The Last Tsar's Dragons

by Jane Yolen

  But no—he preferred the chase, the slow seduction, the whimpering of the whipped dog that would be the prince. He must not jump the fence before it was close enough. His mother always said that. The old folk wisdom was true.

  He touched the charm around his neck. The prince would hate him but could not harm him.

  “Have some cakes,” Prince Yusupov said, gesturing with a hand toward the table. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

  Rasputin wondered at that. It was, indeed, too warm down in the cellar, but he himself was not sweating. He rarely sweated, except in the baths or in the arms of a beautiful and eager woman.

  “The cakes were made especially . . . especially for you,” Yusupov said. He hesitated. “To make peace between us.”

  Rasputin heard the hesitation, thought he understood what that meant. “The cakes will do, Felix,” he said. And indeed, they were the very kind he loved best. Honey cakes topped with crushed almonds, skorospelki covered with branches of fresh dill, caviar blinis, and so much more. But Rasputin did not want to appear greedy.

  “Please,” Yusupov said. “Irina had them made especially. We would not want her to be disappointed.”

  “No, we would not,” Rasputin said, managing to make the four words sound both engaging and insulting at the same time. It was not unintentional, and he enjoyed the confused clash of emotions that sparked briefly in Yusupov’s eyes. He picked up a honey cake and a blini and ate them, savoring the taste. Surprisingly, they were too sweet and dry. “Some Madeira, if you please,” he told the prince.

  Yusupov himself went to the sideboard and poured the wine, with exquisite care, into a glass.

  The first glass went down quickly but barely moved the dry taste out of Rasputin’s mouth. Forgetting that he didn’t want to appear greedy, he held out the glass for a refill.

  Eagerly, the prince filled it for him.

  “And the princess?” Rasputin said, after downing the second glass. His mouth was still dry, but he forswore another glass. He wanted to remember this evening in every crisp detail.

  “Here shortly. She had to see off her own guests and then change costume,” Yusupov said. “Women!” His voice sounded like a small dog’s bark.

  “Ah, women,” replied the monk. “God bless them. My mother used to say, ‘A wife is not a pot, she will not break so easily.’ Ha ha. But I would rather say, ‘Every seed knows its time.’”

  Yusupov started. “What do you mean by that? What do you mean?” He was sweating again.

  Rasputin felt a sudden camaraderie with the poor man. Prince or pauper, young man or old, women make fools of us all. He put his hand out and clapped Yusupov on the shoulder. “Just that women, God bless them, are like little seeds and know their own time, even though we poor fellows do not.” Then he passed a hand across his forehead, and it came away sweaty. “Is it very hot in here?”

  “Yes, very,” said Yusupov, using a handkerchief to wipe his own forehead.

  “Well, sing to me then to pass the time ’til your wife gets here,” the monk said, pondering another drink. Just to fend off this awful heat. He pointed to the guitar that rested against the wall. “I heard you often singing in those far-off days when we went into the dark sides of the city. I would hear you again. For old times’ sake.” The camaraderie faded as quickly as it had come, and he leered at the prince. “And for the sake of your lovely wife, Irina.”

  Yusupov nodded, gulped, nodded again. Then he went over and picked up the guitar. Strumming, he began to sing.

  I could not believe my ears. The prince had actually begun singing, slightly off-key.

  I moved back and peeked carefully through the window. Rasputin was still on his feet, though there seemed to be cakes missing from the table. An empty glass stood on the table as well. And Yusupov, that damned upper-class clown, was strumming his guitar and singing lustily. Had he gone faint with worry? It certainly did not sound so. Had he decided not to kill his old friend after all? I ground my teeth. It was hard to tell.

  I turned away from the sight, raced up the servants’ stairs, and found Dr. Purishkevich and Grand Duke Dmitri at the top of the stairs that led down to the cellar.

  “For the Lord’s sake, what is going on?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper. “To my certain knowledge, the monk has eaten several cakes. And had a glass of wine.”

  “Two at least,” said Dr. Lazovert, joining us on the stairs. “We heard him ask for a refill. He is. . . .” he whispered as well, “not a man at all, but the very devil. There was enough poison to fell an entire unit of Cossacks. I know, I put the stuff in it myself.” He looked wretched and stank of fear-sweat and rough liquor.

  “Pull yourself together,” I began, but it was too late. The doctor’s eyes had rolled back, and he sank into a stupor.

  Purishkevich caught him before he tumbled down the stairs and broke his fool neck. I took his hands to try to revive him.

  The grand duke just looked disgusted. At me. “The plan was yours. So what next?”

  I finally took it upon myself to slap the doctor’s face hard enough that my own hand hurt from the blow. It was more frustration than medicinal, and either way, it did nothing to revive him.

  All the while we whispered together, Yusupov’s thready voice singing tune after tune made its way up the stairs.

  “Should we go down?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “No, no, no,” Purishkevich whispered vehemently, “that will give the game away.”

  “But surely he is already suspicious.”

  “He is a peasant,” said the grand duke, which explained nothing.

  I was suddenly a-tremble. After all we had planned—I had planned—for it to come to this? This is the worst possible outcome. Oh, had I but known.

  Suddenly the door to the cellar opened, and we conspirators all backed up. I have to admit, I was the fastest. But it was just poor Yusupov, saying over his shoulder, “Have another cake, Father. I will see what is keeping my wife.”

  And Rasputin’s voice, somewhat hoarsened, called up to him, “Love and eggs are best when they are fresh!”

  “A peasant,” the grand duke repeated, as Yusupov came up to find us.

  If the doctor had been trembling, the prince was a leaf on a tree, all aflutter and sweating. “What should I do? What can I do?”

  “He cannot be allowed to leave half-dead,” Purishkevich said.

  The grand duke handed Yusupov a pistol. “Be a man.”

  At that, Yusupov bent over like an old man from the weight of what he had to do, then went back down the stairs, holding the pistol behind him.

  We heard Rasputin call out, “For the Lord’s sake, give me more wine.” And then he added, “With God in thought, but mankind in the flesh.”

  A moment later we heard a shot. Though I’d expected it, I still jumped in shock. Then a scream. I didn’t think it was Rasputin. Dr. Lazovert sat bolt upright, though I had no idea why a slap and a gunshot couldn’t wake him but a scream did.

  “Come,” said the grand duke, “that will have done it.”

  Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure, but in this company, it was not my place to say.

  Two of them ran down the stairs one right after another, the grand duke first, and the quickly recovered Dr. Lazovert second. Purishkevich stayed behind. And I, trailing a bit later, because I was not actually supposed to be there, came last.

  Rasputin had fallen backward onto the white bearskin rug, his eyes closed. There was blood. Much blood.

  I felt faint. “Definitely faint,” I heard myself saying.

  Dr. Lazovert knelt by Rasputin’s side, felt for his pulse. He did not seem moved by the blood. In fact, the sight of it seemed to recover him even more.

  Perhaps in his profession he is more at ease with blood than poison.

  He looked up at us, saying phlegmatically, “He is dead.”

  But, as it turned out, that was premature. I began to wonder about the doctor’s qualifications, for not a mom
ent later, Rasputin’s left eye, then his right, opened, and he stared straight at Yusupov with those green eyes that reminded me of dragon eyes. Eyes that were suddenly filled with hate.

  The doctor fell back on his rather large behind.

  I found myself saying, “I gather that a man arising from sure death is no ordinary occurrence for a doctor.” Nobody paid me any attention.

  Yusupov screamed. Not like a man, but like some kind of monkey. It had definitely been he who’d screamed earlier, and not Rasputin. Then he began to gibber. Any second, I thought, he will climb the curtains and be away. And I will be right after him.

  But in fact I could not move at all. It was as if we were all in some sort of horrific fairy tale and had been turned to stone. Neither could poor Yusupov move, though at least he’d stopped screaming.

  The grand duke was cursing under his breath. And I thought we were about to lose Dr. Lazovert again, who had struggled to his feet but was looking mighty wobbly, like a man standing in a very high wind.

  “Long whiskers cannot take the place of brains,” said Rasputin, foam bubbling from his mouth as he spoke. He leaped up, grabbed poor Yusupov by the throat with one hand, and tore an epaulet from the prince’s jacket with the other. But Yusupov was sweating so badly, the monk’s hand slipped from his throat, and the prince broke away from him, which threw Rasputin down on his knees.

  That gave Yusupov time to escape, and he turned and raced up the stairs. He was screaming out to Purishkavich to fire his gun, shouting, “He’s alive! Alive!” His voice was inhuman, a terrified scream, more like a strangled cat than a man.

  The three of us left in the room watched, frozen with horror and amazement, as Rasputin, down on all fours, foaming and fulminating, climbed the stairs after him.

  Prince Yusupov made it to his parents’ apartments and locked the door after him, but the mad monk, maddened further by all that had happened to him, went straight out the front door into the frigid night. He no longer had on a coat, and we could only hope he would die soon of both frost and the poisoned drink. Not to mention the gunshot.

  The others, equally underdressed for the weather, followed him to see what he would do, Dr. Lazovert muttering all the while that Rasputin was a devil and would probably sprout bat wings and fly away.

  But the mad monk neither opened bat wings nor flew. Instead, he careened across the snow-covered courtyard toward the iron gate that led to the street, shouting all the while, “Felix, Felix, I will tell everything to the empress.”

  At last, Purishkevich raised his gun and fired.

  The night seemed one long, dark echo. But he had obviously missed because Rasputin was still standing.

  “Fire again!” I cried. “If he gets away and tells his story to the tsar, we are all dead men.” Though we had been making so much noise in public now, we were probably dead men anyway.

  Purishkevich fired again and, unbelievably, missed once more.

  “Fool!” the grand duke said as Purishkevich bit his own left hand to force himself to concentrate.

  That there were only a few streetlights made things even more difficult. But as if he were out hunting deer, Purishkevich carefully sighted down the barrel on the running figure. Amazingly, when he fired a third time—his most difficult shot of the evening—it seemed to strike Rasputin between the shoulders. He shuddered, stopped, but did not fall.

  “A devil, I tell you,” cried the doctor. I could hear his teeth chattering with the cold. Or just with fear. Or both.

  “I am surrounded by fools,” the grand duke said, and I was inclined to agree with him.

  Then Purishkevich shot one last time, and this one hit Rasputin in the head for certain, and he fell to his knees. Purishkevich ran over to him and kicked him hard, a boot to the temple. And with that, the monk finally fell down on his back in the snow.

  Suddenly, Yusupov appeared holding a rubber club and began hitting Rasputin hysterically over and over and over again.

  The grand duke took hold of the prince’s shoulders and led him away. And not unkindly, for someone who had decried him as a fool mere moments ago.

  Only then did I take out the knife that was in my shirt and, unsheathing it, walked over to the body and plunged the blade deep into Rasputin’s heart. It went into his body so smoothly, I could not believe the ease of it.

  I wanted to say something profound, anything—but there was nothing more to say. This time, the mad monk’s eyes stayed closed, and he did not arise again.

  A servant from the princess’s apartment came out a little later with a rope, and they pulled the body over to the frozen Neva and left it there.

  “Should we find a hole and push him in?” I asked, eager to be rid of the evidence.

  “Let the world see him,” the grand duke said. “Dead is dead.”

  I looked at the mad monk splayed out on the ice and wondered at that. By my count, Rasputin should have died five times that night before the knife decided the end. But despite my earlier worry about the monk’s death being called into question, all I felt then was relief.

  “Dead is dead.” I agreed and left the body lying there on the river ice.

  When I got home, I soaked for an hour in the tub but could not scrub away the feel of my hand touching Rasputin’s back, when the knife went deep into his body, as if through fresh butter.

  “It is ended,” I told my image in the mirror.

  But really, it had only begun.

  At the Mariinsky Theatre, the tsarina came on stage looking as if she had no idea what was about to happen, but in fact she did. Knowing how much she hated surprises, and how she needed to be prepared, the tsar had told her three days ahead of time about the ceremony. But the rest of the family was not in on the surprise.

  The audience was full of noble families. The English and German delegations were there as well. Everyone applauded dutifully—and some even with great excitement—when the tsar made the announcement.

  The tsarina put her hand to her breast and looked marvelously surprised, because she had not known her husband was going to make a speech and detail all of the things she had done to earn this medal of honor. And when she stood and made her careful way up the stairs and across the boards towards him, her left hand still rested there on her breast. She looked, one of her friends would tell her later, like a doe crossing the ice, with careful competence and always on alert for possible danger.

  Standing by the podium, holding a large bouquet of flowers, the medal on its ribbon around her neck, she was extremely pleased and still a bit surprised.

  Nicholas had spoken about the work she had done to improve conditions for the poorer classes since first coming to Russia as a bride; how she had founded schools and hospitals, never hesitating even when difficult regulations and unbending bureaucrats had tried to stop her. She hadn’t known that he had known, which made things all the sweeter and the award—even though she had been warned three days earlier—very surprising. But as her grandmother Victoria probably would have said, “We do it for the glory of God, not the glory of ourselves.”

  Alexandra raised her arms wide, the flowers in her right hand. She had practiced a speech for three days before the mirror, but in that instant, forgot every word of it. All that came out was: “I love you. I love you, all the Russians. And I thank you for the love that comes back to me as well.”

  Then there were roars of approval and great cheers. And she thought as she nodded to the audience, who were now on their feet, applauding and calling out her name, “I will remember this moment for the rest of my life.”

  She turned and mouthed to her husband who was applauding as well, “The rest of my life.”

  The mad monk lay on the ice. His chest hurt abominably where the knife had plunged in. He couldn’t move.

  “I curse you,” he muttered, or tried to. His lips were frozen shut, and anyway, he wasn’t sure whom he should be cursing, not knowing who had set the blade deep in his chest. Instead, he cursed his old drinking compan
ion, his betrayer.

  Felix, may your world crumble.

  A dead man’s curse is a powerful thing, and he knew that the Lord listened at that moment.

  May every living thing you touch wither and die.

  He could feel his curse take hold and bend the very fabric of the world.

  And may you lose everything you hold dear.

  The cursing done, he continued to take stock of his wounds.

  His shoulder and the back of his head hurt, too, though not as badly as the hole in his heart. Oddly enough, his stomach and throat were burning as well. He wondered if the cakes—how many had he eaten?—had disagreed with him. Trust the courtiers to make stale and rotten cakes. His own mother could have done better.

  And though he judged several of the wounds mortal, they did not worry him. He was wearing his charm, so men couldn’t kill him. Nor women, it turned out. The whore who long ago had slit him from stem to sternum had learned that. He would survive the wounds.

  But the cold?

  The Russian cold was not just death for a man. It was death for armies. For nations.

  But it is not death for God, nor his chosen messenger!

  He was cold, he decided, but he had been colder. The Lord knew how cold a moujik from Siberia could get without succumbing. And though these thoughts cheered him, they didn’t change the fact that he could not move. Moving warmed the blood. Moving warmed the soul. There was no life without movement. And it wasn’t just for himself that he worried.

  How long ’til the full moon? he thought. How long ’til that fool Lenin arrives and lets the dragons out of their holes?

  Dragons, when caught in their lairs, can be drowned, starved out, slaughtered by massed rifle fire—in fact, killed in any number of ways. It was why the tsar’s dragons’ stables were better guarded than his own home. In the skies, they were unstoppable: swift fire from on high and death to all who stood against them, like Jews and revolutionaries. But not now.

  The fools haven’t killed me. But if I don’t recover before the moon is full, they will have killed Russia.