by Ann Hood
“Mother,” he said to her, and that mesmerizing stare focused on the Empress, whose knees buckled slightly under its intensity.
Maisie couldn’t believe that this man could call the Empress Mother, that he spoke without being spoken to, that rather than bow or step back from her, he boldly walked right up to her.
“Gregory,” the Empress said in a shaky voice.
“Bring me to the boy,” he said, and strode into the palace, the royal family skittering after him.
In Alex’s dark bedroom, everyone stood around the bed, leaving room for the Holy Man to stand close to Alex. Candles flickered, sending shadows dancing across the faces of those gathered there.
The Holy Man spoke in low hypnotic tones, his large dirty hands resting on Alex’s forehead.
“In Pokrovskoe, on the Tura River, in western Siberia,” he intoned, “there is great freedom. It is there that I, burning with fever in my bed, a mere boy of twelve like you and your friends here, sat up and pointed a finger at the horse thief everyone was searching for.”
Felix blinked. How did this man know that they were twelve years old?
Gregory continued, telling stories of Siberia and nature and faith.
His voice seemed to soothe the people and even the room itself.
After a very long time, Alex Andropov opened his eyes.
Gregory locked his on Alex’s.
Felix found himself holding his breath.
Until, suddenly, the Holy Man turned to face the others.
“The boy will live,” he said simply.
At that, the Empress let out a sob of relief and took those dirty hands in her pure white ones, kissing each with gratitude.
“Do not let the doctors near him,” he said.
“Whatever you ask,” the Empress said.
The Holy Man smiled, revealing stained crooked teeth.
“I wonder, Mother,” he said, “if my favorite fish soup is waiting for me.”
“Of course, of course,” she said.
Again, the Holy Man walked ahead of the royal family. Again, they followed him.
But Maisie and Felix stayed behind with Alex.
“Are you all right?” Maisie asked dubiously.
Alex nodded weakly.
He said something, his voice hoarse and soft.
“What?” Felix said, leaning closer.
“Rasputin,” Alex whispered.
Chapter Eleven
A SURPRISE GUEST
That night by Alexander Andropov’s bedside, Rasputin showed them his healing powers. But Maisie and Felix didn’t really understand them until Alex got strong enough to come down to breakfast again several days later.
Outside the all-white dining room, the winter sky was still dark. A servant had parted the heavy blue-and-silver curtains so that the first rays of sunlight would come in. A porcelain stove made of vivid ornate tiles kept the room warm and cozy. Periodically, a footman walked through the room with a swinging pot of smoldering incense, leaving behind a trail of sandalwood smoke.
When the Tsar left to go into his office and the Grand Duchesses began their lessons, Alex, still pale and weak, said: “Rasputin healed me. If only I could tell Babushka.”
“I thought his name was Gregory,” Felix said.
Alex nodded. “Gregory Efimovich,” he said. “But when he was a young boy he was given this nickname of Rasputin.”
“What does it mean?” Maisie asked.
“Dissolute,” Alex said.
“Okay,” Maisie said, “and what does dissolute mean?”
Felix answered, “Doesn’t it describe someone who’s immoral?”
“Yes,” Alex told them. “People believe that it’s a sign of his humility that he kept such a name.”
“Is that why he doesn’t take a bath, too?” Maisie said, wrinkling her nose at the memory of Rasputin’s pungent body odor.
“He’s a mystic, a holy man,” Alex explained. “Taking a bath isn’t important to him.”
“Well,” Maisie said firmly, “it should be.”
“But why does he dress so fancy, then?” Felix wondered out loud.
“The Empress embroiders his shirts by hand,” Alex said. “Out of gratitude for saving Alexei’s life.”
“I think he saved your life, too,” Felix said softly.
“But how?” Maisie asked.
“He heals through prayer,” Alex said. “In 1907, Alexei had a terrible injury. The doctors tried everything, but ultimately announced that he was going to die. The Tsarina called Rasputin here, to the Alexander Palace, and he healed Alexei. Some people believe he does it through hypnosis. Others believe he is using drugs to save Alexei. But you saw what happened to me, didn’t you?”
Remembering Rasputin’s eyes holding her gaze, Maisie shuddered.
“I think he’s kind of creepy,” she said.
“I owe him my life,” Alex reminded her.
“But this is proof of what we talked about on the train,” Felix said. “When you’re back at home, you won’t need mud baths or painful iron contraptions or mystics. You’ll get a transfusion and you’ll get better.”
Alex’s eyes blazed.
“I’m not going home!” he said angrily.
Maisie said in a quiet voice, “Alex, we are in 1911 St. Petersburg. In seven years the entire royal family is going to be massacred. You have to leave. Now.”
“Aha!” Alex said. “I’ve thought of that. But since I know that the Tsar will abdicate in February of 1917, and the family will be placed under house arrest then, all I have to do is leave Russia before that happens.”
“But where will you go?” Maisie asked. “And what if you can’t leave?”
Alex shrugged. “I have a long time to work that all out,” he said.
The silvery light of morning came through the windows. The wood in the stove crackled.
A footman appeared with more incense, walking across the room and then around its periphery, swinging the gold pot.
As he left, another footman entered with a tall dark-haired woman.
“Madame Brissac,” the footman announced.
Madame Brissac smiled a toothy smile.
“You must be Maisie,” she said, her eyes examining Maisie coolly. “I’ve come from St. Petersburg to prepare all the ladies. The Empress has requested I make a gown for you as well, for the ball Friday night.”
“All right,” Maisie said.
“Stand,” Madame Brissac ordered, and Maisie stood.
Madame Brissac walked around Maisie several times, taking notes with a gold pen in a small leather-bound notebook. Periodically, she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, which Maisie took for some kind of disapproval.
Finally, Madame Brissac said, “Fine. I’ll call for you later today for a fitting.”
She frowned at Maisie.
“What a shame, though,” she said, shaking her head. “I can make you one of the most beautiful dresses in all of Russia, but I cannot do anything with that hair.”
With that, she walked out.
“I don’t even want her to make me a dress,” Maisie grumbled, insulted.
“A ball!” Felix said, imagining another dance with Anastasia. “I wonder what the occasion is this time.”
“Some special guest from America,” Alex said.
“I can’t wait until Friday,” Felix said dreamily, ignoring Maisie’s scowl.
“Meanwhile,” Alex said, “I need to find where you’ve hidden the egg.”
“You’ll never find it,” Felix said.
“Just watch me,” Alex said.
Indeed, over the next few days before the ball, Maisie and Felix spotted Alexander Andropov coming in and out of anterooms and drawing rooms, looking inside Chinese vases and porcelain bowls, peeking under tables and behin
d curtains. Despite his determination, they both knew the egg was safe with Jim Hercules.
Although Maisie did not like Madame Brissac, the white gown with silver threads that she created for Maisie was so beautiful that Maisie threw her arms around the unsuspecting woman.
“Please, please,” Madame Brissac sputtered as she disengaged from Maisie’s exuberant hug.
Madame Brissac smoothed her own dress and patted her hair.
“Now, you see,” she said, “I could not agree to make you a beautiful dress and then have you wear it with that unruly, unmanageable—”
Maisie’s cheeks burned red. “So you said,” she huffed.
“Yes, yes, well. I arranged for this to be sent from my couturier shop,” Madame Brissac said, pulling a small gold box from one of the many pockets in the apron she wore.
The apron was filled with a seemingly endless supply of pins and needles and threads of every color and tiny jeweled scissors and measuring tape.
Maisie took the box, suspicious.
“Well, open it,” Madame Brissac said, wearily.
Slowly, Maisie untied the gold ribbon and lifted the lid of the gold box.
Inside, a large barrette sparkled with hundreds of small diamonds.
Maisie gasped.
“So you will lift your hair like this,” Madame Brissac instructed, demonstrating in the air between them. “And twist it like so. And then clip it with this. And voilà! Your hair will complement my dress.”
“It’s so sparkly,” Maisie said.
“Yes,” Madame Brissac said, collecting her things.
She took off the apron and folded it into her giant bag.
“Thank you,” Maisie remembered to say as Madame Brissac walked out.
Maisie went to the triple mirror, still in her beautiful white-and-silver dress and white suede slippers.
“Lift like this,” Maisie said, lifting her tangle of curls.
“Twist like so,” she said, awkwardly twisting her hair as Madame Brissac had demonstrated.
“Clip with this,” she said, fastening the diamond clip in her hair.
“And voilà!” Maisie ended, her voice full of awe.
Because looking back at her from all three mirrors was a girl who was almost pretty.
To Maisie and Felix’s surprise, the ball was not going to be held at the Alexander Palace. Rather, the entire family was going to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, fifteen miles away.
Maisie knew that if she asked Felix to get the egg from Jim Hercules, he would refuse. He would argue that if they took it from its hiding place, they risked having Alexander Andropov find it and destroy it. Although that was true, Maisie also believed it was an excuse to stay even longer with Anastasia.
She and Felix had not discussed it, but Maisie also believed that they had received their lesson the night Rasputin arrived: Your family is everything. That’s what Anastasia had told them. All they had to do now was give her the Fabergé egg, and they would be back in Elm Medona with their mother, and their father would be nearby.
Your family is everything.
Maisie smiled to herself.
Then she went to find Jim Hercules.
“Mama hates St. Petersburg,” Anastasia confided to Felix in the carriage en route to the Winter Palace.
“Why?” Felix asked.
Outside, snow fell so hard that he couldn’t see the carriages behind or in front of them.
“She says it’s a rotten town and isn’t even one atom Russian,” Anastasia said. “Even Papa calls it ‘the bog.’”
“Then why are they having this ball there?” Felix wondered.
“It’s complicated,” Anastasia said, thoughtfully. “To Russians, the Winter Palace is the symbol of the power of the Tsar. It has fifteen hundred rooms, almost two thousand windows, and one hundred and seventeen staircases.”
“Wow!” Felix said.
“But lately . . .”
Anastasia hesitated, looking sad.
“What is it?” Felix asked, touching her hand.
Anastasia took a deep breath. “Lately, as one of the Grand Dukes told Papa, ‘A new and hostile Russia glares through the window as we dance.’”
“Is Russia already hostile toward your family?” Felix asked.
“Already?” Anastasia repeated, surprised.
“I meant . . . just . . . Who’s hostile?”
She studied his face carefully.
“Well,” she said, finally, “just six years ago something terrible happened there, at the Winter Palace. Papa believes it could be the beginning of more terrible things.”
“Was it the Bolsheviks?” Felix asked, a chill spreading up his arms.
“What are they?” Anastasia asked, confused.
“Oh,” Felix said, quickly. “Nothing. I’m mixed up, that’s all.”
“It wasn’t these . . . Bolsheviks. No. Father Gapon, a priest that the workers liked very much, brought a hundred thousand of them to protest at the Winter Palace. He had a petition he wanted Papa to sign, but of course we don’t live there. Papa was in Tsarskoe Selo. He didn’t even know about the protest! As the demonstrators neared, the Imperial troops fired on them—”
“Oh no!” Felix said. “People were killed?”
Anastasia nodded solemnly.
“Everyone calls it Bloody Sunday now,” she added with a shiver.
“Bloody Sunday,” Felix repeated softly.
“That began a revolution. Not just workers, but farmers and peasants. Even students!
“Papa told us that reports estimated two million workers went on strike that fall.”
Anastasia smiled at Felix.
“Don’t look so glum, Felix! Papa fixed everything. He signed a new constitution and did all sorts of things to make people happy again.”
Felix looked away from Anastasia and out the window at the swirling snow.
One thing he knew for certain: The Russian people were not happy. Not at all.
Lights illuminated the dark winter night for blocks around the Winter Palace the evening of the ball.
Like everything in the Tsar’s regimented world, the ball began at exactly eight thirty.
At the other formal parties and balls, Maisie had been happy to wear the velvet and lace dresses Great-Uncle Thorne had packed for her. But even those didn’t compare to this gorgeous one made for her by the Imperial seamstress. Maisie, in her beautiful white-and-silver dress, her hair upswept and held with the diamond barrette, stood at the top of the white marble State Gala Staircase with its red velvet carpet. Above it hung a gigantic gold-and-crystal chandelier. Sculptures, paintings, marble, and mirrors lined the staircase, and Maisie recognized more than one painting with Leonardo da Vinci’s signature on it.
The ceilings in every room reached skyward, higher than any Maisie had ever seen anywhere.
She felt dwarfed here, a small speck of a girl in a fancy dress.
But her dress paled in comparison to the gowns the women ascending the staircase now wore. Their jewels glistened in the light, like millions of fireflies were escorting them inside.
Palm trees lined the corridor leading to the ballroom. Two different types of troopers stood at attention along the vast corridor: one kind wore all white with shiny silver helmets. The others wore bright red.
Felix and Anastasia joined Maisie and watched the people climbing the State Gala Staircase.
“How many people are coming, anyway?” Maisie finally asked.
“Three thousand,” Anastasia said simply.
“Three thousand?” Maisie blurted.
Anastasia nodded. “It’s an Imperial ball, after all,” she said.
“Who are those guys in the tight fur pants?” Maisie asked.
“Hussar soldiers,” Anastasia said. “It takes two
men to pull those on.”
Suddenly, a man in a black-and-gold uniform appeared. He held a walking stick like Great-Uncle Thorne used. His was black and topped with an enormous gold double-headed eagle.
The man tapped his stick three times, and everyone grew silent.
“Their Imperial Majesties!” the man announced.
Enormous doors decorated with gold opened, and all the women bent their knees and dropped their heads.
There sat Nicholas and Alexandra on giant thrones, wearing enormous jeweled crowns, like a king and queen in a fairy tale.
The orchestra began to play, and soon the guests were waltzing past Maisie, Felix, and Anastasia.
One of the Hussar soldiers asked Maisie to dance, and before she could decline, he had one hand on her waist and the other was holding hers high. He swirled her away from Felix and Anastasia.
“Is it true,” Maisie asked him, “that it takes two men to pull those pants on?”
The soldier laughed.
“Yes! It is true!” he said.
Anastasia led Felix outside to a balcony overlooking the gardens, though they were snow-covered, with high drifts and icicles.
“I wish you never had to go back to America,” Anastasia said.
In the moonlight, she looks beautiful, Felix thought. He felt a tug of something. Something pulling him home, back to Newport and Elm Medona. But he felt the tug of something else, something pulling for him to stay. Was Alex Andropov right? Could they escape in January 1917? Or even sooner? Could he take Anastasia with him, and save her life?
“You look so serious,” Anastasia said, placing one hand on Felix’s cheek.
“I was just thinking about how much I would like to stay here,” he said, his throat feeling suddenly dry.
Inside, the orchestra had stopped.
The man who had called everyone to attention was tapping his staff again.
“Oh,” Anastasia said, disappointed, “we need to go inside.”
“Why?” Felix asked, also disappointed.
“He’s going to introduce the special guest from America,” she said, taking Felix’s hand and leading him back inside.
Everyone was silent.
The man announced:
“Ladies and gentlemen! We present to you Mr. Phinneas Pickworth!”
