The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  He tried to smile, although it came out more like a grimace. “My wife is the president of the Red Cross; it’s an honorary position, but with war breaking out we will require the Red Cross to assist us in our time of need. I’ll authorize your assumption of her duties while she retains the title. But,” he said, as I eagerly nodded, close to tears at his continued, if frayed, trust in me, “be forewarned that, like everything else, the organization is not as it should be. I’ve heard complaints of missing funds, poor management, and overall apathy. No official in my empire seems to think he need be honest if he can get away with it.”

  “I oversee my household. I can manage the Red Cross.”

  He sighed. “I wish it were the same thing.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “This is the ward for unwed mothers.” The head matron of St. Petersburg’s Red Cross paused with me on the threshold of a large, poorly lit raftered room, where row upon row of wasted women on iron cots emitted a din of wretched coughing. As I started to step inside, I smelled the stench even through my protective sanitary mask—a putrid miasma of unwashed flesh, open sores, pus, excrement, and antiseptic.

  The head nurse held me back. “They have influenza and typhoid. It’s not safe, Your Imperial Highness.”

  I peered into the room. The rows seemed endless. “So many?” I was deeply shaken. I had assumed the Red Cross duties for the sake of reconciliation with Alexander, but I also had hoped to prove my own charity toward the unfortunate. However, I’d not counted on this searing display of the plight of the poor, the likes of which I’d never imagined. In my tour of the hospital, I’d seen enough to make me want to weep. Not only was the need overwhelming, there seemed to be no way to relieve it. Confronted by such misery, I couldn’t avoid understanding why the Nihilists would want us dead. While we dwelled in splendor, Russia suffered right under our unseeing eyes.

  “These are not even a quarter of those in the city,” said the matron. “We care only for the very sick. Most are prostitutes or factory workers. Their children, many soon to be orphaned, are in the lower ward and are twice as many. Your Highness, every hour of every day we must turn away many more in need of our care. We haven’t sufficient beds or staff to accommodate all of them.”

  I thought I must go in, offer whatever solace I could, but the matron steered me back to the administration office, where I sat before her desk in limp disbelief.

  “As Your Highness has seen, we lack funds,” she informed me, standing over her stacks of papers. “We do not know where the monies allocated to us by the imperial ministry end up, but they do not come here. In our current state, we cannot pay our doctors. We’re on the verge of closing. It’s a disgrace.”

  Looking at the mildew-stained walls, feeling the wind whistling through the cracked window frames, I could see she wasn’t exaggerating. The entire place was falling apart.

  “I’ll see the funds administered,” I said. “I will speak to the finance ministry at court myself and bring the monies here in person, if necessary.”

  She gave me a grateful nod, but I detected the skepticism in her voice. “We are indeed blessed to have Your Highness’s concern.”

  I was determined to prove they had more than my concern. It took months of disentangling the bureaucratic knots that had resulted in more than half of the Red Cross funds being redirected into unscrupulous pockets, but I pursued it relentlessly, summoning ministry officials to demand an accounting. If anyone tried to evade me, I threatened to inform the tsar. Word soon spread, until the mere mention of my involvement sent malefactors scurrying for cover. I wasn’t interested in punishment—I didn’t have the power to enforce it, though I wished I did—devoting myself instead to reorganizing the Red Cross and seeing it funded as it deserved, including donating substantial sums from my own income. Eventually those who oversaw the funds understood that if anything went awry, they’d answer for it—to me.

  I hardly cared that my efforts elevated my profile, with newspaper editorials penning praise for my interest in something other than fashion or galas and intimating other grand duchesses might do the same, easing some of the backlash against our Romanov indifference. I went to the hospital every day, enrolling in courses to become certified as a nurse, and did rounds on the wards, ignoring Sasha’s outrage that I endangered my health. I marshaled my children to help prepare care packages for the destitute who queued up for hours outside charity centers, and I paid for major renovations to a new ward, founded in my name. I wanted to establish educational centers, so that impoverished women would have options other than working as seamstresses, factory employees, or prostitutes, but my plans were suspended by the war with Turkey.

  Under my administration, the Red Cross rose to the challenge, sending medical supplies, infirmary units, and other necessities to the front by train. Sasha was dispatched at the head of his regiment; he might end up in battle, which worried me greatly, but I didn’t waver in my work. I’d finally found the means to be useful to my adopted country, to give back to Russia something of what she’d given to me.

  Being a member of the imperial family came with obligation. I had discovered mine.

  * * *

  THE WAR EXACTED tremendous casualties. The tsar’s own nephew was killed in battle, and Sasha was also involved in the fighting, causing me tremendous anxiety before I received word that he was unharmed. Every man in the imperial family sound enough to do his duty had been obliged to present himself for the cause; we were fortunate that more did not perish. By the end of 1877, the Turks had suffered unsustainable losses and our army had reached the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. Fearing Russia might bring about that ancient city’s fall and thereby reap more conquest than was acceptable, the British sent a fleet of battleships to deter our navy from invading the capital. Under pressure to negotiate a settlement, the tsar agreed to terms in which the Turks renounced their hold on their provinces of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro, with Bulgaria granted autonomy. As a result of Alexander’s conciliation, Prussia wasted no time in occupying Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Great Britain seized the former Ottoman holding of Cyprus.

  And whatever victory the tsar might have claimed was marred by a national corruption that helped abrogate his disagreements with Sasha. My husband was the sole commander in the field not accused of the wholesale embezzlement of funds that had resulted in army boots and coats arriving at the front made of threadbare fabric, of bread baked with sawdust, rotting meat, and bayonet blades so weak they broke apart, costing countless Russian soldiers their lives. Alexander charged Sasha with a commission to investigate abuses of power; all high-ranking commanders, including the senior uncles and Vladimir, came under scrutiny. The voluminous report Sasha prepared made the very color drain from his father’s face. The grand dukes and Vladimir were heavily fined, the newspapers printing the scandal on the front pages.

  “They merely neglected their duties,” Sasha said. “They all blame their subordinates, forgetting they put those subordinates in charge. Of course, while the cats looked the other way, the mice felt free to plunder at will.” He snorted. “Now let’s see how high Miechen holds her head this Season, once she discovers Vladimir’s income has been reduced to a pittance and no one wants to be seen anywhere near their palace.”

  In the midst of all this upheaval, I found myself again with child. I despaired at the inconvenience, as due to my pregnancy and the unrest abroad, I couldn’t attend my sister Thyra’s unexpected wedding to Prince Ernst August, titular heir of the German duchy of Hanover. Prussia had recently annexed Hanover, so my sister had in fact wed a titled prince without a realm. I had to wonder at the haste of it and suspected our mother had arranged it to remove Thyra from any further unsuitable liaisons.

  My third son, Michael, or Misha, as we called him, was born in December of 1878. Our child seeded in war would be our most gentle, as if his very nature resisted the violence preceding his birth. Nicky a
nd George nicknamed Misha “Floppy” because, as he grew older, he had a habit of throwing himself onto the nearest chair as if the weight of his body were too heavy for his spirit. I loved him with all my heart, and Sasha, perhaps because Misha had been born after he himself had witnessed the horrors of war, favored him with a tenderness he’d thus far only shown toward Xenia.

  With three growing boys and a daughter, I submitted to the inevitable and, at Alix’s recommendation, hired an English nanny, Mrs. Franklin. I still personally attended to my children, however, insisting on suppers together and reviewing their educational progress. In time, Sasha would have his way and the boys would experience the hard cots, cold baths, and firm discipline that he believed necessary to fortify their character, but while they were young, there was always affection in our home, warmth and playtime, and plenty of love.

  I never wanted any of my children to feel unloved.

  * * *

  PRIVATE SUNDAY LUNCHEONS with the tsar at my palace were my idea. As he and Sasha groped toward mutual accord, I thought they needed time together without ceremony, and Alexander fascinated my children, who greeted him formally as “Your Imperial Majesty Grandpère” and then clambered into his lap. Alexander patiently endured their chatter and was taken with soft-eyed Misha, who always sat close to him.

  I knew Alexander was grieving. The tsarina had returned from Nice for the last time; installed in her apartments in the Winter Palace, she would only leave them again in her coffin.

  I had gone with Sasha to visit his mother and been deeply affected; the tsarina had wasted to mere bones, gasping for air as she coughed up bloodied clots, but Sasha showed no sympathy for his father’s suffering at the impending loss of his wife. If the subject was raised, my husband went silent and Alexander didn’t reproach him, making me wonder if Sasha had at long last discovered the tsar’s adultery.

  If I had any doubt, Miechen made sure to dispel it. Although she’d endured a frightful time after Vladimir’s disgrace over the war, banned from court for months until her husband pleaded with the tsar to forgive him, she’d not sacrificed any pride, attending other salons throughout the Season, her head indeed held high, her person adorned with enough jewels to blind every hostess. And she remained attuned as ever to current gossip.

  “Everyone has heard of it by now,” she said. “If Sasha hasn’t, he must be deaf. Her name is Catherine Dolgorukova. Her father was a prince, a close friend of His Majesty’s, and a hopeless gambler who left his family in ruin. On his deathbed, he begged the tsar to care for his children, so Alexander sent the boys to military academies and enrolled Catherine and her sister in the Smolny Institute, which, as I needn’t tell you, is reserved for the nobility, founded by Catherine the Great, no less.”

  “Yes,” I murmured. “It’s very exclusive. The tsarina is its patron.”

  “Indeed. Yet His Majesty paid their board and tuition; upon Catherine’s graduation, he acquired a suitable living arrangement for her in the city. She’s still unwed, though past her thirtieth year and still ostensibly his ward, but one hardly requires a seer to deduce why his carriage has been seen coming and going from her house. Apparently, it’s been going on for years. Sometimes,” she said, her voice terse, “he’s been known to spend the better part of the night there. Some even claim she’s already borne him a child.”

  As my hands twisted in my lap, she added, “You can see, it’s quite the scandal.”

  I almost told her in that moment that she was no one to cast aspersion, with Vladimir bedding ballerinas left and right while she spent his fortune embellishing their palace and her position. I held back. It wasn’t the time or place. Besides, she only repeated what others said. None of it was secret, not anymore; yet still I was repulsed. She would never forgive our father-in-law for allowing Vladimir’s misdeeds to be made public or the humiliation done to her as a grand duchess.

  I didn’t dare tell Sasha about my conversation with her. If he knew about his father’s mistress, he kept quiet, attending our Sunday luncheons. Providing no one mentioned his mother, he and the tsar appeared to be mending their differences, at least on the surface.

  For a visit by the tsarina’s brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse, who’d been summoned to see his sister before she passed, Alexander requested that Sasha greet the grand duke at the train station and escort him to the Winter Palace. It was an overt sign of Sasha’s return to favor, and he left with his entourage on that frigid February afternoon while I stayed home, getting my children to bed early so I could prepare for the banquet in the grand duke’s honor. As the tsarina was too ill to leave her bed, I would receive her brother together with the tsar.

  But when my troika deposited me at the Winter Palace, Sasha hadn’t yet arrived.

  “The train is running late,” Vladimir said. “My father is not pleased. You know how he detests tardiness. He’s in the Lesser Field Marshals’ Salon if you wish to see him. I’ll stay here and wait for Sasha.”

  Lifting my heavy dress train, I mounted the Jordan staircase that led to the staterooms. In the salon, I found Alexander pacing. “Where is he?” He turned to me with a scowl. “Can he not do anything as instructed? It’s nearly seven. Our reception was to be at six-fifteen.”

  “Majesty, my husband cannot be held responsible for a train delay,” I said.

  Alexander’s mouth thinned. When his aide-de-camp arrived to say His Imperial Highness and our guest had arrived, he stalked from the salon, with the other grand duchesses and me behind him, including smug Miechen, who’d overheard his cutting remark about Sasha.

  We had just reached the top of the staircase, looking down the steps that Sasha, Vladimir, and the grand duke were about to climb, when all of a sudden the hissing gaslights flickered.

  Then the marble floor shuddered.

  Miechen shot me a look of alarm. We flanked the tsar, but I’d barely reached for his arm when the enormous crystal chandelier suspended over the staircase came crashing down in an explosion of shattered glass. Shards of dislodged plaster sprayed from the ceiling. The grand duchesses reeled away, screaming; I couldn’t hear them, but I saw their mouths agape and eyes flared in terror before I too was thrown off my feet, as a fiery roar burst from the dining hall down the corridor and blasted at our backs.

  Darkness plunged over us. As the roiling fog of disintegrated wood, plaster, and stone billowed into the corridor, choking me, the terrifying cacophony of distant wails reached me in fragments. I groped in the thick dust for something to hold on to.

  “Minnie!” Alexander’s mouth was at my ear. He was yelling, but I heard him as if through a narrow tube, disorientated as he helped me up and began calling out the names of the others. As each person responded in ragged fear, I heard Miechen, and then I remembered.

  My voice erupted. “Sasha!” I couldn’t see anything below us. The entire staircase must have been destroyed, I thought in a rush of horrified panic. Sasha, Vladimir, and the Hessian grand duke had been coming up it and—

  “Lights,” shouted Alexander. Servants rushed out from other rooms. It seemed as if an eternity passed before they arrived bearing kerosene lanterns or candles. The weak flames scarcely illuminated, but it was enough to reveal that the staircase was intact. At its marble base, Sasha, the grand duke, and Vladimir lay in a heap. As I stumbled down to them over the crumbled plaster and glass on the steps, Sasha was the first to stagger to his feet.

  He swayed, blinking, then reached down to assist the stunned grand duke. Vladimir righted himself, a bleeding gash on his temple. My court slippers crunched over the debris as I fell into my husband’s arms. He held me tight as Alexander, Miechen, and the other grand duchesses, coiffed locks in tatters and their headdresses blown off, minced down the staircase accompanied by footmen with the lanterns. We rushed outside into the square, where the palace guard had converged.

  Against the snow-speckled night, nectarine flames crac
kled from the shattered windows of the very hall where we’d been about to dine. As we stood shivering, the tsar barked at one of his guards, “What happened?”

  “An explosion, Majesty,” quavered the Cossack, gazing up in bewildered horror from under his black lambskin hat at the fire-engulfed hall. “In the basement below the Finnish guard quarters.” He crossed himself. “God save them. The regiment was inside.”

  “There must be many wounded,” said the tsar. As he began to issue orders, I unclasped Sasha’s hand. “They need assistance. I’m a certified nurse.”

  Drawing away from him, I gestured to Miechen. To her credit, despite the smudges on her powdered face and a missing slipper, she joined me at once. Together with the other grand duchesses and our ladies, we hurried across the quadrangle to the opposite wing, into the basements for sheets to use as bandages, mattresses from the servant quarters, buckets of hot water, and medicinal supplies. My Red Cross training kept me from hysteria as I ordered a makeshift infirmary set up. Once the fire in the hall was doused, the few survivors of the demolished guard quarters were hauled from the wreckage and brought to us, rescued by servants, the tsar, Sasha, Vladimir, and other grand dukes, who dug in the rubble with their bare hands.

  Limbs were missing, flesh seared to clothes. Blood soaked my gown and I didn’t notice it until hours later, when the doctors and nurses summoned from the city hospitals took over and Sasha arrived, bathed in grime and soot, to bring me home.