The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  “If necessary. We must all do whatever is necessary to safeguard the empire.”

  “Honestly.” I threw up my hands, making him blink. “And my charities and our court entertainments—must we sacrifice them as well to safeguard the empire?”

  “I told you. Never again. They will never harm us again. If we must live here in Gatchina without galas or society, so be it. I’ll not risk my family.”

  I paused. I couldn’t blame him. The dining hall in the Winter Palace, his father’s sleigh on the canal bridge, the thwarted attack in Moscow and then in St. Petersburg, and now, in his mind, even our private train—the dissidents had proven they would attack us anywhere, at any time, and nothing save their death or his vigilance could impede it.

  “Sasha.” I softened my voice. “I understand. I’m very concerned, as well. But the Nihilists weren’t responsible for the accident. You read the official report. Our locomotive was in poor repair, going too fast for our overladen carriages.”

  “I don’t believe the report. They were responsible.”

  “Even so, we cannot live like this, in constant fear. Nor can we blame all of Russia for it. You once told me, we mustn’t ever run from them.”

  “We are not running.” He grasped his walking cane, coming to his feet. He had a permanent limp from the accident and now couldn’t walk without the cane—“like an old boyar,” he griped. I knew he had back pain, too, for sometimes he’d pause and inhale sharply, cursing under his breath before he pressed on, because to admit weakness was anathema to him. “They are the ones running. And they will be run out of my realm or I’ll execute the lot.” He glared at me. “You can support your charities, hold your balls, and be the empress. When have I ever denied you that right? You want more money for your charities? You shall have it. But I’ll not succor the enemies of our faith nor let any malcontent threaten us.” He abruptly changed the subject, indicating he’d reached the end of his tolerance. “How is George?”

  “Better,” I said. Our son had suffered another severe bronchial attack and had recovered, though his health remained precarious. “But I don’t think he’ll be well enough to accompany Nicky on their grand tour next year. Imagine if he takes ill—”

  “He’ll never be well enough if you keep fussing over him. Let him be, woman.” Sasha started toward the bookshelf where he stashed his vodka, almost revealing the bottle I knew he hid behind the volumes, then he veered away, no doubt because I’d put my foot down about that, too.

  “I want to reassure those who’ve petitioned us,” I said at length, as he stood brooding by his desk. “It’s my duty. My charities depend on their contributions. If I do it discreetly, will you object?”

  He grunted. “Do as you please. You always do.”

  “Thank you.” I exited the study, knowing he’d retrieve that bottle the moment I left.

  His immoderation distressed me, but its effect on my children was more troubling. Nicky had grown to fear him; as our tsarevich, he was expected to excel in everything he undertook, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Preobrazhensky, only for Sasha to jeer that he might do better were he not so preoccupied “writing sonnets to that Hesse girl.”

  Which led to more concern for me.

  For the Season of 1889, Alicky returned to Russia to visit her sister. Ella was widely admired in the family, as Sergei wasn’t an easy husband, with his propensity for conducting his household like a military establishment, wearing his uniform at all times, even at breakfast. But Ella, or Tante Titinka, as my children called her, never lifted a complaint. Whenever we were in the city, she welcomed my children at her palace across the Nevsky Prospekt, serving macaroons and hot chocolate, and not objecting when they trailed snow from their boots all over her Persian carpets.

  “But no sign of a child yet,” Miechen sniffed. “Either she’s barren or…”

  I sighed. “Not every woman conceives right away. For some, it takes time.”

  Miechen held her tongue about Sergei, though not about Ella’s sister. “I hear Nicky visits the mouse every afternoon after his regimental duties. He even escorts her to all the balls and receptions. You must be beside yourself with disappointment.”

  “He’ll be leaving soon on his grand tour. She will return to Hesse. She’s devoted to her Lutheran faith. Nicky says her father has asked her to never convert while he lives, and Sasha forbids marriage to a non-Orthodox. I therefore have no reason to be disappointed.”

  “She may be a devout Lutheran for now, but she knows well what she’s about. A tsarevich does not come around every day.”

  I laughed, even if I wasn’t amused. I’d taken Sasha’s advice to heart, hoping Nicky’s interest in Alicky would fade. It hadn’t, to my disconcertion. I couldn’t understand what he saw in her and began to fear Miechen was wiser than I cared to admit. Was this German nobody intending to corral my son into a marriage proposal?

  Matters being as they were, I couldn’t dispatch Nicky on his tour soon enough. He’d visit several royal courts along the way, and I prayed another princess would set her sights on him. Variety was what he needed; as our heir, we’d make certain he had it. Saying goodbye to him and George tore at me, however, for our consultation of various physicians had failed to yield a satisfactory remedy. All agreed that my second son had weak lungs, but George refused to heed my pleas to stay home. Biting back my tears, I sent them off.

  They’d not been gone two months when a telegram from Nicky arrived at Gatchina. George had fallen ill and was returning to us.

  * * *

  “IT IS CONSUMPTION, I’m afraid,” Dr. Botkin informed us after examining George, who’d arrived looking so haggard, I was aghast. “In both lungs. He needs a warmer climate as soon as possible. He can’t endure the winters here.” He delivered this devastating news with profound sadness but also in some haste, for he must have feared Sasha’s reaction.

  My husband sat still, as if struck mute, leaving me to exclaim, “He’s not yet twenty! How is it even possible? You yourself examined him many times, Doctor, as did your colleagues. Not once did any of you mention consumption.”

  Botkin nodded in discomfort. “I fear we are indeed at fault. He’s very young for the disease, and his symptoms were inconsistent at first. But I am certain now. Forgive me, Your Majesties. I will resign my post as imperial physician at once.”

  Sasha said quietly, “You tended to my father in his extremis. How were you to know? You’ve diagnosed it now. I’ll not accept your resignation.” He didn’t look at Botkin as he spoke, his stare fixed on some remote place.

  “Majesty.” Botkin bowed, gathering up his case of instruments. From his bedroom, I heard George coughing, and I started toward the door. “Our villa in the Crimea,” I said absently, in a haze of disbelief. “I’ll take him there to rest.”

  “The damp of the sea will not serve him,” replied Botkin. “It must be higher. Drier. Consumptives fare much better in such climes. It can slow the disease for many years, Majesty.”

  “Higher?” I stared at him.

  “He means the mountains.” Sasha motioned Botkin out. He finally lifted his eyes to me. “The doctors advised my mother to do the same. She refused. It was Nice or the Crimea until—” He choked. “Our boy. Why does God test us so?”

  I couldn’t stay to console him. I had to tend to George. But as I dosed our son with the laudanum syrup Botkin had prescribed and stayed with him until he slept, I could hear Sasha’s harsh weeping in the next room, as if his great heart might break.

  * * *

  WE COMMISSIONED A villa in Abbas-Touman, in the foothills of the Caucasus near the city of Kazbek, which had a hospital. George accepted his diagnosis without visible upset but insisted on staying in Russia rather than going abroad to a sanatorium. I organized his move, sending furnishings and chests with his belongings ahead, taking him by train and then by carriage over a
goat path of a road to the villa, which wasn’t luxurious by our standards but spacious enough, with a wide veranda overlooking the valley. I hired local staff to look after him. As I settled him in, making his bed myself and tucking a shawl about his shoulders, I said, “It’s only until you are well. Botkin says this dry mountain air will restore you. As soon as you’re improved, you can return to us.”

  He turned to me. “It doesn’t help me to hear promises that won’t come true.”

  Tears burned in my eyes. George embraced me, comforting me, though he was the one now in exile. “I think I’m going to like it here,” he said as I clung to him, my liveliest child, who’d always been so full of mischief, so like me in his temperament. “Not His Imperial Highness anymore. Only plain George Alexandrovich.”

  “Never.” I cradled his face in my palms. “You will always be a grand duke.”

  I stayed with him for two weeks, but then I had to leave. My family couldn’t be left on their own for too long. Xenia, Olga, and Misha had wept at their brother’s departure, and Tania wrote to tell me that Sasha closeted himself for hours on end in his study, only to emerge for long walks through Gatchina Park with his dogs, his astrakhan cap jammed on his head and his face lowered, as if he couldn’t bear to see any of the places where our children had played. His pain for George was like a pebble in my throat; it hurt whenever I breathed.

  As I rode away in my carriage, down the mountain road to the imperial train awaiting me in Kazbek, George waved to me from the veranda. It was not forever, I told myself.

  And yet it was. Even if I could not accept it.

  * * *

  “HER FATHER HAS died. Her brother Ernest is now Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine; in April, he’ll marry Aunt Marie’s daughter, Ducky. All of her family will attend, even the queen. I want to go. Alicky has invited me.”

  Nicky stood stalwart before us, even if his impression of steadfastness was marred by the way he kept darting his gaze at me.

  “Stop making calf eyes at your mother,” spat Sasha. “She’s not going to intervene on your behalf this time. You are very well informed as to who is marrying whom and have had the gall to declare your intention to all and sundry without bothering to inform us first, so be a man now and look me in the eye.”

  Nicky lifted his chin. “I am informing you. I’ve done whatever you asked of me. I went on that grand tour and met many princesses—”

  “I understand your cousin, the rake of Greece, met many princesses. You only got yourself hit on the head by a samurai for acting the fool.”

  “It wasn’t a samurai.” I gave Sasha an exasperated look. Nicky had been assaulted in Japan by an offended bystander, who’d taken umbrage at his and his cousin’s antics, striking at them with a sword while they rode, laughing, in a rickshaw. The blow had glanced off Nicky’s temple, missing his eye by a miracle. He had the scar now and occasional headaches even after it had healed. “He might have been killed.”

  “He wasn’t.” Sasha stared at our son. “And here he is, demanding to attend a royal wedding and pay suit to a girl who’s made it clear she cannot convert because her conscience forbids it yet must now step aside for her new sister-in-law. And if my niece Ducky has anything of my sister in her, she’ll put Alicky of Hesse in no doubt of where she belongs—which is not in Russia.”

  Nicky swallowed. I saw the movement in his throat above the starched white collar of the shirt he wore under a trim new charcoal-gray suit he’d acquired in Paris.

  “Did you do anything I asked while you were in France, besides buying that dilettante’s attire?” Sasha said. “Did you pay court to Princess Hélène as instructed?”

  “Yes,” said Nicky, and Sasha blared, “Liar. Her father the comte wrote to tell me that your cousin the rake of Greece courted her while you said as little as possible.”

  “She—she is not for me.” I could see that Nicky was desperately trying to avoid looking at me again. I felt awful for him. But I was determined to not give in. If he went to Hesse to attend the wedding of Alicky’s brother, with her family around her, who knew what might come of it? I wouldn’t put it past Victoria to shove Alicky into his lap, if only to see her granddaughter become Empress of Russia one day.

  “She is not.” Sasha’s tone oozed sarcasm. “Princess Hélène is pretty, well educated, but not for you. For any other, yes, as she’s the daughter of the acknowledged heir to the French throne, but not you. Only this German girl of no account will do. Is that what we’re to understand?”

  Nicky said quietly, “Why are you so opposed to her? She only said she couldn’t convert while her father lived. Her brother has no such objection. If I could present my case, Alix will heed me. She knows she must convert to be my wife.”

  “She needs more than to convert.” Sasha gripped his cane and heaved himself up, stalking to Nicky. To our son’s credit, he did not flinch when Sasha thundered, “She needs my consent. And she doesn’t have it. By God, your brother George is ill, living in the foothills, and now I must contend with this tomfoolery of yours, when he’d make a better heir than you’ll ever be. Go. Run off to Hesse to play suitor at her brother’s wedding. But whatever you tell Alicky of Hesse, I do not consent.”

  “Papa.” Nicky’s voice quavered. “I don’t understand. Why?”

  “I have no time for your mewling.” Sasha lumbered to the drawing room door. “I’m due in St. Petersburg. Minnie,” he barked at me, “talk some sense into that thick head of his before I lose my patience and knock it into him.”

  Banging out, yelling for his valet, he left Nicky gazing after him in bewilderment.

  “Shut the door and come sit by me,” I told him.

  Once he did, I collected my fortitude. I couldn’t deny that I loved him best of my children. My firstborn, he had a special claim on me that was both his balm and bane, for he always sought my advice, and I encouraged it. I wanted him to depend on me, because it meant I’d always be first in his heart. Only I wasn’t. Not anymore. She was. I had to hold myself in check, even as my dislike for her curdled into disgust. How could such a mouse, as Miechen called her, have conquered my son with a few visits and a handful of letters?

  “Your father doesn’t mean to be harsh,” I began, for now that we were alone, his shoulders slumped in dejection. “He’s very worried about George, and he loves you so. But you’re the tsarevich. Your marriage is not only one of personal preference but a matter of state. Whomever you choose must be prepared to assume the duties of her rank.”

  Even at this moment, I couldn’t bring myself to cite my other objections: her German birth, which I might have overlooked were it not for her utter paucity of court training and extreme timidity, which branded her as the minor princess she was. I couldn’t say it because I knew how judgmental it was. How could I, his own mother, denigrate her for the very qualities she lacked, when I had not possessed many of them when I first arrived to Russia? But it was more than that. Penury and lack of training aside, her character alone disqualified her in my eyes. Nicky was shy enough. With her at his side, they’d be more like siblings than spouses. Neither of them understood yet how passion could fade, how much patience and effort were required to sustain a marriage over the years.

  “Alicky will convert, Mama. She understands what is expected of her.”

  “Does she?” I tightened my hands in my lap, though I wanted to take his and somehow magically remove her taint from his heart. “Her upbringing has hardly been exemplary. She knows nothing of life here. To be the tsarevna might seem a dream come true, but believe me, it is not. I know. I once held the title myself.”

  “But when Papa married you, you were not rich or prepared. You’ve told us stories about how you and Aunt Alix made your own clothes and didn’t have governesses because your father couldn’t afford them. Why is she any different?”

  I paused. He’d caught me by surprise, turning my own
words against me.

  “Our Church forbids marriage between a brother and his brother’s widow, but Papa still wed you,” Nicky went on. “You knew nothing of life here, but you learned. Alicky will, too. You can help her. You’re my mother. I’ve told her you’ll be a mother to her, as well.”

  “Nixa and I never married,” I reminded him. Then, as he continued to regard me in confusion, I said gently, “I only want you to think very carefully about this. Like her, you have no experience, and we…we’re not sure she’s the right bride for you.”

  “For me?” he said. “Or for you?”

  I drew back. He’d seen through me. Just as he could rarely hide anything from me, I couldn’t hide much from him.

  “Is it her?” His voice took on an edge, an anger he’d held within that now rose to the surface. “Because you don’t care for her? Because she’s not witty and charming or fashionable? Because she’s not Ella or Miechen? Is that why?”

  “Surely not. She may not be Ella, but one Miechen in our family is quite enough.”

  “Then why?” He reached for my hand. “Mama, I’m almost twenty-four. If I must take a wife, as you say, for myself and Russia, why shouldn’t she be the woman I love? She is German, and I know that displeases you, but we’ve wed German brides for centuries. She’ll become like you in time—a Russian. She’s not what you think. You do not know her at all.”

  “No,” I admitted. “I do not.”

  “Xenia will wed the man she loves,” he said, lifting his voice to stave off my protest. “You can say she’s too young for only so long, but you want her to marry Sandro. She’ll stay here, not go abroad to wed a prince who’ll make her unhappy. Don’t I deserve the same?”

  I couldn’t speak. I gazed at his handsome face, his pleading eyes, and he was my little boy again, seeking reassurance that I’d never deny him. I found myself once more trapped between my desire to soothe him and my unfathomable mistrust of her. I couldn’t understand it, why I wasn’t delighted he’d found this girl to love, who surely must love him in return, as he wasn’t one to give his heart away on a whim. I couldn’t decipher my own objections. It was like a dark pit in my soul. All I knew but couldn’t say was that while they might love each other now, love was never enough in a royal marriage. In the end, love was often the least of it.