The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  On our carriage ride to the Anichkov, I rested my head on Sasha’s chest, his entire person reeking of smoke. As his arms enfolded me, Sasha uttered one word: “Assassins.”

  * * *

  “IT WASN’T A gas leak.” Sasha stood before me, his voice and eyes like stone. “They infiltrated the palace. Workmen were repairing the plumbing in the basement. One of them, a carpenter, brought in explosives, stick by stick. It must have taken him weeks. The officer who checked the passes remembered him coming in late on the very day of the banquet.”

  “A carpenter?” I echoed, unable to believe it.

  “Yes. He must have lit a detonator timed to go off when we were supposed to be in the hall.” Sasha showed no emotion; he might have been relating something that had no bearing on us, but I knew after years of marriage that he was never more furious than when he assumed this impassive stance. “He would have murdered us all. Instead, he killed eight Finnish guards in their quarters, twelve servants in the hall, and wounded forty-five others, some so badly burned they’ll never recover.”

  He stared at me as I clasped my fingers together, sitting in our drawing room and feeling as if our very walls might explode at any moment. It had taken a few days for my ears to stop ringing and my hands to cease trembling, but he’d returned to the palace the very next morning to survey the ruin and involve himself in the official investigation.

  “So, it was…?” I finally said.

  He nodded. “Nihilists. My father has ordered the arrest of every suspected dissident. This time, he vows, there will be no mercy. He cannot risk it. His Silver Jubilee celebration is coming up next month.”

  “Are we expected to attend?” My voice was a mere thread.

  “Of course we are. We mustn’t show them any fear. I forbid it. We will go and we will look them in their miserable faces so they can see how little they affect us.”

  “But we don’t even know who they are! We don’t know their faces. They could be anyone. Anyone at all. Dear God, if they hid a bomb in the palace, none of us are safe.”

  He placed his hand on my shoulder as I broke into tears. “Minnie,” he said quietly. “If we give in to them now, we’ll never stop running.”

  I swallowed. “Not the children. I won’t risk the children.”

  “No,” he said. “For the foreseeable future, the children must stay far from court.”

  * * *

  THE CARPENTER WHO’D plotted our death was never found. But what did result from Sasha’s urging was the tsar’s establishment of a powerful branch of secret police called the Okhrana, charged with hunting down dissident groups. For every one they arrested, Sasha said, ten others eluded them. He spoke as if all of St. Petersburg teemed with them. So vehement were his avowals of retribution that I had to order him not to say another word before the children, after Nicky asked if a Nihilist could crawl over our gates to kill us while we slept. Everything I had done to preserve my children’s sense of safety had been torn apart by one horrible act.

  Although I couldn’t admit it at the time, I already suspected that our world would never be the same.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Marie wept with heartrending pathos as I embraced her. She had come from England to be with her mother, and now the tsarina lay in the chapel in her coffin, wreathed in white roses. I had paid my respects, kissing her gaunt cold cheek and remembering how she’d tried to console me after Nixa and then after my baby’s death. How lonely she must have been, so helpless before the blows of fate.

  “She’s with God,” I consoled Marie, who appeared prematurely aged and overweight, nothing like the vibrant young grand duchess who’d romped after Milord in the Summer Garden. “Your mother is at peace now.”

  “She suffered so,” whispered Marie. “Oh, Minnie, if you had seen her…it was dreadful. She couldn’t even catch her breath at the end.”

  My stab of guilt that I’d not seen her—because Sasha had refused to let me return to the Winter Palace following the explosion—was stifled by Marie’s sudden gasp in my arms. I half-turned to see Alexander on the threshold, glancing past the black-clad women holding mourning vigil with his daughter.

  Tearing herself from me, Marie snarled at him, “How could you?”

  Alexander went still.

  “I could hear them,” Marie said. “Every day, above us. Running. Playing. Laughing. While my mother, your empress, agonized on her deathbed, you brought your whore and bastards into this very palace to torment her in her last days.”

  “My child—” he started to say, even as I too stared at him. Marie had known for years about his mistress; she’d been the first one to tell me, but this…Like Marie, I thought it an unconscionable act to have installed that very woman in the palace while his wife was dying. And illegitimate children: I was shocked by the confirmation that he had them.

  Marie flung up her hand. For a moment, I feared she might actually strike him. Instead, she pointed a trembling finger at the door. “You do not deserve to be here. I am ashamed of you. Whatever shame you do not have for yourself, we all carry for you.”

  It was an unpardonable offense, one he never would have tolerated. Yet he turned and left, his head bowed, while Marie broke into anguished sobs. The women surrounded her. I tiptoed out, thinking to lend comfort to Alexander, even if I was dismayed by his actions. But he was gone. Sasha and his four brothers brooded in the antechamber, the grim resolve on their faces warning that, for once, the Romanov sons were united against their father.

  The people lined the funeral route to toss flowers and blessed medals as the tsarina was conveyed to the cathedral to be laid to rest beside Nixa. Forty days of mourning were ordained, all social activities suspended for the duration.

  In the wake of his mother’s death, Sasha ordered our move for the summer to the Yelagin Palace, situated on its namesake island at the mouth of the Neva. Spacious and beautiful, with a cupola-domed entryway and enfilade of staterooms, it offered peaceful vistas of the river. I missed my home, my raspberry-silk-papered study and sitting room, with all my bibelots, but under the circumstances it was preferable. At least my children could play in the gardens here without me fearing a Nihilist would toss an explosive device over the wall.

  Here, I sequestered myself to write overdue letters to Alix and my parents, who’d expressed urgent concern over the situation in Russia. Alix urged me to go to Denmark for an extended stay. I planned to do just that, as soon as the period of mourning ended, yet scarcely had the tsarina been entombed, the heat of July simmering over St. Petersburg, than Sasha returned from a visit with Vladimir. He was shuddering with rage.

  “We are summoned. All of us. To the Winter Palace for dinner.”

  “Dinner?” I recoiled. “So soon? But we’re still in mourning.”

  “The tsar commands it. And do not pretend you don’t know why.”

  Here it was at last: the secret, flung at my feet like a carcass.

  “Yes,” he said. “We are to receive Princess Catherine Yurievskaya. It’s her title now, accorded by imperial decree. He has married her and legitimized their three children.”

  “Three!” I leapt to my feet, my portable desk sliding off my lap to clatter to the floor, scattering papers and startling my aged Beauty.

  “Oh?” Sasha eyed me. “I thought you were fully informed. Vladimir’s German cow certainly knew. She wasted no time in telling us when my father’s summons came. It seems everyone knew how he bedded his ward and sowed his seed in her.”

  I gazed at him in dumbstruck horror, thinking of Marie, who’d departed for England as soon as she saw her mother to her grave, without speaking to her father again.

  Before I could untangle my voice, Sasha went on, “I’ll say this much for the German, she made quite a show of refusing to acknowledge the woman’s presence. And for a Lutheran, she’s not entirely ignorant. She declared the tsar h
as violated our Orthodox rule, as our Holy Church requires a forty-day minimum after the death of a spouse before remarriage. But Vladimir cannot ignore the summons and risk being cast back into disfavor. Nor can they afford it.” He gave a sour laugh. “Without his income, how will she continue to refurbish their abode?”

  I lifted my chin. “Miechen might have to attend the dinner. We do not.”

  “We do.” My husband’s jaw was set. “I’ll not be deprived of the opportunity to show them exactly how we intend to receive her. You will go with me and you will dress for it. In your sapphires and cloth of silver. We apparently are no longer in mourning.”

  He tromped out. Beauty eyed me sadly from her cushions.

  The tsar had married his mistress. God help us all.

  * * *

  SHE WAS FAIR and slim, painfully so. Though she and I were in fact the same age, I felt an unwitting rush of sympathy for her, her white court gown and pearl-laden kokoshnik making her seem like a waif in someone else’s clothes. With her wide blue eyes regarding us in wary fear, she also resembled a doe among predators. No one save me cared to soften the impression.

  Even the children were here, at Alexander’s command. We stood grouped in order of precedence—first Sasha and me, with our sons Nicky and George, the only two I’d agreed to bring. Next were the tsar’s brothers: Constantine in his red and gold uniform, beak-nosed and haughty; disgraced Nikolai, grown fat and given to sneers; and their youngest brother, gallant Mikhail, along with their respective families. The tsar’s other sons—Vladimir, Alexis, Sergei, and Paul—stood together, glowering. Dressed to her teeth in blue silk and diamonds, Miechen directed her stare to the ceiling, as if only the frescoes held any interest.

  Now twelve and nine respectively, Nicky and George were eager to meet their cousins, whom they didn’t know. The jabbing of elbows and whispering between them and Grand Duke Mikhail’s four sons, in particular handsome twelve-year-old Sandro, only added to the tension as we shushed them, for they had no idea why we were here.

  Behind the tsar and his new wife stood a golden-haired boy, no older than eight, with her delicate features and his unmistakable gray-blue eyes. He was alone; their two daughters were still too young to be presented, but my sons looked amazed at this unexpected arrival. Nicky tugged at my trailing sleeve. “Who is that?”

  Sasha glared at him. “No one.”

  “His Imperial Majesty the Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, Alexander II, and Princess Yurievskaya,” proclaimed the Grand Master of the Court in a strident voice, underscoring the awkwardness. He rapped his ivory wand on the floor. We dropped into collective obeisance. But not for as long as we should have. Sasha gripped my shoulder, pulling me upright with unseemly haste as the tsar came before us. He had color in his cheeks, a startling rejuvenation for a sixty-two-year-old man who’d recently buried his wife. After returning Sasha’s malignant stare as my husband ignored the woman at the tsar’s side, Alexander turned to me.

  “Minnie,” he said, in a leaden tone, “I present Princess Catherine Yurievskaya. My wife.”

  I felt the barbed stares all around me. As the second lady of court now, after Catherine, my reaction was paramount. Sasha had told me not to show acceptance of her in any way, but I couldn’t refuse to address her as he had. Her quivering lips betrayed that she was fighting back tears; my heart went out to her, for she wasn’t to blame. A ward dependent on the tsar’s mercy when she hadn’t been much more than a child herself—how could she have mounted resistance?

  I inclined my head, murmuring, “Your Imperial Highness.”

  The other grand duchesses also inclined their heads to emulate my example. Only Miechen turned her face away in disgust. With these mortifying introductions concluded, we filed into the dining room, not the one where the bomb had exploded, as it was still under repair, but the larger Pavilion Hall—a less intimate setting, where at least we’d be spaced out enough at the table to dissuade caustic asides.

  Seated in the very chair once occupied by our late tsarina, the princess displayed anxious poise as she attempted to engage those around her in conversation. No one said much in return, averting their eyes at every opportunity. At the foot of the table, Sasha sat as if frozen, his massive shoulders squared under his epaulettes and his stare fixed on his father from across the vases of flowers, candelabras, and tiered food-laden platters.

  I had never been so uncomfortable at court in all my time in Russia. As the desserts and coffee were served, Sasha growled, “We leave now.”

  I flinched. “But we’ve not finished. And the boys, they’re so happy to be with your uncle’s sons. It’s not proper to depart—”

  “Now.” He rose like a mountain, plunging the hall into silence. The tsar, who hadn’t looked at us once throughout the meal, shifted his gaze to him. “You will stay.”

  Sasha flung his pristine napkin onto the table. He’d not eaten a bite. “Nicholas,” he called out. “George. Say goodbye to your cousins. It is past your bedtime.”

  As my boys hastily excused themselves, Sasha turned to me. “Are you coming, wife?”

  Seated across from me, Miechen gave me a sharp-toothed smile.

  “You will stay,” thundered the tsar, but I’d already stood, fumbling for my wrap, as Sasha, with a hand on each of our sons’ narrow shoulders, steered us out.

  No declaration could have been more overt. Henceforth, my husband was at war with his father.

  * * *

  “FESTIVITIES GALORE,” SAID Miechen. She’d had herself rowed out in her barge to my palace, expressing awe at my surroundings, albeit with a critical “Doesn’t it get terribly damp here, so close to the Neva?” Then she looked over my latest collection of paintings—in my spare time, I’d begun acquiring Russian art—and exclaimed, “Are you never idle! And these are so different. Peasants and bazaars. Not at all what one is accustomed to, is it?”

  “Sasha prefers it. He wants us to surround ourselves with works by Russian painters. He says our children should learn that not only Western art is worthy of display.”

  “Well. We won’t see these exhibited in the Hermitage anytime soon,” she replied.

  Now we sat in my parlor, drinking tea as she repeated the gossip from court, for although she’d turned up her nose at the princess, evidently the tsar had chosen to ignore it. Not in our case, however. We weren’t welcome, and so I’d missed the galas in Catherine’s honor.

  “I thought you weren’t present because you had left for Denmark,” said Miechen, in an offended tone. “Had I realized otherwise, I might have abstained myself.”

  I forced out a smile, knowing she would not have. “The imperial secretary returned word that I can visit Denmark anytime I like, but my children and Sasha are forbidden. As I won’t go without them, I must endure.”

  “Alexander denied your family leave?” She snorted. “It’s degrading, the way he carries on. One might almost admire his nerve, to put us through the shame of it.” She eyed me. “I assume your absence from her receptions means you’re still not speaking to him?”

  “I would be, if Sasha were.” I sighed, too weary from the upheaval to feign with her. “He says he’d rather be exiled to Siberia. He can’t abide the insult to his mother’s memory.”

  “Nor should he,” she declared, but she didn’t sound admiring. Rather, she seemed pleased that Sasha now bore the brunt of the tsar’s displeasure. “It’s unforgivable. A disgrace. Vladimir thinks the same, but—”

  “He cannot afford it.” I didn’t care to ease the serrated edge in my voice. “I understand. The tsar has married her. There’s nothing we can do to change it.”

  “And he’ll crown her, too. Mark my words. This is only the beginning. By next year, we’ll be summoned to her anointing in Moscow.”

  “Do you truly think he’ll go so far?” I couldn’t imagine it. Not only because Catherine was so i
ll-prepared but because, to me, she hadn’t seemed all that willing.

  Miechen said, “At the last event I attended, he had their son brought in. There was some mummery going on, an Italian juggling act”—she made a sound of repugnance—“the most vulgar form of entertainment, but what can we expect these days? In any event, he sat the boy on his lap and asked, ‘How would you like to be a grand duke?’ In front of everyone. Now, if that isn’t a sign of things to come, I don’t know what is.”

  I had no reply. Much as I loved Alexander, he’d gone past any justification.

  “The marriage has been condemned throughout Europe,” Miechen continued, munching on her fifth macaroon from my plate. “You must have heard what Victoria said? No? Oh, she was most perturbed. She declared that when emperors begin taking morganatic brides, what hope can there be for preserving the sanctity of royal bloodlines?”

  “That sounds like her,” I muttered. I’d received a letter from Alix, in which she’d detailed similar utterances of dismay from the queen, even if I wasn’t about to admit it.

  “Constantine is beside himself,” added Miechen.

  As she spoke, I glanced to the parlor doors, though I had told my servants to stay out, as I invariably did with her. I was never sure what she might say.

  She lowered her voice. “He’s been holding gatherings at his Marble Palace. To discuss the situation with his brothers and others. Vladimir has attended.”

  I recalled Alexander telling me that Constantine was rumored to be an occultist, in league with unsavory characters. Such persons abounded in Russia: Strannik, or holy wanderers, were revered by the peasantry, and yurodiviy, or holy fools, were common in aristocratic salons, babbling about unseen forces and fleecing or seducing—and sometimes both—the gullible. I couldn’t conceive of worldly Vladimir, with his continental taste, attending such gatherings.