‘And of course we must build something near the river,’ continued the mayor, attempting to fold his arms across his stomach.
‘Must you?’ inquired Nicky.
‘The sick and the crippled keep slipping into the Sarov,’ he replied. ‘And it can be almost impossible to get them out. Our Saint used to bathe there,’ continued the mayor, ‘so the waters have healing properties. Hundreds of pilgrims bathe there every day.’
‘The river!’ Alix’s eyes shone brightly, remembering Philippe’s words. ‘We must go.’
‘I am not sure, Your Imperial Majesty, if you will forgive,’ ventured the mayor. ‘It is dangerous…’
‘We must go!’ insisted Alix.
‘Absolutely, of course you must, Your Imperial Majesty,’ he agreed effusively, his round dark eyes flickering around the room. ‘The waters are said to be most powerful at midnight.’
It was a small group that set off from the town hall towards the river. Both Nikolasha and Peter elected to stay behind drinking cognac with the mayor, while Alix, Nicky, Militza, Stana and three bodyguards dressed in full military regalia stepped out into the warm night under a full moon, and walked the mile or so to the riverbank. As they made their way out of the town, the true extent of the number of pilgrims gathered for the canonization became apparent. There were hundreds of small fires all along the side of the road and the air was heavy with smoke and the smell of sizzling shashlik. It was like an army encampment made up of the sick and frail. Everywhere they walked, they heard the mellifluous sound of singing and the gentle ringing of small bells.
‘It is as if the Holy Spirit is moving amongst us,’ whispered Alix, looking left and right, drinking it all in.
Nicky, in his white uniform, was equally entranced. The two of them moved slowly and quietly, she in a gleaming white dress, like ghosts amongst their people. In the darkness they walked unrecognized and those who suspected they might be the ‘Little Father’ and ‘Little Mother of Russia’ dismissed them as a vision, something else extraordinary in a truly magical day.
Upon reaching the river, they paused while the guards cleared a path. Those clustered around the river bank, dressed in simple cotton shifts, the women with scarves drawn tightly around their faces, were instructed to pull the infirm, the frail and the limbless from the waters in order to make way for the royal party. Next to the river was a small wooden structure, which was used for bathing. Inside were three naked men whose wet, scrawny frames shone in the moonlight as they left the shed and searched in the bushes for their damp clothes.
Alix was too self-possessed to notice the procession of naked and gnarled flesh in front of her. She had been thinking about this moment for an apparent eternity and it was nearly there. All she had to do was bathe in the river and it would come to pass, just as Philippe had promised. Her hands were shaking as she began to unbutton her clothes. Militza and Stana helped her as they tried not to stare at the other naked bodies around them. Neither of them had been confronted by such poverty since they had arrived in Russia all those years ago and it stirred a terrible sense of foreboding in Militza’s troubled thoughts.
She, Stana and Alix finally disrobed in the shed near to the river and then the three of them walked towards the river. Alix went first, her naked backside glowing a luminous alabaster white against the black shallows of the river. Nicky couldn’t believe it! His wife was normally so prudish; even the lavatory at Tsarskoye Selo had a special cover on it, so as not to offend her and now here she was, walking completely naked into the river. He felt such a joyous rush of exhilaration that he laughed out loud.
‘Don’t you dare laugh at me!’ said Alix as she picked her way through the mud, gingerly cupping her own breasts as she slipped into the water. Quite what had come over her, Nicky didn’t understand, but he was delighted. He too stripped naked in the hut and, just as Militza and Stana immersed themselves in the water, he came careering towards the bank and, leaping into the air, he jumped right in.
The cool water was pure bliss after the airless heat of the day, the joy of its chilled softness against their bare skin so relaxing and liberating. It felt marvellous, so free. After the oppressive, claustrophobic religiosity of the day, to swim naked in the cool river felt like an incredible release. Militza was immediately reminded of her childhood when she and Stana used to run and swim naked in the streams at the foot of the Black Mountains.
‘This is wonderful!’ exclaimed Alix, swimming and splashing in the water.
‘Glorious!’ agreed Nicky, executing a few vigorous strokes before relaxing back on the surface.
Just then the clouds cleared and the full moon shone, its silver light dancing on the surface of the water making the river shimmer and sparkle around them. Above, the stars covered the sky as if they’d been spilled out of a pot of bright white paint.
‘You can feel the magic,’ said Militza as she looked across at her sister’s dark silhouetted face.
‘Yes,’ Stana nodded and they both turned to watch Alix as she lay on her back in the river, her naked body floating on the surface of the water, smiling, as she quietly began to pray to St Seraphim, her saint, her people’s saint, to grant her the deepest wish of all.
17
12 August 1904, St Petersburg
Militza would never forget hearing the boom of the gun salute. She held her breath. Bang! There it was.
One hundred and two.
It echoed around the city.
And the city stopped in its tracks.
Militza ran to the window and threw it wide open. Bang! Another one. She couldn’t believe it. Bang! Again. She looked down into the square to see all the traffic had halted. The trams were not moving. Pedestrians were stationary, rooted to the spot on the pavement, in the road, frozen in an instant. They were all listening. Could it really be true? Were they hearing correctly? Had the cannons at the Peter and Paul Fortress just announced the birth of a male heir to a reigning monarch for the first time since the seventeenth century? Bang! There it was again. It was as if the cannon itself was blowing away all that was miserable, all that was woeful and depressing about the war: the loss of life in Manchuria, the endless news about the Japanese sinking Russian ships. Great explosions of hope and happiness were being blasted through this troubled city.
Militza’s telephone rang urgently. Stana! She couldn’t wait for her butler to answer, so she ran down the stairs in her morning dress and picked it up in the hall.
‘God be praised!’
‘Philippe be praised!’ she replied. ‘We are saved! The Tsarina is saved!’
‘Russia is saved,’ enthused Militza.
‘And so is Montenegro!’
The rush of adrenaline was so powerful Militza began to tremble. It had all been worth it! They had done what everyone else had failed to do. They had managed to furnish the barren Tsarina with an heir. A son! At last.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said, laughing down the telephone. ‘We did it!’
‘We did,’ came Stana’s reply. ‘No one can touch us now.’
Outside, church bells began to ring. There were ripples of applause and shouts of joy from the street below. The servants began to arrive in the hall, their normally sullen, uncommunicative faces beaming with elation.
‘It’s a boy!’ shouted a footman.
‘A boy!’ confirmed a lady’s maid.
Bang! The cannons carried on firing. Again and again. Three hundred and one times in total. It went on for well over an hour and by the time they had finished and Militza looked out again into the streets below, flags were being hoisted up poles, the double-headed eagle was flapping from every conceivable vantage point and the national anthem was playing in the park across the street. This was going to be a party, a very large party and everyone was going to join in. Work was most definitely over for the day and when the factories opened their gates, hours before time, the labourers and machinists poured out into the streets. Instead of closing, most of the restaurants pulled their tables out into the streets and, in the more expensive hostelries, the managers cracked open champagne, serving regulars free of charge.