by Kim Wright
“But where does he go?” Cynthia asked the maid. She was named Alina, and her darting, gleaming eyes indicated that she was the sort who would always take joy in recounting the troubles of others.
“To the gentlemen’s enclave,” Alina said.
Well, that didn’t sound so bad. Cynthia had heard that the imperial men had an entire wing set aside for their private use, where they played billiards and cards and displayed their gap-mouthed trophies of sport - including, it was rumored, a stuffed bear posed for eternity in the most vulgar of all possible postures. Guns on the walls, brandy in the glasses, pipe tobacco in the air. Cynthia’s British heart had not disapproved of such an arrangement, even though it was mysterious that Serge would leave his pretty young wife for so many nights merely to indulge in these gunmetal-and-leather sort of masculine pleasures.
“It is a long series of rooms,” Alina said, then added, “with halls which lead on one side to an exit through the stables, and on the other side to a dock. They have their own bathhouse there and a steamroom and sauna. Where the gentlemen sweat out their poisons and beat each other with rushes.”
“Two exits, do you say?” Cynthia inquired, her ears perking up at the most relevant part of the description. This was scarcely good news for the wives. “So the men can travel unseen by either boat or horse to visit their mistresses, I presume? Or are the pleasure women brought into the palace instead?”
Alina laughed, blowing out a great puff of smoke.
“The pleasure women,” she said. “I’ve never heard them called anything quite like that. If they’re the pleasure women, I wonder what that means for the rest of us.”
Cynthia waited for more, but it was not forthcoming.
There was a great deal of speculation within the palace as to why after four years of marriage, Ella and Serge had yet to produce an heir. She was of the perfect age and constitution. He was older, past forty but still a fit figure of a man, capable of riding and shooting with the best of them, or so it was said. Therefore, wagged the tongues, where was the baby?
If there was to be one, the servants would have known before the royals. The maids were aware of which bedsheets had dried smears on them in the mornings and which did not, and they certainly knew which ladies produced monthly pads for disposal and which did not, and thus could generally predict the impending arrival of heirs long before their fathers were privy to the happy news. In fact, there was protocol around even this aspect of imperial life. The cloth pads were placed in a special container once they were bloodied, then carried away not to be washed and returned but burned, since palace etiquette dictated they were never to be used again. The other discarded items from the Romanov women – the dresses and gloves and shoes and even their lingerie - were passed on to their personal maids, but not these. The Russians were too superstitious about blood, especially aristocratic blood, no matter how it had been rendered. The pads collected from the elite apartments were merely burned, but those from the chambers occupied by the family were furthermore burned by a priest, in a ceremony not unlike that of a funeral, a ritual of mourning for a child who was not to be. Cynthia was too accustomed to Anglican logic to accept the folkloric roots of Russian Orthodoxy or to understand how these people who looked so elegant on the surface could indulge in such primitive rites without batting an eye. She could only speculate on the thoughts of the low-ranking cleric assigned to this thankless task, who was required to solemnly pray for the souls of even nonexistent Romanovs.
“The Grand Duchess Ella remains incorrupt,” Alina said, leaning back against a stone wall and exhaling another great puff of smoke.
“Incorrupt?” Cynthia asked in some confusion. Her Russian was adequate but there were still times when she was unsure she had full understanding, and this was a word she had only heard in connection to the church. The body of Christ had never decomposed, and thus was incorrupt, but a human? And then, with a sick thud to the chest, it occurred to her what Alina was truly saying. “You mean that she is still a virgin?”
The woman nodded.
“You’re quite sure?”
“We see him come, and we see quickly him go,” Alina said, with a shrug so exaggerated that it bordered on being French. “On their wedding night and each one after, without fail. He goes to the men’s enclave, just as I said.” And it was this time, the pointed way she said “men’s,” that Cynthia fully grasped her meaning, and her horror grew.
“If this is true, then why would he marry her?”
“Men such as him need a wife.” Alina gave a wicked grin. “More than the other kind, wouldn’t you say?”
“But he was in the army,” Cynthia said, aware that such a remark was foolish but still struggling to understand. “A military man during his youth.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Ah, yes. The army.”
Cynthia sat back too, the stone wall behind her striking her shoulder blades, knocking the breath from her lungs. “How many people know this?”
Alina paused to consider. “A dozen servants, but we don’t add to the count. Within the imperial family, perhaps only the two of them can say for sure, but many more suspect. And the more time passes without a child, the worse it shall look.”
“The worse it shall look for him, you mean,” Cynthia said.
“It is hard to say who they might blame.”
And in that remark, so benign on the surface but with so much implied, Cynthia at last saw the full of Ella’s situation. It was quite clear which of the two was dispensable. Not the brother of the tsar, but a princess from a minor German principality. If the marriage were to fail, all blame would fall to the blameless Ella. The real question was whether or not Cynthia should share this tale with the Queen. She had been sent to collect a very specific type of information, only relevant to whether or not Ella was in danger. Would an unconsummated imperial marriage count as danger? How long would the dynastically-obsessed Romanovs continue to tolerate a barren bride?
Alina ground out her cigarette on the sole of her shoe and then tossed the stubby remains over her shoulder, into a nearby rose bush. They had dallied for some time already and should return. Ella loved her naps but no woman, not even a royal one, could sleep forever.
Cynthia wanted to ask Alina why she thought Ella would stay in this sham of a marriage. Ella who’d had so many options, who had been courted by so many men, who could run home to her grandmother at any time. But perhaps that was the very reason she stayed. How humiliating would it be to return from her marriage childless, rejected, a virgin? After she had defied Victoria, refused so many suitable suitors to marry this man, to cross this great distance, to insist upon this cold and empty bed over every other one in Europe?
She will never admit her mistake, Cynthia thought. She would rather live out her life without love than without dignity. This information went a great way toward explaining the woman’s personality – the cool reserve with everyone around her, punctuated only by her inexplicable fondness for that dancing master, the handsome one with the dark ponytail and the Asian slant to his eyes. The excessive gaiety expressed in her letters back to London. Why she did not flirt at the balls and grand dinners but sat instead with the sort of vague, far-away stare that one generally only sees on the face of saints in church paintings.
Cynthia tossed her own cigarette and the two women stood. Alina was still smiling, proud of the potency of her gossip and the effect it had had on the obviously shaken Cynthia. News of this weight was worth another pot of jam at least, for this was surely the most interesting story being swapped in all the back rooms and courtyards of all the elite chambers in the Winter Palace that day.
But she was wrong. For down another hall and in another courtyard, this one smaller and less carefully tended, two more maids had also brought their heads together. One of them was whispering to the other that it had now been nine weeks since she had last burned the pads of Tatiana Orlov.
The Streets of St. Petersburg
3:14 PM
Vlad endured the hypocrisy for as long as he could – the speeches from the men, the weeping of the women, Yulian’s poor, bewildered mother reminding him so much of his own – before he escaped outside. It was a mockingly beautiful day and he found himself walking down by the river. He took pains to turn before he got to the expanse of the Neva which led to the Winter Palace. He could not bear seeing it on this particular afternoon.
He walked until his legs ached, his feet stumbling a bit in the marshy land by the river. The effort of pulling his boot from the mud with each step quickly exhausted him and finally he climbed higher on the bank, where he could sit looking up at the billowy clouds.
A formation of geese flew overhead and their presence excited a cadre of men on the opposite riverbank, men whose presence Vlad had not noted until now. St. Petersburg fell from a bustling city back into a fetid marshland within the course of an hour’s walk and the Neva had always been a working river, drawing fishermen and hunters to its banks. Two men stood up from their huddled group and pointed their long guns toward the sky.
The geese flew in a perfect vee, their symmetry so precise as to be militaristic. There is always a plan, Vlad thought. Even birds have one. The silence here on the banks of the river was almost deafening. He was aware of the pounding of his heart, and - even greater weakness – the sadness that lay there as well.
A shot rang out, and then another. One of the bullets must have found its mark because the lead goose in the vee dropped from the sky, spiraling down as gracefully as a ballerina before hitting with a splash. A shrill blast of a whistle goaded a pack of dogs into motion, and they galloped into the water, the alpha male paddling to the center of the river to retrieve the goose. The racket they made was appalling but Vlad’s attention remained heavenward, where, within the formation, another goose had moved forward to take the place of his fallen leader. The geese flew on, their symmetry slightly less perfect, but their pattern essentially undisturbed.
Such is nature, Vlad thought. One life barely gone before another replaces it. Order restored before the dog can even carry the body of the dead goose back to shore.
And so it was with the imperial family.
This has been our great mistake, Vlad thought, watching the geese move across the sky until they were nearly out of sight. We killed one tsar and another took his place, and if we kill this tsar his son will move forward, and the formation shall remain unchanged. The Romanovs shall simply fly on, far above us, until the end of time.
To kill one was not the answer.
You would have to kill them all.
Vlad knew such a plan would not be readily accepted by his comrades. Even Gregor, whose bile sometimes rose to match his own, focused his fury solely upon the tsar. It was easy to hate a tyrant who thundered out his edicts, who, with his barreled-chest and thick beard, fully looked like the bully that he was. Any man on the street would happily take a crack at such a beast. But to accept the necessity of dispatching of the whole family, including the blue-eyed children and the inconveniently pretty women, required an entirely different turn of mind.
Vlad knew that he could see the truth – this had been the curse of his life, his almost singular ability to see the truth – but he also knew that his comrades did not yet have the stomach for true revolution. They wanted to overthrow the imperial family, not obliterate them, and it would be years before they would grasp the necessity of his ultimate solution. Enough time for a different sort of man to rise to the helm of the revolution. Vlad’s thoughts stuttered back to the image of the girl with the red sash, joking with her brothers, and then leaping from the carriage before it had fully come to a halt. How old would she be? Twelve, perhaps thirteen?
The dogs paddled back to the far shore, the alpha dropping the goose at the feet of his master and earning a hearty pat. The others shook water and lay back down on the bank while the men resumed their position in the blind. One goose would not feed the families of five men.
But both the hunting and the fishing would have to wait for a while, because to the left a boat was coming into view. A large one, with both the flap of sails and the dull drone of an engine, boasting a deep navy hull and sparkling white fittings. It bore no flags, but the craft was too fine boned and graceful to have been designed for any practical purpose. A yacht, a pleasure ship of some sort, and across the bank the hunters all shifted to watch it pass. One of the fools even saluted, although there was no evidence of whom the vessel might carry or what purpose it might serve. Just as it passed Vlad, a figure appeared on the deck. A young woman with red hair, dressed entirely in white and then, emerging from behind her, a plump pigeon of a man, raising his hand to squint into the sunlight, a gesture the cheering hunters mistook for a return of their salute.
They don’t look like aristocrats, Vlad thought, but who could tell? Oppression, like the devil, had the ability to assume many forms.
Vlad lay back on the bank. More of the titled and wealthy seemed to come to St. Petersburg every day, with their tennis rackets and valises, their crates of champagne, well-starched servants, and small yapping dogs. These people thought differently from the members of Volya – they were frightened and pleased and motivated by different things. It was beginning to occur to Vlad that, at least for now, the energies of the revolution were perhaps better spent looking for ways to influence the tsar than for ways to replace him. Alexander was not a man to be shaken by petitions or riots or strikes. He would be controlled only by a different sort of means.
We must take something that he loves, thought Vlad. Something that not even he will find so easy to replace.
A kidnapping. A hostage from within the inner circle. The bear will not bend his ear toward his people even if we bring a thousand petitions, Vlad thought. But will he bend it if he knows we have the girl in the red sash?
The Royal Yacht – The Victoria and Albert
4:12 PM
“Do you waltz?” Trevor asked Emma.
“Why on earth would you ask that? I don’t hear a band.”
He chuckled. “I am asking on behalf of the Queen. We were just discussing Ella’s last letter in which she spoke of rehearsals for an imperial waltz, one featuring the ladies of the court and some of their attendants. Her Majesty had the very inspired suggestion that you and Alix might join in this presentation.”
Emma leaned against the ship railing. The sailors had said they were within minutes of St. Petersburg now and the yacht had been held back to a fraction of its power. Trunks and valises were beginning to be brought up on deck, stacked all around them. It still seemed unreal, perhaps because there were no clear signs that they were indeed approaching a city. Marshland stretched all around her, as far as the eye could see. Young green reeds poking up from blue water, pine trees clinging to small spits of land, the loud and hopeful birds trailing the yacht, screaming out as they dove and rose in the still air.
Emma wrinkled her nose. “It smells.”
“So it does.”
“All this stagnant water. It seems the entire city would be full of contagion.”
“You can mention your concerns to the tsar when you meet him.” Trevor leaned over the railing too, clasping his hands close together and bringing his shoulder to where it almost touched hers. “But in the meantime, I believe we were talking about the waltz.”
“I waltz well enough, I suppose, at least for a schoolteacher. But I don’t unders
tand what she’s asking.”
“There’s a grand ball scheduled in a just a few days. To mark the summer solstice and the return of the composer Tchaikovsky to his motherland after a triumphant tour of the continent. There will be performances of all sorts, including some sort of exhibition waltz featuring, just as I said, the imperial ladies and their attendants. Her Majesty believes it would be a simple matter to have you and Alix invited to join them.”
“But why should we do that? If Ella wrote her about rehearsals, presumably they’ve been going on for weeks, which suggests a rather elaborate presentation, does it not? And yet the princess and I are to arrive at the last minute and join the troupe?”
“Heavens, Emma you’re not thinking clearly at all. This isn’t about whether or not you’re the star of the show. If you join in the rehearsals, this will give you an excuse to be in the theater. To get to know the other dancers, and that is really what we will need.” Trevor looked down into the swirling water beneath them, the hosts of dragonflies hovering just above the surface. “If you’re afraid you will dance badly you can pretend to roll an ankle on the last day of rehearsal.”
‘”I never said I was afraid I’d dance badly.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
“It just seems rather implausible.”
“Well if we were to enumerate all the things about this journey that seem implausible I hardly think you waltzing would be at the top of the list.” Trevor darted his eyes to the side and noted the freckles on Emma’s nose, more visible in this light than they ever had been in London, and quite enchanting. “Look, dear, it’s Her Majesty’s suggestion and I think it’s rather a good one. Alix is quite keen to show her waltzing skills in front of Nicky and play at being a Romanov for a day. And it’s the best chance we have of getting someone backstage at the theater and within the circle of the dancers. They may know nothing of Yulian’s true background and they may know quite a lot.”
