The Summer Queen

by Margaret Pemberton

  Ella said cautiously, ‘Kyril and Ducky aren’t with us, Miechen, and as Kyril is third in line to the throne, he needs to be with us if abdication is to be under discussion.’

  ‘Kyril isn’t with us because Nicky posted my son as far away from Petrograd as possible and he’s serving with the Northern Fleet in Murmansk.’ Miechen’s voice was clipped and tight.

  ‘And Ducky is ambulance-driving at the Front.’ Felix, who rarely admired anyone other than himself, was obviously deeply impressed. ‘She has formed her own ambulance unit. Every driver is a woman. I’ve suggested they descend on the battlefields bare-breasted, like the women warriors of Greek mythology. It would give severely injured men a reason to live, don’t you think?’

  With difficulty, Nicky’s brother Misha put from his mind the arousing picture Felix had conjured up. ‘Alexei is still a child, Miechen. If Nicky abdicated, who would act as regent?’

  ‘As Dowager Empress, Minny would. Or she and Paul could act as co-regents.’

  There was silence, but it was silence because no one had any objections to what Miechen had said – or wouldn’t have, if it could be achieved.

  Paul said grimly, ‘Such a prospect could only happen if Rasputin was no longer on the scene. With Rasputin pulling Alicky and Nicky’s strings, Nicky is unlikely to abdicate, no matter what pressure we, as a family, bring to bear on him.’

  ‘Then the answer is obvious, and Rasputin must no longer be on the scene.’ Languidly Felix rose to his feet. ‘No doubt, if you all put your heads together, you will come up with a solution, but Dmitri and I can’t stay to help. We have an assignation at the House of Fabergé. Dmitri is going to help me choose Irina’s Christmas gift.’

  ‘Am I?’ Dmitri asked as they left the palace in a horse-drawn sleigh.

  ‘No, of course not. Prince Felix Yusupov doesn’t go to the House of Fabergé. Monsieur Fabergé comes to Prince Felix Yusupov. We are now heading to my palace on the Moika in order that, over champagne, we can plot how we can make the family happy by disposing of Alicky’s mad monk. Poison, I think. Poison would do away with the sight of blood – and blood is so messy. Even a glimpse of it makes me feel faint.’

  A week later Alicky’s daughter, Olga, said to her mother, ‘I think there’s a member of the family who is trying to build bridges with Grishka, Mama. Felix Yusupov has invited him to a late-night supper at the Moika Palace tonight, in order for him to meet Irina.’

  ‘How extraordinary!’ Felix wasn’t one of Alicky’s favourite people. He was too outrageous and bohemian, but his marriage to Nicky’s niece had made him family, and if he was extending the hand of friendship to Grishka, then she was willing to begin thinking differently about him. ‘Although I don’t think the invitation can have been for tonight,’ she added, ‘I happen to know that Irina is in the Crimea.’

  ‘Then I must have heard wrongly. It was Dmitri who told me. He’s on leave from his Cossack regiment. Do you know he’s been awarded the Cross of St George for gallantry in action? Uncle Paul must be very proud of him.’

  The next day, when Alicky made her daily telephone call to Rasputin, she was told that the previous evening he had been Prince Yusupov’s supper guest and hadn’t been seen since he had left for the Moika Palace in one of the Prince’s chauffeur-driven Daimlers.

  With Nicky at the Stavka, Alicky did what she had long been doing. She acted in his stead, telephoning the Chief of Police and demanding that he make a full and instant investigation.

  His report, the next day, wasn’t reassuring.

  ‘Pistol shots were heard coming from the Moika Palace the night Rasputin was there,’ he said, privately hoping that at least one of the shots had found its mark and that the biggest troublemaker in Russia was now as dead as a door-nail, ‘and there are blood stains leading out of the palace and across the courtyard. According to Prince Yusupov, it was a small party, the only other guests being Grand Duke Dmitri, an army officer named Sukhotin and Purishkevich, a member of the Duma. Prince Yusupov says there was a lot of heavy drinking and the party got a little out of hand, when Sukhotin shot a dog that was making a nuisance of itself. He showed me the body of the dog, which was in a corner of the courtyard, awaiting removal. Prince Yusupov says that the last he saw of Rasputin, he was weaving drunkenly in the direction of Gorokhovaya Street, swigging from the neck of a bottle of brandy and bawling lewd songs.’

  Even though she was exceedingly fond of Dmitri, and even though Felix was now part of her extended family, Alicky gave orders that both of them were immediately to be placed under house arrest.

  Then she fired off a telegram to Nicky updating him on the situation.

  After that there was nothing she could do but wait, and she did so with a rising fear, as her four bewildered and distressed daughters huddled around her.

  Three days after he was last seen, Rasputin’s frozen body was found in the ice below a bridge in the northern part of the city. With its discovery, Felix coolly admitted that he and Dmitri were responsible for, as he said, ‘having saved the dynasty’. That Felix was capable of such an action was no great surprise, but Dmitri having been a party to it was something none of the family could quite believe.

  Paul was as glad as anyone that Rasputin was dead, but his son having taken part in the murder plot horrified him.

  ‘And Nicky is punishing him for the crime by sending him to Qazvin on the Persian front! Where the hell is that?’ he said despairingly to Miechen. ‘And the dire way this war is progressing under Nicky’s leadership, what is the likelihood of my ever seeing him again?’ To Miechen’s distress, he covered his face with his hands, tears streaming through his fingers.

  ‘And I,’ Felix said unconcernedly to Misha, ‘am to be banished eight hundred miles distant to my estate in Kursk. All in all, it’s not too severe a sentence for having freed an empire from the rule of an insane moujik.’

  ‘Is it true that, until the very end, you couldn’t kill Rasputin, no matter what you did to him?’

  Felix shuddered. ‘You have no idea, Misha, mon ami. Dmitri, Sukhotin and Purishkevich were in another room, ready to come and dispose of him when poisoned cakes had done their business. I was alone with him – Rasputin thought we were waiting for Irina to join us. He ate enough cyanide-filled cakes, washed down with poisoned wine, to fell a regiment and the only effect they had was that he asked me if I would sing for him! In desperation, I did the only think I could think of doing. I made an excuse to leave the room, snatched Dmitri’s army revolver from him, sprinted back and shot Rasputin. He fell, foaming at the mouth, but still the Satan didn’t die. I have never been more terrified in all my life and then . . . Oh God, Misha – he came after me like a wild animal on his hands and knees!’

  Felix broke off and, with a shaking hand, lit a cigarette.

  ‘Having heard the gunshot, the others rushed into the room; and, after the cyanide-filled cakes, the poisoned wine and being shot, the Fiend got to his feet and began running out of the palace. It was incredible! Unbelievable! We chased him across the courtyard, shooting as we ran, until finally he fell into the snow, and even then . . . even then as we bound him with rope and rolled him up in a rug, an eyelid twitched.’

  There was nothing faked about the horror Felix was remembering.

  ‘Then we hoisted him into the boot of a car, drove him to the north of the city, dug a hole in the ice beneath the Krestovsky Bridge and dropped him through it. We figured that, with all the ice and snow, he wouldn’t surface for months, but in the dark we didn’t notice that in between dragging him from the car and dropping him into the water one of his boots had fallen off. If it hadn’t been for that being recognized, Rasputin would still be at the bottom of the Malaya Nevka River.’

  In the days that followed, Alicky didn’t leave her mauve boudoir. She was too overcome with grief at the murder of her beloved friend, and with terror at the thought of what would happen the next time Alexei had an uncontrollable bleed. It was Nicky who dealt with the family
– or who tried to deal with them, for although no one made too much hue and cry when Felix departed for Kursk, they were united in their indignation over Dmitri being sent to the Persian front.

  ‘It’s a death sentence!’ his father said, no longer the suave and sophisticated Paul they were all familiar with, but a man heartbroken and despairing. ‘How can Nicky do this to him?’

  Even Nicky’s mother begged him to rescind the Army order sending Dmitri to Persia. ‘The climate alone will be enough to kill him,’ Minny said passionately. ‘And you must be aware of how detrimental to you the monk was. All the fifteen months you have been at the Stavka, it has been Rasputin who has been ruling Russia through Alicky – not Alicky who has been ruling it. When Nikolai tells you that Rasputin’s death has saved the monarchy, he is telling you the truth. Whatever Dmitri did, he did out of love for you. You cannot send him to what is sure to be his death.’

  Nicky had been immovable.

  Ella, her face as white as the wimple that covered her head and bound her chin and neck, pleaded with him as well, but to just as little effect.

  Nicky merely said time and again, ‘A murder is always a murder. There has to be punishment.’

  A week later Alicky left her boudoir and the palace in order to bury her beloved friend in a quiet corner of the Alexandra Park.

  Dressed in boots and an ankle-length black fur, looking years older than her forty-four years and carrying seven hothouse roses, she had become wraith-thin. The burning certainty she had lived with – the certainty that, because of Grishka, haemophilia wouldn’t kill Alexei and that he would survive to inherit the throne of the Russian Empire and rule it as an autocrat, as Russia had always been ruled – had been savagely and cruelly annihilated. From now on, fear and tension would again be her constant companions, for how, without Grishka, could it be any different?

  As she walked through deep snow with Nicky and Alexei and the girls towards the freshly dug grave, more snow was falling. Ever since she had first come to Russia it had always been the same. At all the major moments in her life there, it had been winter. It had been winter and Russia had been covered in snow when Nicky’s father had been dying, and when Nicky had urgently telegrammed to Hesse-Darmstadt that he needed her by his side.

  And when Nicky’s father had died and Nicky had become Tsar, and when it was imperative that they marry as soon as possible, it had still been the middle of an Arctic winter. Snow had been falling as she had entered the chapel of the aptly named Winter Palace; and it had been falling when, as her darling’s wife, she had left it to shouts from vast crowds that she was their Winter Bride.

  And now it was winter again and this time there was no springtime of hope awaiting her. Before Grishka’s coffin had been closed she had written him a letter:

  My dear Martyr, give me thy blessing that it may follow me always on the sad and dreary path I have yet to follow here below. And remember us from on high in your holy prayers.

  And when she had sealed the envelope with a kiss, she laid it on his mutilated breast.

  As she had reached the graveside, Anastasia slid her hand in hers. ‘What mattered, Mama,’ she whispered in an effort to bring comfort to her mother, ‘is that we were lucky enough to have had him in our lives for a little while, and that he loved us and we loved him.’

  The coffin was lowered into the grave. A lone priest conducted the Requiem Mass and, when it was at an end, she and Nicky each threw a handful of earth onto the coffin.

  ‘Here, my darlings.’ Beneath her thick veil, Alicky’s tears flowed freely as she handed a rose to Nicky and Alexei, and then to Olga, Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia. ‘May we always remember him, and may he never be far from us.’

  Stepping up to the edge of the grave, she kissed the rose she was holding and then gently dropped it on the coffin. Solemnly and in turn, Nicky, Alexei and the girls each did the same.

  It was over. Their goodbyes had been said, but as Alicky walked unsteadily away from the graveside, her heart told her that it was not the end – only the beginning of the end. For without Rasputin the future was a yawning black abyss; an abyss that would need every last drop of her iron determination and courage, if she was not only to face it, but survive it.

  Chapter Forty

  MARCH 1917, ALEXANDER PALACE, TSARSKOE SELO

  ‘Alexei has measles,’ Alicky said on the telephone to Nicky, who was at the Stavka. ‘Botkin says it will be three or four weeks before he begins to get over it. Olga woke up with a rash on her head and a sore throat this morning and, as measles are so infectious, I think Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia will also soon be showing symptoms.’

  Nicky had been lovingly sympathetic, but nasty as measles were, with his mind focused on the war effort, he could see no reason for returning to Tsarskoe Selo. Alicky was a trained nurse, and Botkin had always shown himself calmly efficient when it came to dealing with the children and their illnesses.

  The first intimation at Tsarskoe Selo of more-than-usual unrest in Petrograd was when a senior member of the palace staff, who had been given a day’s leave to attend his mother’s funeral in Petrograd, failed to report for duty.

  More snippets of information came in during the morning. Women had taken to the streets, protesting at the lack of bread. Men had walked out of several factories. Crowds were surging into the city, carrying Bolshevik red flags and banners. Trains had stopped running.

  ‘Hooligans,’ Alicky said dismissively when she was told. Alexei’s temperature had soared to one hundred and four degrees, and she had far more on her mind than worrying about yet another wave of unrest in Petrograd – unrest the Cossacks of the Petrograd Garrison would soon put an end to.

  It was a telephone call from Ducky that first alerted her to the fact that the unrest was a little more serious than usual. ‘Are you and the children still quite safe, Alicky?’ she had asked, her voice tense and deeply concerned.

  ‘Safe?’ Ever since Ducky’s divorce from Ernie, she and Ducky had never been close, and they certainly weren’t in the habit of making telephone calls to each other. ‘Of course I’m safe. Why wouldn’t I be?’

  There was a stunned silence from the other end of the line, and then Ducky said, ‘Because I’m in Petrograd and I don’t feel at all safe. There is uproar on the streets. Government buildings are being set on fire. A red flag is flying above the Peter and Paul Fortress. The sooner Nicky gets here and restores order, the better. What time do you think he will be arriving?’

  ‘He won’t be arriving. He can’t just leave army headquarters because of a disturbance in the streets – it’s nearly five hundred miles away. Are those gunshots I can hear in the background? Is a wedding being celebrated?’

  Ducky said a word so rude that Alicky didn’t even know what it meant.

  ‘Ring Nicky, while you still have telephone contact with him,’ Ducky said, when she could trust herself to speak. ‘He has to return to Petrograd. Tell him that if he doesn’t do so as fast as is humanly possible, there won’t be a Petrograd for him to return to!’

  Over the telephone came the sound of an almighty crash and then the line went dead.

  Alicky frowned. Ducky was quite obviously drunk, and she could only suppose that the crash she had heard was her falling to the floor in a drunken stupor.

  Nevertheless, she telephoned Nicky right away. ‘Sorry to be disturbing you, when you must be so busy, my darling. Ducky has telephoned to say there is civil unrest again in Petrograd and she wants to make sure you are aware of it.’

  ‘I am aware of it, sweetheart. Members of the Duma cabled me earlier this morning with an urgent request that I return at once. They are, of course, a bunch of old women, and I have dealt with the situation by telegraphing the military governor of Petrograd and insisting that he bring order to the streets immediately, and that calm must be restored by tomorrow at the very latest.’

  Alicky loved it when Nicky sounded every inch an autocrat. ‘I wish,’ she said, her voice thickening, ‘that
we were in bed together, my love.’

  ‘It is all I ever think about. Our being together. Making love. Being happy.’

  By the time she came off the phone she’d forgotten all about Ducky’s near-manic telephone call.

  The next morning it was obvious that Anastasia, too, had measles. All that day no news of what was happening in Petrograd reached Tsarskoe Selo. Helped by Dr Botkin and her two ladies-in-waiting, Alicky nursed her sick children around the clock until she was near to collapsing from exhaustion.

  ‘You must rest, Your Imperial Majesty,’ Botkin said to her time and again. ‘You cannot keep pushing yourself as you are doing.’

  She had taken no notice of him. Alexei’s temperature was now beginning to drop, but Olga’s and Anastasia’s had soared.

  Only when she was told that the telephone line to the Stavka was down did she begin to feel uneasy.

  ‘Mama! Mama!’ she heard Tatiana shouting, ‘I’ve got red spots, too, and my ears are hurting.’

  Two days passed. Alexei was over the worst, but was wan and pale. Olga was now delirious with fever, Anastasia was constantly slipping in and out of consciousness and Tatiana had developed abscesses in her ears.

  The only member of the family to make physical contact – other than Ducky – was Nicky’s brother, Misha. He arrived by car, striding into the palace in great agitation, saying, ‘You and the children must leave, Alicky! The city is in the complete control of the revolutionaries. It’s a miracle they aren’t yet at Tsarskoe Selo.’

  Alicky stared at him as if he was mad. It was incredible to her that Misha would show such panic in the face of danger, and although he was obviously about to head south until the unrest was over, she most certainly was not going to do so.

  ‘I can’t leave. The children have measles and are in no condition to travel anywhere. Although I now have no communication with Nicky, as all the lines are down, I know he will be on his way here and, when that happens, order will be restored.’