“With the Season upon us?” I said. “Your mother has gone to the Crimea. Who will open the gala at the Winter Palace? Your father needs me, the tsarevna, at his side. And there I will be.”
Irate but unable to detain me, short of bolting the doors, he squeezed into his blue-and-silver uniform and elk-skin breeches and trudged with me to court, where, in the flush of my new condition, I contrived to dance, flirt, and converse. Sasha glowered, steadfast at my side; even Vladimir remarked he’d never seen my husband quite so resolute.
“Have you given him cause to doubt you?” he teased as we danced across the Nicholas Hall under the cut-crystal chandeliers.
“Never,” I said. “And isn’t it high time that you, brother-in-law, ceased cavorting about and found yourself a proper arrangement?”
“What? Are two ballerinas from the Mariinsky not proper enough?”
“Honestly.” I rapped my fan on his shoulder. “Your father complained to me only last week that your gambling debts are outrageous, and if you don’t marry and start behaving as a grand duke should, he’ll cut you off. Whatever will you do with your ballerinas then?”
Vladimir threw back his leonine head and guffawed. But his mirth soon faded. “I must get myself a wife,” he admitted. “Papa has made it a nonnegotiable condition of my continued solvency. So I’ll go abroad on a grand tour—it’s what we grand dukes do—and see if I can find one. Wish me luck, Minnie. Such a pity you’re already taken.” He winked at me, the rogue. “I’d have married you without a second thought.”
“You’re incorrigible. I wish only luck for the lady. She will need it.”
As he bowed and I left him to rejoin Sasha, who waited for me with a scowl, Vladimir called out, “Lucky lady or not, I’ll not give up my ballerinas.”
Of that, I had no doubt.
* * *
WHILE CHUNKS OF melting ice flowed from the Neva to the sea and the Summer Garden burst with May bloom, I took to my bed, again in Tsarskoe Selo. After only a few hours, I delivered my third son, christened George. Sasha paraded with him yowling in his arms. He was robust, a proper Romanov baby, and his arrival helped ease my lingering sorrow over the death of our little Alexander; we now had two surviving sons.
Nicky, however, remained small, to Sasha’s discontent, and cleaved to me rather than to his father. Though our firstborn was still very young, Sasha grew too strict with him. I came upon them one morning, after Sophie alerted me, to find poor Nicky standing naked in the tub, shivering, as Sasha doused him with a pitcher of cold water.
“Are you mad?” I shoved my husband aside to envelop my trembling son in a towel. “He’s four years old. What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“To make him strong.” Sasha jutted out his lower lip, as he always did when confronted with a problem, be it soggy cabbage at the table or a demanding lesson from Pobendonostev. “He must learn that life is not soft cushions and Mama’s loving arms.”
“You’re a brute. You could have given him pneumonia. If I ever catch you doing this to him again, you will learn just how cruel Mama’s loving arms can be.”
He went out, slamming the bathroom door. Nicky whispered, “Papa hates me.”
“No. No, my sweet boy. Papa doesn’t hate you. He’s just—he’s…”
“A brute?” Nicky said, and I laughed, coddling him. “Yes,” I said. “A big moujik brute. Shall we send him out to thresh wheat?”
My son tilted his head, as if he thought it a good idea. From then on, I made certain that Sasha did not bully him.
“Do you want him to grow up to fear you?” I asked Sasha, who scowled.
“Better that he fear me than grow up to be like Sergei,” he retorted.
I paused. His younger brother, Grand Duke Sergei, was fifteen, a year from his majority of age, and exemplary, fluent in several languages, including Italian, as he’d insisted on reading Dante in the original. He also had musical talent, playing the flute in the Winter Palace orchestra. Tall and thin as a stork, Sergei was strikingly handsome, with the incised cheekbones of a Renaissance prince and hazel-green eyes that, like a cat’s, tended toward amber in the right light.
“And what is so wrong with Sergei? He’s studious, accomplished, and—”
“You don’t hear what I do.” Sasha heaved himself to his feet. “My brother Paul has told me…things. Things I will not repeat. But mark my words,” he warned. “Nicholas will not be like Sergei. Not if I have any say in it.”
There was no arguing with him when he was in a mood. Besides, whatever Paul had conveyed couldn’t possibly be as terrible as he made it seem. The tsar’s youngest sons, Paul and Sergei, were inseparable; they’d grown up together, traveling with their mother to the Crimea and Nice until she became too ill. In the palace, they shared lessons, trying to find their way in a world dominated by their older brothers, Sasha, Vladimir, and Alexis.
As for Nicky, I’d not let anyone instill fear in him. My firstborn was not like a Romanov. I already sensed it, and I did not think it a defect. Quite the contrary, in fact.
We had more than enough swaggering Romanovs already.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Vladimir returned from his tour of Europe, where he’d made an endless succession of casino owners, hoteliers, actresses, and their respective entourages exceedingly happy.
He came to see me at my Anichkov. Sasha was out, walking Beauty and his hunting terrier, Moska. As we drank tea, Vladimir exposed his new monogrammed emerald and onyx cuff links. I had to roll my eyes at his inability to restrain himself until he suddenly announced, “I found a wife.”
“You did?” After the adventures he’d described, in addition to the tsar’s fury when the bills from the Continent arrived, I thought finding a wife had been the last thing on his mind.
“Yes,” said Vladimir. “She suits me. Apparently, I suit her more. She was already betrothed, but she broke off her engagement to marry me.”
I suspected this enterprising lady had gleaned the advantages he presented. A profligate husband, with his imperial income and penchant for ballerinas and racehorses, was the sort some women preferred, as it left them with ample time to indulge their own interests.
“And who is this fortunate lady?” I asked.
He sucked at the inside of his teeth. “You’ll not like it.”
“Whyever not? I thought you might never marry at all, given your present course.”
“She’s German,” he said, and before I could react, my hand freezing on the samovar, he went on quickly, “Duchess Marie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, daughter of Grand Duke Frederick II. Her father has Slavic blood; his great-grandmother was a daughter of Tsar Paul I. But her family is also friendly with Chancellor Bismarck and the new kaiser.”
I sat back, without pouring him more tea, regarding him in disapproving silence until he groused, “Everyone wanted me to get a wife. Must I be judged for her birth?”
“Not by me. I’m quite sure you know best.” But my tone of voice indicated otherwise, and he reverted to a plaintive tone, which was entirely wasted on me.
“Minnie, there aren’t many princesses willing to come here as you did and adopt our ways. I realize France’s defeat by Germany must leave a bad taste in your mouth, but please don’t begrudge me. I’ve heard enough about it from my father.”
“The bad taste in my mouth is of no concern here,” I said. “Is His Majesty opposed?”
“Not in theory. But in practice…” He fiddled with his cuff links. “She will not convert. She says she owes her highest obedience to God, and God wishes her to remain a Lutheran.”
“How like a German, to have personal assurance of our Almighty’s wishes.”
“You’ll be kind to her when she arrives?” he said. “You are the tsarevna. I’m depending on you.”
“If she arrives. Conversion for a Romanov bride has never
been an option.”
“Oh, she’ll arrive,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was confident or perplexed. “Marie may think she knows what God wishes, but if He disagrees, she will ignore Him.”
“She sounds enchanting,” I said dryly. “I look forward to her arrival.”
* * *
MARIE OF MECKLENBURG-SCHWERIN refused to convert, but such was the pressure brought upon Alexander, who wanted Vladimir settled, and by the duchess’s father, who had an intractable daughter on his hands, that eventually an agreement was reached. For the first time in one hundred fifty years, a Romanov grand duke would marry a woman who did not embrace the Orthodox faith.
Sasha was enraged. Like Bertie, he had absorbed my family’s anti-Prussian sentiment, for I wasn’t reluctant to express it, particularly after the catastrophic war that cost Napoleon III his empire and laid brutal siege to Paris, crushing my hope for a Prussian defeat that might restore our lost Danish duchies. Now Sasha vented his spleen on Vladimir, snubbing him at the Winter Palace and informing their father the marriage would be an “abomination,” until I had to remind my husband that, sometimes, we must swallow what we cannot chew.
“Vladimir will be the one doing all the swallowing,” he said. “That German cow will lead him by the nose and spend every last ruble he has.”
“Perhaps, but she’ll be Grand Duchess Vladimirovich, so we must accommodate.”
Only she was not Grand Duchess Vladimirovich. She adopted the patronymic of Pavlovna, to exalt her Romanov descent, and arrived in 1874 to turn our lives upside down.
* * *
I DIDN’T WANT to like her.
Since the loss of our Danish duchies, hatred of Germany had taken root in my soul. Adding to my disgust with the marriage was the fact that the tsar presented his new daughter-in-law with a hundred-carat emerald once owned by Catherine the Great, in addition to the five-carat ruby from Vladimir, as well as a magnificent suite of emeralds that rivaled any I owned. Watching the statuesque Grand Duchess Pavlovna glide down the aisle of the Kazan Cathedral, adorned like an empress, I took savage glee that all the jewels in the Romanov vault could not detract from her square-jawed Germanic face, although I had to concede she had expressive brown eyes and an arresting presence, despite her overly plump figure.
And, like her or not, the tsar made it clear he expected me to befriend her—in fact, do more than befriend her. “She’s headstrong,” he said. “She wanted Vladimir and now she has him. What she’ll do with him is beyond me, but I don’t want her making a spectacle of herself. See to it that she understands what’s expected of her. I detest vulgarity.”
It was a telling remark on his new daughter-in-law, so once she and Vladimir returned from their monthlong honeymoon abroad, I took it upon myself to visit her at Vladimir’s palace, which fronted the embankment near the Winter Palace in the most exclusive district of the city. I entered the foyer to the cacophony of workmen, high scaffolds mounted against the walls, and tarps covering the floors.
She swept down the main staircase, dressed in a bustled green silk gown, her curly auburn hair, lighter than my own and frizzier, barely contained by diamond-studded combs. After a perfumed embrace and tiny kisses on both my cheeks, she led me upstairs to her drawing room, where her Limoges tea service was set out and the thick, gilded double doors muffled some of the noise.
“Renovations,” she informed me unnecessarily in her accented French. Like a German, she’d not bothered to refine her pronunciation; I would discover it only added to her charm. “This schloss desperately needs a feminine touch. New furnishings, new floors, new upholstery—all of it. Vladimir barely stayed here. As you can imagine, he left it in utter disarray.”
“I see.” I resolved to say as little as permissible. Let her talk and reveal herself. Seated on a baize settee opposite me, she waved her maid out as soon as the girl had served tea, then directed her full scrutiny on me. Her gaze was piercing, almost intrusive in its intensity.
“You must tell me everything. I do so want us to be friends.”
“Everything would take a very long time,” I replied. “Perhaps you can tell me how you find Russia. I remember when I first came here, everything seemed so strange.”
“Did it?” She sipped her tea, then reached for a silver case inlaid with seed pearls. Snapping it open, she removed a thin black-papered cigarette and lit it with a match, blowing smoke through an affected pout of her lips. “I don’t find Russia strange at all.”
I stared at her.
“Oh, do you want one?” She extended the case. I did not smoke, but the way she proffered it felt like a challenge, so I took a cigarette, lighting it and immediately coughing when the acrid smoke hit my throat. My eyes watered; as I placed the cigarette in a crystal ashtray on the table between us, she reclined with hers between her fingers. “I do love a cigarette with tea. It’s the style in Paris and Berlin. All the princesses smoke these days.”
The mention of Berlin was deliberate. I made myself take up my cigarette and inhale. The attempt sent me into such a coughing fit that she half-rose, alarmed, until I managed to say, “It’s stronger than I’m used to.”
“It’s Russian tobacco,” she purred. “What were you smoking?” But then she smiled. “You didn’t smoke before, but now you will. I admire a woman who doesn’t let herself be bested.”
“I had no idea it was a contest,” I said, but despite my resolve to remain aloof, I began to rather like her. She wasn’t what I’d expected. There was no Teutonic aggression here, only a firm sense of who she was. In a woman of only twenty, it was refreshing.
“It’s always a contest between women who are wed to brothers,” she said. “I hope we can move past the obvious and become friendly rivals instead.”
“Rivals?”
“Why, yes. I intend to be a premier figure in society here.” She leaned toward me. “You cannot imagine how very dull my existence was before I met Vladimir. He rescued me from a life of endless subservience and boredom.”
The former I doubted. She did not strike me as a woman who could be subservient to anyone. “Vladimir is certainly a prize,” I said, and she must have detected the irony in my voice, for she laughed—a startling guffaw that had nothing false about it.
“A prize, indeed. He’s a reprobate. I know about it already, so you cannot shock me. The ballerinas, the horses, the gambling debts—he told me everything. I insisted on it. One must be very sure of the bank before one opens an account.”
“He has led a colorful life. You’ll have your work cut out for you, I’m afraid.”
“No. He has his work cut out for him. I’ve been quite clear on my expectations. It’s up to him to fulfill them. If he thinks I’ll abide the debts, he’s mistaken.”
“And the ballerinas?”
She shrugged. “One cannot tame a beast, only train it to do one’s bidding.”
I chuckled. I couldn’t resist. “Train Vladimir. You are fearless.”
“What is there to fear?” She extinguished her cigarette in the ashtray, where mine smoldered in a column of ash. “He’s my husband. Providing he can obey a few simple rules, he’s free to do as he pleases. If he cannot, I’ll take a lover of my own. A wife can, you know.”
As appalling as her words were, I wasn’t appalled. She spoke with such forthrightness, as if stating the terms of a transaction. Yet I must have looked astonished, for she pointed at the case. “Have another. It takes time, but after a while, the smoke feels pleasant.” And as I did, coughing just as much but determined to master the vice, she asked in a dulcet tone, “Have I shocked you?”
“Not in the least. Did you expect to?”
“I had hoped.” She shrugged again. “That I have not bodes well for us, Minnie.” Taking up the teapot, she refilled my cup. “You must call me Miechen.”
* * *
SHE MEANT WHAT she said. That
Season, the gates of her still-unfinished palace were thrown open to welcome the aristocracy. I realized at once that while I was the undisputed first lady at court by virtue of my status as tsarevna and the tsarina’s now-chronic absence, in St. Petersburg at large, Miechen intended, as she’d warned, to establish her claim.
Ill-tempered because I’d forced him to join me tonight and don his gold-and-green Preobrazhensky uniform for the occasion, Sasha took one look around the newly restored foyer and grumbled, “Did she strip the Winter Palace of its gilding?”
“It is rather ostentatious,” I agreed, for it was, her renovations consisting of multicolored marble and gold cherubs everywhere.
Sasha practically gnashed his teeth when Vladimir and Miechen came to greet us, passing his virulent gaze over her person as she gave him a careless smile. In contrast to my discreet white silk and diamond-and-pearl choker, she flaunted a dramatic carnelian silk gown in the most current fashion, her round white shoulders powdered and, most shockingly to Sasha, bare; her arms were sheathed in long satin gloves, with as much jewelry as she could ladle on, including that impressive suite of emeralds. The effect was indeed vulgar, as the tsar had feared, but she seemed utterly unconcerned with what my husband or anyone else thought, leaving Sasha to glower at his brother as she hooked her arm in mine and swept me into her crowded salon.
Throughout the evening, champagne, cognac, and wine flowed. Caviar, smoked salmon, and various imported pâtés circulated with abandon, borne on gold platters by servants liveried in distinctive mulberry with Miechen’s grand ducal crest. Sasha made no effort to conceal his distaste, but Vladimir appeared content, resigned in a manner I’d not have thought possible, rotating around his wife like a star in her orbit and naturally, with his own erudition, enhancing the overall ambiance of sophistication.
“I cannot understand what he sees in her,” said Sasha, hours later as we returned home. “She’s a parvenu. Their palace is ghastly and that buffet dinner was a debauchery. She will bankrupt him before their first anniversary.”
The Romanov Empress Page 12