The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  “The tsarevich!” he bellowed, and the guards hastily parted to let us pass. I caught sight of their white faces under their conical hats with the double-headed eagle emblem. With terrible certainty, I knew something catastrophic had befallen us.

  The imperial troika was parked near the back door. Thick blood congealed in the snow—so much blood that my boots squished over it as I clung to Nicky and followed Sasha to the stairway. We found Grand Duke Mikhail’s wife, Olga, there, with her sons, who were dressed for our skating party. When she saw me, she pitched into my arms, nearly pushing Nicky aside to the ground. My son grabbed at my jacket as she cried, “They told me my Misha was dead. A bomb, they said. God have mercy on us!”

  Her son Sandro, grown tall in his fifteenth year and already showing the sculpted Romanov features, went to Nicky. I heard him whisper, “My papa is not dead. He wasn’t in the same troika. But our poor grandpère…”

  Sasha lunged past Mikhail’s boys to barrel up the stairway. Blood drenched the steps. I inched up with Nicky and Olga, who wept in the crook of my arm, her boys behind us. We traversed the passage full of liveried servants on their knees toward the tsar’s study.

  Mikhail came out from the open doorway, still in his greatcoat, bloodstains spattered across the green wool. He murmured to Sasha. My husband thrust his head forward, flicked his hand at me, and proceeded into the study.

  Olga moaned, “I cannot.” Mikhail retrieved his wife, who swayed into his arms as if she were about to faint. I felt the same as I went with Nicky into the study, where only two months past I’d met with Alexander. The elegant white-paneled room, with its tables displaying the multitude of family photographs, was crammed with ministers, household officials, and members of the family. I saw Miechen in a corner among the grand duchesses. Our gazes met, collided, then I tore mine away as the crowd parted before me to reveal the couch upon which something unspeakable lay, tended by the royal physician, Dr. Botkin. The metropolitan in his cassock prayed beside it. Sasha looked down, as if stupefied.

  Nicky began to cry. I pushed him back, whispering, “Go to Tante Miechen.” I couldn’t look away, taking one step, then another, riveted by the horror before me.

  Alexander was unrecognizable. In his mutilated visage, one eye protruded; a gash with broken teeth that had once been his mouth yawned above his crushed jaw. As he agonized, blood seeped from his wounds, pooling onto the carpet. He wore the tattered remnants of his uniform, the trousers shredded above mangled stumps. He had no legs.

  Rulers can be removed….In the end, we are mortal.

  Grief engulfed me. I reeled back toward Miechen, who had Nicky huddled at her side. She drew me away as I tried to contain my anguish.

  “Two bombs,” she murmured. “Two men, at the canal bridge. They hurled the first one but missed. It hit his Cossack escort. Alexander went out to attend the wounded guard and Mikhail rushed to stop him. Another man, whom no one had seen, threw the second one. It struck him directly, as you can see—”

  “No.” I wanted to cover Nicky’s ears. His tearstained face was pinched tight, as though he was about to scream. “No more. Please.”

  “He cannot survive,” she said. “You must prepare.”

  As she spoke, I looked at Sasha. He’d retreated from his father to the quadrangle window. I could discern the cries of the crowds beyond the pane, alerted to the tragedy and already congregating in the palace square.

  Vladimir, dressed in his Sunday cravat and waistcoat with its fob chain, went to Sasha and put his arm about his shoulders. I saw him speak with urgency. Sasha craned his head, in that way he had when told something unexpected—or unwelcome.

  “You must,” I heard Vladimir urge, his voice, never subtle, carrying in the hush. Sasha gave curt assent. Vladimir departed the study, motioning to the ministers who hastened to follow. In the corridor, Grand Duke Constantine paced, his lean stature shrunken into itself. He flinched when Vladimir marched past him without a glance. Returning my gaze to Sasha, I saw him glaring from his post at the window at his stricken uncle.

  All of a sudden a figure in a white lace gown flew, shrieking, from a side door into the study. Everyone froze as Princess Yurievskaya flung herself upon the tsar. The grand duchesses, all of whom had despised and rejected her, beheld her desperation in mute horror as she cradled Alexander’s shattered head, drenching her gown with his blood.

  “No, no, no,” she wailed. I jerked forward without thinking, pulling her away. She crumpled in my arms, both of us on our knees on the study’s bloodied floor. I felt her thin body, her very bones under her skin, quaking in despair.

  “Silence, please,” said Dr. Botkin. He directed his gaze at the imperial family. They drew nearer but not too much, avoiding the princess and me, their eyes fixated on the dying tsar. With a choked gurgle, Alexander went still.

  Botkin checked his pulse. “The emperor is dead,” he pronounced, tears in his eyes.

  Catherine went silent. She seemed to dissolve against me.

  Outside in the square, the palace entry barricaded by the Preobrazhensky regiment, a runner was alerted to the news. A roaring yell resounded: “God save Tsar Alexander III!”

  In the study, everyone dropped to their knees to pray for the departed soul. The metropolitan, who only that morning had recited our mass, wavered in his chant for the dead. Someone took limp Catherine from my arms; she had fainted.

  Rising to my feet, I went to my husband. Sasha regarded me pensively. For a heart-stopping instant, I thought I saw a smile flicker across his lips.

  Then Vladimir returned, with the prefect of the police in tow.

  “Has Your Imperial Majesty any orders?” asked the prefect. I almost didn’t understand why he was asking a dead tsar, until I realized he directed his question at Sasha. And the poor prefect appeared shaken to his core, for his late tsar had just been murdered under his watch. Glancing past him into the corridor, I saw that Constantine had vanished.

  I anticipated Sasha’s immediate order to arrest his uncle. Instead, he said, “Your police are useless. You’ve let malefactors run loose like wolves. You are dismissed. The military will assume command for the present. I want those villains who murdered my father executed. At once.” He turned to Vladimir, disregarding the prefect as the man bowed almost to the floor. “Assemble the cabinet. I will see them within the hour. And tell that metropolitan to prepare to render the Oath of Allegiance in St. George’s Hall. I want everyone present. Summon priests to render the oath to the troops, as well.”

  “As you command, Imperial Majesty.” Vladimir gave Sasha a conspiratorial look. “I will find it,” he said, lowering his voice. “I will find it and bring it directly to you.”

  “Do so,” growled Sasha. “Tear this entire palace apart if you must.”

  He took my hand in his before I could ask him what he’d charged Vladimir with finding. In a single moment, he transcended all expectations. As we walked toward the Jordan staircase and the servants dropped into obeisance, he did not spare them a look, his chin lifted, his bearing perfectly erect. There was no shambling now, no clumsy gestures or head thrust forward on his squat neck in awkwardness.

  Sasha the Bullock was now Tsar Alexander III, Autocrat of All the Russias.

  And to my stunned disbelief, I was his tsarina.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “We had to kiss his forehead after mass, twice a day for seven days,” I told Alix. “It was dreadful. The embalmers had done whatever they could, but he was…they couldn’t hide the damage. And the smell—” I shuddered. “By the third day, I could smell it before I even entered the chapel.”

  This was the first opportunity I’d had to be alone with my sister and describe the horror of it all, as she was the only one with whom I could be completely honest. She and Bertie had arrived just in time to attend Alexander’s entombment in the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in the fortr
ess, defying Queen Victoria’s panicked warning that Russia had become a den of assassins, preying on its sovereign ruler. But Alix had not seen my father-in-law’s ravaged visage as I had.

  “I can’t imagine it,” she said. “Such savagery…I have no words.”

  “And now this.” I motioned about the cramped ground-floor apartments in Gatchina Palace, located thirty miles by train outside the city. “Practically a barracks. Surrounded by a high wall and cast-iron gates.” My heart sank anew as I regarded the crates of my personal belongings, which I hadn’t yet unpacked. “Not even the staterooms, but here, in the Arsenal Hall, because it can be better defended if we’re attacked. I wanted to stay in our Anichkov or move into the Winter Palace, but security dictated our removal from the capital. Sasha has delayed our coronation in Moscow. He will not say how long it will be before we can return to the city.”

  Without thinking, I took a cigarette from the silver case in my pocket and lit it with trembling fingers. Alix stared. “I can’t stop trembling,” I said. “The doctors tell me I have a nervous disorder. I barely sleep or eat, and—”

  “Yes, you don’t look well at all.” She frowned. “When did you start doing that?”

  “This?” I realized she stared because I was smoking. “Miechen introduced me to it. Apparently, all the princesses in Europe now smoke.”

  “Not in England. Minnie, it can’t be good for you.”

  I gave her an impatient look. “It calms my nerves. I thought you said you had no words.”

  She pursed her mouth, watching me inhale before she said, “If Sasha thinks it’s best to reside here for now, you must make do. It’s not so bad,” she added unconvincingly. “It needs a fresh coat of paint, but with your furnishings and some pictures on the walls—”

  “Please, don’t.” I tipped ash into my teacup. “It’s as much of a tomb as the fortress. They might as well have buried us alive.” I heard my voice darken with the impotent rage that had overtaken me from the moment I realized that Alexander’s murder had catapulted us into terror. “Since Peter the Great left Moscow to build St. Petersburg, never has a tsar removed himself from his capital. I understand the concern, after that awful explosion, and now this. But we’re the imperial family. We can’t get past the gates without an escort of Cossacks. And the secret police watch our every move. Sasha once told me that if we gave in, we’d never stop running. How is this not giving in to those monsters?”

  “But they have been arrested?” Alix said.

  “Yes.” I angrily blew out smoke. “There was a woman, too. She organized it, in a cheese shop of all places. She was at the canal; she waved a handkerchief to alert the others that Alexander’s sleigh approached. All four have already been executed—by hanging.”

  “Dear God.” Alix folded her hands in her lap.

  I crushed out my cigarette. I wanted to smoke another one, but she’d only scold me. “As you say, we’ll have to make do until we can return to the city. Sasha has his cabinet, his officials and regiments to oversee, the entire empire to rule. He can’t do it from Gatchina—”

  A sudden sob caught in my voice. As Alix rose in alarm, I pressed my hand to my mouth. I had told myself not to cry anymore, that tears, as Mrs. Franklin said, resolved nothing. And still, I longed to wail in that moment, at the injustice of it, the brutal end of the tsar who had liberated the serfs and wanted so much for Russia, and the dread unleashed in its wake, from which I feared we might never escape.

  “Oh, Minnie.” Alix embraced me. “We cannot know why God tests us so in moments like these. But you have Sasha to protect you.”

  Pressed against her, I heard myself whisper, “Sasha has changed.”

  “He has lost his father in a horrible way. Naturally, he’s changed—”

  “No.” I drew back from her. “It’s more than that. He…he burned the manifesto.”

  “Manifesto?” she echoed, in bewilderment.

  “The announcement for a constitution.” I forced my confession out, the secret that haunted me almost more than my father-in-law’s death. “Alexander planned to grant the right to assembly. Vladimir knew about it somehow. He found the manifesto in Alexander’s desk. He ransacked the study; when he realized one of the drawers was locked, Alexander’s valet told him Catherine Yurievskaya had the key. Vladimir threatened that if she didn’t hand over the key, he’d throw her and her children out to beg in the streets.”

  Alix went pale.

  “She gave him the key,” I went on. “In reward, Sasha granted her and the children an annual income, providing they live abroad. Vladimir brought the manifesto here; they burned it in the hearth. It was to be published in the court circular, the day after Alexander was—” I tried in vain to control the despair in my voice. “His father’s last act and he destroyed it. Alexander was going to tell him but never had the chance. All the circulars with the announcement were confiscated. Sasha has ordered any publication deemed subversive by the Okhrana to be shut down. He says Russia is unworthy of our trust.”

  “He does it for the country,” whispered Alix. “For the future of your children.”

  I met her eyes. “He may believe that. But what kind of future will it be?”

  * * *

  SASHA HAD TO spend time in St. Petersburg, for while the apparatus of court might reside in Gatchina, the empire did not. So we could communicate, he had a telegraph service installed in our new residence.

  I expected to miss him terribly; it disconcerted me that I did not at first. I had grown to love him, despite his gruff manner and aversion to the social activities I enjoyed. I’d attempted to attribute his reluctance and lack of graces to his upbringing, to the fact that he’d been raised to serve in the Imperial Guard, not to be the tsarevich, although neither had his brother Grand Duke Vladimir, who complemented Miechen to perfection. But the abrupt change in him, his burning of Alexander’s final act, had cast me into dreadful doubt. I wondered if the man I had married was in fact still a stranger to me, despite Alix’s repeated counsel that he loved me and his family, that he only acted as he must to preserve our safety, as well as the unity of the country he now ruled, following the brutal murder of his father.

  Yet once Alix returned to England with Bertie and I found myself alone with my children, surrounded by legions of servants whose names I had yet to learn, I began to yearn for my husband. His familiarity, his coarse laughter at my tart remarks, our intimacy—it made me miss him more than I’d thought possible, for he was my anchor in our abrupt new existence as Emperor and Empress of Russia.

  To assuage my woes, I dedicated myself to the monumental task of learning about the four hundred public institutions, including hospitals, asylums, wards, and orphanages, that I was expected to patronize as tsarina. I also concentrated on my Red Cross duties and skill-training centers for women, for which I could now establish an imperial endowment. In addition, I was the official patroness of the Smolny Institute for Girls, that educational bastion founded by Catherine the Great, and from my personal income I funded the Russian chapter of the Society for Protection of Animals, a cause very dear to me. I told myself that I mustn’t forget my experiences during my father-in-law’s reign. His manifesto would never see the light of day, but I resolved to do as much as I could in his memory for the people we now held charge over, even though it might never be enough: There was always far more need than my single-handed efforts could alleviate.

  My children grew to love their vaulted playroom with its toys, writing desks, a billiards table, and a swing that Sasha had rigged up. They rallied around me to play hide-and-seek, racing through the curved Chesma Gallery to hide behind the magnificent tapestries or the huge jade statues and porcelain urns in the Chinese Gallery, even though I knew if we broke anything, it was irreplaceable. My younger children adapted, never asking why we now lived so far from our home in the city. They had our private gardens here, and their stu
dies and outdoor activities to fill their time, but Nicky was more sensitive.

  One night, I woke to find him standing by my bed, shivering in his shirt. When I rose to embrace him, fearing he had a fever, he whispered, “The dog. I heard it barking.”

  “Dog? Which one, my darling?” We had several on the palace grounds, but none right now in the family save for Sasha’s hunting dogs, which he kept in kennels. My beloved Beauty had passed away at the venerable age of sixteen, and Nicky mourned her deeply with me, for he loved all animals. We’d taken her in a little casket to the pet cemetery of the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, burying her beside his grandfather’s Milord. Nicky had made me promise to erect a headstone for her.

  “The ghost of Paul’s dog,” he said, his eyes huge in his pinched face.

  For a moment I was confused, until I suddenly understood. Gatchina had been the site of Tsar Paul I’s strangulation; it was said the dead tsar’s mournful dog had howled in such grief over the death of its master, it had to be put down.

  “No, my child.” I drew him into bed with me. “It’s only your imagination. There are no ghosts here. You were frightened by the sound of the wind.”

  “The servants say there are ghosts.” He clung to me, almost thirteen years old, lanky and thin, all knees and elbows, but still so young in his heart, so easily upset.

  “Well, then,” I said, running my hand over his thick hair. “What can we do to banish the ghosts? Would a new puppy do?”

  He lifted his face. “A borzoi?” he breathed. It was his most fervent wish; the long-haired Russian wolfhound was esteemed for its keen sight, agility, and swift pursuit of prey, but Sasha had refused, saying Nicky wasn’t old enough to properly train such a valuable dog.

  I hugged him. “A borzoi it is.”