The city burst into frenetic life as the Season took hold. Events started toward midnight, lasting well into dawn. Galas, operas, balls, plays, and symphonies were held in blazing halls, theaters, and palaces, with fortunes spent on fuel for the stoves, beeswax candles, and gas for the chandeliers. Lavish boards were heaped with delicacies brought up from storehouses, where a wealth of meat and fish had been kept frozen on ice blocks from the prior winter. Only in Russia had I ever heard of food being frozen, and I was astounded by the abundance: succulent salted sturgeon and trout, partridge, grouse, venison, ham, and sausage, as well as grains, dried fruits, and nuts, accompanied by tender asparagus and vegetables nursed in indoor greenhouses. Hospitality was a Russian virtue, and winter was the time to eat, drink, and celebrate. Winter was for rejoicing, and Russians loved joy.
Sasha and I took up residence in our Anichkov Palace at the intersection of Nevsky Prospekt and the Fontanka Canal—a commodious house that included, to my delight, an enclosed garden and a large pond. From my new palace, I took to my troika to visit the aristocracy. As Tania predicted, everyone was eager to receive me, invitations arriving daily at my door. Sasha grumbled that “were it up to those empty-headed fools,” I wouldn’t set foot at home until the Neva thawed, but I felt obliged as the new tsarevna to let myself be entertained, while Tania emphasized the importance of instilling goodwill, particularly with the tsar’s three brothers, his two sisters, and their respective families.
I reveled in the attention. The conversation, held in French, was never tedious, everyone enthralled by the latest opera, play, or novel. The food was delicious, and the music, by Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Borodin, sublime. I wore beautiful new gowns, ordered by the dozen from Paris and St. Petersburg fashion houses. With my curled hair adorned with feathers, bejeweled combs, or pearls, jewelry sparking against my skin, I danced the nights away without a care, for there was nothing improper in it. Unlike some ladies, I invariably returned home. Sasha might grumble, but he didn’t impede me. One of us had to attend society and, as he said, “Better you, my Manja.” He too had his entertainments, places he went with his brother Vladimir and their fellow officers. I refrained from asking what these pursuits entailed. Prince Obolensky, Tania’s husband, kept watch over him, and like me, Sasha always came home, albeit bleary-eyed from vodka.
Protocol, however, obliged him to accompany me to the state galas at the Winter Palace, where thousands flocked, the Nicholas Hall searing with heat and adorned with parterres of roses and allées of laurels. Sasha detested it. Frowning, tugging at his uniform, he always drank too much. Once drunk, he lost his timidity and would play the tuba with the orchestra; he had a fine ear for music and played quite well, when sober. More often than not, he ended up in an inexplicable fury, compelling me to whisk him back home to tuck him into bed before I returned to the palace to finish out the night.
I had everything I could have dreamed of—wealth, position, the entire city at my feet. For my first Epiphany, the traditional time for gifts, I held my first ball at my palace, overseeing the preparations for weeks in advance and marshaling my slovenly maids. Dirt and disorder, I found, were the norm in Russian households. The linen closets alone presented a mess of disorganization, the maids baffled when I joined them to sort and discard the worn or moth-eaten to replace it with the crisp and new. Ladies of quality, let alone a tsarevna, apparently didn’t occupy themselves with the management of their homes, but my childhood of chores under my mother came to the fore.
“These floors must be scrubbed,” I told my staff. “And the rooms dusted thoroughly every day. You wash yourselves, yes?” I added, as they stood with their mouths agape. “Well. A house must also be maintained. It is where we live.”
In contrast, bodily cleanliness was a Russian obsession, with public steam baths available throughout the city for men and women. My private bathing room was fully equipped, and Sasha bathed every two days, even in the dead of winter. I was therefore confounded that such a fastidious people could allow inches of cinder dust from the stoves and hearths to accumulate unnoticed on every surface. I developed a ruthless reputation for impromptu inspections and sniffing of the linens, but in time my staff learned that if they wanted to remain in my employ, they must do as I instructed. Those who persevered reaped the reward, for my annual income as tsarevna was substantial, apportioned by the tsar himself, and I believed in paying my servants well.
In winter the days were short, with long nights, but homes and churches remained aglow with candles and song. By January, the dim daylight expanded, reluctantly at first, for the ceremonial Blessing of the Waters, when we joined the tsar on the Feast of the Epiphany in procession to the river, where a hole dug into the ice revealed the Neva’s murky depths. After the metropolitan dipped his staff in to bless it, a goblet of this briny water was given to the tsar to sip, and the people rushed to fill up their buckets, for the blessed water was deemed miraculous. By April, the icebound Neva cracked, and cannons were fired from the fortress to herald the advent of spring.
In this perfect world, all I lacked was a child. But Sasha and I enjoyed regular intimacy, and I was confident I would soon bear fruit.
I was nineteen years old and the tsarevna.
How could anything I desired be denied?
CHAPTER TEN
“Are you walking with us today?” thirteen-year-old Marie asked. I found the grand duchess in the antechamber of the tsar’s study, her big blue eyes shining with anticipation. Her father’s daily strolls along the promenade of the Quai de la Cour alongside the Winter Palace were a time-honored spring routine. After reviewing his state affairs, Alexander would take walks outside, dispensing with ceremony to greet his subjects. He believed Russia’s Little Father, as the tsars were dubbed, must never seclude himself, and his request that I join him today was an honor.
“I am.” I smiled at Marie in her white frock and beribboned sun hat, her chestnut-colored hair plaited. “How pretty you look.” I didn’t see her as often as I would have liked. Her youth precluded attendance at the winter galas, as it did the presence of her even-younger brothers, Grand Dukes Sergei and Paul, both of whom, like her, studied under tutors, only the boys did so in preparation to enter the regiments. So I was pleased to find Marie here, perched on the ottoman with the tsar’s red Irish setter, Milord, petting his ears and sticking her tongue out at the turbaned attendants protecting the study entrance.
She heaved a dramatic sigh. “Finally. Winter is so boring.”
I sat beside her. “You’ll not be a child forever. Once you are a woman, winter won’t seem that way.”
Her young face made the perfect moue of distaste. “Mama is still in Nice. She hates winter, too.”
“Yes. The cold is very hard on her,” I said. Marie was still too young to realize that her mother’s health had grown increasingly frail or that the tsarina’s frequent retreats to the Crimea or Nice, ostensibly to seek a warmer clime, were, I suspected, as much motivated by her cough as the need to escape the social demands of St. Petersburg. “But now that it’s spring, she’ll be back soon. And this summer, we’ll go to Peterhof and Tsarskoe Selo. Won’t that be lovely? All those wonderful gardens to run around in.”
I wanted Marie to have gardens, to play and laugh, to enjoy her final years of childhood. I realized now that I’d been fortunate growing up as I had, without strict etiquette. For while Marie was lively, given to racing about the palace, sliding down the marble banisters, and joining the liveried servants taxed with polishing the floors by skating along them in padded slippers, life as a grand duchess wasn’t easy for a child, especially one whose mother was absent for long periods of time and whose father oversaw an empire.
“I suppose,” she said, with that mercurial indifference children had. She leaned closer to me. “If the Nihilists don’t force us to flee to the fortress of Gatchina instead.”
I regarded her, taken aback. “
Whatever makes you say that?”
“Papa was just yelling about it to one of his ministers. They don’t want him to take his walks outside anymore. The Nihilists have threatened him again.”
A chill went through me. To hear such news from her was bad enough, but I’d had no idea that this nebulous group of anarchic discontents, who’d adopted the epithet of “Nihilists” to promulgate their gospel of social revolt, had threatened the tsar. I’d heard talk of them in the salons, of course. But nearly everyone dismissed them as rabble-rousers and libertarians with too much time on their hands, taking up the banner for the downtrodden and the serfs, left by the emancipation without land, obliged to pay taxes and immigrating in growing numbers to the cities in search of employment.
“You mustn’t let such things worry you,” I said. “It’s not—”
My words were cut short by the tsar’s emergence from his study. Spare and tall, my father-in-law wore his old frock coat, his cravat and hat, a walking stick in his gloved hand. He beamed at Marie, who rushed to hug him, and then at me. “Always so prompt, my dear,” he said through his bushy mustachios. “You should have had them inform me you were here.”
“Them?” I glanced at the attendants, who remained impervious as pillars.
He chuckled, taking me by the arm. As Marie and Milord trotted beside us, we traversed the palace, his personal guard accompanying us to the side entrance but no farther, at his command. He didn’t move in his usual direction toward the promenade along the Neva, however, turning us instead toward Sadovaya Street. In his ordinary clothing, with his plain black fedora on his head, he went unnoticed, pedestrians passing by without a glance. Past the Mikhailovsky Castle, used for military training, the Summer Garden came into view—an oasis of greenery on its island between the Fontanka and Swan canals.
“The gardens today?” I asked.
Alexander gave a grim nod. “If we can evade those imbeciles following me.” He did not elaborate on which imbeciles; as I cast a nervous glance over my shoulder, he tightened his hold on me. “Come. We can enjoy privacy here. I’ll not be deprived of it.”
Marie skipped ahead with Milord. “Not too far,” Alexander called out, as we walked under the elm trees, past fountains of colored marble. “I’ve been advised the embankment is no longer safe,” he said to me. “It appears nowhere outside the palace is safe anymore, if my ministers are to be believed. Such hens they are, always fussing over me.”
“Marie overheard the fuss,” I said, flipping open my parasol to shield my complexion.
“Did she?” He patted my arm. “She’s not a child anymore. Living as we do doesn’t allow it. She hears too much. The servants talk. Everyone talks. As I said, such an ungodly fuss. You’d think that a Nihilist assassin awaited me on every corner.”
“So, it’s true?” I came to a halt. “Have they actually threatened Your Majesty’s person?”
“Do you doubt it? My dear, Russia is not what it seems.”
I met his gaze. “I don’t understand. Who are these Nihilists to threaten their tsar?”
He looked pained, glancing to where Marie chastised Milord, who’d elected to urinate in the middle of the path. “Their name says it all: The Latin nihil means ‘nothing.’ They reject authority, proposing anarchy as a means for change. They despise our monarchy, our aristocracy, and our Church. Like the mobs during the French Revolution, they would tear asunder everything we stand for.”
I felt as if a shadow fell over us, though the sky above was clear of clouds, that immense crystalline spring sky of Russia. “That’s absurd. You freed the peasants and abolished serfdom. You are the Tsar Liberator. Your people adore you.”
He sighed. “My people are not Nihilists. They merely want to go about their lives with a minimum of hardship. These rebels are discontents. Intellectuals, mostly, who’ve adopted the fervor of revolutionaries. They’re not always aligned in their views, from what I’m told, but they believe I freed the serfs to provide slave labor for our new factories. We do whatever we can to suppress them, but they sow terror in the hope that I’ll either grant reforms or abdicate. Preferably abdicate. They have no use for a tsar.”
“It cannot be allowed. It’s treason!” I exclaimed, and Marie glanced over at us.
Alexander waved her on ahead. “Much as I lament to say it,” he said, “treason it might be, but not everything they promulgate is baseless. The serfs are indeed suffering. I released them from centuries of servitude, but releasing them from the bonds of tradition isn’t so simple. I failed to see what the result might be. Without landowners to answer to, they’ve been cast adrift, exploited when they come here to seek work, as many are illiterate. Had I known as much, I may not have been so determined to change their way of life. Few can welcome change if they reap no benefit in it.”
I couldn’t imagine what he described. Recalling the people on their knees in the snow as he’d passed in his carriage, I had to wonder at my naïveté. Had I failed to mark the darkness festering under my gilded new life? And then, as I realized we were here, alone in the garden, I said in alarm, “Surely if they’re a danger to you, we shouldn’t—”
“No, no.” He shook his head. “I won’t cower in that pile of stone, nor have guards dogging my every step. When our fate comes, we cannot escape it.” He steered me down the path, toward Peter the Great’s little Summer Palace, perched beside an artificial lake at the far end of the garden. “You mustn’t worry about such things,” he went on, echoing my own words to Marie. “The Nihilists are a nuisance, but they’ve not killed me yet.”
“God forbid.” I might have crossed myself had I not been holding the parasol with one hand while my other hand was resting upon his arm.
“Indeed, but they don’t believe in God.” He let out a curt laugh. Then he went quiet, his stick tapping on the path before he said, “I wish to talk to you about Sasha. Are you happy with him? Please don’t say what you think I should hear. I get enough of that already at court. Tell me the truth. Is he a loyal husband to you?”
Though he didn’t say the actual words, I understood. “Yes. He has his habits, but not that.” I searched my father-in-law’s face. “Why?”
“No reason. Only that he protested rather vehemently at first when told he must give her up before marrying you.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth, making a remonstrating sound. “Marie! Let Milord do his business wherever he likes.” As he watched his contrite daughter proceed to the lake bordering the Summer Palace, I grappled with sudden disquiet. Sasha had indeed forsaken a mistress; the tsar had confirmed it. And the knowledge squeezed my heart. I’d seen no evidence of any indiscretion. He went gallivanting with Vladimir at night, but surely it could not mean…
“Minnie?” Alexander’s voice brought my gaze back to him. “If you tell me that a mistress is no longer a concern, I’m very pleased. Sasha kept his word.”
Uncertainly, I said, “We still don’t know each other well, Majesty, but Sasha…he has been kind to me.”
“Kind. Hardly what I’d call a healthy endorsement from a newlywed wife, though I suppose kindness in a marriage is underrated. Do you love him?” Alexander said abruptly.
“I…” My voice faded. I did not want to lie, as he had requested honesty. “I will learn to love him. In these matters, love requires time.”
“It does. For some.” His face underwent a subtle change, a sadness that softened him, so that he appeared both younger and much older. “I once loved my wife very much.”
The melancholic admission disturbed me. He spoke as though he did not love her anymore, but how could that be? They’d been married over twenty years, had eight children together, suffering the loss of a daughter early in their marriage and then Nixa’s death. I would have thought such trials could only bring them closer. But then I recalled the tsarina’s absences, her apparent need to escape. Did she also seek to escape her husband?
He paused, chuckling as Marie ran up to him to take from his coat pocket a bundled handkerchief, which she ran back with to the lake, scattering breadcrumbs. Huddled in the middle of the water to avoid the stalking hound, the ducks ignored her.
“She’ll never lure them with Milord there,” Alexander said. “But she’d stay all day with those crumbs if we let her. She’s stubborn. Like Sasha. Did you know his brothers call him the Bullock?”
“Bullock?” The nickname was so apt, I had to smile. “It fits him. He does have a bull’s temper. And its obstinacy.”
“You know him better than you think. When he was a boy, his tutors despaired. They assured me he had no mind for learning. They recommended I entrust him to the regiments and let the military discipline him. Who would have thought he’d become my heir instead?”
He sighed, watching Marie stomp her foot at the ducks’ refusal to cooperate. “Now he must learn. Sasha is not prepared to assume my throne, should these dire warnings of my demise come to pass sooner than expected. I cannot leave this empire to a man who doesn’t know how to rule. Our modern age shows no mercy to crowned fools.” He returned his gaze to me. “Will you help him?”
“Me?” I said in surprise. “Majesty, I’m not very well educated myself.”
“But you read. You like books. And you win people’s hearts. Don’t deny it. I’ve already heard plenty from my brothers’ wives, who speak only about how fashionable and clever you are. The grand duchesses do not flatter any woman lest she overshadows their own considerable accomplishments. You could provide him with a tutor, see that he does more than follow Vladimir’s lead. Young men can be so impetuous, and Vladimir doesn’t set much of an example. Wine, ballerinas, racehorses: What Vladimir alone spends will bankrupt me. Sasha needs guidance. He is not Nixa.”
The Romanov Empress Page 9