The Romanov Empress

by C. W. Gortner

  Despite my repeated behests, Nicky refused to come to St. Petersburg to contend with the furor. To bolster flagging morale, I went to work with my charities, organizing my Red Cross to provide supplies, nurses, and doctors at the front. But the battles were taking place halfway across the world, with casualties mounting by the day.

  Alexandra went into labor in August. Awaiting the outcome at Peterhof, I prayed with all my might that this time, surely her last, she would not fail, even if I had given up on her. A tsarevich born to the ruling tsar would ensure the continuance of our dynasty and give cause for celebration, distracting the people from this ruinous war with Japan.

  Only three hours later, as I sat anxiously in the anteroom with Xenia and Olga, Nicky arrived. He looked as if he’d given birth himself, his hair plastered with sweat, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, having discarded his jacket during Alexandra’s ordeal.

  His tired smile could have lit up St. Petersburg.

  “Praise be to God,” he said, as we staggered to our feet in disbelief. “I have a son.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  He was God’s gift to Russia—a robust boy with his father’s gray-blue eyes, tufts of fair curls, and an eager smile, his little hands grabbing curiously at everything he saw.

  As his godmother, I stood by the gold font in the royal chapel of Peterhof while he was christened as Alexei Nikolaevich. Nicky and Alexandra weren’t present, by tradition; their four daughters, dressed in miniature court dresses and small pearl-studded kokoshniks, stood wide-eyed behind me as their brother was baptized. At the touch of the cool water on his forehead, he let out a wail. Anastasia giggled. Tatiana hushed her. Olga and Maria smiled as I glanced at them, lifting my finger to my lips to demand silence.

  I wasn’t displeased. He should be baptized in laughter. He was our future.

  The fortress fired three hundred cannon salutes; throughout Russia, people rejoiced, the Japanese war forgotten for the moment. On her daybed in Peterhof, Alexandra received a steady queue of well-wishers; it was even reported that she smiled. She’d fulfilled what few thought possible, but she did not attend the gala in her honor, still recovering from labor. I went in her stead, beaming at Nicky’s side.

  Following the celebrations, Nicky returned with his family to Tsarskoe Selo and I resumed my charity efforts. After a long month of visiting wards and shipping boxes of medicines to the front, I entered my palace to find Obolensky at the gates.

  Nicky had sent me an urgent summons.

  * * *

  “WHY DOESN’T THE bleeding stop? The stump has fallen off. The opening should be healed by now. Is there nothing else we can do?” I stood by the lemonwood cradle as Alexei kicked his bound legs, which had been fastened to an evil-looking device to curtail his movement. He cried piteously; he was hungry, not having nursed in days. To me, he looked extremely pale, his skin almost colorless. Botkin adjusted a fresh bandage about his navel, over the seeping wound where the umbilical cord had been clamped. Fresh blood wet the gauze within moments, as Alexei writhed feebly.

  Eugene Botkin passed his hand over his balding pate. To my eyes, he appeared very troubled. He turned to Nicky, whose features were taut as he watched his nine-week-old son. In the corner, the nursemaid was praying. At a curt gesture from Nicky, she exited the room, letting in a draft of cool air.

  “It’s like an oven in here. Can’t we open—” I stopped. There were no windows.

  Nicky murmured, “Sunny worries that air from the outside might sicken him.”

  “No one is asking her to throw open every pane as Victoria did at her castles. But surely it’s not healthy for him to be shut in like this.” I looked to Botkin for confirmation. He gave a weary sigh. He’d not slept in three days, never leaving Alexei’s side. Not even Alexandra had displayed such fortitude; after nearly fainting from her vigil, Nicky had led her away to rest, against her protests.

  “Fresh air isn’t the problem,” said Botkin. “If this bleeding doesn’t cease…” He met Nicky’s eyes. “Your Majesty, we must consider the possibility.”

  My son shook his head. “No.”

  “What do you mean?” I rounded on him. “What possibility?”

  “No.” Nicky’s voice rang out, piercing in that shuttered room. For a second, the child went quiet. Then Alexei began to cry again, and Botkin returned to his ministrations.

  My son led me into the corridor. At his order, the passage had been cleared of servants. Only his turbaned Abyssinians stood at the far doors, to prevent an intrusion.

  “You mustn’t speak of it,” he said, a tremor in his voice. “Never before Sunny. Promise me.”

  “There was no one else in the room but us,” I replied, but my own voice faded as I recalled the nursemaid he’d sent out. My anger evaporated, leaving an icy core in its wake. “Nicky, for the love of God, what possibility does Botkin think we must consider?”

  My son stood so immobile, I thought he’d fallen into a stupor. Then he said, “He believes Alexei has the bolezn gessenskikh.”

  I frowned. “Is that German?”

  “The Hesse curse,” he clarified. “It causes uncontrolled bleeding.”

  I gazed at him in bewilderment. “But…it’s an English disease. It runs in Victoria’s family. How can he—” I went quiet. Alexandra was Victoria’s granddaughter.

  He lit a cigarette with a trembling hand. “The queen’s son Prince Leopold died of it. Sunny’s sister Irene bore a son Heinrich, who died of it in his fourth year. And Sunny’s youngest brother, Frittie—she believes he had it, too. He died after a fall from a first-story window, but she says the fall didn’t kill him, as he barely had a scratch. He bled to death from within.”

  I felt as though the entire palace had gone so quiet, so still, that the very gilded eaves above us were listening, the structure crouched like a beast, waiting to pounce.

  “Can it be cured?” I whispered.

  He coughed, smoke trailing from his nose. “No.”

  I feared I might be sick. I turned for a chair, a stool, anything to sit upon.

  “Mama.” His voice wrenched my gaze back to him. “Sunny is distraught. If the bleeding stops, there’s hope. Botkin says Swiss experts are studying the malady. Sometimes, the patient recovers. Other times, a hemorrhage develops. We must—” He drew in a shuddering breath. “We must watch Alexei very closely. If he has any bruising or swelling, if the pain increases, it could be a sign of an internal hemorrhage.”

  “But how can we know for certain if he even has this sickness? He might not,” I said, but my denial sounded too shrill, as though saying it aloud could make it true.

  “Only time can tell.” Nicky’s shoulders sagged. His very person seemed to cave into itself. “The experts claim the disease is passed through the maternal line; when Botkin mentioned it before you arrived, Sunny made such a sound—like an animal caught in a snare. But Botkin says the symptoms are consistent. A minor wound, a fall, a stumble: Anything can cause the bleeding. It can turn severe. In order to know how severe—”

  “Yes.” I reached for him, my hand groping at his sleeve. “I understand.”

  “We must never discover how severe it can be.” He struggled for his composure, his joy in his new son turned to cinders. “No matter what, Alexei must be kept safe.”

  I folded my arms about him. Setting his head on my shoulder, he wept. But then he drew back abruptly, already looking down the corridor to her boudoir. “I must go to her.”

  “Go.” I straightened his collar. “I’ll see to the girls. They must be worried.”

  As I started away, he said, “Remember: Say nothing. They’re too young to understand. Children repeat whatever they hear. Sunny doesn’t want anyone else to know.”

  “Of course,” I said, but as I hastened to the girls’ apartments, I wondered what he intended to do. If Alexei had this terrifying disorder
, how could we hide such a calamity in the very heart of our family, much less conceal it from the world?

  * * *

  —

  ALEXANDRA HAD FURNISHED her daughters’ rooms with ordinary maple furniture, with chintz drapery that echoed her own staid upbringing, set alongside military cots on cast-iron bedsteads like those Sasha had insisted upon for our children. Each set of girls shared a bedroom: Nine-year-old Olga and seven-year-old Tatiana, known as the “Big Pair,” had a stenciled frieze of flowers and dragonflies on their walls, with matching dressing tables and blessed icons above their beds. Five-year-old Maria and the youngest, Anastasia, the “Small Pair,” had roses and butterflies and the same interchangeable décor.

  Olga had gathered her sisters in her room, pushing together the two narrow beds, their little dogs on the floor, though the moment I entered, the dogs yipped and sniffed my skirts. Anastasia was asleep, her chubby arms wrapped around the stuffed Danish teddy bear I’d given her as a present for her Name Day. The others were awake. Their eyes, varying in hue from Olga’s mellow blue-gray to Maria’s deep blue, turned in unison to me.

  They already had distinct personalities, despite Alexandra’s grouping of them in pairs. As the eldest, Olga was the leader—and my favorite, because I knew her best. Like my daughter, her namesake, she was unconcerned with appearances, her chestnut hair often disarrayed and her frocks rumpled. She liked to paint, too, and was also a gifted pianist.

  Now, as Maria nestled in the crook of her arm, Olga said warily to me, “Will he die?”

  “Oh, no.” I made myself smile. “Babes often suffer from colic.”

  “Is that all?” asked Olga. Had she overheard something? Their nanny had been seated at their apartment entrance and given me a suspicious look. I didn’t like the woman and had motioned her to stay put, lest she follow me inside to overhear everything I said.

  “Yes.” Hiking up my skirts and wishing I could loosen my corset, I perched on the bedside and smoothed Anastasia’s tumble of golden hair. She was perspiring; the palace was overheated tonight. “That is all. A bad colic.”

  Maria blinked sleepily. She was very pretty, if too plump. Tatiana sat erect. Though still quite young, she would be the beauty of the quartet, with her almond-shaped blue-gray eyes that, like her mother’s, could appear violet, and Alexandra’s coppery hair, a wide-lipped mouth, and Nicky’s aquiline nose. She was also tall for her age, with supple limbs, like a ballerina.

  “We heard Mama crying,” Maria ventured. “She told Papa she had cursed Alexei. Why would she say that? Mama is good. She never sins.”

  “Your mother is upset. There’s no curse,” I said. “He’ll recover. But babes are delicate, so you must be very careful with him. You mustn’t play too roughly with him.”

  As the truth was out of the question, I was saying whatever I could to prepare them. Even if they weren’t told, they’d suspect, Olga especially. She was inquisitive, unlike Tatiana, who often appeared lost in reverie, having inherited Alexandra’s detachment. Anastasia would also notice; in time, she and Alexei would bond as younger siblings did. Despite her youth, she’d proven keen-eyed and boisterous. One night at dinner, when she was allowed because of my visit to sit with us at the adult table, she’d made me laugh under my breath by eating her peas with her hands, ignoring Alexandra’s reprimands.

  “The child is too willful,” Alexandra had remarked, after Anastasia was marched out by the nanny, green smears all over her face. My daughter-in-law looked directly at me as she spoke, as if I were to blame. Her implication was clear: My youngest granddaughter had my character, contrary and determined to thwart.

  “So,” I said, passing my gaze over them. I loved them so much, these beautiful grand duchesses who were also our future. “Will you be tender with your little brother?”

  Olga and Maria assented. Tatiana gave me a pensive look. “We’re not allowed yet to play with him,” she said. “When we are, we’ll be careful.” She spoke as if he were made of Sèvres china, a fragile teacup. Which, I realized, he was. He could fall and crack.

  I leaned over Anastasia, who grumbled, her flushed face buried against her teddy bear. She smelled of chocolates; I espied the telltale stains on her fingers.

  “Eating bonbons in bed?” I asked, and Maria giggled. Olga averted her eyes, abashed, while Tatiana demurred, “Not me. I don’t like sweets.”

  “I won’t tell. But don’t eat too many.” I pinched Maria’s side, making her squeal. “Or you’ll grow fat as Tante Miechen.”

  The girls’ laughter woke Anastasia. Her groggy gaze warmed at the sight of me. “Amama!” she cried, citing her nickname for me, and she flung herself into my arms. She was the most impulsive. No matter how often she was chided for it, Anastasia showed no distinction, lavishing her affection on her pets, servants, and any others she liked. If she disliked someone—such as the nanny—she ignored them. And that, I thought as I kissed her cheeks sticky from the bonbons, was indeed like me.

  I stayed with them, heaped together like puppies. Anastasia pulled up her French bulldog, Shvybzik, and tucked him between us, his snuffles making Olga and Maria shake with laughter.

  Eventually, they all fell asleep, save Tatiana. She sat quiet, gazing into the distance; when I touched her hand, she said without turning to me, “It’s not a colic.”

  Not a question. A statement—one that I couldn’t bring myself to refute.

  “No,” I said. “It is not.”

  She nodded. “Then we must be very tender with him.”

  * * *

  THE LOSS OF Port Arthur, along with twenty thousand of our men, was decried in Russia. Newspapers printed scathing editorials of the tsar’s mismanagement, and agitators took to the streets. His cabinet warned Nicky that talk of revolution, spurred by the insidious Social Democrats, spread, further damaging his reputation, with jubilation over Alexei’s birth now subsumed by unrest.

  Due to the massive casualties in Port Arthur, the 1904 Season in St. Petersburg was suspended. Our family Christmas at Tsarskoe Selo was tense, overlaid by unvoiced concern for Alexei. The bleeding from his navel had been stanched, causing immense relief, but Botkin believed Alexei had the disease and suggested a protocol to safeguard him in the future, including restraints and a leash-like device to hold him in check once he began to crawl. While Alexandra betrayed none of the terror she must have felt, I wanted to say that all children bumped and scraped themselves. They stumbled and fell. He was a babe now, but as Alexei grew older, how could we detain his curiosity, his natural desire to explore the world around him? Yet not even the beloved family dogs were allowed near him, as if a sniff from a gentle pet might harm him. When told her Shvybzik mustn’t enter the nursery, Anastasia gave puzzled voice to what no one else dared say: “Why not? Shvy won’t bite Sunbeam.”

  “Sunbeam” was Alexandra’s endearment for her son, but she herself wasn’t sunny now. I watched her throughout Christmas as she closed into herself like that room that now served as her babe’s cage, eschewing anything that might touch on Alexei’s condition.

  “You mustn’t allow it,” I finally told Nicky in a fit of despair when he came to St. Petersburg with Alexandra for Epiphany and the Blessing of the Waters, leaving the children behind. “We cannot hide it. You must tell the family; already they ask why the boy is hidden away. Issue a public bulletin. It’s a disease, not a curse. She might blame herself, and God knows how terribly I feel for her, but your plight will engender sympathy. After the loss of Port Arthur, all of Russia will rally to you once they hear your son is ill.”

  He looked as if I’d asked him to expose his soul. “Mama, our son’s health is a private matter. We’ll not make a spectacle of it for political gain. How can you ask such a thing? Since when are we, the imperial family, obliged to divulge our personal pain to the world?”

  “Our pain is evident,” I replied, hearing Alexandra in his wo
rds. “Our soldiers are retreating through Siberia. Bertie, the American president Roosevelt, and the kaiser himself are calling for a cease-fire. We’ve lost our standing in the Orient. You must amend your policies. Grant the concessions espoused by your grandfather, dismiss everyone who counseled you otherwise, and tell your people your son is unwell. You must do whatever is necessary to protect your throne.”

  His hand curled into a fist on his desk. “Absolutely not. There will be no cease-fire. I’ve kept Witte on my cabinet, as you advised, though his liberal stance displeases me, and I sanctioned those who lost us Port Arthur. But I am still the tsar. I will rule as my ancestors before me. Papa never wanted our autocracy abolished. If I permit a constitution and Duma, we will rule in name alone, if we’re allowed to rule at all. Never, whilst I live.”

  “Nicky—”

  He held up his hand, still in a fist. “Say nothing more on the subject.”

  For the moment I obliged, reasoning that the ongoing burden of the war, the shock of Alexei’s illness, and Alexandra’s distress were an impossible combination. Let time ease the brunt of it. Once it did, I’d try again. I’d not cease until Nicky accepted that in this modern age, our autocracy was already doomed. No tsar could rule as his ancestors had.

  If he didn’t concede, they would force him to it.