The Witches of St. Petersburg

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  “Me?”

  “Last time we spoke, you were not very kind,” he said. “You raised your voice.”

  “For which I apologize,” said Militza, watching Olga slide her tongue up and down the side of his index finger.

  “Also when the charges have been dropped,” he said and shrugged.

  “I would not worry about those.” She smiled briefly. “And anyway, it is only an investigation; no charges have been brought, and the ecclesiastical court in Tobolsk has not accused you of anything.”

  “They could just as easily denounce me as a Skopets!” he laughed. “It would have as little meaning! But I am fortunate enough to have too much use for my cock to want to cut it off in the name of the Lord!” He laughed with such gusto that his chair shook. “Don’t you think?” He stared at her. “Who would want to castrate themselves for God?”

  “Ridiculous accusations,” she agreed enthusiastically. “I think you should show how unafraid you are of them, how foolish they actually are, and come back to the city.”

  “What use have I of the city when I have all I need around me here?” He removed his hand from Olga’s lips. “God has seen fit to reward me well.”

  “You are his humble servant,” said Militza. “But I wonder if the rewards aren’t greater in St. Petersburg.”

  “Why do I have need of more rewards?” He appeared a little entertained at such a suggestion.

  “No one needs rewards,” replied Militza. “But they can make life a little more pleasurable, can’t they? Fine wine? Madeira? The beauty of the ballet and gypsy song?”

  “You reap what you sow.”

  “And you have sown, Brother Grigory,” she said sweetly and smiled.

  OVER THE COURSE OF THE DAY GRISHA’S HOUSE BEGAN TO FILL with people. A long line of acolytes gathered, forming an orderly queue in the courtyard outside. Some were mad, some were ill, some just wanted reassurance that something they feared would never happen—the death of a cow, the failure of a crop, a well turning sour. There were mewling children and sniffing adults and a laborer whose arm had been scythed off at the last harvest. Where they’d come from, how they knew he was there or what time they should arrive, Militza was never told. But they queued up, shuffling in, dressed in their peasant garb. The combination of the heat of the room, the boiling-hot samovar, the fire, and their unwashed clothes made for an intense, heady smell, a cocktail of sweat, vodka, and pickled garlic. The poor light and the continuous low mumble of prayer, combined with incense and the intoxicating bodily perfumes, made Militza feel quite sick and faint.

  She stumbled out on the porch. In comparison to the fetid, febrile atmosphere inside the house, the sharp Siberian afternoon air was something of a shock. It burnt the back of her throat as she inhaled. Holding on to a wooden railing for support, she breathed deeply. The oxygen made her feel better—anything to be out of the heat and the smell. She should be getting back to Tyumen. It was an arduous journey and much more dangerous in the dark. Who knew who’d be out there in the pitch-black wilderness? How many escaped convicts on the road? The rules were changing and respect for the aristocracy was ebbing. She was a woman on her own, and she did not want to be out after dark. Anyway, she’d got what she’d come for. He had no idea she was behind the allegations. But what she really wanted was to be able to announce his return to St. Petersburg to the tsarina. She’d surely done enough to tempt him back, reminding him of the riches he enjoyed there. After all, there was nothing Rasputin liked more than temptation.

  “Leaving so soon?”

  “Grisha?” She was a little startled when he appeared at the other end of the porch. “I thought you were inside.”

  “I have been asking myself all day, why have you come?” He stared at her, his eyes narrow. “Why would my mamma come all this way to see me, Grisha, out here?” He gestured slowly around his courtyard with an outstretched hand. “Curiosity?” He paused. “Self-interest? Contrition? Or guilt?”

  “Guilt?” Militza smiled. “Why would I possibly feel guilty?”

  “I have been wondering who could have denounced Grisha to the police, who knows Grisha well enough to do that.” He took a step forward, his head moving slowly from side to side like a cobra about to strike. “Do you know?”

  “Me?”

  “Your sister?” He came closer.

  “Stana? Why would she do that?” Militza laughed a little.

  “Nikolasha?”

  “You cured his dog, helped his marriage . . .”

  “Not the tsarina!” He smiled. “She likes Grisha.”

  “Yes,” agreed Militza. “As does the tsar.”

  “The tsarina likes Grisha so much she makes clothes for him, embroiders his shirts.” He smiled again. “So that leaves you.”

  “Grisha . . .” She smiled and walked towards him. “I could never do that.” She stood in front of him and stroked the side of his face with her hand. “We are one and the same, you and me. We are made of the same things, of the same Four Winds, the earth and the fire beneath it.” Her heart was beating fast, but she maintained the light, playful note in her voice.

  “It can only be you,” he said, grabbing her wrist.

  “Grisha!” she exclaimed quickly. “I came here to be healed!”

  “Healed?” He was a little taken aback.

  “Yes!” she lied. “I have thought of nothing else. Nothing else at all, over the days and nights on the train across Siberia.”

  “A healing?”

  “I want to be healed like Olga. Heal me!” she shouted. “Heal me!”

  “My dear, my mamma, if you don’t sin, you don’t repent. If you don’t repent, you cannot be saved . . .”

  Chapter 29

  June 1908, Znamenka, Peterhof

  MILITZA LEFT SIBERIA NEITHER REPENTANT NOR SAVED. Her driver, upon hearing her shout the words “Heal me!” loudly and repeatedly, had, as instructed, come running into the courtyard to suggest she immediately leave for Tyumen. So with Rasputin still grappling with his belt buckle, she was taken back to her carriage, lamenting her lack of healing and begging him to return to the city.

  THE TSARINA WAS NATURALLY ECSTATIC WHEN MILITZA GAVE her the news in the Rose Drawing Room at the Lower Dacha.

  “At last!” she declared.

  “I thought I’d come and tell you as soon as I heard.”

  “You did well.” Alix paused, as if debating whether to say something else. She took hold of Militza’s hands, and her own were cold to the touch. “You must never speak of what I am about to tell you,” she whispered. “Never.”

  “Of course.”

  “And I am only telling you because I know you will find it as outrageous and unfounded as I,” she continued, still holding Militza’s hand. She nodded. “I’ve heard some terrible rumors that . . .” The tsarina paused and lowered her voice even more. “That . . . Our Friend . . . has been investigated for improper behavior—for being in a sect!” Her voice was barely audible. “A sectarian! A member of the Khlysty.”

  “But that’s illegal.”

  “I know!”

  “And was he?”

  “In a sect?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t care! I put a stop to it as soon as I heard.” She looked horrified. “Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “Rasputin being a Khlyst?”

  “Anyone wanting to investigate Our Friend! I was so angry. Dear, gentle Grisha who has never hurt a fly. Don’t they know how important he is to me? To the imperial family? It’s treasonous! They have no regard for us. It is like they are deliberately trying to cause me pain. Me! Their tsarina!”

  “Awful.” Militza shook her head. “Do you think he knows?”

  “I should imagine so. They searched his house for two whole days!”

  “Who launched the investigation?”

  “I asked,” Alix said, her voice raised and quivering with anger. “And guess what?” She touched her nostrils with her lace handkerchief. “The file is missing. Typical!�
� She shook her head. “Only in this country can the tsar’s closest friends be investigated and the tsar not be able to find out who did it! This country is not Europe.” She shivered. “It is savage!”

  “Awful,” agreed Militza again, thanking Nikolasha in her prayers. “But anyway at least now he is coming back.”

  “Yes,” the tsarina said, sitting down in the sofa. “What a relief for us all.”

  The conversation changed to the happenings of the last few months. Instead of talking about Stolypin and Nicky’s endless problems with the Duma, which wanted to take more and more of the tsar’s power, Alix wanted to know about the children and their plans for the summer. For the imperial family, there was a trip planned on the Gulf of Finland in the Standart. Work was starting on Livadia, which they were hoping might be ready in time for Olga’s sixteenth birthday, in just over three years’ time. Just as she was expressing her surprise that her eldest was getting so old, there was a knock at the door and Anna walked in. Militza smiled through her irritation. She’d been alone with the tsarina for only half an hour. Half an hour. And she was being interrupted by that bovine little woman, who persisted in talking about the breakup of her marriage and how Rasputin had predicted it all along! And what a good Friend he was. And how often she saw him and how terribly close they were. And . . .

  “Have you heard?” she said, her head cocked to one side, her hands clasped in front of her. “Prince Yusupov is dead.”

  “The count?” asked Alix.

  “The son,” both Militza and Anna replied at the same time.

  “You knew?” asked Anna, looking surprised and disappointed at the same time.

  “Which one?” asked Militza.

  “The oldest. Nikolai. The good son.”

  “Nikolai? Oh, how awful! How awful to lose a son,” said Alix, grabbing hold of her handkerchief and covering her mouth in horror. “How totally, terribly awful. Poor Zinaida. Poor, poor Zinaida . . . How?” she whispered.

  “A duel,” replied Anna.

  Militza shook her head. Her mouth went dry and the breath left her lungs. She’d known something terrible was going to happen to one of those boys. That night, long ago, when she’d seen the cards: The Ten of Swords. Death. The King of Swords. She had never forgotten it. In those quiet moments before dawn, when she’d lie in bed and think things through, those three cards always appeared before her. But a duel? What a waste. What a terrible, useless waste of a young man’s life. A duel? She closed her eyes, and then, all of a sudden, she could see it. The early-morning sunshine, the dappled ground under the beautiful poplar trees. It was positively bucolic, flowers, birds, the noise of the wind in the trees . . . The young men were giddy with adrenaline, their fine clothes rumpled by the breeze. There was the smell of wine, the sound of their friends shouting, telling them not to do it, urging them to put down their weapons, to desist. And then the shots, the echo around the woods. What recklessness this was! Not a care for anyone, even themselves. Why didn’t they stop it? Why?

  “First time they both missed,” said Anna. “So they did it again and Count Arvid Manteuffel shot Nikolai straight in the chest, while Prince Yusupov, he fired—”

  “Up in the air,” said Militza, opening her eyes.

  “So you did know?” asked Anna.

  “No,” replied Militza with a shake of her head.

  “Up in the air?” asked Alix. “So he deliberately missed?”

  “It appears so,” replied Anna.

  “And why did this duel take place? What foolish thing made this madness happen?” asked Alix.

  “Why do they ever?” said Militza.

  “An affair. Between Arvid’s wife, Countess Marina Heiden, and Nikolai,” added Anna, shooting Militza a look. “It had been going on awhile and the husband had asked them to stop. Many times. So there was nothing else to be done . . .”

  “But it was all so very avoidable,” said Militza.

  “Quite,” agreed Alix, nodding her head slowly. “How appalling.”

  IT WAS A FEW WEEKS LATER THAT MILITZA CAME ACROSS THE ashen face of Count Felix Yusupov. They were at the Vladimirs’ for a soirée in Yalta, and despite the golden light of the dipping sun and the joyful, glamorous crowd, the man looked broken, standing by a tree, staring out to sea. It was a beautiful party. Some one hundred or so people floated across the lawns, serenaded by musicians, entertained by dancers, as they flitted from group to group, chatting about the summer, the picnics they planned, the fun they were organizing and who exactly had been to visit the tsar and tsarina since they arrived in the Crimea ten days ago.

  “Have you been?” asked Militza, running her long string of pearls through her hands as she spoke to her hostess.

  “I can’t stand the German,” said Maria Pavlovna, conveniently forgetting her own heritage. “She is the reason my beautiful Kirill lives in exile, and for that I shall never forgive her.”

  “Of course,” said Militza, taking a sip from her glass.

  “While they were very happily letting your sister marry her brother, they were banishing my son for marrying his cousin! I don’t see the fairness in that.”

  “No, well—”

  “And it was all her fault, her idea, but then it always is, isn’t it? Tell me, does he have any opinions anymore? Or is he guided entirely by his wife?” She sighed loudly, looking down the beautiful terraced lawns, lined by cypress trees, lit by flickering flares that dropped all the way down the Black Sea below. “He hangs on to that shit Stolypin, who is nipping away at our power and gives in to Duma after Duma. The man has no judgment at all. And in the meantime, his prudish old wife prattles on about the sanctity of marriage. Just because Victoria divorced the tsarina’s brother to marry my son. I don’t see that as a good enough reason for them both to be stripped of all their titles and banished from Russia!”

  “I am so sorry,” said Militza, suddenly realizing quite how upset the poor woman must be.

  “So am I.” Maria Pavlovna sniffed a little. “It’s just seeing your sister and Nikolasha so happy, laughing at my party.” She nodded over at the pair as they walked down towards the sea, holding hands. “And I can’t help but wish my son was here too.”

  “You could ask Rasputin, I suppose.” Militza felt her cheeks flush a little with embarrassment. She was sure she wasn’t telling the grand duchess anything she didn’t already know.

  “Him?” she snorted. “Rasputin-Novy as that is what we are supposed to call him these days! I thought those sorts of double-barreled names were reserved for aristocrats, not peasants from Siberia.” She shook her head. “I don’t think I need his help. I’m sorry . . .” she said before walking off.

  “Upset someone else, have you?” asked the count, leaning against the trunk of a tree. “You and your little cabal of necromancers?”

  “I am sorry to hear about your son,” she said quickly, for the man’s face was almost unrecognizable with grief.

  His normally ruddy complexion looked pale and waxy; his eyes were blank and rheumy. His ebullient mustache that had been so aggressively thick and determined appeared thinned and limp, as if no amount of wax could stiffen its resolve. He also looked unsteady on his feet, as though he would struggle to climb the stairs. Sorrow drains the blood quicker than the sun dries a sponge.

  “Well, you were the one who knew,” he said. “You saw it in the cards . . .” He raised his eyebrows as his voice trailed off.

  “I am sorry I couldn’t tell you more . . .”

  “More!” He turned to smile at her. “If you think I believe you knew anything about the death of my son, Madame, then you are mistaken.” He drained his glass of vodka. “You were simply taking a chance, like the charlatan you are. You guessed. You were lucky.”

  “I lost a child . . .”

  “Dear lady, we have all lost children. Babies. Not sons. There is a large and profound difference. My wife wept for her babies—but for her son, my wife is mute. She does not laugh, she does not smile, she does not move,
such is her grief, such is her pain, such is the misery that has torn at her soul. So don’t talk to me of loss and how you empathize. You don’t. You’re a sibyl. A witch. An odious little soothsayer with some trick cards up your sleeve. Some around here think you have a gift, with your prophecies and your gurus and your séances. But I think you are nothing. I despise you as I despise your black cabal of lechers and lepers—and I despise that man who you introduced to our tsar.”

  “Good evening, Count Yusupov, I am so sorry to hear about Nikolai,” said Stana as she approached, smelling a little of champagne and the roses she’d picked from the garden.

  “Go to hell!” he said as he slowly walked away, back up the stone pathway leading towards the house.

  Stana was shocked at Count Yusupov’s outburst. A rose fell from the small bunch that she’d picked. Militza reached into the pocket of her cream silk dress for the small red bottle of Badmaev’s tincture. Her hands were shaking a little as she opened it and knocked the solution straight back in one. She shivered as she swallowed.

  “The man’s upset,” she said to her sister. “He’s grieving. I am sure he didn’t mean to be so rude.”

  “I know. It’s just I am tired of all the enmity, tired of being the focus of so much hatred. I was trying to be kind. That is all.” She sighed. “Have you seen Nikolasha?”

  “Is that the other son?” asked Militza, ignoring her sister, her eyes half closed as she tried to focus on a slight, eccentrically dressed young man striding towards her.

  Clean-shaven, his blond hair parted and smoothed flat, he was very handsome; he smiled, and his white silk, open-necked shirt ballooned as he walked. He was wearing a pair of loose-fitting crimson trousers with a sash that was held in place around the waist by what looked like a heavily diamond-encrusted clasp.

  “Grand Duchess Militza? Grand Duchess Anastasia?” He bowed and his heels clicked together. “At last I make your acquaintance!”

  “Prince Yusupov.” Stana smiled.

  “Felix Felixovich,” replied Militza.

  “I believe we have a mutual Friend.” His smile was conspiratorial as he glanced around the party.