Nina smiled and replied, ‘How could I know that when you told me never to look into his face?’
‘I’ll warrant the Tsarina looks into his face,’ I said.
‘They all do.’ She took my sarcasm seriously. ‘It’s why Rasputin has such success in controlling them. His is an overpowering presence. He half hypnotizes Alexei into believing that whatever he says is true – thus if he tells Alexei he will recover from a bout of illness, then the very act of telling the child this aids him in doing so.’
‘But because everything about the child’s illness is cloaked in secrecy,’ said Dr K, ‘the Tsarevich is being denied the best care. Britain and America are experimenting in blood transfusion. If those techniques were perfected, who knows how long the child might live?’
‘And if Rasputin were a true miracle worker,’ I said, ‘then he would heal the boy completely.’
‘I’m sure he does his best,’ said Galena. ‘And every bit of assistance he gives must help in some way.’
‘Unfortunately, in other matters his presence is not passive or neutral,’ said Dr K. ‘He helps the child, but he hinders everything else.’
Nina agreed. ‘Without Rasputin’s advice, the Tsarina can barely decide on which clothes to wear. He has no experience of government office, yet she appoints or sacks ministers according to his opinion. She is melancholic and desperately lonely, and he gives her the attention she craves. Her only son, upon whose shoulders rests the continuance of everything they believe in, is irrevocably ill. Whatever future medical advance might be made to relieve Alexei’s condition will probably come too late for him. I sense it is awful to be Alexei,’ she added, ‘knowing he is only needed to survive long enough to breed another heir.’
‘What a burden to have that as your sole purpose in life,’ said Galena.
I did not join in their collective sigh of sympathy. The Romanovs themselves were a burden on Russia.
‘May the Holy Mother look benevolently upon Alexei,’ said Galena as she rose from her chair to fetch a tray from the kitchen.
Out of respect for her I waited until she had left the room before saying, ‘I do pity him.’ I flashed a look at Nina to show that my sympathy was genuine. ‘Truly I do – but it may be best that he does not live. For the good of Russia, none of them should live.’
Chapter 25
Despite Dr K’s wise advice and Galena coaxing her to eat more, there was a veil of disquiet around Nina that was beginning to bother me.
The house was too crowded downstairs for private conversation so I volunteered for shifts at the Winter Palace in order to speak to her. But the days went past and there was never an opportunity. The ever-vigilant Matron was on the prowl and the place was too public. And … I was nervous in case she spurned me. I was sure she’d seen me on a few occasions, but was she deliberately ignoring me? She seemed willing to chat with Tomas, who visited occasionally. I didn’t blame her. The wards had some horrible cases and Tomas was witty and funny.
Once they were by the sluice room, and she was telling him of a young patient who refused to take his medicine because it tasted vile.
‘There’s a simple solution to that problem,’ said Tomas. ‘Make a great show of swallowing some of it yourself. Ensure that the men in the nearby beds see and hear you do it. Declaim loudly that, even though you are female and young and weak, you will do this to set him an example. He’ll be shamed into drinking it.’
‘What a wonderful idea!’ Nina exclaimed.
‘If any of it touches your lips, you mustn’t screw up your face like this.’ Tomas contorted his face like a gargoyle.
They were laughing together. I turned away so as not to disturb them.
On my way there one day I met Fyodor. He was bursting to tell me his news. ‘Lenin is asking to be allowed safe passage through Germany to return to Russia!’
‘The Germans must think he’ll push for peace negotiations with them, so that they can turn their forces round and overrun France.’
‘Who cares about the reason? The point is, he would energize and inspire the Bolshevik Party.’
‘He’d be arrested as he stepped off the train.’
‘That’s true.’ Fyodor gave me a meaningful look. ‘But if enough people joined our cause, Lenin would have his own personal guard to protect him.’
‘Not for me, thank you, Fyodor,’ I replied. ‘I don’t want to trade an international war for a civil war.’
‘It will happen anyway, Stefan – with or without you.’
When I got home, I related this conversation to the others.
‘I fear Fyodor may be right,’ said Dr K. ‘The changes that Alexander Kerensky and other Duma councillors are proposing would take a long time to have a measurable effect on people’s lives. Nina’ – he addressed her – ‘living as you did in the Alexander Palace, where the Tsarina is pulling the strings of our puppet government, were you aware of any developments?’
‘Not with any degree of accuracy,’ Nina replied. ‘It’s difficult to explain. What happens in the city and the rest of Russia does not interfere significantly with daily life in the Alexander Palace. They eat and read and sew and entertain friends; and each week there is a music recital. Before and after State Council meetings the Tsarina prays with Father Grigory Rasputin for divine guidance, and his advice prevails. Sometimes the Tsar wavers, but she manipulates her husband, who inevitably accepts Rasputin’s point of view. The concerns of ordinary people are not fully represented or heard.’
‘Then he is not just an incompetent Tsar,’ I said. ‘He is no Tsar at all!’
‘The Tsar is very conflicted. He loves her. She loves him. They both love their children. What colours everything, affects their moods and movement and lies heavy upon their hearts, is Alexei’s illness.’
‘Which is definitely the condition known as haemophilia,’ said Dr K.
‘Do you know this for sure?’
‘I did some research, made enquiries. Their physician, Dr Botkin, does what he can, but he is limited because the Tsar and Tsarina wish to maintain a shroud of secrecy about it. Haemophilia is genetically prevalent in royal families. The crowned heads of Europe fear that if people realized how frail and vulnerable the royal successions actually are, then it could lead to revolution and anarchy.’
‘In Russia we are more than halfway along the road to a revolution,’ I said.
‘What Stefan says is true,’ Dr K told Nina. ‘Even the Russian nobles realize it is coming. Some are making independent contact with high-placed members of the Duma. If the Tsar does not give the Duma councillors constitutional power before the end of this year, then by the end of next year they will take it from him.’
Chapter 26
At the beginning of November Dr K and I were doing double shifts in the City Hospital, but as we slid into December the pressure eased. An official communiqué from the Ministry of War informed us that the practicalities of warfare meant that major engagements did not take place during the winter. The field marshals and generals planned their offensives for the spring.
When Dr K read this out at a staff meeting, one of the senior orderlies commented, ‘That’s not what our patients are saying. They tell us that the reason there are fewer wounded is because there is a shortage of stretcher-bearers, nurses and doctors. The ambulance service is so badly organized that if soldiers fall on the battlefield there is no hope of them being rescued. The wounded lie forgotten in no-man’s-land.’
‘There is a truth in their remarks,’ a junior doctor agreed. ‘The men tell us that at the Front they bless the colder weather. They believe that freezing to death is an easier way of dying. They prefer it to bleeding out, or lying with infected flesh festering for days, going mad for lack of water.’
But the surgical wards of the City Hospital continued to be busy and we were working long days to deal with the number of operations.
Nine days before Christmas, Dr K and I, having finished a session in theatre, were discussing the
fact that patients who we thought were recovering had relapsed, requiring further surgery. We’d spent a day cutting off limbs – whole legs and arms – from soldiers who’d had a foot or a hand amputated at the Front.
‘Gangrene is tracking up the muscle.’ Dr K paused outside the door of his office. ‘I want to prepare a report to be sent to the War Ministry. The army doctors need to be aware of the consequences of their actions upon their patients. Their methods of dealing with shattered limb bones by guillotine-style amputation and suture seals in bacteria and encourages infection to spread. With gangrene it delivers a death sentence, for it spreads into the body, and by the time we see the patient it’s too late. We need someone at the battlefield instructing the medics there how to perform a more efficient amputation.’
There was a burst of laughter from behind us. ‘Oh, that’s funny, that is.’ A grizzled soldier, a double amputee, was sitting on a pallet in the corridor. The rough bandages on the stumps of his legs above his knees were suppurating brownish pus. ‘Honourable Doctor, sir,’ he said, ‘there are no medics to perform amputations on the ordinary soldiers of the Front Line. We do it ourselves with kitchen knives or rusty bayonets.’
Dr K wiped his hand across his face. ‘Nevertheless,’ he replied, ‘I will personally deliver the report I write and make sure that someone in authority reads it. Even if I have to take it to Tsar Nicholas himself.’
‘Then, Honourable Doctor, please oblige me, and every other conscript, by ramming it down the Tsar’s throat until he chokes upon it.’
Kneeling down beside him, Dr K said gently, ‘You are suffering. I will give you something to take away the pain.’
‘I have watched my comrades die unspeakable deaths,’ the soldier replied. ‘There is nothing you can give me to take away the pain in my heart.’ And this man leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes, and quite deliberately gave up his spirit; passing away in front of us.
Dr K stayed motionless.
As did I.
Seconds ticked past and still we did not move. A suffocating blanket of despair descended upon us, draining away our energy and hope.
‘Sir?’ A hospital porter addressed me.
‘What?’
‘Sir? Will I take this soldier’s body to the morgue?’
I nodded dumbly and bent to help Dr K to his feet. When I made to follow him into his office, Dr K stopped me.
‘Go home, Stefan,’ he said. ‘Go home and eat. Eat and rest. I want to be alone for a while.’
I was leaving the building when my friend Tomas hailed me. In the circumstances I was overjoyed to see his cheerful face. ‘What brings you here?’ I asked him. ‘Why are you slumming with ordinary folks when you’ve sided with the nobility and treat only the officers?’
‘Dr Lazovert sent me to fetch a phial of potassium crystals from the hospital pharmacy and bring it to the Moika Palace.’
‘Potassium crystals? Is your medical team so hopelessly inept that you are deliberately killing off your patients now?’
‘Prince Yusupov asked him for it. He said that the household is teeming with rats and they need a strong poison to get rid of them.’
‘In the city slums they are eating the rats to stay alive.’
‘So they say … and in the weeks I’ve worked in the military wards at the Moika I’ve never seen a rat.’ A frown appeared on Tomas’s chubby, pleasant face.
‘Why didn’t Dr Lazovert obtain the potassium from the hospital pharmacy himself?’
‘He said he didn’t have time. The stuff was needed speedily. The Prince has refurbished his basement to host a supper party there tonight and he didn’t want his guests affronted by vermin scuttling about.’
‘The rats would be in good company,’ I joked, ‘for Yusupov’s relatives and friends are vermin.’
As we walked along, I told Tomas of the incident in the corridor, with the soldier who’d had both legs amputated, whereupon he asked me to come and look at one of his patients at the Moika Palace whose wounds were leaking a similar red-brown fluid. He added that, as a doctor, he had access to Prince Yusupov’s well-stocked kitchens and we could share a jug of beer and some food.
It was an attractive idea. Galena wasn’t expecting me at any specific time and lately she’d been going to bed very early so as to rise before dawn to get a place in the bread queues. Dr K would sleep on the sofa in his office, as he frequently did when he’d had a trying day. Nina would be at home … If we were alone, then maybe there would be an opportunity to speak to her and ask if there was anything troubling her. But … it was a long time since I’d met up with my friend, and I was enjoying the easy banter of our conversation. We were still making jokes about the Russian aristocracy as we walked along the canal to the entrance of the Moika Palace.
‘This way,’ said Tomas, leading me to a small courtyard. ‘There is a secret door here to a private staircase going down directly to the basement. This is where Dr Lazovert instructed me to deliver the poison.’
I hung back in the yard while Tomas knocked upon the door. A shaft of light spilled out on the snow as Prince Yusupov himself answered the door.
‘Come in!’ he said gaily.
‘I have patients to attend to.’ Tomas made to turn away.
‘Come in, I say!’ Yusupov’s words were slurred. He was drunk, but not enough that he would allow what he considered a lesser mortal to disobey his command. He pulled Tomas inside, failing to close the door behind him. I could hear Tomas protesting loudly. He wouldn’t want to get involved, for it might harm his career to be associated with one of Prince Yusupov’s decadent entertainments.
‘A fellow doctor has come with me to consult over a special case,’ said Tomas. ‘We are hoping to save the man’s life.’
‘Bring him in too! What’s his name?’ asked Yusupov.
There was a silence and then I heard Tomas say, ‘Tobias. My friend’s name is Tobias.’
Yusupov began to call, ‘Tobias! Tobias!’ at the top of his voice.
I went through the door and followed them down the narrow staircase. The basement room was small but lavishly furnished. Plush drapes hung upon the walls, with expensive ornaments placed in alcoves and upon the mantelpiece. In the grate, a log fire burned, which should have made a rosy glow within the room. Instead, the leaping flames seemed demonic, casting grotesque dark shapes onto the ceiling.
No one had eaten, and yet the supper table was being arranged to make it look as if several people had taken a meal. Dr Lazovert was littering the imaginary guests’ plates with food selected from a central dish containing cream-filled pastries and fancy chocolate cakes. Yusupov picked up a bottle of wine and slopped irregular amounts of it into the glasses. I had never seen this man at close quarters before, but his looks confirmed his reputation as a degenerate. His lean face was faintly mottled and his eyes intense, but his hands were steady enough as he bit into a cake and set the half-eaten portion upon a plate.
A false image of normality – the aftermath of a meal eaten with friends. For what reason?
‘We should leave,’ Tomas tried again.
‘Don’t be like that,’ Yusupov chided him. ‘Tonight’s fun is just beginning.’
‘My patient—’ Tomas began.
‘—is a member of the Romanov family.’ I finished Tomas’s sentence for him with a lie, in an attempt to find a way out of here before we were implicated in whatever devilish scheme was being concocted. ‘And we are concerned for his health.’
‘In that case’ – Yusupov pouted – ‘I suppose I must let you leave to do your doctoring work. But later I’ll be upstairs with my real guests. After midnight we will be celebrating with music and dance. You are welcome to join us then.’
‘Sire.’ I bent my head. It made my skin crawl to do it, but I saw it as the fastest way out of that room. It reeked of evil, the stench worse than the gangrenous flesh which Dr K and I had been dealing with during the day.
On the staircase I was behind Tomas. At the do
or I glanced back. Dr Lazovert had put on a pair of rubber gloves. He emptied the contents of the phial into a bowl, then, using a pestle, he began to grind the potassium crystals to a powder.
Chapter 27
We went by the courtyard, through the gardens, to reach the wing of the palace where the military hospital had been set up. It was a revelation to me to see the amount of materials this unit had obtained. Stacked at the end of the ward were boxes containing instruments, bandages and cotton wool.
‘The City Hospital is constantly running short of supplies,’ I said enviously.
‘Prince Yusupov is the richest man in Russia,’ said Tomas. ‘More wealthy than the Tsar. I suppose we must give him credit for spending some of his vast fortune on this.’
‘He deserves no praise,’ I said. ‘Yusupov was pressurized into allowing a hospital in his home as a sop to preserve his status, for it was a scandal in high society that he refused to take a commission in the army. Olga, the Tsarina’s eldest daughter, commented openly about the disgrace of it. Yusupov’s wife, Irina, is cousin to the Tsar’s children, and Olga reduced this woman to tears with the shame he was bringing to the family. Nina told us. She said it was a source of tension among the Romanov relatives.’
‘How is Nina?’ Tomas’s face softened at the mention of her name.
‘She is fine,’ I said.
‘I miss her company,’ he sighed. ‘It’s a great opportunity for me to work here. Dr Lazovert has a lot of experience and I’m learning so much. But I shared some jolly times with Nina in the Winter Palace when we were students, and I drop in there when I can, to exchange a few words.’
‘Huh! I spoke to her once when she was on the ward and the Matron threatened to have me expelled from the university!’
‘Perhaps it was the way you were speaking to Nina,’ said Tomas. ‘You can sound dismissive, Stefan. Nina and I tried to make jokes about our work and I tell funny stories. Nobody seemed to mind – and when the staff are happy it helps the patients too.’
The Rasputin Dagger Page 14
