“Listen to me carefully, Father Grigori,” Gospodin Ministir Protopopov had said. “People are openly plotting your death. Be on your guard every moment! These are very difficult times!”
As I now rushed out the door, I called to the two secret agents posted on our staircase. Coming to our aid, they each took Papa by an arm, and all of us quickly descended. Once downstairs, we stepped from the small lobby, across the courtyard, through the archway, and onto the frigid street, where a dark blue limousine was already waiting for us. It was a Delaunay-Belleville and certainly from the imperial garage, though it lacked a coat of arms and official markings. When the chauffeur jumped out to open the door for us, I could see by his khaki-colored full-dress uniform and the double-headed eagles stamped on the gold braid around his collar that he was in fact one of the Tsar’s personal drivers. That an unmarked motor had been sent was no surprise, for the Tsaritsa always took great pains not to draw attention to my father’s visits to the palace.
As we flew off, rushing down the street and then turning along the embankment of the Fontanka River, I leaned over and lowered Papa’s window so the brisk night air might rouse him to his duties. Sitting back in the rich leather seat, I pulled my cloak over my shoulders and buried my hands in my fur muff-which the Empress had gifted me just the year before.
It was slightly past midnight, and had this been before the war and these the White Nights of summer, the streets would have been flooded with dusky sunlight, people in search of entertainment, and any number of horse cabs. In December, however, the planned boulevards and prospekti of the capital-all of which were big and straight and therefore so very foreign, so uncomfortably non-Russian-were dark and freezing and filled now with droves of wounded soldiers and hungry peasants, some huddled around open fires, others sleeping right out on the pavements, with a few marauders roaming about. Not long ago Papa had had a vision that the Tsar needed to bring trainload after trainload of grain into the capital. And he was right. The liodi-common people-needed food. Back home in our village, we had lived through many hard seasons, and my father knew very well what the Tsar did not-that a peasant without bread was a very dangerous man.
When we turned onto Nevsky Prospekt I saw only a small handful of sleighs and just one place that looked lively and warm, the Sergeeivski Palace, which had been home to Grand Duchess Elizabeth, the Tsaritsa’s sister, before she’d taken to the cloth. Now it was inhabited by the young Grand Duke Dmitri, and the second-floor windows of the stunning red building were ablaze with electric lights and some sort of revelry, for of course there were not and never would be any shortages among the nobility. After that, all was depressingly quiet, the streets filled with litter and lost souls, who, I began to realize, looked increasingly less like wounded soldiers and more like deserters.
Within a short time we left the edge of the city and were speeding through the countryside. Father and I sat silent in the rear seat, he gazing out his window, I staring out mine. The moon was surprisingly bright, and as my eyes followed the snow-laden landscape, I saw flat white fields, then a strand of birch, next a cluster of small huts with smoke curling from the chimneys and a tiny church with a gold onion dome, then again dormant fields tucked under a pale blanket.
There was little doubt in my mind that by morning all good society and then some would know of tonight’s events. I was sure that by sunrise the drunken princess, the half-naked countess, and the balalaika player, even the secret agents, would start spreading the word that the Empress had called Rasputin to the palace yet again-and at such an ungodly hour, no less. By teatime tomorrow afternoon, all the court would probably be gossiping about how a late-night call had been placed for the Tsaritsa, a call begging the besotted Rasputin to rush to her private rooms and soothe her desperate needs. Yes, the tongues would wag, for we Russians were the most vicious of gossips, and there were sure to be nasty rumors of the wild peasant romping in bed with the Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna-that German bitch-and even with her devoted friend, that slut Anna Vyrubova, perhaps all three of them together. There might even be gossip of a Khlyst act, a “rejoicing.” After all, didn’t the name Rasputin come from the word rasputa-a debauched, depraved good-for-nothing? The counts and dukes and princes might even hold an emergency meeting at the Yacht Club, where they would smoke and drink and mutter that something had to be done about that filthy monk who was ruining the prestige of the Tsar, the peasant who was nothing but a stain on the entire House of Romanov. After all, wasn’t he more than likely spying for the Germans, even quite possibly drugging the Tsar himself? Gospodi-good heavens-for the sake of Holy Mother Russia, shouldn’t he be eliminated?
Yes, I thought with a shudder, Papa’s visions of his own end were not so hard to believe.
The closer we came to Tsarskoye Selo, the more I could see that the bite of cold night air was invigorating Papa like a dip in the Gulf of Finland. Indeed, as the wintry countryside gave way to villas and small palaces tucked in parks, I was relieved to see that my father appeared in complete control of himself.
Within minutes of entering the royal village, we came to the long iron fence surrounding the vast palace grounds. Staring across a plain of snow and into the deep night, I caught a distant glimpse of the buttery-yellow walls and white columns of the home Catherine the Great had built more than a century earlier for her favorite grandson, Aleksander I. When we reached the entrance itself, the guards hurriedly swung open the gates without so much as a single question, and the limousine followed the drive up a slight hill. I couldn’t hide my surprise, because for years my father hadn’t been allowed to approach the home of the tsars so directly. Because of an uproar of protest from, among others, nearly the entire Romanov clan, the infamous Rasputin had been forced to sneak into the imperial home via a pretend meeting with a maid in the right wing of the palace. In fact, the outrage against him had grown so vocal recently that the only place he could meet their Imperial Highnesses was down the road at Madame Vyrubova’s tiny house. All this because the chamberlain’s staff listed any visitor to the palace in the Kammerfurier-the court log-available to many officials. Needless to say, whenever the name Rasputin appeared, it sparked another wave of protest about his dark influence on the throne.
Tonight, however, none of that apparently mattered, for the Delaunay-Belleville limousine pulled up not to the main entrance at the rotunda, or even the right wing, but directly to the left wing, which contained the private apartments of the Tsar and Tsaritsa. And there, dressed in a huge fur coat and perched on the fountain of steps, was plump Madame Vyrubova herself.
“Come this way at once, Father Grigori,” she pleaded anxiously, leaning heavily on a cane.
The Empress’s confidante led my father into the palace, and I, ignored, scurried after them. Madame Vyrubova limped horribly, for several years earlier she had nearly been killed in a train accident. When she’d been pulled from beneath a steam radiator and steel girder, no one thought she would live, let alone walk. Taken to the hospital, she received the last rites as the Emperor and Empress, who had been quickly summoned, wept by her side. It was then that Papa had appeared, pushing everyone aside as he rushed to the wounded woman. Taking her limp hand in his, Papa used all his forces, commanding her back to us, the living.