The Witches of St. Petersburg

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  “Oh, he is a beauty,” said Stana. “Blond curls, big blue eyes, and such a robust, fat thing. He gives his parents so much joy.”

  “How wonderful.” The countess smiled. “And do you think the empress will be doing the season? She cannot remain locked up in the Alexander Palace forever! The last time we saw her was at the Medieval Ball.”

  “What a night that was.” Stana smiled, glancing across at Nikolasha, who was helping himself to a cigarette at the other side of the room.

  “What a night indeed,” confirmed Militza.

  “Now, Grigory Yefimovich—”

  “Grisha,” he interrupted.

  “Grisha,” she repeated, smiling. “There are so many people I would like you to meet. Do you know Dr. Badmaev?”

  “I am not fond of doctors.”

  “He’s not that sort of doctor, more of an apothecary. And he’s terribly well connected. Let me introduce you. Peter!” she said as she approached the table where Dr. Badmaev was sitting, smoking his small clay pipe. “This”—she paused, waving her fan—“is Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin, the man I was telling you about. The man who cured Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich’s dog! Apparently, he laid his hands on the dog and she rose again, like Lazarus!” recounted the countess.

  “Not like Jesus?” Dr. Badmaev smirked.

  “No,” replied Rasputin. “I raised the dog, not the Holy Spirit of the dog.”

  “I’m sure you could manage that too, old boy!” He chuckled and slapped Rasputin on the back while he shook his hand. “A dog indeed! A dog!”

  Rasputin stared at Dr. Badmaev, his pale eyes narrowed with irritation. He withdrew his hand and was on the point of saying something, for where he came from such mocking would not pass without some sort of a fight, but the countess merely laughed.

  “A dog,” she confirmed. “But a miracle all the same. Come, Grisha.” She pushed the small of his back to move on. She was looking for a more appreciative audience for her Siberian. Militza was on the point of following.

  “I am not sure your friend likes my jokes,” remarked Badmaev, a little entertained.

  “I am not sure he likes you,” replied Militza. “You should really try a little harder, Peter. Everyone needs friends, no matter how powerful they think they are.”

  He looked at her, a little put out, and changed the subject. “How is the tsarina?” he asked. “I only see the tsar these days, and only when he wants more elixir, which he seems to need more and more. And every time I go, the empress is always in her quarters.”

  “She is not well,” said Militza, her voice quieting. “It is her back, or heart, or both.”

  “They should leave that palace more, see some people, be seen by people. I know it is a security risk, but—”

  “His uncle has just been blown up in the street,” she hissed.

  “I know that, but even so . . . He’s paranoid . . .”

  “I think, when you’ve seen your grandfather blown up in front of you when you’re twelve years old, and watched them carry his legless body, his intestines spewing out, to the Winter Palace for the rest of the family to mourn, that might be enough to scare a man.” Militza stared at Dr. Badmaev.

  “If that’s all you think it is,” he said.

  “I thought you, of all people, would understand.”

  “I just worry—”

  “The tsarevich is fine,” she interrupted.

  Dr. Badmaev looked puzzled. “It is just that the quantities of hashish and cocaine I’ve been supplying can sometimes make you a little . . . um, anxious.”

  BY THE TIME MILITZA HAD FOUND RASPUTIN OVER ON THE other side of the party, he was ensconced at a table surrounded by a coterie of enthusiastic women, most notably an actress who’d drunk at least a bottle of champagne. She had wrapped her elegant calf around his and seemed to be hanging on his every word.

  “Did you know,” she said to Militza, her gown slipping slowly off her right shoulder, “he was in Sarov when they canonized that saint?”

  “Oh?”

  “And he predicted the empress would have a son after that, and she did!”

  “Incredible.”

  “Isn’t he!” She grabbed hold of his leg and Rasputin smiled.

  “Come!” said Militza to her protégé, pulling him by the hand away from the actress. “Why don’t we go and have our fortunes told; there is a woman in the corner scrying with a crystal ball.”

  Leaving the tactile actress, a somewhat reluctant Rasputin crossed the room to the fortune-teller’s table. Dressed in a fringed head scarf, with dark eyes and an even darker complexion, she professed to be a gypsy from Novaya Derevnaya. As he sat down, she stared at him.

  “Have I met you before?” she asked. “Do you ever come to see the gypsies on the Islands? To hear us sing?”

  “I am new to the city.”

  She raised her eyebrows for a second, expecting him to say more, then bent down below the table and brought out a smooth, shining black ball. “Obsidian,” she said. “It is the hardest but most accurate ball to read. It has taken a lifetime to learn.”

  “I have never seen one that black,” said Militza, leaning in closer.

  “Do you scry?” asked the gypsy.

  “A little.”

  “This ball is very rare.”

  “Get on with it, woman!” yawned Rasputin, looking across the room at the drunken actress.

  “Right,” replied the gypsy, closing her eyes and breathing slowly as if entering a deep meditation. Suddenly she opened them. “You have journeyed far,” she said, looking into the ball. “I see bare feet walking through the snow and the ice and the mud. I see faraway lands and I see churches, statues. Now I see crowns and crosses and tears. I see a baby. I see wealth and power and gold.” She sat back and looked at him. “Do you want wealth and power and gold?”

  Rasputin shook his head. “I am a man of God, Madame, what would I want with wealth and power and gold?”

  “One day,” she whispered, “you will be the most powerful man in Russia.”

  Rasputin roared with laughter. “You gypsies are all the same! Power and gold! What rubbish! I want no such thing,” he said, getting out from his seat. “What I need is more wine.”

  IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING BY THE TIME MILITZA and Rasputin left the salon. Stana and Nikolasha had gone on ahead, leaving them to take the car alone. Rasputin had probably consumed more than three bottles of Madeira wine, and Militza had not had an abstemious evening herself. He sat next to her on the back seat, so close that she could smell his heady violet cologne and feel the strength of his thigh as he placed his leg alongside hers, pushing himself hard up against her. She felt a frisson run the length of her body.

  “Did you find that exciting?” she asked, holding her head coquettishly to one side.

  She was flirting and he knew it, but she couldn’t help herself. He was her creation, she thought, hers to do with as she pleased, and if it pleased her to flirt with him, then flirt she would. It was the wine, his close proximity, and the fact he’d spread his favors so liberally around the room without a thought to her and her feelings. She had bought him to the party; he should have paid her more attention.

  “Exciting?” He snorted. “I am not sure you know what excitement is, Mamma.”

  “I have lived a life!” She laughed. “I have had much more excitement than you’ll ever have.”

  She ran her hands through her dark hair as she turned to look at him. She had certainly drunk far too much wine, but this man owed her. She was an attractive woman, a beauty, or so she’d been told many times. He’d been flirting with other women all night long and now it was her turn.

  “Let me tell you what excitement is, Mother.” He leaned in closer to her. She could feel his breath on her lips. And it thrilled her. “Excitement, real excitement . . . is a meeting of the Khlysty.”

  “That’s illegal,” she whispered as she stared into his eyes.

  “There is nothing illegal about find
ing God.”

  “Through sin?”

  “It starts with a dance,” he began, taking her hand and starting to draw circles with his index finger on her palm. “When the red sun has set, they gather in a small hut.” His voice was soft and the circles he drew were softer still. “They are dressed in normal clothes as the singing begins. It starts with psalms and folk songs about longing for the advent of the kingdom of God, for God becoming Man and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And gradually, slowly but surely, the music gets more and more jubilant and they start to take off their clothes, put on shirts made of white muslin to commemorate the resurrection of Christ. It is a symbol that they have exchanged their earthly life for a spiritual one, and then they dance. Slowly at first, swaying together, moving as one, to the light of twelve candles.” His finger went back and forth across her hand. Militza held her breath. “Then the group splits into couples, and they dance, up and down the room, up and down, as the room gets hotter and hotter, and they start to chant, ‘The Holy Ghost is amongst us, the Holy Ghost is amongst us,’ over and over and over until their tongues are thick and stiff and paralyzed. Then the preacher speaks of God and Man and the Holy Spirit, while the rest of us shiver and shake like little children. The dancing begins again. This time we remove our tops; women are bare-breasted, their hair flying around their faces like snakes. Out come the whips, made of thin strips of leather, that sting like acid as they hit your skin. We self-flagellate; we thrash and whip until there are cuts and slices all over our backs, until finally we sink to the floor, covered in blood and sweat, exhausted by the dance and the song, but ecstatic, higher than the clouds in the sky. And then, at last, we copulate. Regardless of age or relationship, you copulate with whoever is next to you, behind you—it bears no relevance. And when you finally, both men and women, reach a shuddering climax of fluid and flesh, there is no more earthly ego, no more I or you, nothing but an indivisible spirit. The Holy Spirit. Ecstasy.” He smiled and then sniffed. “That, Mamma, is excitement.”

  She leaned towards him in the back of the car, felt his large member, the member she herself had fashioned, tumescent against her thigh; she felt a sudden rush of urgent excitement and she swiftly placed her hand on top of his groin, then wrapped her fingers around its wide girth and squeezed. His mouth opened in pleasure and he moaned. Militza was completely aroused as she parted her legs under her silk skirts, awaiting the rough, bracing touch of his hand. How she longed to ride this man! How she longed to feel the thrust of his large shaft inside her, longed to dance naked and covered in sweat, to copulate with him over and over again.

  He leaned over. “It is not you but your sister who puts fire into my loins,” he whispered, firing droplets of spittle into her ear. “She is the sort of warm whore we dream of on a cold, Siberian night. She is already fucking another other than her husband; what is another cock to service?”

  Chapter 20

  November 11, 1905, Sergievka Palace, Peterhof

  THE TEA WAS LAID EXACTLY AS ALIX LIKED IT. AN ENGLISH tea with milk and sandwiches and delicate small cakes, it was to put her at ease, to remind her of her childhood. Militza had telephoned a couple of days before mentioning that both she and Stana had found someone new, someone so exciting, just as Philippe had predicted, someone who was so powerful and whose ability to heal through prayer certainly rivaled John of Kronstadt’s. Then the garrulous Theofan had been dispatched to Tsarskoye Selo to tell of his meeting with the muzhik, to recount how he’d met him at the Academy of Theology, how he’d spoken to the students and so beguiled them with his knowledge and charm. He’d been told to mention the Tolstoyan theory that peasants were closer to God, although obviously not the name of Tolstoy himself, due to his recent excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church.

  The sisters had chosen Stana’s palace over Znamenka to remove any association with the séances and Ouija and table-tipping. Rasputin was a man of God, pure and simple. And they wanted to keep it that way.

  It was just past four in the afternoon when the royal couple arrived. Militza and Stana were waiting nervously in the hall. As Nicky and Alix walked up the steps to the palace, it was shocking to see how much they had both aged in the last few months, cowed by the riots and the talk of revolution. The signing of the new constitution should have been a weight lifted off Nicky’s shoulders, but the opposite was true. No man, Militza surmised, ever wants to give away power, but his gray face and exhausted demeanor were surprising nonetheless. However, it was Alix who had more than aged—she had an air of weary melancholy about her that she was unable to cast off. She managed to smile briefly when she saw Stana’s children, Sergei and Elena, asked the rudimentary questions about life and what books they were reading, remarking on how much they had grown. But her warmth, her zest for life, her curiosity, her ability to engage, had completely disappeared. She was no longer present; she was anxious, preoccupied with problems elsewhere.

  “How wonderful to see you!” exclaimed Militza, taking Alix by both hands, then escorting her into the yellow salon. “How are the girls?”

  “Well,” she replied. “I have taken on a tutor for them, John Epps. They need a little help with their English, although I have to admit he is, in fact, Scottish, so I do hope he doesn’t pass on his accent. They have already picked up Irish from Miss Eagar—it’s a wonder they can be understood at all.”

  “And . . .” Militza almost didn’t want to ask.

  The topic of the “Hesse disease” or the “curse of the Coburgs” had not been broached by either of the women since Militza had tidied up the bloody rags from Alix’s bed the day Alexei was born. Militza had discussed it with Nicky over the telephone a few times, urging him to tell the doctors at Tsarskoye Selo, so at least they knew what they were dealing with. But all her pleas had fallen on deaf ears. Alexei’s illness was to be kept a secret. In precarious times like these, the monarchy had to appear strong and any weakness was to be denied. Neither of the tsar’s sisters even knew how ill their little nephew was.

  “Alexei?” asked Alix, her voice straining with levity. “He is so well, so very well. He has a new rocking horse that he bounces back and forth on far too vigorously! But he is such a healthy big boy—he doesn’t stop eating and his sisters adore him. Don’t they, Nicky?” He turned and looked at her blankly. “Don’t Alexei’s sisters simply adore him?”

  “Yes, my darling, they do.”

  A footman served the tea while they took up position and waited for Rasputin to arrive. Nicholas and Alexandra were sitting next to each other on the yellow silk divan, while Stana and Militza perched on two smaller chairs. Another chair was placed between them.

  “Bishop Theofan has been most effusive in his descriptions of Rasputin,” said Nicky. “He keeps insisting that he is the voice of the Russian soul and its people.”

  “I think you’ll find him inspiring,” said Stana.

  “Yes,” agreed Militza. “Don’t be put off by the way he greets people. He is not used to the ways of the city and is unfettered by manners. He is a free spirit. An honest soul.”

  The man has no idea about protocol, she thought. She had not spoken to him or seen him since the night of the party. She’d been overcome with humiliation the following morning. The images of her flirting and his rejection had haunted her for days afterwards. They’d returned in vivid flashbacks, each more appalling than the last. But she’d decided it was far better never to mention the car journey. They had both drunk a little too much—he was most certainly very drunk. Far better, she concluded, to pretend it had never happened. Militza was nothing if not determined. She was determined to sit firmly on the moral high ground, determined to concentrate on the matter in hand. She had a favorite to promote, and promote him she would.

  “He’s from Siberia,” said Stana.

  “But he is truly a holy man. He is well traveled and has lived amongst holy men and has learned much along the way,” added Militza. “Philippe’s words have come to pass, as I knew they would
. He predicted someone new.”

  “Philippe taught us much,” replied Alix, taking a small sip of tea.

  They sat in silence then, looking at the sandwiches, listening to the mantel clock.

  “Where is Peter?” asked Nicky eventually.

  “He’s having luncheon at the Yacht Club,” replied Militza.

  “On his own?”

  “No, Nikolasha is with him,” said Stana. “Those brothers never seem to run out of conversation!”

  Alix coughed a little and shifted in her chair. “Nicky was out rowing on the lake this morning,” she said. “Can you believe the weather? Sun in November—it is virtually unheard of.”

  “I almost went out without a shawl,” agreed Stana. “Although I didn’t.”

  “No,” Alix said. “But all the same . . . sun . . .”

  Just then the double doors opened and Rasputin burst into the salon. Dressed in a long black tunic, a large brass crucifix around his neck, he looked a little unkempt. He immediately went over to kiss Militza three times, embracing her forcefully as he did so. He clearly had no compunction about the other night. Or maybe he simply couldn’t remember it . . . Turning immediately to Stana, he cupped her chin in his hand. “Mamma!” he exclaimed and kissed her with equal vigor. Alix stood up, still holding her teacup.

  “Little Mother!” he said turning towards her. “We meet at last!” He walked over and fell to his knees in front of her, clutching her around the calves. “I kneel before you and all of Russia!” Alix was rigid. She had no idea what to do.

  “Please stand,” she said quietly. “There really is no need.”