It was a nightmare scenario and one that the very diligent Botkin had lived in dread of. With no other doctor there for support, how could he possibly handle a situation in which the heir to the throne could quite possibly die? A careful examination told him that the previous small swelling in Alexei’s groin – a swelling that had been healing satisfactorily – had ruptured on the bumpy carriage ride and begun bleeding in earnest, the trapped blood forming a swelling the size of a grapefruit in Alexei’s groin.
After ordering for ice-packs to be applied, he sent a telegram to Dr Federov and Alicky’s blood specialist in St Petersburg, Dr Derevenko, telling them of the situation and of how their presence was urgently needed. He sent a similar telegram to Alexei’s paediatrician, Dr Ostrogorsky. Then all he could do was to do what everyone else at Spala was doing, which was pray.
Without Irène, Alicky doubted if she would have been able to get through the next few days. Irène had lost one child to haemophilia, and Sigismund’s older brother, Waldemar, suffered from the disease. If anyone could sympathize with the torment she was suffering, it was her sister, and Irène was also able to stand in for her when it came to acting as a hostess to the many Polish nobles who had descended on Spala. For appearances of normality had to be kept up, regardless of the hideous drama unfolding in secret in the Tsesarevich’s bedroom.
On their arrival at Spala, Dr Derevenko, Dr Fedorov and Dr Ostrogorsky were all in agreement that blood was seeping into Alexei’s groin and lower abdomen and that, with every passing day, it was finding new places in which to form fresh haematomas. The pain Alexei was in was dreadful. As he writhed and thrashed and screamed, Alicky never left him. Day and night she remained by his bed, trying to give him what comfort she could, her red-gold hair turning whiter by the minute.
‘Help me, Mama!’ he gasped time and time again, and then, ‘When I’m dead it won’t hurt any more, will it? I want to die, Mama. I want to die!’
On the sixth day the doctors told Alicky and Nicky that Alexei’s stomach had begun to haemorrhage and that Alexei couldn’t be saved. Bulletins were issued to prepare the public for the Tsesarevich’s death. A priest came to perform the last rites.
Swaying with fatigue and almost insensible with grief, Alicky said, ‘If Alexei is dying, then Father Grigory has to be told, so that he can pray for his soul.’
In the early hours of the morning, and thousands of miles away in Siberia, Rasputin responded to her telegram:
GOD HAS SEEN YOUR TEARS AND HEARD YOUR PRAYERS STOP DO NOT GRIEVE STOP THE LITTLE ONE WILL NOT DIE STOP DO NOT ALLOW THE DOCTORS TO BOTHER HIM TOO MUCH STOP
Peace and certainty flooded through Alicky. It was going to be all right. Incredibly, miraculously, even from a hamlet in far-distant Siberia, Father Grigory had been able to perform a miracle and save Alexei’s life.
When she told the doctors and showed them the telegram, they looked at her with pity in their eyes. Alexei had by now received the last rites and there could be no further hope. As if to prove it, over the next few hours nothing in Alexei’s condition changed.
But then came the dawn, when, to their utter disbelief, Fedorov, Derevenko, Ostrogorsky and Botkin saw that not only – against all their expectations – was Alexei still alive, but the haemorrhage had stopped. From the very brink of death he had begun to make a recovery, and it was a recovery they had no explanation for.
Their stunned bewilderment wasn’t shared by Alicky. She knew it was Father Grigory’s prayers that had saved Alexei’s life; that, incredibly, he hadn’t had to be with Alexei for his prayers for him to be answered; that in far-away Siberia all he had needed to do was go down on his knees and pray.
And she knew something else as well. Father Grigory’s banishment was going to come to an immediate end and, no matter how loud and insistent the complaints from Nicky’s ministers, or the demands of the newspapers and the Russian people, she and Nicky were going to continue to rely on him, not only for the way he kept Alexei alive, but for advice in every other area of their lives – political as well as personal. Any alternative was unthinkable.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
MAY 1913, NEUES PALAIS, POTSDAM
Willy was buoyant. Everything was going his way. The hideous period in his life when Phili and other members of the Liebenberg Circle had – because of a mountain of evidence to the contrary – been unable to defend themselves against claims of homosexuality was now in the past. By the skin of his teeth, and because he had instantly severed all ties with Phili, never meeting or speaking with him again, he had managed to escape the scandal that had followed. The void in his life afterwards had seemed bottomless, but he had survived.
Now, about to give his precious only daughter, his last child Princess Viktoria Luise, in marriage to Prince Ernst August of Hanover in a few days’ time, Willy couldn’t have been happier. Not only was it a love match, but Sissy – the only name Viktoria Luise had answered to since she’d been a child – had assured him of that, as had the groom. Ernst’s pedigree was impeccable. Via his Danish mother he was both Georgie and Nicky’s first cousin and was closely related to the Norwegian and Greek royal families as well. It meant the wedding guest list was going to cover every royal court in Europe, as well as Russia.
It was going to be the biggest, most spectacular royal wedding in decades, and Willy’s only disappointment about it so far was that, although Nicky would be attending, poor health meant that Alicky would not.
It was a disappointment he had overcome. Alicky was rumoured to be mentally unstable, antagonizing Nicky’s family by her habit of rarely appearing in public and by her bizarre, insistent friendship with a depraved, mystic monk who was equally bekloppt, or, as English Georgie would say, barmy.
As well as Sissy’s wedding giving him the opportunity to appear in a wide range of military uniforms – Willy would, of course, wear his British admiral’s uniform when greeting Georgie and May, while an equally splendid Russian military uniform would suffice when meeting Nicky – there were also lots of other heavily gold-braided and bemedalled uniforms that he could don when greeting other guests.
The Danish contingent, for instance, would be very large, considering that the groom’s mother was Danish. Norway, too, was going to be represented, as his English cousin Maud, who had married Prince Carl of Denmark, had, by a bizarre turn of events eight years ago, found herself Queen Maud of Norway, after Norway had separated from Sweden. Wishing to establish its own monarchy, the country had offered the throne to her and Carl. While Maud had retained her Christian name, Carl had changed his to the Norwegian Haakon. Willy had found it a disturbing way of establishing a monarchy, but the deed was done and Maud was, after all, a first cousin.
Politically, of course, the new King Haakon was of no importance whatsoever. His brother-in-law Tino, the newly crowned King Constantine of Greece, was in a different category, Greece being in such a close geographic position to the Balkans.
Just thinking about the Balkans gave Willy pause for thought. There was always trouble in the Balkans, an area where two great empires, Austria–Hungary and Russia, had opposing interests. The problem with that, of course, was that as Germany had an alliance with Austria–Hungary, and Britain had an alliance with Russia, if Austria–Hungary and Russia went to war over their differences there, Germany and Britain would find themselves on opposing sides; and for half-English Willy, such a thing was unthinkable.
Sissy’s wedding was a heaven-sent chance to discuss the matter with Nicky and Georgie. All three of them were emperors. If they got their heads together, surely they should be able to come up with a solution that would pacify Austria–Hungary and ensure peace in Europe.
He gave himself a shake. War – why the devil was he thinking of war, when he was about to play host at such a joyous event as Sissy’s wedding?
Throwing off all thoughts of war as easily as throwing off a cloak, he shouted for his valet, in the tones of an English sergeant-major shouting for a squaddie. He needed
to be dressed in his British admiral’s uniform. Georgie and May would be arriving later that morning and although, among his hundreds of guests, Nicky was the most important, being not only a fellow emperor but one who ruled as an autocrat, Georgie and May were the guests Willy was always most pleased to see.
Even as children, he and Georgie had always got on well, and he had sincere affection for May. Even if it hadn’t been for the childish Kindred Spirit nonsense all those years ago, he would have singled her out as one of the few women whose company he enjoyed and whose intelligence he respected.
His late beloved grandmother had known what she was about, when she had ensured that May would one day be Queen of England – and the proof of her being so single-minded about it was the way, after his Cousin Eddy’s death, that she had simply arranged for May to marry Georgie instead.
And Willy counted Georgie a very fortunate man, for May had all the qualities his own wife lacked, chief of which were common sense, intelligence and, above all, the ability to remain in command of her feelings at all times. No matter what the situation, it was impossible to imagine May being reduced to hysterics. Dona, on the other hand, gave way to hysterics at the slightest provocation. There were even times when he wondered if, like Alicky, she was a little touched in the head.
To her credit was her deep devotion to him – although, with all his wonderful qualities, why wouldn’t she be devoted? And she was also devoted to all seven of their children, even Eitel, whom he could barely stand. There was also a natural stateliness about Dona, something he thought was largely due to her magnificent yard-wide, ostrich-feathered and flower-bedecked hats, which often had the addition of a small stuffed bird tucked amongst the foliage, and all of which he had designed.
May rarely, if ever, wore anything a yard wide. Mindful of her tightly curling fringe, she nearly always wore a toque, pleated and ruched to resemble a turban and adorned with a spiky Hussar plume or a small, jaunty ostrich feather.
No one, though, could wear jewels in the same way May could – and certainly no one could get away with wearing so many items of jewellery all at the same time. A tiara would be worn with a pearl-and-diamond choker twelve strands or more deep, which in turn would be worn with ropes of pearls hanging to her waist, brooches, bracelets and earrings of emeralds, or rubies or sapphires – and sometimes a collection of all three stones at once – and always a selection of fabulous rings. Why she didn’t look like an overdressed Christmas tree he didn’t know, but she never did. Instead, with her superb posture, she always looked the epitome of imperial glamour.
In many ways he thought her entirely lost on Georgie, whose only nod to flamboyance was to wear a white gardenia in his lapel, and who looked more like a well-to-do country solicitor than a king and emperor.
Willy had decreed that Dona and all six of their sons were to accompany him to the station where, as Georgie and May stepped from the train, a brass band would launch into the British national anthem. He and Georgie would then ceremoniously inspect a Guard of Honour before, in open carriages, making a state procession through crowded, banner-decorated streets all the way to the Neues Palace.
Tomorrow morning there would be a repeat performance for him, as he met Nicky from the train, the colossal difference being that where Georgie and May had travelled with a modest entourage, consisting primarily of Georgie’s private secretary and his equerry, plus the usual valets and ladies-in-waiting, he had been informed that Nicky would be travelling not only with his always very large entourage, but with more than a hundred policemen on an armour-plated train.
If Willy was riding high on a wave of elation, the same was true for May. George rarely travelled abroad. As a sailor, he had seen enough of foreign lands to last him a lifetime, but even he had been happy to cross the Channel for Sissy’s wedding. May relished any opportunity for a change of scene – and this change of scene was a very special occasion, for it would be an opportunity to meet lots of family she either rarely saw or hadn’t seen for some time.
Even before she stepped inside the palace she was greeted by more than a dozen of her German relatives, who came chattering and laughing down the palace steps and into the courtyard to greet her carriage. There were Mecklenburg-Strelitz cousins, Württemberg cousins and even a barely remembered Schleswig-Holstein cousin, and there was much kissing on the cheeks and heel-clicking.
That evening at dinner she and George were seated centrally on the top table with Willy and Dona. All in all, it was a dazzling array of European monarchy, and May’s satisfaction at being such a very prominent member of it was deep. It was at moments like this that she remembered how, for her, it could all have been so very, very different.
Willy, who was much enjoying having May seated next to him, dug her in the ribs with his good arm, saying jovially in German, the language they always spoke together, ‘I think we should have a toast to Kindred Spiritship, May.’
‘I quite agree.’ She shot him a warm smile. She had always had a weakness for a handsome man and, for all his faults, Willy was very handsome. As well as his magnificent up-twirling moustaches, his strong, regular features and his still-thick dark hair tamed by Macassar oil, he had a forceful vigour that, when he was at his best, as now, was very attractive.
Nicky’s arrival the next day completed the two-hundred-and-fifty-strong family guest list, and Willy almost immediately took the opportunity for a private conversation with him in regard to the situation in the Balkans. Nicky listened to him with resigned passivity, saying only what he thought Willy wanted to hear. A little later Willy had a similar conversation with Georgie; and afterwards, when Georgie had managed to escape from him, Georgie was able to tell Nicky that Willy believed all three of them were now in complete agreement regarding the Balkan states.
Nicky said that if they were, it was news to him; and the two of them moseyed off to enjoy a game of billiards together and chat about nothing more controversial than whether or not Nicky and his family would be attending the Cowes Regatta in August, aboard their imperial yacht, the Standart.
That evening there was another grand state banquet. Willy, wearing the full dress uniform of an English Royal Dragoon, and with the Russian Order of St Andrew emblazoned across his breast, led May into dinner, while Georgie, wearing the uniform of the Prussian Dragoons, escorted Dona, and Nicky escorted Willy’s elderly aunt, the Dowager Grand Duchess of Baden.
For May, dressed in a shimmering white gown beaded with diamonds, with more diamonds at her ears, throat and wrists, and wearing Queen Victoria’s spectacular wedding tiara, it was a never-to-be-forgotten moment. One that in those long-ago days in Florence and after Eddy’s death, she could not even have imagined.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Looloo and Toria. Looloo was looking at her with a slightly dazed, bewildered expression. The look in Toria’s eyes would have curdled new milk, and May knew why. As a girl, Toria had always taken it for granted that she would one day be a queen and that she, May – being only a Serene Highness – would remain an unmarriageable spinster. That it had turned out so very differently was something Toria bitterly resented, but her jealousy and animosity May had long ago come to terms with.
She caught a glimpse of Maudie, who not only gave her a matey wink, but also, at waist level, a thumbs-up sign. The corners of May’s mouth twitched. Although she had drawn a short straw where two of her sisters-in-law were concerned, Maudie was pure gold and always had been.
Later that evening she would catch up with Maudie, and with the other members of the extended Royal Mob to whom she had always been closest: Vicky and Louis; Irène and Heinrich; Russian Aunt Marie; Marie-Louise and Ducky. And she would get over her disappointment that the two people she would have most liked to spend time with – Alicky and Ella – were absent.
‘Alix sends you her love,’ Nicky said in his quiet, gentle manner when they had a few minutes’ conversation together. He always called her Alix, never Alicky. ‘Her health isn’t good, as I believe you
know – and she doesn’t enjoy this kind of event. She is much happier when the family group is small and intimate – as it was last year when we visited you and Georgie at Balmoral with the girls and Alexei.’
‘George tells me we may well see you in August, at Cowes?’
It was polite small talk, and not at all what May wanted to say to him. She wanted to ask about Alexei’s health, but knew that, even coming from her, it was a question Nicky would find quite unacceptable. Equally unacceptable would have been the riveting subject of Rasputin.
‘And that’s the problem with Nicky,’ she said much later that evening, as she and George shared a whisky nightcap together, ‘he is always exquisitely well mannered; always on the surface so very amiable and agreeable, but when it comes down to it, you can never have a truly honest conversation with him. He’s as inscrutable as a sphinx. Do you know what his attitude will be, if Emperor Franz Josef continues stirring things up in the Balkans, or haven’t you asked him?’
‘I haven’t asked him. I left that up to Willy. And as Willy seems happy enough with Nicky’s attitude, so am I. Now are you coming to bed so that I can turn the light off?’
‘Yes, and yes.’ She slipped into the giant canopied bed that dominated the cavernous room they had been allocated. Sliding her hand into his, she said, ‘I shall be wearing a gown of embroidered Indian cloth of gold and a crown, not a tiara, tomorrow. And the rest of my jewellery – earrings, choker, necklaces, brooches and bracelets – will all feature Teck family emeralds.’
‘You’ll look magnificent, darling. No woman there will be able to hold a candle to you. I can’t begin to tell you what a lucky chap I think I am.’
She squeezed his hand tightly. ‘Goodnight, George. God bless.
He squeezed it back, a deeply contented man. ‘Goodnight, May darling. Pleasant dreams.’
The Summer Queen Page 39
