Inside Alexandra’s boudoir, a stout maid in a starched white cap clucked and fussed over the enormous canopied bed, fluffing pillows and smoothing the top sheets. The cretonne curtains on the windows had been unfastened to reveal Peterhof’s lush gardens, forests of pine trees, and rolling gray waters crashing along the coastline below. The midsummer twilight cast Alexandra’s oval face in a luminous glow, like the sad-eyed Virgin on the wooden icon above the headboard.
Lena dropped into a low curtsy. The humidity made her skirt cling to the back of her knees. As she struggled upright, she scanned the chaos of overstuffed chairs, framed portraits, and figurines. At last she spotted a crystal vase atop an end table draped in lace doilies. She moved to the table and arranged the lilacs in the vase, hoping their fragrance might alleviate the bitter aroma of bromide salts.
“Leave us,” Alexandra ordered.
Lena stepped back and bumped a mahogany armoire. The slender silver drawer knobs rattled against the wood in protest. The maid placed her chubby hands on her hips and glared at Lena.
“Not you, Lenichka. But Anya, if you will.”
The maid drew in a quick intake of breath and gave a lumbering curtsy before trudging out of the room. She shut the door so hard the windowpanes shook.
Lena hovered awkwardly in the corner, unsure of her next move.
“I knew you would visit me,” Alexandra said gently. “Come closer.”
Lena approached, but could not find satisfactory words. Congratulations for the new baby were in order and yet they were not.
“Please speak to me, Lenichka.” Alexandra offered her hand. Lena kneeled and folded the long tapered fingers in her own. She detected the scent of rose water mingled with stale cigarette smoke. “My grandmother was Queen Victoria. My mother passed away when I was a girl and grandmama helped raise me. Now she’s gone as well. I’m grateful you speak her language. I wish to hear it more often. I miss her so.”
“Grand Duchess Anastasia is beautiful. Everyone says so. She pleases her father.” Lena thought it important to include this last bit.
“Nicky loves all his girls.” Alexandra sighed and leaned back into her pillows. “But four daughters and no heir? If only you had been present when the child was born.”
Despite the humidity, a chill passed over Lena. “Why would you want me?”
“You told me your mother is a midwife. Perhaps you know secrets to help a woman conceive a boy.” Alexandra’s voice faded. Lena leaned forward to catch the last words. “Perhaps with your help, I would have delivered a son. An heir to the throne.”
On the other side of the bedroom window, a breeze ruffled the English rose petals and the delphinium blossoms. Lena wished she was strolling through the gardens now, gulping in the fresh air gusting in from the Gulf of Finland. “Only God can grant what you wish,” she whispered.
Alexandra clamped her hand tightly around Lena’s wrist, her palm hot and slick. “Are you suggesting God doesn’t hear my prayers?”
With her free hand, Lena twisted a lock of hair around her finger. Usually, Alexandra treated her as tenderly as a newborn kitten. “I only meant you have the best doctors at your disposal.”
“Everyone hates me. I hear the gossip. I’m called the German bitch. They say I’m useless. They say I’m cursed.”
Lena wished she could deny it. But only yesterday she’d overheard a smug cow of a royal cousin whisper that the tsar should have married Matilda Kshesinskaya, the ballerina he’d kept as a mistress for many years, rather than Alexandra. At least then, the woman hinted, the empire might enjoy the stability of an heir.
“Your mother must have passed knowledge on to you,” Alexandra insisted. “Please. My grandmother is gone. My sister is childless. I have no one.”
Lena could smell the empress’s desperation. She longed to lift Alexandra out of despair, yet it wasn’t her place to give advice. If she helped and something went wrong, what a convenient scapegoat she would make. She could find herself suddenly under police surveillance, seized in the dead of night, and thrown into the darkest dungeon of Peter and Paul Fortress.
“I will continue to pray for you and the holy tsar.” The words were cotton in Lena’s mouth.
Alexandra dropped Lena’s hand and drew a crocheted coverlet over her shoulders. Her voice shifted to the icy tone she used when a clumsy maid dropped a vase. “I have already prayed for help. I asked only for loyalty. You’re excused.”
Lena rose to her feet, curtsied, and backed out of the room gradually, not daring to give further offense. Alexandra buried her head in a pillow and let out a muffled gasp. Lena grasped the doorknob. A tremor rolled down the back of her neck. For a moment, she was no longer in the presence of the Empress of all the Russias, but back in the dingy cabin in the northern woods where she’d been raised.
“You want something.” Alexandra sprang upright in bed. “I see it in your eyes. Something troubles you.”
Lena bowed her head and thrust her hand into her skirt pocket, feeling for the paper, making sure it was still there. She closed her fingers over the crumpled letter.
Her mother had written with news of Lena’s brother, Anton. After university, he’d been unable to find work. He’d returned home to Archangel and had grown involved with a group of boys too radical even for the local union. They reeked of alcohol, advocated violence, and viewed jail time as a soldier would a medal of honor. One of them had been arrested. Under duress, her mother feared, he might reveal other names.
Images of her brother’s face raced through Lena’s mind, the ruddy cheeks and perpetually startled high eyebrows. A solution began to take shape, like random stars assuming the form of a constellation. Alexandra was the last person with whom she would have thought to share Anton’s problems. But now she had an opportunity she couldn’t let pass. She only needed to summon the courage to ask.
Lena took care with her words. “My mother wrote. There is trouble at home.”
“I can help,” Alexandra insisted. “Whatever it is. We can help each other.”
“I worry about my brother. He is a good boy. His friends are not.”
Alexandra clenched her pillow, gaze fixed on Lena. “I understand wayward brothers. I have one, Ernest, back home in Hesse. He hasn’t been the same since his wife left him. If you help me, I can protect your brother.”
Lena drew in a quick breath. Simple advice could do the empress no harm.
“The women in Archangel needed sons to please their husbands,” Lena said. “This is what my mother told them to do…”
PARIS
OCTOBER 1941
Horns blared. Try as she might Charlotte could not tear her gaze from the clock on her kitchen wall. The slim hour and minute hands had aligned, pointing upward to indicate noon. Right on schedule, the soldiers assembled along the boulevard, rifles angled on their shoulders, dark green uniforms drab but spotless. They started to advance. She closed her eyes, listening to their heavy boots thump cobblestones in time to a monotonous military march. The tune rattled through makeshift loudspeakers that now lined the city’s streets.
Charlotte remembered the way people spoke of the soldiers at the beginning. The rumors kept the entire city in a state of terror. Occupying Huns came in the dark of night. They used spiked clubs to knock doors from hinges. The soldiers seized children and cut off little boys’ hands, so they couldn’t grow up to hold guns. Charlotte knew she shouldn’t believe such stories. And yet, at the beginning of the occupation, whenever the soldiers marched, her pulse quickened. She’d grabbed her son and run to the bedroom. She’d shut the door and held him close until the heavy sound of boots and the crackle of music grew faint in the distance.
As the months of occupation progressed, Charlotte forced the fear to harden in her stomach, an irritating but benign tumor. Now, she opened her eyes and tried to focus on the tasks at hand: pinning her auburn hair into a neat bun at the nape of her neck, using the last of her long matches to light the gas on the stove and heat the wat
ery substance passing for soup. She made a mental review of the exercises she meant to teach later that afternoon with her class at Matilda Kshesinskaya’s ballet studio.
Charlotte stepped away from the stove and peeked into the parlor to check on her son, Laurent. Kshesinskaya had offered to watch him while Charlotte was in class. The two of them stood together at the front window. Kshesinskaya tried to distract Laurent with a stuffed monkey, but he slipped out of her arms and clapped for the soldiers, as though watching a Punch and Judy puppet show at Luxembourg Gardens.
“Be still,” Kshesinskaya scolded. She looked up and saw Charlotte watching them. “He needs to understand,” she explained.
Charlotte’s fingers flexed irritably. Of course Laurent needed to avoid the soldiers, like automobiles on the street or a scalding pot of hot water on the stove. But he was only three. Charlotte moved toward them. She kissed the top of her son’s head and then gently tilted his face up. He’d had a bad nosebleed yesterday and dry flakes of clotted blood still clung to his nostrils. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
“The soldiers may need to march.” Kshesinskaya pulled up the sleeves on her silk blouse and rubbed her slender wrists as she pointed at the windows. “But we needn’t give them an audience.”
“You’re right.” Charlotte made the rounds of her flat, drawing all the thick blackout curtains closed. It felt good to move her legs, to shut out the soldiers on foot and the officers on their fine stallions as they passed. Kshesinskaya understood how to handle this situation. She’d dealt with occupation before, when the Bolsheviks seized control of Saint Petersburg in 1917, forcing Kshesinskaya to flee her country with nothing more than a pocketful of jewels. “We’ll listen to Madame.”
Laurent’s features scrunched into a frown. The horses were his favorite part of the parade. The back of Charlotte’s neck ached. As she twisted to massage it, her gaze traveled to her rolltop desk in the corner of the room, where she’d stashed the latest postcard from her mother. Postcards were all the Germans allowed now, so they could read what people had to say without the trouble of ripping open and resealing envelopes.
Her mother had written diligently, scrunching her words to fit them on the small card. She begged them to return home to the Dordogne, to stay in the little cottage next to the vineyards, where they could help Charlotte’s father tend the grapes. Her parents never wanted her to move to Paris in the first place and still refused to consider it her home.
Charlotte meant to respond to her mother, but every time she started, Laurent bruised his knee and started to cry. Or she had to take yet another call from one of her students’ parents, informing her they were sorry but their family had to leave the city.
“The Germans can’t stay forever,” she heard Kshesinskaya say.
Charlotte wished she could believe her. And yet so many new soldiers arrived in the city every day, each batch more fresh-faced than the last. On her way to class, she saw them strut along the streets with cameras strapped around their thick necks, snapping pictures like privileged tourists. She passed sidewalk cafés where they laughed and gorged themselves on foul-smelling schnapps.
A steady pounding at the front door sliced through her thoughts. A deep voice boomed from the other side of the door, in French, but with a halting German accent. “Madame? Open this door.”
Laurent grabbed her hand. She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but her muscles cramped. She couldn’t move, couldn’t curl her fingers around his. This was what everyone said would happen. The soldiers may not have come under cover of night, but one of them had finally arrived at her door.
Laurent’s small hand grew moist with sweat. Charlotte slid her feet together, heels flat to toes, in a perfect fifth position. She always felt better in fifth position. The stories about the German soldiers had to be false. Perhaps this one only needed to use the facilities. Perhaps he was looking for someone else entirely.
“Madame Marchand?” the soldier called.
Charlotte’s stomach lurched. She didn’t understand. She took care to avoid the soldiers, averting her eyes and crossing to the other side of the street when they passed.
Kshesinskaya’s concerned face came into focus, her voice grave as death. “Charlotte, that soldier knows your name.”
She shook her head. The pummeling at the door continued, obscuring the fading marching music from the street. Charlotte tried to swallow her panic, but she remembered more of the stories now. When soldiers came to your door, shouting your name, they sent you east to nowhere. That’s what people called it now. East to nowhere and never heard from again. Charlotte imagined one of the fat young Germans she saw on the street bursting into her flat and pointing a machine gun at her son.
“This door is opening one way or another,” the soldier called.
She couldn’t let him near Laurent. She couldn’t let the soldier even see she had a son. Charlotte took Laurent by the arm. He stumbled in front of her as she pushed him to the bedroom. “Stay here.” She kissed the top of his head, taking in the leafy scent of his hair and drawing strength from it. “Don’t let them see you. Like hide-and-seek.”
Charlotte tried to pull Kshesinskaya into the bedroom after Laurent, but she jerked Charlotte sideways, gold bangles jangling around her wrists. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Please. I don’t know what else to do.” Charlotte only knew it felt right to keep moving. “Avoid them. Isn’t that what you were saying to Laurent?”
“Come in here with us then.”
“If I don’t answer, he might force his way inside. I’ll see what he wants.”
Charlotte shook Kshesinskaya’s hand off her arm and pushed her into the bedroom. Laurent gave her one last pleading look before Charlotte shut the door.
She stood alone in the living room. The pounding at the door continued, more insistent now. In the kitchen, the soup had bubbled over in a foamy mess. Charlotte flipped the gas off on the stove. Then she rolled her shoulders back, as she used to when she prepared to take the stage. She strode to the door and unhooked the thin metal latch.
Behind her, she heard the jingling of bracelets. Kshesinskaya clamped her almond-scented hand firmly over Charlotte’s mouth.
“Madame Marchand is not here,” Kshesinskaya called, her voice a falsely merry singsong.
The pounding stopped. The German lowered his voice. “When will she return?”
What was Kshesinskaya doing? Charlotte couldn’t breathe. She struggled against her grip, but the older woman wouldn’t let go. “I’m not sure,” Kshesinskaya said. “Some days, she stays out all hours, let me tell you. Why did you say you were here again?”
The soldier’s tone changed, became almost flirtatious. “Pardon me, madame. Of course. My name is Herr Krause and I wish to speak to Charlotte Marchand. She used to dance with the Opera Ballet, did she not? Now she works for that old Russian prima donna Matilda Kshesinskaya?”
Charlotte wanted to scream, wanted to run for Laurent. It wasn’t just her name. He knew all about her. But Kshesinskaya pressed her hand even tighter against Charlotte’s lips.
“She may also be known as a grand duchess,” the German said sweetly. “Is this familiar? Have you heard her use the title?”
Kshesinskaya spun Charlotte around. She touched her fingers to her lips. Charlotte nodded. Kshesinskaya lowered her hand, breathing heavily. Charlotte realized she’d never seen Kshesinskaya frightened before, not even when the German tanks rolled down the boulevards. Kshesinskaya motioned for Charlotte to take her handbag, which hung on a hook near the door.
“What happens to you when I don’t come back?” Charlotte whispered.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“But where will we go?”
Kshesinskaya released Charlotte and flew across the room. She snatched the handbag from its hook. Then she moved to the rolltop desk, opening drawers, removing all of the postcards from Charlotte’s mother and stuffing them deep inside the handbag. She tossed
the bag to Charlotte.
“Go to your parents. They’ll explain everything. Take Laurent to the Métro. Leave out the back door. Now!”
The force of her voice propelled Charlotte back toward her bedroom. She groped for the knob and stumbled inside, searching for Laurent. The door to the back garden had been opened and she spotted him outside, crouched and shivering in his thin coat near the remains of the rhododendrons Charlotte planted last spring. Frantically, Charlotte searched her room for anything of value she might snatch and take with them.
“It could be hours before Madame returns,” she heard Kshesinskaya say.
“I’ve waited a long time to find her,” Herr Krause replied smoothly. “I can wait a little longer.”
Then she heard Kshesinskaya’s calm but grumpy reply: “Fine. Fine.”
Charlotte flung open a heart-shaped wooden box. Her jewelry collection consisted mostly of costume pieces. She was wearing a necklace from her mother and owned one diamond pendant and matching earrings, a gift from an admirer many years back. Charlotte thrust the diamonds in her handbag and bolted outside. She grabbed Laurent and started to run, stomping on the rhododendrons and pushing them both through the back gate and out to the boulevard.
The midday sun slipped behind puffy gray rainclouds. As she ran to the Métro, she noticed the drawn curtains in the flats and the thick iron locks on the doors of the shops. When Charlotte first moved to Paris, she couldn’t sleep for all the noise. She’d come to the city because she was so sick of the quiet in the countryside. Now she heard only the patter of the wooden soles of her shoes, the snapping of twigs as a squirrel dashed up a tree trunk, and the dying notes of the military march crackling through speakers on the opposite end of the boulevard.
She dodged a bicyclist and descended into the dark Métro station, cradling the back of Laurent’s head in her hand. His ribs felt sharp and thin against her body. She imagined Kshesinskaya facing the German soldier at the front door. When Charlotte never materialized, what then? He might send Kshesinskaya east to nowhere. And somehow it was all connected to Charlotte.
The Secret Daughter of the Tsar Page 4
