by Kim Newman
"By which time, I will be expected to have given birth to three haemophilic sons and spent my summers being rained on in a nasty foreign country."
There was another commotion at the door. Everyone fell to their knees. Cinzia followed suit before she fully realised why.
The Tsar had entered the room, and was not pleased.
Her mother would never believe this.
"You! I thought I'd had you fired. Or shot!"
Lysenko bowed.
"I had him re-hired," said the Grand Duchess. "He's the only doctor who truly understands my condition."
Tsar Nicholas III was smaller in person than he seemed on television, but then everyone was. He was still impressive. The Russian Bear personified. Big, barrel-chested, strong. His full, rounded face was mostly covered by tightly-cropped beard. He wore a rough peasant smock, a thick leather belt and baggy trousers. His fondness for chopping wood and other "peasant" activities was well-known. It was also said he could bend a rouble coin in his teeth.
"Get out, Lysenko. And the rest of you."
Nobody needed prompting. Cinzia picked up her make-up case and made for the door with the others.
"Wait! You, girl! Who are you?"
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He was talking to her. She turned and bowed. "I am from ITV. I have come to apply make-up to Her Imperial Highness."
"Then stay. You will start work in a moment."
The Tsar picked up the box of chocolates.
"You will need wallpaper and paste if Katiusha keeps filling herself with these pollutants."
He tossed the chocolates away.
"Hah," he said. "Wallpaper. Paste."
Evidently, his remark was an imperial joke. She tried a dutiful laugh, but it came out as a cough.
Nicholas walked over to the bed and hugged his daughter. The Grand Duchess sniffed, then started crying. "You don't care about me! Nobody cares about me!"
"We all care about you. Your mother and I love you very much. So do your sisters and brother. That's why we arranged this marvellous wedding for you. All over Russia, all over the world, millions and millions of girls will go to bed tonight dreaming that they could swap places with you. Isn't that true, make-up girl?"
"Absolutely sire," said Cinzia, nodding.
"Then let them swap!" sobbed the Grand Duchess. "I don't want to go through with this silly wedding."
The Tsar stood upright, stuck hands into his belt and spoke evenly. "Ekaterina, I grow tired of this nonsense. You always forget that you and I are not as ordinary people. We are endowed by the Almighty with power and wealth because we have duties and obligations ordinary people don't have."
"I'll abdicate. I'll go and be an ordinary person—just like her."
She pointed at Cinzia. Something inside boiled over. This spoiled brat was wasting her time, time she could be spending at home reading a book, listening to music, playing cards with Mother. Time she could be helping people who needed help at the Free Hospital.
"Your Imperial Highness wouldn't like it very much. If you want to swap places, let's do it. I live near a particularly smelly canal. I share three rooms with my mother and a bone-idle brother. Most months we have to get by on less than three hundred roubles. It's been a while since we had truffles flown in from Switzerland."
The Tsar fixed her with chilling blue eyes. For a few seconds, she was hypnotised, glimpsing an avenue of stakes, each with someone impaled on it. Had she gone too far?
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The Tsar nodded, grunted agreement, almost smiled.
"Do you hear that, Katiusha. It is the voice of the great Russian people who love you. You must do your duty for this girl and for others like her. If you do not, I shall have to do mine, regardless."
Cinzia did not doubt he meant it. Tsar Peter had his own son tortured to death. And they called him Peter the Great.
Grand Duchess Ekaterina whimpered, "you don't love me."
"Yes I bloody well do! But I didn't father children to love them. I fathered them for the Russian Empire and the Romanov dynasty."
Cinzia believed this, too. Before Nicholas acceded to the throne, his childless marriage to Princess Flavia of Ruritania was dissolved. His subsequent marriage to Elisabeth-Mathilde Kshesinska was a model of heir-begetting fruitfulness, but Flavia kept apartments in Moscow, Petrograd and a dacha near the palace at Tsarskoye Selo. The Tsar still visited her almost daily.
"I don't want to leave Russia," Ekaterina sobbed. "The King of England is mad. Who's to say the Duke isn't the same? Look at his earsl And I don't want to be Queen of England. The peasants eat dogs there and they don't have colour tele."
There was a loud, firm knock at the door.
"Yes? What now?" shouted the Tsar.
In walked a hussar officer. Cinzia was used to thinking of cavalrymen driving tanks on the news reports from Indo-China, but this man looked as though he was on his way to Borodino. His jacket was red, covered in gold lace; over his shoulder was slung the hussar's pelisse, a short brown overcoat lined with black fur, also plastered with braid. His fur cap boasted a white cockade and a brass plate of the imperial two-headed eagle. Straps of white leather complicated his attire even further. From some of the straps dangled what appeared to be a flattish handbag, while others were attached to the scabbard of a sabre, which he held in his white-gloved right hand.
"Well?" snapped the Tsar.
The officer saluted, slammed boot-heels together and bowed. Cinzia was secretly relieved that all of his get-up survived the agitation.
"Apologies, sire," he said crisply, "I did not know His Imperial Highness was present. I have come to make my report to the Grand Duchess."
"Go on then." said the Tsar.
The officer turned to the Grand Duchess and saluted once more.
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"Ensign Pavel Chekhov, First Troop, First Squadron of the Akhtirska hussar regiment respectfully wishes to inform her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Ekaterina Nicolaievna that her personal escort awaits the pleasure of her orders."
"Ensign Chekhov," said the Grand Duchess. "You in command of my escort again? I thought you had applied for a transfer to the space program?"
"I did, Imperial Highness. It was recently decided all aristocrats were to be disqualified from becoming cosmonauts."
Cinzia remembered lunar duellists. KrokodiU the fortnightly satirical magazine, had carried a full report of Georgi Sanders' presentation. Count Ignatieff's younger brother thrashed Editor Solzhenitsyn through the streets of Moscow with the flat of a sabre until the self-proclaimed Funniest Man in Russia grabbed the staff of an imperial flag and defended himself. Now Solzhenitsyn was the Funniest Man Lying Low for a While in Sweden.
The Grand Duchess had evidently stopped feeling sorry for herself. She held a silk sheets in front of her face. The Tsar might assume this was to protect her modesty, or be smart enough to figure Ekaterina didn't want Chekhov to see her with red puffy eyes and mascara-stained cheeks. Cinzia recognised the symptoms: the Grand Duchess was smitten with her ensign in his tight pants. Maybe he looked less ridiculous on a horse.
"Thank you, Ensign," said the Tsar. "The Grand Duchess will come down when she is ready."
Chekhov saluted, spun round on one heel and marched out of the room. Through the door, she saw a pair of troopers bending down and cross-linking their hands to provide a seat for Chekhov. They carried him away. He'd probably had a regiment of servants smartening his uniform, shining leather, polishing brass and sewing on lace and he wasn't going to risk a speck of dirt spoiling things.The Grand Duchess sighed, let the sheet down and addressed Cinzia.
"Come on, soul of mother Russia, we'd better get started."
"Bronstein, I look like a houri" said Ekaterina, swivelling her head to one side and another, making eyes at the mirror.
"Under the lights you'll be radiant. You don't want to look like a ghost on tele."
The Grand D
uchess now wore a pink satin ball-gown fit to grace the cover of a million women's magazines, even the snooty Viennese ones.
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Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
Cinzia tried to use little powder on that fine skin, and concentrated on eyes and lips. The Grand Duchess's hair hung loose over her shoulders, held by a small tiara set with rubies and diamonds. Without trying, she would outshine every other woman at the ball.
Maybe it was true. Maybe royals were more than human.
"I wish I could wear my hair Afrikan style," the Grand Duchess pouted. "It's too long. Perhaps I should cut it."
"You do and I'll assassinate you," said Cinzia.
They were surrounded by maids, dressers and flunkies, sewing, fussing and whispering. One or two gasped at her impertinence.
"I might as well be dead anyway," Ekaterina smiled. "I've decided I'm not going through with this marriage unless you are my personal make-up artist. I hope he likes it."
"If the Duke doesn't like you there's something wrong with him."
"The Duke...Oh. Yes. Him."
"Cinzia! Thank God I've found you," said Bondarchuk, out of breath. He bowed to the Grand Duchess. "Are you finished? We need you urgently in the Duke's suite. Half the British team are stranded at Croydon airport. An engine fell off their Bristol Brabazon. All the BBC make-up people are still there. I've got the rest of the girls working on his entourage, but I need you to do the Duke himself."
The Grand Duchess sniggered and waved her away. "I'll be fine now," she said.
Cinzia scooped her bits and pieces into the case.
It was wasted on her, really. Her mother should be here.
It took five minutes to negotiate their way across the palace, clambering over cables, lights and cameras, pushing through knots of soldiers and courtiers making last-minute adjustments to suits, dresses and uniforms.
And this was just an Imperial Ball. The wedding would be worse. It would bankrupt some of the Empire's most distinguished families. Duchesses could not wear the same dresses twice while there were cameras around.
In the Duke's quarters, things were even more chaotic. Luggage had gone missing, or had never come to Russia in the first place, and people rushed around trying to borrow jewellery, combs, razors, scissors, lipstick from the Russians.
Sir Anthony Blunt stood in the middle of this, looking miserable. The Duke of Edinburgh, the Duke's Father, who Paradjanov had identified
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as the widower of Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, was trying to get Sir Anthony to arrange a wild boar hunt.
Sir Anthony broke free and hurried Bondarchuk and Cinzia into a small side-room where the Duke of Cornwall stood in his shirtsleeves looking out of the window.
"Sir Anthony," said the Duke. "We must try and do a bit of sightseeing."
"Your Grace, this young lady speaks fluent English. She'll see to your make-up."
He turned to her, smiled and nodded. "Where do you want me, Miss?"
There was no dressing table. There was an armchair. It would have to do. She pointed to it. Bondarchuk made excuses and left.
The Duke sat down. She opened her case on the floor next to the chair, took out a large cotton sheet and spread it over the Duke, tucking it into the collar of his shirt.
She crouched in front of him and looked into his face. He was more of a challenge than the Grand Duchess. Though only in his mid-twenties, hardly older than her, Charles had lines. He'd been around. She was prepared to dismiss the talk of recklessly flying his helicopter into battle zones in Indo-China as propaganda, but something had added ten years to his face.
He was tense.
"You are nervous, sire?" she asked him.
A man cleared his throat behind her. "The correct form of address is your grace'." She had forgotten Sir Anthony was in the room.
The Duke shrugged and smiled apologetically.
"I rather suppose I am. It's not every day one meets one's future wife. With four hundred million people watching."
He spoke with a curious, clipped accent. Not at all like the affected "upper-class twit" English accent Mother used to entertain her with.
It was a question, she decided, of smoothing out some lines and emphasising a few others. Then she noticed the ears again.
She laughed. She couldn't help it.
The Duke smiled. "What's so funny?"
Her face was on fire. She hadn't blushed like this for years. Soon she'd be too old to. "It's nothing, your grace. Nothing at all."
"I hope you'll not think it remiss of me if I tell you that you have lovely eyes. Now go on, share the joke. I can take it."
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She swallowed. "Making a professional appraisal of your grace's face, it occurs to me that your grace has rather prominent ears. I was wondering if sticky tape might be of use."
The Duke froze and gave her a murderous look. Blunt muttered words in English that she didn't recognise and stormed out.
"Blunt has gone out to find someone to have you shot. Now get on with it."
She set to work, wondering if she'd still have a job in the morning. Or a head.
Moments later, a voice behind her snapped, "ACH GD 22230333 Earl of Balham reporting for duty, sahl"
She turned. It was the man who had laughed at Yussupov at the airport. Now he stood wore an Asiatic turban, a blue jacket, a tutu and ankle-boots.
The Duke grinned at him. "You can't meet my bride-to-be dressed like that, Sellers,"
"Why on earth not, old fruity substance?" he said, in the upper-class twit accent her Mother imitated.
"You're not wearing your decorations. It states clearly on the invitation that medals and orders must be worn."
Both laughed. The Earl took a hip-flask from the breast pocket of his jacket and offered it to the Duke, who refused. He took a hefty guzzle himself and then noticed her.
"Well hellaaao" he growled, crouching next to her and twiddling his moustache, "now you're a gorgeous bit of tottie, and no mistake. Are you coming to the palais de danse, my little Russian doll?"
She resumed work. "I am, but I shall be busy. I have to stay behind the scenes in case anyone's face falls off."
"I'd love my face to fall off for you, my little boiling samovar."
"You'd better get dressed for the ball. The British party has to leave for the Winter Palace inside the hour."
"But I'm going like this, meinfuhrer. This is my formal evening dress. The turban's in honour of wartime service in Injah, RAF battledress because I was in the RAF."
"They let you fly an aeroplane?"
Oh dear, there she went again.
"Heavens no!" he said, switching accents. "Put me in ENSA, give 'em a song an' a dance, tell a few jokes, that was me. Every Night Something Awful. That's why I'm wearing the old tutu and boots don't you see, laddie."
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Sir Anthony returned, pulling in Bondarchuk.
"I want her fired! At once. And I want all her family fired. Her insult to the Duke was unforgivable."
"Oh forget it, Tony!" said the Duke, waving him away.
The Earl of Balham went up to Blunt, puffing out his chest.
"You're talking about the woman I love, Tones. If you fire her, you'll have to fire me, too."
Blunt turned, threw his hands up in the air and walked off.
"I have deaded him, swine rotter that he is," shrilled Balham in a high squeak, "deaded him proper."
"Thank you, Earl," Cinzia said. "To return the favour, I'll remind you that you have less than half an hour to change into clothes more appropriate to the occasion. I've met his Imperial Highness the Tsar and my estimate of his character is that he could well lock you into a dungeon and throw away the dungeon if you do anything to spoil his little girl's big day."
"You are right, my Captain. I will go and do that thing. I will. I will. I will go and put on my brown paper suit
and make a dress sword from Mum's old drawers."
The Duke laughed. Balham left.
Cinzia was losing count of mad royals. She wished she had Paradjanov's handbook of who was who.
More people appeared at the door. Cinzia looked up and was surprised to see the Grand Duchess standing there.
"Is everything to your satisfaction?" she asked the Duke in heavily accented English.
"Fine thanks," he nodded politely.
"Cinzia Davidovna has done an excellent job. Would you approve if she was personally responsible for your make up and mine until the wedding's over?"
"Fine with me," said the Duke, "as long as she brings her sticky tape"
Nobody had asked Cinzia if it was fine by her. It wasn't. Not without a big pay-rise anyway.
"Do you have any idea who that insane person in the ballet skirt was?"
The Duke had no explanation.
The vast rotors of the Sikorsky gunship cut up the air with a low roar, but the ride was smooth. Whether this was an inherent property of the aircraft or whether it was because the Duke of Cornwall was at the controls, Cinzia didn't know.
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For all the noise, she heard Bondarchuk muttering into his wireless behind her. "You've got to just trust me on this. No close-ups of the happy couple when we come in to land."
At least one camera-crew would be waiting on the ground when the aircraft landed at the Imperial complex at Tsarskoye Selo.
Charles, Duke of Cornwall, and Grand Duchess Ekaterina Nicolaievna had carried on their televisioned engagement for three days. From the glittering Grand Ball at the Winter Palace through the couple's various subsequent public engagements, everything on-screen had been just fine. With three hours of live broadcast daily, ITV had captured immense ratings which still climbed. All Soyuz TV, the opposition, could offer was the remarkably unpopular comedy series Mother Courages Flying Circus and repeats of On the Trams.
"Dear God! What I wouldn't give for a rifle right now!" said the Duke's father. She looked out of the gunport and saw, down on the ground 200 feet below, a herd of deer running, frightened by the helicopter's noise.