The Grand Duchess of Nowhere (16 page)

I said I didn’t know.

‘I do,’ said Masha. ‘It’s the Empress and no one likes her because she’s German.’

I told her not to repeat such things.

I said, ‘Granny Miechen is German too. Granny Edinburgh is half German. You should mind your tongue.’

Kira said, ‘And anyway, Peach says the Germans are really our brothers and we shouldn’t be fighting them.’

Aunt Ella wrote to ask me if I would talk to Sunny. In Moscow, she said, wherever a crowd gathered they shouted for the Empress to stop interfering in Russia’s affairs and take the veil.

It’s so very unfair
, Aunt Ella wrote.
We can none of us help our blood or our upbringing and I’m sure Sunny has done everything she can to become a good Russian but if they take axes to Bechstein pianos, what might they do to
a German Empress if she continues to provoke them? The children too. She should take them to a convent for safety. If Nicky must stay at the Front he should appoint Misha to be his Regent. Sunny has to understand her limits
. To which I could only reply that Sunny had never been my friend so I was the last person on earth she would listen to. And the very idea of Grand Duke Misha being Regent seemed too ridiculous. Emperor Nicky had only allowed him to return because of the war. If Misha reigned in Nicky’s absence, people would have to start receiving his wife. And then, what if Tsesarevich Alyosha were to have a bleeding episode and die while Misha was Regent? Wouldn’t that make Misha’s little son the obvious next heir? It was unthinkable. Besides, in Petrograd there was another slogan going around. Grand Duke Nikolasha for Tsar!

*

Warsaw fell in August 1915. My ambulances returned to Russian soil and the Stavka pulled back from Baranovichi to Mogilev. I offered my services to Georgie Buchanan at her hospital on Vasilievsky Island. I drove for her, as required, and when I wasn’t needed as a driver I helped in the laundry. I loved the steam and the soapy smell and the endless, mindless nature of the work. I’d always thought I was strong until I had to haul wet sheets. But my strength improved and so, by all accounts, did Empress Sunny’s. Her neuralgia disappeared, her headaches stopped and daily visits from Dr Botkin were no longer required. Suddenly she was well enough to jump out of bed at first light. She put on a kind of nurse’s uniform and learned how to dress wounds.

I saw her one evening at the train station and she greeted me like I was her dearest cousin in the world.

‘Ducky,’ she said. ‘What do we both look like! Look at your hair. Look at the state of my boots.’

I’d never seen her so gay.

She said, ‘You’ll never guess what I’ve been learning today. The administration of ether. Isn’t that splendid? One has to be very attentive to the surgeon’s instructions. Quite nervous-making really, but so much more satisfying than going to receptions.’

I felt a little envious of her. To be assisting a surgeon sounded much more thrilling than washing sheets but of course they’d only allowed her to try her hand at it because she was Empress.

‘Come to tea on Sunday,’ she said. ‘We can compare war stories!’

Sunny and I have been family and we’ve been neighbours but in all those years she’d never invited me into her life. It took a war for her to open her drawing-room door to me. And that was how I met Grigory Rasputin.

He was sitting with Anna Vyrubova. He didn’t stand when I walked in, or even look up. Countess Hendrikova was in attendance too, helping Sunny perform her Russian tea ceremony. I love to see a samovar and hear its hot water murmuring but honestly, if you want a cup of tea why not put some of Mr Twining’s leaves in a china pot and be done with it?

His presence made me nervous. Some of the stories I’d heard about him were enough to make a trooper blush. But several times I found myself taking a quick peep in his direction, in spite of myself. He continued deep in conversation with Vyrubova, his head bent close to hers.

We talked of the satisfactions of war work – Sunny’s two oldest girls were helping out in the Catherine Palace hospital – and I was encouraged to admire the cosiness of the drawing room. I do like mauve. In moderation.

Sunny said, ‘I think Gran-Gran Queen would have liked it, don’t you?’

I think she would have.

Suddenly Rasputin said, ‘
Matushka
, your guest is nervous of me. Please put her mind at rest.’

Sunny said, ‘I don’t think Grand Duchess Victoria is nervous of anything. She’s been to the Front, you know.’

‘You know best, Little Mother,’ he said. ‘Well then, perhaps she peeps at me because she would like me to be her friend.’

He got up from his seat and approached me. His shirt was peasant-style, a
kosovorotka
, but made of crimson silk. There was a sour smell about him. Unwashed hair, and who could say what might be caught in the great tangle of his beard. He drew a chair up to mine. I clung to my cup and saucer. I was determined he shouldn’t take my hand.

‘Such a strong face,’ he said. ‘But I see you have suffered. A child, was it? Yes, a little one. A daughter, I think.’

Sunny said, ‘Oh, don’t speak of it. It was too awful. I was there, you know? We were at Skierniewice. Ernie had brought her there for a holiday and she must have drunk some bad water.’

‘Hush, Little Mother,’ he said. ‘Hush now. I’m speaking to Grand Duchess Victoria.’

And Sunny shut up, like a chastened child.

‘Vika,’ he said. No one ever,
ever
calls me Vika. ‘Vika, why do you hide your face behind your cup? There’s no tea left in it.’

He gestured to Hendrikova. ‘More tea for Grand Duchess Victoria,’ he said.

Then very quietly, smooth as silk, he said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Vichka. Let me fill your empty cup.’

You will have heard about Rasputin’s eyes. Everyone who had ever consulted him talked about his gentle, grey, all-seeing eyes.

‘Your little one is with you,’ he said. ‘Whenever you think of her she’s as close to you as I am now.
Dushenka s taboy
.’

Taboy
. He’d
tutoyered
me. The ultimate impertinence.

Sunny said, ‘I don’t know if she understands you. Her Russian isn’t very good.’

‘
Matushka!
’ he said. ‘Please! The Grand Duchess understands me, in her soul.’

I did too, though not as he meant it. I felt him working on me, touching what was buried. He had no business going there. I was close to tears but I was angry too, that he’d try his conjuring tricks on me in Sunny’s drawing room. We were never a pious family but Mother once said to me, ‘If God speaks to you, you’ll know. If it doesn’t feel like God it isn’t. It’s the Evil One.’ Those words came back to me and I mastered my tears.

I said, ‘I know where my daughter is. Why do you intrude?’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The door locked against grief. Well, well, I understand. But some day you must open it, or it will destroy your health. I see you clearly.’

‘And I you.’

‘Your heart is pounding,’ he said.

How did he know? Was a vein throbbing in my temple?

‘Such passion,’ he said. ‘I know it when I meet it. I too am a passionate person. Come to Gorokhovaya Street. I can help you, Vichenka. I have the key to that locked door.’

I said, ‘Leave me alone. I came here for tea. You have no right.’

Then I saw his other eyes, pale and cold as ice. Was he Mother’s Evil One or just a thwarted showman? If I’d looked at them a little longer I might have known for sure but Sunny interrupted him again, very cross at his attention to me.

‘Grishka!’ she said, and she rapped her fan on the arm of her chair. He went to her at once.

Then I understood the gossip. Empress Sunny didn’t call him ‘Father Grigory’ or ‘Grigory Efimovich’. She called him ‘Grishka’ as one might a child or a brother.

He was taking his leave. I was glad. I’d feared if I were the first to leave he might follow me. He kissed Sunny’s hand, then Vyrubova’s, then Hendrikova’s. Not mine.

‘Dear ladies,’ he said. ‘Until tomorrow, if God spares us.’

When he’d gone, Anna Vyrubova said, ‘Grand Duchess Ducky doesn’t approve.’

Sunny picked up her knitting. An army sock.

She said, ‘Sceptics don’t trouble our Dear Friend. He’s greater than that. He gives his back to the smiters.’

Vyrubova said, ‘Very true. Is that from the Bible?’

‘Book of Isaiah,’ Hendrikova said.

‘Yes,’ said Sunny. ‘And his cheeks to them that pluckèd off his hair.’

‘Except no one has pluckèd off our Dear Friend’s beard!’ said Vyrubova.

Hendrikova said, ‘It can be understood metaphorically, Anna.’

‘Can it?’ she said. ‘How clever you are.’

Sunny said, ‘But wasn’t it astonishing how he went straight to the matter of Ducky’s sad loss? So powerful.’

I said, ‘Sunny, how can you bear the smell of him?’

‘It’s the smell of sanctity,’ she said.

I looked at Countess Hendrikova. She seemed the likeliest person in the room still to be in possession of her wits. Nothing.

I said, ‘It’s the smell of a man who never bathes.’

‘That,’ said Sunny, ‘is because you don’t believe. But you will. When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you’ll find he smells of frankincense and myrrh.’

‘And anyway,’ said Vyrubova, ‘I’m sure I remember him saying he’d been to the
banya
.’

When I left the Alexander Palace, I found myself looking back over my shoulder all the way home. I was cross with myself but I couldn’t shake off the idea that Grigory Rasputin was following me.

I hadn’t been in the house more than five minutes when Miechen telephoned.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘What’s her drawing room like?’

‘The holy man was there. He stinks.’

‘So I’ve heard. Did he go into a trance?’

‘No, but he talked about Elli. I suppose Sunny must have told him about that. She calls him “Grishka”.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. And he addressed me as
tu
, without so much as a by your leave. He made my skin crawl. And now I can’t get him out of my mind. He invited me to go to Gorokhovaya Street. He said he’d fill my empty cup, or unlock my door, or some such disgusting talk.’

‘The beast. He means to ravish you.’

‘Of course I made it clear I saw what he was up to. That annoyed him. So then he left. But now I feel as if he’s haunting me. Those eyes.’

‘Oh, Ducky,’ Miechen said, ‘how terrifying. You must get a priest in at once. Have him slosh holy water all over you. Now tell me about Sunny’s décor.’

‘Mauve, lilac, mahogany.’

‘Just as I’d heard. What did she serve?’

‘Olivier salad sandwiches.’

‘Cake?’

‘Iced gems.’

‘And they told me at Yeliseev’s they couldn’t get them. Because of the war.’

‘Sunny is the Empress.’

‘I’m sure I spend far more at Yeliseev’s than she does. Well, darling, thank you for the gossip. But do get a priest in, to put your mind at rest. Get a good one. Get a bishop.’

*

I didn’t get a priest in. I couldn’t bear the thought of the children’s questions and Peach’s scorn. But whenever I thought of Grigory
Rasputin or remembered his eyes I said the Our Father, and after a few days he faded from my mind. Even when Uncle Bimbo called on me and brought up his name, I felt calm.

Uncle Bimbo’s main topic was Grand Duke Nikolasha. As Emperor Nicky had taken command of the army, Uncle Nikolasha was being sent to the Caucasus, to be Governor-General.

‘Kicked upstairs,’ Uncle Bimbo said. ‘And far enough away not to disoblige Sunny and her witch-doctor. I hear he’s still slithering around her feet.’

I said, ‘He is. I met him, at last.’

‘Did you, by Jove? And what did you make of him?’

‘Clever. I could see how he draws people in. Sunny’s besotted.’

‘Oh, I know,’ he said. ‘He has her transfixed. She thinks he holds the boy’s life in his hands. But how did you come to be invited? Has our dear Empress decided to be your friend after all?’

I said, ‘I think Sunny’s manner has improved. I think getting out of the palace and doing a little war work could be the making of her. And you know Olga and Tatiana are nursing too? People will like that. Wounded men love any nurse, and to be nursed by one of the Tsar’s daughters no less. That will be something for a man to tell his children.’

He said, ‘I hope you’re right, Ducky. That would be good news indeed. If we could just get rid of the reptile she might make a decent Empress yet. If only he’d fall under a tram.’

If we could just get rid of him. That was the first time I heard those words, but not the last.

Uncle Bimbo said, ‘And perhaps we may console ourselves that Nicky can’t do too much harm. He has some good men advising him, and the Germans have pushed us back so far they’ve probably lost interest in us anyway.’

The autumn fogs began, filthy and yellow. Miechen was trying
to gauge the city’s atmosphere and decide whether she dared to plan a party.

She said, ‘Nothing unsuitable, you understand. But a little dancing and cards would lift everyone’s spirits.’

I said, ‘How can you have dancing? All the men are either at the Front or waiting to be fitted with a wooden leg.’

‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of men. There’s Bertie Stopford for one. And what about all those lovely officers at the British Mission? I’m sure they’d adore a walk-around and some pleasant female company.’

The British Mission occupied a suite of rooms at the Astoria but its officers were often out and about. I’d met some of them at Georgie Buchanan’s afternoon teas. They were strange types, not quite soldiers, not quite deskmen. One could hardly ask them what they did all day – in time of war we’re all supposed to keep our eyes open and our mouths shut – but the Mission men seemed to spend a great deal of time sitting in the Winter Garden pretending to read newspapers, watching the comings and goings. Some of them travelled out of town – one mustn’t ask where – and would be gone for weeks. Then suddenly they’d reappear.

There was Captain Alley, for instance. He seemed to have a passe-partout, perhaps because he spoke Russian, not careful, precise Russian as Cyril or Uncle Bimbo did, but rough, slurred Russian, like an old
dvornik
. Captain Alley was billeted with Lieutenant Rayner and they made a very odd couple. Alley usually looked as though he’d slept on a train and Oswald Rayner seemed always to have stepped that very minute out of Trumper’s, freshly shaved. Rayner knew Felix Yusupov from Oxford and one could see why they’d been friends, both so elegant and composed. Their uniforms fitted when no one else’s did. Cuddy Thornhill was another figure from the British Mission. I knew him by sight, though we hardly
conversed. Actually Thornhill rarely conversed with anyone. He’d just fade into the background and gaze at his glass or his tea cup. Ex-Indian Army, according to Georgie Buchanan.

‘Been everywhere,’ she said. ‘Speaks languages no one else ever heard of. And he’s such a good listener.’

I couldn’t at all imagine him turkey-trotting around Miechen’s reduced wartime drawing room. But she was determined to throw a party and so many came, it was ladies we lacked, not men. I danced every dance.

‘You see?’ Miechen said. ‘Now sit and take a glass of fruit cup with General Knox. He wishes to quiz you.’

Dear Alf Knox. He seemed to think I was the person to ask about Empress Sunny.

I said, ‘But I hardly ever see her.’

He said, ‘But you’re family, and neighbours?’

Of course he had no reason to be fully acquainted with my history.

I said, ‘I was married to her brother. Then I was divorced from her brother. And we’re only neighbours in the loosest sense. We don’t call on each other if we run out of sugar.’

‘The Empress must find her situation difficult,’ he said. ‘With the Emperor away and a family to care for. You’d think she might be relieved to have someone else appointed Regent.’

I said, ‘You mean Grand Duke Misha?’

‘Yes, Grand Duke Michael,’ he said. ‘Or even your husband. A purely temporary arrangement, for the duration of the war. I just wondered whether the Empress has expressed an opinion.’

‘Certainly not to me,’ I said, ‘but I can tell you she’d never give up the Regency to Cyril. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of anyone in the family she trusts. She and the Emperor are a tight little love knot, you know. No one else gets close to them. Apart from Grigory Rasputin. Perhaps you should canvass him.’

‘Ah yes,’ he said. ‘The monk. I don’t think so. I’m afraid he might propose himself as Regent.’

So even then, in 1915, people were worried that Nicky and Sunny were their own worst enemies.

‘What a pair,’ Cyril says. ‘Too wrapped up in each other to notice what’s going on in the world. Too busy standing on their dignity to listen to advice. And now look at what they’ve brought down on all our heads.’

He thinks they’ll go to England. King George and Queen May will surely find them a house.

‘Bloody Sandringham,’ he says. ‘That’s where they’ll end up. Some drafty lodge house in Norfolk. Serve them right.’

We hear nothing. Maybe they’re there already.

But back then we were all still hoping that our Emperor would wake up and acquaint his wife with some home truths.

‘Someone must talk to Sunny.’ That was what everyone said.

Aunt Ella suggested Dowager Empress Minnie should do it. A mother-in-law carries a certain weight of authority, after all, but she was in Kiev, and anyway she and Sunny had always padded about each other like cats preparing for a fight. Clearly it was Nicky’s job. He should have given command of the army back to Uncle Nikolasha, gone home to Petrograd and confined Sunny to her boudoir. At the very least he should have sent Grigory Rasputin on his way.