‘What? Snippets you picked up at the banya while chewing gherkins and drinking vodka? I am not sure those sources could possibly compare to the Tsar himself – to my source, the apex of power!’
‘Well, you probably know the other rumours then?’
‘Probably.’ Militza shook her head. She inhaled, expanding her chest, preparing to enjoy whatever her husband said.
‘That Maria Fyodorovna has sent a team of spies to France to find out about Our Friend. The Tsar’s mother doesn’t like the way like Badmaev is with her son, doesn’t like the way he has managed to get such a position at court, doesn’t like the secretive meetings, the furtiveness of it all; and she doesn’t trust him.’
‘The Dowager Empress has sent spies?’
‘Secret agents. They’ll report back to her.’
‘When?’
‘Soon. And the problem is, we both know what they’ll come back with…’
Militza was shocked. This was news indeed. She reached forward to pick up the red bottle again. More elixir. She needed to think and she needed to think fast.
‘I think you should stop taking so much of Mr Badmaev’s bloody potion.’ Peter nodded towards the bottle. ‘I hear he’s prescribing half of Countess Ignatiev’s salon, these days. It’s ridiculous. The man doesn’t seem to be able to cure anything except stubborn nervous diseases, mental maladies and disturbances of the female physiology.’
‘Tell that to the Tsar and all those patients he’s put forward for ministerial posts. And anyway, he’s a doctor,’ she replied, raising her fine, large, black brows. ‘Dr Badmaev, if you please. Not Mr. He knows what he is doing.’
‘Well, everyone trusts a doctor! Don’t they?’
Militza nodded, staring out of the window towards the large fountain in the garden and the calm sea beyond. ‘Yes, they do,’ she said slowly. ‘I think I have an idea.’
And as with all ideas, Militza had always found it much better for the person in question to come up with it themselves. So it was a few days later that Alix announced, while taking a small walk through the fragrant rose garden just to the left of the long terrace at Znamenka, that she’d thought of something simply splendid. The fact that Stana had planted this suggestion in her head when she’d visited for luncheon the day before was neither here nor there.
‘I think,’ Alix declared, as she spun her parasol, ‘I think that Nicky should make Our Friend an honorary doctor.’
‘Oh!’ Militza stopped in her tracks and clutched her heart in ostentatious excitement. ‘How clever of you! That is such a good idea.’
‘It just came to me,’ continued Alix, with a small shrug and a curl of a smile. ‘He has been so incredibly helpful and loyal, he deserves something. Don’t you think? It seems such a shame that he has not been recognized.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘I suggested it to Nicky at breakfast this morning and he wasn’t completely sure, but I explained it would help with Dr Ott, and the others… It would be nice for him to have a position. An official role. I feel they look down on him sometimes. I see their faces when he speaks. I know he has an appalling southern accent, but then I speak Russian with such a terrible thick accent too! And no one thinks any the less of me for that!’
‘No,’ agreed Militza, fighting the smile on her face, ‘I think most people find your accent… charming.’
‘Yes,’ Alix nodded. ‘Charming.’
How could she not hear the sniggers and the titters when she opened her mouth to speak Russian? Militza wondered. Had she become inured to the antipathy at court? So used to the frosty reception she received that she no longer felt it? Is it possible to have one’s feelings so hurt that one ceases to feel any more at all?
As they continued their walk, arm in arm, down the gently sloping lawn, through the thick line of cedar trees, towards the sea, Militza remembered a story that Alix once told her about her early days in Russia and about how she’d always felt ‘quite alone and in despair’. She’d described an afternoon’s drive that she and one of the more unpleasant ladies of the court, Countess Vorontsov, had taken along Nevsky Prospekt, when they’d come across a beggar asking for alms. He’d approached the carriage with his hands outstretched and she, Alix, had been so touched by his plight and his kind eyes, she’d given him a few coins from her purse. The beggar had smiled gratefully at her. ‘That was the first smile,’ she’d told Militza, ‘I’d received in Russia.’ And she had been there for over a year.
Now even the beggars don’t bother, thought Militza, as they paused on the brow of a hill to catch their breath, staring out to sea. Perhaps it is preferable, then, that she no longer notices.
‘Perhaps we could ask the French?’ suggested Alix. Militza stared at her blankly. ‘To give Our Friend a doctorate?’
‘I don’t think that is a good idea,’ Militza said hurriedly.
‘Oh?’ Alix looked a little surprised. She was not a woman used to being contradicted.
‘The French…’ Militza’s mind was whirring. How could she tell her that Our Friend had in fact been arrested five times in France for practising without a licence? Not that there was any doubt that Monsieur Philippe had special powers. Of course he did. It was, Militza reasoned, just a great shame that the French authorities were the last to realize them. ‘I think a Russian doctorate, a Russian medical diploma, would be much more fitting for services in Russia, to the Russian court, to the Russian Tsar himself,’ she declared. ‘Rather than anything Our Friend achieved in Paris. Although he has clearly achieved a lot in Paris, and in France, the whole of France, of course,’ she swiftly added.
‘Yes,’ sighed Alix. Her voice suddenly sounded a little weak. ‘You know best.’
‘Let’s ask him tonight,’ suggested Militza.
She turned away from the sea and looked up the hill towards Znamenka. Its huge neoclassical façade stretched expansively before her. Three stories high with a large domed roof tower, plus endless bedrooms, ballrooms, salons, dining rooms, servants’ quarters, its own glasshouses, stables for one hundred horses, cellar, and kitchen gardens, it was an impressive and imposing sight. The weak afternoon sunset made its yellow and white frosted pillars glow a pale orange and, if she squinted slightly, she could see several white dots, the children, playing on the terrace. Militza smiled to herself and sighed with a gentle contentment.
She turned back. Alix was looking pale in the wind. Over her shoulder, the sun dipped behind a thick cloud gathering on the horizon. She shivered; her white chiffon ensemble rippled against her.
‘I am cold,’ she said, closing her flighty parasol and wrapping her arms around herself. ‘And tired.’ She looked up at Militza. Her pale blue eyes appeared to be fighting back the tears.
‘Are you all right?’ Militza moved swiftly, placing her hands on Alix’s shoulders.
‘Yes, yes,’ she replied breezily, avoiding looking Militza in the eyes, as the wind whipped loose stands of hair around her face. ‘Just tell me,’ she stammered, fighting to get the words out, as her lips shook and her nose started to run. Try as she might she could not stop her tears. ‘Tell me…’ She was inhaling and exhaling, shivering and stammering, trying to keep in check the bubbling brook of emotion that was desperately bursting out of her. ‘Tell me, it will be all right. Tell me it will.’ At last she sobbed and at last she cried, but instead of cleaving to Militza she stood there on the clifftop, rigid, her fists clenching, her pale golden hair flying around her face, biting her bottom lip as the tears streamed down her face.
‘Yes, it will,’ Militza said, moving towards her and wrapping her a tight embrace. ‘It will all be fine.’ She slowly kissed Alix on the cheek and then on her soft, sensitive mouth.