The Summer Queen

by Margaret Pemberton

  As she rose to her feet to allow the maids to dress her in the silver-and-brocade gown that she was to wear to the Winter Palace, she vowed that from now on, no matter how turbulent her inner feelings, outwardly she would always be the very essence of imperial dignity. It was what her Granny Queen would be expecting of her, and what her beloved Nicky needed from her, and she wasn’t going to let either of them down. Not now. Not ever.

  A valet knocked on the door and gave a message to her lady-in-waiting. The Dowager Empress’s carriage had arrived at the palace and it was time for Alicky to join her.

  Alicky took one last look in the mirror, set her mouth in a determined line so that her crippling nervousness wouldn’t be obvious to the crowds and then, draped in furs, turned and walked from the room. One part of her life was over. Another part – unimaginably, unbelievably different – was about to begin.

  Chapter Thirty

  MAY 1896, ALEXANDER PALACE, TSARSKOE SELO

  Alicky wrote to May, her pen flying over the imperial headed notepaper:

  And so I must apologize for barely keeping in touch with you over the last eighteen months, but I have been so busy helping my dearest Nicky with the crushing load of government papers he has to attend to every day – being an autocratic ruler, every last little detail of ruling Russia is up to him and the burden is almost intolerable. Also, being a new mama, I have been spending every other minute with my plump little Olga, who is now almost six months old.

  Coronation Day is now only a week away, and you ask why it hasn’t taken place before now and how I shall survive the ordeal. The reason for the long time-gap between Nicky becoming Tsar and being crowned is that there was a twelve-month mourning period after his papa’s death, and the remaining six months have been taken up with all the arrangements for it being made. As to how I shall survive it, I shall survive it as I did my wedding, and that is by focusing only on Nicky and the vows we will make. Nicky tells me that despite the thick snow and freezing weather – spring is very late in coming this year – the crowds on the processional route will be even greater than the crowds on our wedding day. Apparently my robes and crown will be even heavier than my wedding dress and nuptial crown were – something I find hard to believe, as my Russian-court wedding gown was so stiff and heavy with diamonds I could barely move in it.

  Other things I remember are having a necklace once worn by Catherine the Great placed around my neck (it added immeasurably to the weight of everything else). Standing in front of the beautiful gold mirror that all previous tsarinas-to-be have stood in front of. Walking into the chapel with my maids of honour behind me and seeing Nicky, so handsome in his scarlet Hussar uniform, a fur-edged cape hanging from his shoulders. Nicky’s younger brother, Misha, and his cousin, Kyril, holding our two wedding crowns; and the flickering candles that Nicky and I were given to hold. For the most part, though, it was a blur that I knew I had somehow to survive – and the coronation will be the same, but oh, how I wish it was already over and behind me!

  The main things making such long ceremonial occasions an agony for me are my poor old legs. When I was a child I was playing catch with Irène and Ernie in the palace vegetable garden, and I tripped and fell through a sheet of plate glass that was protecting some plants. It took months for the deep lacerations on my legs to heal, and ever since my legs have never been strong. Standing for too long has always been an agony for me.

  How blessed you are that, after only two and three-quarters years of marriage, you and dear Georgie have two sons! Nicky and I do not mind in the slightest that our firstborn is a darling little girl, but everyone else in the family seems to think it a great failing on our part not to have produced a son first time around. God willing, our next child will be a boy, and the heir everyone is so eager for.

  I am writing this in my mauve boudoir at the Alexander Palace, Tsarskoe Selo. Tsarskoe Selo is an imperial village fifteen miles from St Petersburg (and so is a welcome distance from St Petersburg society, which, try as I might, I cannot feel comfortable in), and the Alexander Palace is where Nicky was born and is the palace we are happiest in. Although it is just as grand as all the other Romanov palaces, I have done as Granny Queen has always done and made our private rooms snug and comfy, doing so in the English style that I grew up with at Darmstadt. If you could see my boudoir, you would think yourself at Osborne House or Balmoral, especially as there is a large portrait of Granny Queen hanging on the wall above the fireplace.

  My mother-in-law thinks me dreadfully bourgeois, but I don’t care. I care only about giving Nicky surroundings that he can relax in, and that come as a welcome relief from acres and acres of gold leaf and marble.

  Minny has asked that I call her ‘Motherdear’, which I obediently do, but privately I find it impossible to think of her as ‘Motherdear’, as she has made life difficult for me since the wedding. For months she refused to hand over certain pieces of the imperial jewels that it is traditional for a dowager to pass on to her successor, and it was only because of the uproar it would cause if I wasn’t seen to be wearing them at my coronation that she finally parted with them. She would never have behaved so, if Nicky had married someone else; but for some reason I don’t understand, she never wanted Nicky to marry me, and it was only because of his insistence that if he wasn’t given permission to marry me, he would never marry at all, that she finally accepted me as her daughter-in-law. So there you have it. She doesn’t approve of me and, sad to say, has no genuine affection for me. I wish it were otherwise, but it isn’t.

  What else? Thank you for your update on Kindred Spirit Willy. I am glad you and he are still on such easy terms. Nicky does his best with him, but Willy will harangue Nicky about Russia’s relationship with France (Willy wants Russia to sever all ties with France, on the grounds of it being a republic and not a monarchy and therefore, as far as he is concerned, completely untrustworthy). All in all, Nicky finds a little of Cousin Willy goes a long way – as, of course, does nearly everyone else, apart from your infinitely patient self.

  I’m beginning to feel the same way about Ducky as Nicky does about Willy. She says I am very unfeeling about her situation, but Ernie is my brother and so of course I see things from his point of view, as well as hers. It isn’t as if he beats her, or ill-treats her in any physical way; and he has given her the most exquisite little daughter. She has told Ernie she wants a divorce. A divorce, can you imagine? The word alone is enough to give Granny Queen a heart attack. I sometimes wonder if Ducky and Missy are mentally quite the thing. (There are some very salacious rumours going the rounds about Missy’s behaviour in Romania, but not ones I can put on paper!)

  And now I must close, giving much love to you and Georgie and lots of precious kisses to little David and baby Bertie. (Wouldn’t it be nice if, in another fifteen years or so, there was to be a romance between David and my darling little Olga? Not a royally arranged marriage, of course, just a natural and wonderful falling in love. How happy that would make Granny Queen, and what a couple of proud mamas we would be at the wedding!

  Love, love, love, Kindred Spirit Alicky

  Having finished her letter, she was about to hurry to the nursery to scandalize Olga’s head-nurse by announcing yet again that she, and not the nurse, was to give Olga her morning bath, when there came a rumble of approaching carriages accompanied by what sounded like an entire regiment of outriders.

  Her heart sank. Nicky was in St Petersburg for the morning, in deep discussion with his uncles over matters to do with the coronation. Ella, when she visited, never arrived with an ostentatious number of Hussars accompanying her. Her mother-in-law, however, always did. But why on earth was she visiting this morning, when she would know that Nicky was in St Petersburg, meeting his uncles? Had she come in order to spend time with baby Olga? Or had she come to demand back some of the imperial crown jewels she had been so loath to part with?

  Minutes later, Minny – looking indecently young in a wasp-waisted, high-throated, trailing lac
e gown and a wide straw hat drowning in artificial flowers – was dropping air-kisses in the direction of Alicky’s cheeks. ‘Forgive me for this unexpected intrusion, Alicky, but I have been meaning to speak with you for some time and today, with Nicky in St Petersburg, seemed as good a time as any.’

  They seated themselves on the French Regency sofas that faced each other a few yards apart. Minny made polite enquiries about baby Olga and then launched into the reason for her visit.

  ‘I have come to believe that I have not been very fair to you Alicky,’ she said, her voice apologetic. ‘Because you were only in Russia days before you became Empress, you didn’t have time to appreciate the great difference between court life in Russia and the court life you had previously experienced in Darmstadt and in England. As a result, and through no fault of your own, you started your reign on the back foot. A drawback I should have put to rights by explaining all the things that the Russian public – and the court – expect of their Empress. I was simply too grief-stricken over the loss of my beloved Sasha to do so, and you are not to be blamed for things that have begun causing disquiet.’

  Alicky was confused. Was Minny making an apology to her for not having given her the guidance she had so badly needed, or was she about to launch into yet another tirade of criticism?

  ‘The main duty of a Russian empress is to be seen, not to hide away, as you are doing here, at Tsarskoe Selo,’ Minny said, answering Alicky’s unasked question. ‘The Empress is the undisputed leader of St Petersburg society. As such, you should constantly be seen at St Petersburg balls and parties and receptions. The public want to see you bowling down Nevsky Prospekt in an open carriage with a cavalcade of outriders in the summer, and in a sleigh with even more outriders in the winter. As it is, you shrink from appearing in public and the people barely know what you look like.’

  ‘The people will know and love me for the things I am able to do for them,’ Alicky said through gritted teeth, wondering for how much longer she was going to be able to keep her temper. ‘I have no wish at all to be a frivolous example to them.’

  Minny’s eyes flashed fire. ‘I hope you are not insinuating that, when I was Empress, I set a bad example?’

  Alicky had been, but enraged as she was, she knew she couldn’t possibly say so. ‘No,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘but your way of being Empress is not my way.’

  Minny’s dark eyes flashed fire. ‘I’ve lived in Russia for thirty years. You have been in Russia barely two years. You might do me the politeness of acknowledging that I know what I am talking about. At the moment you are achieving the near-impossible. You are antagonizing not only the court and the public, but the family as well.’

  And, sick at heart, she rose to her feet and, without giving Alicky the courtesy of a kiss goodbye, swept from the room.

  ‘Did you tell her about the charity you will soon be launching?’ Nicky asked, when Alicky told him of what had taken place between her and his mother.

  It was late evening and they were in the cosy intimacy of her boudoir. She was seated on his lap, her red-gold hair unbraided and spilling in undulating waves way below her waist.

  His arms tightened around her lovingly. ‘About how it will be on the same lines as the Needlework Guild that Aunt Alix, Princess Mary Adelaide and Cousin May give such support to, in England?’

  ‘Yes, and she was very crushing. She said Russia wasn’t England, and that women of the nobility in Russia would never spend time making and embroidering articles of clothing to be given to the poor. But surely, Nicky, that is only because they have never been asked to do so?’

  Nicky was never contentious and never took sides. ‘It’s time to forget Mama and her concerns, sweetheart. It’s time for bed.’

  Minny’s hurtful remarks were immediately forgotten. It was only nine o’clock, but that didn’t matter to either of them. As Nicky carried her in the direction of the bedroom, Alicky clasped her hands around his neck. There was a tiny bead of sweat on it and, as he closed the bedroom door behind them with his heel, she licked it away.

  She loved the taste of him; the scent of him; the feel of his hair against the palm of her hand; the weight of his legs as they intertwined with hers. Most of all, she loved the rapturous feeling of utter, ultimate surrender. In bed there had never been any shyness or restraint between them. They were good lovers and successful ones, for although no one but themselves knew, she was several weeks pregnant – and this time, after weeks and weeks of praying in front of her favourite icon, she was absolutely certain that the child in her womb was a boy.

  A week later and the morning of the coronation in Moscow dawned bright and clear. Once the capital of Russia, until St Petersburg had superseded it, the city was still a glorious sight. Its wide avenues were lined with palaces and mansions. Its skyline was a sea of steeply pitched red-and-green roofs, golden domes and glittering church spires and, at its heart, lay the forbidding medieval walls of the Kremlin, a city within a city.

  In their apartment in the Kremlin Palace where they had spent the night after their ceremonial entry into the city, Alicky woke early, still clasped in Nicky’s arms. Coronation Day. Not just Nicky’s Coronation Day, but her Coronation Day also. As Head of the Orthodox Church, Nicky would crown himself, and then crown her. She wondered what her mother would have thought of her little girl one day being crowned Her Imperial Majesty The Empress of all the Russias.

  The little girl who had been born and brought up in the small and modest court of Hesse-Darmstadt, being shown by her English mother how to make her own bed, darn her own stockings and mend her own clothes, seemed light years away.

  As a child, and despite having been born in Germany and having a German father, Alicky had spoken English long before she had spoken German. She had grown up regarding Osborne House, Windsor and Balmoral as much family homes as the New Palace was her family home, and she had always thought of herself as being English. And now she would never again do so, for from today all her loyalties would be to Russia.

  The dim interior of the Cathedral of the Assumption was lit by hundreds upon hundreds of candles. Beneath clouds of swirling incense, more than a thousand of Europe’s royalty and nobility stood in the flickering light, squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder. Their eyes focused on the two slight figures who, beneath a purple canopy, were seated on diamond-encrusted coronation thrones.

  ‘How many more hours do you think it will be before we can totter into the fresh air and sunlight?’ Ducky whispered to Missy, hoping to ease her backache by transferring her weight from one foot to the other.

  ‘An age. Nicky hasn’t been invested with his regalia yet. Alicky hasn’t ever been high on my favourite-cousin list, but I must admit she really does look the part. When it comes to imperiousness, no one does it better. Not even Granny Queen.’

  From somewhere unseen, a choir began to sing.

  Ducky stood on tiptoe, trying to give herself more height and catch a glimpse of Kyril.

  Ernie, who was standing on the other side of her, said out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Do stop fidgeting, Ducky. At least you’re half-Russian and accustomed to all this kerfuffle. If Nicky has to crown himself, why doesn’t he get a move on and get it over with?’

  ‘Did you catch a glimpse?’ Missy whispered from the other side of her, knowing full well what it was Ducky had been trying to do.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered back.

  ‘And how did he look?’

  ‘Divine and unobtainable.’ She wiped a tear away.

  Thinking the tear was caused by the emotion of the scene, for a gold-robed priest had now begun investing Nicky with his regalia, Ernie was impressed.

  ‘Buck up, Ducky,’ he said. ‘Only another few hours of this droning on and we’ll be on the home-straight and heading for the celebration dinner.’

  ‘Alicky behaved magnificently,’ Sergei said three hours later, as he and Ella took their places in the banqueting hall. ‘Her unfortunate unpopularity of the last months will, n
ow that the people can see how impressive she is on a great state occasion, soon be forgotten. I don’t think even Catherine the Great could have looked as regal as Alicky did today – and she certainly couldn’t have looked as beautiful.’

  Ella flushed with pleasure, pleased at Sergei’s praise of her little sister. ‘She was faultless, wasn’t she?’ she said. ‘And it can’t have been easy for her. Her legs have begun troubling her when she becomes overtired, and if she wasn’t overtired by the time today’s ceremony was over, she must be now, poor darling.’

  Both of them looked to where, by rigid tradition, Nicky and Alicky were dining apart, wearing their coronation robes and their crowns. Alicky still looked stunningly regal, but Nicky’s gold crown had been made for Catherine the Great and sat far too low over his eyebrows.

  Vladimir, who was seated on the other side of Sergei, said drily, ‘Our Tsar looks like a small boy playing at dressing-up.’

  Sergei grunted agreement. ‘I have things other than Nicky on my mind at the moment. The day after tomorrow is the traditional coronation feast for the people. It’s going to be held at the old military training field. Four hundred thousand are expected, and it’s down to me to see that it goes off without any revolutionaries baying for an end to the monarchy – and for equal rights for everyone – causing trouble. I’m not going to relax until it’s over.’

  Vladimir grinned. ‘That job is one of the penances of being Governor-General of Moscow. And if you are expecting four hundred thousand, trust me when I say that, with free food and beer being given out, it’s more likely to be seven hundred thousand. It’s going to be mayhem. Make sure you have plenty of policemen there.’