by Sam Eastland
From this slight and barely conscious gesture, Pekkala realised that, no matter how much the Tsar loved his wife, he was hesitant to read what she had written.
‘Pekkala,’ the Tsar began. But before another word could leave his mouth, a steward arrived, bearing a tray of the Tsar’s favourite oolong tea, and the Tsar’s mouth snapped shut like a trap.
The steward, wearing a short, silver-buttoned black tunic over a collarless white shirt, looked neither at Pekkala, nor at the Tsar as he set before them two glasses in ornate brass holders. Wisps of steam curved sensually from the surface of the black, smoky-tasting tea.
Nobody spoke.
The only sound was of the patient stamping of the steam engine.
The Tsar waited until the steward had left the carriage. Then he leaned forward, resting his hands upon his knees and fixed Pekkala with his pale blue eyes. ‘How much do you know about icons?’ he asked.
‘Enough to know one when I see one,’ replied Pekkala. ‘Beyond that . . .’ he let his words trail off.
‘I am thinking of one icon in particular,’ continued the Tsar. ‘It is called The Shepherd.’
‘That one I do know,’ said Pekkala. ‘It was on display in the Hall of St George the day you declared war on Germany.’
The Tsar nodded. ‘And it was there with good reason, Pekkala. For the faithful of this country, that icon represents the surest guarantee that God is on our side.’
‘What does this have to do with me?’ replied Pekkala.
The Tsar smiled at Pekkala’s impatience. ‘Normally, I would have said that it has very little to do with a heathen like yourself.’
‘I am not without faith, Majesty.’
‘But yours and mine are not the same, Pekkala. What spirits guide you live out there,’ he gestured at the wilderness that lay beyond the cushioned walls, ‘and their names are hidden from all but the savages who gave them life.’
‘Savages?’ He thought about his mother, a Sami from the tundra of northern Finland, and the parallel worlds she inhabited, shifting from one to the other like the steam which drifted off their tea.
‘Yes,’ replied the Tsar, ‘and I mean it as a compliment. It is why I have chosen you for this particular task, Pekkala. You are not bound by the same attachments as we who must struggle with the trappings of our Orthodox religion. The very thing that separates us is the basis for my trust in you. You may not care for this icon, Pekkala, but to millions of Russians, its safety is as important as the safety of Russia itself.’
‘Has something happened to The Shepherd?’ asked Pekkala.
‘No,’ replied the Tsar. ‘For the moment, it is safe in its usual place at the Church of the Resurrection at Tsarskoye Selo.’ He paused as he hooked a finger through the brass loop handle of the glass and drank a mouthful of the tea, breathing in sharply as he sipped. ‘And if I had my way,’ he continued, ‘that’s exactly where it would remain. But my wife has decided that the icon should be placed in the care of Rasputin.’
An image of the Siberian flashed behind Pekkala’s eyes. The unwashed hair combed down about his ears, the lower part of his face hidden behind an unkempt beard and the stare of his sledge-dog-grey eyes.
‘You know how much he is despised,’ said the Tsar. ‘If it were not for the lengths to which my wife and I have gone to protect him, he would have been thrown in a dungeon long ago.’
And if it were not for your own fascination with the man, thought Pekkala, no one would have cared enough to hate him in the first place.
There were many reasons why the Romanovs protected Rasputin, but the most important reason was one that most people didn’t know about. Their only son, Alexei, had been born with haemophilia, what Russians referred to as ‘The English Disease’ because of the fact that it had been passed down through several generations of British royalty, and put at risk the children of anyone whose bloodline, which included that of both the Tsar and the Tsarina, intersected with the British kings and queens. The disease could not be cured, and it almost always proved fatal. His blood unable to clot, Alexei could have bled to death from the kind of nicks or scrapes a normal boy might expect to receive every day. This frailty had required him to live as a person might if they were made of glass.
Even Alexei’s friends were hand selected by the parents for their ability to play gently. Pekkala remembered the soft-spoken Makarov brothers – thin and nervous boys whose ears stuck out and who carried their shoulders in a perpetual hunch, like boys do when they are waiting for a firework to explode. In spite of his fragility, Alexei had already outlived them, since both boys perished in battle.
No matter what precautions they took with their son, the parents seemed always to be waiting for that moment when Alexei would simply fade away. In doing so, it was as if the Tsar, and the Tsarina Alexandra in particular, had absorbed the disease into their own bodies.
Fearing that news of this disease might be interpreted as some kind of curse by the superstitious masses, who were only too ready to find the hand of God, or of the devil, in every deviation from the norm, the haemophilia was kept secret from all but the Romanovs’ doctors, and the closest associates of their family.
The secrecy surrounding Alexei’s illness forced the Tsar and the Tsarina to bear the burden of their son’s terrifying fragility in silence.
It was Rasputin, and Rasputin alone, who had proved capable of alleviating the symptoms of Alexei’s illness.
Sceptical as Pekkala was about the Siberian monk’s ability to work miracles, there could be no denying that the Tsar’s own doctors had on several occasions informed the parents that there was nothing to be done for the boy, and that they should begin preparations for his funeral. At moments like these, Rasputin would be summoned to the boy’s bedside. There, with nothing more than the sound of his voice and the gentle laying of his hand upon Alexei’s forehead, the boy’s symptoms would immediately begin to lessen. Within a matter of hours, the boy whom the best medical experts in Russia had given up for dead would be walking around his room. On one occasion, when Alexei had fallen while getting out of a rowing boat at the Romanovs’ hunting lodge at Spala in Poland, Rasputin happened to be on the other side of the country and it was feared that he would never reach Alexei before the boy succumbed to his injuries. Instead, Rasputin sent a telegram, assuring the parents that the boy would soon recover. And he did, in spite of all predictions from Alexei’s attending physicians.
No one had been able to scientifically explain this phenomenon. In their search for answers, the Tsar and the Tsarina chose to see it as a divine miracle, a conclusion with which Rasputin, wisely choosing not to claim the credit for himself, was happy to agree.
Rasputin became, for the Tsar and the Tsarina, their son’s only assurance of survival. Their faith in him, and in his abilities, was absolute. He had become, in the minds of these terrified parents, the most valuable person in the world, more important than the country over which they ruled, more important than the fortunes of the Russian people, more important even than their own lives.
The Russian people knew nothing of this, and they quickly drew their own conclusions about the Tsarina’s seeming appetite for the dirty, coarse and ill-mannered Siberian. In their ignorance, they came to loathe Rasputin as completely as he was adored by the Tsar and the Tsarina.
In Pekkala’s opinion, Rasputin was a man who understood his limitations. It was the Tsar, and even more so the Tsarina, who had increasingly demanded from Rasputin a wisdom he never claimed to possess. He had been called upon to judge matters of state, as well as the conduct of the war. The best he could do, in such situations, was to offer vague words of comfort. But the Romanovs had fastened on those words, stripping them of vagueness and turning them to prophesy. It was no wonder Rasputin had become so despised by those who sought the favour of the Tsar.
But the Romanovs could not shelter Rasputin forever. Sooner or later, the hatred of the Russian people, peasants and nobles alike, was bound to turn deadly. T
he child and the man who was able to cure him had become as horribly fragile as each other. The only difference between them was that Rasputin had long since come to understand the meaning of this terminal equation.
‘If word gets out,’ continued the Tsar, ‘that Grigori has taken possession of The Shepherd, those whose faith has already been shaken by recent setbacks on the battlefield will fasten on it as the reason for every misfortune we have suffered in this war. That is why I chose this meeting place, where my absence from headquarters would only be hours, not the days it would take if I had come to you.’
‘I could have come to Mogilev.’
‘Not without raising suspicions. No, Pekkala, it was too risky. No one can know that the subject has even been raised, or the results would be disastrous!’
‘Have you explained this to the Tsarina?’
‘Of course!’ exclaimed the Tsar. ‘But you know how she is. She has become fixated on the idea that only in the hands of this holy man can the true power of the icon be unleashed.’
‘And you expect me to convince her otherwise?’ asked Pekkala.
The Tsar laughed. ‘I have given you many difficult tasks before, Pekkala, but none as impossible as that! No, I do not expect you to persuade her. It’s Rasputin I need you to convince!’
Now the Tsar’s plan was becoming clear. Pekkala had met with Rasputin many times in the past, often at the special annexe of a club known as the Villa Roda, which had been built on the orders of the Tsarina for Rasputin’s private use. The reason for this structure’s existence was that Rasputin had been banned from almost every other club in the city.
‘He will listen to you,’ said the Tsar.
‘He might,’ agreed Pekkala, ‘but you he will obey, if you only command him to do so.’
‘Impossible!’ The Tsar waved a hand in front of his face, as if shooing away an insect. ‘If the Tsarina finds out that I have had a hand in this, she will dig in her heels even further.’
‘But even if I can talk Rasputin into this, it is the Tsarina who must be convinced.’
‘Exactly,’ the Tsar wagged a finger at Pekkala, ‘and the only one who can do that is Rasputin! She will follow his advice as if God himself had whispered in her ear.’
Pekkala could not deny the Tsar’s reasoning. ‘I will do my best, Majesty.’
The Tsar nodded, satisfied. He reached in to the pocket of his waistcoat. He removed his pocket watch, which was an 18-carat gold Patek Philippe, commissioned by his wife from Tiffany and finished with diamonds by the Tsar’s own jeweller, Carl Fabergé. Glancing at the time, he sighed. ‘I must get back to running the war.’
A few minutes later, Pekkala stepped down from the carriage.
With a jolt like the slamming of a huge door, the engine’s wheels began to move.
Pekkala watched the train pull out, his gaze fixed upon a guard who stood on the platform at the back of the caboose. The long, cruciform bayonet glinted at the end of his Mosin-Nagant rifle. The guard stared down along the empty tracks. Like the steward who had brought him tea, the man seemed oblivious to Pekkala’s presence. It was as if the Inspector had been a ghost, visible only to the Tsar. And then Pekkala realised that the Tsar had wanted it that way all along. He had never been here. This meeting had never taken place.
Pekkala turned and walked back down the road, his boots swishing through fragile globes of dandelions which had sprouted from cracks in the earth.
He found the car just where he had left it, Ostrogorsky leaning on the bonnet, puffing away on a long-stemmed pipe and humming an old Cossack tune. His deep, sad voice drifted on the still air as the smoke smoothed out the ragged edges of his mind. As they travelled back towards Tsarskoye Selo, Pekkala looked out at the dense ranks of pine and white birch trees which crowded down to the road, separated on either side of them by ditches overgrown with daisies, their white petals almost hidden under a coating of the grey road dust. The sun was already low in the sky, and beams of tannic-tinted light flickered down through the branches. He thought of his childhood in Finland and, in spite of the good fortune which the Tsar had bestowed upon him here in Russia, there were times when he longed to disappear back into the wilderness of his native country, where the brutal simplicity of life and death was not obscured by the lies men told to make themselves believe that they were masters of their fate.
*
Meanwhile, as the Imperial train headed south towards Mogilev, the Tsar opened the letter from his wife.
Unfolding the neatly creased page, he breathed in the dry sweet smell of his wife’s White Rose perfume, a tiny drop of which she always dabbed on to the paper.
Alexandra wrote to him almost every day, often interspersing her Russian with English or French, although seldom with the language of her birth. The Tsar always read the letters, sometimes more than once, but it had lately begun to seem as if the letters weren’t really written to him. He could not escape the feeling that his wife was pouring out her heart to another man – someone who looked like him, who sounded like him, who behaved like him – but who was not him. It was as if she had created an illusion more in keeping with the man she wanted for a husband, in whom the failings of reality had all been scrubbed away. As the Tsar read his wife’s most recent tirade against the members of the Russian parliament, who had begun to loudly criticise the handling of the war, he knew she was appealing to a mirage of his true self, a man who might sweep aside all opposition to his will in a wave of rage and ruthlessness. ‘Be Peter the Great!’ she pleaded. ‘Be Ivan the Terrible. Crush them all!’ In Alexandra’s mind, nothing less would restore the love and confidence of ordinary Russians. Rage equals love. Ruthlessness demands respect. The man she had invented would understand these things, and the world she had invented for him to live in would obey such contradictions. But here he was, the ruler of an Empire, knowing in his heart that all the raging in the world would not bring back the millions who had been killed in the fighting, or the millions more who would die before this war was over.
6 June 1915
Petrograd
Rasputin’s apartment, located in a quiet section of the Gorokhovaya Ulitsa in Petrograd, did not belong to him. It was on permanent loan from one of his many benefactors, most of whom cared less for Rasputin than they did for his influence over the Tsar.
The power of Rasputin’s opinions, particularly with the Tsarina, had never been publicly acknowledged. It was, nevertheless, the worst-kept secret in Russia. Each week, Rasputin received dozens of visitors, who trudged up the stairs to his apartment, their pockets stuffed with cash, hoping for the Siberian monk’s help in currying favour with the Romanovs. Sometimes it was the matter of a military contract, supplying saddles for the cavalry or hobnails for a million pairs of marching boots. Other times, it concerned an unfavourable ruling of the court which could, with a few words from the Tsar, be overturned. The visitors pleaded their cases, while Rasputin lounged upon a threadbare couch, sighing and staring at the ceiling. As they departed, the visitors emptied their pockets, heaping stacks of money in a large blue-and-white washbasin, secure in their minds that their generosity would not go unrewarded. But the names of these people, along with their long-winded and carefully rehearsed appeals, were forgotten even before they reached the bottom of the stairs. And the money, with which Rasputin could have retired a wealthy man, would usually be given away to the next person he saw who looked as if they didn’t have enough.
Pekkala entered the courtyard, which was damp and gloomy and smelled of the mildew which clung to the painted stone. Shards of broken green glass lay on the cobblestones, the remains of bottles, pitched out of the window high above, which had once contained the sweet Georgian wine that was Rasputin’s favourite.
Rasputin had not always been a heavy drinker. This came only after the attempt on his life, when an insane woman named Khioniya Guseva, who had become convinced he was the anti-Christ, found him in the street and stabbed him with a butcher’s knife. Although Rasputin recov
ered physically from the attack, inwardly he was never the same. It was as if, in that moment when the knife blade pierced his flesh, he glimpsed the horrors that awaited him on New Year’s Eve of 1916, in the halls of the Yusupov Palace.
As Pekkala began to climb the stairs, a woman passed him on the way down. She was in her late forties, with a high forehead and small, deep-set eyes which she averted from Pekkala as she clattered down the steps in patent leather shoes. With a passing glance, Pekkala noticed that the buttons on her shirt had not been fastened correctly, and that loose strands of her auburn hair, spliced with threads of grey, hung down over her neck where it had been hastily bundled into place.
He knew at once that she was not one of those who had come to curry favour with the Tsar. She was one of Rasputin’s other guests, who were equally numerous, who sought absolution for their sins. Pekkala knew of highly ranked ladies in Petrograd society who had knelt at Rasputin’s feet for the privilege of cutting his toenails. These women saved the clippings and sewed them into ribbons of silk, which they used to line the necklines of their dresses.
Arriving at Rasputin’s apartment, Pekkala found the door open. He walked in just as Rasputin emerged from a back room, wearing only a long shirt and a pair of slippers. His face wore its usual scowl but, at the sight of Pekkala, he broke into a wide grin, showing his strong, white and unusually long teeth. ‘Inspector!’ he shouted, spreading his arms as if to embrace Pekkala, although the two men remained several paces apart. ‘Come in! Come in!’ he commanded, even though Pekkala had already entered the room. ‘Sit down!’
‘Where?’ asked Pekkala, looking around him. Every seat in the room was heaped with clothes and unwashed crockery.
‘Any chair will do,’ replied Rasputin, tipping a heap of laundry on to the floor and dusting off the cushion with his hands. ‘Here!’