The Last Tsar's Dragons

by Jane Yolen

  “You ever notice,” Bronstein, began, “that every time we ask the tsar to stop a war—”

  “He kills us,” Borutsch finished for him, his beard jumping. “Lots of us.” Bronstein nodded in agreement and was about to go on, but Borutsch didn’t even pause for breath. “When he went after Japan we told him, ‘It’s a tiny island with nothing worth having. Let the little mazzikim who think they’re descended from the sun god keep it. Russia is big enough. Why try to add eighteen square miles of nothing but volcanoes and rice?’”

  Bronstein took off the oval eyeglasses that matched his pinched face so well and idly smeared the dust from one side of the lenses to the other with an old handkerchief. “Well, what I mean to say is—”

  “And this latest. His high mucky-muck Franz falls over dead drunk in Sarajevo and never wakes up again, and all of a sudden Germany is a rabid dog biting everyone within reach.” Borutsch gnashed his teeth at several imaginary targets, setting his long beard flopping so wildly that he was in danger of sticking it in his own eye. “But why should we care? Let Germany have France. France let that midget monster loose on us a century ago; they can get a taste of their own borscht now.”

  “Yes, well—”

  But Borutsch was not to be stopped. “How big a country does one man need? What is he going to do with it? His dragons have torched more than half of it, and his ‘Fists,’ those damned Cossacks—” He spit the words out, then actually spit, sending sputum to sizzle on the hot tiles. “The Fists have stripped the other half clean of anything of value. While we Jews are stuck in the middle again. . . .”

  “Wood and grain,” Bronstein managed to interject. The only things worth more than the dragons themselves, he thought. Wood in the winter and grain in the spring—the two seasons Russia gets. The nine aggregate days that made up summer and fall didn’t really count.

  “Yes. So he sends us to fight and die for a country we don’t own and that’s worth nothing anyway, and if we happen to survive he sends us off to Siberia to freeze our dumplings off. And if we complain?” Borutsch pointed his finger at Bronstein, thumb straight. “Ka-pow.”

  Bronstein waited to see if the older man was going to go on, but Borutsch was frowning into his schnapps now, as if it had disagreed with something just said.

  “Yes, well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Pinchas.” Borutsch looked up at his name, his eyes sorrowful and just slightly bleary from drink. Bronstein went on. “I’ve got an idea.”

  Borutsch’s lips curled upward in a quiet smile, but his eyes remained sad. “You always do, Lev. You always do.”

  “It’s more than an idea this time,” Bronstein said. “I’ve taken action.” Borutsch’s face seemed caught between curiosity and apprehension, and yet Bronstein hesitated. Maybe I shouldn’t tell him. I can go on by myself for a bit longer.

  But he knew that wasn’t true. For what he wanted to do, he needed allies. He needed helpers. He needed friends. And he needed to start gathering them as soon as possible.

  While Bronstein argued internally, curiosity finally won out with Borutsch. “What is this idea then, Lev? Tell me what have you ‘taken action’ on?”

  Bronstein found that tone irksome. This is who I want to share my dream with? A disapproving old man who talks and talks and never acts—never does anything!

  But he had to admit that this thought was neither charitable nor true. He knew the work Borutsch had done with the Black Repartition party and the Emancipation of Labor party, and he’d worked at Iskra with him in England, writing Marxist news and smuggling it into Russia.

  He has always been a friend to the worker and, I have to admit, a friend to me. It’s not his fault that he has grown old and his defeats hang on him like stubborn leaves on a winter tree. Frowning, he came to a decision. He may disagree with the methods I have adopted, but he can’t argue that his methods haven’t failed.

  “I won’t tell you,” he said. But before Borutsch could ask “why not?” Bronstein continued, “I will show you.”

  The mad monk was not so mad as people thought. Calculating, yes. Manipulative, yes. Seductive, definitely.

  He stared speculatively at himself in a gilded mirror in the queen’s apartments. His eyes were almost gold.

  Like a dragon’s, he thought.

  He was wrong. The dragons’ eyes were coal black. Shroud black. Except for the dragon queen. Hers were green. Ocean green, black underwater green with a lighter, almost foamy green color in the center. But then the mad monk had never actually been down to see the dragons in their stalls or talked to their stall boys.

  He didn’t dare.

  If there was one thing that frightened Rasputin, it was dragons. There had been a prophecy about it. And as calculating a man as he was, he was also a man of powerful peasant beliefs.

  He who fools with dragons

  Will himself be withered in their flames.

  It was even stronger in the original Siberian.

  Not that you can find anyone who speaks that here, he thought. Not even the peasants. But he’d not heard his native tongue for years, for he had chosen to be here in the center of the empire. Which is where I belong. He smiled at his reflection, his long eyeteeth lending him a wolfish look, which suited him. From a child, he’d known he was made for greater things than scraping a thin living from the Siberian tundra like his parents.

  Or dying in the cold waters of the Tura like my siblings.

  Or drowning on dry land from too much homemade vodka like my cousins.

  He shook off the black thoughts—which came to him too often to be a coincidence. Prophecy, perhaps. One must always listen to prophecy. Then he made a quick kiss at his image in the mirror.

  “Now there’s an enchanting man,” he said aloud, but in his own dialect, just in case he should be overheard and mocked. If he feared dragons, he hated mockery. And the court was very polished in its use.

  Still, his own face always did much to cheer him—as well did the ladies of the court. The ladies of the court always took him out of his black moods. As did the ladies of the pantry. And the laundry. And the field.

  To say the mad monk was fond of the ladies was to say that the salmon was fond of the stream. Or that the bear was fond of the salmon.

  “Father Grigori,” said a light, breathy child’s voice from the region of his hip. “Pick me up.”

  The mad monk was not so mad as to refuse the order from the tsar’s only son. The boy might be ill, sometimes desperately so. The skin stretched over his pitifully thin body was often covered with bruises, as if someone had beaten him. As if anyone would dare.

  But one day, Rasputin knew, one day soon the boy would be tsar. The stars foretold it. And the Lord God— who spoke to Father Grigori in his dreams of fire and ice—had foretold it as well. And who am I, Rasputin whispered to himself, to argue with God? Though he’d done so since his own boyhood. Argued, wheedled, cajoled. And God had joined in the conversations with great enthusiasm, the monk’s high position being a sign of how much the Lord had enjoyed their conversations.

  “As you wish and for my pleasure,” Rasputin said to the boy, bending down and picking up the child. He bore him carefully, knowing that if he pressed too hard, bruises the size and color of fresh beets would form and not fade for weeks.

  The boy looked up at him fondly and said, “Let’s go see Mama,” and Father Grigori’s mouth broke into a wolfish grin. The boy was still too young to recognize what it meant. The tsarina was a tasty dish to be chewed slowly and savored, as the royals did their food, not bolted like the peasants would have done. He may have begun as a peasant, but he’d learned his lessons well. Moderation in all things. Well, at least moderation in most things.

  “Yes, let’s,” Rasputin told the tsar’s son. “As you wish and for my pleasure.” He settled Alexei on his back, then practically danced down the long hall with the child riding him as if he were the tsar’s own steed and not the tsarina’s pet monk.

  Having made i
t back to my apartment, I felt revived and thought about lovely Ninotchka. Perhaps she would be receptive . . . even if it was afternoon.

  I recalled how we had met, not a year ago at the Bal Blanc, Ninotchka in virginal white, her perfect shoulders bare, diamonds circling that elegant neck like a barrier. I had been between wives—I married young and often—and was so thoroughly enchanted by her, I asked her to marry me after two afternoons. Hastily, yes. It was less than a year after my wife’s death, not quite a scandal, but close enough. However, I had been besotted with Ninotchka and didn’t want to chance someone else claiming her fortune. Or her virtue.

  If only I had taken more time. It was not that much later I discovered that the diamonds were her sister’s, and her virtue, like the diamonds, a mirage. It was only much, much later that she discovered how little money I actually had.

  I suppose all those discoveries could have crippled the marriage, but we both understood the contract between us was important for our standing amongst the courtiers. To all who saw us on a daily basis, we had to appear astonishingly in love. Even the talkative servants did not know our secret despairs.

  One has to learn to be a survivor here. Otherwise, the winters are even colder.

  It was very quiet in the apartment. Possibly Ninotchka was napping. Or she might be entertaining. I hoped she was available and not with some of her admirers. My earlier weakness had wakened a great desire, as if I had a need to prove my powers.

  My mouth had become slightly sour, the taste of too much tea, or not enough. Perhaps from thinking too much . . . about Ninotchka. The problem with taking someone so young to wife is getting one’s turn with her. Nights, of course, she is always mine, but who really knew what Ninotchka was getting up to during the day? I am not bothered by indiscretions as long as they are discreet. But I did hope it was with some rich royal, otherwise her beauty would be wasted.

  I had already unlocked the door to the apartment, was partway into the Great Hall. Thought about knocking on her bedroom door, about some man scrabbling out of the bed, to hide behind hastily gathered sheets, or a pillow. While lovely Ninotchka lay there smiling her perfect smile.

  Suddenly realizing: I don’t want to know, I turned abruptly on my heel, the new boots making a squealing noise on the tiled floor. The sound was not unlike the squeal a sow makes in labor. I had watched many of them at my summer farm. A farm, thankfully not on the dragons’ route. Yet.

  I was good at making quick decisions. Unlike the rest of the courtiers, sycophants and toadies all. Unlike the tsar of all the Russias, who is the worst of them all. One day he blows hot, the next cold. And they blow right along with him. Soon there will be no weather at all. Not a bad witticism. I figured I would save it for the next dinner party—though without the tsar’s name attached, of course.

  I closed the door behind me with a very quiet but final

  snick.

  And thinking of the weather, it felt as if there were a storm in my brain. Sometimes my thoughts worked that way. And what I was suddenly thinking about were the tsar’s dragons.

  I decided, not quite on a whim, to go down to the stalls and visit them, those black creatures out of nightmares. I felt that the dragons were the key. Though I wasn’t sure the key to what. There is a strange, dark intelligence there. Or maybe not exactly intelligence as we humans understand it, more like cunning. If only we could harness that as well as we have harnessed their loyalty—from centuries of captivity and a long leash—much like the Cossacks, actually.

  I nodded to myself, liking the dragon/Cossacks analogy. It explained so much. The Cossacks are without guile and incredibly loyal. They are all about the use of physical power, brute strength—as are the dragons, though I suspect the dragons are smarter. With a bit of luck, I might figure out this harrowing business. If the tsar listened to me this next time, he might finally make me a count. Then Ninotchka would be available in the afternoons, too. It all came down to the dragons. And the making of the plan.

  As I strode down the hallway, I could feel a great grin wreathing my mouth. Making decisions, even hasty ones, always lifts my spirit. I took several deep breaths, could feel my blood began to race. There was another stirring down below. Good Lord, I felt twenty years old again.

  I even began to whistle, which, if any of the royals had been in the hallway, would have been a terrible breach of protocol. . . .

  And then suddenly there was the mad monk with the tsarevitch on his back.

  The whistle died on my lips.

  At least the two were paying me no mind. The boy riding on Rasputin as if the old man were a horse.

  All the child needs is a whip. I could probably find one for him.

  Just as quickly, I thought: If the monk stumbles . . . if the boy slips off his back . . . I could be a hero.

  I began moving toward them quickly, walking more on the balls of my feet, swinging my arms.

  Rasputin is the only person—noble or servant—who dares carry the child without soft lambs-wool blankets wrapped about him. I knew the boy’s skin was like the oldest porcelain. It could be smashed by the slightest touch.

  Well before they reached me, I saluted the monk, saying conversationally, “Father Grigori!”

  He nodded back, interrupting his flow of words to the boy only briefly to call out, “Kozzle!” though it wasn’t my name, only sounded somewhat similar. Then he was back to telling the tsarevitch he was a strong and just young prince and would someday be a great tsar like his father. All lies, of course, but something in his big, peasant voice made you believe it. You could read all of Siberia in his speech, and though they weren’t deep thinkers, the moujiks of the steppes weren’t liars, either.

  Rasputin, it was rumored, was both.

  All the while I was really ready to seize the child if necessary, thinking: Rasputin may be just a moujik by birth, and he may really be as mad as they say, but I would be madder still to neglect the obeisance he demands. He has the ear of the tsarevitch. And the tsarevitch’s mother, Alexandra. Perhaps more than just her ear, if you believe the rumors.

  But my mind shuddered at going that far. Besides, the tsarina was much too fastidious for any such thing. She was, after all, the granddaughter of the Upright Queen, as Victoria of England was known hereabouts. Probably stiff as a board in bed. But then that was said of all the English.

  Though I suspect Victoria was upright only because her stays were too tight and because who would want to fumble in the dark with her? It’s a wonder that randy German prince could get that many children on her. It was another small joke I would never dare say aloud, even to my few intimate friends. Because that kind of loose talk—even if meant as a joke—gets out and ruins careers, even if it is humorous. The tsar is besotted with his wife and will hear nothing bad about her, even in jest. In fact, no jests about her beloved grandmother, either. I wonder if the tsar has any sense of humor at all. Possibly it was removed at birth, like the Jews removed the foreskins of their sons.

  As Rasputin came nearer, he gave me a sullen glance. Peasant to the base, but—I had to give this much to him—possessed of a kind of sardonic wit.

  Still, the memory of my almost-name so recently in his mouth seemed to turn everything to ashes. As if the monk had cursed me. And me with no ability to curse him back.

  Suddenly my head was filled with too many passing thoughts, all jumbled together: The man is a monster, a peasant, and a lecher. He never addresses me by my title, but this time he looks at me with that slow, sensual grimace that drives all the women of the court wild. I wonder if it’s true that he touches the louche men of the court as well with that throb of a smile. To me it looks like a serpent’s smile. I trust it not at all. It has no warmth, no fellowship in it, only menace.

  As he drew even to me in the hall, he finally left off his tale-telling to the boy and whispered sharply to me, “Commend me to your young wife, she of the swan neck and the drawer full of fake pearls.”

  Yes, I admit I was startled at
what he said.

  And then, to compound the insult, the young tsar on his back tittered, as if he understood what had been implied.

  At first, I thought that the monk had brought the boy inside while he did his dirty business. But I forced myself to coolly dissect what Rasputin had said. The boy would surely have reported back any such thing as an entry into someone’s apartment to his mother or nannies. At his age, he would know little about the backstairs of life, though I highly suspected his sisters did.

  But because of how Rasputin had phrased his taunt, I now knew what I’d only feared before. Even my own naïf Ninotchka may have fallen under Rasputin’s spell. If she’d been dallying with a princeling, all could have been forgiven. But not with this Siberian monstrosity. If it was true—if it was believed by the court to be true, I would have to kill him. My legs got shaky again, but there was nowhere to sit that was close enough. I willed them to stop wobbling. Willed my mind to slow down.

  My heart roiled with bitterness as I realized that soon I would be the laughingstock of the court. If indeed I was not already. Maybe this was why the tsar hadn’t listened to me. It could explain everything.

  My dear Maman had said, often enough, “Don’t blame the hen when the rooster crows. The fault lies with the sun.” I am not certain I understood that little saw ’til this very moment. Not really.

  But Maman, who could grow old sayings in the dirt outside our house, had never had any words for what I was feeling now: this cold anger thrusting its bitter hands into my heart. For honor’s sake, whether he’d had her or not, I would have to kill Rasputin. Alone or with the help of others. For Ninotchka’s sake as well as my own. If word of this got around the court, I would lose my standing altogether, unless I divorced her.