“What is it, Maria? What’s troubling you so?”
I turned around to see Prince Felix, wearing only an undershirt, underpants, and socks, climbing out of my father’s bed. It was not the first time I had seen a man so scantily clothed, of course, for back home our entire family would traipse through the snow to cleanse ourselves at the banya-the sauna-while in summer we all bathed in the River Tura. It had all been quite natural and innocent, without the least impure thought. But somewhere I knew that Fedya’s motives were anything but simple. I should have spun quickly away, but in the reddish light of the oil lamps, my eyes burned upon him. He was the first member of the nobility I had ever seen so exposed, and I was transfixed by his long thin arms, which appeared as beautiful as they did weak, not to mention his skin, which looked astonishingly smooth and pure, without a single bruise or scar.
“Nothing,” I replied, turning and averting my eyes. “Nothing at all. I…I just need to get some sleep.” Behind me I heard the rustle of clothing as he dressed. “There’s not much sense in your waiting for Papa. Knowing him, he won’t be home until after the sun rises.”
“I don’t doubt that. But are you and Varya quite all right by yourselves?”
“I assure you, we’re perfectly fine.”
“Very well.” He came up behind me in his stocking feet and hugged me. “But someday, my sweet one, you’re going to have to tell your Fedya what you’ve been up to! Imagine, you out so late on your very own! And without an escort! Aren’t you the little devil? But not to worry, I promise I won’t tell your father!”
When he gave me a little squeeze, I flinched. Prying myself out of his grasp, I excused myself and hurried from my father’s bedroom. Why didn’t I trust Prince Felix? Papa certainly did. Indeed, my father seemed to be genuinely fond of him. One might even say that in the past months they had become close personal friends. Had my father, perhaps, seen and seized a chance to endear himself to another branch of the Tsar’s extended family? Or was he in fact helping the prince deal with certain proclivities that didn’t mesh with married life?
Knowing that Prince Felix would leave our flat via the rear door, I hurried down the hall to the kitchen, where I made a quick but somewhat feeble attempt at rinsing the blood from the sink. I then took the filthy coat over to the nook where Sasha lay and dropped the garment in a corner. Sasha looked up at me from Dunya’s cot, his brow wrinkled with confusion.
“Not a word from you!” I whispered, as I pulled the curtain tight, hiding him behind it.
A moment later Prince Felix did indeed come into the kitchen, pulling his great reindeer coat over his shoulders as he made his way to the door. Slipping right up next to me, he leaned over and pressed his buttery cheek against mine.
“Good night, my dear,” he said, with a light but moist kiss. “I hear a flying angel just blew into town, so perhaps your father is out rejoicing.”
Recognizing the code words of the Khlysty, I shuddered. What was Prince Felix implying? Exactly what was his business, tonight or anytime, with Papa?
“In any case,” continued the prince, “be sure to tell him his Fedya stopped by.”
My voice faint, I replied, “Yes. I’ll be sure to tell him.”
And then he opened the rear door and slipped down the dark, narrow stairs as easily as a black-capped marmot into its frosty Siberian hole.
Because the Khlysty were severely outlawed, their greatest oath was one of secrecy. For that reason, my father was the only person I knew who’d actually met someone who belonged to the sect. From bits and pieces of things Papa had said, I had come to understand that years upon years ago, when he had wandered the countryside on foot in search of God, he had drunk tea and eaten raisins with a small group of Khlysty. But while my father believed as they did in the concept of sin driving out sin-a concept that fit so neatly into our Russian soul-there had been nothing more to the encounter. My own mother had grilled him on the issue, and right to her face Papa had denied ever taking part in a Khlyst ritual of rejoicing, when members would whirl and twirl themselves into a frenzy, eventually collapsing onto the floor.
Whether or not Prince Felix knew that Papa was at the palace, the very fact that he had even insinuated that Papa was out “rejoicing” scared me to the bone. My father had already been accused and investigated for being a member of the sect, but what about Prince Felix? Could he belong to a local ark, a Khlyst community of nobles devoted to group sinning? Had a flying angel-one of their mysterious couriers who moved from ark to ark, keeping them all in secret contact-really just come to town?
I had heard many such rumors, that an ark of the highest-born personages gathered in the depths of some palace right here in the capital, some said even within the shadow of the Winter Palace. Others whispered that a certain Prince O’ksandr headed an ark that gathered beneath one of the Kremlin cathedrals. I had no idea what was true, but was Prince Yusupov, like Madame Lokhtina, who had been clutching my father’s member and screaming that he was Christ and she was his ewe, seeking the penetration of my father as a way to sin, repent, and cleanse himself of his “grammatical errors”? I shuddered at the thought.
And yet…
I had witnessed how the Holy Spirit had come down upon Papa. Not only did he have the greatest of Christian gifts, the gift of healing hands, and not only did he possess second sight, but many women claimed he was also able to treat the sin of lust. Was this the key to Papa’s suddenly intense relationship with Prince Yusupov? Was he performing treatments upon the prince just as he would upon one of his female devotees? Was he trying to restore the purity of love between Prince Felix and Princess Irina, the Tsar’s own niece?
I knew Papa would never speak of any of this, any more than I could ever bring myself to ask. But the prince, gossipy and open, would certainly tell me. And I could certainly broach the subject with him. In this night of extremes, I was determined to find out, and so I dashed over to the nook and peered around the curtain. Immediately, Sasha started to get up.
“No!” I whispered harshly. “Just stay there. I’ll be right back!”
I hurried to the kitchen door, which I threw open. Without a cloak or even a shawl, I moved through the hall and to the top of the steep rear stairs.
“Fedya!” I called in a loud whisper. “Fedya, stop!”
Though I could hear his steps quickly descending, he apparently could not hear my voice. I charged downward. Why was Prince Felix-sole heir to an enormous fortune that included Rembrandts, Tiepolos, jewels like Marie Antoinette’s, dozens of estates, and some 125 miles of the Caspian coast-so interested in a dirty peasant with a dirty reputation? What could someone so high and noble want from someone so low and uneducated? Had he found the same kind of love for my father that Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna had?
Or did he mean to harm him?
After all, it was no secret that Prince Felix’s mother, Princess Zinaida, was one of Rasputin’s greatest enemies. She-the stunningly beautiful matriarch of Russia’s richest family who was once one of the Empress’s close friends-had essentially been banished from the palace because of her hatred for my father. Was Prince Felix keeping his visits to our apartment secret in order to deceive his mother, or, God forbid, were his visits perhaps under her shadowy auspices and part of a greater plot? Rejected by the Empress, Princess Zinaida had become, I’d heard, especially close to several of the Tsar’s uncles, the very grand dukes who despised Rasputin and saw in him the ruination of the Romanov dynasty.
I flew down the dark narrow rear steps even more quickly than I had so recently come up the front staircase. No matter my haste, however, I couldn’t catch the young prince. By the time I had descended from our third floor, the back door of the building was shut tight. Wiping the frosty ice from a window, I peered out. From the back I saw Prince Felix, wrapped in his heavy coat, moving quickly through an arched passage, and the next instant he disappeared.