Alexandra (39 page)

The strains of recent years had coarsened the emperor physically, and made him mentally rigid, preoccupied with his health. He deliberately locked himself into comforting routines that took up
much of his time and shut out unpleasant interruptions.

‘Today I was able to take a close look at him,’ an observer wrote in October of 1915. ‘The tsar is not handsome, the colour of his beard and moustache is tobacco-yellow,
peasant-like, his nose is fat, his eyes stony.’
⁷
Others saw in his eyes a unique blend of melancholy, sweetness, resignation and tragedy,
and noted that in conversing he was alternately vague and evasive, never looking anyone directly in the eye for very long. Instead he gazed out of the window, or into the distance – anywhere
but at the person he was speaking to. Father Gregory told his friend the moneylender Simanovich that the tsar
was ‘afraid of everyone’. ‘When he talks to
me in his study,’ the starets said, ‘he looks around to see if anyone is eavesdropping.’
⁸

Despite the escalating dangers and urgent exigencies of the war, Nicky settled into the governor’s mansion at Mogilev as if into a safe oasis, a retreat from burdens and tensions. He felt
calm, never read the newspaper or saw any war footage in newsreels. He set up fresh routines for himself, taking long afternoon drives in his Rolls-Royce or walks in the woods with his English
setters, his aides trailing along behind, unable to keep up with his vigorous stride.

He rose late, listened to the reports from the front, attended briefings for officers, gave out medals, and read his wife’s long letters – letters which, with their abundance of
chatty, homely anecdotes, their passionate declarations of undying love, made his eyes fill with tears.
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In the evenings, after dining with his
officers, he watched American movies and played cards and dice and dominoes.

He liked the rustic quiet of Mogilev, the picturesque groves of beech and chestnut, the orchards and meadows where cows and sheep grazed, the flowing river and sleepy small town. He brought
Alexei to live with him there, in his spartan rooms in the governor’s mansion. Together they reviewed troops, went to church, watched films, said their prayers before lying down next to one
another in narrow camp beds. Alexei played sentinel, in much the same way as he and his friends played war with toy guns at the Alexander Palace. Amid the serenity of the forest, the tranquil
meadows, the real war seemed remote indeed.

And in fact, shortly after Nicky took command, the intensity of the German push eastwards diminished. Activity shifted to the western front; the eastern front became a rearguard. Nicky had
stumbled into a period of relative quiescence; from the autumn of 1915 on, Russian assaults resulted in large-scale casualties for the Russian army, but there were no German assaults, nothing on
the scale of the previous spring’s advance.

Alix redoubled her letter-writing efforts when Nicky moved to Mogilev. ‘My pen flies like mad over the paper and the thoughts tear through my head,’ she told him. ‘I long to
poke my nose into
everything (Ella does it with success) – to wake up people, put order into all and unite all forces.’
¹⁰
The elderly premier Goremykin called the empress ‘Madame Energy’ as she dashed off letter after letter, throwing herself with relish into the attempt to harden
her husband’s resolve and make him a stern ruler.

‘You are master and sovereign of Russia,’ she wrote him. ‘Almighty God set you in place, and they should all bow down before your wisdom and steadfastness.’ If only Nicky
would model himself on his mighty predecessors. ‘Be Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Emperor Paul – crush them all.’
¹¹
She
complimented him on ‘showing his mastery, proving himself the Autocrat without whom Russia cannot exist’, but in reality, as she said, it was she herself who ‘wore the
trousers’ and longed to ‘show her immortal trousers to those poltroons’ in the ministry of defence and at staff headquarters.
¹²
Alix liked to say that she had the heart of a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s wife. She liked to think herself formidable; it amused her that Prince Orlov
(‘Fat Orlov’, she called him), head of the military chancery, was so ill at ease at the thought of meeting with her that he had to take large doses of valerian drops in order to steady
his nerves before coming to see her. He always ‘reeked of valerian’, she told Lili Dehn.
¹³

Alix was beginning to nourish a dangerous delusion: the delusion that, if necessary, she could rule effectively. That she had the will, the courage, the discernment to decide and carry out
policy, while standing up to the ministers and others in the government – men she considered to be, most of them, either stupid, treasonous or both. Encouraged in her conviction by the
increasingly wayward Father Gregory, who did not want power for himself, but feared prosecution for a range of misdeeds from assault to bribery, Alix imagined herself on a path to greater and
greater authority.

She imagined that she saw clearly what needed to be done, guided by her narrow view and her confidence that God was speaking to her through Father Gregory. She was even confident that, should
the starets be removed from the scene entirely, another divine spokesman would appear, for had it not been so when Monsieur Philippe died?

Lili Dehn noticed that Alix, who was ‘greatly addicted’ to card games, ‘never liked to lose’.
¹⁴
She not only disliked losing, she expected to win, in whatever situation she found herself. She was coming to see herself as locked in an increasingly sinister contest with
those in her husband’s government, and was becoming contemptuous of her opponents’ power, which she consistently underestimated. When, the day after the tsar took command of the
military, eight of the thirteen cabinet ministers signed a joint letter of resignation, she was undismayed. Let them make disloyal gestures – it only proved what she had always said, that it
was all but impossible to find truly capable men.

She was feeling her power, yet exhaustion nagged at her, for the struggle drained her and left her weak. In the long autumn evenings, she lay on her couch, surrounded by her daughters. Olga
played the piano, the others took turns reading aloud. Anna Vyrubov (whom Alix in her letters referred to as ‘The Cow’), alternately clinging, critical, and sulky, occupied a chair, a
perennial guest. On Thursdays the Rumanian orchestra played; once in a while a concert was given at the hospital. On other evenings, the family played cards, put puzzles together. Alix knitted and
embroidered.

Olga was doing too much, and was looking ‘nervous and anaemic’. She had had to stop nursing, and could only supervise the work in the wards. Tatiana, thin and fragile-looking, was
sturdier. She continued to work in the hospital, and to meet with her relief committees. She imitated her mother’s austerity; she sold the pearl necklace her father had given her on her
eighteenth birthday and gave the money to the relief fund. Marie and Anastasia, now sixteen and fourteen, kept up their nursing work and, with the older girls, took their mother’s place at
hospital openings and charitable bazaars.

They brought their mother news from Petrograd, which, that autumn, had become a city of grey uniforms and black mourning gowns. Under dark skies full of rain-laden clouds, anxious pedestrians
walked up and down Nevsky Prospekt, looking for the telegrams posted in the shop windows, telegrams with news from the front and lists of casualties. There were soldiers everywhere,
young boys on their way to the war, truckloads of wounded being taken to hospitals, amputees begging in the streets. Nurses hurrying to work, red crosses on their white aprons, Duma
deputies driven past in cars, workers on strike milling in dozens in the wide squares, shoppers in the markets dismayed at the high prices of bread, meat and fuel: such was Petrograd in the late
months of 1915.

Although society congregated in the capital and entertainments were offered, the socializing was subdued. There were no balls, no lavish parties. Gowns from Paris, delicacies and fine wines
– apart from those already in the cellars of the elite – were hard to come by; imported flowers and greenery from the south of France for decorating the grand rooms of mansions were not
to be had at all. Besides, so many of the guests were in mourning that they lacked the zest to enjoy themselves. They were apprehensive. Like the other citizens of the capital they gathered in
nervous groups, exchanging war news, the latest rumours about German spies. There was said to be a spy at Mogilev, one of the generals. The emperor and empress were both suspected of carrying on
secret peace discussions with the Germans. And Rasputin, as always the favourite topic of gossip, was said to be the most notorious spy of all, passing on the secrets he heard at court to his
paymasters in Berlin.

The news was bleak, and beyond all her other concerns Alix was faced, in November, with a personal sorrow. Her long-time friend and former maid of honour Sonia Orbeliani, for years an invalid
living in the palace, was dying. Sonia had been courageous, fighting her disabilities and remaining as active as possible despite being unable to walk. She was a political creature, the niece of a
former liberal prime minister, and she had been blunt in her assessments of the various Russian regimes – indeed in all her opinions. Sonia had told Alix what she thought of the current state
of affairs and, though they often differed, Alix had listened to her views, admiring the spirit Sonia displayed as an ‘undaunted Georgian’ who never gave up. At Sonia’s request,
Alix remained with her in her last days and, when the end came, Sonia died in her friend’s arms.

‘One more true heart gone to the unknown land!’ Alix wrote to Nicky afterwards.
¹⁵
She arranged the
funeral, took it on herself to carry out Sonia’s last wishes, and wrote to all the Orbeliani relatives – in itself a sizable task. When she went to the memorial service, she did not go
dressed as the empress, but in her plain nursing gown. ‘I hate the idea of going into black for her this evening,’ Alix told Sophie Buxhoeveden, ‘and feel somehow nearer to her
like this, like an aunt, more human, less empress.’
¹⁶
Later on, after the long service had ended, she lingered near the coffin, sitting
down beside it and stroking Sonia’s hair, as she might have stroked the hair of a sleeping child. She wept for the loss of her friend and ‘true heart’, for the honest voice that
had been stilled.

But there was no time to indulge her grief, for a worrying crisis was at hand. On the very day of Sonia’s funeral, Alexei was brought home from Mogilev, his lower face swathed in bloody
bandages. His nose had been bleeding without stopping for two days. The doctors had cauterized the nostril repeatedly but the bleeding would not cease, and the boy had lost so much blood that his
skin was dead white.

‘Above the blood-soaked bandages his large blue eyes gazed at us with pathos unspeakable,’ Anna Vyrubov remembered. The doctors continued to cauterize him – a painful process
– but he was growing very weak, and could hardly talk.

Alix watched in agony as her son reclined against his pillows, unable to lie flat lest the blood flow increase. Sophie Buxhoeveden noticed that she was, as usual, ‘calm on the
surface’, but knew that she was remembering the terrible attack of bleeding Alexei had endured three years earlier at Spala, when it had seemed certain that he would die.
¹⁷
Then Alix had waited for days before contacting Father Gregory. Now, however, she was prompt to send for him.

She put in a call to Petrograd, and sent a car to Father Gregory’s apartment.

He came into the sickroom, his long hair lank above his silk peasant blouse, a gold cross that the empress had given him around his neck. As usual, he was assured. If he stank of Madeira, none
present recorded it.

He walked to Alexei’s bed and looked down into his chalky face. He made the sign of the cross over the bed, and reached down and touched the boy’s face
briefly.

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he told Alix and Nicky, who were kneeling beside the bed. ‘Nothing will happen.’ He left as quickly as he had come.

Almost as soon as he had gone, those nearest the bed realized that the bandages on the tsarevich’s face were remaining white. The blood had ceased to flow.
¹⁸
Once again, as even the most sceptical in the room had to acknowledge, the starets had bewitched the boy’s blood. When the doctors advanced a medical explanation for
the sudden cessation of bleeding, it was not believed. The doctors had failed; Father Gregory had succeeded. Alexei recovered.

Nicky returned to Mogilev, to his quiet life and long afternoon walks. Alix ordered a stone for Sonia Orbeliani’s grave and began sending Christmas letters to the families of the men in
her Siberian rifle regiment, many of whom had been severely injured by poison gas. On Thursday nights, however, she interrupted whatever occupied her to sit by the fire and listen to the sad,
plaintive music of the gypsies, letting it calm and nourish her, and bring her the catharsis of tears.

‘I prayed last night till I thought my soul would burst, and cried my eyes out,’ Alix wrote to Nicky as the year 1915 ended. ‘I cannot bear to think of all you have to
carry.’
¹⁹
Her mood was ‘of the saddest’; she had taken Veronal and it made her stomach hurt, so she took opium to soothe it.
Sedated and depressed, she had lost her brave assurance that a turning point had been reached, that a new era of Russia’s glory had arrived. All that had arrived was the threshold of a new
year, a year that was sure to be filled with deprivation, sorrow and crisis. She would face the new year as bravely as she could, with prayer and tears, until the deliverance she ardently wished
for was at hand.