The Last Romanov (7 page)

The Belovezh Estate is aflame with giant candles and Baccarat candelabras. A vast tent is set up on the clearing in front of the lodges, and the melodic notes of “The Blue Danube” float out and echo around the forest. The Empress has sent man-sized urns of lilacs from the imperial greenhouse in the Alexander Palace. The scent of roasted mutton, partridge, and truffled whitefish caviar rises from makeshift kitchens and ceramic heating stoves, mingling with the perfume of mead and pine and anticipation. It is Darya's seventeenth birthday.

Wearing a white shirt, loose tie, and unbuttoned vest, his hair sprinkled with silver, Boris Spiridov trots his stallion about the grounds, giving last-minute orders, making certain the tables are set with starched linen and silver stamped with the family emblem, libations plenty, and the cooks vigilant.

Boots crunching on the pine needles underfoot, sapphire blue skirt sweeping the ground, Sabrina Josephine advises Darya regarding the nuances of court protocol, the dangers and joys of carrying royal blood, and the art of seduction.

Her many admirers, gentlemen callers of all ages, young and old aristocrats, noblemen, and grand dukes, come from near and far, bearing all types of lavish gifts and promises of endless devotion. She, like Sabrina, believes in meeting the educated young men who might have potential. She is curious, wants to measure them for herself, gauge their first reaction. She is different, after all. That first moment of an encounter is what matters, whether they gape at her like dumbstruck adolescents or possess the wisdom and self-containment that comes with maturity and a healthy imagination. For now, no one has passed her scrutiny.

So she would rather wade the brooks, attempt to decipher her dreams, or search for yet another healing miracle sprouting from the ground. Or, most of all, she would like to take the train with Boris to Bialystok, the nearest big town, and bid by his side in auctions as he teaches her how to differentiate between an original painting and an imitation, how to bid without creating a frenzy and raising the value. She would like to visit one art gallery or another, hear his philosophy on different mediums, one work of art or another. Or discuss the miracle of imagination with artists of all persuasions, aesthetically adventurous men riveted to her translucent opal gaze.

The imperial entourage arrives bearing gifts and compliments and storks to let loose for good luck. Empress Alexandra wishes Darya a happy birthday and many more years of health and happiness.

Wild hair tamed back with one of her mother's sheer scarves, Darya is radiant in a silver brocaded dress, high-collared and long-sleeved to please the Empress's sense of decorum. She had spent hours in her dressing room, an amalgam of feathery hats, gossamer veils, rhinestone-encrusted evening gowns and gloves, lace and satin corsets, and high-heeled shoes resplendent with bright crystals, purchased from antique shops and back-alley stores. A rack is designated for hand-me-downs the Empress sends her, which a seamstress in town shortens and takes in to fit Darya. Clothing and accessories that other people throw away become precious eye-catchers on her.

The Empress hands Darya an enamel icon studded with diamonds and pearls, a copy of Feodorovskaya, Mother of God, pressing her cheek to Christ's face.

Darya curtsies. “Thank you, Your Majesty, I'll always cherish it.” The icon is a far more valuable gift than any she has ever received, but she wants nothing more than to turn away from the gloomy features of the Feodorovskaya, the hollow eyes, the grief-struck lips.

The Empress gestures with two fingers. “Come closer, Darya Borisovna, this is for your ears only. I would not have made this trip in my condition if it were not for wanting to thank you in person, my dear. You were right that day at Yalta. I am with child, after all. And taking your words to heart, I'm hoping this one is a boy.”

“My heartfelt congratulations,” Darya whispers back. “I cannot wait to meet the little one.”

“Then you must visit us when the time comes. I will send for you. The girls, too, would love to see you. Now, go, enjoy your day. I shall not keep you any longer.”

The Tsar is pleased to be here, away from endless court formalities and responsibilities that leave little time for leisure. He claps Boris on the back. “Hard to believe, my friend, that seventeen years have passed since Sunny introduced you to Sabrina Josephine. You did well that day,” the Emperor teases. “You added to your own family while reducing the aurochs population. Are the animals under control?”

“So much so,” Boris grins back, “they seem to have altogether stopped breeding.”

“We don't want that either, not at all. A controlled number is necessary for our hunting pleasure.”

“Understood, Your Imperial Majesty,” Boris replies with a playful salute and the click of boots. “Shall we join the ladies?”

The tender notes of a dulcimer float outside from the tent, where Jasmine the Persian Dancer is joining three drummers seated on a carpet-covered dais. She sweeps her arms up, anchors her long hair on top of her head, folds her legs under, and settles on her knees in front of a low, mahogany stool that holds her santour, a Persian hammered dulcimer. Her index fingers hooked into the loops of the santour's mallets, she sends them skipping on the taut stings, raising notes that travel to faraway places and transport the perfume of Persian roses and visions of turquoise domes, the plight of torn-apart lovers and the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. A lot has changed since she was last here, at the Belovezh Forest, seventeen years back, but not her feelings toward the Emperor, who, in her heart, remains the sweet, insecure Tsarevich who once clung to her every word. She drops her mallets on the dulcimer, massages her fingers, shakes her dark mane of curls, and raises herself to her full striking height.

She is on the dance floor, pearly veils swaying and foaming about her, embroidered vest tossed to the side to reveal plump breasts packed into a beaded brassiere. Her movements are fresh, languid, her head thrown back, her throbbing neck damp with sweat, her voluptuous buttocks swaying to the clap of the drums. She is twisting and twirling, floating away from the crowd, unleashing her emotions as she sinks into a trance.

More guests stream into the tent. Women huddle farther away from the spectacle, chatter, exchange gossip, wonder why such a brash dancer would remain a favorite in court. Surrounding the dance floor are cheering men, their arousal electrifying, eyes devouring the Persian dancer, her every deliciously intimate swing.

She reaches out and snaps her brassiere open, sending it into a languorous dance overhead.

Men cheer, clap, encourage. Their alcohol breaths mingle with the odor of roasted lamb, ripe fruit, and desire.

She swings the brassiere once, twice, as if to lasso one of the men, aims it at the opening of the tent.

The brassiere lands on the left shoulder of the Empress, who has just stepped in.

A collective gasp of horror can be heard around the tent. The beat of drums, laughter, and applause cease. Maids, servants, waiters are effacing themselves, retreating behind expressions of solemn seriousness, pressing themselves against the canvas walls.

The Empress stares at the brassiere, stares at the insult of beaded lace fragrant with perfume and moist with perspiration. Her features are a mask of revulsion, her pursed lips as pale as death. She raises her gaze to confront the offender. In what appears no more than a halfhearted attempt at modesty, Jasmine bunches her skirts and presses layers of sheer gauze in front of her breasts, exposing her black lace underwear in the process.

Sabrina removes the brassiere from the Tsarina's shoulder, crushing it in one hand, the other restraining the Empress with a soft touch on her arm. “Please, Alix, I will handle this. I promise. Darya will accompany you to your lodging. She'll give you something calming.”

Alix nods, shaken. She reaches out for Darya as if she might faint.

Darya has an urge to spit behind her shoulder. Looming misfortune is creeping up, sour and bitter, to settle on her tongue. As she leads the Empress out of the tent and away from the gathering crowd, Darya is unaware that by the end of this evening, she will understand what her heart already knows.

Sabrina Josephine marches the length of the tent toward the dancer who, having enjoyed the spectacle of the Empress's retreat, has found her way back to the dais.

Lace brassiere dangling in hand, Sabrina charges like an aurochs, marches up the three carpeted steps, and comes face to face with the dancer.

“My lady?” the dancer purrs down at Sabrina. “How may I oblige?”

“Like this!” Sabrina shouts, rising on her toes and looping the brassiere around the dancer's neck, grabbing both ends and yanking with all her might.

The entire tent rocks about them, wind in the trees outside, wind forcing its way under the tent. The installed chandelier sways as if by a chorus of ghosts. The scratch of scurrying squirrels can be heard. A cloud passes across the full moon, framed by the entrance to the tent.

In the absence of the Empress, the emboldened guests crowd the dais as if cheering a spectacle in a Roman arena.

Sabrina tightens her grip on the brassiere, jerking, yanking, squeezing harder. Her rage sparks off her green eyes. Her veins are pumping venom. “I'll kill you! Drag you into the forest and feed you to aurochs.”

Beads of perspiration appear on the dancer's upper lip. She gasps, heaves. The brassiere is wet in Sabrina's hand. Jasmine grabs Sabrina's wrists. They lock eyes, the daring stares of cats. Boris calls out to Sabrina from somewhere, ordering her to stop. He is on the dais, attempting to loosen Sabrina's grip. Every muscle in her face strains. Jasmine's lips are turning color. Her hands fall to her sides. Boris touches Sabrina, a soft touch on her shoulder, gentle, persuasive, full of reproach.

“Sabrina!” He reprimands in a low voice.

She turns her skewering glare on him. And then she hears him utter her name again, feels his tightening grip on her arm. She releases Jasmine, sending her scrambling for breath.

***

Later in the evening, when most of the guests have retired and the dwindling crowd is drunk and swaying to a slow tango, Darya and her parents sneak into the humid canopy of trees to toast Darya's birthday and Boris and Sabrina's seventeen years and nine months of love.

They walk far into the forest, away from the music and vodka-laced air.

Sabrina and Boris amble ahead, sharing champagne from a bottle. “Come along, darling,” Sabrina calls to her daughter. “Come have some champagne.”

The forest is oddly still to Darya. The trees are creeping toward her. Heavy clouds press upon the fecund growth of pine and oak and ash. She comes to a stop on a narrow sandy path between the trees. She listens, struggling to decipher the silence of nature teeming with all types of animals.

Then she sees the Ancient One, her veils whipping a gale about her, floating around one branch or another, disappearing behind a stout tree trunk, and then appearing anew. One moment she is tempting Darya to follow her into the dark, into an abyss of uncertainty, somewhere far from home, the next she is crossing her hands in front of her face, the red paint on her manicured fingernails melting and dripping blood. Darya has learned to decode her dreams of the Ancient One, certain that they foreshadow some looming event, something that will transpire the next instant, the next day, the next month, the next year. But this is different. Wide awake and on the alert, she is uncertain how to decipher the Ancient One's message. Until, raising her bloody fingers, the Ancient One points to her eyes, which are changing shape, widening, deepening, darkening, becoming wild, feral.

Darya cups her hands around her mouth and calls out to Sabrina and Boris to turn back immediately because the forest is different tonight, dangerous, filled with bloodthirsty animals and silent ghosts.

One moment her parents are ahead of her, Boris wiping off the spilled champagne glistening on Sabrina's cheek as she turns to say something to Darya. The next instant, they are engulfed in a thickening gale of dust from which Boris never returns.

An aurochs charges, hooves uprooting bushes and raising dust that momentarily blinds Darya. The animal's curved horns impale Sabrina's skirt, the champagne bottle still clutched in her hand like a weapon. She calls out her daughter's name in an unrecognizable voice, attempts to say something, but is tossed with a violent shake upon the underbrush of pines and leaves. The bottle shatters against a tree. Champagne foams and hisses. Gasping for breath, Sabrina lifts herself on her knees and crawls forward to grab the broken neck of the bottle. She struggles ahead on all fours and aims the jagged glass at the eyes of the animal.

The aurochs crouches, haunches quivering, teeth gnashing, its bloodshot stare aimed at the fearless huntress. It lumbers forward with a great howl and pins Sabrina's arm down with its forefoot, grabs her hand between powerful jaws and snaps down.

Cannon batteries of the Fortress of Peter and Paul announce three hundred salutes across Russia. The cheering populace crowds the streets. Flags wave in the hot breeze. Guns boom in Kronstadt. There is singing and dancing in the streets.

His Imperial Majesty Alexei Nikolaevich, sovereign heir Tsarevich, Grand Duke of Russia, heir to the three-hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty, is expected at Peterhof Chapel.

Tsar Nicholas II and the Empress, Alexandra Feodorovna, pace anxiously outside the church. Custom forbids the imperial parents to be present during their son's baptism ceremony. They gaze at each other with shared joy, struggling to rein in their impatience until the proper time when they will be ushered into the chapel, where family and guests are already seated.

The mercy of God has been visited upon them, and for now, their joy overshadows the catastrophic results of the war with Japan, which has been raging for the last eight months.

The great-grandfather of the Tsarevich, Christian IX of Denmark, has traveled from afar to witness the baptism of a miracle, the first heir born to a reigning Russian Tsar since the seventeenth century. He sits next to Maria Feodorovna, the dowager mother, who is regal in a brocaded gown studded with diamonds. A tiara of oak and laurel leaves, surrounded by sheaves of wheat encrusted with diamonds and centered with a citrine, shimmers on top of her swept-up hair.

Grand duchesses, distant cousins, and aunts flaunt gold-embroidered gowns, scintillating jewels, cascading diamond earrings, and diadems of all shapes and sizes. Grand dukes, princes, and uncles discuss the significance of this birth and how it will change the course of history. Court officials in gold-laced coats, elk-skin breeches, and rows of medals on their chests sit silent and stiff-backed, expecting the venerable arrival. Couriers in magnificent uniforms with gold braid and high orders on their chests discuss the dire political situation: negotiations with the Japanese to seek a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean had broken down, leading to war and threatening a Japanese victory. Should Japan win, the balance of power in East Asia would shift significantly, and the embarrassing defeat could pitch the Russian people against their Tsarist government. Still, as a tribute to courage and bravery on the battlefield, the entire corps of officers of the Russian army and navy has been named honorary godfathers of the Tsarevich.

The grand duchesses—nine-year-old Olga, seven-year-old Tatiana, five-year-old Maria, and three-year-old Anastasia—are all dressed in lace, chiffon, and organza. They crane their necks to catch the first glimpse of their infant brother.

The imperial entourage, ladies-in-waiting, squires, and Cossacks of the Guard are seated in back of the cathedral. Among them are Lili Dehn, close friend of the Empress, and her husband, an officer of the imperial yacht, and Anna Vyrubova, the lady-in-waiting of the Empress. Also present are Tamara Sheremetev, the resident imperial artist and Creator of Miniatures, accompanied by her syphilitic husband, Count Trebla, the imperial veterinarian.

The gold-inlaid mahogany doors swing open and the grand master of ceremonies marches into the chapel. He lifts his ebony staff with the imperial double-headed eagle. Three taps of his staff reverberate around the hall. “His Imperial Majesty Alexei Nikolaevich, sovereign heir Tsarevich.”

Darya Borisovna emerges through the doors, her golden gaze resting on every man, woman, and child. Her torrent of black curls tumbles over a velvet cape the color of amethyst, under which sway colorful scarves and scented petticoats that once belonged to her mother.

She is delivering the Tsarevich to the baptismal font on a pillow of gold cloth, which is fastened to a jeweled strap looped around her neck.

Murmurs of disbelief rise from the assembly. Who is this revelation, swathed in mysticism and mystery? Who is this girl who carries herself with unprecedented grace and exemplary confidence? Why is such a holy duty assigned to such a young woman?

Darya swallows her grief, adjusts the pillow on her arms and steers her way toward the central aisle, her eager steps moving toward Father Yanishev, the confessor to the Imperial Family.

A few days earlier, the lady-in-waiting in charge of this task was struck with contagious pockmarks on her entire body. The Empress, who found the advanced age of the lady-in-waiting unsuitable in the first place, had seized the opportunity to persuade the Emperor that Darya was an appropriate candidate. As she has taken up residence with the Imperial Family to spend her year of mourning in the Alexander Palace, Darya is most touched by this added kindness.

She sails down the aisle, comfortable in her skin, as if she is carrying her own son to the baptismal font. Her laced shoes tightly bound, the soles fitted with rubber to prevent her slipping, a continuing tradition to accommodate the ladies-in-waiting who are usually older, she delivers the Tsarevich to the trembling hands of Father Yanishev.

Slowly, carefully, he undresses the small Tsarevich, preparing him for the ceremony. He dips the heir into the font, then raises the infant high above his head.

The cathedral erupts into applause.

The screaming Tsarevich lets loose a stream of urine on the ecclesiastic pendant of rubies and emeralds Father Yanishev wears on his habit. To the roar of laughter, the father declares that he is now doubly sanctified.

The grand master of ceremonies announces their Imperial Majesties. The crowd rises to their feet.

Women sink into deep curtsy.

Men bow low.

Her chestnut-red hair glowing under the chandeliers, her eyes dazzled with joy, the Tsarina is lavish in white silk embroidered in gold and covered by a velvet robe with a thirteen-foot sable-trimmed train. She wears a brooch of Ceylon sapphire mounted in gold and silver and bordered by fifty-six carats of unparalleled diamonds, which were transported in an armored car from the diamond chamber in the St. Petersburg Winter Palace. The Tsar is clad in formal regalia, medal-heavy and trimmed with gold braid and sable.

Darya reclaims the Tsarevich from Father Yanishev, wraps him in a towel, and dries him briskly. She plants soft kisses on his wrinkled forehead, brushes his peach-fuzz hair, and buttons up his baptismal robe. The Tsarevich grabs her finger and smiles at her with his mother's gray blue eyes. She pulls out a small box from her skirt pocket, snaps the clasp open, and steals a quick look at an enamel amulet nestled in blue satin. Fashioned by Peter Carl Fabergé, goldsmith and jeweler to the Imperial Court, the amulet depicts a mythical childlike figure with pointed emerald ears and ruby eyes, the belly a translucent opal, which will portend the Tsarevich's future.

“My gift to you, Loves. For good luck and endless happiness,” she whispers. “It was my father's gift to me on my seventeenth birthday, and I had the back engraved to you.”

She fastens the amulet to the Tsarevich's baptism robe, strokes the opal belly, the ruby eyes, not a gesture of farewell, no, not that, but a silent vow to hold her father's memory dear. She has granted his gift a prominent stage, an honor and permanence he would have appreciated.