Woozy from chloroform, Alicky didn’t register the wonder of what had just happened. ‘It’s another girl, isn’t it?’ she said hysterically. ‘It’s a fifth girl, and Russia is never, ever going to forgive me!’
‘It’s a boy, Angel!’ Nicky’s voice was choked with tears of thankfulness. ‘He’s a big, healthy baby. Listen to him bawling. What a mighty tsar he will one day be.’
‘A boy?’ Her incredulity was total. ‘Truly, Nicky? Truly?’
‘See for yourself, my darling.’ Ignoring the ecstatic doctor and midwives, he helped her push herself up against the pillows. ‘Isn’t he a whopper, Alicky?’ Their son was kicking his legs and clenching his little fists in indignation at his so-very-sudden emergence into the world. ‘Isn’t he the most magnificent baby boy you’ve ever seen?’
‘He’s a miracle!’ Alicky’s joy was so all-encompassing she thought she was going to faint with it. ‘Oh, when can I hold him, Nicky? When will the cord be cut?’
‘Soon, Your Imperial Majesty,’ the doctor said, certain that, in gratitude for his last hour’s work, his reward would be dizzyingly lavish.
Even before the cord was cut, Nicky gave orders for the news of his newborn heir to be made public, and for the first time he and Alicky were able to listen to the boom of Peterhof’s saluting cannon fire in the joyous knowledge that the firing wouldn’t stop at one hundred, but would continue all the way up to a glorious three hundred.
In St Petersburg the batteries of the Peter and Paul Fortress thundered similarly. Soon church bells were ringing all over Russia. The national anthem played in parks and public squares. Flags flew. At a time when the country was at war in the east, the glorious news of an heir was doubly, trebly welcome.
As Alicky wrote to May:
And so, dear Kindred Spirit, I am at last the very proud mama of a beautiful and healthy baby boy. (You can imagine what that word ‘healthy’ means to me!) I can’t begin to tell you how magnificent he is! Like his papa, he has the most beautiful blue eyes and his hair is the palest gold you can ever imagine.
Shortly before I conceived him, I made a pilgrimage to Sarov to honour St Seraphim, whose holy relics have performed many miracles. Those in need of miracles bathe in the Sarovka River, where St Seraphim bathed, and as at night I waded into the icy depths, I prayed with all my heart and soul that my next child would be a boy – and my prayer has been answered! Although we gave our precious son the name Alexei, after the tsar who was Peter the Great’s father and who is the tsar Nicky admires most, we had very much wanted to name him Seraphim, but Nicky’s mama and his grand-uncles – even Sergei – nearly had heart attacks when we told them. And so my little darling is Alexei Nikolaevich, Sovereign Heir Tsesarevich, Grand Duke of Russia.
Nicky and I are so pleased that Georgie agreed to be one of his godparents, as did Willy (despite me no longer thinking of him as a true Kindred Spirit!). My two eldest girlies were absolutely splendid at his baptism ceremony. It was the first time either of them had taken part in anything so formal, and they looked absolutely delicious in traditional Russian court dresses of deep-blue satin decorated with silver-thread embroidery and little stiff headdresses decorated with pearls.
You cannot begin to imagine, dear May, what a difference Baby’s birth has made to us. (Baby is our pet name for Alexei.) Where once I was so unpopular, both with Nicky’s family (other than Sergei), and with St Petersburg society (who are absolutely NOT typical of the real Russia), now I can do no wrong. There has been some terrible unrest in the country over the last several months – all caused by troublemakers who fill the heads of the workers with unrealistic expectations; there was even a general strike some months ago in Odessa – but Baby’s birth has shown how truly devoted to us the country as a whole is. The peasants – who are the true Russians of Russia – refer to Nicky as their ‘Little Father’, and now I am ‘Mamushka’, their Little Mother. Outside St Petersburg, at Ilinskoe, where Ella and Sergei have their country home, we have only to appear and the people flock in hordes from miles around and bow respectfully in their hundreds to us. Some of them even fall on their knees, so do not believe any rumours as to our unpopularity!
My last piece of good news is that Sergei is soon to be relieved of the burden of his governorship of Moscow and is to be recalled to another position here, in St Petersburg. I will then see far more of Ella than I have for quite some time, although she and Sergei were on a visit to Peterhof when darling Baby was born.
Much love and huge hugs, your always Kindred Spirit, Alicky
That evening, as Alicky was leaving Marie and Anastasia’s bedroom after listening to them say their prayers and after kissing them goodnight, one of Alexei’s nurserymaids came hurrying down the corridor towards her, an anxious expression on her face.
Dipping a curtsey, she said, ‘There is no cause for alarm, Your Imperial Majesty, but there is a little spotting of blood on His Imperial Highness’s swaddling bands and—’
She got no further.
Alicky’s hand had flown to her throat. To the nearest of the footmen who lined every yard of every corridor, she said, ‘Inform his Imperial Majesty his presence is needed in the nursery.’
And then, struggling not to let her alarm show, she headed swiftly and with fast-rising fear to her precious son.
In the lamplight Alexei was lying in his cradle, freshly bathed, sweetly-smelling and nightgowned, cooing happily. There was no sign of him being even remotely distressed.
‘The blood,’ she said tightly to the head nursery-nurse. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘His navel, Your Imperial Majesty. And it was only a few spots. Hardly anything at all.’
With a thudding heart Alicky leaned over the cradle. As she lifted up Alexei’s linen nightgown, the head nursery-nurse said, ‘I swabbed the spots away. There will be nothing to see, but if you would like to see the swab?’
Alicky wasn’t listening to her. She was undoing the safety pins holding Alexei’s muslin nappy together. As the nappy fell away, there were fresh drops of blood on its inner folds. More drops were oozing from his tummy button.
The head nursery-nurse said, perplexed, ‘But it had stopped, Your Imperial Majesty! I can show you the swab I used. I—’
She fell abruptly silent as Nicky strode into the room. Taking one look at the beads of blood, he said, white-lipped, ‘Summon the doctor.’
As the nurse hurried from the room, Nicky said to the nurserymaid, ‘Leave us.’
The girl did so, unable to imagine what all the fuss was about. Her mother had had twelve babies and would not have blinked an eye at a few spots of blood leaking from the navel. It was certainly nothing for the Tsar and Tsarina to worry about; and the doctor, when he came, would tell them so.
In the room behind her, Alicky and Nicky looked at each other with horror-filled eyes.
‘Is it possible it is natural bleeding?’ A pulse throbbed at the corner of Nicky’s jaw.
Although he knew that one of Queen Victoria’s sons had died from haemophilia and that Alicky’s brother and Irène’s little boy had, too, and that others in Alicky’s family suffered from it, he had always been confident that his Romanov bloodline would ensure that the sickness wouldn’t affect any son he and Alicky had. Now, however, he was filled with terrible doubt.
‘Yes.’ Her voice was unsteady. ‘It could be natural bleeding. It has to be. But if it isn’t? Oh God, Nicky! What if it isn’t? God couldn’t be so cruel as to have given him to us and then to have given us such a burden to bear, could he?’
Nicky didn’t answer her. His birthday fell on the feast day of the Old Testament prophet, Job; and, like Job, he believed in fate and the impossibility of battling it.
The arrival of the doctor went some way towards reassuring him.
‘It is just a slight leakage, Your Imperial Majesty,’ he said to Nicky, after swabbing away the trickle of blood and beginning to bandage Alexei’s tummy. ‘The umbilical-cord stump probably dropped off a little too
soon. His Imperial Highness is not in any distress. Tomorrow will show how little cause there is for anxiety.’
‘Should we have told him the reason for our anxiety?’ Nicky asked, when they were in their own room, lying in the darkness, clasped in each other’s arms. ‘How can he have made an accurate diagnosis, without being in possession of all the facts?’
‘We can tell him tomorrow – if we have to. But pray God we don’t have to, Nicky.’ Tears rolled down Alicky’s cheeks, falling onto his naked chest. ‘Pray God his diagnosis is correct and that there will be no sign of bleeding tomorrow, and no sign of any sinister bleeding in the future.’
He pressed her hard against him and then, feeling her response, rolled her beneath him. Her lips parted, even before his mouth closed on hers. Lovemaking had always been their joy and comfort, and it was their comfort now. Tomorrow would bring reassurance. Tomorrow there would no longer be any anxieties about Alexei’s health. Tomorrow, God willing, all would be well.
The next morning Alicky rose as dawn was breaking. If Alexei’s navel had continued to bleed throughout the night, she wanted to know. She didn’t want evidence being wiped away before she had seen it for herself.
The nursery was filled with soft early light. The nurserymaid was asleep on the night-sofa; the head nurse in her bedroom adjoining the nursery. Only Baby was awake, placidly blowing bubbles.
As she leaned over the cradle, her heart was slamming against her breastbone. ‘Please let the bleeding have stopped. Please! Please! Please,’ Alicky whispered fervently, her whole heart in her prayer; her entire being in it.
With trembling hands, knowing the future of the monarchy rested in what she was about to see, or not see, she removed the covers to reveal the bandage the doctor had bound her precious son’s tummy with. It was still neatly in place.
And it was saturated with bright-red blood.
Never again were her beautiful, classical features to be untouched by strain and anxiety. At thirty-two years old, Alicky began living with a tension that was palpable and, because people were unaware of its cause, unpleasantly disconcerting.
Her public appearances had always been rare, but now they became rarer still and, when she did appear in public, her lips were always set in a tight line and her complexion, once so flawless, was often stained with ugly red blotches. Her saving graces were the heavy, lustrous glory of her hair, and her figure, which, despite her many pregnancies and with the help of French corsetry, was still enviably slender.
Not until a couple of weeks into the new year of 1905 did she write to May. Sitting in her mauve boudoir at a walnut-inlaid escritoire that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette, she wrote:
Dearest May,
After six months we now know, without any shadow of doubt, that Baby has the family bleeding disease. Ella and Sergei know. Vicky and Irène know – how could I possibly keep it from Irène, when she has already lost a child to the disease and another child is a semi-invalid through suffering from it?
Sergei has said – and in this I agree with him, as does my poor, darling Nicky – that no one else must know. Not his mother or his brothers, or, other than Sergei, his uncles. With the war in Japan going so disastrously wrong and dissatisfaction in the country so rampant, if it became public knowledge that the Tsesarevich had a disease that could mean him not living long enough to inherit the crown, the country might well turn into full-scale revolution. As it is, the threat is so real we have to be guarded in a way inconceivable to you and Georgie in nice, cosy England. Only recently a government minister was assassinated, and in Moscow Sergei receives death threats on a daily basis.
She laid her pen down. There had always been civil unrest in Russia. It was why the country could only be governed by a strong, autocratic tsar. Sergei said it was the speech Nicky had given to the leaders of local governments, shortly after his father’s death, when he had said he regarded their hope of representative government as being a ‘senseless dream’, that had given birth to the Social Revolutionary Party. Another, smaller organization, going by the name of the Bolsheviks, was run by a man called Lenin, who was living in exile in Geneva.
It was the Social Revolutionary Party and the Bolsheviks who were demanding an end to autocracy – and not only an end to autocracy, but to the monarchy as well – and who were behind all the bombings, the government minister’s assassination and the death threats that Sergei was receiving. With a heavy sigh, Alicky picked up her pen again:
Today we received news of a Workers’ March that is to take place tomorrow in St Petersburg. According to Uncle Vladimir (who is now the city’s Governor-General), the march is to culminate at the Winter Palace, where the leader of the march intends handing a petition listing all the workers’ grievances to Nicky. As Nicky isn’t in St Petersburg, but is here, at Tsarskoe Selo, this is clearly an impossible outcome, and it is to be hoped that Uncle Vladimir makes this clear to them and that, even at this late date, the march is called off without there being large-scale public disturbance.
So many things are so very grim, and I often think back to those golden, far-off days when we were young girls enjoying family get-togethers at Osborne, or Balmoral, or even, sometimes, at Windsor. When Granny Queen was alive there was always such a sense of safety! Ella often talks of the days when you and she were best friends and always shared a bedroom at get-togethers and sat up in bed, talking for hours on end and eating Garibaldi biscuits. Even I can never see a Garibaldi biscuit without being overcome by the memory of dear Granny Queen, so small and squat in black silk and her little white lace cap, with its long chiffon streamers, and the wonderful faint scent of orange blossom that she so loved to be surrounded by.
Alicky put her pen down. That, because of her pregnancy, she hadn’t been able to be with Granny Queen when she died was something she knew she would always regret. She had been Granny Queen’s favourite granddaughter. Had her grandmother asked after her, as she lay dying? No one had said she had, but then it had never been something that – fearful of not receiving the answer she so wanted – Alicky had ever asked about.
She picked up her pen again and wrote:
Enough. I must end. Ella and Sergei will be here by the end of the month, and then at least I will have one sister always close by. Irène and Vicky visit as often as they can, but Tsarskoe Selo is such a long, long way from both of them.
All my love, your secret Kindred Spirit, Alicky
PS: When Vicky was last here, she told me it is widely believed by some members of the family that I am so conscious of your Serene Highness background that I have little time for you! As the truth is so very different, I found it very funny, and hope you do, too. xxx
Three weeks later, in Moscow, Ella was still trying to come to terms with the appalling death toll on what was now spoken of as ‘Bloody Sunday’. According to Vladimir, it was the Preobrazhensky Guards who had opened fire on the marchers as they approached the Winter Palace, but they had not done so under his instructions. Some reports said hundreds had died; others that the death toll was more than a thousand. Whatever the truth of it, the blame lay heavily on Vladimir’s shoulders, as Governor-General of the city. However, where the country was concerned, the blame was entirely Nicky’s.
‘And he knew only that a peaceful march was intended,’ Vladimir said over the telephone, ‘and that, as he wasn’t in the city to receive the petition, it was a march that would be called off. He’s the most pacific person – far too pacific – that I know, and now the shouts on the streets are of “Nicholas the Bloody” and “Nicholas the Murderer”. Until now, revolution was only a possibility. Now, God help us all, we’re on the brink of it!’
Due to the strikes in Moscow, the atmosphere was electric with tension, as if a thunderstorm was about to break. Ella, packing for their move back to St Petersburg, lived in constant fear for Sergei’s safety. She had always known that her marriage was a mystery to both their mutual families and to the court, and that it was generally believed that
Sergei was a harsh husband – and one who, it was suspected, had homosexual tendencies. The reality of their relationship was known only to them, but when she had insisted to Granny Queen that she was perfectly content with Sergei, it had been the truth. There was more than one kind of love, and if theirs was different from most people’s, what did it matter? All that mattered was the strength of the bond that existed between them.
The city was deep in snow and Sergei had just left the Kremlin for his government office. It would be his last visit there, for he had been relieved of his position as Governor-General twenty-four hours earlier and all that was left for him to do was a little tidying-up.
She was thinking what a comfort to Alicky it would be, when she and Sergei were again living in their palace in St Petersburg, when there was an explosion so deafening it was as if every mighty wall surrounding the Kremlin had been blasted into atoms.
She screamed, knowing instantly who the bomb had been meant for, and then she began to run.
Running down the wide stairs with her heart in her mouth, she left the palace and crossed the snow-covered courtyard. She was dimly aware that people were both racing after her and towards her, all of them trying to stop her; all of them trying to prevent her from seeing the horror that awaited.
She would have none of it. With the strength of a madwoman she fended them off, racing towards the smoking remains of what had been Sergei’s carriage.
And then she came to a sudden, rocking halt, unable to take in what it was that she was faced with. There was no injured Sergei. There wasn’t even Sergei’s body. Scattered far and wide across the bloodied snow were simply bit and pieces of him. A leg here. An arm there. His boots had been blown clear off his legs, his feet still in them. There was no trace of his head, or his shoulders. She stumbled over a severed hand.
His rings. She must take his rings. Sergei would want her to do so. She was on her knees amongst bones and cartilage, retrieving from pulverized flesh the icon that Sergei had always worn around his neck. ‘A stretcher,’ she said, time after time, like a mantra. ‘A stretcher. We must have a stretcher. We must take his remains to the monastery and lay them before the high altar.’
The Summer Queen Page 35
