‘No, no,’ he said quickly, shaking his head. ‘I daresay you know what you’re doing. I don’t make it my business to tell another man’s servant how to do his job.’
I bristled a little at this characterization. The Tsar’s servant. Was that what I was? Well, of course it was. I was hardly free. But still, it was an unpleasant thing to hear the words said aloud.
‘And you have settled in to your new duties well?’ he asked me.
‘Yes, sir,’ I replied truthfully. ‘I am… well, perhaps it’s the wrong phrase, but I enjoy them very much.’
‘Not the wrong phrase at all, my boy,’ he said, snorting a little and then blowing his nose on an enormous white handkerchief. ‘Nothing better than a fellow who enjoys what he does. Makes the day go a lot quicker. And how’s that arm of yours holding up?’ he added, punching me so hard where the bullet had entered my shoulder that it was all that I could do not to let out a great scream of agony or punch him in return, an action which would have had dire consequences for me.
‘Much improved, sir,’ I replied through gritted teeth. ‘There is a scar, as you predicted, but—’
‘A man should have a scar,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve got scars all over me, you know. My body’s full of them. Naked, I resemble something that a cat’s crawled over with untrimmed nails. I must show you some time.’ I stared at him, astonished by the remark. The last thing I wanted was to be offered a tour of the Grand Duke’s scars. ‘There’s not a man in this army who isn’t scarred,’ he continued, oblivious to my surprise. ‘Take it as a mark of honour, Jachmenev. And as for the women… Well, when they see it, I promise you it will take their fancy more than you would imagine.’
I blushed, innocent that I was, and looked down at the ground, quite silent.
‘All the saints, boy,’ he said, laughing a little. ‘You’ve gone quite scarlet. You’ve been showing the scar to every whore around the Winter Palace already, have you?’
I said nothing and looked away. The truth was that I had done no such thing, that I remained as innocent of carnal pleasures as on the day when I was born. I had no interest in whores, although they were accessible to me for they were a staple of palace life. Nor did I have any interest in women who did not require compensation for their charms. There was only one girl who attracted my attentions. But to reveal it would have been impossible, for it was so inappropriate an attachment that its revelation might have cost me my life. The last thing I was going to do was admit it to Nicholas Nicolaievich.
‘Well, good for you, boy,’ he said, slapping my arm once again. ‘You’re young. You might as well take your pleasures where you—Good God!’
The sudden change in his tone made me look up and I saw that he was not looking at me any more, but staring out of the window towards the garden, where the Tsarevich’s fort was coming along nicely. Alexei himself was nowhere to be seen, however, and as I followed the direction of the Grand Duke’s eyes, I caught sight of him, perhaps fifteen feet off the ground, sitting on a thick branch which extended from an oak tree.
‘Alexei!’ whispered the Grand Duke under his breath, the word filled with trepidation.
‘Ho there!’ shouted the boy from his vantage point, his voice reaching us now, delighted by how high he had climbed. ‘Cousin Nicholas, Georgy, can you see me?’
‘Alexei, stay where you are!’ roared the Grand Duke, running out into the garden. ‘Don’t move, do you hear me? Stay exactly where you are. I’m coming for you.’
I followed him outside quickly, astonished by how seriously he seemed to be taking this matter. The boy had managed to get himself up the tree, it would hardly be any more difficult to get himself down again. And yet Nicholas Nicolaievich was sprinting towards the oak as if all our lives and the fate of Russia itself depended on our rescuing him.
It was too late, however. The sight of this monster of a man charging towards him was too much for the boy, who tried to stand up and descend the trunk – convinced, perhaps, that he had broken some unknown rule and would be wise to run away before being caught and punished – but he caught his foot in a branch and in a moment I heard a surprised cry emerge from his lips as he struggled to find purchase on one of the smaller branches and twigs beneath him before falling hard and noisily to the ground below, where he sat up, rubbed his head and elbow, and grinned at us both as if the entire thing had been a great surprise to him, but not an entirely unpleasant one.
I smiled back. He was fine, after all. It was boyish mischief. No harm had been done.
‘Be quick,’ said the Grand Duke, turning to look at me now, his face pale. ‘Call the doctors. Get them here now, Jachmenev.’
‘But he’s fine, sir,’ I protested, surprised by how seriously he was taking this accident. ‘Look at him, all he did was—’
‘Get them now, Jachmenev,’ he roared, practically knocking me over in his anger, and this time I did not hesitate.
I turned, I ran, I summoned help.
And within a few minutes the entire household had come to a dramatic stop.
The evening came and went without dinner being served; the night passed by without any entertainment being offered. Finally, just after two o’clock in the morning, I found an excuse to leave the room where the other members of the Leib Guard had gathered, each one staring at me more contemptuously than the last, and made my way back to my bunk, where I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes, fall asleep quickly and put the events of that horrible day behind me.
In the time between the accident and the early morning I had endured feelings of confusion, anger and self-pity, but was still ignorant as to why Alexei’s fall was considered to be such a terrible disaster, for he displayed no outward sign of injury except for a few small bruises dotted along his elbow, leg and torso. Of course, I had begun to realize that the care which was extended towards the Tsarevich was not purely because of his proximity to the throne, but that something more serious lay at its heart. Looking back, I could recall conversations with the Tsar, with some of the guards, even with Alexei himself, where matters had been implied but not stated fully, and I cursed my stupidity for not having made further enquiries.
As I made my way along the corridors, feeling increasingly sorry for myself, a door to my left opened and before I could even turn my head in that direction to see who was inside, a hand had gripped my lapel and practically lifted me from the floor to pull me inside.
‘How could you have been so stupid?’ Sergei Stasyovich asked me, closing the door and spinning me around to face him. To my great surprise, I saw that the only other person in the room was Alexei’s older sister, the Grand Duchess Marie, who was standing with her back to a window, her face pale, her eyes red with tears. One of the guards had mentioned earlier that the Tsaritsa Alexandra had already arrived from St Petersburg, and upon hearing this I had felt a sudden burst of hope that she would not have come alone. ‘Why weren’t you watching him, Georgy?’
‘I was watching him, Sergei,’ I insisted, upset by how the entire world seemed to have decided that everything that had taken place was the fault of this poor moujik from Kashin. ‘I was in the garden with him, he wasn’t doing anything dangerous. I only stepped inside for a moment and was distracted by—’
‘You should not have left him,’ said Marie, stepping towards me. I offered her a low bow, which she waved away as if it was an insult. She was the same age as I – we had both turned seventeen a few days earlier – and had a porcelain beauty that turned men’s heads whenever she walked into a room. To some, she was considered the great beauty of the Tsar’s daughters. But not to me.