Finally, towards the early hours of the morning, they arrived. The carriage pulled up outside a large building and they were released, hearts racing, back into the night. Standing in the snow, still dressed in their evening wear, fine diamonds around their neck, the two sisters held hands for comfort. They blinked as they took in their surroundings.
‘Tsarskoye Selo!’ exclaimed Militza, looking at her sister.
‘What are we doing here?’ asked Stana, with increasing confusion.
‘Follow me,’ barked the major.
Still surrounded by guards, the three of them were escorted into the back of the palace, past the sentries and up the back stairs into the Tsar’s private quarters and the bedchamber. As one of the guards raised his hand to knock on the door, Alix burst out. Dressed in her nightclothes, her hair loose around her shoulders, her eyes were wide with panic.
‘You’re here! You’re here!’ She embraced first Militza and then Stana covering them with kisses, as if she were a lost child, found in the woods. ‘Philippe!’ she embraced him too. The three prisoners stood there, their arms by their sides, too shocked to understand what was going on. ‘They have searched St Petersburg for you. Or so I hear. From the Vladimirs’, to the Yacht Club and finally the Ignatievs’ – you have been hard to find! But I was desperate, you see, desperate, so Nicky sent for you.’
‘Nicky?’ Stana frowned.
‘Sent for us?’ asked Philippe.
‘Yes, you see I had a terrible dream!’ declared Alix.
‘A dream?’ Stana was bewildered.
‘Arrested? In front of all those people? For a dream?’ asked Philippe, looking from Stana to Militza. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or furious.
‘You weren’t arrested,’ Alix said, laughing. She looked from one to the other, appearing feverish, her skin shining with sweat and her lips pale. ‘Nicky only asked them to fetch you! How silly. Oh, how silly everything is.’ She laughed again. ‘But I just had to tell you my dream, it was so terrible and I need your help. So…’ She clapped her hands together.
‘What was your dream?’ asked Militza, her dark eyes narrowing.
‘Oh, it was terrible!’ Alix shook her head.
She walked back into the bedchamber, indicating that they should follow. She climbed back into her bed and, drawing her knees up under her chin, she went on to explain she felt as if she had been visited by an evil spirit.
‘It stood,’ she said, ‘at the end of the bed. It was tall, much taller than a man but was the shape of a man. It was wearing a black hooded cape like Santa Muerte and it carried a baby. But the baby was tiny and red and covered in blood and it was screaming, it wouldn’t stop screaming. The man was doing nothing to stop the screaming and all the time the blood dripped out of the baby and landed on the floor – there,’ she pointed, ‘at the foot of the bed. And then it laid the baby on the bed, still covered in blood and screaming. I leant forward to comfort it, to stroke it, to stop it from screaming and it turned into a snake and slithered away, leaving a trail of blood behind it. By then I was screaming so loudly in my sleep that I woke Nicky and some of the servants, I was shaking and covered in sweat – I couldn’t stop shaking and I went to be sick, but there was nothing to throw up, so I retched and retched until eventually I had no strength in me, but still I cried and shook, so Nicky offered to send for you.’
Just then Nicky appeared at the doorway. ‘There is nothing to worry about, is there? It was just a dream?’
‘But all dreams have meaning,’ replied Philippe, sitting on the end of Alix’s bed, taking charge. ‘Just as all illness is the soul’s memory from a past life. The soul is much older than the body and, as such, we return to this world to pay our debts, because everything has to be paid for. To heal the sick, you have to ask God to forgive your faults and at the same time the soul is strengthened and the body is healed.’
‘I knew you’d understand. I knew you would know,’ replied Alix, staring at Philippe, a smile curling her lips. ‘You always understand.’
‘In the heart is the thought, in the brain is the reflection of that thought. Thought is distinct from reasoning; a thought is a direct penetration into the light.’ He smiled and patted the back of her hand.
‘The light…’ Alix nodded in agreement.
‘But what does it mean?’ asked Nicky.
‘It means—’ Philippe began.
‘It means that you are pregnant,’ interrupted Militza. ‘The baby is small and not yet full of blood, so it must be nurtured, it must be succoured, fed with blood.’
‘I knew it!’ beamed Nicky. ‘I knew it!’
‘A baby…’ Alix smiled and rubbed her flat stomach. ‘I do feel pregnant.’
‘And this time,’ said Philippe, ‘you will trust me and trust in God and it will be a boy. The son that all of Russia wants.’
‘Yes! A son. The son that Russia wants,’ confirmed Militza.
‘And this time,’ Alix said, smiling broadly, ‘there will be no Dr Ott. No doctors at all. Apart from my very own Dr Philippe and his beautiful Montenegrin nurses.’
14
August 1902, Lower Dacha, Peterhof
For the next nine months Militza, Stana and Dr Philippe rarely left her side. After a short spell at Tsarskoye Selo, the imperial family – including the newly appointed Dr Philippe, complete with military epaulets indicative of his recently elevated position – moved to the Lower Dacha, Peterhof.
The moderately sized villa, right on the Gulf of Finland, was the most informal of all the palaces. The rooms, recently refurbished by Roman Meltzer, though a veritable temple to the new and highly fashionable art noveau style, were pokey and cluttered and, frankly, just as Alix liked them. With her newly engaged Montenegrin nurses and her French doctor living very nearby at Znamenka, the days were spent quietly reading, walking, paddling, dozing or attempting to feed the free-flying hummingbirds that darted around the glassed-in tropical winter garden. While Stana’s and Militza’s children travelled back and forth between their palace and the Lower Dacha, filling their days with lessons and exercise, the little Grand Duchesses did the same. Olga, under the instruction of her music tutor, could occasionally be heard practising on the cream-coloured piano in the Tsar’s reception room, while Tatiana was engaged in lessons with her nanny, Margaretta Eagar, and the ‘littles’ were left to play in the expansive gardens with Orchie, or were sometimes escorted, parasols in hand, across the rocks and on to the nearby beach.
This was not a palace where Alix and Nicky received guests. The dining room, with its blue walls and cream-coloured curtains, embroidered with blue poppies, was far too small for official dinners and the reception room, despite the piano and the tall vases replete with white flowers, was not formal enough for any but the most intimate guests. So they lived there, without interruption, social obligation, or indeed ceremony, much like members of the petit bourgeoisie in a comfortable, but not particularly ostentatious, dacha.
Alix was never happier than she was at the Lower Dacha. She had given birth to both Maria and Anastasia in the upstairs bedroom there, surrounded by family photographs. And given the importance of this confinement – the fact that she was most certainly carrying the heir, the future of all Russia – she had little more to do now than wait, sew, read, talk, lie on the veranda, relax on the wicker chaise, drink morning coffee and listen to the waves and the children playing downstairs.
These were halcyon days and slowly but surely, as Alix’s waistline increased, so did her sense of contented satisfaction. She and Militza had never felt so close. She blamed it on her hormones, but the more Militza was there to rub oil into her tired calves and thighs, the more Alix enjoyed the way the Montenegrin’s hands moved inside her legs. How delightful their secret afternoons were, spent in soft, tender caresses and furtive coupling. Militza’s determined fingers were as magic as her swift, loving tongue and the rosacea, the awkwardness, her social nervousness, her inability to understand the comings and goings at court, all faded into the background. She had her close friends and husband by her side and Alix cared little for anything else. Nicky rarely ventured away from the palace, invitations were refused, parties were eschewed and visitors were few and far between.