The Last Tsar's Dragons

by Jane Yolen

  As Rasputin backed away, he instinctively admired the tsarina’s form. She was not overly slim like her daughters, nor plump—zaftik, as the Jews would say. Her hair was piled atop her head like a dragon’s nest, revealing a strong neck and the briefest glimpse of a surprisingly broad back.

  Some peasant stock in her lineage somewhere? He quickly brushed the ungracious thought aside. Not all of us have to raise ourselves from the dirt to God’s grace. Some are given it at birth.

  The rest of her form was disguised by draping linens and silks as the current fashion demanded, but the monk knew her waist was capable of being cinched quite tight in the fashions of other times. Her eyes, the monk also knew, were ever so slightly drooping, disguising a stern nature and stubborn resolve—especially when caring for her only son.

  She turned those eyes on him now. “Yes, Father Grigori? Do you require something of me?”

  The monk blinked twice rapidly, realizing he’d been staring and that perhaps “desiring her not at all” was overstating things a touch.

  “Only to implore you once more to keep the bloodsuckers away,” he managed to say, covering his brief awkwardness with another bow. “I feel the young tsar is so much better now that you have stopped those aspirin powders. The bruises less offensive, his energy higher.”

  The tsarina nodded, then sat down smoothly on the chair by the bed, a hand’s space away from her sleeping son.

  Rasputin took the nod as a dismissal and left the chamber quickly.

  Once through the door, he slowed for just a moment. Where is that girl with the swan’s neck? he thought. I should like to take these unworthy feelings out on her. He rubbed his hands together, marveling at how smooth his palms had become during his time at court. Perhaps it is not too late to find a whip.

  The tsar sent a letter home the day after getting to the front. The tsarina opened it with shaking hands.

  My Own Darling:

  Again I had to leave you and the children—my home, my little nest—and I feel so sad and dejected but do not want to show it. God grant that we may not be parted for long. Do not grieve and do not worry! Knowing you well, I am afraid that you will ponder over what Misha told us the other day—that there are many dissidents in the countryside. That the Jews are fomenting revolution, and that this question will torment you in my absence. Please let it alone!

  My home guard and my dragons will take care of it all.

  My joy, my Sunny, my adorable little Wify, I love you and long for you terribly!

  Only when I see the soldiers and sailors do I succeed in forgetting you for a few moments—if it is possible!

  God guard you! I kiss you all fondly.

  Always yours,

  Nicky

  She wondered what she might write in return. That Alexei was slowly recovering? That the conversations among the various European courts were slowing down during these days of war? That because of the war, no Russian princess’s hand could be offered to the Germans, which ruled out many of her closest cousins.

  She thought, as she often did, of the last year at this dark, cold, time, when their daughter Sonia had fallen ill with a noise in her lungs. Remembering with an ache in her heart, standing by Sonia’s bed and watching as the doctors put two cups on Sonia’s chest. And Sonia taking no notice, hanging like a lump in the two maids’ arms. And then watching as Sonia, wreathed in prayers, died, but calmly and in a state of grace.

  “Oh my darling child,” the tsarina whispered. It was unthinkable, a child like Sonia—so good, so kind—was taken while others she could name—though she wouldn’t, being both a good Christian woman and a princess and tsarina as well—lived on. Sometimes, believing in a benevolent God was a stance she found hard to maintain. Something else she would have to offer up to Father Grigori in confession.

  When, this year, she herself had come down with an illness, she had felt no such calm, and little grace, but battled mightily to stay alive because she had to run the country with Nicky away. This roiling, troublesome, ungrateful country full of rebels and a culture that consisted of potatoes, hard drinks, and a peasantry that was always a problem.

  A bit like England’s Ireland, only without the poetry.

  In her illness, the doctors had cupped her, too, and Father Grigori sent up many prayers for her safety. Her strong English and German constitution stood her in good stead, plus those prayers.

  She certainly hadn’t wanted to trouble Nicky with that, in the war with his terrible commanders. He would only have fretted, fearing that she, too, was dying, even if the letter was written in her own firm hand. But he always said he could not go on without her. Did not want to leave her side, ever. So why was he away on a front in an unwinnable war? Why had he left her to be a ruler in a land that didn’t want her? Had never wanted her? Even after she had done so much for it.

  And then she thought that she didn’t really know how she would bear it if Nicholas should die before her, out on that cold, unyielding front. She only hoped he came safely home to her and that they could go to Heaven together when their time came.

  Then suddenly she knew what she could actually write to him: that his filthy dragons were eating up the treasury, stinking up the castle from the ground up, and killing no Jews, which was hardly the bargain she’d expected, nor had he. She would even send a curse on the dragons in German. Ein Fluch auf ihrem schmutzigen Drachens! It would make him laugh and be strong.

  And settling on this at last, she began to write.

  “Where did you get them? Where did they come from? What do you plan for them?” Borutsch couldn’t help himself; his voice trembled slightly on the last phrase.

  Bronstein looked as if he were going to slap his old friend. “Quiet yourself and don’t look so woman-nervous. We approach the shtetl.”

  Borutsch didn’t answer but took another quick sip of the schnapps.

  “And if you say anything about . . . about what I have just shown you . . . anything at all . . . we are both dead men. I let you in on the secret in case something happens to me. In these times, no one is safe. Once the dragons are hatched and trained, you can tell whom you like, but not until then.”

  Bronstein’s voice trailed off, but there was a hard edge to it. Like nothing Borutsch had ever heard from him before. He took another sip of the schnapps, almost emptying the flask.

  “I’ll not speak of it, Lev,” he said quietly. He tried for the schnapps again, but a bit of it sloshed over his shirtfront as Bronstein grabbed him roughly by the shoulders.

  “You won’t!” Bronstein hissed through pinched lips. “I swear to you, Borutsch. If you do. . . .”

  Borutsch bristled, shook himself free, recorked the flask. “Who would I tell? And who would believe an old Jew like me? An old Jew with fewer friends in this world every day.” He peered up at Bronstein and saw the manic light dim in his eyes. But still Borustch realized that he feared his friend now more than he feared any dragon. It was a sobering thought.

  “I . . . I am sorry, Pinchas.” Bronstein took off his glasses. Forest dirt was smeared on the lenses. He wiped them slowly on his shirt. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “They say that caring for dragons can make you think like one. Make you think that choosing anything but flame and ruin is a weakness.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s. . . .” He shook his head, then put his glasses on. Went on in a firmer voice. “This world is untenable. We cannot wait upon change. Change must be brought about. And change does not happen easily.” He frowned. “Or peacefully.”

  Borutsch took a deep breath before speaking. What he had to say seemed to sigh out of him. “The passage of time is not peaceful? And yet nothing can stand before it. Not men, not mountains. Not the hardest rock, if a river is allowed to flow across it for long enough.”

  “You make a good, if over-eloquent point.” Bronstein sighed. “But he would disagree.”

  Borutsch frowned as if the schnapps had turned sour in his mouth. “He is not here
.”

  “But he will return. When the dragons hatch. . . .”

  Borutsch looked stunned. “You have shown him the eggs, too?”

  “I have told him of the eggs.”

  “If they hatch, Pinchas. Do you know what this means?”

  “Don’t be an idiot. Of course I know what this means. And they will hatch. And I will train them.”

  Neither one of them had spoken above a whisper. All the Jews of the area had long been schooled in keeping their voices down. But these were sharp, harsh whispers that might just as well have been shouts.

  “What do you know about training dragons?”

  “What does the tsar know?”

  “You are so rash, my old friend.” It was as if Borutsch had never had a drop of the schnapps, for he certainly felt cold sober now. “The tsar has never trained a dragon, but his money has. And where will you, Lev Bronstein, find that kind of money?”

  Bronstein laid a finger to the side of his nose and laughed. It was not a humorous sound at all. “Where Jews always find money,” he said. “In other people’s pockets.”

  Bronstein turned and looked at the morning sun. Soon it would be full day. Not that this far north in the Russias in the winter was there that much difference between day and night. All a kind of deep gray.

  “And when I turn my dragons loose to destroy the tsar’s armies, he will return.”

  “If he returns,” Borutsch shouted, throwing the flask to the ground, “it will be at the head of a German column!”

  “He has fought thirty years for the revolution.”

  “Not here he hasn’t. By now, Ulyanov knows less about this land than the tsar’s German wife does.”

  “He is Russian, not German. And he is even a quarter Jew.” Bronstein sounded petulant. “And why do you not call him by the name he prefers?”

  “Very well,” Borutsch said. “Lenin will burn this land to the ground before saving it, just to show that his reading of Marx is more ausgezeichnet than mine.”

  Bronstein raised his hand as if to slap Borutsch, who was proud of the fact that he didn’t flinch. Then, without touching his friend at all, Bronstein walked away down the hill at a sharp clip. He did not turn to see if Borutsch followed, did not even acknowledge his friend was there at all.

  “You don’t need to destroy the army,” Borutsch called after him. “They’d come over to us eventually.” Bending over, he picked up the flask. Gave it a shake. Smiled at the small, reassuring slosh it still made. Enough for one more wetting of his mouth. “Given the passage of time,” he said more quietly, but Bronstein was already too far away to hear.

  Borutsch wondered if he’d ever see Bronstein again. Wondered if he’d recognize him if he did. What did it matter? He was not going back to the shtetl. Not going to cower in that burrow ever again.

  He flung the flask away angrily and watched as it rolled a bit down the hill, leaving a strange trail in the snow.

  “Not going to drink any more cheap schnapps, either. If there’s going to be a war with all those dragons,” he said to himself, “I will leave me out of it.” He’d already started the negotiations to sell his companies. He’d take his family to Europe, maybe even to Berlin. It would certainly be safer than here when the dragon smoke began to cover all of the land. When the tsar and his family would be as much at risk as the Jews.

  He looked back at the hills they’d just walked, behind which the eggs lay buried and ready to hatch.

  Each a little bomb, he thought, then shivered. They were not little at all. Each was bigger than a bomb and could deliver its blasts over and over and over again until the world truly was in flames.

  He nodded to himself. Better to leave sooner than later. If he could find any paper in his house, which, luckily, had only lost a barn and his wife’s two cows, he would write to his lawyer in Germany and send it by messenger in the morning.

  I took the stairs two at a time. Coming around the corner on the floor where the apartments were situated, I told myself that it no longer mattered who was there with Ninotchka—cookboy or prince. Out he will go.

  And I shall lock her in her room.

  Though I rarely gave orders, she knew when she had to listen to me. It was in the voice, of course.

  After I lock her in, I will send out invitations to those I already know are against the monk.

  I checked my face in a hall mirror. Damn, my face looked grim, nearly growling. But I didn’t feel grim. I felt elated, counting the conspirators on my fingers as I strode down the hall. The archbishop of course, because Rasputin had called rather too often for the peasants to forgo the clergy and find God in their own hearts. The head of the army, because of the monk’s anti-war passions. To his credit, the tsar did not think highly of the madman’s stance, and when Rasputin expressed a desire to bless the troops at the front, Nicholas had roared out, “Put a foot on that sacred ground, and I will have you hanged at once.” I had never heard him so decisive and magnificent before or—alas—since.

  I shall also ask Prince Yusupov and Grand Duke Pavlovich, who have their own reasons for hating him. And one or two others. But then another thought occurred to me. Too many in a conspiracy will make it fail. We need not a net but a hammer, for as the old babushkas like to say, “A hammer shatters glass but forges steel.” And this operation needs both the shattered glass and the steel.

  I already knew that my old friend Vladimir would be by my side. Vladimir had called Rasputin out in the Duma, saying in a passionate speech that the monk had taken the tsar’s ministers firmly in hand, saying brilliantly that the ministers “have been turned into marionettes.”

  What a fine figure of speech! I hardly knew he had it in him. A good man with a pistol, though. I counted on that pistol.

  But was one pistol enough? The peasants believed Rasputin unkillable. And no one doubted the story of that slattern who tried to gut him with a filleting knife, calling him the antichrist. She had missed her opportunity, alas for Russia. Yes, her knife slid through his soft belly, and he stood before her with his entrails spilling out. But some local doctor pushed the tangled mess back in the empty cavity and sewed him up again.

  “Or so they say. So they say.” I was muttering to myself now. With the mad monk, it’s difficult to know how much is true and how much is story.

  Oh yes, he might be the very devil to kill.

  And realizing that I’d made a joke—I entered the apartment, giggling.

  Ninotchka was working on her sewing in the alcove. Two women friends, the delightful Masha and the despicable tart-tongued Dasha, plus the maid who cleaned up the place, were walking around her, gabbling like geese. Ninotchka looked up, her blond hair framing that perfect, heart-shaped face.

  “A joke, my darling?” she asked.

  “A joke,” I agreed, “but not one a man can share with his adorable wife.” I cupped her chin with my right hand.

  She wrinkled her nose. “You stink, my love. What is that smell?”

  I’d forgotten to wash the stench of dragon off my hands.

  “It is nothing. I was talking to the horses that pull our carriage, reminding them of what sweet cargo they will have aboard tonight.”

  “Tonight?” The look in her eyes forgave me the stench. It was not yet the start of the Season, and she had been growing feverish for some fun.

  I planned to take her to the Mariinsky Theatre and dinner afterwards. And she would reward me later, of that I was certain.

  “I have planned a special treat out for us. It will be a surprise,” I said. It was amazing how easily the lie came out. “But now I have business,” I added. “I beg you to go to your rooms. You and your women.”

  “Government business?” she asked sweetly, but I knew better than to hint now. She was simply trying to discover some bit of gossip she could sell to the highest bidder. After all, I alone could not keep her in jewels.

  Later in bed, I will sleepily let out a minor secret. Not this one, of course. I am a patriot, after
all. I serve the tsar. Even though the tsar has not lately served me and mine at all.

  I smiled back. “Very definitely government business.”

  As soon as Ninotchka and the women went into her room, and the maid went on to the next apartments to clean them, I locked her door from the outside.

  Let them make of that what they will, I thought, though knowing it was government business would keep them from complaining.

  Then I sat at my desk and wrote the letters, taking a great deal of time on the initial one until I was satisfied with the way I had suggested but never actually said what the reason for the meeting was.

  Then I sent for Nikita to deliver the letters and to make a reservation at the Mariinsky and Chez Galouise, the finest French restaurant in the city, for their last sitting. I knew I could trust Semyon completely, thinking, He, at least, would never shop me to my enemies. After all, I have saved his life upon three separate occasions. That kind of loyalty is what distinguishes a man from a woman.

  The mad monk lay in a pile of flesh and blankets and was nearly content. He’d been unable to find the swan-necked lady-in-waiting but had made do with a fleshy and mostly willing tradesman’s daughter who had a head of brilliant red curls and, alas, nothing inside it. A quick tumble had nearly knocked the unworthy thoughts of the tsarina out of his head, and when they returned a few minutes later, he merely ploughed the young woman again. She hadn’t the energy to protest by then. He was naked except for a silver cross on a braided chain that he never removed, for it was charmed. While he wore it, he could not be killed by the hand of man. God had charmed it, and God had told him of it.

  And God is good. He has raised me up from nothing. He has fulfilled my every dream. He has put me next to the tsar so I can whisper His wisdom into the ears of power.