The Romanov Bride Read online

  Suddenly a footman rushed forward, placing a fur cape over the Grand Duke’s shoulders, and we were off. With great pomp, two uniformed guards threw open the Palace doors, and we four royals stepped into the cold, snowy night, followed immediately by my Starshiye Freilini and my husband’s aide-de-camp. As we approached the large, old-fashioned carriage-a remarkably heavy brougham, its carbide lamps now blazing brightly-the Grand Duke’s driver, Coachman Rudinkin, silently bowed his head and tipped his stubby top hat. A footman hurried ahead of us all, opened the carriage door, and the Grand Duke and I and our young charges climbed in, settling on the silk cushions. Once our attendants were settled in a lesser carriage behind us, the whips began to crack and we went dashing across the inner territories of the mighty Kremlin, soon to pass through its gates.

  Chapter 14 PAVEL

  By the time I reached the end of the Upper Trading Row, the snow, which had promised to be heavy, had faded to a handful of flakes. Crossing onto the vast Red Square I could see no carriages or sleighs, merely a handful of peasants wandering this way and that, as they did round the clock. I imagined that I looked just like them, a lonely man, his purpose unknown and certainly not of interest, merely in a rush to cross the rather desolate space.

  As I passed the corner of the tall redbrick History Museum, I eyed someone emerging from the shadows. They said half of the city’s street janitors were spies for the police, and at first I couldn’t tell who this person was. I pressed on, pretending not to have noticed him, thinking only that we were so close, so very close, to seeing our dreams fulfilled. All I had to do was deliver this bomb, which I cradled as dearly as if it were my unborn child. And then, of course, my next duty would be my greatest.

  Suddenly the man behind me, the one who had blossomed out of the shadows, hurried alongside me. When he was right by my side, I glanced over and saw the familiar face of Kalyayev, our poet. I smiled, he grinned back, and in a single gentle movement I passed the bomb from my arms to his. It only took a second. No one could have noticed. And, with the goods delivered, I crossed the cobbles and melted into the white shadows of the snowy Aleksandrovski Gardens. Meanwhile, Kalyayev pressed farther on, disappearing into the gardens as well.

  I felt such elation. Such happiness. We were assured success now, weren’t we? All I had to do was spy the carriage, cross onto the street, and if I saw the Grand Duke himself inside the coach I was to drop the black rag. Yes, it was black, the color of death and night, specifically chosen so that Kalyayev could see the signal on the snowy street, and then he would dart out and heave the bomb through the window of the carriage. The Grand Duke would be killed immediately and everything would change, right?

  I felt no cold. No chill. And certainly no dread. Only excitement. The Grand Duke and probably his wife would come, I thought, staring up the slight hill toward the towering Nikolsky Gate. They would emerge from the Kremlin via that gate, turn left, and pass us by. And they would do so within minutes, perhaps even seconds, for the opera was due to start shortly.

  I waited, my eyes trained on that very spot, and I don’t think I blinked until it appeared like a mirage in the night, not a sleigh but a carriage exiting the Kremlin. It was like some kind of fantasy, yet when it turned and crossed the corner of Red Square and started down the low hill it became real, for I saw the carriage and its two bright lights. That had to be the Grand Duke on his way to the Bolshoi. He had to be inside. How wonderful!

  Stepping out of the shadows, I followed our plan exactly. The carriage was making its way toward me, I was making my way toward it. And all I had to do as it passed was glance inside. If by chance it wasn’t the Grand Duke’s carriage, I was to do nothing. If the Grand Duchess was inside and alone, I was to do nothing. But if he was in there, with or without his wife, I was to pull the black rag from my pocket and drop it on the cobbles. That would be the signal. Kalyayev would rush from the shadows of the gardens and hurl the bomb through the glass window and onto his lap.

  The lights of the carriage became still brighter and larger as it neared, and within a few steps I saw the white harnesses on the beautiful dark horses. And I saw, too, that the driver was wearing a fine coat bundled over his livery. There was no doubt about it, I thought as I reached into my right pocket and clutched the dark rag, this was the vehicle of a highborn gentleman. And, yes, when the carriage was but twenty paces away, there it was on the door itself, the Grand Duke’s royal crest.

  Now the only question was who exactly was inside…

  I felt the eyes of the coachman upon me, for he was most certainly protective of his master. I knew he was studying me, wondering if I posed some kind of danger, and so to look a simple, harmless fool I pulled both hands from my pockets and rubbed them together as if to beat away the cold. Satisfied that I carried no gun or bomb, the coachman drove on at his normal pace.

  And then like any Russian fool upon suddenly seeing his master, I stopped, took off my hat with my left hand, and bowed as the carriage passed. With my right, I reached into my pocket and clutched the black rag, eager to drop it onto the street. A lamp burned inside the large old carriage as well, and in its soft light I saw him, the royal bastard, our Grand Duke, bearded and caped and looking remarkably smug. Sitting right next to him, of course, was his bride, and it’s true, I was stunned by her beauty. Never had I seen a more pleasing creature, the gentle shape of her face, the softness of her lips. This was the first time I had ever laid eyes on the Grand Duchess Elisavyeta Fyodorovna, of course, and her skin glowed and diamonds sparkled all around her. Nevertheless, I retained my sense of duty and pulled the black rag from my pocket and was all set to drop it when Her Highness saw me standing out there in the cold. Looking directly at me, she caught my eyes with hers, lured me like a golden icon of the Mother of God, and smiled softly, even gently, as if she understood my misery and even felt a kind of compassion for me and my life.

  Surprised-no, shocked-I hesitated.

  I should have dropped the black rag right then and there. Had I done so, Kalyayev would already have been darting from the shadows of the Aleksandrovski Gardens. Instead, I waited a moment too long, and in that moment I saw not just the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Sergei but two others sitting right opposite them. And not two other adults… but children! Bozhe moi, my God, it was their young charges, the girl and the boy! Nothing could have stunned me more. We had rejoiced at the idea of blowing up the Grand Duke Sergei. We had all agreed, if need be, to kill his wife, the Madonna of Romanov princesses, as well. But young ones? Could I throw the black rag to the cobbles and thereby condemn these children to a bloody and violent death?

  Without even thinking, I turned away, my body shivering madly. Killing a man known and hated for his iron rule was one thing. Even murdering his wife as well was somehow acceptable. But blowing to pieces these young ones, royal or not, was not right. I couldn’t do it! We hadn’t talked of this possibility, that the young Grand Duchess Maria and Grand Duke Dmitri might be accompanying their foster parents to the opera, but there they were, sitting opposite their guardians!

  I turned and hurried off without dropping the black rag, proving beyond a doubt that despite the murder of my own wife and unborn child there was still something human left alive in my dark heart.

  Chapter 15 ELLA

  “Why do you always do that?” asked my husband.

  “Do what?” I replied as we drove toward the Bolshoi.

  “Greet people like you just did with that man back there. He charged up to our carriage and you met his curiosity with a pleasant nod of your head.”

  “Well… well…” I said, rather flustered. “I suppose I was simply trying to do my duty.”

  “In the future you shouldn’t be so open. People are always staring upon us, and if you acknowledge them in any way it only encourages them. Is that what you want, people looking upon us as if we were monkeys?”

  My face burning, I muttered, “Of course not.”

  I folded my hands in my lap and glanc
ed out the window, not venturing another word and not daring to gaze upon the children, either, for I knew they were studying me, perhaps taking delight in my humiliation. But… but wasn’t that my duty, to reach out to our people, to inspire the best in them? Of course it was. And yet I couldn’t counter my husband, not in front of the young ones.

  I wanted to cry. I wanted to lash out. Instead I reached out and rested my trembling hand upon my husband’s arm. Sergei ’s inner soul, I knew, was so conflicted, so tortured, and I had to remind myself that my greatest duty was to him, and my greatest task then was to soothe the poor man, who, it was true, had become embittered not just by his own appetites but by the murder of his father as well. Yes, it was Sergei’s own father, Aleksander II, who had freed the serfs in 1861, saying “Let us liberate the serfs from above or they will liberate themselves from below.” It was Aleksander II, as well, who had planned to end autocratic rule in Russia by introducing a European-style constitution. This would have long come to pass were it not for the revolutionaries, for just days before the constitution was to be released they had blown the Tsar apart.

  And with what result?

  The revolutionaries had believed this death would spark a great revolution, but in fact it created not a single demonstration, only widespread mourning. And the new Tsar, Aleksander III, what did he and the Grand Dukes think, including my dear Sergei? Well, they came to hate any kind of revolutionary or progressive thought, for it was the revolutionaries who had killed their father. Worse, they fully believed the murder of Aleksander II was God’s punishment for the Tsar’s folly with liberalism. My husband, shocked by the savage murder of his father, especially felt this, just as he believed that the only way to deal with unrest was by force. And so the great constitution, Russia ’s first, was promptly withdrawn.

  Oh, I knew revolutionaries wanted to go from Tuesday to Friday in one giant leap, but were it not for them Russia would long ago have had a constitution. One had only to look upon the murder of Aleksander II to realize that that horrific act took our dear land not forward but back to Sunday, if not further.

  And just look at what was now happening, I thought, peering out at a broken street lamp and windows that had been smashed during the recent riots. Just how far were we retreating into chaos? Oh, the simple people of our Russia didn’t know what they were doing in these dark days. They were like sick children whom one loved a hundred times more in their illness than when they were well and happy. One longed to ease their sufferings, to teach them patience. This, I knew, was what I felt more every day.

  And then the opera…

  Suddenly the grand building with its great columns and electric illumination came into view. Suffice to say that it was a command performance, that our beloved talent, Boris Shalyapin, sang his most famous role, Boris Godunov, which, Sergei remarked, the poor man probably had to sing as often as a tea-kettle whistles. And all society, dressed in their finest uniforms and gowns, were greatly pleased to see Sergei and me in attendance, so I did collect much money for my Charity Fund, and the evening was a grand success.

  Chapter 16 PAVEL

  Having failed in my task, I retreated into the night shadows of the Aleksandrovski Gardens, shaking and sweating despite the frost. What had I done? Had I ruined the plan altogether? But how else could I have acted, what choice was there?

  Little Kalyayev, his sweet face tense with anxiety and cradling the bomb, came dashing toward me, and demanded, “What is it? What happened? Was the Grand Duke not in the carriage?”

  “He was there-I saw him!”

  “Then what-?”

  Shaking and nearly in tears, I pleaded, “I couldn’t kill children!”

  “What do you mean, what children?”

  “Tell me I did the right thing!”

  “You fool, what are you talking about?”

  Savinkov, the Polish fellow on the sleigh, the one from whom I had got the bomb, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Together the two of them pulled and pushed me into a hidden area, where they pinned me against a tree.

  Pressing a knife against my throat, Savinkov hissed, “The Grand Duke’s carriage passed right by me as it drove around the corner-he was in there! I saw him with my own eyes! And he’d already be dead if it weren’t for you! You failed and now you’ve put the entire operation in danger!”

  “But children… I saw them in there, that young Grand Duchess and Duke, and… and…!”

  “What children? I saw none!”

  “They were in there, the young ones, sitting just opposite the Grand Duke Sergei!”

  All but screaming in my ear, Kalyayev demanded, “Are you a traitor to our cause? Have you betrayed us to the police?”

  “No, I swear!” I pleaded. “The Grand Duchess Elisavyeta was in there, too, and I would have given the signal… but the children, the two little ones! I saw the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess and the two children-I saw them all! But… but we never talked about this, what we should do if there were children present! Forgive me, I just couldn’t do it!”

  Kalyayev turned away, slammed his fist against his own forehead, and said, “If all four of them were really in the carriage, then our friend here is correct, we couldn’t kill them, not the little ones.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” demanded Savinkov.

  “We want the Grand Duke’s death to unleash revolution and… and…” Kalyayev fell into desperate thought. “And that wouldn’t happen if we started killing children. That would turn the workers and mothers against us, not for us.”

  “But I saw no children!” snapped Savinkov. “He’s lying-I say we kill this one here and now!”

  “Go ahead,” I said, only too eager to pass from this world. “But I swear all four of them were in the carriage!”

  A long minute of argument followed, but Savinkov and Kalyayev decided to spare my life, at least for the moment, at least until they could figure out if I was telling the truth. And so they led me from the park and delivered both me and the bomb to several other conspirators, who were dressed as peasants and who in turn led me to a small apartment with only one window. There I was shoved onto a chair and my arms were tied behind my back. The bomb was placed on a table, and Dora Brilliant herself appeared before too long. It was her job to disarm the explosive, which she proceeded to do right before my eyes.

  “Did I do the right thing?” I pleaded, my brow beading with perspiration. “Or did I ruin it all? What have I done?”

  As she coolly went about her business, she shrugged, and muttered, “You did what you needed to do.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Sh,” she said, carefully pulling some small piece from the bomb. “The others will discover for themselves that you are telling the truth-and I’m sure you are, for I can see it in your eyes-and then we will decide upon another time and place to put an end to the Grand Duke.”

  Of course I was telling the truth. But of course I didn’t care if they killed me. And yet I couldn’t stop trembling, which perplexed me a great deal and only caused me to tremble more. I had thought everything dead within me, every morsel of compassion, of feeling, long gone. Or was it not? I realized that that was what scared me more than anything else-that I carried a weakness, a softness, which could and would dampen my thirst for blood. I’d felt not a moment of hesitation or remorse when I slit the throat of that unimportant bureaucrat in Novgorod, and yet the sight of those two royal children had caused me to fall apart. What did this mean, the end of my revolutionary path? Was I not destined to avenge the deaths of my wife and child and fellow workers who had fallen on Bloody Sunday?

  No, I thought, just picture Shura lying there in that crimson snow, just remember her bright death in that blinding sunshine…

  Her delicate work completed, Dora Brilliant disappeared behind a curtain and into the next room. Alone and tied to the chair, I drifted in and out of self-pity for what seemed like hours, one moment lashing myself for my failure to hasten the end of the Grand Duke, the
next silently sobbing at the loss of my wife and unborn. I wanted to die. I thought of breaking loose and finding poison, of hanging myself, of taking a gun and blowing my brains out, of leaping across the room and grabbing the disarmed bomb and somehow making it explode…

  Hours later the door opened. The two of them, Kalyayev and Savinkov, came stomping in. At the sound of them, Dora Brilliant and some other comrade reappeared. But one glance at Kalyayev and I knew my fate. From the satisfied smirk written all across his brow, I knew, unfortunately, that I was to live.

  Throwing his fur hat on the table next to the disarmed bomb, Kalyayev said, “I waited outside the Bolshoi in the cold. Handfuls of drivers were huddled around fires, and I moved from one to the next, gleaning what information I could, asking: ‘Did the Grand Duke come to the theater tonight? Which carriage did he come in? Was his wife in attendance also? Was there anyone else with them?’ ”

  “Meanwhile I went inside,” confessed Savinkov, who, owing to his aristocratic looks, I was sure, had had no trouble entering the Imperial Bolshoi. “And I asked and inquired, and everywhere I heard exactly what they were saying out on the street, that the Grand Duke had arrived with his wife as well as his two young wards.”

  “Not only that,” added Kalyayev, “but I waited outside until the end of the performance and I saw the four of them for myself. All bundled up, they hurried through the cold and climbed back in the Grand Duke’s carriage, returning directly to the Kremlin.”

  “So our little new revolutionary, our Pavel here, did quite the correct thing,” began Dora Brilliant, running a hand through her dark hair. “Not only would it have been morally wrong to kill the children but we would have lost many supporters and sympathizers. In fact, it would have set us back years.”

  Realizing that I had told the truth as well as, by some fluke, acted in the best interests of the Revolution, they freed me, cutting loose the cords that bound me. I slumped forward, my face falling into my hands. More than anything I was overwhelmed with self-doubt, for the truth was that I had made no heroic decision, nor had I even briefly thought what might be best for the cause. Simply, I had been defeated by the sight of the two youths.