The Red Tide

by Christopher Nicole

  Gleb knew there were princes and counts, barons and mere gentry, who were difficult men, and harsh to their tenants and underlings. By the word of his own father he knew that there had been Bolugayevskis like that, and not all in the distant past: from what old Igor had had to say, the Princess Dagmar had been a devil incarnate, as had her father. But they were dead. There was the saving grace of humanity, they always died. Even monsters like Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great had eventually died. As no doubt would this present day monster, Rasputin. One simply had to wait for the enemies of mankind to die, and make sure one did not die first. One had this problem even within one’s own family. Gleb would never forget his brother Rurik, not because Rurik had been his brother, but because the poor fool had had the temerity to lust after the Countess Anna, and then the Countess Patricia, and when brought up short had been dismissed.

  Gleb was no different to any other heterosexual male: he also lusted after the beauty with which he was surrounded. He thought the Countess Anna the second most beautiful woman who had ever walked the face of the earth, and the second most desirable, too, even in her seventies — once he had placed her at the top of the list. Now she was surpassed by her granddaughter. But he had more sense than even to dream of being anything more than a valuable servant to such goddesses. Rurik’s excesses had led him into the ranks of the Okhrana and an assassin’s bullet in the Moscow rising of 1905. Gleb was still alive.

  It followed therefore that he regarded the war with disfavour. He had no great personal feelings about the death of Prince Alexei, or about the disappearance into the Army — and thus also the probable death — of Count Cohn. Or should it be Prince Colin, despite what the Countess Anna had decreed? In that respect life on Bolugayen had not changed, nor did he expect it to. But, remembering as he did the upheaval that had followed defeat by the Japanese in 1905, the war itself threatened the life he so cherished. That bothered him. More, it frightened him. He was childless and his wife was dead. fie had only himself to think about. But he had every intention of ending his days in his own pantry with his own bottle of vodka and the fairly regular leavings from the Prince’s table of bottles of champagne and brandy and port. Anything that threatened that desirable termination of his years was unacceptable.

  He watched the man coming down the road and through the gates with a frown of annoyance. He hid first of all made out that the man was on foot, which meant that he must he poor. That he was limping, which meant that he was an invalid. And that he wore the tattered remnants of a uniform, which meant that he had been a soldier. Or perhaps, still was a soldier. And now he recognised the man himself, and felt a very curious sensation. He was not a superstitious man, at least, any more than the average Russian, but as nothing had been heard of him for two years, the fellow he saw walking wearily towards him was surely dead.

  Gleb cast a hasty glance left and right, but the verandah and front garden were deserted. So many men had been recruited from Bolugayen that even the fields were being worked by women, nowadays, and there were no men in the house at all save for Oleg the bootboy. In the middle of the afternoon the women would all be drinking tea, even the Princess and the two Countesses. It might be possible...all manner of ideas went. through Gleb’s mind — he even thought of losing the dogs, who were in any event barking. This man had no right to be returning without the Prince...but he knew he was not going to do anything more than welcome the stranger he knew so well. He went down the steps, and hurried up to the gates, which as always stood open. The man was quite close now. “Rotislav?” Gleb asked “My God, man. What has happened to you?”

  “I have come home,” the valet said. “Have you anything to drink?”

  Rotislav wanted vodka more than even food or a bath. although he certainly needed a bath. Gleb took him into the pantry, watched him gulp at the alcohol and then tear at the food he put in front of him. like a wild animal. “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “I have been to hell,” Rotislav said.

  “But...where is Prince Alexei?”

  “1 must speak with the Countess Anna,” Rotislav said. “Should you not speak with the Princess?”

  “Her too,” Rotislav said.

  “When you have had a bath and a change of clothing,” Gleb decided.

  So much for keeping the valet’s return secret. Gleb told Madame Xenia, supervised Rotislav’s bath, found him some clean clothes and then hurried upstairs. The Princess and the two Countesses were in the summer parlour, as he had supposed, drinking tea, while Count Alexei Junior played on the floor at their feet.

  Anna was now entirely recovered from her accident of live years ago, and her eyes were as bright as ever: even the tiny wrinkles which crisscrossed her seventy-eight-year-old cheeks could not detract from the essential beauty of her features, supported as they were by her immaculate hone structure. The Countess Anna Junior was an extremely pretty child of eight, with the golden hair and strong features of her family But Gleb had eves only for the Princess, and not only because of what he had to say. He had regarded this young woman with grave suspicion when she had come here permanently, as an eighteen-year-old. She had not been Russian. In fact, she had been American, a nation Gleb held in the deepest distrust, if only because they did not have a tsar. But more important than that she had been taking the place of a woman he had respected and loved. Gleb had no idea if the Princess Sonia was guilty of everything or indeed anything of which she had been accused; he had never known, and he had never expected to know, anyone quite as charming and as beautiful.

  On the other hand, he had reminded himself, he had also disliked the Princess Sonia, in the beginning, because she was Jewish. Thus he had been prepared to wait, and been rewarded. He had watched the Princess Priscilla grow from a somewhat uncertain girl into a quite entrancing woman. She was indeed a reincarnation of her grandmother, judging by the painting hanging in the downstairs parlour — but with a vital difference: where the Countess Anna had always had the morals of an alleycat — or a Russian countess — the Princess Priscilla had always had the morals of a Boston matron. She never swore, and she drank little, while since the disappearance of her husband she had never looked at any man in more than passing. Even the fact that she clearly supposed Prince Alexei dead, and thus routinely wore black, had not, to his knowledge, caused her ever to consider sharing her bed; she had remained concerned only with managing of Bolugayen, and with bringing up her son and stepdaughter. And even the widow’s weeds, in such stark contrast to her pale complexion and yellow hair, did nothing more than enhance her beauty. But now he might be the one to bring a smile to those habitually sombre features.

  “Is there news, Gleb?” Anna asked. “I did not hear the post horn.”

  “There is news, Your Excellency, Your Highness. Your Highness...” Gleb licked his lips. “Rotislav is here.”

  Priscilla stared at him with a faint frown, as if she could not quite place who he meant.

  Anna reacted more quickly. “Rotislav? Rotislav is dead!”

  “He is here, Your Excellency. He came an hour ago.”

  “An hour? And you have only just told us?”

  “I have had him bathed and fed. He needed food, Your Excellency, and he stank.”

  “Rotislav. My God!” Priscilla stood up; all the blood had drained from her cheeks. “I must speak with him.”

  “He is outside, Your Highness.” Gleb opened the doors, and the valet came in, moving hesitantly, as if he had forgotten the luxury in which he had once worked.

  “Rotislav!” Priscilla impulsively reached for his hands, and just as impulsively he kissed her knuckles, and then dropped to his knees before Anna. Little Anna gathered her half-brother into her arms and retreated across the room.

  “Two years,” Anna said. “Where have you been?”

  Rotislav kissed her knuckles in turn. “I was taken by the Germans, Your Excellency. I was sent to a prison camp. But when they discovered I was Polish, they made me enlist in a Polish regiment t
hey were raising from amongst our prisoners. They made me fight with them, against our own people. They made me kill Russians.”

  Anna gazed at him. “They also allowed you to survive.”

  “I was lucky, Your Excellency. The time came when I was able to desert. I ran away and got through the Russian lines. Then I did not wish to fight any more, so I came here.”

  “You walked through the Ukraine and the Donbass, wearing a German uniform?”

  “I took a uniform from a dead Russian. And his papers. I only wished to live, Your Excellency. Say that you forgive me.”

  Anna looked at Priscilla. “Have you news of the Prince?” Priscilla’s voice was low. But Rotislav got the message; forgiveness would depend on what he next had to say.

  “His Highness is a prisoner, Your Highness.”

  Priscilla stared at him, and the blood, beginning to flow back into her cheeks, faded again. She sat down, heavily.

  “You are lying,” Anna snapped. “If Prince Bolugayevski had been taken prisoner, the whole world would know of it.”

  Rotislav nodded. “That is what he feared, Your Excellency. He feared the Germans would gain a huge propaganda coup if they could claim to have captured a prince. Thus, when he realised we were going to he captured, he took off all his badges and discarded anything which could identify him, and surrendered as an ordinary soldier. I was with him when he did this, Your Excellency,” Rotislav said. “We were in prison together, but he told me to treat him as an equal, not as his servant. Then the Germans made me enlist.”

  “How long ago were you enlisted?” Anna asked. “Over a year, Your Excellency.”

  “Then you have not seen the Prince for over a year. And he has spent all that time in a prison camp, where we are told men are dying like flies?”

  “He was well when I had to leave him, Your Excellency,” Rotislav insisted.

  Priscilla stood up again. “He is alive,” she said, and flushed as her grandmother looked at her. “If he survived Tannenburg, then he is alive.” She hurried from the room into her own apartment. Her heart was pounding so hard she was quite sure the others could hear it.

  Alexei was alive! But had she not always believed that, refused to accept the fact of his death? For two years she had lived in a limbo of uncertainty, but always with that one dream to occupy her mind, at the expense of all else. She had refused the pleadings of her father and brother that she return to the safety of Boston until the war was over. She knew her attitude had frustrated Grandmama. Not the decision to remain: Anna had expected that of the Princess Bolugayevska. But Anna was a woman to whom action was the elixir of life. She gloried in it herself, and expected those around her to do so as well. She had been unable to understand why Priscilla had not exerted herself as Princess of Bolugayen, why she had not consciously instilled in her son the understanding that he was prince in fact, rather than in waiting. For Priscilla it had been simply a matter of waiting. As she had survived the catastrophe of the Titanic, so Alexei would survive the catastrophe of the war. The pair of them had been chosen by Fate to be indestructible.

  And now it was certain. She fell to her knees, clutching the cross given to her by Father Valentin when she had become an Orthodox Christian. She had not believed then, had secretly dismissed the whole thing as a lot of mumbo jumbo, especially if this religion could throw up someone like the monk Rasputin, who everyone seemed agreed was ruining the country. But she believed now, because this was the cross to which she had prayed, every night for two years, to bring Alexei back to her.

  She heard the door of her sitting room open, but did not turn her head; there was only one person on Bolugayen would dare enter the private apartment of the Princess Bolugayevska without knocking. “Are you praying because you are pleased, or sorry?” Anna asked.

  “How can you ask that, Grandmama?”

  “Answer me, and we will both know.”

  “I am the happiest woman in the world,” Priscilla said.

  Anna snorted. “He has not yet come home,” she pointed out.

  *

  Sonia supposed she was the most depraved woman on the face of the earth. She was far more depraved than any of those who shared her lot, because they had never attempted to resist. Naked, she knelt beside a tin bath tub and bathed a man. No, not a man. Never a man. A beast from the steppes. At the moment she soaped his back. But it would soon be time to soap his front, and then go lower. When she did that, he would drive his thick fingers into her hair, and pull it, hard enough to cause discomfort. He enjoyed causing discomfort. When he was bored with her hair, he would fondle her breasts, pulling the nipples, again hard enough to cause discomfort, and then roam between her legs, squeezing and pulling. There was nothing gentle about anything he did.

  But everything she did had to be gentle. She sometimes wondered just what he would do if she squeezed his testicles while washing them, or scratched his penis with her nails. He would certainly beat her. But it was what else he might do to her that held her back. So then, she was, on top of everything else, a coward. She wanted to live. And even, perhaps, one day, prosper all over again. It was too easy to tell herself that survival was the key, survival to avenge herself on all those who had wronged her. Then she would need to live forever. But in her heart she knew she would do anything to save herself from being returned to the clutches of the Okhrana, of Michaelin, to the constant fear and the constant humiliation.

  As if she did not suffer constant fear and even more, constant humiliation, here! But here was different, because here she shared, and was yet humiliated, in private. Besides those with whom she shared did not seem to be aware of being humiliated, and therefore did not consider her to be humiliated either. So, when she began to soap Rasputin’s right shoulder, she could look across that great mass of hair at Nathalie, busily soaping his left shoulder, or she could turn her head and look down the length of that enormous body at Dagmar, busily soaping the staretz’s feet. Two princesses and a girl who should have been a princess, abasing themselves before the almighty — at least in Petrograd. It was a mystery to Sonia why Dagmar did it. She herself had no choice, if she wanted to live. Nathalie had no doubt abandoned the concept of any other man, lost as she was in her mountains of fat. But Dagmar, if undoubtedly overweight, was still young enough to be called voluptuous. She was, in fact, an extremely attractive young woman. She could have the choice of virtually any young man in Petrograd, and there were a surprisingly large number of these, when one would have thought they should be at the front. But she preferred to be here, pandering to the obscene lusts of her master, racing her mother and her aunt by marriage to be the first to reach the elongated goal.

  The door behind them opened. None of the women even raised their heads; they were as used to being naked in front of Anton as they were to being naked in front of Rasputin himself. But Rasputin lazily opened his eyes. “A message, holy Father,” Anton said. “From Tsarskoye Selo. Her Majesty requests your presence, urgently.”

  Rasputin snorted. “The little brat is bleeding again. Very well, Anton. I will leave immediately. Have the automobile brought to the back.” He stood up, scattering water in every direction. “Now I am aroused and unsatisfied,” he remarked. “To please a woman.” His tone was contemptuous. “You will accompany me.”

  Sonia realised he was pointing at her. “Me, Father Gregory?” She could not believe her ears.

  “Yes, you, you silly bitch. Go and dress yourself. Put on some decent clothes.” If he had not allowed her to return to her own house, he had sent for her belongings, no doubt bewildering Antonina even more.

  “Her Majesty hates me,” Sonia said.

  “You are wrong. She has asked after you. She told me to bring you to her, next time I was summoned.”

  “Why can’t I go with you?” Nathalie asked.

  “Because Her Majesty has never told me to bring you, that is why. Now dry me and help me dress.” He glared at Sonia. “Hurry, woman.”

  Sonia had never been to the
Summer Palace. It was situated some distance outside of Petrograd, a place of utter quiet, shrouded from the world by huge stands of trees as well as extensive fields, under both flowers and vegetables; the Tsar was an enthusiastic gardener, who enjoyed the pastoral life — there were those who said that was what he had been born to do, rather than attempt to rule a country as turbulent as Russia. Not that there was much evidence of pastoral life as they neared the complex of buildings themselves, and had to stop time and again to be inspected by soldiers and flunkies. No one smiled at the holy man, or gave him more than the most cursory of greetings. Sonia they ignored altogether. “They do not like us,” she muttered.

  It had been a strange experience, for in all the months she had lived at Rasputin’s apartment that summer, he had never taken her driving before. But then he had never had a reason to take her driving before. Whatever could the Tsaritsa want with her? She supposed she should he apprehensive — if the Empress knew she was living with Rasputin she would surely know what she was called upon to do — but she was not apprehensive at all. She did not think there could be anything done to her or said to her, or even thought about her, which would hurt her or embarrass her, ever again. But she could not help but wonder how intimate was the staretz with the Tsaritsa, and just how much did she know about his lifestyle, about what went on behind the closed doors of that infamous apartment?

  She herself had had no idea what to expect. She remembered the day she had arrived at the apartment, how he had slowly looked her up and down, and then undressed her, again slowly, and carefully, with obvious pleasure, uncovering her as a child might have unwrapped a Christmas present promised him by his parents, knowing what lay beneath the paper and yet savouring every second of approaching it. He had dismissed Nathalie, to her obvious chagrin, and they had been alone. Sonia had thought she would faint, but she had not dared faint, lest he perform some unacceptably obscene act on her body. Thus she had stood there while he had fingered her. There had been nothing else. He had not even attempted to kiss her. He was truly interested only in what lay between the neck and the navel, save for the hair. He found hair exciting, whether on the head or at the groin. But for the rest, it was look, and touch. And hurt, to be sure.