The Witches of St. Petersburg

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  “You?”

  “Yes, Imperial Highness.” Margaretta might have curtsied, but Militza sensed her seething anger even from this distance. Militza said nothing. “As a former trained medical nurse,” Margaretta began, “I thought Her Imperial Majesty might require her physician.” Her head shuddered from side to side as she tried to control her emotions.

  “I’m not sure if washing bandages and changing bedpans in Ireland qualifies you for much, my dear, but seeing as you are here”—Militza turned to the two gentlemen on the landing—“I shall inform the empress.”

  BACK IN THE BEDROOM, PHILIPPE HAD CLOSED THE CURTAINS and the atmosphere was a little calmer.

  “I have been chanting and using a little hypnosis and she seems a little more settled,” said Philippe as Militza approached the bed.

  “Alix?” she said. “Dr. Ott and Dr. Girsh are outside.” She spoke slowly. “They said they’d like to examine you?”

  “No!” Alix replied, shifting in the bed. “Tell them no. Tell them to go away. I don’t want them to examine me. Those two buffoons only deliver daughters.”

  THE BLEEDING STEMMED, AND IT WAS FOUR DAYS LATER THAT full labor began. Initially, Alix took the pains and moans in her stride. During the hours of the early evening she held on to the bedpost, with both hands, moaning and lowing as she rode the waves of each of the contractions, while Philippe, Militza, and Stana stood by, occasionally mopping her brow and murmuring words of encouragement. But by midnight she was growing weak and was laid to rest in her bed, with Brana offering little sips of Madeira laced with laudanum to help her through. By now the bedsheets were sodden with blood, and her cries echoed around the palace. Militza had her hands between Alix’s legs, her fingertips slipped inside, as she desperately tried to free the baby’s head. As she pushed and kneaded, Alix moaned plaintively and pathetically with pain. It was patently clear there was not much time left.

  “We need chloroform and forceps—this baby appears to be coming out neck first,” pronounced Militza.

  “Here,” said Philippe. He rattled around in a box and handed over a small glass bottle and handkerchief. “But we have no forceps.”

  THE STRUGGLE WAS IMMENSE AND THE LOSS OF BLOOD OBSCENE as Militza fought, up to her forearms, desperately trying to ease the baby out. Alix battled against the pain and the chloroform, slipping in and out of consciousness. And then finally, at around 4 A.M., just as the sun was coming up over the sea, an exhausted, small, rather skinny baby was born.

  Stana stared at the red, wriggling creature on the bed.

  “It’s a girl.”

  Such was the shock that no one bothered to swaddle it; they all simply stood there, unable to believe their eyes. A girl. Another girl. How could this be? The tsarina had believed Philippe wholeheartedly. They all had. And now there was a girl. A fifth daughter.

  “We could kill it?” suggested Brana, looking at the baby with utter contempt. “A little bit of chloroform?”

  “No,” said Militza.

  “Get rid of it,” proposed Stana. “It has to go. She can’t have a fifth daughter.” She shook her head. “But how?”

  They all turned to Philippe, who was so traumatized by what he had seen and what had just happened, he was unable to respond. He stood, motionless and emotionless, staring at the child on the bed, still attached to its mother by a pulsating cord, his whole life clearly flashing before him, for he knew, here and now, that his work in Russia was done. Not even he, the cat with nine lives, the master who could calm storms and hypnotize almost anyone, not even he was capable of coming back from this. A fifth daughter? His life was ruined.

  “I could take her with me when I leave,” he said simply. “Find her a nice home, a loving family. No one need know.”

  There was silence as the four of them digested this plan.

  “Yes,” agreed Militza. “Take her! Take her away and no one need know.”

  “But what do we say? We will need to say something, something by way of explanation?” said Stana.

  “A miscarriage? A stillbirth?” Brana shrugged. “It happens all the time.”

  “Yes.” Philippe nodded, warming to the idea. “Nature is so wasteful, so cruel, the poor tsarina, the nation will mourn with her, all the mothers of Russia will mourn; their Mother Russia suffers like they do, they will take to the streets in sympathy, they will fill the churches and weep for her . . . But a fifth daughter . . .” He shook his head. “No one rejoices for a fifth daughter. No one fires a cannon or rings a church bell for another girl.” He shuddered. “That doesn’t bear thinking about.”

  “It’s agreed,” said Militza.

  “But what do we say to Ott and Girsh?” asked Stana. “They will want to see something?”

  They all looked at each other, each hoping the other would say something, do something to make the situation better. The baby on the bed began to cry, and Alix moaned slightly in response; the effects of the chloroform were beginning to wear off. Whatever decision they came to, they would have to act quickly.

  “Right,” said Militza, briskly drying her bloodied hands on a towel. “You”—she pointed to Brana—“cut the cord. You”—she nodded to her sister—“stay here and look after Alix. I will go and inform the tsar, and you and Brana had better keep that baby quiet and sort something out.”

  Militza left the room and, smoothing down her crimson-stained apron, walked slowly downstairs to the tsar’s office. On her way she passed several members of the household hanging around in the hall, awaiting the news. As they raised their eyes expectantly, Militza dropped her gaze as if preparing them for bad news. She knocked on the office door and Nicky opened it. She could tell by the expression on his face he knew something was wrong. Had the child been a healthy boy, the shouts of joy would have reverberated around the house so loudly and wildly, you would have heard them on the beach and in the Gulf of Finland beyond. Instead there’d been silence.

  “It’s a girl,” Militza said softly.

  “How?” he asked, collapsing into a chair. “How can it be?” He sniffed as tears of desperate disappointment welled up in his exhausted eyes. “She believed in Philippe this time; we have prayed to God, we have never stopped praying to God; we have begged and pleaded and been on our knees asking for his help and forgiveness, asking for a son. And now this?”

  “I know,” soothed Militza, sitting down next to him and taking his hands. “I know, I know.” He rested his head on her shoulder as he sobbed. “Listen,” said Militza as she comforted him with a gentle embrace. “I think you know what I am going to say, even if you don’t want to hear it.” She paused and steadied herself. “Russia will not take another daughter. Alix cannot have another daughter. The court won’t accept it, St. Petersburg won’t; in the provinces, the countryside, they will never forgive her. They already think she is a German spy sent to destroy the house of Romanov. You know I am telling you the truth. I am only sorry you have to hear it from me.”

  Nicky stopped crying and raised his head, staring at her. He was so close she could taste his warm breath on her lips.

  “Philippe will take her away. He will take her to France. He will need money of course, but you can give him that. But he must go and he must take her with him. And he must go as soon as possible.”

  “But what will Alix say?”

  “Alix is not quite conscious. But we will tell her when she is well. And she will be grateful. She will be pleased we have helped her. She will be happy we have saved her from the mob. But it must be a secret. It must all be a secret. Who knows what would happen if it was ever discovered that there was another girl? You’d have to divorce her, and she’d be banished and hounded out of the country. If she even got that far . . .”

  Nicky just stared at her. It was all too much to take in. He looked haunted, scared; he was indecisive at the best of times, but Militza was asking him to make a decision right here and now. And it pained him so much to think about it.

  “Whatever you think is best,
” he mumbled finally.

  IT WAS PHILIPPE WHO CHRISTENED THE BABY GIRL SUZANNA. It was his idea to give her such a decidedly French-sounding name, so that no one would suspect where she was truly from, and the day they left for Paris was one Militza would never forget.

  It was cold and dank, and a miserable, thick fog hung heavy over the dacha. It chilled the bone and made you shiver as if someone were striding over your grave.

  Only the tsar, the tsarina, and the two sisters saw them off. No one else except Brana even knew the baby existed. The cleanup had been thorough and organized. Drs. Ott and Girsh were the first to be convinced. By chance, Brana, who had uncharacteristically sharp eyes for a crone, noticed a walnut-sized ovule nestling in the blood and sheets as she cleaned up after the birth. This was hastily retrieved and duly presented to the doctors by way of explaining the “miscarriage.” Fortunately, when examined under a microscope it proved to be a dead fertilized egg of around four-week gestation, and so they sadly confirmed the tsarina’s terrible news: an appalling miscarriage that had manifested as a phantom pregnancy. There was simply no child at all. The Dowager Empress was informed, and then the court. Rumors, naturally, abounded. Alix was said to have given birth to an animal with horns, a creature so frightful, so hideous, the spawn of the devil himself, that they were forced to execute it at birth. Others saw the premature death of the baby and the lack of the long-awaited son as a form of divine retribution for the appalling tragedy at Khodynka Field. Despite Philippe’s prediction, very few were sympathetic. However, all this was preferable to the reality. If the truth ever got out, the birth of a fifth daughter? That would destroy them all.

  IT WAS DECIDED THAT PHILIPPE AND SUZANNA SHOULD TRAVEL through Finland and then by train to Paris, where Philippe would be met by a trusted colleague of his: Leendert Johannes Hemmes. Leendert and Philippe had been friends for a long time and were of the same Martinist religion. His loyalty was discussed long into the night, as Militza and Philippe plotted and planned. Leendert also possessed psychic powers, which he used to diagnose sickness in the urine of the unwell. He could be trusted. He had to be trusted. The child could not stay in Russia.

  “We shall be fine,” Philippe assured Alix as she stood in the cold fog, her gray eyes glazed, her expression blank. “It is not a long journey. And we will write.”

  “No,” Alix replied. “No contact. No news. It is the only way. The secret police are everywhere. And I can’t vouch that any news won’t send me insane. The wound needs to be cauterized. Suzanna is dead. She is with May, eating baked apples . . .”

  Philippe nodded. In his arms, he held the silent, sallow, sickly looking Suzanna, who already seemed to know her fate.

  “Would you like to . . .” He held the baby up.

  “Be sure to keep her warm,” whispered Alix.

  She reached out a thin, shaking hand to touch her daughter for the last time. Her trembling fingers hovered over the baby, and she looked as though she were going to bless her child, commend it to God, but she withdrew slowly, clearly thinking better of it.

  THE TSAR HAD GIVEN PHILIPPE A NEW AND VERY FINE SERPOLLET motorcar as a token for all his hard work. It was parked, freshly polished, in the driveway, waiting to be taken to the station and loaded onto the train to Helsinki. Philippe was also given some five million rubles, in sequential notes, to ensure Hemmes’s discreet silence. (The fact that Hemmes was later to build himself a rather fine house in Rotterdam, with no obvious means of support, was neither here nor there.) Alix had gathered together a small selection of trinkets by which her daughter would one day, when it was safe, know herself: a small Fabergé box; a traveling icon on a silver chain, also by Fabergé; and a thick rope of pearls. All things she could sell if she ever needed to. Poor Alix was not capable of putting pen to paper, so it was Militza who wrote Suzanna a long letter in which she explained why her brokenhearted mother had been persuaded to give her beautiful daughter away.

  Just as he was leaving, Philippe turned to Militza, reached into his pocket, and took out a small icon, which he placed in her hand.

  “Take this,” he said, squeezing it into her palm. “It is the rarest and most powerful of icons: St. John the Baptist, the angel of the desert. It will keep you safe, for it protects all who own it. No harm will ever come to you while you have it in your possession. It was given to me by Papus, and now I pass it on to you. I don’t need it anymore, my work is done and I have no future.” He kissed her gently on the cheek. “Remember, it was St. John who declared the coming of the Messiah. And so too will you. You will call him to Russia, like a siren, and when you need him most, he will come. Thank you. Thank you for believing in me. You have a gift, Militza. Use it wisely.”

  He then turned to the tsarina. “Your Imperial Majesty . . .” He bowed his head. Alix stared at him. Her strained face was impassive; her thin fingers nervously played with the lengthy rope of pearls around her neck. “You will get your son. I predict if you canonize Seraphim of Sarov and swim at midnight in the holy waters, you will conceive and realize your dreams. Seraphim himself once predicted your reign. He said that one day Russia would be ruled by a Nicholas and Alexandra, and he would be canonized in that reign. Do this and you will conceive your son.”

  Alexandra simply stared and nodded slowly. “As you command, so I shall do,” she replied.

  “Don’t weep for me—and don’t weep for your baby,” said Philippe, taking hold of her slim shoulders. “I promise you, someday you will have another friend who, like me, will speak to you of God. Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tiny posy of dried flowers. “These violets were touched by Christ. Touched by his very hand. They have been worshipped and prayed over for centuries. I am giving them to you to keep you safe.”

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “I have no need of them anymore. For in a few years, in 1905, I shall be dead.”

  “Don’t say that!” She placed her shaking fingers on his lips.

  “It is true. For I always speak the truth.”

  “Hush.”

  “But my spirit will live on.”

  “It will,” she whispered, and a single tear snaked down her cheek. “I bless the day we met you.”

  Her face turned a raw, dark pink. She was visibly shaking as she walked slowly back into the palace.

  THAT NIGHT MILITZA PUT ALIX TO BED. SHE WAS GIVEN ONE of Brana’s more potent cocktails of poppy-head tea and warm milk, which she sipped in bed, staring at the wall, unable to say a word. Eventually, she lay down, and while Militza slowly stroked her hair, she quietly wept herself to sleep. Equally exhausted by the schemes and plans of the last few days, Militza herself fell asleep a few minutes later on an adjacent divan, only to be woken later by Alix.

  It must have been two or three in the morning, she remembered, and the moon was shining through the open window. Alix was standing, in a thin white nightdress, bathed in a silver light, slowly rocking what looked like a poppet in her arms and singing sweetly under her breath. Militza sat and watched, transfixed. The tsarina was not weeping; she didn’t look distressed—in fact, she looked blissfully happy, singing a lullaby and rocking the wooden peg doll in her arms. It was as if all her worries and the agony of the last few days were as nothing. Her voice was sweet and childlike, and her movements were effortless. She looked like a wisp, luminous in the moonlight.

  “Alix?” ventured Militza as she slowly crossed the room towards her.

  “Oh!” she replied, turning around suddenly. “It’s you!” She smiled; her cold hand cupped Militza’s chin, and she ran her thumb gently along the length of her lips. Her voice was breathy, her eyes glassy. And the look on her face was one of divine bliss. “Look!” she said offering up the poppet. “Look, my love.”

  Militza caught a glimpse in the moonlight. “A magic doll from Smolensk.”

  She recognized its sharp wooden face and crude clothing immediately. She remembered asking Brana to find it, sending her to the nunnery in Smole
nsk. It had taken the crone days to find the right group of nuns, for they had become increasingly secretive over time. Eventually, it was the queue of the barren, weeping outside a small back door down a narrow back street, that alerted her to them. They were all waiting, desperately waiting, for a little wooden doll to rock to sleep at night in the hope that it might help them conceive.

  “Look, Nicky, it’s like baby Jesus,” replied Alix, softly caressing the top of its hard head.

  “A boy,” whispered Militza, walking towards her.

  “Yes, my love, a boy.” She smiled. “We have a son at last.”

  “Well done,” replied Militza, taking Alix by the shoulders and directing her back to bed. The opium tea was playing tricks with her traumatized mind.

  “Are you pleased?” Alix cowered. “Have I pleased you at last?”

  “Yes, yes, you have done well.”

  “All I want to do is please you, my love,” she continued, standing by the bed, swinging the poppet in one hand. She turned back towards Militza, took a step towards her, and placed her lips on Militza’s cheek. “I have only ever wanted to make you happy. A son for you, for Russia.”

  “I know,” Militza whispered, before pushing her slowly away, towards the bed.

  “Stay with me?” Alix’s voiced sounded panicked. It was hard to tell if she was conscious or unconscious, in this world or another. She suddenly grabbed Militza by the elbows and stared, terrified, into her eyes. “I don’t think I will make it through the night on my own.”

  Chapter 15

  February 11, 1903, St. Petersburg

  THAT NIGHT WAS THE FIRST OF MANY THAT MILITZA spent sleeping on the divan in the tsarina’s bedroom. It took a few weeks before she stopped waking and rocking the doll in the middle of the night and a few more for her to stop weeping. Brana’s opium cocktails were steadily increased in strength to help dull the pain. It was only when the tsarina found it difficult to rouse herself in the morning that it was decided to reduce the amount of poppy heads in her nightly drink. The tsar himself suggested she should try some of Dr. Badmaev’s excellent cocaine as a bit of a pick-me-up; he himself was using it to help him with his persistent toothache as well as the torpor of his day.