That Kyril had never made a serious pass at her didn’t matter. She had seen the way he looked at her and was certain that, if it hadn’t been for Romanovs not being allowed to marry their first cousins, he would have made a pass at her years ago. She had never heard his name linked seriously with anyone – except with ballerinas, of course; ballerinas were de rigueur for all Romanov men. One had only to look at Kyril – six feet four, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped and oozing sex appeal – to know that he wasn’t deviant, as Marie-Louise’s husband, Aribert of Anhalt, so blatantly was.
On the brow of a hill she reined her horse in. A whole raft of Romanov relations had made the journey to Coburg for her wedding, but Kyril had not been among them. She knew why. It was because he’d had no desire to see her marrying Ernie.
But if he had come to Coburg, had taken her passionately in his arms, said that he loved her and couldn’t live without her, that Romanov protocol forbidding first cousins from marrying didn’t matter, and that even though it would mean exile from Russia, he would happily be exiled for her sake – if she had to ditch Ernie and run away to Paris with Kyril – she would have done so in a flash.
She was a tough young woman who rarely cried, but tears glittered on her eyelashes. There was going to be no Kyril in her life, but there was going to be Ernie, and she was just going to have to make the best of the cards she had been dealt.
With her heart feeling as if it was about to break, Ducky turned her horse’s head around and headed bleakly back to the palace, doing so at a slow trot, in no hurry to arrive.
That evening a handful of the male wedding guests, Nicky and Willy among them, congregated in the billiard room to smoke and drink and pot a few balls. Nicky was in an almost suicidal state of depression.
‘Alicky loves me,’ he said, when Willy asked him how things stood between him and Alicky. ‘She loves me with all her heart, Willy, but the dear girl simply cannot bring herself to forswear her religion for Orthodoxy. Ella has tried to get her to change her mind, for although Ella didn’t convert when she married Sergei, she has converted since; and Sergei’s mother was born Lutheran and she, too, converted when she married. So Alicky has two wonderful examples to follow, but neither Ella nor Aunt Miechen has been able to get her to change her mind and, as the Tsesarevich, I absolutely cannot marry her unless she does so.’
A tingling sensation ran through Willy’s body. If he could get Alicky to agree to marry Nicky, he would be seen as the matchmaker par excellence in the family, while at the same time achieving a masterstroke of international diplomacy. For with Russia’s future tsarina a German, Russia was never likely to be a military threat to Germany, which was becoming an ever-increasing concern on the international stage.
‘Leave it to me.’ He slapped Nicky hard on the back. ‘I’ll speak to Alicky the minute tomorrow’s church service is over. I’ll get her to change her mind.’
Nicky had no faith at all in Willy’s confidence. He couldn’t see how, if both Ella and Miechen had failed to change Alicky’s mind, Willy would be able to, for it wasn’t as if he and Alicky were close. He’d never even heard her mention Willy’s name.
So deep in despair that he couldn’t see how he was going to get through the next few days, let alone the rest of his life, he went to his room to write Alicky another desperately pleading letter.
The next morning, after Ernie and Ducky’s wedding ceremony and in the interval before the wedding guests sat down to the wedding breakfast, Willy asked Alicky if he could speak to her privately, as a Kindred Spirit.
Alicky was too taken aback to say no, for although she and May had kept the Kindred Spirit bond affectionately alive between the two of them, Willy had long regarded it as too childish to be taken seriously and had thereby broken the blood-bond between them, and she was surprised he even remembered it.
‘I want,’ he said when the door of a small room had closed behind them, ‘to speak to you about why you should no longer keep refusing Nicky’s proposals of marriage.’
Alicky’s eyes, red-rimmed from a night of crying, opened wide with shock. ‘As Kaiser, you’re Head of the German Lutheran Church! You, of all people, know why I cannot marry him!’
‘And in that role, I can tell you that you will not be abandoning the Church of your birth if you adopt Orthodoxy. Instead, your adoption of Orthodoxy will enrich and deepen your Lutheran faith.’
It was far from being what he really thought and felt. A few years ago Willy had barred his sister Sophie from ever setting foot on German soil again, when she had married Tino of Greece and had converted to Orthodoxy. For the moment, though, it was convenient to convince himself that they were his real feelings; and when Willy wanted to convince himself of anything, he did so easily and with passionate – although temporary – sincerity.
‘It is what both Ella and Miechen have found,’ he said, having no idea whether or not this was true. ‘And Nicky’s mother, too, was a Lutheran until she married Nicky’s father. A change of faith is really not such an unusual thing for a royal in your position.’
‘No,’ Alicky said, as she had said to Nicky. ‘I cannot do it. I cannot.’ Tears choked her throat. ‘I have made a promise to my late mama that I will never forget my confirmation vows.’
Willy had the vision of a much-needed military alliance between Germany and Russia in front of him, and he wasn’t accustomed to being thwarted.
‘There is no need for you ever to do so,’ he said, with what he hoped was God-like authority. ‘The vows you took as a Lutheran are, in essence, the same as the vows taken at confirmation in the Russian Orthodox Church. And so, when you make your vows on becoming a member of the Orthodox Church, you will simply be reaffirming your Lutheran vows.’
Whether what he was saying was true, he didn’t care. All that mattered to him was that Alicky married Nicky, and that the future Empress of Russia would be a German.
‘Think of Nicky,’ he continued, undeterred. ‘He is a mild-mannered, gentle young man, not unlike late Cousin Eddy. And Granny Queen realized that when Eddy became King and Emperor, he would need a strong woman at his side to give him the strength and forcefulness his own nature lacked. That was why she arranged for a marriage between him and Kindred Spirit May – and it is why, on his death, she didn’t let such an admirable future Queen and Empress go to waste and saw to it that May married Georgie. When Nicky becomes Tsar, the responsibilities he will inherit are so vast they will crush him. If he is not to be dominated by his uncles – and make no mistake, Alicky, his uncles’ intentions will be to dominate him and rule through him – he will need a wife who will be a strength to him; someone who will rule the largest country in the world alongside him, allowing no one else to influence him. And God’s purpose for you, Alicky, is to be that person. It is,’ he ended with an over-the-top theatrical flourish of his good hand, ‘your royal duty and God-given destiny!’
Alicky stared at him, stunned. For a moment Willy thought she had stopped breathing. ‘And will I truly not be breaking my promise to my mama if I become Russian Orthodox?’
‘How can you be, when the vows to love God and to live in service to Him are the same, although expressed differently, for both Lutherans and members of the Russian Orthodox Church?’ He was so convincing, he almost believed what he was saying.
Alicky certainly did so. Slowly, but very purposely, she rose to her feet.
‘I need to find Nicky,’ she said dazedly. ‘I need to tell him I now see my way clearly. I need to tell him I have changed my mind.’
‘You’ll find him in the little snug outside Ernie’s room, waiting for the outcome of my conversation with you,’ Willy said, even more highly pleased with himself than usual.
He would have said more – that Nicky would be in a state of near-collapse waiting to know if she had, or hadn’t, changed her mind – but Alicky had run from the room, the door swinging on its hinges behind her.
Ignoring dozens of her startled relatives, she sprinted in the directi
on of the palace’s main staircase. On reaching it, she scooped her skirt up in her hands, taking the wide steps at a run, narrowly avoiding knocking over a startled Louis of Battenberg, who was coming down them.
Breathlessly, her heart hammering, she ran in the direction of the set of rooms that were Ernie’s. Almost sick with the fear that Nicky would no longer be in the snug, and gasping for breath, she flung open the door.
He had been standing facing the fireplace. At her entrance he spun round, every line of his body taut with tension.
With blazing happiness on her face she rushed across to him, throwing herself into his arms, saying, ‘I will marry you, darling Nicky. I will, I will!’
With a sob of overwhelming thankfulness, he burrowed his face in her hair. ‘Oh, thank God, sweetheart. My life would be nothing to me without you in it. I love you so much. My whole life is yours, Alicky. Always and for eternity!’
And his mouth came down on hers, hot and sweet, passion uniting them in a way that would never, to the end of their lives, fail them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
JUNE 1894, YORK COTTAGE
‘And the dear darling just burst into tears when I told him.’
Alicky was sitting with a heavily pregnant May in the garden of York Cottage, Sandringham.
‘The family – and there were more than sixty of them gathered there – went wild at the wedding breakfast when we announced our news. Ducky was dreadfully miffed, but that couldn’t be helped. We simply couldn’t keep such tremendous news to ourselves, and it was perfect being able to tell everyone all at once.’
May, who was so physically uncomfortable she felt as if it was a baby elephant that she was pregnant with, eased herself into what she hoped would be a more comfortable position. It wasn’t.
‘And we had ten blissful, beautiful days before Nicky had to return to St Petersburg,’ Alicky continued, ‘and as I had already arranged to stay with Granny Queen for three months, I came to England. And Granny then invited Nicky to Windsor, so that she could get to know him a little better, and he is going to be with me for nearly the whole time I am here. I’m so happy, May! I never knew people could be this happy. Truly I didn’t.’
May was sincerely glad Alicky was so passionately in love with Nicky, but she had some reservations.
Putting her foreboding into words, she said, ‘Once you marry Nicky, you will constantly be the centre of attention. Have you thought of how you will cope with that? I know how much you have hated being a bridesmaid at family weddings, but family weddings are nothing in comparison to the great state occasions that are part and parcel of Nicky’s life, and are now going to be part and parcel of your life also.’
Alicky had been reassuringly dismissive. ‘There’s no need to worry about me on that score, May. Uncle Sasha is only in his forties and is an enormously big, strong man. Do you know that he can bend an iron poker with his bare hands? It’s going to be twenty or thirty years before Nicky succeeds him as Tsar, and until then Nicky and I are going to live in the same kind of quiet domesticity that you and Georgie so happily live in here, at York Cottage.’
May didn’t flinch at the word ‘happily’, but it took a lot of her willpower not to do so. With fierce determination, she put all thoughts of her and Georgie’s tortuous shyness and embarrassment in the bedroom – and their total incompatibility out of it, as well as in it – to the back of her mind. ‘Quiet domesticity may be achievable in England, Alicky,’ she said wryly, ‘but I doubt it’s a phrase much used in Russia. You and Nicky will be trailblazers!’
Their time together as an engaged couple in England was idyllic, but by September the idyll was over, and Nicky was back in St Petersburg and Alicky was in Darmstadt. As the fiancée of the Tsesarevich, she would be joining him for good in the New Year when, in preparation for a spring wedding, she would be accepted into the Russian Orthodox Church.
It was a day that couldn’t come soon enough, for the harmonious atmosphere in the New Palace that had existed before Ernie and Ducky’s marriage was harmonious no longer.
‘Why did no one tell me?’ Ducky demanded time and again, on the verge of hysteria. ‘You must have known, Alicky! Why didn’t you tell me Ernie is only interested in men? Why did you leave it for me to find out on my wedding night? And now I’ve found out, it seems that everyone else in the family knows of Ernie’s preference for Hussar officers, valets and stable-boys – and yet no one, no one, thought it important enough to tell me!’
‘You did return from your honeymoon pregnant,’ Alicky had pointed out, trying to get Ducky to look on the bright side of things.
Ducky’s dark eyes had flashed fire. ‘Oh yes, that major miracle occurred! But only because Ernie becoming a father and having a son to inherit Hesse and by Rhine after him was the only reason he married me. And if he could have come to bed fully dressed and with gloves on to do the deed, he would have.’
In October, Alicky received an urgent telegram from Nicky: Papa ill. We are at Livadia, in the Crimea. I need you, darling. Please come.
If she could have flown there in an instant, she would have. As it was, and with the telegram still in her hand, she ran to her bedroom, calling out for her lady-in-waiting and for maids. She needed to pack. She had to leave at once, if she was to give the love of her life the support he so badly needed.
She travelled by train as far as Warsaw with her lady-in-waiting and with Vicky, who had been on a sisterly visit to Darmstadt. At Warsaw, Ella, who had travelled from the Crimea to meet them, took over as Alicky’s escort, bringing with her no good news.
‘Uncle Sasha is desperately ill,’ she said as they settled into a compartment aboard the train that would take them to Simferopol, where they would be met by Nicky. ‘He has nephritis. His kidneys are on the point of failing completely.’
‘And when they do?’ Alicky’s heart was in her mouth.
‘Then he will die – and the doctors say it is only going to be days before he does so.’
The blood fled from Alicky’s face. How could Nicky’s father die now, when Nicky had not anticipated succeeding him for many years? What would happen to the future that she and Nicky had been so eagerly looking forward to? How could a life of quiet domesticity be lived, once they became Tsar and Tsarina? The answer, of course, was that it couldn’t.
Other questions came thick and fast. How would Nicky cope with so suddenly becoming the autocratic ruler of a great empire? How would she cope with the public display that came with being Tsarina? As question after question flooded her brain, Alicky struggled to think of an alternative scenario. Perhaps Ella was exaggerating. Perhaps the doctors had made the wrong diagnosis and were being unnecessarily fatalistic. Perhaps, even at this very moment, Nicky’s father was beginning to regain strength, rather than continuing to lose it. Another thought came to her and she said, ‘Who is in control of things at the palace, Ella?’
‘No one. It’s complete chaos. We all knew Uncle Sasha hadn’t been well for some time, but no one imagined he was ill with something that would prove fatal. Nicky is in complete pieces, as is Aunt Minny.’
At Simferopol, Nicky was waiting to greet her, flanked only by a couple of equerries. Hugging her tightly, his voice breaking with emotion, he said, ‘Oh, thank heavens you are here, Alicky. I couldn’t have survived another day without you. And apologies that there is no reception party, and that no imperial train was waiting for you when you reached the border, but the minister whose job it is to arrange such things forgot all about doing so, in his anxiety about my father.’
‘Reception parties and imperial trains are of no importance at a time like this.’ Alicky slid her hand into the crook of his arm and squeezed it, in loving reassurance. ‘How is your papa? Has there been any change in his condition?’
‘A little, but none that gives hope.’ Nicky looked towards Ella, who, together with Sergei and his father’s other three brothers, had been at Livadia for more than a week. ‘He now only speaks when he absolutely has
to, Ella,’ he said to her as they stepped into a waiting carriage. ‘I just hope and pray he is still able do so by the time Alicky arrives.’
Simferopol was a mountain town, and their carriage ride to Livadia took them through a high pass before heading down through heavily wooded hillsides towards the Black Sea. Beautiful as the scenery was, none of them were capable of appreciating it, their thoughts taken up with what they would find when they arrived at their destination.
What they found was the chaos that Ella had warned Alicky about – and it was chaos laced with panic. Government ministers and court officials ran like headless chickens up and down stairs and along crimson-carpeted corridors. Aunt Minny, usually so vivacious and dazzling, was white-faced and dazed with anxiety.
‘Your father has insisted on being dressed, so that he can greet Alicky in the way the Tsar of Russia has always greeted a future Russian empress,’ she said to Nicky, after she had given Alicky two hasty kisses on both cheeks. ‘I tried to dissuade him, but he was adamant. Absolutely adamant.’
The vast bedroom smelled of sickness. There were oxygen bags in a corner of it, and a bedspread embroidered with double-headed eagles hid evidence that the bed had only recently been vacated. Seated in an armchair in the centre of the room was the waxen, wasted figure of what had once been an all-powerful bear of a man.
Minny moved to the side of his chair and rested a hand tenderly on a shrunken shoulder. Once, long ago, when the imperial train had become derailed and the roof of the carriage the family were travelling in had collapsed, her husband had taken the colossal weight of it on his back and had lifted it sufficiently to allow her and their children to scramble to safety. Now he looked as if a puff of air would be more than he could survive.
The Summer Queen Page 29
