I covered my mouth in horror and stepped forward, standing as still as a statue.
It was then that a Cossack spotted me and started charging toward me, his whip raised high, for of course he was completely unaware that I was part of the Imperial Family, not the rose thereof but her sister nonetheless. Yet I would not be intimidated, not because of my lofty rank but because my soul commanded me strength. As this bearded man with high hat raced at me, I raised my right hand. Still he came, with greater and greater speed, but I stood calmly, not so much as flinching. With three fingers I slowly pecked at my forehead, my lower stomach, my right shoulder, my left. Still he did not stop, and as the horse charged right at me, it seemed if nothing else that I would be run down by the beast. At the last moment, though, the Cossack, nimble horseman as were they all, veered to the side, and man and horse swooped past only a few hands from my left side, leaving me standing and my garment flapping wildly about in the vacuum.
And then with a whoop the Cossacks were gone, hurrying off in pursuit of a handful of young men who were fleeing down a side street.
All fell quickly and disturbingly quiet, the silence broken here and there only by desperate sobs, for there were a handful of people lying about in pain. The time-honored and hallowed manner of dealing with dissent or disturbance in Russia had always been the iron fist and, of course, the whip. Like all the Grand Dukes, my husband had been a great proponent of such, for amongst society it was widely believed that our uneducated masses understood nothing but force and could be controlled by nothing but a master’s power from above.
And yet… these were not animals…
Neither were they peasants or workers. No, it all came into my mind quite quickly, for judging by the clothing of those who had fled and of those who were left lying about-clothing that was neither fine nor ragged-these people, all seemingly young, were quite different. What were they, then, who were they?
Overwhelmed by the conflict, I rushed forward. First I came to a young man with the soft face of a boy, the silken blond hair of a child, and a bloody whip mark across his cheek. Reaching out, I helped him to his feet.
“What happened here?” I begged.
“There was a demonstration not far from here… we… we tried to force our way into the city council.”
“We? Who is this ‘we’?”
“A group of us from the University.”
“And this, the shops? Did you do all of this, break these windows and ravage these places?”
“The city is on strike!” said this boyish man in a surprisingly deep voice. “And these shopkeepers defied us. They stayed open during the strike, and so they got their punishment!”
“But-”
We both heard it then, another whoop, more clattering of hooves. Were the Cossacks coming back, or were they merely charging down a nearby street?
“Madame, you must get out of here before they return!” the young man said, turning and hobbling off. “Go, get out of here! Run! They show no mercy!”
He scurried off, as did a few others, terrified of what might come next. But I couldn’t move, so overwhelmed was I by the destruction. Were the people really so desperate? Was this really their only recourse?
Off to the side I saw a woman struggling to rise, and I hurried to her. She was a pretty, young thing, reddish hair, long blue skirt, her fair face now smeared with grime and a curl of blood.
“Please,” I said, reaching toward her with outstretched hands.
She accepted my aid and I pulled her to her feet. For a moment it seemed she might faint, and I clutched her.
“Oi, bozhe moi!” Oh, dear God, she cried, holding her side. “One of… one of them came alongside me and kicked me with his stirrup. But Misha…” she moaned, tears welling in her eyes as she searched the small square. “Where’s my Misha?”
“This Misha, he’s your-”
“My husband…” she said, starting to cry. “Misha! Mishenka, where are you?”
“I’m sure he’s fine, I’m sure you’ll find him. But please, child, let me help you. I know of a small hospital not too far away,” I said, nodding in the direction of my very own place.
I ripped away part of my sleeve, and with this scrap blotted at the blood seeping from her mouth. I prayed that she’d merely broken a rib, that there was nothing more serious damaged within her.
“I can’t leave!” she said almost in panic. “What if he’s lying somewhere? What if he’s hurt and he needs me?”
“Let’s just get you taken care of first. Let me get you to the hospital and I’ll come back and look for your Misha.”
Her eyes welled with a torrent of tears. “But-”
“Come along, the hospital’s just down several streets, just this way.”
“Wait, you can’t mean the hospital run by one of them, do you?”
“Them?” I hesitantly asked, fearful of the answer.
“Yes, them, the Romanovs, I’ve heard it’s run by one of their stupid cow princesses.”
“Why… yes… of course…” I managed to mutter.
“No,” she pleaded. “No, I won’t go there. Haven’t you heard, don’t you know? It’s the talk of the neighborhood.”
I felt a greater pain than any whip or sword could inflict as I inquired, “Know what, my child? What are you talking about?”
“That hospital is for officers and aristocrats only. They say they won’t help any of us!”
“No,” I gasped as if the wind had been knocked from me. “No, I’m quite sure that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is! I heard it from one of the strike organizers. He told us all about it, all about a babushka who went there for help. She was so sick, and all they gave her was dirty water!”
“No!”
“Yes, this striker told me he’d seen it all with his own eyes, that the Romanovs gave this old babushka dirty water with poison and she died the very next day, writhing in pain!” exclaimed the girl. “I won’t go there!”
And with that the girl, painfully clutching her side, hobbled off. Within moments she had disappeared, leaving me paralyzed with grief and with only one shocking thought:
Dear Lord, when and how had we come to be so widely hated?
Chapter 26 PAVEL
There were all these papers and leaflets and booklets and pamphlets being passed around by all the different parties, the Social Revolutionaries, the Social Democrats, the Liberals, the Marxists, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, and so on, this one preaching for a democratic bourgeois republic, another for a constitutional monarchy, still another for a complete socialist revolution. As for me, in the months after we killed the Grand Duke, well, I realized I was a complete Nihilist, the old-fashioned kind. I wanted everything gone, tsar and prince, merchant and factory owner. Death to them all. And all power to the people. That sort of thing.
It was none other than Dora Brilliant, our beautiful bombmaker with those deep, dark eyes, who helped make everything so clear to me. We met that fall near Konny Rynok, where horses were traded, and ducked into one of the many traktiri, the cheap cafés scattered about. Each one of the places in the area was fancied by different pet lovers, one by horse traders, the next by dog owners, and so on. The one we slipped into was full of bird sellers, and so as not to seem suspicious Dora and I made a pretend of turning to the icon and its red lamp by the door and crossing ourselves. Several small yellow Russian canaries twittered in a cage up front, and tables of canary lovers huddled about, drinking tea and arguing about the best grains to feed their treasures, ways to teach song, and so on and so forth.