“She’s rather an ogress, isn’t she?” I fingered the delicate lace trim on her wedding gown, which felt like shredded meringue. “She has everyone in terror of her. Did you see her at dinner tonight?” I lowered my voice to imitate Victoria’s querulous tone: “Alfred. Enough wine. We have other guests who wish to partake. Vicky, please keep that boy’s elbows off the table. Bertie, must you talk of India? We are eating. I do not wish to hear about elephant tusks. She certainly knows how to keep her brood in place.”
Alix frowned. “She’s their mother. It is what a mother must do.”
She sounded irritated. Thinking she was upset that I’d not kept closer watch over our younger siblings as promised—especially after one of their romps in the drawing room, when they’d stepped on Victoria’s favorite spaniel and made it yelp—I said, “You’ll not miss Mama. The queen sounds just like her, though Mama is prettier.”
“You mustn’t say such things,” said Alix, but a smile crept over her mouth. “She summoned you today to a private audience. It’s unheard of; everyone was talking about it. Alfred went to Bertie later. He seemed upset.”
“How could you tell? He always seems upset. It must be his digestion. He eats too much.”
Alix chuckled, to my relief. “Entirely. He’ll grow obese before he’s thirty. Did the queen ask you about him?”
“As a matter of fact, she did.” I gave her a pointed look. “She told me Alfred was taken with me and she’d considered me as a bride for him but didn’t believe it would be a suitable match.” I paused. “Did you tell her about Nixa?”
“About his interest in you? No. She only knows that I refused him. She said it was very sensible of me. She thinks Russia is a barbaric land, too harsh on foreign brides.”
“She must mean Danish ones. The Romanovs have wed plenty of German brides in the past, and none died of their barbarism that I’m aware of.”
“Perhaps she’s worried for you,” said Alix.
“Why should she be? Whom I marry is none of her concern. And if Alfred is so interested, he should have said so—to me. Not have his mother do it for him.”
“I doubt she expected him to show any interest.” Alix paused. “If you’d said yes, you could have stayed here with me.”
I was surprised. “Is that what you want? Are you having second thoughts now that you’re here?” I almost added that after meeting Victoria, I’d certainly have second thoughts.
“I am not. But remember what I told you: Listen to your heart—”
“And use my head. I haven’t forgotten.”
We gazed at each other, the short distance between us suddenly seeming too wide, almost unsurpassable. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” I finally said, lowering my eyes. “It’s never going to be the same again, is it?”
“No.” She came to me, clasping my hands. “But we will always be the same. Minnie, promise me that we’ll never change. We’ll always be loving sisters, no matter what.”
“Stop it. You’ll make me cry before the wedding.”
“Promise.” She pressed my hands tighter. “I must hear you say it.”
“Yes.” A lump filled my throat as I whispered, “I promise. Sisters forever.”
“No matter what.” She bent her head to kiss my fingertips. Then she reached up and set her palm against my cheek. “You are so strong. Stronger than you know. You refused Queen Victoria today. What other princess would dare do that?”
I refrained from saying that she certainly had not done so. What was the use?
Alix came to her feet. “And you mustn’t worry about me. I know I will be happy here. Bertie is so kind. We have our entire life ahead of us.”
It was as much reassurance as I could expect. At this time, what else could she do?
“That must be a relief to everyone concerned,” I said, as she returned to the coffer and shut its lid. “Imagine the uproar if you decided to cancel the wedding.”
Alix went still. Then she started to laugh, and I had to laugh, too.
CHAPTER FOUR
The wedding wasn’t grand, but it was crowded, held in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, which could accommodate nine hundred in the pews.
I was proud to see that my sister, in her wedding gown and pearl-and-diamond parure, a gift from Bertie, outshone even the queen’s daughters. Alix had never looked more beautiful, an opalescent vision beside her florid husband, who looked quite pleased with himself.
They would honeymoon at some manor called Osborne, where the queen had honeymooned with her late Albert. After the wedding reception and breakfast in the Waterloo Gallery, Victoria disappeared as soon as Alix went upstairs to change. I waited anxiously for my sister, knowing she’d soon depart by train. When she reappeared, she had everyone, including me, gazing in awe at her, in her white velvet and ermine wrap.
“Regal” was the only way to describe her. “Hurriedly” was the only way she could say goodbye. They were running late, as everything tended to do at weddings. Before I could say a word to her, her kiss grazed my cheek and she and Bertie were racing out of the castle with their respective households for the carriages to the station. Behind them went the nine hundred guests.
We departed the next day, without seeing the queen again. I hoped I’d never see her again. While I was glad to leave, I worried for Alix, who now must endure married life under a tyrannical mother-in-law.
* * *
UPON OUR RETURN to Copenhagen in mid-March 1863, more unexpected change fell upon us.
Following the overthrow of their Bavarian-born king, Otto, in late fall of 1862, the Greeks had rejected Otto’s brother as his successor. A list of candidates for a new monarch, including Victoria’s son Alfred, was drawn up; to everyone’s surprise, my seventeen-year-old brother, Willie, who’d seemed destined for a career in the Royal Navy, was elected by the Greek National Assembly on March 30. He took the title of George I of the Hellenes, and after his ceremonial enthronement in Copenhagen, he departed for Greece in October, marking another elevation for our family. I felt badly for him. Kingship aside, he’d been obliged to do his duty as Alix had, accepting a crown he hadn’t asked for that took him far from us. It only strengthened my resolve to stay put.
No sooner had Willie left than Papa was summoned to our moribund king’s bedside. Frederick’s notoriously extravagant life had finally caught up with him. He succumbed in November, just as he’d lived—noisily, and without remorse.
My father became King Christian IX.
We moved into the Amalienborg Palace—a ramshackle edifice in dire need of renovation, which Mama proceeded to undertake with her habitual industriousness and economy. I was now officially Princess Dagmar of Denmark. When I declared I found the title ridiculous, Mama reproved, “Much as you might dislike it, a princess is what you are.”
“Well, I don’t feel like one,” I said, which made her purse her mouth.
Papa provided me with my promised suite of rooms; as predicted, Thyra clamored to share it with me and I agreed. I couldn’t bear that echoing expanse without Alix at my side to make it feel like home.
Conflict plagued Papa soon after. Prussia and Austria contested Denmark’s titular possession of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg on the base of Jutland Peninsula between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s minister president under King Wilhelm, declared war on us and seized the duchies, claiming we held them illegally. Despite his futile attempts at mediation to regain the duchies, Papa was excoriated by our newspapers for our loss, rousing my hatred of the Germans.
This weakening of our standing also exerted immediate impact upon me.
Mama summoned me to her new study, which was heaped with fabric samples and architectural plans for the palace renovation.
“I’ve received a letter from His Imperial Majesty Tsar Alexander II. He
approves his son’s suit. He proposes to send Tsarevich Nixa forthwith. Isn’t it wonderful?” she said, waving the letter at me. “He’ll come here to propose in person. That’s not usually done,” she went on, as I stood there, silent. “It’s a great honor. Prospective brides are always invited to the Romanov court to be assessed, but His Highness will come instead to—”
“Assessed?” I interrupted. “How so?”
“To determine their suitability. Minnie, are you not elated? It is a great honor,” she repeated.
“So you keep saying. But if the prospective bride is deemed unsuitable, what then?”
Her foot tapped under her hem—an impatient tempo on the warped wood floor (she’d had the old rugs removed), which I was unable to see yet couldn’t ignore. “You’re not being called upon to be assessed. Nixa has seen you already. You are deemed suitable. He thinks so, and now so does his father, the tsar.”
I set the letter aside. “Isn’t this rather sudden? After Prussia has humiliated us and stolen our duchies, I should think I’d be deemed most unsuitable indeed.”
I saw her near-imperceptible recoil. As I glanced at the disorder on her desk, evidence of her plotting, I wondered how many letters had gone between her and the tsarina—two queens organizing the future of their progeny, regardless of political calamity, like countless queens before them.
“Your father’s situation has nothing to do with this,” she replied at length. “A princess must still marry, regardless of who stole what from whom.”
“I see,” I replied, for she’d never admit otherwise. “Yet Nixa barely knows me. Apparently that also poses no impediment.”
“There are none. What impediment could there possibly be?”
“Me.” I met her aghast stare. “I am the impediment. Or shall I have no say in whom I take as a husband, as Alix had no say in hers?”
Mama’s face closed like a trap. “She had her say. Plenty of say, I can assure you.”
“Then will you allow me the same?”
For a moment I thought she might start berating me for my ingratitude, poking a hole in her carefully laid plans. Instead, she said tightly, “Naturally. Your father and I would never force you.”
I nodded. I meant to take her at her word. More important, I knew Papa would take her at her word. If I did not find the tsarevich agreeable, there would be no wedding.
* * *
HE ARRIVED IN early summer, as Denmark burst with wildflowers and melted snow gushed in the rivers. We’d moved to Fredensborg Palace outside Copenhagen, by Lake Esrum, as Mama deemed the orangery and baroque gardens the ideal setting for our encounter.
I didn’t know what to expect. As I had told Alix, they spoke French at the Romanov court; it was sophisticated, renowned for its grandeur—more Western than Eastern, despite its Oriental roots. But for me, Russia had now adopted that barbaric menace Victoria had accorded it. I imagined endless winters under snow-filled midnight skies, with fur-swathed heathens downing vodka and smashing the cutlery. Anything that added to my determination to find the tsarevich unworthy became grist for my imagination, until my fear assumed such epic proportions even I had to admit not all of it could possibly be true.
Still, I clung to my resolve. Alix had been wrong. I wasn’t adventurous. I had no desire to abandon my country, my family, or my faith—as a Lutheran, I’d be expected to convert to Russia’s Orthodox Church—for a land steeped in myth and frozen tundra.
I supposed he’d arrive with Cossacks flanking him; instead, my first look at him—my first real look—occurred as he walked alone across the gardens toward where I sat under an oak tree, a book in my lap.
My eyes at half-mast as I succumbed to drowsiness, I suddenly heard his footsteps approach. I jolted upright, my book slipping from me. At first, I thought the male figure walking toward me was my father, who, since the loss of his duchies, was given to perambulations in the afternoons to rest his mind. Mama hadn’t been specific about when the tsarevich might arrive, and I’d anticipated some sort of production to herald it.
Yet here he was—the Russian heir, standing paces away, his head tilted quizzically as I scrambled for my upended book, at first not thinking anything, then, as awareness went through me, leaving the book where it lay to lift my face to him.
He was handsome. I couldn’t deny it. The Romanovs were a handsome family. But he wasn’t large; he looked too slim in his fitted jacket and gray striped trousers, his crisp white shirt open at the neck, without a cravat—an informality that struck me moments before he leaned down to retrieve my book. As his gray-blue eyes met mine, he said softly, “I regret to disturb Your Highness. Please, accept my apologies.”
His thick hair was dark, with coppery highlights in its depths. His features were angular, and he had a slight quirk to his mouth when he spoke, a subtle imperfection that gave him an elfish air. Despite everything, I found myself intrigued. He was behaving as if he had no right to be here and must explain his intrusion.
Listen to your heart.
Hearing Alix in my head, I ventured a smile as he turned my book over, smoothing its crumbled pages. “Enoch Arden by Lord Tennyson. In English.” He handed it back to me. “Do you enjoy reading poetry in foreign languages, Princess Dagmar?”
I still hadn’t grown used to my title, although the way he spoke it in his Russian accent (he’d learned some Danish, which impressed me) wasn’t unpleasant.
“My sister Alix sent it to me,” I said. “She says everyone in London is reading it. Enoch is lost at sea and finds upon his return that his wife, who thought him dead, has married his childhood friend. Enoch never tells her who he is, as he loves her too much to spoil her happiness. He dies of a broken heart. It’s sad. I’m not sure I like sad poems.”
“Neither am I, though in Russia, sad poetry is a national pastime.” As he smiled, I realized that he’d not introduced himself, as though we were friends who’d happened upon each other, which again proved disconcerting.
None of it fit into my idea of how our encounter would be.
“You look surprised,” he said, as I came to my feet. He was tall but not too tall. I found I could look him in the eye without craning my head too much.
“I am.” I saw no reason to lie. “I hadn’t thought to see you today.”
“But you knew I was due?” He seemed worried that I hadn’t, so I made myself nod and then, with his gaze still fixed on me, I said, “You’ve found me idling away my time. My mother will not approve. She had hoped our meeting would be more dignified.”
“Then we shall not tell her.” He was looking so intently at me that I wondered if I had a grass stain on my face. “You are not as I thought.”
“Oh?” Had he decided this wasn’t a proposal he cared to make, now that he’d seen me in person again? It must be one thing to admire a girl from afar as she ran about unawares, as I had at Rumpenheim, quite another to come face-to-face with her and decide whether to marry her. Without realizing what I was doing, I raised a hand to my hair, finding to my chagrin that the frayed ribbon tying it back had nearly slipped off. Suddenly I wanted to be that girl he’d first seen and been enraptured by, as Alix had claimed, and I cursed inwardly at my disregard for the seriousness of the occasion. I should have prepared, as Mama had chided countless times, greeted him as befitted my station in life. He’d think me slovenly, in my worn day dress with my hair unbound, reading poetry in midafternoon under a tree, without a hat or—
“Yes,” he said. “You are different. More…vibrant.”
Incredulous laughter escaped me. “That isn’t what Mama would say.”
“Then she does not see you as I do.” Before I could react to his remark, which I wasn’t sure he intended as flattery, he said, “I’ve come a long way in hope of this moment. I planned it all in my head and yet…” He smiled once more. He had small white teeth, but the top one was crooked, overlappin
g its neighbor—another perfect imperfection.
“You are disappointed,” I said.
“Oh, no.” He moved so quickly to me, I thought he might take my hand. He didn’t, his fingers flexing at his side as if he struggled to curb the impulse. “Not in the least. Are you?”
It was the moment I had dreaded. Now would be the time to send him on his way. I sensed he wouldn’t express offense. He was too well trained to cause me any discomfort. He’d simply retire, as he had all of Europe to choose from.
Instead, I heard myself say, “No. Not disappointed.”
His smile widened, brightening his face. He was rather pale; he did not seem to be someone who spent much time outdoors.
“Shall we walk?” I asked, and as I winced at my forwardness, for the gentleman should always lead, he stepped closer, so close this time that his slim fingers brushed mine.
“I would like nothing better,” he said.
* * *
HE STAYED WITH us for a month. We went riding in the morning—despite his delicate appearance, he was an avid horseman—and boating on the lake. We took walks in the garden without a chaperone (proof that everyone knew he was a serious suitor) and he spoke to me of Russia, as if he somehow intuited that I harbored unspoken trepidation.
I found myself fascinated by his descriptions of the Romanov empire, of steppes inhabited by Mongol tribes, and of the rugged mountains of the Caucasus, populated by rebel Circassians whom the tsar had vowed to tame or annihilate. He had me basking in the balm of the Crimea on the Black Sea and running wild like a lynx in the wilderness of Siberia. He danced me through the ethereal beauty of St. Petersburg, under the shimmering pale sky—those white nights I knew about, as we had them in summer in Denmark, but which he turned into such a magical occurrence, he made me long to see them in Russia. He spoke of his father’s historic emancipation of the serfs, which freed the peasantry from centuries of servitude to landowners and made Tsar Alexander II beloved in his realm.
The Romanov Empress Page 4