by Kim Wright
Good God, but he was bad at this. The woman hesitated, as if wondering how long she should punish him for his small social slip, but quickly relented. They had not yet received the first course of what would likely be a laboriously long dinner; she seemed to decide that there was no need to alienate her traveling companion so quickly in the journey, for her pout gave way to a smile and she leaned forward to whisper in his ear. With this gesture, the egg-shaped ruby wedged between her ample cleavage all but threatened to roll out onto the table and Trevor tried not to gape. He had been taught to staunchly ignore this part of a woman’s anatomy, no matter how temptingly it might be presented, but it seemed this was but yet another way in which they did things differently in Russia. Given the calculating manner in which his partner’s breasts were arranged, he feared it might be ruder to ignore them, rather like refusing to salute a flag.
She whispered several names in his ear that meant nothing, twisting and pointing at various tables as she did so. Trevor noted that all of the women she indicated as beauties had a similar round-faced large-eyed appearance, making them seem a succession of rather vapid dolls. The Romanov court apparently appreciated a most specific type of feminine beauty. But with the last name, Tatiana Orlov, she directed his gaze toward yet another small, blonde woman and this time Trevor was given pause. On one level, Tatiana was much like the others. On another level, she was extraordinary, with dimples and heavily-lashed eyes and cheeks which glowed without benefit of rouge. She was what the others wish to look like, Trevor thought. She is the prototype they aspire to, the way jewelers cut glass in a doomed attempt to emulate diamonds.
“You like her?” his companion asked sharply.
He had evidently given himself away, so there was no need to lie.
“She is beautiful.”
The woman shrugged, and her ruby rose and fell. “Her birth was common.”
As was mine, Trevor thought, raising a glass of champagne to his lips and smiling apologetically at his companion. At times like this he often pondered what throws of chance had brought him to these grand and foreign places, so far from the simple village of his youth. Back then he had often announced to his schoolfellows that when he was a man he would go to the city, and they had all jeered at his boast. By “the city,” he had of course meant London. A portrait of the much-younger Victoria had hung on the wall of his schoolhouse, a map of England beside her, and this was as far as Trevor’s mind could expand. If anyone had suggested he would someday find himself in France or Russia, serving Her Majesty on missions of intrigue, he would not have deemed such a thing possible. The life of the man had exceeded the dreams of the boy, a state of being which may sound marvelous, but which actually had left him adrift, unsure of what to hope for next. He wondered if Tatiana Orlov, raised from her own humble past to become one of the acknowledged beauties of the Romanov court, ever felt the same way.
The first course, thank heaven, was finally being served. Not by the Cossacks, whom Trevor thought might double as footmen, but instead by a host of servants in full livery. They swarmed the tables with serving dishes while the Cossacks remained farther back, lining the walls, where evidently they would remain for untold hours at military attention. As the tureens of soup were circulated around the table, Trevor’s dining companion drained her champagne glass and then – or could he have imagined this? – winked at him.
From there, the procession of dishes was rapid enough to confuse a scholar and the wines were potent and plentiful enough to knock a gourmand to the floor. At one point, an entire fawn, his legs curled beneath him, his eyes bright and trusting, was carried in on a great silver platter and deposited on the head table between the Tsar and the Queen. This grand entrance was meant to signal the arrival of the venison course - the seventh or perhaps the eighth, for it was impossible to keep count in the face of such an onslaught. The one thing that Trevor did note was that the manners of the imperial family and their guests were growing steadily more appalling as the dinner progressed. The men drank at a pace which could only be described as businesslike, and talked far too loudly, sometimes shouting over the ladies seated between them. Down the table, the young Grand Duchess Xenia had done nothing but complain that the Tchaikovsky ball had delayed their normal summer progress to the shore and the pleasures which awaited her there. Trevor had no doubt that she would not have tempered her displeasure with this inconvenience even if she had been seated beside the composer himself. His own dining companion had just sucked a clam from its shell with all the finesse of an East End whore and now sat gazing at him in the manner of one who has seen the worst of the world and fervently hopes to see it soon again.
“Our ultimate aim, of course, is to unite the two shores of our land,” the young Nicholas was saying, with such palpable enthusiasm that it rang out to all within earshot. Trevor, with yet one more smile of apology at his dinner mate, had to incline his head and strain to hear him. With his entire table in respectful attendance, Nicholas went on to extol the virtues of the half-completed Trans-Siberian Railway. To hear the young tsesarevich speak, you would think that no previous nation had ever struck upon the idea of building a single continuous track from one end of their country to the other, cutting across deserts, rivers, mountains, prairies, and whatever else it found along the way. Trevor suspected the project was in fact a mimic of the famous railways of the American west and wondered if the Trans-Siberian system, upon its conclusion, would have a similar impact. It seemed that if Russia had truly found a way to create reliable transport from the European-influenced St. Petersburg all the way to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, taking in Moscow, Siberia, and Mongolia along the way, then Russia would be…
Unstoppable.
The word struck Trevor like a thud to the chest. As it now stood, Russia’s massive size could be deemed as much a disadvantage as an advantage, rendering the country difficult to govern with borders far too expansive to defend. But what would happen if the country did find a means of marshalling its staggering wealth of resources? If so, they truly would become another America – so vast and rich that no nation in Europe could begin to match their collective power. Trevor was not sure the civilized world could handle a second America. It had barely survived the first one.
“And I shall tell them so the next time the committee meets…” Nicholas was saying. He trailed off at this point, betraying himself by glancing nervously in the direction of his father. It was evident that Nicholas had not yet found a seat on this much-acclaimed Trans-Siberian committee, and was thus not yet in a position to tell anyone anything. But it was just as evident that he fervently wished to be. The boy has a desire to matter, Trevor thought. If not on this committee, then on some other. He needs something to give him a voice, a role, and a man’s place at the table of power. Alix had abandoned any pretense of conversation with the gentleman seated on her other side and was facing Nicky, smiling and nodding to indicate she was listening to his every word.
But, unfortunately for the tsesarevich, so was his father.
“Committee?” the tsar boomed. His voice was low and deep, pitched to the timbre of a cannon and it had the unlucky effect of halting conversation all around him so that his words to his son thundered down from the elevated table to those on the floor. At least a third of the room had ceased conversation, making Trevor wonder how on earth the tsar had been able to hear Nicky’s words in the din. But perhaps the acoustics of the banquet hall, like those of the theater, were contrived to benefit people seated in certain locations.
“You are not ready for the Trans-Siberian committee,” Alexander called out to his son, in the grand and empty silence. “I shall have a set of toy trains sent to your room instead.”
And then he boomed with laughter, the sound crueler than his words, and Trevor dropped his gaze back down to his plate, fairly certain everyone in earshot was doing the same thing. No matter what their nationality or politics, Trevor suspected they were all discomforted to see a young man so utterly humil
iated in the presence of the woman he loved.
Voices slowly entered back into the void and conversation resumed. Trevor gulped from his glass and stole a sideways look to the table where Nicholas was sitting – silent, but with an odd look of forbearance on his face. Emma was right, Trevor thought. He has not been trained in politics at all, not even the politics of the dinner table, or else he would not have risked such a childish brag within earshot of his father. Nicholas had deep dark eyes and a kind and gentle expression. He has the innocent look of a faun, Trevor thought, and we can all see what happens to fauns around here.
“I am ready for a grand ball,” said Xenia. “A silly little dinner like this is a dreadful bore, but a ball…”
And here she drifted off, seemingly unaware of how her words might sound to the British guests, articulating what had previously only been hinted: that the arrival of Victoria, Alix, and their coterie was an occasion worth only a bit more fuss at a silly little dinner which had already been planned. The possibility that the Queen of England might be forced to offer Russia yet another granddaughter was certainly not an event worthy of a grand ball.
“The Tchaikovsky is coming up soon enough,” the man beside her said to Xenia, with a wearied air. He had evidently had a long night.
“Good, for I am bored,” she said. “I don’t like the Winter Palace in the summer.” She chattered on about the glories of the Palace in cold weather- grand balls for Christmas, sledding on the hills or ice skating on the Neva- and Trevor reflected that the Romanov family, like most of the royal houses of Europe, were hardly a bevy of intellectuals. They liked to talk about the events of their days, but their days never varied. They liked to talk about their relatives, but their relatives were all alike. Irony was lost on the majority of them, as was humor, unless you counted vulgar jokes. Belches and farts and the like and they did not like to debate ideas, for to enter into a debate was to concede that there might be more than one rational way to look at a matter, and this was something that royals as a species were loath to accept. As Xenia prattled on to her captive audience about toboggans and snowmen, Trevor let his gaze once again move to Alix and Nicky.
“Religion,” Alix was saying, “is not a ring that one can slip on and off.”
Oh dear, thought Trevor. She sounds so serious, so pious, so much the exception to the rule I have just established. The next thing we know she will be lecturing everyone on the meaning of Paradise Lost. She already has the wrong clothes and she furthermore distinguishes herself as an intellectual, her position at court is fully doomed. Bloody slabs of venison were being deposited on each plate along the table.
“Of course not,” Nicholas was responding. “I quite agree. I agree with…I agree, of course, with everything you say.”
They could be such a nice young couple, Trevor thought. The boy a little timid, too eager to please, too desperate to be liked. The girl tense and solemn, pitched forward with the weight of her unaccustomed jewels. If they lived in another time and place, if they were not required to become Nicholas and Alexandria, and could remain just Alix and Nicky… He might make a great success somewhere as a greengrocer or a bookkeeper, perhaps a chemist. She would be a devoted mother, the sort who read to her children each night as they drifted to sleep. They’d be lovely people to have as neighbors, a family you smile and tip your hat to on a Sunday stroll.
They would be fine, Trevor thought, just fine if they were average people.
Trevor cut a bite of venison and raised it to his mouth. It was delicious, stunningly so, with the lusciousness of the flesh unchanged even when he looked into the tranquil brown eyes of the faun centerpiece on the high table. What were they all to make of this, of this great dinner with its dozens of hidden implications, not the least of which was that it was not truly so great? That the imperial family was welcoming them with a yawn and not a fanfare, and beyond the wine-dulled drone of conversation swirling over the tables Trevor’s eyes moved to the double doors opening into the portico and the glow beyond. It was late, or perhaps early, but what difference could it make? No matter what the hour or what the day, the sky remained the same. The sun visible for twenty hours on this particular date on the calendar. Sunset fading to a milky shade of pearl which would last until morning and then, when one looked to the east, you would see the true miracle of the summer solstice: That before the light of the old order had fully departed, a new day had already dawned.
Chapter Sixteen
The Winter Palace – The Imperial Gardens
June 22, 1889
2:20 PM
“I trust you did not find my invitation for you to join me in my daily stroll untoward,” Ella said. “But I wished to speak to you privately.”
“Of course,” Tom said, as if a summons to an imperial suite was an everyday event. This was the second time in three days that a woman had insisted that they should meet alone and he could only hope this time did not end as badly as the last.
“Is my grandmother well? I have never known her to travel with a doctor.”
“It’s a precaution only, I assure you,” Tom said, offering Ella his arm as they strolled through the small enclosed garden behind her apartments. She ignored it.
“I’m sure the solstice dinner was distressing to her.”
“It was an interesting evening for everyone present.”
“She has no intention of allowing Alix to marry Nicky, does she?”
“I assure you that I am not privy to Her Majesty’s private thoughts.”
Ella looked at him out of the corner of her eye. She truly is lovely, Tom thought, suddenly seeing how Ella might have once been proclaimed the most desirable princess in Europe. She’s a bit of a tyrant and a bit of a prig, but God knows they all are, and as princesses go, she does have a certain fire.
“What you mean is that you’re too ethical to reveal facts to which you are undoubtedly privy, which speaks well of you as a private physician. Tell me, Tom, is there some sort of doctor-patient confidentiality, just as that which exists between a person and his solicitor?”
She was good. The use of his given name, tossed in so casually, and the belated decision to take his arm, to turn her profile only slightly more toward him. Ella was a woman who had been frequently photographed and painted throughout her life and she knew her best perspective was this one, neither fully facing the man nor fully in profile, but somewhere in between. Yes, just like this, with her remarkable eyes regarding him from the side. She was trying to charm him and despite the fact Tom recognized her tricks – despite the fact he himself had used similar ones on countless occasions – he was not immune to her machinations.
He smiled. “I would consider it an honor to serve you just as I serve your grandmother.”
“And does my grandmother have to know that you are to be…in service to me as well?”
“Of course not,” he said, with more certainty than he felt. Where the devil was this all heading? She had paused before a rosebush, and therefore he had paused with her, both of them considering the blossoms before them, the heady smell of the flowers hovering in the heat.
“What experience do you have in the practice of obstetrics?”
The question startled him. It was the last thing he had expected her to say.
“There is to be a baby?”
“Not mine. I wish you to attend a friend.”
“Where is this friend?”
“In her room. Packing.”
“So your friend is going somewhere?” It was a nonsensical question, but the best he could muster under the circumstances.
“She will be traveling to the coast. Or at least she will be, with your help. And I intend to go with her.”
“This conversation is very obscure, Your Imperial Highness.”
“Only by necessity. Follow me.”
And so he did. Into the building and down the halls, the damn halls. The never ending halls. Later, in the storm-tossed nights which followed excessive drinking, Tom would sometimes
dream of a hell which was very much like the Winter Palace – an eternal succession of hallways, doubling back upon themselves, collectively leading nowhere. Tom and Ella walked through them, their feet sometimes silent on the islands of carpet and then tapping quietly against the wooden floors until Ella at last paused in front of a rather ordinary door in a rather ordinary section of the residential wing of the palace. Tom casually tilted his head and tried to take in the sort of details he knew Trevor and the others would expect to hear upon his return. Judging by the moderate spacing of the doors, as well as the pedestrian quality of the artwork on the walls, he could only conclude that they were in some sort of middle tier of the palace. Not as grand as the imperial wings, nor as dreary as the working staff’s rooms, but somewhere in between.
Ella rapped once and then turned the knob. The door swung open. Evidently they were expected.
Tom followed Ella through a sitting room and into a bedroom where a woman was indeed packing. One chest stood open on the floor, another was already locked and strapped on the bed, and her arms were full of dresses destined for a third.
“My friend, Tatiana Orlov,” Ella said. “And this is Dr. Thomas – do you have a last name, doctor?”
“Bainbridge,” Tom said. Tatiana flushed.
She had recognized him, just as he recognized her. She was the same petite blonde woman he and Emma had found in the theater dressing rooms scurrying away from the arms of Konstantin Antonovich to hide herself under a pile of costumes.
“Tatiana is going to have a child,” Ella said.
“This is true?” Tom asked Tatiana, without caring if the question insulted Ella. The woman before him was so small, so impossibly slender beneath her laced corset, that it scarcely seemed possible she was pregnant. She could not have been more than two or three months along and women were often still uncertain in that stage of gestation.
