‘This is what happens when amateurs are allowed within our ranks,’ said Sergei, turning around in frustration and pacing the room. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to say it, Georgy, it’s hardly your fault, but you don’t have the experience for such responsibility. It was quite ridiculous of Nicholas Nicolaievich to have recommended you. Do you know how long I have trained to protect the Tsar?’
‘Well, as you’re only two years older than me, I can’t quite see the difference,’ I said, for I was damned if I was going to be spoken down to by him.
‘And he has been in the palace for eight years,’ snapped the Grand Duchess, stepping closer to me now, infuriated by this last remark. ‘Sergei spent his youth in the Corps of Pages. Do you even know what that is?’ She stared at me contemptuously and shook her head. ‘Of course you don’t,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘He was among 150 boys drawn from the court nobility and trained in the ways of the Leib Guard. And only the very finest members of the corps are assigned to protect my family. Every day he has learned what to look out for, where the dangers lie, how to prevent any tragedy from taking place. Do you have any idea how many of my ancestors and relatives have been murdered? Do you realize that my brother and sisters and I walk in the shadow of death at every moment of the day? All we have to rely on is our prayers and our guards. Sergei Stasyovich is the type of man we need around us. Not you, not you.’
She shook her head and looked at me pitifully. I found it quite extraordinary that her anger appeared to be divided between what had happened to her brother and what I had said about Sergei. What was he to her, after all, except just another member of the Leib Guard? For his part, the object of her defensiveness was fuming now by the window, and I watched her go to him and speak quietly before he shook his head and said no. I wondered whether Marie was not a little enamoured of him, perhaps, for he was a striking young man, tall and handsome, with piercing blue eyes and a shock of blond hair that made him seem more Aryan than Russian.
‘I don’t know what is expected of me,’ I said finally, growing close to tears now in my distress. ‘I’ve looked out for him all that I can since the moment I was appointed to my duties. It was an accident, why is that so hard to understand? Young boys have accidents.’
‘Get some sleep, Georgy,’ said Sergei quietly, turning around now and walking over to pat my shoulder in commiseration. I brushed his hand away, not wishing to be patronized by him. ‘Tomorrow will be a busy day, no doubt. They will want to talk to you. It’s not your fault, not really. The truth is that you should have been told before now. Perhaps if you had known…’
‘Known?’ I asked, my brow furrowing in confusion. ‘Known what?’
‘Go,’ he said, opening the door and pushing me back out on to the corridor. I was about to argue further, but he was talking quietly with the Grand Duchess again. Feeling myself entirely surplus to their interests, I grew utterly frustrated with the situation and left quickly, not going to my bed as I had initially planned, but returning instead to the garden where these events had begun.
There was a full moon that night and I found myself standing in the same spot where I had been talking with the Grand Duke earlier in the afternoon, content now to be alone with my private thoughts and regrets. A gentle breeze was blowing outside and I closed my eyes in front of the open doors and let it wash over me, imagining that I was far away from here, in a place where so much was not expected of me. In the darkness, in the gloomy solitude of that corridor at Stavka, there was some element of peace to be found, a small respite from the drama which had engulfed us throughout the afternoon and evening.
I heard the footsteps marching along the corridor for some time before I even thought to turn and look in their direction. There was an urgency to them, a determination that made me nervous.
‘Who’s there?’ I called. Despite what Sergei and the Grand Duchess Marie might have thought, I had been trained over the previous few months in ever more ingenious ways to deal with a suspected assassin, but surely there could not be one here, at Army Headquarters of all places. ‘Who’s there?’ I repeated, louder now, wondering whether I might yet have a chance to redeem myself in the eyes of the Imperial family before the sun rose. ‘Make yourself known.’
As I said this, the figure finally emerged into the brightness of the moonlight and before I had a chance to catch my breath she was standing directly before me, raising her hand in the air, and with one sharp and determined motion, she struck me forcefully across the face. So taken by surprise was I by both the strength and the unexpected nature of the act that I fell out of my stance, tripping backwards and stumbling on to the floor, landing painfully on my elbow, but I made no cry, merely sat there, dazed and nursing my wounded jaw.
‘You fool,’ said the Tsaritsa, taking another step towards me, and I retreated a little, like a crab rearing backwards along a beach, although I didn’t think that she intended to strike me again. ‘You stupid fool,’ she repeated, her voice devastated from anger and fear.
‘Your Majesty,’ I said, standing up now, but keeping a safe distance from her. There was a look of absolute terror in her eyes, a panic unlike any I had ever seen before. ‘I keep telling people, it was an accident. I don’t know how it—’
‘We cannot afford accidents,’ she shouted. ‘What is the point of you if you do not look after my son? If you do not keep him from harm?’
‘The point of me?’ I asked, certain that I did not care for the expression, even if it did come from the Empress of Russia. ‘I cannot keep my eyes on him at every moment of the day,’ I insisted. ‘He is a boy. He looks for adventure.’
‘He fell from a tree, this is what they tell me,’ she replied. ‘What was he doing in a tree in the first place?’
‘He climbed it,’ I explained. ‘The Tsarevich was building a fort. I expect he was looking for more wood and—’
‘Why were you not with him? You should have been with him!’
I shook my head and looked away, unable to understand how she could think that I could possibly be always by the boy’s side. He was an active fellow, no matter what they thought of him. He escaped me constantly.
‘Georgy,’ said the Tsaritsa, putting her hands to her cheeks now and holding them there for a moment as she exhaled lengthily. ‘Georgy, you don’t understand. I told Nicky that we should have explained it to you.’
‘Explained it?’ I asked, raising my own voice now, despite the difference in our rank, for whatever it was could be held back from me no longer. ‘Explained what? Tell me, please!’
‘Just listen,’ she said, putting a finger to her lips for a moment and I looked around, waiting to hear something that might explain everything.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘I hear nothing.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It is silent now. There’s not a sound. But in an hour’s time, perhaps less, these corridors will echo with the sound of my son’s cries as the first agonies begin. The blood around his wounds will fail to clot. And then he will start to suffer. And you might think that you have never heard such anguished cries, but…’ She released a small, bitter laugh as she shook her head, ‘they will be nothing, nothing, in comparison to what will follow.’
‘It was not a heavy fall,’ I protested, hearing the weakness of my words, for I had started to realize that there was a reason for such protectiveness.
‘A few hours after that and the real pain will begin,’ she continued. ‘The doctors will not be able to stem the flow of blood, for his wounds are all internal, and it is impossible to operate upon him, for we cannot allow him to bleed even more freely. Having no natural release, the blood will flow into Alexei’s muscles and joints, trying to fill spaces that are already full, expanding those injured areas ever further. He will start to suffer in ways that neither you nor I can possibly imagine. He will cry out. And then he will scream. He will scream for a week, perhaps longer. Can you imagine that kind of suffering, Georgy? Can you imagine what it must be like to scream for so long?’