The Witches of St. Petersburg

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  “The gypsies are his answer to every question.”

  Stana nodded. “Since when is murdering him the answer to yours?”

  The argument went back and forth. The more Stana refused to discuss the idea or even entertain such a concept, the more Militza believed herself to be correct. Every time she pondered the future with him still in it, she was overcome with nausea and paranoia.

  “I’m anxious, I’m worried,” she whispered to her sister as the waiter came to clear away the tea.

  “I think you need to speak to Dr. Badmaev about all the elixir you are taking,” said Stana. “It’s affecting your nerves.”

  “Are you scared of Rasputin?”

  “No,” Stana replied defiantly. “I just hate him. According to Nicky, ‘Better ten Rasputins than a hysterical Alix.’ Whatever Rasputin does, however duplicitous he is, he makes life more bearable at Tsarskoye Selo. He keeps Alix calm and so Nicky gives him what he wants. His prayers coincide with the recovery of Alexei, and now, after Spala . . .”

  “That child of many prayers,” said Militza, shaking her head.

  “I could not take that away,” said Stana. “Despite what he’s done to our country and the war.”

  “The truth is you think he made all the difference to your wedding. You think it was all down to Rasputin that you and Nikolasha got married in the first place. Well, it wasn’t. And the person who made the ultimate sacrifice for you was not him but me!” Militza stood up from the table. “So I don’t need your help, I don’t need your approval. I shall do this with or without you!” She looked at her sister. “Without you it is!”

  And so she waited, as she knew she had to, although she was desperate not to. But she would only have one chance, so she bided her time and prepared. On her own, her magic would not be strong enough against him, for he was a formidable force. Quite what the Four Winds had found when they’d scoured the land looking for a koldun, she could not tell. But his magic was strong and his will was even stronger. Perhaps he had been born with a small tail? He certainly had two budding horns on the top of his head. Maybe he had been born with teeth? Or was he the product of three generations of illegitimacy? All she knew was that he had certainly signed a pact with the devil, using the blood of his left little finger. And it would take all of her powers to stand up to him. She would have to call on the magic of all the ancient sisters who’d gone before her to rid Russia of his evil soul. For days, she disappeared into her salon in Znamenka. She pored over her books while she played with the toenails she’d so painstakingly harvested from him and kept in a beautiful handcrafted box that had been given to her by Papus himself, inlaid with a large Martinist star, the symbol of the order. Rasputin had come willingly to her house, she reminded herself, a fact that would make the spell more powerful. She had not taken her trophies using force.

  But the spells of the past seemed weak. What use was an old spell and graveyard dust in his drink or food? “As the dead no longer stand up, may the body of Rasputin no longer stand, as the bodies of the dead have disappeared, may the body of Rasputin also disappear”—it all seemed so ineffectual. Brana could certainly find the graveyard dust and she might be able to sprinkle it on his food, but the idea he would suddenly keel over did not seem plausible at all.

  She must think, she must plan—and all the while she kept reminding herself that she was the one who had the St. John the Baptist icon. She was the one who was protected and he was not.

  So she waited for June 23, for midsummer’s night and the feast of St. John’s Eve; then, stepping out into the forest, her cape tied tightly around her, she could not help but think how much she missed her sister, of the summers they’d spent gathering herbs wet with morning dew. The last time they’d gone out together was years ago, when they’d tried to help Alix. The woman was so disloyal not to remember that, remember how they had helped her, how Militza and Philippe had come to her rescue when the fifth daughter was born. Funny how the poor child was not mentioned now, funny what people remember, funny what they choose to forget . . .

  It was a beautiful night as she wove her way through the forest. The sky was clear and the sun low in the pale blue sky, trying in vain to set. She loved these white nights, where the days lasted forever and the city was not allowed to sleep. There was always a sort of madness in the air that made malefic spells trip more freely off the tongue. She was looking in the forest for foxgloves, known as dead man’s bells, so Rasputin might hear them ringing in his ears; for hemlock grown in full sunshine so it would be more virulently poisonous—and, of course, for henbane. Brana had already secured a mandrake. She’d been dispatched two nights before with a sword and one of Nikolasha’s borzois. Under strict instructions, she’d traced a circle, three times, around the plant and had tied the plant to the dog; then, while she covered her ears, she’d placed a plate of meat outside the circle so that the dog pulled up the plant as he lunged forward for the food.

  While Militza wandered alone through the forest, Brana busied herself melting down a cross, fashioning the molten metal into a bullet. The only way to kill a koldun as powerful as Rasputin was to force a metal bullet through his heart.

  It was about 6 A.M. by the time Militza came back to the palace with her foxgloves, hemlock, and henbane, all glistening with St. John’s Eve dew; then the two women set to work. Militza fashioned a doll in the shape of Rasputin, just as she’d done all those years before, taking care to reproduce the large member that she and Stana had added out of foolishness. What an appalling act of folly that had turned out to be. She warmed the wax from a fresh corpse in her hands; it was a much softer, whiter fat than the wax she was used to, and there was something deeply unpleasant about the way it melted and slid all over her hands, covering them with the grease. The smell was acrid and made her eyes water, and she needed to be quick, for the poppet of fat would not keep its shape for long. She placed it in a small metal dish.

  “Quick,” she said to Brana. “Pass me the mandrake.” Brana sprinkled the powdered mandrake into a glass of wine, dark and red, the color of blood for her drink.

  “Kulla! Kulla!” she began, draining the glass in one. “Kulla! Kulla!” she repeated, her eyes flickering and her body swaying as she worked herself into a meditative trance. “Kulla! Kulla!” She picked up the small bullet made from the molten cross. “Kulla! Kulla! . . .” She pushed the bullet slowly into the chest of the poppet made of fat. “Kulla! Kulla! Blind Rasputin, black, blue, brown, white, red eyes. Blow up his belly larger than a charcoal pit, dry up his body thinner than the meadow grass, kill him quicker than a viper.” She reached into her box and pulled out three of his toenails. “Kulla! Kulla!” she continued as she squashed them into the fat. “See these nail clippings, may he never be able to clamber out of his dead man’s grave, may he never climb to heaven, may he always be in hell!” She looked up. “Brana, the window!”

  Brana rushed to open the window as Militza sprinkled the foxgloves, the hemlock, and the henbane over the small metal dish, then lit the candle underneath it. Soon the little poppet began to sizzle in the dish. The doll melted, and suddenly the liquid and herbs all caught fire.

  “I call upon the winds!” Militza had her eyes closed and her arms outstretched. “I call upon the winds to take this zagovor with all its maleficence and take it on the wind, find Rasputin, wherever he is.” She opened her eyes a little; there was nothing but a light breeze coming through the window. “I call upon the winds! The Four Winds! I call upon them to take this zagovor, take it! Take it and find Rasputin!”

  Suddenly the curtains billowed and there was a loud whistling as a huge gust of wind came charging through the window like a whirling dervish. Books and papers flew everywhere; glass and china smashed on the floor as the wind tore around the room, howling, moaning, weeping in Militza’s ears. It wrenched at her clothes, lifted tables and chairs, flew paintings off the wall; it was so strong that she could not manage to open her eyes. And then suddenly it left. The curtains lay fla
t against the wall and the room was silent. Militza looked down. The metal dish with the bullet, the herbs, and the pool of melted human fat had disappeared. The spell had flown.

  NOT LONG AFTER, MILITZA WAS WOKEN BY A TELEPHONE CALL in the middle of the night. Rasputin had been stabbed in the stomach by a noseless whore just outside his own house.

  Militza smiled softly and went back to sleep.

  Chapter 33

  August 17, 1915, Znamenka, Peterhof

  THE CRYING, THE HAND-WRINGING, THE HYSTERICAL weeping lasted for days.

  “Grisha is no more! Grisha is no more!”

  The crowds chanted like a Greek chorus as they bore his semiconscious body off a steamer in Tyumen. The tsarina was prostrate with grief, unable to get out of bed, calling for all the elixirs Dr. Badmaev had in his little leather bag; she was more upset at the attempt on Grisha’s life than the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia, Russia’s ally, a month later. The tsar was sleepless with anxiety; if the mystic died, who would help calm Alix’s nerves and her painful heart? He was exhausted by the hysterics; he’d never prayed so forcefully for another man’s life.

  Meanwhile, the rest of the court held its breath. When could they celebrate?

  For the first few days, his life was in the balance. The noseless whore ravaged by syphilis, Khionia Guseva, had yelled, “I have killed the Antichrist!” as she dug the knife into his belly—and had managed to slice through his stomach so deeply his entrails had fallen out. The doctor stitched his gut back together—as well as his soul, apparently—on the dining room table by candlelight. But his pain and agony were so profound that the icon of the Virgin of Kazan hanging in the corner of Rasputin’s house in Pokrovskoye was said to have wept tears of sympathy.

  But he survived. He survived well enough that by the fourth day of his ordeal he was photographed sitting up in bed, looking sad, clutching his chest as he always did, exuding tremendous piety and religious fervor, all the while declaring that any nurses on the ward with him should be relieved of their corsets. It was, thus, a little easier for him to put his hand up their skirts.

  Militza was furious; instead of freeing Russia from the clutches of this monster, she’d only succeeded in creating some sort of living saint—a saint with a newfound fondness for opium, to dull the pain of his assault, but a saint all the same, whose Lazarus-like recovery from a whore’s knifing made him more remarkable than ever. The fact that the whore was an ex-lover of his was rarely, if at all, mentioned.

  His return to St. Petersburg—now more patriotically named Petrograd—was a return to his old ways. Except this time with impunity. The queues outside 64 Gorokhovaya laced all the way down the street; the moaning from the back room divan was constant; the ten o’clock club was superseded by daily 10 A.M. telephone calls from Tsarskoye Selo on his new telephone, Petrograd 64646 (the number of 6s was not lost on Militza); and the Okhrana were no longer following him around as he walked the streets of Petrograd but chauffeuring him in his new private car.

  WITH NICHOLAS AWAY AT THE FRONT, RASPUTIN’S VISITS TO see Alix, Anna, and the children became as regular as his visits to the banya and the nearby brothel. By now, dislike for the man had spread through every corner of the empire, and even previously loyal acquaintances of the imperial family and indeed other members of the imperial family could no longer hold their tongues. The Dowager Empress declared dramatically that unless Rasputin was removed from the court, she would move to Kiev . . . She moved to Kiev. Xenia and Sandro were equally vociferous in their distaste; they too were ignored.

  And still Stana would not change her position. She simply refused to talk about the man. She even purchased one of the “Rasputin Is Not Discussed Here” signs on sale in the market around Nevsky and placed it very firmly on her mantelpiece in the salon. For many, this was a standing joke in the fine sitting rooms of Petrograd, but for her it was a little different. Her position was untenable. With Nikolasha as commander in chief of the army and Rasputin constantly speaking out against the war, Rasputin’s and Stana’s were two paths that would never meet.

  BY THE SPRING OF 1915, NEARLY FOUR MILLION RUSSIANS HAD been killed, wounded, or captured in the war. The situation on the front was becoming increasingly desperate. There was talk of a second round of conscription (commandeering all twenty-one- to forty-three-year-olds). There was panic in the countryside. These men could not go to fight! Who would sow and bring in the next harvest? Who would stop the rest of Russia from starving? There had not been a call-up of the second round since Napoleon’s invasion in 1812.

  In Petrograd itself the atmosphere was febrile and frightening. Rumor was rife and revolution was in the air; there were meetings and gatherings and speeches—the peasants had had enough, and the government and the imperial family were becoming a laughingstock, tellingly ruled by the Cock. All conversation began and ended with the name Rasputin. As did all verse.

  A sailor tells a soldier,

  Brother, no matter what you say,

  Russia is ruled by the cock today.

  The cock appoints ministers,

  The cock makes policy,

  It confers archbishops

  And presents medals and positions.

  The cock commands the troops,

  It steers the ships

  Having sold our motherland to the Yids.

  The cock has raised all the prices

  So the cock is mighty and powerful

  And rich with talents.

  Clearly this is no ordinary cock,

  They say it’s fourteen inches long . . .

  Peasant women enjoyed the cock,

  And those in town as well,

  Once the merchant wives had tried it

  They had to tell the noble ladies too.

  Thus the holy man’s cock gained so much power

  It might well have been made a field marshal.

  Soon it reached the tsar’s palace

  Where it fucked all the ladies-in-waiting,

  And the tsar’s maiden daughter too,

  But it fucked the tsaritsa most of all . . .

  “Enough!” declared Militza, taking hold of the piece of paper. “Where did you get that?”

  “They are all over the city,” said Dr. Badmaev. “You can’t move for stories or tales like this.” He nodded out of the café window towards the street outside, where the pavements were bustling with soldiers. “I did warn you a long time ago. I said I didn’t like him, and now he is not just unlikable, he is dangerous.”

  “You’re talking to me as if it is my fault.”

  “Well, isn’t it?” His dark eyes narrowed. “‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I think that is the saying.”

  “I didn’t wish for anything,” replied Militza indignantly.

  “No?” he asked. “I seem to remember a conversation we had once.”

  “I am sure I can’t recall it.”

  “There is something very unseemly about him, as if he was indeed manifested, or is perhaps a walk-in, when a maleficent soul floats around until he finds a benign host—and what could be a more benign host than a simple peasant from Siberia?”

  “I am well aware of what a walk-in is,” said Militza. “I have seen many in my time.”

  “Many?” Badmaev looked puzzled. “I have seen them rarely—and they always appear to be reasonable at first, but slowly the maleficent soul takes over. Like a cancer it eats away at the weaker, benign soul until the other withers, so that there are only flickers of the previous, little sparks that die over time, never to be seen again. I have only seen them a few times over my travels. Perhaps they are more usual in Montenegro?”

  “Perhaps.” Militza nodded.

  She was behaving childishly, she knew it, but there was something about Badmaev’s tone that worried her, something about the way he looked at her that chilled her to the bone. It was similar to the look the drunk Prince Yusupov had given her. If he also blamed her for Rasputin�
�s rise from a Siberian backwater to the foot of the throne itself, it was only a matter of time before others followed. Rasputin would be her legacy. It was enough to make her wish she had never been born.

  She only had one more card left to play: Stana.

  If she could persuade her sister to join forces with her, if they could unite one last time, then together they stood a chance of defeating him. Together, their strength, coupled with the icon of St. John the Baptist, might well be enough to end this. For one thing was certain: after the stabbing and his resurrection in Siberia, she was not capable of ridding Russia of him all on her own.

  So, with Peter away in Moscow, she invited both Stana and Rasputin for dinner at Znamenka. It was her last throw of the dice. Little did she know how effective it would be.

  AS SHE LIT THE CANDLES IN THE DINING ROOM THAT NIGHT, HER hand shook with nerves. She had not seen Grisha in over a year, not since the attempt on his life, and was more than a little anxious lest he knew it had been her doing. Had he heard her spell on the wind? Did he know how she really felt? The rumors, the testimonies to his “supernatural forces,” were so rife; his ability to read thoughts, see souls, and raise the dead was no longer questioned. If you were to lure the devil to your chamber, she thought, with the intent of doing him harm, surely the devil would know? She glanced over at the shelf next to the fireplace; there she could see the glint of the small frame of the icon of St. John the Baptist, hidden behind some books. She prayed it would keep her safe.

  “Philippe, Maître, Friend,” she muttered under her breath. “I need you now.”

  STANA ARRIVED FRESH FROM TEA AND A GAME OF BEZIQUE with the Grand Duchess Vladimir, who despite the awfulness of the war was still trying to enjoy her summer as best she could, preferring to stay out of the city as much as possible.

  “She says she wants to keep away from the awful proletariat,” laughed Stana as she sipped her champagne. “I am not really sure she knows what the word actually means! But the word is à la mode and she loves to discuss things à la mode, while she happily spends a lifetime’s wages on a little bibelot from Cartier!” She stopped and noticed the table was laid for three, not the two she was expecting. “Are we to be joined?” she asked. “Roman? Marina? Nadezhda?”