“Sasha,” I gasped to Tania. “Fetch him. I…I think it’s time.”
Despite everyone’s assurance that the way I carried my belly indicated my child would be a boy, I had told myself I didn’t care. Son or daughter, I’d love it the same, but when Sasha came barreling into the room, where Sophie mopped my brow as I groaned in pain and the midwife prodded between my thighs, he went white and began shouting to no one in particular, “Alert the Winter Palace this instant! My wife is about to give birth to my son. Tell them to make haste.”
Between crests of pain that sucked the very air from my lungs, I managed to say, “Haste? Why? I can give birth just as well without—”
“No.” Sasha glared at Tania. “See that she’s not left alone for a moment. My father and mother must be present to attend the birth.”
As he stormed out in a fluster, bellowing orders again at the footmen in the corridor and thereby alerting the entire palace staff to my ordeal, I grimaced. “Must I delay until they arrive?”
Tania nodded. “It is the protocol, Your Highness.”
Two hours later, the tsar and tsarina arrived to hold vigil in my room, alongside Sasha, to my embarrassment. By the tenth hour, just as I thought I’d gladly yank the child out myself, I felt its sudden release. The umbilical cord was severed. I heard a resounding slap on wet buttocks and a wail of protest. As I collapsed onto my sweat-sodden pillows in a fog of fatigue, I heard Sasha declare: “A son!”
The tsarina said mournfully, “Born on the feast day of St. Job. We must pray that God does not test him like poor Job in the forge of calamity to prove his faith.”
I wanted to retort that surely God had tested his mother enough in labor, but I was too exhausted, and the empress was ill, her consumption now a confirmed secret among the family. I pitied her, knowing the deep anguish she still felt over Nixa.
“Let me see him,” I whispered. Tania set the baby, cocooned in white cloth, on my chest. As his little fist clenched at my breast, a feeling unlike any I had known overwhelmed me.
My child. My son. He was here at last. He was mine.
“We shall name him Nicholas,” Sasha said, “in honor of my grandfather.” He paused, looking suddenly at me. He had turned away during most of my labor, prowling the room as I heaved and cried out but never really looking at me. Now he did. “Manja?”
I passed my weary gaze from him to Alexander, who stood with his arm around his wife. He smiled at me. “It’s a fortuitous name for a tsar.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Nicholas it is.”
* * *
—
TO ME, HE was perfect, with Sasha’s gray-blue eyes and silky tufts of my dark hair, which would lighten as he grew older, and a little body that smelled soft, like cream. I was dismayed when informed I must employ a wet nurse. I wanted to nurse him myself and crept to his bassinet whenever I could, dismissing the wet nurse to let him suckle at my aching nipple. I had plenty of milk; my pregnancy had been uneventful, despite all the precautions taken out of fear that I might suffer from milk fever or other ailments that killed new mothers. The tsarina’s superstitious comment about his birth had also perturbed me; I did not share her pious mysticism, but I couldn’t help believing that nursing my son gave us both a talismanic protection.
For the christening, I dressed Nicky—as we all called him—in a hand-embroidered cotton-and-lace gown I made for him, his bib stitched with his name and birth date. The tsar gave him the traditional Romanov gold cross and issued an effusive proclamation: a three-hundred-gun salute from the fortress and free champagne everywhere, from the great palaces to the aristocratic mansions and dockside taverns.
Sasha strutted about in pride. But in private, he said to me, “Isn’t he rather small? My mother remarked he looks half the size Vladimir and I were at our births.”
“Every babe is different. I am small. I’m also strong. Did I not carry him for nine months? He will grow into a Russian bear, like you.”
Sasha gave uncertain assent. “Still, we mustn’t coddle him too much. When I was a boy, we slept on cots, bathed in cold water, and had no luxuries to give us airs. My father, as you know, still has his apartments kept in the strictest order.” His gaze roved about our drawing room, which was crowded with potted plants, Japanese lacquer screens, and knickknacks I’d bought on whim at the local bazaars, framed photographs on every table, the walls covered in paintings. I liked the clutter, especially in winter. It felt cozy to me, as a home should.
“He’s a baby,” I said. “He’ll not be sleeping on a cot anytime soon.”
Sasha chuckled. “My swan has become a lioness. Woe to anyone who interferes with her cub.”
Truer words had rarely been spoken. I was determined to rear my son personally, following my own childhood example by not engaging menials to keep him out of my way. I even used my need to care for my child to postpone my studies with Pobendonostev, which in any event weren’t serving me, as the tutor had dedicated all his efforts toward Sasha. Despite his grumbling, my husband had avidly taken to the instruction, so much so that he didn’t even make a mention of my absence. With the extra time from not attending those grueling afternoon lessons, I caught up on my correspondence while Nicky napped. Letters between my mother and me became a weekly occurrence, with her imparting advice on weaning and nutrition and warning me against swaddling, for it stunted a babe’s natural growth. I did everything she advised, battling the wet nurse. Being a mother was an all-consuming gift and chore I relished. I liked nothing better than to bundle up Nicky and take him in my carriage to show him off to his cooing great-aunts and -uncles or to promenade with him in his pram, the tsar at my side, on the Quai and in the Summer Garden, though I now insisted on a gendarme escort at all times.
I was so engrossed in caring for my boy, I didn’t feel the need for any more children, though it was expected. And within weeks of my recovery from labor, Sasha was again visiting my bed.
The love that Alix advised me to nurture but I had not yet fully felt began to flourish in this time. Despite our differences over how Nicky should be reared, having a child brought us closer, and I found myself welcoming my husband’s affections, his burly arms and tender touch. He was the only lover I’d known, but I couldn’t imagine any other—attentive and sensitive, attuned to my pleasure more than his own. When he had me moaning aloud, he liked to whisper, “I’m told if a woman is pleased, she breeds sons,” making me pull him deeper into me even as I replied, “What nonsense.”
I soon became pregnant again. Almost a year to the date of Nicky’s birth, I bore another son, this time named Alexander, after his grandfather the tsar. He was a beautiful babe, too, larger than Nicky, to Sasha’s proud satisfaction.
“Now sisters,” he said, cradling little Alexander in his arms. “Boys need sisters.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Not yet. Mothers need respite.”
“Would you lock the door on your own husband, wife?” he growled.
“If necessary,” I replied, but he knew I would not, and I smiled to see him kiss Alexander’s plump cheeks and our newborn son’s attempt to reach for his mustache.
“This one is strong,” Sasha said. “A true Romanov. I’ll teach him to shoot boar.”
I reasoned it was natural for him to favor the more robust proof of his manhood, although it made no sense to me. Even if he was smaller, Nicky was healthy and well formed, too.
As our second son’s first birthday approached in 1870, we were due to depart for Denmark to visit my parents. Sasha had expressed keen interest in seeing my country, and I was eager to show it to him. Then little Alexander developed a high fever; in a panic, Sasha sent word to the palace. When the imperial physician dispatched by the tsar emerged from the nursery to say sadly, “I fear it is meningitis, Your Highness,” I gave such a piercing cry that Sasha recoiled helplessly.
“He’s only eleven mo
nths old! He hasn’t fallen from any horse.” In my disbelief at hearing the same illness that killed Nixa, I barely heeded the physician’s grave explanation that the disease did not require an injury. Ripping myself away, I bolted into the nursery, refusing to allow anyone near him.
I sat by his crib and dried his puckered brow over and over of that horrible sweat as he writhed and lamented before lapsing into silence. Seeing Nixa again in that villa, his wasted face and imploring eyes, my entire world shattered.
Everything inside me, everything around me, went black.
I did not know he was gone until Sasha entered and I felt his hand, trembling, on my shoulder. “Manja, my love. Come now.” His voice caught. “Nicky…he needs you.”
My son had been sequestered in the Tauride Palace with his nursemaid, out of fear of infection. Lifting my eyes to Sasha, I whispered, “Don’t let them take him away.”
Sasha hoisted me up from my stool by the crib and led me to the door; when I started to turn around, he tightened his hold on me. “Do not look back.”
Bereft, I could not attend his funeral. Sasha saw him entombed in the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, and from her retreat in the Crimea, where she was fighting her own deadly battle, the tsarina sent me a heartrending letter of condolence, reminding me that God sometimes takes from us what we most love.
Crumbling the letter in my fist, with a wail I flung it aside. That evening, Sasha came home to find me on the floor. Tania and Sophie said they’d tried to rouse me as he roared at them to get out. They had tried. But in that dreadful moment, envisioning my perfect babe lying cold and still under a white sarcophagus, all I wanted was to die myself.
“Manja.” Sasha dropped beside me to gather me in his arms. “You mustn’t do this to yourself. God must love us very much to have called our little one to His side.”
“God took him from me, just as Nixa was taken,” I wept. “God does not love me.”
He cupped my face in his palms. “You must never utter such a blasphemy again. God indeed must love you above others, to ask of you such sacrifice.” As I flinched at his quiet chastisement, he said, “I also grieve for our little boy, but you—you are my life. Without you, this world means nothing to me.”
Sudden tears swam in his eyes; I’d never seen him cry before. He lowered his gaze, whispering, “I know I’ll never be Nixa for you,” and I recognized then what I hadn’t yet admitted. In some unbidden moment I failed to mark, I had fallen in love with him—with his stolid presence and awkward vulnerability, with his persistent devotion to me, although he had no need, for, like his brothers, he could have had plenty of other women. Yet in all this time, even if he’d no doubt heard that Sasha the Bullock was fortunate to have wed his dead brother’s fiancée, not once had he wavered. Not once had he reproached me for the secret flame of Nixa’s loss in my heart, which our son’s death had laid bare.
He had given me his heart instead. His great bull’s heart, with all its insecurities.
“Sasha,” I said.
His expression faltered, as if he braced for a thrust. “It doesn’t matter if you never love me as I love you. Nicky and I…we both need you so.”
“I do.” My voice caught. “I do love you, my husband.”
He slowly let out his breath, as if he had carried a knot inside him, and drew me to his chest. “We will have more children,” he said. “I promise you. Many more. We shall fill this house to the rafters with their laughter, so one day you can remember our lost boy without so much sadness.”
His tender avowal fractured me, so that I found myself saying, “Take me home.”
He murmured, “We are home, my love. Russia is our home.”
“I want Denmark. I want my country. My parents.”
He tightened his arms about me. “Then we shall. We will go as soon as it can be arranged. I’ll ask leave from my father.”
It was then, in that moment, as we held on to each other like survivors of a cataclysm, that I gave myself entirely to him. In the next few weeks, as we prepared to travel, I forced myself for his sake and for our Nicky, who was confused, sensing my grief, too young to understand the loss he must have felt at seeing the nursery emptied of his dead brother’s crib.
I had to be strong for both of them. For just as I was to them, they were my life.
CHAPTER TWELVE
My mother and father welcomed us with joy. Assuming charge of me as they always had, Mama commandeered plenty of meals and fresh air to fortify my body and spirit.
“Why, you are skin and bones!” she exclaimed. “We can’t have you wasting away. You’ve a son and husband to look after.”
My sixteen-year-old sister, Thyra, wasn’t there. She’d fallen in love with a Danish army officer—an unfortunate choice, as he was in no position to wed a princess. Mama had to intervene to break up the affair, sending disconsolate Thyra to Athens to spend time with Willie and his wife and hopefully mend her broken heart.
But Alix arrived with Bertie and their young children, my sister having given birth to her second daughter, Victoria, the same year as I had Nicky, followed the year after by her third daughter, Maud. She was pregnant yet again, she sighed, but it was still early enough that she’d defied the queen’s usual mandate against travel. As we walked through the gardens at Fredensborg, my son tottered after Alix’s George, who was three years older and quite the tyrant, ordering Nicky and his own older brother, Albert, about with a peremptory tone.
“My George thinks he must assert himself,” said Alix. “The second son is always the most demanding, because he knows he’s not first—” She cut herself short, taking my arm. “Forgive me. I didn’t think. Having a child every year has made me an addle-brain.”
“Don’t apologize.” I blinked back sudden tears. “Your children are so beautiful. You and Bertie must love them so much, and look—” I said, to dispel the shadow that fell over her eyes. “Sasha is besotted. What a great Russian fool he is.”
My husband was on his hands and knees on the lawn, clad in his rumpled linen jacket and baggy moujik trousers—as soon as we were away from court, he refused to wear anything else but that old jacket, worn pants, and scuffed boots—as the children squealed, clambering onto his broad back, assisted by Bertie, who guffawed as Sasha crawled to and fro, shaking his head and mock-biting at the children’s legs.
“He loves children. He’s like a big child himself.” She turned to me. “Have you given any thought to when you might try again…?”
I swallowed against a knot in my throat. “Yes. Soon. We both want more children.”
Her smile deepened. “Children are our consolation. Until they grow up and leave us, we must get out of bed every day for them, no matter what.”
I sensed distance between her and Bertie—nothing I could elucidate, but present nevertheless. One evening, Alix retired early; the men emptied the cognac and smoked too many cigars, finally staggering drunk up to their rooms. Left alone with Mama in the drawing room, I ventured, “Does Alix seem unhappy to you?”
My mother was darning socks. She still mended her and Papa’s clothes, which had so dismayed me that I insisted on giving them funds to replenish their meager livings. Without looking up from her needle, she replied, “You must never ask her.”
“Why? Did she say something to you?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I had come to love Bertie, not only because of his fondness for Sasha but because he was everything I might have wished for in a brother-in-law—affable and never rude, a champion against Prussia in England. France and Prussia were on the verge of war, and Bertie’s outspoken speeches about the need to curtail German aggression hadn’t pleased Victoria in the slightest.
Mama gave a troubled sigh. “Nothing directly. But enough to know she must look the other way. Bertie is a good husband, but like every man, he has his weakness.”
“You mean mistresses,” I sai
d flatly, bringing her gaze up to mine.
“As I said, you must never ask. It would serve no purpose other than to humiliate her. He loves her, regardless. More so, I think, than he even knows.”
I returned to my reading, but the words blurred before my eyes and I excused myself, going upstairs to the children’s room. The boys shared a bed, tumbled together like puppies. Alix’s girls were next door to her, with their nanny, so she could hear them if they cried in the night. After I smoothed Nicky’s hair and disentangled George’s possessive arm thrown over him, I padded down the corridor to Sasha’s room. We did not share the same rooms, even in Russia. He kept his own apartments, which were austere, while I had mine, which were not. He came to my bed whenever we sought intimacy, but we’d agreed to an amicable balance by maintaining separate beds.
Now I could hear him snoring from behind the door. I went in anyway, undressing to my shift. Sliding into the bed, hot as a kiln from his body, I curled beside him. He grumbled, moving closer to me. His manhood poked the small of my back. Hiking my shift, I eased him into me.
“I want a child, Sasha,” I whispered as he bucked into me. “I want another son.”
* * *
AS THE LAST of the autumn leaves drifted across the prospekts, I knew. I found myself beset by malaise, a retching in the morning that sent Tania into a fluster. I didn’t say anything to Sasha until late November, when our personal physician examined me and confirmed it. Despite our joy, and perhaps because of the loss of our second son, Sasha became impossible, wanting me to seclude myself and abstain from any strenuous activities.
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