‘I don’t think he will listen to me.’
‘But he is your creation!’
‘Maybe. But I am not sure I can make him listen.’
‘Of course you can make him! You have to make him.’ Stana’s white face was imploring. ‘Do it for me!’ She drank some of the tea.
‘How?’
‘Seduce him.’ Her black eyes stared.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! He much prefers you, anyway!’
Stana looked confused. ‘But you’re his mistress. You made him. You’re in charge of him. He’s yours.’
‘What would Peter say?’
‘He doesn’t need to know. You seduce Rasputin and then you ask him to change her mind.’ Stana was undeterred. ‘You seduce him and he will do what you say. A man is always at his most malleable after sex. They’re like dogs after a hunt – at their most obedient when they’re spent.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to! You promised me once you’d look after me. You sealed it with a kiss, all those years ago. You can’t break that promise. You simply can’t.’
‘I can.’
‘You’ve done worse things. It is all your fault for manifesting him in the first place.’ She tugged at her sister’s hand. ‘If not for me, then for both our sakes and for the sake of Montenegro. For if I go down, so shall you!’
And so a few weeks later Militza returned to Rasputin’s filthy flat on Kirochnaya Street. She stepped out of her car and immediately pulled her fur-trimmed hood around her face for there were spies and informers everywhere, selling other people’s secrets to the police. She could not be too careful, even on this unremarkable street.
‘Goodness, Mamma,’ he said as she took off her cloak. ‘You look very beautiful.’
She had made an effort, it was true. It was the first time she’d set out to seduce anyone, but she’d concluded that dressing the part, wearing a costume, might help. So, despite it being late afternoon, she was wearing an evening dress of dark ruby red; it revealed her smooth white shoulders and the line of her neck. She’d piled her hair up with a few diamond-studded pins and was wearing a Bolin diamond and pearl collier de chien. She’d also swallowed half a bottle of Dr Badmaev’s cocaine elixir, which always made her feel a little better.
‘I am on my way to the opera,’ she explained, which was true. Although she had certainly made an extra effort with her toilette, judging by the heavy smell of violets that permeated the apartment, so indeed had Rasputin. His normally matted hair was clean and combed and his open-necked peasant shirt and baggy trousers looked as if they had recently been washed.
‘Oh.’ He sounded a little disappointed. ‘I had rather hoped we might drink some Madeira.’ He looked down at two polished glasses he had placed on the table.
‘I am happy to have a glass of wine,’ replied Militza, sitting down opposite him, with swish of silk. She was more than happy to have a glass of wine; she was sick to her core with trepidation and was desperate for anything to calm her nerves. ‘No friends here today?’ she asked breezily, looking around the room.
He even appeared to have put a small vase of dark roses on the table. Their perfume was trying – and failing – to compete with the heady notes of his cologne.
‘None of my little women are here today,’ he said, looking across at her as he poured the wine. ‘I dismissed them as soon as I knew you were coming.’ He handed her the glass and Militza had to admit she was a little flattered.
He raised his glass to her and took a large sip of sweet, heavy wine. There was something about the man’s directness, coupled with his disarming eyes and his coarse peasant hands, that made him very attractive to an aristocratic woman. He was not bound by convention and he exuded a physicality, a sensuality – and a sexuality that most of the fine young men of St Petersburg had mislaid decades ago on the way to the salon.
‘I know why you are here,’ he continued.
‘Really?’ Militza was a little taken aback. Were the dress and the jewels too obvious?
‘You are annoyed with me,’ he said. ‘I can see the anger in your soul.’
‘You can see my soul?’ She drank a sip of her wine.
‘I can see all souls,’ he said, pouring himself more Madeira. ‘They glow like halos around the head. The happier the person, the brighter it shines. Spiritually awakens the soul. Today, I can feel your anger and your soul is diminished, it doesn’t shine; it hangs around you like a grey, sad cloud. You are much like when you were last in my flat, when you were agitated and angry.’
‘Well, you are right,’ she conceded, taking another large sip of wine.
‘I am always right,’ he replied.
‘Only a fool thinks he is always right.’
‘I am no fool, my lady, I can tell at a glance whether someone is ill and if I concentrate a little longer I find out what ails them and how to cure their illness.’
‘Pure hypnotism and witch-doctoring, you’re no better than any of those dozens of shamans you find in the Altai.’ She smiled. ‘You’re not the only one to be able to dilate their pupils at will.’
‘Yes, but some of us, Mamma, make the use of drops. And now you are angry because I am curing the young boy without you. What do you care about more? Yourself? The young boy? Or the future of Russia? Don’t tell me you don’t care about the future of Russia?’
‘I am not angry about you helping the Tsarevich. I have children and I would hate to see any of them in pain,’ she countered. The man was certainly no fool, but then neither was she. ‘What you are doing is so helpful to the Tsarina and indeed the Tsar.’
‘They would be broken without me,’ he said, draining his glass and banging it down on the table. ‘Broken! You should see their pitiful, grateful eyes every time they look at me. Their souls lie in tatters and I am sewing them back together again, one stitch at a time. How can that make you angry?’
‘I am not angry.’
‘You are lying. You have the dark soul of a liar.’
‘I want you to help the Tsar and Tsarina, that is why I took you there, that is why I introduced you to them. I am so happy you can help the poor boy,’ she said, taking another small sip of wine and then looking up at him. ‘I am only worried for you, Brother Grigory.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, Grisha, you. I am worried about the gossip, about the sharp tongues that surround the court, about what the cabal of harpies would say about you visiting at night.’
‘You should hear what they say about you, my dear,’ he said, staring at her as his hand slowly moved across the table to stroke the soft skin between her thumb and forefinger.
His touch was so unnerving that Militza could not respond. She felt panicked. She was supposed to seduce him. She needed to gather herself. She thought of her sister and the position she was losing, the position they would both be losing. She closed her eyes. She must concentrate.
‘Do you want to hear what they say about you?’ he asked, his voice was soft, his caresses even softer.
‘What do they say, Grisha,’ she asked, her gaze meeting his. ‘What awful, terrible things do they say?’
‘That you’re a witch!’
‘A witch?’ She laughed gently and moved a little closer. ‘Is that all?’
‘A witch who casts spells and can see dead people.’
‘Dead people?’
‘And that you smell of goat.’
Militza flinched. Would this insult never go away? She was sitting right next to him now on the velvet banquette, all the more determined to see it through. Smell of goat? She will show them. Let them see quite how powerful she could be. With her sister married to Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich and she to Grand Duke Peter Nikolayevich, the pair of them would be an incomparable force. All she needed, all they needed, was the Tsarina to grant the divorce.