It turned out to be a glorious summer. Everyone decamped for the long warm evenings of the Crimea, Nicky and Alix moving with their three little Grand Duchesses to the imperial summer palace, Livadia, along with the head nursery nurse, Mrs Orchard and their Irish nanny, Margaretta Eagar, while Militza and Peter with Marina, Roman and Nadejda, as well as Stana, George and their children, Sergei and Elena, moved nearby into their new summer house, Dulber. A homage to Peter’s obsession with Fifteenth Century Egyptian architecture and inspired by his travels in Syria, Dulber (meaning ‘splendid’ in Arabic) was a grand and glamorous project that had taken him two years to oversee. With silver domes and more than one hundred rooms, it was stocked with delicious wines and had beautifully planted exotic gardens full of palms and fountains. It was like a vision from one of Scheherazade’s tales and their little slice of paradise. And of course, Philippe came too.
The families were inseparable. These were relaxed, languid happy days, away from the prying eyes of the court, where the hours were whiled away playing cards and highly competitive games of tennis, at which Nicky particularly excelled. In the afternoons the gentlemen swam off the Sapphire Coast, whilst the ladies took afternoon carriage rides and long walks in the fragrant rose gardens. Luncheons, spent together at Livadia, were long and included all the staff, as well as any visiting dignitaries who’d travelled the five days from St Petersburg with important court papers for the Tsar to sign. Afternoon tea a la anglaise was taken promptly at four, also at Livadia, whilst the evenings were spent in either of the palaces, discussing the day’s events, plus the goings-on at the numerous nearby country estates, before finally, after dinner, withdrawing to gather around the card table in the salon where Philippe or Militza would host séances long into the night, while the smell of henbane and hashish drifted out on to the verandas beyond.
Mostly Nicky wanted to converse with his father, discussing complex affairs of state, constantly asking, ‘What would Father have done?’ which bored his wife, but intrigued both Peter and George, who couldn’t help but question the veracity of such a discourse. It took all Peter’s willpower to hold his tongue.
On one memorable night the party spent the evening in the old Emperor’s bedroom in the Maly Palace, where the armchair in which Alexander III had died remained, untouched and unmoved, still turned to face the window and the view out over the Black Sea. The Tsar wept so uncontrollably while sitting in his father’s old armchair that everyone, save Alix, was forced to withdraw due to acute embarrassment.
However, the majority of the time Alix would try and control events, steering conversations away from dull foreign policy, the unrest in Manchuria and the dreary politics of government, back to family matters, summoning either her dear departed mother or her little sister May. Mostly, these sessions passed off without incident. There were the occasional breakages, little cut-glass goblets would tumble and shatter on the parquet floors at moments of particular excitement and once a Venetian lamp was upset during a vigorous bout of table tipping.
But there was one night in Livadia towards the end of August when the group were visited by something very uncomfortable indeed.
It was a particularly dark night, for the summer was on the move and the moon had long since disappeared behind thick cloud. The party had been drinking Kummel, some of them smoking small amounts of hashish out of little clay pipes. The mood was relaxed and a little merry. Even Militza had filled her small bowl full of aromatics and was feeling the pulsing force of her belladonna drops as her heart raced and her vision grew a little blurred. Despite the autumnal chill in the air, her hands, as she held on to the Tsar, were damp with sweat. She had been channelling for a while, her spirit guide leading the way through the miasma of souls and visitors who wanted to communicate with the illustrious company.
‘Wait!’ said Militza, her eyes half-closed, her elbows on the table as she held on to Nicky and Philippe. Her pale green silk evening dress shimmered in the candlelight. ‘There is someone else here…’ She opened her eyes and glanced around the room. ‘There!’ She spotted something in the corner. The rest of the assembled company followed her gaze.
‘Where?’ asked Peter, trying to see into the darkness.
‘Behind Stana,’ whispered George, who was transfixed, his mouth slightly ajar; his pupils, dilated through hash and alcohol, shone in the half-light. This was more than the usual trickery he’d been witness to.
Alix gasped as a young girl dressed in a white nightdress walked slowly out of the shadows. She must have been about six years old; her feet were bare, her hair hung long and loose over her shoulders and her hands were covering her eyes.
‘May?’ asked Alix, a little confused, for she was small enough to be her sister but so far, in all their conversations, May had never actually manifested, and anyway, this child was thin and dark, whereas May had had blonde hair and deliciously fat cheeks.
‘Happy… Birthday… to… you…’ Philippe started to sing in a quiet, low voice. For the child looked as if she were covering her eyes, waiting for her birthday surprise. A cake with candles? ‘Happy birthday… to… you…’ continued Philippe, conducting along with his short fingers.
‘… to you…’ Stana joined in, nodding and smiling at Philippe across the table, matching him note for note.
‘Happy birthday…’ sang Alix, also copying Philippe, her head nodding in time to the song.
‘… dear…’ added the Tsar, a little tentatively.
They all turned to stare as the girl flung her arms into the air. Alix screamed, Stana gasped and Militza covered her mouth in horror. The small, white-faced child stood there, her face expressionless, her mouth impassive – but instead of eyes she had two deep black holes. It was as though they had been gouged out, leaving two dark, soulless pits. They all stared, terrified, not daring to breathe. And then she spoke. It was not the sing-song voice of a child, but a deep and low demonic growl that seemed to come from the very depths of hell.
‘The man who turns his back on God,’ she snarled, facing each one of the assembled in turn with her empty black sockets, ‘looks the Devil in the face!’
She then turned and walked back into the shadows. Alix started to whimper and weep with fear while Stana looked across at her sister, who in turn stared at Philippe, looking for some sort of explanation.
‘Well,’ he began, rubbing his smooth hands together, as he blinked rapidly behind his round, wire-rimmed spectacles, ‘the advice of a fallen angel, um, a very fallen angel, should not – not be taken too seriously. And no one here has turned their back on the Lord, not one of us. No one has turned their back on God,’ he repeated. ‘No one at all.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘So – so I think we should simply ignore this.’
Alix nodded in agreement and mumbled. ‘Yes. Ignore it.’
‘For the Lord moves in mysterious ways,’ went on Philippe, growing in the confidence of his diagnosis.
‘Of course,’ confirmed Peter.
‘And we all have faith,’ agreed Stana.
‘Yes,’ confirmed Nicholas. ‘All of us.’
The only person to remain silent was Militza herself who, as she picked up her small glass of claret, found it difficult to stop her hand from shaking. She glanced over at Peter; his grey eyes were fixed on her, his expression questioning. Militza looked at him and slowly and almost imperceptibly shook her head.