The Tsarina's Daughter (Reading Group Gold)

by Carolly Erickson

  Mama couldn’t help smiling, though she tried not to.

  “Don’t disgrace your family, either of you. Besides, if you giggle or make fools of yourselves, you will surely make me and your papa laugh, and that would never do.”

  When we were presented to Uncle Edward and Queen Alexandra I had to blink several times to assure myself I wasn’t imagining things. The king was an old man with white hair and a full white beard, immensely fat, wearing a red plaid waistcoat beneath his formal evening dress. He sat in a wide thronelike chair at one end of the ballroom with the smiling, pretty, dark-haired Aunt Alexandra beside him, and he had the Racing Form folded on his lap.

  Olga’s name and mine were announced, and we approached the royals and curtseyed.

  The king looked at us gravely, and then said, in a throaty bass voice loud enough for mama to hear, “Two fine Russian fillies from your stables, Sunshine. Where are the rest?”

  I had never heard mama called by her childhood nickname of Sunshine before. She blushed at the name, her blush a fiery red. But she did not look entirely displeased, and I heard her reply, in her soft voice, “They are on the Standart, Pudge.”

  The king looked startled, then burst out with a laugh so hearty and so infectious that it brought smiles to many faces.

  “Pudge! Ha! Pudge!” His laugh made his old man’s features look boyish and gleeful. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years. The dear old queen’s name for me. Pudge!” He peered at mama. “You must come out with me, Sunshine, in my new Daimler. Will you?”

  “Gladly, if Your Majesty wishes.”

  “Come now, Sunshine, none of this Your Majesty nonsense. I prefer Pudge!”

  The king seated us near him at supper and continued to look jolly and merry as he worked his way greedily through course after course of lavish dishes, each course washed down with a different fine wine. At his elbow, as he ate, was a jar of Bar-le-Duc jam which he smeared liberally across the meats and fish, the lobster and even the subtly flavored side dishes. At times the king paused to listen to the lively band—the Blue Hungarian—and waved his fork in the air in time to the music.

  The ballroom was splendid with oversize epergnes filled with orchids and white lilacs ornamenting the supper tables, and we ate off beautiful Sèvres china and drank from sparkling crystal goblets that shone as brightly as the women’s crownlike tiaras. Tall footmen in yellow jackets and green breeches stood behind each chair, ready to remove plates, fill goblets, even pick up stray flowers that fell from the women’s white tulle gowns.

  My thoughts could not help wandering to the scenes I had witnessed in the Vyborg, that horrifying yet fascinating world of want and overcrowded wretchedness at home in Petersburg. What would all these beautifully dressed, well fed people think if they could see what I had seen there? What would my family think if they knew that I had gone to Daria’s basement apartment with Avdokia the milk woman not only once but several times, each time taking food and castoff clothing and, on the final time, medicine for the woman in the filthy apartment who had such a bad cough.

  My musings were interrupted by the strident voice of a woman across the table from me, an American.

  “I had it made in Paris,” she was telling her neighbor. “It is an exact duplicate of a crown made for a Spanish queen.”

  “Mine is a replica of one worn by the Empress Josephine at her coronation,” came another female voice.

  “Some, of course, are more authentic than others. I’m told the pawnshops are full of tiaras with false gems. After all, royalty has its tawdry side.”

  This ill-advised remark was greeted by a hush. Everyone looked at the king, to see if he had taken offense. But he was concentrating on the plate of partridges being set in front of him, and appeared not to have heard the offensive remark.

  While we watched, he took a knife and spread Bar-le-Duc jam over the roasted birds. Then he took a bite. At once the corners of his mouth turned down and his nose wrinkled in distaste. He spat his mouthful of partridge onto the delicate china plate.

  “This sauce tastes like old shoe leather!” he cried out. “And the birds are tough. Bring me my prune soufflé.” And taking the plate of partridges he tossed it onto the carpet and reached for his goblet of wine.

  Thirteen

  Preparations for the race went forward feverishly. Mama’s cousin Willy held race practices for his crew every afternoon, whether or not the wind was favorable, conducting them himself, and had the Meteor hauled out of the water and her bow scraped again and again, lest the smallest bit of dirt or weed or barnacle mar the smooth fast surface of the narrow hull.

  Uncle Bertie did not go aboard the New Britannia himself, but had a superb crew—so everyone said—and watched them sailing up and down in front of the Royal Yacht Squadron when he was not preoccupied with driving his Daimler or organizing torchlight parades or talking about his hopes for his race horses Persimmon and Witch of Air.

  There were to be five yachts in the upcoming race, though it was agreed that either the Meteor or the New Britannia would surely win, the other boats being inferior in design and operation.

  “Besides,” mama said to Olga and me when we were alone, “they wouldn’t let any really fast boats enter the race. It wouldn’t do to have some boat owned by a commoner beat a royal yacht.”

  As race day approached mama became more and more weary of all the racing talk and tired of waiting on the lawn in front of the Royal Yacht Squadron to watch the afternoon’s trials.

  “I think I’ll invite the ladies to tea aboard the Standart,” she said. “Yes. A party just for the ladies. We can have lobster and caviar, tea cakes and pastries.”

  “But mama,” I reminded her, “remember what happened when you gave your last party. Ladies can be very unkind.”

  “Don’t talk foolishness, Tania. These are my relatives, here at Cowes. Good kind English and German folk, most of them, not haughty Russians!”

  “Grandma Minnie will be there,” I reminded her. I could not help thinking about Grandma Minnie’s harsh, critical words about mama and what she had said to Monsieur Gilliard about her. I was convinced that Grandma Minnie wanted to put mama into a home for mad people, or a dark dungeon.

  “But she will be with her sister the queen,” mama replied. “She would not be unkind to me when Queen Alexandra is with her, surely. The queen is so gentle and thoughtful.”

  “Don’t listen to Tania, mama,” Olga said. “She is only a child. She cannot yet understand women as we can.”

  The tea was held as mama wished, and if she had been worried that the women she invited might not come to her party, she was soon able to relax as launch after launch came up to the Standart, delivering silk-gowned, white-gloved, straw-hatted ladies in twos and threes.

  Among them were Queen Alexandra and her three daughters, pop-eyed Victoria, plain Louise and Maud, whose ears stuck out; mama’s older sisters Victoria and Irene (my third favorite aunt, next to Ella, because she was always so happy and bubbly); and mama’s cousin Ducky, who had been married to mama’s brother Uncle Ernie but who decided she would rather be married to Uncle Vladimir’s son Kyril, who she really loved.

  There were more relatives than I could count or name, most of them with round faces and fat necks like Great-grandma Victoria. There were also some American ladies, Mrs. Yerkes and Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Astor and several others.

  Grandma Minnie arrived on the arm of a grey-haired, respectable looking gentleman whom she introduced as Mr. Schmidt, and who apologized to mama for coming uninvited to her tea party for ladies.

  “I have no wish to intrude,” he said in German-accented English, the accent different from cousin Willy’s and Adalbert’s.

  “He is here as my escort,” Grandma Minnie said. “I felt a bit shaky this afternoon, and took some of my Quiet Drops, and then needed a man’s arm to hold onto when I came over in the launch. Nicky was out on the Meteor with Willy, so I asked Mr. Schmidt if he would accompany me.”


  Mama had a chair brought for Grandma Minnie and welcomed Mr. Schmidt, urging him to be at his ease. He went to sit in a corner of the salon and smiled and nodded at the ladies. He said little, I noticed, but observed all that went on around him.

  Mama, who was usually very elegantly but simply dressed, had decided on that afternoon to wear, over a plain ivory gown, a colorful Japanese kimono.

  “How very singular,” I heard one of the American ladies say when she arrived. Another whispered “odd, very odd” to her companion—but I heard her despite her whispering.

  “And is this the way they dress in Russia now, Alix,” said mama’s Aunt Helena with some asperity. “I don’t think dear mama would have approved.”

  Only Queen Alexandra was charitable in her reaction, praising the lovely kimono for its fine silk and beautiful embroidery and adding how lovely mama looked in it.

  The room was filling with cigarette smoke as mama, made tense by the frowning looks and disparaging remarks her kimono attracted, lit one cigarette after another.

  “I know my mother would have liked my kimono,” she said to no one in particular. “She probably would have worn one too. She went her own way, made her own choices.”

  I had often heard mama say this about her mother, my grandmother Alice, praising her as the most outspoken and the most intelligent of Queen Victoria’s nine children. I had also heard mama say that her mother and Helena had often quarreled.

  “She was a freethinker, my sister Alice was,” Helena remarked, not making the least effort to hide her disdain. “An atheist. She questioned all the truths of the Bible.”

  “She was a student of the Bible, yes. As of many different religious texts. She had a brilliant mind. A mind made to probe into the truth of things.”

  “I’d like to probe into that delicious-looking plate of cakes,” piped up one of the American ladies, moving toward the tea table where silver trays of finger sandwiches, scones, breads and cheese and shrimp pâté were displayed, along with a large red velvet cake and lots of different kinds of pastries. “Serious talk makes me hungry.”

  Several others got up quickly and joined the American lady. But the interruption did not prevent mama from continuing to talk about her mother.

  “She was the best mother anyone could have. She died for her children. Maud, Louise,” she went on, addressing the princesses, “you remember my mother don’t you, your Aunt Alice?” The young women nodded. “How loving she was, and how intelligent? You must remember.”

  “I remember something about Providence,” Maud remarked timidly. “I think she said it didn’t exist.”

  “There! What did I tell you!” exclaimed Helena. “She was an atheist.”

  A thought struck me.

  “Where do atheists go when they die?” I asked. “For them there is no heaven or hell.”

  “They are eternally damned, of course,” said Helena with a snort. “They deny God. Where else should they go but hell?”

  “My mother is not in hell,” mama said with feeling. “Her spirit is still among us. I see her often.”

  The murmur of conversation in the room ceased, and all eyes were turned on mama, who nervously lit another cigarette and stood where she was, her kimono awry, staring at Helena and smoking.

  At this point Mr. Schmidt slowly rose from his seat and came over to mama, looking down into her frowning face and saying, very quietly, “It is no wonder this talk of your late mother has distressed you. Won’t you come and sit with me for a moment, just until you feel calmer?”

  She looked up at him, suspiciously at first, then questioningly, and finally with a look that I rarely saw on her face, a look of submission.

  Who is this man? I wondered.

  “Mama? Are you all right? Can I come with you?”

  “Of course Tania. Come and sit beside me. Let the ladies have their tea.”

  “I find that a quiet talk often calms me,” Mr. Schmidt said, seating himself and patting the cushion next to him. Mama sat down, loosening the waist belt of her kimono and sighing.

  “Ah, that’s better. Do you know, I believe this obi has been making me uncomfortable. It’s just like a Japanese corset.”

  Mr. Schmidt nodded. “I wondered whether that might be the case. How are you feeling now?”

  “Perhaps I have a migraine coming on. Upsetting things affect my health.”

  “Do you have these migraines often?”

  “They are the bane of my life. My, how easy you are to talk to, Mr. Schmidt.”

  He smiled. “I enjoy the conversation of beautiful ladies. And their daughters,” he added, looking over at me.

  “I have been admiring your kimono,” he said presently. “Have you been to Japan?”

  “No, but I should like to go. I often wish—”

  “What is it that you often wish?”

  “That I could escape to someplace like Japan, where no one would hate me.”

  I was startled. I wanted to say, “But mama, no one hates you,” but something stopped me. Perhaps it was Mr. Schmidt’s kindly, interested manner. Then too I was thinking, was she right?

  “Japan is the country that attacked Russia, is it not?” Mr. Schmidt was saying. “And destroyed many ships of the Russian navy? I find it illuminating that you should dress in a Japanese kimono here in Cowes, where the prowess of the British and German sailing vessels are celebrated—and aboard your own Russian yacht. You dress in the costume of an enemy, not a friend. Why do you suppose that is?”

  Mama looked at him, her eyes wide open in wonder.

  “I cannot imagine.”

  “Perhaps it is no significant thing.” He shrugged. “I once spent weeks trying to imagine why a man I know keeps dreaming of a tree full of white wolves.”

  There was a pause. I looked out across the salon. The ladies were eating and chatting. They seemed not to be paying any attention to our little group in the corner.

  “I have many strange dreams,” mama said presently, in a sort of faroff voice. “Sometimes I dream of cranberries—or of pins, thousands of steel pins. I’m trying to pick them all up but I can’t, they get stuck in the carpet. I step on them. Alexei steps on them. He bleeds.”

  “It is only natural that you should be concerned in your dreams about your son. The hope of the Romanov dynasty. He carries so much on his small shoulders. And I know that he is ill.”

  Mama began to cry.

  “There, there, my dear. I had no idea I would cause you pain. I mean to offer only sympathy and kindness—and understanding.”

  “You are kind,” I heard mama murmur when her tears stopped flowing and she was wiping her face with her linen handkerchief. “Even kinder than Father Gregory, who sometimes chastises me. He says my faith is too small.”

  “I have heard something of this Father Gregory. He sounds like a remarkable man. Tell me, do you ever dream of him?”

  “Of Father Gregory? No. Only of cranberries, and pins, and—and—”

  “Yes?”

  “And the grey dove.”

  “Tell me about the dove.”

  Mama thought for a moment. “She makes soft sounds. She is delicate and weak. She needs to be protected.”

  “Does the grey dove remind you of anyone?”

  Once again she paused in thought. “When I was a child and visiting my grandmother the queen, for a few weeks I had a governess called Miss Dove.”

  “Was she delicate and weak?”

  Mama laughed. “Hardly. She was fierce and tough-looking, and had iron-grey hair. My sisters and I were afraid of her.”

  “Tell me, what happens to the dove in your dream?”

  “She tries to fly away, but she can’t. Her pink feet are caught in sticky mud, and she flaps her wings but she can’t free herself.”

  “Who has trapped her?”

  Mama shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Ah, then, perhaps it is not time yet for you to understand the meaning of that dream.” Mr. Schmidt patted mama on the l
eg, in a gesture of affection, as one might make to a child. It happened to be her sore leg.

  She bristled, and drew her leg away sharply. “That hurts. What are you doing? You have no permission to touch me.”

  “I assure you, Your Imperial Highness, it was never my intent to give offense. Thank you for this little talk. I wonder if I might excuse myself now and take tea?” He stood, speaking ingratiatingly and with his disarming smile.

  “You are excused.” The frosty manner mama usually showed with strangers had returned.

  “Who was that man, mama?” I asked, watching his retreating back.

  “A friend of Grandma Minnie’s I suppose. Or maybe a friend of her sister’s. How queerly he talked. And yet—”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “Nonsense, Tania. You don’t know him. He seems perfectly harmless. Rather soothing, in fact.”

  I brought mama some tea and cakes and sat with her for awhile, as one after another the ladies came up to say a few words to her before taking their leave. After a time Olga joined us.

  “They are all gossiping about Uncle Michael,” Olga confided to us. “How he married Aunt Dina without papa’s permission.”

  It was the most recent in a series of family “indiscretions,” as mama called them. (Grandma Minnie called them “scandals” or “tragedies.”) Papa’s handsome younger brother Michael, who was next in line for the throne after Alexei, had refused to marry a royal bride Grandma Minnie chose for him and instead had married one of the ladies in waiting of the court, Dina Kossikovsky. Papa was very upset because Uncle Michael had given him his word that he would not marry this Dina, but then he had gone to France or somewhere else wicked and they had gotten married anyway.

  “You are not to discuss these things, Olga. If you hear someone gossiping, just turn your head away or say ‘I don’t believe that is a fit subject to discuss.’ You will shame the other person.”

  “Yes, mama. But it is so interesting—”

  “Hush!”

  I brought mama some more tea. She seemed to be her old self again. She stood when Grandma Minnie came to say goodbye, leaning on Mr. Schmidt’s arm.