Everyone in St. Petersburg speaks of it. It is the sensation of the salons and the teahouses. The crude, semi-illiterate peasant from Siberia with the incoherent speech, the monstrous scrawl, and the louche habits, is a regular guest at the glorious imperial palace out at Tsarskoye Selo.
He now calls the tsarina and the tsar “Mama” and “Papa”-the mother and father of the land of Russia. In return, they refer to him warmly as “Our Friend.”
They know nothing about me, of course. No one does. That is how my master wills it to be, and as in everything else, I trust his judgment. For despite the simplicity of his manner, he is truly wise. Wiser, I would venture, than any man who has walked this land. A bold claim, but one I believe to be true.
Our journey together, the one that began in that faraway monastery all those years ago, was always destined to bring us here, to the capital. To St. Petersburg. It was a long road and an arduous one, but one that was necessary to lay the groundwork for our enterprise. For that is why we are here.
To save the empire.
Before meeting Rasputin, I was oblivious to the unease that was simmering across our beloved Mother Russia. My life had been too insular, and I had been too focused on my research to notice the changes going on outside my laboratory. It was during our long discussions at the monastery in Verkhoturye that my master opened my eyes to what he had seen in his travels and told me about this great unease that needs our attention.
The peasants, downtrodden and oppressed, have grown jaded and cynical. Their worsening conditions have eroded their faith in the royal family, which seems lost in its own world. Our new German-born empress, Alexandra of Hesse, is haughty, stern, and domineering. The young tsar, Nicholas, is a physically slight, weak-willed, and anxious man who is in thrall to his imposing wife. They don’t even live in the capital, preferring to stay at their palaces at Tsarskoye Selo, twenty-five versts to the south-a tiresome journey by carriage, or even by motorcar, for anyone who was fortunate enough to be granted an audience. They seem to be detached from the problems sweeping our country and are oblivious to the resentment that the populace, and much of society, feels for them. I remember my own shock and revulsion at what had happened when the tsar finally ascended to the throne. The newly married tsar and tsarina had set up an outdoor festival to celebrate their coronation; the intention had been to extend a helping hand to the poor by offering them a grand day out and free food. They hadn’t planned for the hundreds of thousands of wretched souls who turned up. In the ensuing chaos, several hundred of the poor folk had died, trampled to death. The tsar and his young bride hadn’t seen fit to cancel their grand ball that same evening. The dead were still being taken away by the cartload while the court toasted the royal couple and danced the night away.
Worse still for the state of our great nation is that the people have lost their faith in our Church. This is through no fault of their own. With its pomp and its doctrinal introspection, it is the Church that has lost its connection to the people. A connection Grigory understands better than anyone.
“The mystical and the prophetic are the true essence of Christianity, and these things matter greatly to the people,” he told me in one of our long discussions at the monastery. “But the Church’s officials and its preachers have forgotten it.”
My master told me about the time he spent in the pagan cloisters, deep in the Siberian forests. In these “churches of the people,” as he called them, he learned the ways of the elders. It was there that he was taught the art of healing through potions and prayer. It was also there that he’d first heard prophesies of the downfall of the Romanov dynasty and of a bloody revolution to come.
“The monarchy needs saving,” Father Grigory told me. “The devil’s agents are everywhere, even in the halls of government, plotting to topple the tsar and undermine the faithful. We will need to be cunning if we are to save the people from themselves. That is why God gave you his divine inspiration to design and build your machine. We will need it if we are to overcome the formidable forces of the Antichrist that are allayed against us.”
My master understands these matters with great perspicacity, and I am grateful to be accompanying him on this sacred mission.
WE BEGAN OUR JOURNEY in the provinces, far from the capital. We needed to build on the work Father Grigory had already begun on his own and embellish his reputation as a prophet and a healer. I say embellish, for the man would be a prophet and a healer even without my assistance. He is gifted by God with such powers.
We moved from village to village, from monastery to monastery. I accompanied him as a humble, loyal follower. I quickly discovered that Father Grigory understands people with uncanny perceptiveness. He is a shrewd and unerring judge of character. All those years spent wandering the land before we met, sitting in prayer and discussion with countless people, gave him a veritable fount of insights. Even without the use of my discovery, his tremendous instincts and his hypnotic gaze allow him to divine the hidden desires and fears of those he meets. The most subtle of hints don’t go unnoticed.
Of course, with the aid of my device, he was able to fathom all their secrets. Secrets that he put to good use by turning them into revelations that astounded his gullible, superstitious audience.
On a few occasions, when faced with more stern resistance and cynicism, Father Grigory felt that more memorable interventions were needed. I remember one such incident, in a village near Kazan. It was in the dead of winter, and our request for food and shelter had been brutishly rebuffed. The local priest, an oaf of a man whose name I have long since forgotten, was unmoved by Father Grigory’s offers of spiritual enlightenment. It was only through the good graces of a reluctant blacksmith that we ended up in a small barn while the snow fell outside. The local townsfolk weren’t any more amenable the next day, or the one after. Father Grigory’s mood soured, and a vicious hunger for retribution took hold of him.
“Listen to me, Misha,” he told me that night. “Something malignant has these peasants in its grip. I have seen it before, and I fear my words won’t be enough to help them overcome it. We will need to be more cunning if we are to save them.”
I listened carefully as he outlined his plan, then nodded my acquiescence.
The next night was bitterly cold, and at the allotted time, I stood in the shadows as Father Grigory ran through the village with nothing but his shirt on, screaming like a madman.
“Repent,” he hollered, “repent before the calamity strikes.”
He had been warning the villagers of something terrible all day. The peasants watched in shock as Father Grigory reached the edge of the village and collapsed into unconsciousness.
By the time he awoke many hours later, half the village had burned down.
Needless to say, those peasants were turned into fervent believers. Little did they suspect that it was I who had set the place aflame.
With prophesies, healing, and small miracles, we traveled the land and built up his reputation over the course of many months. On a couple of occasions, we returned to Pokrovskoye, his home. I met his parents, his wife, and his children. They seemed greatly relieved and impressed by his burgeoning fame. I heard stories of how, as a youngster, he spent hours staring at the sky and asking probing questions about life. I also heard about the early manifestations of his talents: how as a child, he’d correctly identified the thief who’d stolen a neighbor’s horse, how he’d predicted another villager’s demise, how he’d healed a horse that had gone lame.
The doubters and the suspicious, however, remained. And on our third visit back to Pokrovskoye, they were ready for us.