The House of Special Purpose (40 page)

‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ I said, my voice low and angry, ‘considering what she did.’

‘You may even think that she is disturbed in her mind.’

‘You don’t think she is?’ I asked.

‘No, I don’t think that either explanation entirely covers what is wrong with Zoya. Such words are too simplistic, too facile. Her problems lie deeper, I think. In her history. In the things that she has witnessed. In the memories that she has repressed.’

It was my turn to stare at him now and I could feel myself growing a little more pale, unsure what he was getting at. I could not imagine for a moment that Zoya would have confided the details of our past – of her past – to him, even if she did trust him. It seemed like an entirely uncharacteristic gesture on her part. And I
couldn’t help but wonder whether he knew that there was something he wasn’t seeing, and that I might tell him if guided along that path. Of course, he did not know me; he did not realize that I would never betray my wife.

‘Such as what?’ I asked finally.

‘I think we both know the answer to that, Mr Jachmenev, don’t you?’

I swallowed and set my jaw; I was not going to admit to this either way. ‘What I want to know,’ I said, a note of determination entering my tone, ‘is whether I should continue to be worried about her, whether I should be watching over her throughout the day. I want to know whether something like this might ever happen again. I have to work every day, of course. I cannot be with her constantly.’

‘It’s hard to say,’ he replied, ‘but on consideration, I don’t think you have very much to worry about. I will be undertaking further sessions with her, of course, on an out-patient basis. I think I can help her come to terms with the things that cause her suffering. Your wife labours under the illusion that the people closest to her are in danger, you realize that, don’t you?’

‘She’s mentioned it to me,’ I admitted. ‘Only briefly. It’s something that she keeps locked inside herself.’

‘She’s talked about these miscarriages, for example,’ he said. ‘And about your friend, Monsieur Raymer.’

I nodded and looked down for a moment, acknowledging the memory.
Leo
.

‘Your wife must be made to see that she is not responsible for any of these things,’ he said, standing up now to indicate that our interview was at an end. ‘That is down to me, of course, during our out-patient sessions. And down to you, in your life together.’

Zoya was already dressed and waiting for me when I entered the ward, sitting on the side of her bed, neat and prim in a simple cotton dress and overcoat that I had brought for her the day
before. She looked up and smiled as she saw me walking towards her and I smiled too, taking her in my arms, pleased that the great bandages that covered the healing wounds on her arms were hidden to me by the sleeves of the coat.

‘Georgy,’ she said quietly, breaking down in tears as she saw what must have been a mixed expression on my face. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said – a curious choice of words, for of course it was anything but all right. ‘At least you can leave here now. Everything will be fine, I promise you that.’

She nodded and took my arm as we left the ward. ‘Are we going home?’ she asked me.

Home. Another strange word. Where was it, after all? Not here in London. Not Paris, either. Home was many hundreds of miles away, a place to which we could never return. I wasn’t going to lie to her by saying yes.

‘Back to our little flat,’ I said quietly. ‘To close the door behind us and be together, as we were always meant to be. Just the two of us. GeorgyandZoya.’

The Tsar’s Signature

T
HAT IT SHOULD
end like it did, in a railway carriage in Pskov, still astonishes me.

We didn’t celebrate the arrival of 1917 with the same degree of festivity or merriment as we had previous years. The Tsar’s household was in such disarray that I even considered leaving St Petersburg and returning to Kashin, or perhaps heading westward in search of a new life entirely; only the fact that Anastasia would never have left her family – and that I never would have been permitted to take her with me anyway – prevented me from doing so. But tension surrounded all of us who were part of the Imperial entourage. The end was in sight, it was just a question of when.

The Tsar had spent much of 1916 with the army, and in his absence, the Tsaritsa had been left in charge of political matters. While he maintained his position at Stavka, she dominated the government with a strength and single-mindedness that was as impressive as it was misguided. For of course she spoke not with her own voice, but in the words of the
starets
. His influence had been everywhere. But he was dead now, the Tsar was away, and she was alone.

News of Father Gregory’s death had reached the Winter Palace within a day or two of that terrible December evening when his body, poisoned and bullet-ridden, had been thrown into the River Neva. The Empress had been distraught, of course, and relentless in her insistence that his murderers be held to account for their crimes, but recognizing the vulnerability of her own position, she quickly began to internalize her distress. I watched her sometimes as she sat in her private sitting-room, staring
blankly out of the window while one of her waiting women chattered on about some unimportant piece of palace gossip, and I could see in her eyes the determination to go on, to rule, and I admired her for it. Perhaps she was not so much Rasputin’s pawn, after all.

When the Tsar returned for a brief Christmas visit, however, the Tsaritsa insisted that Felix Yusupov be brought to justice, but as he was a member of the extended Imperial Family the Tsar claimed that there was nothing he could do.

‘You are more in thrall to these hangers-on and bloodsucking leeches than you are to God,’ she cried within hours of his reappearance, an afternoon when we were all shocked by how unwell Nicholas looked. It was as if he had aged ten, perhaps fifteen years since we had last seen him in August. He looked as if one more drama to face would be enough for him and he would happily pass out and die.

‘Father Gregory was not God,’ insisted the Tsar, massaging his temples with his fingers and looking around the room in search of support. His four daughters were pretending the argument was not taking place; their attendants were retreating into the shadows of the room, as was I. Alexei was watching from a seat in the corner; he was almost as pale as his father, and I wondered whether he had not injured himself earlier in the day and told no one. It was sometimes possible to tell when the internal bleeding had started: the panicked, desperate look on the boy’s face, the desire to sit perfectly still to ward off approaching trauma, were familiar sights to those of us who knew him well.

‘He was God’s representative,’ shouted the Tsaritsa.

‘Is that so?’ asked the Tsar, looking across at her now angrily, fighting to maintain his composure. ‘And I thought that
I
was God’s representative in Russia. I thought that
I
was the anointed one, not some peasant from Pokrovskoye.’

‘Oh, Nicky!’ she cried in frustration, throwing herself into a chair and burying her face in her hands for a moment, before
standing up and marching over to him again, addressing him as if she was his mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Fedorovna, and not his wife. ‘You cannot allow murderers to go free.’

‘I do not want to,’ he said quickly. ‘Do you think that is what I want from Russia? From my own family?’

‘They are hardly your family,’ she interrupted.

‘If I punish them, it is as if I am saying that we approved of Father Gregory’s influence.’

‘He saved our son!’ she cried. ‘How many times did he—’

‘He did no such thing, Sunny,’ he said. ‘Blessed heaven, how he had you in his grasp!’

‘And is that why you hated him so much?’ she asked. ‘Because I believed in him?’

‘Once, you believed in me,’ he replied quietly, looking away from her now, his face scored with so much misery that I almost forgot that he was the Tsar at all and believed that I was looking at a man no different to myself. How grateful I felt at that moment that no one knew of my own involvement in Rasputin’s death; had that been revealed, the weight of the Tsar’s anger would have undoubtedly been turned in my direction and I might have found myself walking to the gallows before nightfall as a sop to his wife’s distress.

‘But I do believe in you, Nicky,’ she said, softening her tone now and reaching out to him. But he misunderstood the move, I think, and backed away from her, leaving her standing in the centre of the floor with her arms outstretched to him. ‘All I ask is—’

‘Sunny, the people hated him, you know that,’ he insisted.

‘Of course I know it.’

‘And you know why.’

She nodded and said nothing, perhaps aware at last that her five children were observing the scene, even if they pretended that nothing untoward was taking place. I glanced towards Anastasia, who was seated on a sofa, crocheting, her fingers moving carefully in and out of the fabric as she watched her parents argue. I wanted
to run to her, to take her away from that terrible place that seemed to be crumbling down around us. Thoughts of Versailles entered my mind again, but I pushed them aside; I knew only too well how that story had ended.

‘Father Gregory was my confessor, nothing more,’ said the Tsaritsa finally, in an injured voice. ‘And my confidant. But I can live without him, Nicky, you must believe that. I can be strong. I
am
strong. With you away while this hateful war continues—’

‘And then there’s that,’ snapped the Tsar, throwing up his arms. ‘It’s too much, can’t you see it? This power that you have. You must allow others to—’

‘It is traditional for the Tsaritsa to be in charge of policy while the Tsar is away,’ she replied haughtily, raising her head in a regal fashion. ‘There is precedent. Your mother did so, as did hers, and hers before her.’

‘But you go too far, Sunny. You know you do. Trepov tells me—’

‘Ha! Trepov,’ she cried, practically spitting out the name of the Prime Minister. ‘Trepov hates me. Everyone knows that.’

‘Yes,’ cried the Tsar, laughing bitterly. ‘Yes, he does. And why does he?’

‘He doesn’t understand how to run a country. He doesn’t understand where strength comes from.’

‘And where does it come from, Sunny, can you tell me that?’ he asked, lunging towards her now angrily. They had not seen each other in months, the depth of their passion and love was well known to all, it ran through the daily letters they sent to each other, but here they were, apparently hating each other, fighting as if the whole world had conspired to rip them apart. ‘It comes from the heart! And the head!’

‘What do you know of my heart?’ she screamed, and each of her daughters ceased their sewing as she shouted this and looked at their parents in fright. I glanced towards Alexei, who seemed ready to burst into tears. ‘You who have none!’ she continued.
‘You who can think only from his head! When did you last care for what I felt in my heart?’

The Tsar stared at her, saying nothing for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘Trepov insists,’ he said finally, with a defeated shrug. ‘You cannot be in charge any more when I am gone.’

‘Then you must not go!’

‘I have to go, Sunny. The army—’

‘Can survive without you. The Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich can be reinstated.’

‘The Tsar must be at the head of the army,’ he insisted.

‘Then I remain in charge.’

‘You cannot.’

‘You will allow a man like him to dictate to you?’ she asked, astonished. ‘You will allow anyone to dictate anything to you? You who claim to be God’s anointed one?’

‘
Claim
to be?’ he asked, his eyes opening wide in astonishment. ‘What is this
claim
? Are you now saying that it is not what you believe?’

‘I am asking whether this is where we are now, that is all. You say you would not be told what to do by a peasant from Pokrovskoye, but you drop like a cur before a bastard from Kiev. Explain the difference to me, Nicky. Explain it as if I was some ignorant, ill-educated
moujik
, and not the granddaughter of a Queen, the cousin of a Kaiser and the wife of a Tsar.’

The Tsar walked over behind his desk and sat down, hiding his eyes behind his hand for a few moments before looking up again, an expression of doom haunting his face. ‘The Duma,’ he said finally. ‘They demand that they are given proper parliamentary rights.’

‘But how can there be any parliament within an autocracy?’ she asked. ‘The terms are mutually exclusive.’

‘That, my dear Sunny,’ replied the Tsar with a bitter laugh, ‘is rather the crux of the thing, don’t you think? There can’t be. But I can’t fight two wars at once, either. I won’t do it. I don’t have the
strength for it. And neither does the country. No, I shall return to Stavka in a few days, you will go to Tsarskoe Selo with the family, and Trepov will look after political matters in my absence.’

‘If you do this, Nicky,’ she said quietly, ‘then there will be no palace to return to. I can promise you that.’

‘Things will …’ he said, his entire body slumped in his chair. ‘Things will resolve themselves. It will just take time, that’s all.’

The Tsaritsa opened her mouth to say more, but, sensing that she had been defeated, merely shook her head and stared at her husband with pity in her eyes. Looking around the room, she focussed on each of her children in turn, her gaze darkening and softening from face to face, only brightening up when she locked eyes with her youngest child, Alexei.

‘Children,’ she said. ‘Come with me, won’t you?’

The five Romanovs stood immediately, but the Tsaritsa extended both her hands in the air, the palms stretched out flat, and shook her head; it was that rarest of occasions when she deigned to acknowledge the presence of lesser mortals in the room.

‘Just my children,’ she said in a forceful voice. ‘The rest of you, stay here. With the Tsar. He may have need of you.’