ivan, and Miss Eagar made their way towards the lake, Alix turned to look at Militza and Stana, her eyes wide, her expression fearful. She looked terrified.

  “Now that we are all alone!” She looked from one sister to the other, her pale eyes darting from side to side, her breath short. She appeared almost feverish. “You have to help me! You both have to help.”

  Militza took her hands again. “Whatever you want.”

  “Now that poor Georgie is dead, I have to have a son!” Alix sobbed. Her golden hair fell down in wisps across her face, making her look like a young child. Her hands were shaking, her bottom lip quivering. “The whole question of the succession has come up again, now that he—the tsarevich—has gone.”

  “There’s Michael,” interrupted Stana.

  “Michael can’t be tsar, he is far too irresponsible. Everyone knows that. I need a son. You can almost hear the Vladimirs pawing at the ground, their eyes hungry for the fight, and there are rumblings in the Duma . . . Everyone keeps asking when? When am I going to have a son? When am I going to produce an heir? When? When? It is all down to me.” Alix’s eyes were hollow. “I have to have a son.” Her hands were turning over and over in her lap.

  “But you’ve just had a baby,” said Stana, looking up towards the palace.

  “If you could have seen Nicky’s face when Professor Ott told him Maria was a girl. Another girl! Nicky managed to smile when Tatiana was born, but this time I saw him try—and he couldn’t. He pretended, but it never reached his eyes. He didn’t even touch the baby. He went for a walk. He walked for an hour. More. When he came back, only then did he take Maria in his arms.” She turned and looked at the two sisters. “Is it too much to want to lie in my bed and hear the three-hundred-gun salute ringing out over the city announcing the birth of my son to the world? Three times I have heard the guns stop after one hundred and one rounds, and three times I have seen the dismay on the servants’ faces, three times I have seen my husband have to overcome his terrible disappointment . . . I just want him to be happy . . .”

  “I am sure he is not disappointed,” insisted Stana. “You have three healthy, beautiful daughters.”

  “What use are daughters? Especially now,” replied Alix, staring out at the gang of children playing on the lake, more particularly at the thriving and boisterous Sergei, with the sun in his blond hair as he laughed and rocked the rowboat back and forth on the water. “It is easy for you to say. You both have sons,” she said, turning back towards the sisters. Her face was haunted with longing. “You have Sergei, Stana, and you have your beautiful Roman, Milly. Please, you have to help me. I will do anything, absolutely anything. I cannot rest, Russia cannot rest, until we have a son.”

  Stana softly patted the back of Alix’s hand, but the tsarina snatched it away with irritation and glared. “You don’t understand! You have no idea of the pressure to produce a son while a nation of millions holds its breath! It is suffocating me! And every confinement is worse: the headaches, the fainting, the endless, endless sickness. D’you know Nicky’s mother even suggested I eat cold ham lying in bed in the morning to stop the sickness? Cold ham with thick white fat! Can you imagine? I can barely stomach a slice when I am well, let alone five months pregnant with a mouth as dry as a desert. And I know what they whisper. They whisper that I am cold and aloof, that I don’t like their parties, their balls, their wretched games of cards. They say that I am a prude, that I tell women off for showing too much flesh at court, that I want to stop my husband going out. But it’s not true. I just feel so unwell. The room is spinning, my head is turning—and I feel sick all the time! And my back . . .” She looked from one sister to the other and then burst into tears. “It is the whispering I hate most,” she sobbed into her handkerchief. “I just wish it would all stop!”

  She looked up, and through the mist of her tears, she could see Militza and Stana completely understood.

  What she didn’t know was that they more than understood; they themselves had heard those whispers; they’d felt the same loneliness. And they also knew what it was like to have a mother who was desperate for a son. They had seen the potions, the lotions; they had smelled the smoke, seen the fires, and heard the incantations. Their palace in Cetinje had been full of it—the freaks, the fools, the endless spells. And they knew exactly what to do.

  “
Don’t worry,” said Militza, nodding fiercely, her lips pursed with determination. “You will have your son.”

  “I promise,” added Stana.

  “Cross your heart?” whispered Alix before lying back, exhausted, into her chair.

  Chapter 7

  December 17, 1899, St. Petersburg

  MONDAY WAS THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS NIGHT TO BE INVITED to perch on the Countess Ignatiev’s elegant, raspberry-colored velvet upholstery and enjoy the sweet wines, the cakes, and the latest and most glamorous guru in town. And as she collected her pack of Marseilles cards from her dressing table drawer and wrapped them carefully in their peach silk scarf, Militza felt a shiver of excitement. The thrice-weekly Black Salons were always exciting, but this Monday was going to be different. Tonight, Countess Ignatiev had promised her someone special, someone very special indeed.

  Walking into the large dimly lit drawing room, packed with the usual princes, diplomats, and divorcées, Militza was met by a rather overexcited Countess Ignatiev.

  “There you are!” she exclaimed loudly, clapping her hands together and then clutching at her ample bosom. “At last! You’re late!” Sophia Ignatiev was nothing if not dramatic. “Darling, there are so many people waiting for you to read for them. We almost have a queue! Here, here,” she repeated, bustling Militza through the party to a corner where she had placed a marble-and-gilt card table, covered with a fringed gypsy scarf, and two heavy armchairs. “Is this all right?” She smiled, holding her arm out. “I was trying to make it as mystical as possible.”

  “It’s perfect!” agreed Militza, for she was very fond of the countess.

  Sitting down at her table, Militza carefully took out her peach scarf and unwrapped her cards.

  “May I?” came a familiar voice as a bronzed hand placed a small clay hash pipe on the table.

  “Dr. Badmaev!” Militza immediately leapt out of her chair to embrace him.

  A Buryat by birth, Shamzaran Badmaev (also known as Peter) had grown up on the steppes of Siberia and trained with the monks of Tibet. He was a master of Asiatic medicine and Tibetan apothecary, with a worldwide reputation. Along with his brother, Zaltin, he owned the most auspicious “chemist” in St. Petersburg, capable of curing the most stubborn and pernicious of maladies. There wasn’t an infusion, herb, or tincture he did not know. His laboratory behind his shop off the Fontanka was a veritable Aladdin’s cave of delights. Militza had once been very privileged to pay him a visit, and even to her expert eye, many of the bottles and bags and powders were completely incomprehensible.

  “How are you?” He smiled, kissing her three times, his narrow eyes fizzing with an extraordinary energy. There were many in St. Petersburg who thought Dr. Badmaev was a spiritual master, and Militza was one of them.

  “Well,” she replied as they both sat down.

  “You look well.” He nodded and then patted his pocket. “I have what you asked for.”

  “You have?” Militza’s eyes sparkled with excitement. “My friend will be so pleased.”

  He pulled a small envelope out of his loose-fitting trousers and handed it over to her. “There is ashoka flower for sadness and grief, black lotus essence for rebirth, and mandrake—”

  “Mandrake?”

  “I have a hermit woman who’s collected it for me for years. She lives in the forests outside Irkutsk, at the crossroads where they used to hang men for stealing horses. There is an abundance of hanged men’s seed in the ground around there and the mandrakes are plentiful.”

  “How does she harvest it without hearing it scream?” asked Militza, handing him over the pack of cards to shuffle.

  “She was born deaf.”

  Militza nodded and smiled appreciatively. “Do you have a question for the cards?”

  “Only the question that is on everyone’s lips.” Militza looked at him quizzically as he expertly mixed up the pack. “The succession?”

  Militza’s heart leapt; she glanced quickly around the room to check that no one else had heard. The succession was, of course, the question on everyone’s lips: three pregnancies and the tsarina had yet to produce anything but daughters. People were beginning to say that she was cursed. Her poor Russian language skills didn’t help, and neither did her inability to understand the importance of the court, but to hear it voiced out loud was not only shocking; it was dangerous.

  “Hush,” she said, taking back the cards and clutching them close to her breast.

  “Don’t tell me you aren’t curious? And haven’t you asked the same question yourself several times over in the comfort of your peach boudoir?” He smiled, nodding for her to continue. “Go on . . .”

  She watched him cut the cards with his left hand before she laid them out in formation. She turned over the first card. “Ah. The High Priestess . . . of course,” she said, moving the card dexterously through her fingers. “Wisdom, sound judgment, foresight, and intuition.”

  “I have also added some black henbane, so tell our friend that if she has hallucinations or sensations of flying, she’s not a witch but should decrease the dose immediately.” He chuckled to himself.

  Militza turned over the next card. “The Star . . . Hope. Effort. Faith. Inspiration . . .”

  “Otherwise she should have a teaspoon in warm water every day,” continued the doctor. “And her husband should always mount her from the right. If he mounts from the left, she will have another girl. Is that understood?”

  Militza nodded, slowly turning over a new card. “So, a teaspoon?”

  “Every day.”

  They both looked down at the card. “The Wheel of Fortune . . . Destiny. Fate.”

  “The cards are very accurate tonight,” concluded Badmaev.

  “They always are. No matter how many times you ask them the same question, they will always come out the same.” She picked another and turned it over.

  “The Ace of Cups,” he said, staring. “Look! There you go—fertility and joy!”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Fertility and joy.” She placed the small envelope very carefully into her silver-thread evening bag and looked back down at the card. “But upside down.”

  “Upside down,” he repeated. They both stared disappointedly at the card. “So, the antithesis is true?”

  “Yes.” Picking the card up, she turned it round in her slim fingers. She sat back in her chair and sighed.

  “But for how long?” asked Badmaev. “How long exactly will the antithesis be true?”

  “Time is not something that Spirit understands,” said Militza. “You know that.”

  “But the wait . . .”

  “The wait is unbearable,” she whispered. “It is agony. And it eats away at her soul.”

  “Do you mind if I take my turn?” came a familiar, unpleasant voice.

  “Count Yusupov!” declared Dr. Badmaev, leaping out of his seat, swiftly picking up the cards. “Of course! We were just finishing . . .”

  Before Militza could say a word of protest, Dr. Badmaev had vacated his seat for the count. “My dear,” he said, leaning forward and firmly gripping Militza’s wrist with his sweaty hand. “How very charming to see you again.”

  “Count Yusupov,” she replied, staring at his painful, plump fingers. “I didn’t think this was your sort of salon. A little beneath you?”

  “Needs must, my dear. And anyway, I have heard the tsar likes this sort of thing. Apparently, it is all the rage!”

  Militza looked down. “If you continue to grip me so fiercely, I will not be able to deal the cards.” Her black eyes shone with fury.

  “I have no interest in your frivolities,” he replied, leaning closer and licking his lips.

  “People are beginning to stare,” she hissed. He loosened his grip but leaned farther across the table.

  “A small bird tells me that you and your sister have penetrated right to the heart of the palace,” he began, raising a large eyebrow.

  “Which palace?” Militza smiled, shuffling the cards. “There are so m
any in this city.”

  “Don’t play coy with me, Goat Girl!” he spat; a small splash of saliva landed on Militza’s cheek. She slowly closed her eyes and wiped it away with her finger.

  “Shuffle,” she said, handing him the cards.

  He looked at the cards suspiciously, but he inhaled and began to shuffle. “People don’t like you. They don’t like you, and they don’t like your sinister little sister; most of all, they don’t like your little-girl games.”

  “My little-girl games?” repeated Militza, furiously taking the cards back and snapping down three of them.

  “Games,” he repeated. “This rubbish!” He gestured dismissively towards the card table. “They want you to desist.”

  “Or what?” asked Militza, turning the three cards over.

  “Or—”

  “Death!” she said, looking down at the table. “Ten of Swords!” She paused, taking in the image of a hunched young man with ten daggers firmly planted in his back. “The King of Swords.” Militza stared down at the cards. She pushed her chair away slightly. She had never seen anything quite like this before.

  “What?” demanded the count, staring at the cards. “What? Tell me!” His face was growing darker, his heart beating faster. What was the witch hiding?

  “It’s just little girls’ games,” she whispered.

  “Girls’ games,” he repeated. “I have nothing to fear.”

  She sighed and looked down at the table, avoiding his gaze. Uncontrollably one tear ran swiftly down her cheek, and she deftly swept it aside with her index finger. It was unlike her to feel so emotional, but she had seen something—something terribly sad indeed.

  “Your son,” she said quickly, not looking up.

  “I have two sons,” he replied, slowly getting out of his chair.

  “Two?” she asked, sounding puzzled. She looked at the cards and then across at the count. “Well, look after them,” she bluffed, hurriedly clearing the cards away. “Both of them . . .”