The Russians Collection

by Michael Phillips

  Talia smiled. How could she be upset with her friend when his eyes were dancing with so much excitement? The South Seas hadn’t been her idea, anyway, though it had been in her mind when she had mentioned going to a far-off place. She glanced at Yuri, then at Andrei, her two best friends in the world, and wondered if there could be a trio of more different characters. Were they friends only because they had been thrown together in the same home? She liked to think, instead, that God himself had thrown them together on purpose because He already knew what good friends they would be. And she didn’t care what imaginary adventures they went on as long as they did it together.

  “Well,” said Yuri, “we just spent five kopecks for the real adventure of riding the steamer, so why don’t we just enjoy that.”

  No one could deny that the little blue steamer was a fascinating world in itself, with its stewards in white waistcoats and an elegant restaurant where the more affluent dined. The children boldly sat at a table and bought raspberry ice, but they ate quickly and left because they felt like intruders. They preferred to be out in the open anyway, watching the dazzling river swirl under them, waving to the many other ships and boats that passed by. Only too soon the trip came to an end.

  “Look!” exclaimed Yuri, pointing to his right. “Our stop is next. We better make our way forward.”

  The boat docked near the Summer Gardens and it was only a short walk to their destination. Once at the gardens, however, the walking did not end. They explored the grounds from one end to the other. They loved the statues of mythological characters and the swans in the little pond.

  They had been to the Summer Gardens many times, but it never grew old or humdrum. The garden wore a different face at every season of the year, always promising new discoveries each time.

  On this hot summer day, the water in the pond was especially inviting. In this trim and aristocratic setting, of course, swimming wasn’t allowed, but the children found a deserted spot by the big pond, took off their shoes, and dared to dangle their toes in the cool water for a few minutes. It was Andrei who started the splashing, and though Yuri and Talia tried to stop him at first with verbal protests, he kept it up until they could do nothing else but retaliate in kind. It wasn’t long before their squeals and laughter were noticed.

  “All right, you kids!” came a stern, deep voice. “That’ll be enough of that, now.” It was a policeman, tall and rather imposing in his uniform, but a twinkle in his eyes indicated that he understood childish ways and wasn’t about to exile them for splashing in the pond.

  The children jumped up and back from the water nevertheless. Yuri, assuming the responsibility of being the eldest, said, “I’m sorry, sir. It was just so hot.”

  “That’s a fact, but rules are rules.”

  “We’ll be on our way.”

  “No need for that, just remember to behave like I’m sure your mama taught you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After the policeman walked away, the children put on their shoes and socks and vacated the place anyway. Besides, they were hungry and wanted to find a nice shade tree under which to eat the good lunch Raisa had given them—apples, thick hunks of black bread, and slabs of cheese.

  “I don’t know why you backed down so easily,” said Andrei to Yuri as they ate. “This is a public place, you know. We have as much right to it as the nannies and their pampered children.”

  “And no one bothers us as long as we follow the rules.”

  “I’ll bet he wouldn’t have said anything if we had been of the gentry or bourgeois.”

  As with Mariana, Sergei and Anna had only told their children the barest minimum about their background. Only that the family had once had a little money but had lost it over the years. That was enough to explain Viktor and his obvious nobility as well as Mariana’s sudden change in position. Why encumber the children with more? It was a life they’d never be able to have anyway. Besides, Sergei had, at least until recently, completely disdained that life.

  Yuri gave his brother a derisive laugh. “Have you been hanging around the university again?”

  “What of it?” challenged Andrei belligerently.

  The potential confrontation between the brothers was mercifully interrupted by the sudden sounds of distant explosions.

  “The war!” cried Talia, almost in tears.

  “No, no,” soothed Yuri, “the war is too far from St. Petersburg. It must be something else.”

  “Revolution!” offered Andrei.

  There was always talk of revolution, and there were occasionally demonstrations at the university and strikes at the factory, but never were such events accompanied by gunfire. In a few moments, after the children’s initial surprise had calmed, they noted that the explosions were even and deliberate.

  “It’s cannon fire announcing something,” said Andrei at length. “Maybe the end of the war.”

  But Yuri had been trying to count the blasts, and he held up his hand so the others wouldn’t interrupt him. After a few minutes he announced, “At least ninety shots.”

  A passerby corrected him, “A hundred, lad.”

  “A hundred and one!” they all said in unison as another shot blasted. The children still were uncertain why the cannon was being fired.

  Then, “One hundred and two!”

  “Saints be praised!” said the stranger. “’Tis a glorious day for Russia.”

  “What is it? What is it?”

  “An heir has been born!”

  13

  It had not been a nice summer for His Royal Highness, Nicholas II of Russia. The disastrous reversals in the war in the Far East weighed heavily on him. He hated war and felt he had done everything in his power to prevent this war with Japan. But when the Japanese had forced his hand with their surprise attack on Port Arthur, Nicholas had been confident that his army could whip the “little yellow monkeys” in no time. Six months of fighting, however, had delivered no major victories to the Russian army. It was not only sickening and disheartening; it was downright humiliating for the tsar of all the Russias.

  At home, the summer had been vilely marked by the assassination of two highly placed officials—the governor-general of Finland and the Minister of the Interior. Such acts made it appear as if the nationalism at the beginning of the war would not be enough to sustain the tentative internal peace of the last months. Nicholas knew only too well what a war, much less a lost war, could do to the political stability of his country.

  Lately, the emperor of Russia felt keenly his fate of being born on the Day of Job the Sufferer.

  As he climbed the stairs to the family dining room at Peterhof, the summer palace overlooking the Gulf of Finland, about twenty miles from St. Petersburg, his mind was far from the anticipation of a pleasant lunch with his wife. He had just come from an interview with Count Kokovtsov and an artillery officer who had been wounded in Manchuria. How he hated to be reminded of the war!

  Thus was his joy, his absolute ecstasy, that much deeper when he was informed that his wife had gone upstairs and retired to her bed in labor with their fifth child. Less than an hour later, she had given birth to a son!

  That evening Nicholas wrote in his diary: “An unforgettable day in which God has clearly shown us His blessing.”

  Mother and child were doing well. The baby was fat and fair with blue eyes and a wisp of yellow hair on his well-formed head.

  Nicholas named his son Alexis after his favorite tsar, Alexis I. Chuckling, Nicholas said, “I must break the chain of Alexanders and Nicholases that have ruled Russia for nearly a hundred years.”

  Alexis the First had been the son of the first tsar of Russia, Michael I. In Nicholas’s mind, he was a great ruler because he had quietly and meekly brought reform to the emerging nation. Nicholas disdained Peter the Great, not only because of his strong-arm tactics but also because he had forced Western ways upon Russia. And Peter had caused the name Alexis to fall out of favor among the Romanovs when he ordered his son and heir, al
so named Alexis, murdered.

  Thus, the tsar’s choice of a name for his heir was greeted with disapproval by some. Still, his will prevailed, and the child was christened a week later as Alexis Nicholaevich Romanov. The emperor and empress could not refrain from entertaining dreams of Russia one day seeing their son, Alexis II, sitting upon the throne. Perhaps he would be Alexis the Wise. Anything seemed possible in those joyous days immediately following his birth.

  Alexandra, Empress of Russia, gazed at the icon of Saint Seraphim, thankful she had managed to get the Church to canonize the early nineteenth-century holy man. She was sure her devotion to Seraphim had led to the long-awaited birth of a son and heir.

  Alexandra had been searching for something upon which to attach her hope since Phillipe, the healer and mystic of France, had been forced to leave the Imperial Court. He had fallen out of favor after his faulty prediction of a son prior to the birth of Anastasia, the fourth daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra. The empress’s friends, the two Montenegrin princesses, had spearheaded the tsaritsa’s mystical journey, first with the introduction of Phillipe. Seances and sorcery became an important part of the empress’s court. The Montenegrins said that what she needed was a person more mysterious than the Frenchman. They believed the more bizarre the character, the more indicative of his disdain for the world, thus demonstrating his closeness to God. There followed a progression of such strange “birds” at court that even Alexandra began to weary of them.

  Seraphim was more to her liking. A holy man who died in 1833, his life was marked by healings and prophecies and spiritual visions. The rumors of his cavorting with the nuns were completely unsubstantiated. He was deeply misunderstood, and that fact strengthened his appeal to Alexandra.

  The birth of an heir further deepened the man’s saintly worth.

  A year earlier, for the consecration of Seraphim’s relics, she had gone to the saint’s last earthly home, Sarov, for the ceremonies. There she had bathed in a healing spring, and now she held her son in her arms. Even Nicholas’s faith in Seraphim was now unshakable.

  As her boudoir door opened, Alexandra looked up and smiled a welcome greeting to her husband. He knelt down by her side so as to better view the child she held in her arms.

  “I don’t think I have ever seen such a quiet, beautiful baby,” he said, sounding as if he were a new father who had not already welcomed four babies into the world.

  “And why not?” smiled Alexandra. “He has the blessing of Seraphim on his dear head.”

  “Oh, Sunny, I can’t thank you enough for bringing this joy into our lives. I don’t know how I would have made it though this terrible year otherwise.”

  “We don’t have to think of that, Nicky. It will be different from now on.”

  “Yes, it must be so. It couldn’t get much worse. The coming of our Alexis is a turning point.”

  Perhaps it wasn’t right to place so much hope upon one tiny child. But an heir was lifeblood to a monarchy, and Alexandra knew how important it was to Nicholas that the Romanov heir be his own son, not a nephew. He was as committed to the continuance of the Romanov line as he was to his own life. Many of the tsar’s opponents had reveled in the fact that he had only produced daughters, and they were eagerly looking forward to the end of the direct line of heirs that had begun with Nicholas I. Should Nicholas II have passed without a direct heir, his brother Michael would have ascended the throne. Since many believed the tsar’s younger brother was the weakest of the lot, it would have been an easy matter then to wrest the monarchy from the Romanovs.

  Alexandra was thrilled. The arrival of Alexis would foil those vile rebels and anarchists. No one would steal the crown from either her husband or her son. She had suffered and prayed and fought too hard to bring this assurance to the Romanov line. The forces of hell itself would not prevail against them.

  14

  Count Cyril Vlasenko dabbed his thick lips with a linen napkin. No matter what the state of the union he served, he saw no reason not to fully enjoy the gourmet repast set before him that evening. His chef, a talented Parisian, managed to produce a new delicacy each day—tonight’s Chateaubriand, poulet roti smothered in garlic, and potatoes au gratin were exquisite, not to mention the vintage Cabernet Sauvignon and cream-filled pastries so light and sweet they made Vlasenko’s mouth water just remembering them.

  “Ah, a fine meal,” he said to his wife, Poznia. He leaned back in his chair, eyeing the last pastry remaining on the silver serving tray.

  “I could tell you liked it, dear,” she replied. “But you know the doctor told you only last week you should watch that rich food.”

  “Bah! He also told me I was the picture of health.”

  “What about your gout? Our son was concerned when he last visited—”

  “And I’m going to take his word over that of a real doctor?”

  “Karl is a real doctor.”

  “I practically bought his degree for him!” These were perhaps the two most unsettling subjects to Cyril—his diet and his good-for-nothing son. “I only hope serving as a medical officer in the army will teach him a thing or two before he has to practice on real people. As long as they keep him away from officers, we’re all right.”

  “Oh, Cyril! I worry every day about him there at the front, facing God only knows what kind of dangers.”

  “Let’s hope it makes a man of him.”

  After a moment of silence, his wife said, “We have been invited to pay a visit to Their Royal Highnesses following the christening of the new tsarevich.”

  “Excellent! That is good news.” Watching his wife out of the corner of his eye, he reached a hand toward the pastry tray. No sense letting it go to waste—or worse, be consumed by some unappreciative servant. Being invited to the palace, especially at such an auspicious time, was quite an honor, and he deserved a small reward—his gout be hanged! He hadn’t yet had a chance to celebrate the birth of the heir, and he had every reason to do so. The continuance of the Romanov line meant the continuance of his own power and glory in Russia.

  Ignoring his wife’s raised eyebrows, he popped the whole pastry into his mouth and chewed with utter delight, then washed it down with a cup of tea.

  She rose and looked at him. “If you will excuse me, I need to dress for the evening.”

  “Do we have plans?”

  “Have you forgotten our invitation to Princess Gudosnikov’s birthday party?”

  “Indeed I have.”

  “We must be there in an hour.”

  “I’ll have the coach brought around.”

  It was turning into a decidedly fine evening. A satisfying meal, good news about the invitation to the christening, and a life fit for a prince of Russia. He was now lord and master of the Fedorcenko St. Petersburg estate, once occupied by the haughty Viktor Fedorcenko. Even most of the furnishings had come with the house, and it was a good thing; after purchasing the estate, Vlasenko hardly had enough money left to buy a doormat. Only some wise—and lucky—foreign investments provided Vlasenko with enough income to afford a few luxuries—his French chef not the least of these.

  The last three or four years had not been entirely smooth, but he had managed to hold his own in the extremely volatile world of Russian politics. That alone was a feat of amazing proportions. But he was becoming quite a master of charm and wisely placed flattery, of greasing the right palms, juggling alliances and, most importantly, being in the right place at the right time. Case in point was his presence at that silly ceremony last summer consecrating the relics of that charlatan saint, Seraphim. He had done his career no harm in presenting to the tsar ornately matted and framed photographs taken of the ceremony.

  And now, because of his manipulations, he was being considered for the illustrious post of Minister of the Interior. Such an appointment would be the crowning achievement of his career. Even Viktor Fedorcenko had never been that close to political power. Every day Vlasenko waited for a messenger to appear with the announcement. Why th
e tsar was taking so long to make his decision, Cyril could not even guess. It had been a month since the post was vacated by the tragic death of Count Plehve.

  Plehve’s death did make Cyril wonder why he was so eager to assume the job himself. It was, without a doubt, the most hazardous position in Russia. The last two Interior Ministers, Sipiagin and Plehve, had been assassinated, while countless unsuccessful attempts had been made on others. It simply was not popular to be an Interior Minister, especially if it was your policy not to cave into the clamoring of the radicals. Vlasenko had every intention of continuing the policies of Plehve; that’s why he was the tsar’s first choice for the position.

  There were rumors afoot, however, that the zemstvo leaders opposed his appointment. Everyone knew how powerless the zemstvos were, but rumors indicated that these bloated so-called leaders had enlisted the aid of the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna to appeal to her son, the emperor, about an alternate candidate. That’s all Vlasenko needed was for that old woman to meddle in government affairs. She was dangerously moderate—perhaps even liberal—in her political views, and she had little respect for Vlasenko, whom she apparently considered a pompous bore. Unfortunately, the mama’s boy Nicholas still listened to his mother. Her recommendation was Prince Svyatopolk-Mirsky, the governor-general of Vilna who had opposed the policies of both Sipiagin and Plehve. The prince sounded like Loris-Melikov, another bleeding heart liberal who would advocate lifting censorship, giving freedom to religious minorities, and instituting a constitutional monarchy. His kind wouldn’t be satisfied until Russia was reduced to resembling England—or, worse still, America!

  Vlasenko was determined to fight back by making the best use of his invitation to the palace. He would ingratiate himself shamelessly to the tsar. He would shovel flattery upon the tsaritsa; everyone knew the tsar listened to her even more than to his mother. Yes, that would be the best way to play it. Win over the empress, and he’d be as good as assured of the job. He would attend Mass a couple of times beforehand just to be in the proper frame of mind. The empress had a weakness for spiritual things.