The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  I nudged the cigarette on the table with my fingertips, recognizing he was right but not caring to admit it.

  “If you think it more suitable,” he went on, “I can ask Paul to find him a ballerina. I believe that young one who dances at the Mariinsky, Little K, is available. I hear she has a taste for grand dukes.”

  “For grand-duke money,” I said. “The only thing little about Mathilde Kschessinka is the size of her ballet slippers. Everything else, including her taste, is oversize and vulgar.”

  He bent over me, kissing my lips. “Not like little Alicky of Hesse, eh, who’s penniless and proper to a fault.” He cupped my chin. “Are we in agreement?”

  I gave reluctant assent. “Providing it is only letters. Ella resides here now and will no doubt invite her sister to visit. We might see more of Alicky of Hesse than we wish.”

  Sasha chuckled. “I’ve no doubt if we do, you’ll remind her of her limitations.”

  As he walked out, I lit my cigarette, leaning back in my chair to smoke.

  Indeed. If she made any attempt to ensnare Nicky, I would remind her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Upon his nineteenth birthday, Nicky was appointed to the Preobrazhensky regiment under Sergei’s command and went to reside at the headquarters in Krasnoye Selo. It wasn’t far, just southeast of the city, but he was now gone for part of the year and I missed him terribly. I sent him weekly packages of clean linens and letters full of advice that doubtless made him cringe, for he was expected to be treated like every other soldier.

  Meanwhile, my George turned sixteen, grown tall and handsome but still prone to bronchial ailments that had me in constant worry. As the second son, he was destined for a regimental career. Sasha kept saying his ailment would subside, but the doctors believed he had weak lungs, and living at a military barracks was out of the question.

  At twelve, Xenia was budding into womanhood. Her infatuation with her cousin Sandro had deepened into mutual love, and they had expressed the desire to wed. Sasha and I said we would refuse our approval until Xenia reached at least her eighteenth year, and I advised my daughter that she must be mature enough before she made any commitment. She dug in her heels, which made Sasha chuckle. “Sandro or spinsterhood. She’s certainly your daughter.”

  “Mine?” I declared. “She gets that Romanov obstinacy from you.”

  At eight years of age, Misha remained our most docile, not an outstanding student by any means but persistent in his efforts. Because of the disparity in my children’s ages, Misha and nearly six-year-old Olga resided most of the year in Gatchina. With all my obligations, I no longer had sufficient time to devote to their upbringing. While I must ensure their preparation for adulthood, I now knew they were safe in the country, and we always returned to them once the Season ended.

  Little Olga, however, was an enigma to me. She adored Misha and always ran to Sasha so he could pick her up and whirl her around. But she plucked disinterestedly at the dresses I had made for her and resisted trying them on. Instead, she retrieved the stuffed bear Sasha had given her on her second birthday, now so threadbare, while the many other stuffed toys I’d bought her over the years remained untouched.

  “Darling, let me wash Poopsie and sew on his eyes. He lost his buttons. He’s blind.”

  As I reached for the bear, she clutched it to her chest. “Poopsie’s not blind. You are.”

  Her words made me think of my sister Alix: Oh, Minnie. Are you so blind? Hurt and confused, I left her. Of all my children, Olga was the one I couldn’t seem to reach, but Sasha dismissed my concern. “She rarely sees you. As soon as she has to attend her first ball, you’ll be her favorite person. Who else but her mother can make her look beautiful?”

  I didn’t think she’d ever be beautiful, not like Xenia. My eldest daughter already turned heads, with her piquant face and lithe figure. But I took solace that Olga would have her father and Misha to confide in as she grew older.

  Devoted a mother as I was to all my children, I would not beg for her love.

  * * *

  “FIVE STUDENTS,” SASHA told me in an emotionless voice. “Carrying hollowed-out books stuffed with explosives. We took the Griboyedov Canal road, due to the church’s construction, which they didn’t expect. By doing so, we missed their attack. The Okhrana has them under arrest.”

  We rode in our carriage through Gatchina Park, having just returned from St. Petersburg for a visit to the unfinished Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, an onion-domed church that Sasha had ordered built on the site of his father’s murder.

  Unable to conceive we might have died in that very same place, I started to cry. “I thought you’d rid us of this nightmare, Sasha. I thought it was over.”

  “Manja, don’t.” He awkwardly patted my hand, for our escort rode behind us and he wasn’t given to public displays. “I am doing all I can, but they’re like rats, breeding constantly, infecting others. Those five will be executed, but I can’t predict when another five will take their place. They hate me because I won’t give them what they want. But I’m prepared to die for Russia if need be. I will not stop doing my duty until they stop me.”

  “What do they want, to stalk us like this?” I wiped angrily at my tears.

  He looked away. “You know. You’ve always known.” As my blood froze, as much from the fact that we’d almost had bombs thrown at us as from his words, he said, “It was the reason for your luncheon with my father that day.” He turned his gaze to me. “Am I wrong?”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “I thought as much. I’m glad we have it out. I don’t like secrets between us.”

  “Alexander…he was going to tell you. I insisted that he must.”

  “Only Vladimir told me, instead. He heard about it. Our father wasn’t as cunning as he thought. A newspaper editor who received advance notice of the manifesto before its publication informed Vladimir. Thank God for it. I’d have been compelled to sanction something I never had intention of permitting. If the Nihilists killed the very man prepared to give them what they wanted, what might they do once they obtained it?”

  I bit my lip, unwilling to admit that I’d supported Alexander’s aspiration. I did not support it now, not since I’d seen what the rally for reform had cost my father-in-law and might yet cost us. As much as I endeavored through my charities to care for our people, I had to agree with my husband. Russia was not ready for such drastic change.

  “I forgive you,” he added. “I know you thought you were doing what was best.”

  His statement put an end to further discussion. I didn’t broach it again, but I fell prey once more to my nerves. Seeing my distress, Sasha accepted an invitation from the governors of the Caucasus, who had expressed eagerness to show their loyalty to the tsar.

  “It will do us good,” he said. “The Caucasians are honest folk. A tsar hasn’t visited the region in many years. We’ll bring our children and our household on the imperial train. We’ll have all the comforts of home and none of the poison of St. Petersburg.”

  “But we’re supposed to go to Denmark in the autumn,” I said, and then, when his jaw set, a silent reminder of what had transpired between us, I nodded. “Very well.”

  We might have all the comforts of home, but I wasn’t comforted. The imperial train was luxurious enough, interconnected carriages containing damask-upholstered bedrooms, drawing rooms, salons, bathing facilities, servant quarters, and two kitchens. Painted in blue with the imperial double-headed eagle crest in gold on its coach doors, it was identical to a second train that was also dispatched, our route closely guarded, so that any attempt to harm us would be stymied by confusion as to which train was ours.

  Under any other circumstances, I might have enjoyed it. Relieved of his regimental duties for the trip, Nicky came with us. His training in Krasnoye Selo had broadened his shoulders and prompted him to gro
w a luxuriant mustache. He made no mention of Alicky of Hesse, and I didn’t ask. My eldest son clearly relished this time with his siblings, who laughed and teased him for his stiff posture, and he was attentive to them, particularly Olga, who cleaved to him like a clam. Even George, recovering from a bad cough, seemed improved, with color in his lean cheeks as he and Xenia read Pushkin’s poetry aloud in the evenings. But I couldn’t forget that we rode in a potential death trap into a remote mountainous area, with our entire staff, Okhrana agents, plainsclothes police, and Cossack guard—all the security measures I’d come to despise as indispensable reminders of our persistent danger.

  Nevertheless, the visit proved delightful. The Caucasians received us with bread and salt, whirling dervishes, and the embroidered cherkeska. Dressed in these caftan robes, I was seated beside Sasha like an equal, for female chieftains were revered in the Caucasus.

  A month later, we set out for Gatchina, the decoy train sent ahead. My younger children had grown restless, arguing over nothing, and George’s cough worsened, so that I was up at night smearing medicinal ointment on his chest. Xenia was pining for Sandro, from whom she evidently couldn’t be apart for too long, and I noticed that Nicky had begun penning letters, which I suspected were intended for Hesse. Tired and out of sorts, I too longed to get back to our routine, but Sasha was in an ebullient mood, as he always was after meeting his “hardworking people, nothing like those sycophants in the city.”

  We rattled along in our drawing room carriage at the rear of the train, George napping on a settee as Xenia and Misha read together, Olga sketched, and Nicky wrote on the portable desk. Sasha reclined, yawning after too much vodka at lunch. Craving a cigarette, I excused myself to use the lavatory. Everyone knew I was going into the corridor to smoke, but I kept up the pretense, though Nicky had once followed me out and smoked a cigarette with me, having picked up the habit at his headquarters, to my discontent.

  He did not follow me this time, intent on his letter. Pulling my shawl about me, for the corridor was chilly, I took out my case and was about to light my cigarette when the train jolted. The match singed my fingers. I dropped the cigarette; as I bent down to retrieve it, a high-pitched metallic shriek deafened me. Then a violent shake sent me sprawling. Thrown against the corridor wall, I started to crawl toward the drawing room compartment, my heart pounding in my throat.

  The lights went out.

  It was the night of the explosion in the Winter Palace all over again, the same mindless plunge into terror, only this time the entire train was tilting, falling off its tracks. I could hear crushing steel, a horrible grinding as brakes were applied, to no avail. Upended in the corridor with my skirts over my head, I was choking on acrid dust when the train came to a shuddering halt. Kicking against the crumpled mass of my skirts, I managed to get to my feet, emerging upon a scene of unbelievable destruction.

  The drawing room carriage had buckled, part of the roof caved in, hanging like a jagged partition between me and where my family had been. I was so stunned, everything swam before me. Warmth trickled past my temple. I lifted my hand. My fingers came away bloody.

  “Minnie,” I heard Sasha groan. “Manja, where are you?”

  “Here,” I cried out. “I’m here, Sasha!” Sidling through the askew doorframe, snagging my dress, I found him buried up to his pelvis in debris, a section of the fallen roof hoisted on his shoulders. His face was contorted; he trembled as he held up the roof with all his might. “The children,” he said. “Find them. I don’t know where they are.”

  I called out their names. From above me, Nicky’s frightened voice said, “Mama, here,” and I looked up to see him peering from a gap in the intact portion of the ceiling, George, Misha, and Xenia beside him. Somehow, they’d managed to clamber out.

  “Olga. Where is Olga?” Fear bolted through me. I thought I might vomit as Sasha gave a shuddering moan and the roof started sliding off him. I picked frantically through wreckage, lacerating my hands on shattered bric-a-brac, shouting Olga’s name. I kept praying, over and over: Please, God, please let my baby be alive.

  Then, to my relief, one of our Cossacks arrived, carrying Olga in his arms. She’d been thrown clear of the carriage; as I took her from him, she whimpered, “They will kill us all.”

  “No, no. Hush, my darling.” I held her to me. The Cossack assisted me out of the wrecked carriage, which had rammed into those in front of it when the train derailed. Nicky and my other children leapt from the rooftop to gather around me.

  It took over an hour to release Sasha. The Cossack, joined by other guards and the secret police, shoveled around him to free his trapped legs and lever a beam under the roof to lift it off his back, giving him only seconds to dodge before it came crashing down. Limping, his trousers torn, revealing black contusions on his left thigh, Sasha came to us as we huddled together. The children were traumatized, cut and bruised, but our hasty assessment revealed no serious injury. George was coughing from the dust, so I wrapped my soiled shawl around him. Sasha, however, worried me the most: His wounded leg needed tending. But as he turned to gaze into the smoke-filled drizzle ahead, for it had started to rain, he said quietly, “Look, Manja. God saved us.”

  Ahead, the disaster was unbearable. The locomotive, engine, and first six carriages had run off the tracks and overturned into the embankment. Had we been riding in any of the front carriages, we would have perished. From the crushed carriages, survivors were pulling out the dead and injured, laying out broken bodies in the mud under toppled poles tangled in wires.

  “It’ll take hours before anyone knows,” said Sasha. “Those are the telegraph lines. We must make do until help arrives.” He started limping toward the rescuers, summoning those he encountered wandering like aimless ghosts.

  “My children,” I told the Cossack. “Don’t let them out of your sight.”

  Xenia clung to Olga, who’d gone quiet, her eyes blank. As I made to join Sasha, who neared the area where the worst had occurred, Nicky seized my hand. “I’m going with you.”

  I held tight to him as we trod through the mud of the embankment, collecting random articles along the way—flung-out sheets and linens, pillowcases and towels. I labored to tear everything into strips for bandages, while he made a fire for warmth and to boil water, using his cigarette lighter and shattered wood from the train as kindling.

  As Sasha ignored his swelling leg to search for survivors, Nicky and I tended to the wounded, together with the uninjured servants and our sole physician on board. We were drenched to our skin in the rain as we watched several victims die of grisly gashes, shattered bones, or shock. At one point, Nicky urgently summoned me to where he tried in vain to stanch a chest wound in a maidservant, who’d traveled with us from Gatchina and whose name I didn’t even know.

  “She can’t breathe,” he said in alarm. “Mama, how can I help—”

  “It’s too late,” I whispered. Blood burbled from the girl’s mouth as she went still.

  Tears clouded Nicky’s eyes. He traced the sign of the cross over her as I stood helpless, never prouder of him or more pained that he must witness such suffering.

  It seemed like an eternity before the shrill whistle of the rescue train alerted us to its arrival. Our decoy had reached the town of Borki. Futile attempts by officials to telegraph us alerted them to the catastrophe. I was so exhausted, I could scarcely stand as emergency workers raced to assist us. Sasha waved them aside, shouting hoarsely that he was needed, until I went to him.

  “Let the nurses and doctors assume charge,” I said. “We’ve done all we can.”

  He regarded me in bewilderment, blackened by soot and grime, his hands riddled with wounds from scavenging in the wrecked carriages. “All of this,” he whispered, “for what? To kill me? So much death to slay one man?”

  I led him into the rescue train with our children. After our ruined train was pulled aside, we went on
to Borki. There, on the station platform, in our soiled clothes, we held a service for the dead. Unabashed tears crested over Sasha’s cinder-blackened features.

  “Monsters,” he said. “They will pay for this.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  “More petitions.” I deposited the bundle on Sasha’s cluttered desk. Until today, I’d rarely intruded on his private time in his study. “You should read them.”

  “Why?” He leaned back in his creaking chair, which, like the rest of his study, was in dire need of replacement.

  “Because they’re from your subjects. Would you heed that ghoul Pobendonostev to our detriment? These new laws to eradicate the Nihilist cause—they go too far.”

  “How so?” His voice remained calm, but I knew I risked his temper. Since the train accident, he’d grown obdurate, granting the Okhrana further license to fill up our prisons and authorizing new censorship laws that prompted more of our intellectuals to flee abroad. I’d publicly supported his stance, for I knew he only sought to protect us, but I couldn’t support it any longer.

  “All subjects of the empire must adhere to Russian customs and the Orthodox faith,” I quoted aloud. “You’re forbidding Jews from living outside the Pale of Settlement, extolling that they must assimilate, relocate, or leave. We have pogroms again outside the cities! Many are choosing exile. These are petitions from wealthy Jews in St. Petersburg, who’ve donated for years to my charities. What am I to tell them?”

  “Perhaps that your husband makes the law.” His tone took on a serrated edge. This wasn’t my place. I did not interfere in how he ruled his realm.

  “I don’t like it,” I said, surprising myself, for times before I had not interfered. “They are still our subjects. Would you have every Jew in Russia convert or go into exile?”