Another tug on his jacket, as he thought: I labor hard to be both.
But most imagination was beyond him. It had not been part of his upbringing. No tutor would have lasted who suggested he learn such a thing. As if imagination could be taught.
“For poets, actors, and women, I suppose,” he told the mirror. “And Jews. I am the tsar. I need facts, not fairy stories. I outgrew those when I was still a young boy.” Then he grinned at his image. “Maybe not Kostchai the Deathless.” As he’d once said to his nanny, “A tsar should live forever.” She’d snapped back, “Not all tsars deserve it.” He never told his mother or father what she said, but he remembered.
It was time to get ready for his trip. He hated to leave the family, his beloved wife, the dragons. But duty called. It was what he was born to, what he would die for. He promised himself he would wear it well to the very end.
Or perhaps, I shall live forever. If I deserve it.
Chapter 2
The tsarina glanced out of the window as the dragons rose into their long, black line. She loved to watch them, too, but for reasons very different than her husband’s. So graceful, she thought. Ils sont si gracieux. Like geese going south, if you ignored the dragons’ long tails, the smoke that trailed behind them. If you didn’t try to change their grunting sounds into the hysterics of geese.
She was well used to ignoring aspects of things she didn’t like. That was part of what a good ruler did. Hold one’s nose and think of Our Lord. She had done that enough times to have earned her rightful place in Eternity.
She chuckled to herself. It was also how she had so many children. How she got through her days in court. Russian courtiers were not an easy crowd to swallow, jumped-up peasants, the lot of them. And their French—incroyable! She had tried to be interested in their problems, their troubles, but she’d made few friends. They spoke Russian quickly when around her, which they knew she didn’t know well. She could have understood them in German or English or French. Or if written, she had a good sense of Latin and Greek. But Russian—even after so many years—was often still a puzzle to her. And usually at the worst moments. She was too shy to ask the Russians to speak more slowly. Or to ask the meaning of a word. She hated feeling incompetent. Languages had always been her best subject. She was right to be proud of her way with many tongues. But Russian….
Yes, she greatly preferred the dragons with their grace and grunts to the Russian courtiers.
There were many days when she longed for home. Her childhood home. The family castle in Darmstadt remained enshrined in her memory. She knew the court called her German Alix. They showed their hatred of her at every formal occasion. Whispering as she went past, never inviting her to take tea.
But, she reminded herself, I am Tsarina, not any of you. Though of course Mother Dear, that witch of a mother-in-law, outranked her because of the barbaric Russian customs.
She felt herself getting cold, and then her jaw began to ache again. A headache was starting, a clear sign that she needed another bit of her powder in its glass of warm water. Bless Father Grigori who had discovered the Veronal for her. This last year it had gotten her through many difficult days.
Glancing once more out of the window, she saw the last of the black vee disappearing over the horizon. She shivered with some kind of unholy delight watching them on their way to harrow the Jews, those filthy carbuncles on Russia’s behind. Even worse than those in her beloved Germany. She remembered some of the stories dear Papa used to tell about them, though none she could repeat in polite society. Not as a woman. Not as the tsarina.
But there was no need to. The stories—truths, really—were well known. Darling Nicky had even commissioned a pamphlet about it—their degradations, the murder of innocent Christian babies to use the holy blood to make their disgusting crackers. Matza, it was called. Silly word for such a foul deed. She crossed herself three times to get rid of the image of those poor babies, then shivered, and not from the cold. She hoped the dragons would manage to kill a lot of the Jews this time. The whole lot of them.
There was a sudden, horrible cry from the nursery two floors above.
An answering frightened scream, possibly one of the younger nurses.
The tsarina turned sharply at the sound.
Alexei must have fallen again.
With dignified speed—she’d never been a fast walker, leg injuries as a child had defined her careful gait—she headed straight off to the nursery, two floors and a long hallway away from where she was now. The doctors predicted that Alexei would not die of his diseased blood. But what did they know? Her own brother had died of the same filthy illness. And German doctors, even the ones unable to save her brother, were much, much better than the Russians.
This time I will persuade Nicky to bring German doctors here. Once she set her mind to it, she could always make it happen. But she always chose her battles carefully.
There. One set of stairs done and no more screams.
She stopped to catch her breath.
And then she thought—as she often did—that there was no way they could let Alexei become the tsar. Even the smallest of arguments wore him down. His own baby tantrums could turn into days of distress. The stress of being tsar would certainly kill him.
She would not, could not, think about the possibility of an early death for her son.
She remembered hearing from her tutor how King Henry VIII of England’s sick son died very young and how his half sisters, Mary and Elizabeth had nearly ruined the kingdom, squabbling over who would get to rule after him. Would it possibly be the same if Alexei assumed the throne? When he assumed the throne. Only with three living sisters to squabble, not just two? Would the Russians—barbarians—accept the idea of a woman on the throne? Even with her own grandmother the longest -reigning monarch in the civilized world?
She set off on the second set of stairs, wondering as she often did if she at this age might have another child. It would have to be another son. She sighed aloud. It was her burden and her duty.
Without noticing, she shuddered. Touched her right temple, which was throbbing.
Best she get the girls married off—or at least promised—as soon as possible, to strong princes.
Halfway up the second set of stairs, she took a deep gulp of air and pushed for more speed from her weak legs. This disease of Alexei’s might kill us all someday.
Now in the hall, she went along as fast as she could, hoping the bruising might not have hurt Alexei so much this time. That his knees wouldn’t swell up.
The doctors had been hinting at an improvement. The aspirin powder they had been giving Alexei regularly was something new, processed in Germany, so she knew it had to be of good quality—was especially made for such pain, such swelling.
For a while it had worked. But only a little while.
But Father Grigori, blessed be that holy man, had demanded the doctors be kept away. And as God so favored him, she had gone along with his advice.
And….
She’d reached the door of the nursery. It was slightly ajar. She listened for a second, heard no cries, no sobbing. Alexei seemed to be doing better under the priest’s care rather than the doctors’. Less bruising, better appetite….
But that cry that she’d been able to hear two floors away… that was not a sound she’d heard before. Perhaps the pain had maybe gotten worse. Ach! It was so difficult to know what to do.