The sound of a child’s running footsteps echoed further down the long dark corridor.
‘May! Is that you?’ the Empress turned and shouted, her hollow voice reverberating against the walls. ‘Little Marie? Are you there?’
‘Wherever she is, she should be asleep,’ laughed Militza gently, looking up the corridor towards the noise. ‘It is long past her bedtime.’
‘She is asleep,’ replied the Empress starkly. ‘Fast asleep. She has been lying in the ground for a long while now.’ She turned to look at Militza. ‘May has been dead for eighteen years.’
5
February 1896, Znamenka, Peterhof
So she sent word. Just as Militza always knew she would, and now the Tsar and Tsarina were on their way to Znamenka. Their carriage, complete with an entourage of police and Cossack bodyguards, had been spotted on the road from the nearby Lower Dacha. It would not be long before they’d be turning into the long, tree-lined drive, and Militza felt her heart beat a little faster.
The idea of having the young Tsar and his wife visit her palace, newly refurbished in the Russian Baroque style by the architect G.A. Bosse, was all she could think about. What would the Yusupovs say when they found out? How would Maria Pavlovna react? How contorted would her furious face become now? But what she did not think of, what she did not pause to consider, was quite what events would be put into motion, how a vortex, once opened up, would be hard to shut.
Instead, she stood naked but for a red velvet robe and admired the sweep of her black hair in the mirror. Her maid’s coiffuring skills were improving by the day, she thought, as she ran her hand over her flat stomach. That would change in the coming months. And this time, she knew, it would be the son Peter longed for, a boy he could dote on and spoil and, most importantly, to whom he could pass on his esteemed title and somewhat diminished estates. She smiled. Sweet, Marina, who, now almost four years old, was asleep upstairs She had not yet told Peter that he was to be a father again.
She looked down. Next to her dressing table stood the large chest she’d brought with her from Cetinje. She opened the heavy lid; how rough and coarse the material felt, she thought, as she leafed through a pile of her old clothes. How simple the patterns, and how poor the cut! She held up an old pair of lace-trimmed underclothes – they looked so terribly old-fashioned. How quickly one becomes accustomed to luxury, she thought, smiling, remembering the last time she’d worn them, the night she and Stana had packed to leave for her marriage to Peter. She remembered curling up with her sister in their bed, remembered her mother, Milena, telling them not to be afraid, how they would be looked after – and she had given them her cast-iron pot, just in case. It was ancient and had belonged to her and her mother before that. ‘Use it wisely,’ Milena had warned. ‘And use it with care. You both have a gift that must not be squandered. Call upon your guides; ask Spirit and Spirit will watch over you.’ And now here it was, at the bottom of the chest. Simple, solid, effective. The stories it could tell. She’d get Brana to fill it, light it and place it in the room for later. But first Militza took off the heavy lid and inside she found some drops.
‘Belladonna,’ she whispered, extract of deadly nightshade. She rolled the dark brown bottle between the palms of her hands.
Turning to look in the mirror, she pinned back her eyelids and expertly squeezed a drop of liquid into each eye. She inhaled sharply. The acid sting was painful, but the effect was almost immediate: her pupils dilating, her black eyes becoming even more luminous and glassy. The result was bewitching and completely unnerving.
Militza smiled and, leaning forward, she clipped two drop-pendant topaz earrings to her lobes and turned to look through a gap in the curtains at the falling flakes of snow outside. She opened the window and inhaled the cold salt air from the sea beyond before closing her eyes. She held her palms out in front of her and began to chant:
Her lips moved in a well-practised rhythm as she rocked back and forth, repeating her Sutta three times. ‘Cease to do evil,’ she said in Tibetan, as she undid the rope to her robe. ‘Learn to do well. Cleanse your own heart, this is the religion of the Buddhas.’ Deeper and deeper she went into herself, climbing further and further down within, right into her soul. She called upon her spirit guide to help her. A breeze swirled around the room and the glass chandelier tinkled, the curtains fluttered and ballooned. She could feel his presence. A small shiver rippled through her body; her chest puffed forward and her mouth fell open with a small, ecstatic sigh. The robe cord hung limply at her side, revealing her naked form framed by the folds of the dark material. She began to caress her own bare breasts, running her hands over her smooth flesh, watching her nipples swell and harden in the mirror. Her skin felt so warm, so soft to her touch as she ran her fingers over her flat belly. She inhaled again, her mouth wide, her lips engorged. Her whole body was tingling with life and energy. She loved it when he possessed her. It made her feel dizzy, powerful, completely sensuous… There was pressure on the top of her arms. They felt tight as if someone were holding on, gripping hard, burning, although no one appeared to be standing next to her. She looked at herself once more in the mirror; her huge black eyes stared back at her. She looked ecstatic. Her heart was beating hard; her blood was pulsing. He’d come. She was ready.
Dinner in the Chinese dining room was polite and perhaps a little rushed. It was obvious that most of the assembled were trying to get through it as quickly as possible to move on to the main event. The poor chefs, downstairs in the subterranean kitchen, had sliced their best salted cucumbers and laid out their most sublime smoked salmon, only for them to be returned almost untouched. Their hot stuffed mushrooms and borscht were a little more successful, as were the roast venison and spatchcock partridge followed by pineapples and preserved cherries from the Crimea.
Even the conversation was stilted and the surprise arrival of George, back from Biarritz, had not helped matters. Stana was laughing a little too enthusiastically, constantly touching his knee, whispering in his ear, trying to engage him with conversation. The poor girl was trying, but George simply looked uncomfortable and complained of a terrible headache. Even when the Tsar enquired as to what he had been doing in Biarritz for all that time, he was not at all forthcoming.
Meanwhile Militza, finding it difficult to keep calm, sipped glass after glass of sweet red wine. Her appetites were not normally this voracious, but her guide always made her more lustful; her white skin became more luminous, her lips rosier and her touch altogether more sensitive. But it was her deep black eyes that held the Tsar transfixed.
‘You look particularly enchanting tonight, Militza Nikolayevna,’ he opined as he sipped his wine
‘Enchanting?’ Militza smiled. ‘It is the good company, Your Majesty.’
Thankfully, once the dinner was over, the party could move upstairs to the panelled library. Peter requested the servants leave the liqueurs and sweetmeats on a small table in the red hall, so the guests could help themselves.
The library was thick with a heavy smoke emanating from the cast iron pot that stood in the middle of the table. The smouldering cocktail of henbane and hashish had been burning all through dinner, filling the room with its intoxicating fumes.
‘I can’t believe we are about to do this,’ Stana whispered into her sister’s ear as she followed her into the room. ‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’