To my surprise, she didn’t hesitate. Coming clumsily to her feet, her eyes—dull as blue chips—locked on mine. “He will not die,” she said. “I know he will not.”
He woke up screaming. The fever spiked so high that he raved he wanted to be “buried under the sky.” This time, there was no hiding the tragedy unfolding in the lodge. Nicky sent the guests away, their kill strapped to the tops of their carriages, carrying with them the news that the tsarevich had been heard wailing upstairs.
Nicky had the bulletin prepared after Alexei lapsed into a silence so profound, Alexandra cried out and pressed her ear to his narrow chest. “He’s still breathing! I can feel it. Send word to our friend. He will come; he’ll know how to save him.”
As Nicky gathered her in his arms, she beat her fists against his chest—“Send word, I beg you!”—and Botkin prepared another laudanum-laced tonic for Alexei.
Alexandra flew at the doctor, knocking the cup from his hand and spraying the infusion against the wall. “Don’t touch my son.”
Olga started to cry and had to leave the room. Alexei might still be breathing, but when I touched his wrist with my fingertips, he was shockingly cold, death already laying claim to his helpless body. While Nicky escorted Alexandra back to their bedroom, his arm around her waist as she moaned in despair, I sat beside my grandson.
Before Derevenko’s impassive presence, I lowered my head and prayed.
I didn’t beg for a miracle. I didn’t implore God to spare him. I prayed that He take him swiftly, release him from this unbearable burden he’d been forced to endure. I asked for an end to his suffering, for angels to swoop down and carry him aloft in their wings.
“Now,” I whispered. “Take him now. Don’t let him agonize. He is an innocent.”
Hours later, as I mopped his forehead of that persistent sweat and he didn’t make a sound, I heard a cry from down the passageway that sounded like desperation. I jumped up, so startled that I clutched the cloth at my chest, drenching my bodice. Derevenko shifted to me, holding out his hand for the cloth. “Majesty, I will tend to him if you must go.”
I paused. Should I leave? What if Alexei…?
Olga appeared at the door, breathless. “It’s arrived. A telegram, brought all the way from Warsaw. Come quickly.”
She assumed my post by the bed as I went to Nicky and Alexandra’s room. The lodge was so quiet now, I could discern the wind in the forest beyond the walls. Nearing their room, where candles flickered before the icons, I saw Demidova on her knees in the doorway, her head bowed to her clasped hands. I stepped around her onto the threshold to find Alexandra also on her knees, with Nicky.
Alexandra crossed herself, stood up, and pushed past me, hastening back to Alexei.
I looked at Nicky. He said softly, “Father Grigori says the malady isn’t as dangerous as we fear. We mustn’t bother Alexei too much.”
* * *
—
ALEXANDRA BOLTED THE door. Henceforth, only she and Nicky, with Derevenko and Botkin, would keep watch over her son. Together with a maidservant, Demidova prepared us a meal; as Olga and I sat at the long wood table in the hall, now devoid of guests, the clatter of our spoons against the soup bowls was so jarring that I abruptly said, “Why didn’t you tell me you knew about Alexei?”
She glanced up. “You never told me.”
“Nicky swore me to secrecy. You said Alexandra herself told you. Why?”
“She knew Stolypin had compiled a report on Father Grigori. She summoned me to explain that he is a man of God. He helps Alexei and gives her comfort.”
“I’m well aware of the comfort Father Grigori gives her. I daresay, so is all of St. Petersburg. And if there were any doubt, we’re now fully informed. A mere telegram from Siberia and she bars us from the room. My grandson will die without us to say goodbye.”
“He won’t die,” said Olga. “Father Grigori says he’ll recover. Alicky believes him, and she makes Alexei believe. Faith is very powerful, Mama. When did you lose yours?”
“I have not lost my faith.” Seeing Demidova pause at the sideboard, where she was slicing up a roast-something for us, I shoved back my chair. “I find it intolerable that my own daughter should see fit to lecture me. I’m going out for a walk; I need some fresh air.”
“It’s almost dark. You can’t go out alone,” said Olga.
“Why not? They’ve killed every animal within a hundred miles by now.” Taking up my mantle, I marched out.
The fenced paddocks wavered under mist, melting into night. At the rear of the lodge, pine trees swayed, soughing nettles mixing with the gurgle of the river. Past the lodge, the forest deepened—a wild place where it was said wolves roamed. I’d never seen a wolf in Spala, nor had anyone I’d known ever killed one here. Tucking my mantle over my head, I paced down the main driveway to stare up at the sky.
A few stars glittered in the dusk-laden sky, like diamond shards. I took a deep breath, trying to invoke that sense of peace that the lodge, despite its purpose, had always instilled in me. I’d learned to enjoy hunting as Sasha’s wife, though there was always that moment of remorse when the stag or doe, run to lathered exhaustion, went still, trembling, as I waited now for death to strike. Sasha had scoffed at my sentimentality. Animals did not have feelings, he’d said. But he’d adored his dogs. He must have known that when he rebuked them for some mischief, they cowered, then crept to him with their ears laid back in apology. They knew pain, fear, and love. Why shouldn’t the beasts in the field feel the same?
Now I wasn’t sure anymore what I should feel. While deeply saddened by Alexei’s illness, I must resign myself. He couldn’t survive what he had. No man, even one of Rasputin’s alleged abilities, could heal a dying child from across the distance. A telegram sent to console was only that. I had to prepare for my grandson’s death.
When I heard footsteps coming down the path behind me, I tensed, not turning until Nicky said, “Mama, you shouldn’t be out here alone.”
I looked over my shoulder, drawing back my mantle. In the fading light, he appeared sketched in charcoal. “Is it over?” I asked quietly.
“He’s still very weak.” A match flared as Nicky lit a cigarette. He smoked too much, I thought absently. It couldn’t be good for him. “But the fever has subsided. Botkin is baffled. Alexei is resting now, without laudanum. Sunny insisted on stopping all medicine.”
I knew that sometimes just before death, the person rallied. I’d seen it with Sasha in Livadia, when he ordered the windows opened to the sea. But no one had thought he was going to live. All of us in that room had known he neared the end.
“His fever is gone?” I said.
Nicky gazed toward the tree-lined horizon. “And the inflammation is lessening. We can’t know for certain yet, but the signs are there. A miracle.”
“From one telegram?”
He turned to me. I couldn’t decipher his expression. “You still do not believe.”
“Olga just accused me of the same. I suppose I have no reason to believe.”
His cigarette crackled, glowing briefly as he drew on it. The scent of burning tobacco reached me. “Sunny has enough faith for all of us.” He turned back to the lodge. “Don’t stay out too long. Those lamps by the entryway aren’t working properly; they should be lit by now, and as you can see, they’re not. I wouldn’t want you to lose your way.”
He retreated. Silence again enfolded me, the night unfurling its mystery.
Sunny has enough faith for all of us.
From this hour forward, should her son live, her faith would be unassailable. She would never lose her way, while I had to wonder if I’d already lost mine.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Spala changed everything. Who were we to argue it, Olga declared. We’d seen the miracle with our own eyes: the fever fading away, clarity returning to Alexei’s wan f
ace, his whispered request for food and drink. How he’d survived wasn’t anything we could explain. No one could, except Alexandra. As Alexei was taken to recover in Tsarskoe Selo, the brace with its straps affixed to his leg once more, she was now even more zealous in her belief that Father Grigori had saved her son by divine power. And when I heard that Rasputin was again visiting the palace, I knew I couldn’t dare protest. I’d done what I could. For a time, Nicky heeded me. He had sent the mystic away. But now my son would never again deny his wife.
A month before Christmas, Nicky came to see me at Gatchina. In a terse voice, he said, “Misha sent me a letter. He’s married that woman Natalia in France. He asks me to officially recognize her as his wife and a grand duchess. Did you know?”
“No, of course not.” I was stunned by the news. After everything that had happened, it was the last thing I expected, though I should have. Unaware of Alexei’s illness and weary of waiting, Misha had finally done what he’d often threatened.
“How can he do this to us?” demanded Nicky. “I will never recognize her, nor can anyone in the family. If he doesn’t repent at once of his folly and have the marriage annulled, I’ll deprive him of his rank and income. He’ll never set foot in Russia again.”
“He’s your brother,” I said, but he was beyond forgiveness.
“If he wishes to remain my brother, see that he does as I command.”
Despite the advent of the holidays, I arranged to meet Misha in England, calling upon Alix to bolster my appeal. He arrived with Natalia and their son, refusing to admit he’d done anything wrong. “The time would never have been right,” he told me. “I haven’t divorced. I’ve taken a wife. I was unaware Alexei had been so ill, but he’s well now, yes?”
I had the distinct sense that Misha knew more about Alexei than he let on, but I refrained from saying as much because it wouldn’t change his mind. Instead, I wept bitter tears. Nicky refused to let Misha return to Russia. My surviving sons were now estranged and both of my daughters were deeply unhappy.
Before the holidays, I went to Hvidøre with Alix, where I ignored my sixty-fifth birthday.
* * *
IN THE NICHOLAS Hall of the Winter Palace, I sat with Nicky on the dais as my seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Olga, radiant in her first adult court gown and diamond-studded kokoshnik, opened the gala marking the 1913 tercentenary of our dynasty.
“How lovely she is,” I said to my son, who smiled in return, deep brackets at his eyes and mouth. I was worried to see him so aged; his refusal to forgive Misha weighed on him, and the nearly nineteen years since he’d assumed the throne had taken their toll, as well. His hair had gone mostly silver, he was too thin, and his skin was parched from his incessant smoking. Yet at my insistence, he had donned his green-and-gold uniform to attend the gala, leaving Alexandra in Tsarskoe Selo and heeding my appeal to bring Olga with him.
“She reminds me of you, Mama,” he said, as Olga laughed at the young prince accompanying her. In his fluster to be dancing with the tsar’s eldest daughter, the prince had forgotten to remove his hat, until it slipped over his brow to drop at his feet.
“Does she?” I blinked back sudden tears. I could no longer remember when I’d been so gay, as I saw Olga toe the offending hat aside, then whirl across the floor in the prince’s arms, to the ardent violins of the mazurka.
“She has your spirit.” Nicky reached across the short span between our thrones to take my hand. “Thank you for insisting that I bring her. And for trying your best with Misha. I know it couldn’t have been easy on you, and now with poor Uncle Willie…”
As his fingers squeezed mine, I averted my gaze, again fighting the onslaught of tears that never seemed far from my eyes these days.
My brother Willie, George I of Greece, had been shot to death by a Turkish partisan. He’d been sixty-seven years old; devastated by his death but unable to attend his funeral due to the instability in Greece, I had mourned him in Russia and sent long letters of condolence to his grieving wife and their children.
“You must stay with us this summer at Tsarskoe Selo,” Nicky said. “The girls and Alexei miss you. Sunny has suggested we can go from there to Livadia, if you like.”
“Yes,” I murmured. “I would like that very much.”
An invitation from my daughter-in-law or an impulsive gesture of affection from my son, after such a trying end to the past year and start of the new one? It shouldn’t matter, I told myself. I’d avoided the Alexander Palace as assiduously as Alexandra did public receptions, knowing that as far as she was concerned, I must remember my place. Rasputin had become a persistent, if unseen, obstacle between us. She would never forget or forgive how I’d made Nicky send him away, so that he’d been in Siberia when Alexei almost died. That I’d been invited at all to spend time with my grandchildren since then was a victory.
The mazurka ended. After the prince bowed to Olga amid the court’s burst of applause, she came back to us, her cheeks flushed, her auburn hair, more the hue of Nicky’s in his youth than mine, escaping its net under her headdress.
“Papa,” she said eagerly, “will you dance with me next?”
“What?” He motioned to the queue of eager young aristocrats lining up behind her. “And deprive all those fine gentlemen of the chance to enjoy your company?”
Olga looked over her shoulder. Her eyes widened.
I heard myself laugh—an unexpected, welcome release. “You’re only young once, my dear. Your papa says you remind him of me. I would never disdain such admiration.”
Olga hesitated, then quickly stepped on the dais to kiss my cheek, the warm smell of her youth, of the heat in the hall bringing out the touch of perfume borrowed from my own vial, washing over me as she whispered, “I love you, Amama. Thank you for inviting me.”
She returned to the floor, a smile on her lips as she accepted the next offer to dance.
“Yes,” I whispered to Nicky. “She is like me, isn’t she?”
* * *
IN THE SUMMER, the Alexander Palace estate was idyllic, never too hot like the city, which emptied of the aristocracy as everyone fled to the seaside. We had not gone to Livadia; Alexandra had a flare-up of her lumbago and was restricted again to her chair. She seemed to prefer it this way, even if her gaze remained forever sharp as the children rallied around her, pushing her down the paths to the artificial lake to feed the swans or reading aloud to her as she did her interminable needlework.
Today, however, only Alexei was at her side, his devoted spaniel, Joy, at his feet. He’d been given the dog as a pup to raise, to keep him occupied, and he trained the animal with such diligence that Joy became his constant shadow, attuned to his every move. My grandson wore his white sailor shirt and short blue pants, because the brace chafed him under trousers. With his straight brown hair, thick-lashed gray eyes, and pert mouth, he reminded me of an imp, but his frown as he watched his sisters while he sat ensconced in a special chair that allowed him to stretch out his braced leg was anything but amused.
From the terrace overlooking the gardens, my granddaughters—clad in identical high-necked white frocks that had gone out of fashion with the new century yet in which Alexandra had dressed them since childhood—chased polished wood hoops, tapping them with wands and attempting to trip one another up. As the youngest, Anastasia was relentless, even though she was caught more frequently and fell with an abandon that made her mother’s lips purse. Alexandra didn’t seem to notice that Olga had a visible bosom or that sixteen-year-old Tatiana moved with a fawn-like grace that would be captivating in silver tissue. Even fourteen-year-old Maria, with her dimpled smile and warm blue eyes, was now an adolescent. Nevertheless, Alexandra called out peevishly, “Do be more careful. You’ll stain your dresses,” as if they were little girls with nothing else to wear.
“I want to play with the hoops.” Alexei slapped his book down on the table b
etween him and Alexandra, rattling her Wedgwood teapot. She never used the Russian samovar.
“Alexei. Must you?” She glanced pointedly at his book, which had nearly sent her precious English pot and matching teacup crashing to the terrace flagstones.
“Yes. I must. Why should they have all the fun?” His frown deepened into a scowl; he was quite imperious, expecting every guard on the estate to salute him when he passed and glaring at them if they failed to render the proper homage.
“Do you see what we must put up with?” Alexandra gave me a look of resignation. “Not yet nine and already an autocrat.”
“I am going to be the autocrat,” asserted Alexei, looking past her to me. “Aren’t I, Amama? Autocrat of All the Russias. Like Papa.”
I chuckled. “That you will. If you don’t start chasing hoops like a girl.”
He pouted. It wasn’t the hoops he necessarily wanted to chase; he wanted to romp with his sisters without fear that he’d precipitate an emergency.
“You can read to us,” said Alexandra. “Go on. You know how much I like it.”
“No.” He crossed his thin arms at his chest, a gesture that reminded me of Nicky. “I’m bored with reading. I’m bored with books and drawing and trains and toys. I want to—”
“We know what you want.” Alexandra set her hand on his knee. “We want the same for you. Always. Please be patient, my Sunbeam. Botkin says you’re doing so very well; if you continue to improve, the brace can come off next month.”
His dejected exhalation indicated that for him, like any child, a month was a lifetime.
“Girls.” Alexandra motioned to her daughters. “Come. Your brother is bored.”
Hoops and wands were immediately abandoned on the lawn as the perspiring grand duchesses flocked to the terrace, pulling up wicker chairs to engage Alexei, whose ill-tempered monotone conveyed he was still not amused.
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