The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  “He knew who he was marrying. She did not deceive him.”

  “She will yet,” he retorted. “A woman like her always does.”

  Miechen roused both my admiration and my envy. She had dictated the foundation upon which her marriage would be built; she did not fret over dalliances yet somehow managed to rein Vladimir to her will. Moreover, she had a husband who complimented her, who loved society and to admire and be admired. My sudden resentment of Sasha’s aversion to balls, his habit of ranging around at home in his tattered apparel, caused me to reprimand him. Once he caught me in a fit of pique after an argument, sneaking a cigarette in my parlor. I was so flustered when he came through the door that, as I spun around to face him, I thrust the cigarette behind my back.

  “There’s smoke coming up behind you,” he said. “Be careful you don’t catch fire.”

  I became a daily smoker. Miechen had been correct: I did grow accustomed to it, but I restricted my intake to four cigarettes a day, and never in public. I didn’t want anyone but Sasha to know, although sometimes when I kissed my sons good night, Nicky wrinkled his nose. “Mama, you smell like a cigar.”

  Miechen’s influence wormed its way into me like poison. I had the disturbing sensation she was gauging me, judging, when we invited her and Vladimir to our palace, as if she was deciding whether we had the right to be who we were. She never said anything denigrating, but I found myself purchasing new gowns by the dozens, discovering that designs by Worth’s rival, the rising Parisian couturier, Félix, were not among any she owned, as she preferred to expend lavish sums solely on Maison Worth. She admired my décor, even asking where I’d bought my Japanese screens, as she needed something like them. But while mine graced my drawing room, in full view of everyone, hers were placed in her private dressing room as a backdrop to her bountiful silk-upholstered boudoir.

  I couldn’t decide if we were friendly rivals or friendly at all and I doubted she cared. That I did care was the most upsetting part, for I should not.

  One day, I would be Empress of Russia. As well she knew.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  As I rode through London with Alix at my side, Bertie and Sasha ahead of us in another open carriage, the English people applauded, and for once, not a drop of rain fell upon us. I had to smile to recall my first visit here.

  I’d been only Dagmar of Denmark then, the younger sister of the new Princess of Wales, my suitability as a bride queried by Victoria for her son Alfred. Now I had returned as Her Imperial Highness Maria Feodorovna, paving the way for the unexpected betrothal of the tsar’s daughter Marie to none other than Alfred himself, now titled Duke of Edinburgh. When Alix wrote to tell me that Alfred had been infatuated with Marie during a reunion of German relatives in Hesse-Darmstadt, my first thought was that he obviously couldn’t control his carnal impulses. Had he not been taken by me during my own sister’s nuptials? Nevertheless, after much negotiation, both Alexander and Victoria gave their consent, signaling an unusual conciliation. London newspapers speculated that the two empires had agreed to uncross their sabers over various domains in Asia. St. Petersburg newspapers promulgated a British plot to undermine Russia, as usual. To emphasize that the marriage was a love match, not political, Victoria agreed that Sasha and I should pay a visit.

  “Let’s wave to them,” I now said to Alix, who raised an eyebrow but did as I suggested. The crowds, surprisingly voluble for the British, cried out our names.

  I laughed, leaning back against the upholstered seat as we made our way toward Buckingham Palace. “What a lark.” I motioned to our matching pin-striped gowns and jaunty bonnets trimmed with artificial cherries—it had been my idea that we dress alike to confuse everyone.

  Alix gave a dry chuckle. “At last, you got your wish. But I’m quite sure the queen will know who you are when she sees you.”

  “I should hope she will,” I replied, smiling.

  Victoria, of course, wasn’t present to welcome us, having retired to Windsor Castle to avoid the uproar of our visit. I determined to enjoy myself, regardless. At a ball held for us one evening, Alix and I again dressed alike, in identical blue satin and jewels, dancing with each other’s husbands—both of whom had grown out their beards to abet our ploy—as the guests scrambled to perch on chairs, tables, and even the edges of potted plants to catch a glimpse of us.

  From Windsor, Victoria dispatched a terse note that she was mortified at the news of our childish behavior.

  We stayed in England for three weeks, touring the royal estates before spending a few obligatory days at Windsor with Her Majesty, who looked to me very aged and querulous, regarding me through her watery gaze as if she couldn’t quite believe her eyes.

  “She never thought you’d marry Sasha,” Alix confided, as we huddled together in her bed like when we were girls in Denmark, for despite the summer balm, Windsor was still inhospitably dank. “She didn’t want Affie to wed Marie, either, but Bertie told her the world is changing and we mustn’t be at odds with Russia.”

  “I hope Alfred agrees,” I said. “Did you see his face tonight when Sasha cornered him after dinner? I thought he’d start to cry as Sasha warned him to make sure he accorded Marie the respect she deserves.”

  Alix tugged the blankets up to our chins. “He needn’t worry on her account; we shall see to Marie’s every comfort.”

  Her remark left me troubled. On our return voyage to St. Petersburg, Sasha gave voice to what I couldn’t elucidate. “It’s a mistake. My sister has no idea of whom she marries. She just wants to be a bride, but what kind of life can she have on that dreary island, with a boor as a husband and miserable queen as her mother-in-law?”

  “You certainly hunted and ate to your heart’s content.” I prodded his stomach. “You’ve gotten fat off the dreary island’s game.”

  “I enjoyed Bertie, Alix, and the pheasants,” he retorted. “Not the rest.”

  I found Marie in a fever of impatience, desperate to hear my counsel on the queen, England, and her future groom. I found myself repeating Alix’s words to her. What could I do, with preparations for the wedding in the Winter Palace already under way?

  “My sister Alix is so looking forward to your arrival,” I assured her. “She will see to your every comfort.”

  Marie was so nervous, she was oblivious to the fact that I failed to mention she’d also have a husband to care for her. I wondered if Sasha was right about her motives.

  Only weeks after her wedding and departure for England, Marie was writing to the tsar to complain. The queen had refused to let her light a fire in her rooms at Balmoral, and when Marie appeared at dinner wearing the diamond tiara russe given to her by her father as a nuptial gift, Victoria bristled, declaring it “too good” while pointedly looking over at her own daughters, none of whom, Marie wrote, “own anything so fine.” She was homesick and miserable, and the tsar summoned me in despair.

  “I shouldn’t have allowed it,” he said. “I was against it at first. But Marie implored me. She said she loved him.”

  “And you believed her? She’s only twenty and has lived her entire life in this palace! What can she possibly know about love?”

  He let out a wretched sigh. “I didn’t wish to deny her. Remember, she’s my only daughter, and I vowed I would never force her to marry someone she didn’t love.”

  I told him I would write to ask my sister to assist Marie. I knew it would take time until, like all brides in a foreign land, Marie learned to compromise. But as I left Alexander in his study, I heard the tsarina’s words in my mind.

  It’s never easy at first, coming to this land, but we adjust, my child. We must.

  Unfortunately for Marie, I feared the adjustment might vanquish her Russian spirit.

  * * *

  DARK-EYED AND ELFIN, my daughter, Xenia, arrived in the spring of 1875. I refused to seclude myself in Tsarskoe Selo, insisting on g
iving birth in my bed in my own palace. As she was a daughter, there was less fanfare surrounding her birth.

  Sasha, however, was greatly moved. He doted on Xenia, her arrival softening his authoritarian control over our sons. He bought her dolls, lace gowns, pretty caps, and even a miniature wood pony, which he plopped her upon, holding her upright and rocking her back and forth as she squealed. With two sons and now a daughter, our family life absorbed us so much that I scarcely paid heed to the anarchy just outside our gates…

  Until a Nihilist assassin attempted to kill the tsar as he walked in the Summer Garden. The gendarmes, whom Alexander now couldn’t evade, threw themselves upon the villain before he could fire his pistol, but the resulting panic ended Alexander’s informal strolls. Sequestered in the Winter Palace, he was obliged to wear a bulletproof vest under his clothes whenever he rode out in his fortified carriage, because, as he sadly told me, “They would hunt me down like a wolf.”

  “He’s done this to himself,” Sasha declared. “My father has spoken of authorizing a constitution, allowing a Duma to restrict our autocracy. Pobendonostev says it would be the end of everything we stand for. Autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationality are the three pillars of Russia, where the tsar is ordained by God to rule, not to tear down God’s rule.”

  I now bitterly regretted having endorsed our tutor, especially as I’d never resumed my lessons with him after Nicky’s birth, so I’d been left somewhat unaware of the man’s pernicious influence on my husband.

  “If he says that, he’s a fanatic. It doesn’t conform to the world we live in now,” I said, as he stared at me in amazement. “Sasha, your father once told me the serfs are suffering. For lack of land, they’re forced to come here to work in factories, where they barely earn a living. Many are illiterate and are exploited because of it.”

  “It has always been that way in Russia. Would you question our divine right to rule this empire as we have for centuries?”

  I realized I’d made a blunder but now felt the urgent need to pry open his constrained view, which could only create more dissension with the tsar. “Ruling as you have for centuries is the reason the Nihilists exist. Your father doesn’t intend to uproot everything the dynasty stands for, but he recognizes there must be adjustments. Surely we cannot go on this way, waiting for the next villain to shoot at him.”

  Sasha glowered. “He may not intend it. But his talk of a constitution gives them plenty of incentive. What he fails to do, they’ll do for him.” He thrust a pamphlet at me. “See here.”

  I lowered my gaze to read the smeared ink on cheap paper:

  People of Russia—victims of oppressors—go out with your pitchforks and return with them lit by the flames of the great houses, with the money that is your due in your pocket.

  A bolt of fearful rage went through me. “Where did you get this?” I asked, even though I already knew. “Did Pobendonostev dare bring this filth into our house?”

  “They’re churning these out on illicit presses all over the city. He wanted to show me that the Nihilists urge our own people, your suffering serfs, to rise up against us.”

  I was horrified. I sympathized with the plight of the poor, even if I now recognized how little I truly knew. Dwelling in a world that rarely offered a glimpse of how the thousands around me lived, I’d assumed it was not my affair, that the tsar was the one to enact the law and see to his people’s welfare. Now I faced the terrifying possibility that should the Nihilists succeed in their zeal, everything I knew and loved might be destroyed.

  “They should be executed for it,” said Sasha. “Hung in the palace square to show that we’ll not abide sedition. Instead, my father, whom you defend, pardoned that cretin who tried to shoot him and let him loose to run back into the rat holes they gnaw in garrets all over this city. Next time, they’ll not miss. Next time, they will kill him—”

  “Sasha, hush,” I said. Nicky had paused in his playing with his toy soldiers on the carpet by the hearth, looking up at us with a troubled frown.

  “Let him learn now,” Sasha said. “Let him understand that the tsar holds power solely by the grace of God and cannot place trust in his own people.”

  I longed to dismiss Pobendonostev, only Sasha wouldn’t permit it. Instead, he gave the horrid man leave to invite into our very drawing room all sorts of people with notions I couldn’t fathom—university professors and gaunt writers in threadbare coats, spouting ideals of freedom in direct conflict to Pobendonostev’s ideals. I was repulsed after one of these writers, with wine on his breath, leered at me and said, “In this very palace, Madame, how many families do you think could live comfortably?”

  “One,” I retorted, irate, resisting the urge to say I was “Your Imperial Highness” to him. “Mine. Do you suppose we should rent out our rooms?”

  “This is why you cannot understand what is right before you.” The man turned with a deriding laugh to the others, all of whom regarded me as if I were an inept child. I saw Sasha’s face darken in rage at the gross dishonor done to me. Then he glanced at Pobendonostev; the tutor’s sardonic smile made Sasha hold his tongue. I understood perfectly then. Our tutor deliberately surrounded us with the very thing he detested, to prove that only chaos would result if we allowed radicals to have their way.

  The very next day, desperate to escape the brooding atmosphere at home, I fled with my children to visit Miechen at her palace. Here, her legion of staff oversaw my sons and her own year-old son, Cyril, the boys running about in a toy-laden nursery the size of a small ballroom, replete with the ubiquitous gold tracery on the ceiling.

  “That tutor will cast us into disfavor,” I said, smoking one cigarette after another, my strict quota forgotten. “Alexander is furious. He berated Sasha for entertaining revolutionaries in our salon!”

  “How unpleasant,” said Miechen. “I regret to add to your distress, Minnie, but there has been talk in society, too.”

  “Talk?” My voice cracked in disbelief.

  “Yes. Of how at the Anichkov, anyone may enter, even a Nihilist, providing they’ve read Dostoyevsky and disdain a cravat.” She gave one of her self-deprecatory shrugs. “Not that I condone such talk, mind you, but I can’t help overhear.”

  “That—that is outrageous,” I whispered. In her eyes, I saw a flicker of malice, a satisfied gleam that she’d discovered a vulnerability in my otherwise ideal existence.

  “It is,” she said. “I certainly would never tolerate it. Nor would I risk incurring His Majesty’s displeasure to indulge a man whom I hired and pay.”

  “He’s a servant.” I came to my feet. “Servants do not determine who enters my home.”

  She gave me a cold smile. “I sincerely hope not.”

  Ordering my maid to gather up my boys and Xenia in her bassinet, I returned in a whirlwind of indignation to my palace. The moment Sasha came home from his regimental duties, I confronted him in the foyer, before he’d unbuttoned his overcoat.

  “Would you see us defamed and banned from court to satisfy Pobendonostev? You will cease these gatherings at once. Inform our tutor that he may continue his instruction of you in a limited capacity, but we will not see any of those miscreants in this house again.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Do I hear my wife dictating to me?”

  “You do.” I turned on my heel. “And unless you care to see your wife and children take residence elsewhere, you will abide by her dictates.”

  * * *

  POBENDONOSTEV DIDN’T PROTEST. He’d accomplished his goal: to set Sasha on a path of inflexibility that put him in opposition to the tsar, whose emancipation of the serfs and resultant miseries had given rise to the Nihilists. I could barely remain polite to him, so infuriated that I couldn’t just throw him out on his ear that I went to see Alexander myself, barging into his study unannounced.

  “Minnie.” He looked up from his desk, amid his papers with h
is pen in hand and old Milord snoozing at his feet. When he saw my expression, he said, “Do not say a word in Sasha’s defense. He has gone beyond forgiveness. These gatherings in your salon and that fiend Pobendonostev, filling his ears with venom—how could you permit it? I’m very disappointed. Not even Miechen, for all her extravagance, has contrived to hurt me thus.”

  “I have no excuse,” I said. “Only that you asked me to guide Sasha. Since Pobendonostev educated him in his childhood and has continued to instruct your sons Grand Duke Paul and—”

  “Not anymore. That man is now forbidden to set foot in this palace. I should dispatch him to Siberia and see how he likes it, teaching convicts to disrespect their emperor.”

  I took a step toward him. “The gatherings are over; I’ve told Sasha that I will not allow them. What else I can do? With Her Majesty so rarely at court, perhaps she has additional duties I can assume. I wish to make amends.”

  “Can you?” Alexander set his pen down, passing an ink-stained hand over his weary face. He had aged. The toll of the Nihilist menace, his wife’s illness, and, no doubt, the secret mistress were taking a toll on him. “My brother Nikolai has abandoned his wife to take up with a common woman. My other brother Constantine, whose own daughter wed your brother, is rumored to be an occultist, inviting prophets and strannik into his home, all of whom urge him to usurp my throne. My daughter, Marie, is desperately unhappy in England. And as if all that weren’t enough, the Balkans are in an uproar and the Ottomans of Turkey have just declared war against us. How do you intend to amend any of it?”

  “I don’t know.” I gazed at him helplessly. “Surely I can do something.”

  He considered me. “I’ve always been very fond of you. You’re my favorite daughter-in-law because you never interfere in what doesn’t concern you. I am sorry Sasha has taken this stance against me, for he misunderstands the gravity of our situation. I cannot allow our empire to careen into revolt when there’s a solution at hand—a constitution and Duma, approved by the people, to stem the criticism and save us all. I once told you I feared I made a mistake in liberating the serfs, but I’ve come to understand that my mistake was not liberating all of Russia. However, I’m heartened you do not share my son’s disapproval of me.”