I’d never actually been to the palace before. The prince was sole heir to the largest fortune in Russia, and I was certainly not in his set. But if I could help pull off this coup, perhaps he would reward me greatly. After all, he had tired of his old friend in carousal, Rasputin, who had gone with him to all the dubious nightclubs long before his marriage.
The prince had said quite plainly a year ago, “Will no one kill this starets for me?”
I hadn’t known it then, but when I spoke of my own plan to Pavlovich, he brought me in on this one. Because of Pavlovich’s extensive social calendar, the first time he was free was this evening, December 31. We didn’t want him canceling any of his other engagements and thus arousing suspicion.
I felt marvelous to have been able to move the monk along and could not wait to hear their applause. It warmed me on such a cold night. J leaned forward and told my driver, “Faster! Faster now.”
It was pitch-black outside, lit only by the car’s lights illuminating the swirling snow. The driver had a heavy foot, and soon we approached the palace.
I went in the back way, as if a servant, as planned. One of the stewards took me down to the cellar room where the dinner was to be. I peeked out from behind the curtain. No one was there yet.
The cellar room was of gray stone with a granite floor. It had a low, vaulted ceiling. Ah, I thought, it already feels like a mausoleum. Only the carved wooden chairs, the small tables covered with embroidered cloths, and the cabinet of inlaid ebony indicated that it was a place of habitation by the living. A white bearskin rug and a brilliant fire in the hearth further softened the room’s cemeterial aspect.
In the center of the room, a table was laid for six: the prince, the monk, Pavolovich, two other conspirators, and the prince’s wife, who had been the bait to lure Rasputin to the place. Though he was not to know it, Princess Irina was off in the Crimea with her parents, not here.
I smiled. What a plot we have hatched! What a coil!
A samovar in the middle of the table was already smoking away, surrounded by plates of cakes and dainties. On the sideboard were the drinks, filled with poison, and the glasses, their rims soaked in poison as well. Dr. Lazovert had told me himself that each cake was filled with enough cyanide potassium to kill several men in an instant.
Several! We only wanted to dispatch one.
My smile grew larger. All was at the ready. As soon as Rasputin dropped, it would be my job to get the body out of there. But just in case he was slow to die, I had a pistol as well. And my knife.
From upstairs came the sound of music. I think it was “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” that damned American song. The music was supposed to be part of a party that Princess Irina was throwing for some women friends before joining the men. I would have to hide again. They would soon be bringing Rasputin down.
I feared being found behind a curtain and situated myself on the other side of the wooden serving door. It had a small window. I could see but not be seen. Perfect.
And then the door opened, and in walked the mad monk himself, followed by a nervous-looking Prince Yusupov. I wanted to shout at him, “Stop sweating! You will give the game away.” But we were already well into it. It would play as it would play. I shrank back for a moment, away from the window in the door, took a deep breath, and waited.
Rasputin sauntered into the room, smiling. He could feel his body tingling, starting at his feet. That always meant something huge would happen soon. Perhaps Princess Irina would declare her love openly. Perhaps the prince would simply offer her to him.
But no—he preferred the chase, the slow seduction, the whimpering of the whipped dog that would be the prince. He must not jump the fence before it was close enough. His mother always said that. The old folk wisdom was true.
He touched the charm around his neck. The prince would hate him but could not harm him.
“Have some cakes,” Prince Yusupov said, gesturing with a hand toward the table. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.
Rasputin wondered at that. It was, indeed, too warm down in the cellar, but he himself was not sweating.
“The cakes were made especially. Especially for you,” Yusupov said.
And indeed, they were the very kind of he loved best. Honey cakes topped with crushed almonds, skorospelki covered with branches of fresh dill, caviar blinis, and so much more. But Rasputin did not want to appear greedy.
“Please,” Yusupov said. “Irina had them made especially. We would not want her to be disappointed.”
“No, we would not,” Rasputin said, managing to make the four words sound both engaging and insulting at the same time. He picked up a honey cake and a blini and ate them, savoring the taste. Surprisingly, they were too sweet and dry. “Some Madeira, if you please,” he told the prince.
Yusupov himself went to the sideboard and poured the wine with exquisite care into a glass.
The first glass went down quickly but barely moved the dry taste out of Rasputin’s mouth. Forgetting that he didn’t want to appear greedy, he held out the glass for refill.
Eagerly, the prince filled it for him.
“And the princess?” Rasputin said, after downing the second glass.
“Here shortly. She had to see off her own guests and change costume,” Yusupov said.
“Ah, women,” said the monk. “God bless them. My mother used to say, ‘A wife is not a pot, she will not break so easily.’ Ha-ha. But I would rather say, ‘Every seed knows its time.’ ”
Yusupov started. “What do you mean by that? What do you mean?” He was sweating again.
Rasputin put his hand out and clapped Yusupov on the shoulder. “Just that women, God bless them, are like little seeds and know their own time, even though we poor fellows do not.” He slashed a hand across his forehead. “Is it very hot in here?”
“Yes, very,” said Yusupov using a handkerchief to wipe his own forehead.
“Well, sing to me then, to pass the time till your wife gets here,” the monk said. He pointed to the guitar that rested against the wall. “I heard you singing often in those far-off days when we went into the dark sides of the city. I would hear you again. For old times’ sake. And for your lovely wife Irina’s.”
Yusupov nodded, gulped, nodded again. Then he went over and picked the guitar. Strumming, he began to sing.
I could not believe my ears. Downstairs, someone was singing, slightly off-key. I moved back and peeked carefully through the window. Rasputin was still on his feet. There seemed to be cakes missing from the table. An empty glass stood on the table as well. And Yusupov, that damned upper-class clown, was strumming his guitar and singing. Had he gone faint with worry? Had he decided not to kill his old friend after all? I turned away from the sight, raced up the servants’ stairs, and found Dr. L., Purishkevich, and Grand Duke Dmitri at the top of the stairs that led down to the cellar.
“For the Lord’s sake, what is going on?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper. “To my certain knowledge, the man ate several cakes. And had a glass of wine.”
“Two at least,” said Dr. L. “We heard him ask for a refill. He is . . . ” he whispered as well, “not a man at all, but the very devil. There was enough poison to fell an entire unit of Cossacks. I know; I put the stuff in it myself.” He looked wretched and—as we watched—he sank into a stupor.
I took his hands and finally had to slap his face to revive him.
All the while we whispered together, Yusupov’s thready voice, singing tune after tune, made its way up the stairs.
“Should we go down?” I asked.
“No, no, no,” Purishkevich whispered vehemently, “that will give the game away.”
“But surely he is already suspicious.”
“He is a peasant,” said the Grand Duke, which explained nothing.
I was a-tremble. After all we had planned, for it to come to this? This, I thought, is the worst possible thing. Oh, had I but known!
Suddenly the door to the cellar opened,
and we all backed up, I the fastest. But it was just poor Yusupov, saying over his shoulder, “Have another cake, Father. I will see what is keeping my wife.”
And Rasputin’s voice, somewhat hoarsened, called up to him, “Love and eggs are best when they are fresh!”
“A peasant,” the Grand Duke repeated, as Yusupov came up to find us.
If I was trembling, Yusupov was a leaf on a tree, all aflutter and sweating. “What should I do? What can I do?”
“He cannot be allowed to leave half-dead,” Purishkevich said laconically.
The Grand Duke handed Yusupov a pistol. “Be a man.” And Yusupov went back down the stairs, holding the pistol behind him.
We heard Rasputin call out, “For the Lord’s sake, give me more wine.” And then he added, “With God in thought, but mankind in the flesh.” A moment later we heard a shot. And a scream. “Come,” said the Grand Duke, “that will have done it.” I was not so sure, but in this company it was not my place to say. We ran down the stairs one right after another, the Grand Duke first, Dr. L. second. Purishkevich stayed behind.
The monk had fallen backward onto the white bearskin rug, his eyes closed.
Dr. L. knelt by his side, felt for his pulse. “He is dead.” But of course, that was premature, for not a moment later, Rasputin’s left eye, then his right, opened, and he stared straight at Yusupov with those green eyes that reminded me of dragon eyes. They were filled suddenly with hatred. Yusupov screamed.
I could not move, nor could poor Yusupov. The Grand Duke was cursing under his breath. And I thought we were about to lose Dr. L. again.
“Long whiskers cannot take the place of brains,” said Rasputin to the ceiling, and as he spoke, he began to foam at the mouth. A moment later, he leaped up, grabbed poor Yusupov by the throat, tore an epaulet from Yusupov’s jacket.
Yusupov was sweating so badly that the monk’s hand slipped from his throat, and Yusupov broke away from him, which threw Rasputin down on his knees.
That gave Yusupov time to escape, and he turned and raced up the stairs. He was screaming out to Purishkevich to fire his gun, shouting, “He’s alive! Alive!” His voice was inhuman, a terrified scream the likes of which I’d never heard before or since.
The three of us watched as Rasputin, foaming and fulminating, and on all fours, climbed after him.
Prince Yusupov made it to his parents’ apartments and locked the door after him, but the mad monk, maddened further by all that had happened to him, went straight out the front door. The rest of us followed him to see what he would do, Dr. L. muttering all the while that he was a devil and would probably sprout red wings and fly away.
But he was not flying; he was running across the snow-covered courtyard towards the iron gate that led to the street, shouting all the while, “Felix, Felix, I will tell everything to the Empress.”
At last, Purishkevich raised his gun and fired.
The night seemed one long, dark echo. But he had missed.
“Fire again!” I cried. If Rasputin got away, we were all dead men.
He fired again and, unbelievably, missed once more.
“Fool!” the Grand Duke said as Purishkevich bit his own left hand to force himself to concentrate.
When he fired a third time, the bullet struck Rasputin between the shoulders, and he stopped running though he did not fall.
“A devil, I tell you!” cried the doctor.
“I am surrounded by fools,” the Grand Duke said, and I was inclined to agree with him.
But Purishkevich shot one last time, and this one hit Rasputin in the head, and he fell to his knees. Purishkevich ran over to him and kicked him hard, a boot to the temple. At that, the monk finally fell down prostrate in the snow.
Suddenly Yusupov appeared with a rubber club and began hitting Rasputin hysterically over and over and over again.
The Grand Duke took hold of Yusupov’s shoulders and led him away.
Only then did I take out my knife and plunge it deep into Rasputin’s heart. I wanted to say something, anything, but there was nothing more to say.
A servant came out a little later with a rope, and we pulled the body to the frozen Neva and left it there.
“Should we find a hole and push him in?” I asked.
“Let the world see him,” the Grand Duke said. “Dead is dead.”
I looked at the mad monk splayed out on the ice and wondered at that. By my count, he should have died five times tonight before my knife decided the thing. But, “Dead is dead,” I agreed with the Grand Duke, and left him lying there.
I went home but could not scrub away the feel of my hand touching his back, the knife going deep into his body.
“It is ended,” I told my image in the mirror. But it had only begun.
The mad monk lay on the ice. His back hurt abominably where the knife had plunged in. He couldn’t move.
“I curse you,” he muttered, or tried to. His lips were frozen shut, and anyway, he wasn’t sure whom he should be cursing, not knowing who had set the blade deep in his back. Instead, he cursed his old drinking companion, his betrayer.
Felix, may you lose all that is dear to you.
His shoulder and the back of his head hurt, too, though not as badly, Oddly enough his stomach and throat were burning as well. He wondered if the cakes—how many had he eaten?—had disagreed with him. Trust the prvidvorny, the courtiers, to make stale and rotten cakes. His own mother could have done better.
He was cold, but he had been colder. The Lord knew how cold a muzhik from Siberia could get without succumbing. He was wearing his charm, so men couldn’t kill him. Nor women, it turned out. The whore who had slit him from stem to sternum had learned that. He would survive this.
But he could not move.
How long till the full moon? he thought. How long till that fool Lenin arrives and lets the dragons out of their hole?
Dragons, when caught in their lairs, can be drowned, starved out, slaughtered by massed rifle fire—in fact, killed in any number of ways. It was why the Tsar’s dragons’ stables were better guarded than his own home. In the skies, they were unstoppable: swift fire from the night skies and death to all who stood against them, like Jews and revolutionaries. But not now.
The fools haven’t killed me. But if I don’t recover before the moon is full, they will have killed Russia.
He tried to twitch a finger, blink an eyelid. Nothing.
I must rest. I will try again in the morning.
The moon rose over the frozen Neva, a near-perfect circle.
I have perhaps two days, he thought, his mind perfectly clear. Maybe three.
The red dragons were no longer restless, because, for the first time, they’d been led up into the night air. Long noses sniffed at the sky; wings unfurled and caught the slight breeze. But they were not loosed to fly. Not yet. Not till Lenin gave the word.
The man in question, who had arrived just the night before, stood watching the dragons critically. Bronstein knew that the Bolshevik leader had never seen dragons before tonight, but he was showing neither awe nor fear in their presence. On the contrary, he was eyeing them critically, one hand stroking his beard.
“You are sure they will function, Leon?”
Lenin meant him, Bronstein. He insisted on calling Bronstein by his revolutionary name. Bronstein realized just now that he didn’t much care for it. It was an ugly name, Leon. And Trotsky sounds like a town in Poland. He wondered how soon he could go back to the name he’d been born with. And he thought at the same time that taking revolutionary names was like a boys’ game. Such silliness!
“Leon!” Lenin snapped. “Will they function?”
“I . . . I do not know for sure,” Bronstein said, too quickly, knowing that he should have lied and said that he was certain. “But they are the same stock as the Tsar’s dragons,” he added. “And those function well enough.”
Bronstein was certain of that at least. He’d traced the rumor of a second brood bred from the Great
Khan’s dragons with the thoroughness of a Talmudic scholar. Traced the rumor through ancient documents detailing complex treaties and Byzantine trades to a kingdom in North Africa. Traced it by rail and camel and foot to a city that drought had turned to desert when the pharaohs were still young. Traced it with maps and bribes and a little bit of luck to a patch of sand that hadn’t seen a drop of rain in centuries.
Then he’d dug. And dug.
And dug some more.
He dug till he’d worn through three shovels and done what he was sure was irreparable damage to his arms and shoulders. Dug till the sun scorched the Russian pall from his face and turned it to dragon-leather. Dug till the desert night froze him colder than any Russian would ever care to admit.
Dug till he found the first new dragon eggs in over 120 years. The Tsar’s dragon queen hadn’t dropped a hatch of eggs in a century, nor was she likely to anytime soon. And even if she did, it would be years before the eggs would hatch.
Dragon eggs weren’t like other eggs. They didn’t need warmth and heat to bring forth their hatchlings. They were already creatures of fire; they needed a cool, damp place to develop.
Nothing colder and wetter than a Russian spring, Bronstein knew. So he’d brought them home in giant wooden boxes and planted them on the hillside overlooking his town, doing all the work himself.
Another thing that set dragon eggs apart: they could sit for years, even centuries, until the conditions were right to be born.
“And some would say,” Bronstein said to Lenin, “they should be more powerful, having lain in their eggs for so much longer.”
Lenin stared at him blankly for a moment, then turned to Koba. “Are your men ready?”
Koba grinned, and his straight teeth reflected orange from the fire of a snorting dragon. The handler calmed the beast as Koba spoke.
“Ready to kill at my command, Comrade.”
Lenin turned a stern gaze at the moon as if he could command it to rise faster. Koba glanced at Bronstein and grinned wider.
A dragon coughed a gout of flame, and Koba’s eyes reflected the fire. Bronstein looked into those eyes of flame and knew that if he let Koba loose his men before Bronstein launched his dragons, then he had lost. There would be no place for him in the new Russia. The land would be ruled by Georgian murderers and cutthroat thieves; new kruks to replace the old, and the proletariat worse off than before. Not the Eden he’d dreamed of. And the Jews? Well, they, of course, would be blamed.
People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction & Fantasy Page 19