The Witches of St. Petersburg

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  Militza and Stana followed him through to the back room, which, even in the dying light of the day, appeared to be in terrible disarray. The sheets on the divan were crumpled, there were half-drunk glasses of wine and Madeira on the table, and the stuffy air reeked of sweat and sex. Militza glanced at the divan, expecting to see some exhausted well-ridden woman gathering up her skirts, but the room was empty. The healed acolyte must have fled down the back stairs.

  “Now,” he said, patting the still-warm patch on the divan. “Sit and tell me why it has taken you both so long to come and see me?”

  His question surprised them. There was no mention of the icon, no mention of the last time Militza had seen him, when he’d begged for her help. They came out with their excuses, pretended that they had tried many times to see him; many times they’d drawn up their cars or their carriages, but there had simply been so many people, or they had not wanted to disturb him. They’d glanced at him at court, but he was always so occupied.

  “Everyone wants me,” he confirmed, nodding magnanimously. “And I just can’t help them all.”

  He poured himself a large glass of Madeira. Militza leaned forward, her father’s request on the tip of her tongue. Rasputin raised his hand and immediately began to recount his visits to the palace, his close and intimate conversations with the tsar and tsarina, as well as the numerous times he’d been called up to help the Little One. On and on he went, describing each crisis, each episode, and how terribly grateful the weeping tsarina always was, how much she relied on him. And eventually how only his telegram to Spala had saved the heir to the throne and indeed Russia and the empire itself.

  “Extraordinary,” agreed Stana.

  “I wonder . . .” began Militza. “I have a note here from my father.” Up went the hand again. “I’ll leave it here.” She pushed the envelope, with its thick red royal wax seal, across the table towards him.

  He glanced down at it briefly before he continued on. The more he drank, the more his chest expanded and the more pompous his attitude became. It became increasingly obvious that he was no longer talking to them, but was recounting some well-rehearsed stories and anecdotes that he told to everyone, anyone. The two sisters had ceased to exist; they were simply his audience. And all that was left was Rasputin himself.

  Chapter 32

  February 22, 1914, St. Petersburg

  IT WAS NOT UNTIL SOME MONTHS LATER THAT THE SISTERS realized quite how duplicitous Rasputin had been.

  A few days after listening to his drunken, boastful ramblings in the overheated, sex-soaked room, Stana and Nikolasha had managed to speak to the tsar in private. As Nikolasha was commander in chief of the army, his opinions, ideas, and advice were important to the tsar, no matter what minor tribulations went on between both their wives, so they were invited to a meeting in his office in Tsarskoye Selo, where they fervently pleaded with the tsar that Russia should commit to helping Montenegro in the Balkan War.

  Their argument was quite simple: since Montenegro had backed Russia during the ill-fated Russo-Japanese War, it was now time for the tsar to honor their alliance and stick up for his staunchest ally, Stana’s father. They were family, after all. They left the meeting buoyed by Nicky’s response, safe in the knowledge that Rasputin would meet with the emperor later that day to shore up the plan. After all, they’d left him the letter and had sat, listening attentively, while he’d drained a couple of bottles of Madeira and talked endlessly about himself for over two hours.

  Except that was not what happened.

  IN FEBRUARY, WHILE THE POOR STALKED THE SNOW-COVERED streets looking for food and the threat of war hung ominously in the air, the court celebrated the wedding not of the decade but perhaps the entire century.

  The union of Princess Irina Alexandrovna, the only daughter of the tsar’s sister Xenia and Grand Duke Alexander, with Prince Felix Yusupov, the richest and most eligible prince in all of Russia, was quite some match. The beautiful, aristocratic, educated Irina, the emperor’s only niece, was regarded as the finest catch in the empire, and for her to marry the empire’s richest prince made the ceremony and the party afterwards the ultimate social occasion.

  The wedding was held in the private chapel at the Anichkov Palace, and the bride arrived in a state coach pulled by eight white horses. She eschewed tradition, and instead of wearing the usual court dress with a kokoshnik, she wore a silk satin gown of the latest fashion, stitched with silver thread, with a rock crystal tiara from Cartier holding in place Marie Antoinette’s lace wedding veil. The groom, as he had no rank in the army or official military roll, wore a dark frock coat embroidered with gold-and-white broadcloth trousers. She was led down the aisle by the tsar himself, who gave her twenty-one uncut diamonds as a wedding present; he also bequeathed Prince Yusupov unlimited access to the Imperial Box at the theatre in lieu of his original gift—a position at court—which the young prince had turned down.

  It was indeed a splendid occasion, a glitter of expensive jewels, rich silks, and dashing uniforms, with the receiving line into the reception over two hours long. And while the happy couple stood there, along with their parents, accepting congratulations from the guests, everyone else sipped champagne, ate spoonfuls of caviar, and talked about the terrible increase in hostilities both at home and abroad, while occasionally glancing out of the windows at the canal and the gray streets below.

  “What did you think of the dress?” asked the Grand Duchess Vladimir, her Bolin diamond-pearl tiara quivering.

  “I thought it was beautiful,” replied Stana, taking a sip of her champagne.

  “I thought it quite dull in comparison to the usual court dress; quite why Xenia let her wear that I have no idea.” She smiled, before proffering up her small plump hand. “Do you like my little Christmas present to myself?” On her index finger glinted a large cabochon ruby ring, the size of an emperor beetle. “Cartier.” Since her husband’s death almost five years before, Maria Pavlovna had been in receipt of one million rubles a year as a pension, which she had mostly spent on jewelry.

  “It is beautiful,” said Militza, for it was indeed stunning.

  “I hear your Friend is opposed to going to war,” Maria said, retracting her hand and taking a large swig from her glass. “Don’t look so surprised!” she continued. “I thought you knew? Only the other day he was asking the tsar not to engage with the Ottomans.”

  “When was this?” asked Nikolasha.

  “Not long ago,” said Maria. “I heard he was actually lying on the floor, begging him not to support your lot.”

  “Begging?” asked Nikolasha.

  “That’s what I heard.” She smiled.

  “Begging?” he repeated, a look of horror on his face. “That man will stop at nothing. Can you believe it?” He turned to look at Stana. “After all that?”

  “He’s moving apartments too,” continued Maria.

  “Where?” asked Militza.

  “Gorokhovaya Street—number sixty-four, fourth-floor flat, apparently. A grubby street,” she said. “The tsar’s paying his rent—one hundred twenty-one rubles a month. But it is very close to the train station, with a direct line to Tsarskoye Selo.”

  “You seem very well-informed, Maria,” declared Nikolasha.

  “Of course I am,” she laughed. “I had tea the other day with that weasel Anna Vyrubova—that woman knows more than the Okhrana and is stupid enough to answer any question you ask!”

  “Who knows more than the Okhrana?” quizzed a small, neat man with a wide face and brown, thinning hair. “Oswald,” he said, introducing himself. “Oswald Rayner, I am a friend of Prince Yusupov’s from Oxford University.”

  “Good evening,” responded Militza, nodding. There was something about the fellow she found appealing. His face was intelligent and his manner charming; it was easy to see why the prince had befriended him. “We were just talking about an acquaintance of ours.”

  “Who is a dear, close friend of Rasputin,” added Maria. “If you know wh
o he is?”

  “I have learned not to mention him by name,” laughed Mr. Rayner. “Talk of Rasputin is more dangerous than Rasputin himself.”

  Nikolasha and Stana were too furious to stay any longer at the wedding. Nikolasha was more humiliated than annoyed; he’d trusted the Siberian to speak to the tsar, he had believed he would help them—and to have been outplayed by a peasant wounded him greatly. This was not a trifle, a little game. This was war.

  THE NEXT MORNING STANA TELEPHONED HER SISTER.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Father is furious. He was relying on Nicky to back him and Nikolasha said it was simple enough, but now Rasputin’s changed everything. That man is totally out of control. He is conducting the orchestra while the rest of us just sit in the stalls. We have to do something.”

  “We need to think, Stana. Let’s not be rash.”

  “Rash!”

  “We need to come up with a plan.”

  “No, dear sister, you do.”

  MILITZA BROODED. SHE SPENT HOURS IN HER SALON, CONTEMPLATING what she should do. It was five days later, at the Countess Marie Kleinmichel’s Persian Ball in honor of her three young nieces, that she realized she could wait no longer.

  A masked ball? For three hundred guests? For which Léon Bakst, the celebrated costumier for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, designed the majority of the costumes? The countess had been besieged by so many people wanting to watch the proceedings, there had been talk of allowing them to view from the balconies above. But in the end, the countess put her foot down and decided she wanted to seat every guest for a midnight supper and a total of three hundred was all her kitchen could manage. The ball opened with an Oriental quadrille, followed by an Egyptian dance, a Cossack dance, a traditional folk dance, and a Hungarian folk dance. The costumes were stunning—caftans of golden thread, capes trimmed with sable, blue silk pantaloons, crimson jackets, silver lamé turbans; the champagne flowed, the caviar circled the room, and everyone was quite breathless with excitement.

  It was billed as the ball to end all balls and it certainly was. It was the last great ball in Imperial Russia before the outbreak of the First World War, the last time the court was to dance in all its finery. Not that anyone knew that that evening. Indeed, the opulence and profligacy, the purchase of such extravagant costumes for one night only, was not questioned by any of the guests. They were used to dancing while the rest of St. Petersburg starved and shivered—why would it not continue forever?

  Stana danced most of the night, watched by Nikolasha, who, although reputedly a fine dancer, preferred a spectator’s view. Peter asked each of the Kleinmichel daughters for a quadrille, hoping that others would be as generous with his own daughter, while Militza was deep in conversation with Mr. Rayner. Prince Yusupov’s Oxford University friend, although wearing a red turban, had decided against the remainder of his costume, preferring a simple white tie in lieu of the loose blue silk trousers that he’d been offered earlier that evening.

  “What is it with the Russians and dressing up?” he asked an amused Militza. “Why can’t they have a normal evening? With normal food. In normal clothes. It’s exhausting!”

  “I suppose there are so many parties it’s the only way to differentiate one from the other,” she replied.

  “Yes,” he said. “The season here is like no other I have ever witnessed. The relentless hedonism is something else. And quite why anyone would want to go to a party dressed as a Hun is beyond me.” He drank his shot of vodka and pushed an irritating feather out of his face. “Particularly during this time—and for you it must be very galling indeed.” He nodded.

  “Me?”

  “Being from Montenegro and your father not securing help from the Russians,” he replied. “It’s almost as if someone’s rubbing salt into wounds.”

  “Yes.” Militza laughed lightly—the man seemed remarkably au courant. “And what are you doing here?”

  “Nothing much,” he replied. “Seeing friends. I’m thinking of renting a little flat on Moika.”

  “So you will be staying with us long?”

  He nodded. “I think things might be getting a little interesting here.”

  “Interesting? I think you flatter us, Mr. Rayner,” declared Militza, taking a large sip of her drink and walking towards the other side of the ballroom.

  “So do you like my friend?” asked a rather inebriated voice in the crowd.

  “Prince Yusupov,” declared Militza. “I didn’t recognize you with all the feathers and the turban. Are you not on honeymoon?”

  “I leave tomorrow,” he said, with a wave of his slim hand. “Paris, where we know far too many people. So I am sure we shall have to slip off somewhere else if we are to find any peace; I’m quite fond of Egypt, what do you think?”

  “Good,” agreed Militza. The man was very obviously drunk; his pale eyes were staring at her, one slowly closing independently from the other, and he was clearly in a combative mood. She made as if to walk away.

  “So, do you like my friend?” he asked again, taking hold of her upper arm.

  “He’s charming,” she replied, looking furiously at his grip. Like father, like son. He loosened it.

  “Well, I don’t like your Friend,” he said. “Rasputin!” He practically spat his name as he staggered back a step or two.

  “I thought you were friends—or at least your friend Munia Golovina and her mother are most certainly close to him.”

  “What a charlatan he is! The man tried to hypnotize me the other day. To cure me, he said. What an utter fraud!”

  “I think you might have drunk a little too much.” She smiled gently. “It might have warped your judgment.”

  “You’re the one with warped judgment. You’re the one who brought this evil charlatan into all our lives.”

  “That is not true.”

  “Who found him? You. Who introduced him to the court? You. Who championed him? You. Who helped him infiltrate the imperial household? You. Who paraded him around St. Petersburg? You. Your house, your palace, Znamenka . . .” He paused, his lips curling with hatred. “That palace is the axis of all that is evil in this world, and you are the personification of all that is evil. You have opened Pandora’s box, my dear, and . . .” He paused again, staring at her. “And you have no idea how to close it.” He turned as if to leave, and then he stopped, swaying a little as he spoke. “I pity you. You think you are so very clever. But you are not. Your monster is out of control, Madame! It’s gorging itself on power, girls, and alcohol. While you? You think it will be fine, but it won’t. You suffer from hubris, dear lady, hubris. And it will defeat you in the end!”

  THAT NIGHT MILITZA FOUND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO SLEEP. SHE was haunted by images that kept whirling and swirling round in her head. Felix Yusupov’s furious, drunken, plumed head berated and hectored her all night, as did vibrant images of Rasputin—his blessings, his healings, his filthy fingers being licked clean, his laughing, his dancing, the smell of his fetid breath and the rough touch of his hands, as well as his haunting voice in her ear: “Naughty girl . . . Naughty girl . . . Naughty girl.”

  As dawn broke, Militza lay covered in a cold sweat, staring at the gilt ceiling; her mouth was dry, her brain was exhausted, but her jaw was set, her mind made up. She must exorcise the beast: she must kill him.

  Later that morning she called Stana and demanded they meet in a quiet corner of the Yacht Club—to discuss such a thing on the telephone would be unthinkable—although a discussion was not what actually took place.

  “NO,” SAID STANA SIMPLY, HER DARK EYES WIDE WITH HORROR. “Are you insane? Have you been taking too much elixir? You don’t look like you’ve slept at all.” Her hand shook as she poured herself tea, spilling a little on the white linen tablecloth. How could it have possibly come to this? “Murder Rasputin?”

  “Keep your voice down!” Militza’s furtive eyes glanced around the club. “The walls have eyes and ears. The Okhrana know everything.”

>   “I don’t care who hears because I will not entertain such a thing.”

  “But he is out of control!”

  “I know!”

  “He’s now so powerful, the other day the tsar sent him to look Stolypin’s replacement in the eye to see if he was a ‘good man.’ And guess what?”

  “What?”

  “He wasn’t. And guess what?” She paused and leaned across the table. “He’s not the prime minister.”

  “That doesn’t justify killing him,” said Stana, stirring her tea.

  “Doesn’t it?” Militza felt her heart beat rapidly in her chest. “I don’t know if you have noticed between quadrilles and appointments with your dressmaker, but you and I are not welcome at the palace anymore.”

  “No one is welcome at the palace; they don’t see anyone.”

  “But instead of us advising, guiding, smoothing the ruffled feathers, it’s them.”

  “Well, Nikolasha’s heard that Anna thinks we only introduced Rasputin to the tsarina so that we might later use him as a tool to further our own goals.” Stana took a sip of her tea. “It seems the tool no longer needs its master.”

  “When was the last time Alix was at Znamenka?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “When was the last time Nicky spoke to Nikolasha, the cousin he loves so much?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  Militza sighed. “Felix Yusupov called our house the axis of evil.”

  “Well, his family have always hated Grisha.”

  “But I thought Felix didn’t?”

  “That was before Grisha tried to cure him”—Stana lowered her voice to just above a whisper—“of his lusts.”

  “Lusts?”

  “Boys.”

  “Homosexuality.”

  “Yes.” Stana nodded.

  “Well, that’s hardly a secret; the man has been dressing up as a woman ever since he could walk. And he’ll tell anyone that he was so convincing as a girl he once caught the eye of King Edward VII!”

  “Well, Grisha suggested he go to the gypsies in Novaya Derevnaya. He said they would soon coax it out of him!”