Peter chatted away to the stiff-looking gentleman manning the Fabergé stall as he riffled through the stunning collection of bejewelled trinkets which included silver photograph frames, cigarette boxes and necklace chains: portable knickknacks to make charming Christmas presents.
Meanwhile, despite her best efforts, Militza couldn’t take her eyes off Rasputin as he drifted from stall to stall, helping himself to whatever amuse-bouche he fancied. He alternately embraced or blessed any of the twittering females who crossed his path – and there were many. Cheeks flushed, heads cocked to one side, hands clasped in front them, they giggled and smiled and touched the backs of their heads, patting their pinned hair, as they flirted with him.
Militza found it hard to contain her emotion. She wasn’t sure if she were simply jealous or plain annoyed. But the confidence he exuded and the aura of physical power emanating from him was something to behold. His presence was magnetic and it was obvious that most of the women in the hall thought so too.
‘How is your friend?’ asked the Dowager Empress, standing right next to Militza and following her gaze.
‘Oh!’ Militza started. ‘Your Imperial Majesty, I did not see you there!’
‘No.’ She gave a half-smile. ‘You appeared lost in your own little world. And what a world!’ she continued. ‘You must be congratulated.’ She nodded, her lips tight. ‘Who would have thought two women from such a ghastly little backwater, with so little breeding and so few connections, could rise so high. It’s as if you were made of wisteria. It climbs as high and as quickly as it can. Like a weed. Suffocating all in its wake. Funny plant,’ she added. ‘I have never seen the appeal of it myself. It has to be trained and cut back, taught how to behave. It does flower, very beautifully, once, and then leaves such a terrible mess afterwards. Tell me,’ she paused, ‘have you found a church in all of Russia where a brother can actually marry his own sister?’
‘You make it sound like a sin,’ said Militza, her heart beating. Even after all these years the Dowager Empress could still manage to make her feel as if she had just arrived in city with thick black mud under her fingernails. All those insecurities, all the misery came flooding back. She could feel herself flushing like a virgin at her first ball.
‘It is, my dear. Incest.’ She shivered. ‘It’s a hideous sin.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact we have found a church. In Livadia,’ Militza replied, despite herself. ‘In April. Such a pretty time of year.’
The Dowager Empress looked horrified, but only for a second and then she shrugged. ‘Sadly, I think I shall be in Biarritz, or Spala. Or somewhere far, far away.’
‘I don’t think it will be a big wedding,’ added Militza.
‘No,’ Maria Fyodorovna said, raising an eyebrow, ‘I imagine you’ll be struggling for witnesses.’
‘Your Imperial Majesty.’ Peter turned around from the Fabergé table and kissed the Dowager Empress’s hand. ‘Have you been buying Christmas trinkets in aid of the poor?’
‘Just a few little biscuits,’ the Dowager Empress replied.? ‘Xenia and I are off to Cartier.’
‘Excellent,’ he said, turning back to the table.
‘Cartier?’ Militza asked.
‘It’s a private invitation,’ replied the Dowager Empress, looking at her up and down. ‘Didn’t you receive one?’
There was something about the triumphant look on the old woman’s face, the hardness behind her pale eyes, that was depressingly familiar. Militza couldn’t stop herself from imagining what it would take to get rid of the woman. Just some sleeping water, drawn after dark. Some dust from a dead man’s grave, worn as an amulet. It would be so simple. So quick. So final…
‘I am not sure I need any more bibelots,’ Militza replied eventually. ‘Sometimes a woman has enough frivolities. There are other ways to occupy one’s mind.’
‘Very wise,’ replied Maria Fyodorovna. ‘I imagine yours is quite occupied at the moment. The idea of your dear Friend, coming to the palace after dark, filling the little boy’s head with stories of Siberia, bringing an icon with him that he says is all-powerful and then afterwards retiring for an evening of tea with Her. The German.’ She paused, her dislike for Alix so profound, she was unable to pronounce her name. ‘That would occupy my mind. Actually. That, and his increasingly well-known fondness for carousing with actresses.’
‘But he is a man of God!’
‘Is he?’ the Dowager Empress whispered, before adding loudly, ‘Oh look, there is my daughter. Cartier beckons!’ And with a rustle of silk, she walked away.
‘Has she gone?’ asked Peter joining his wife.
‘I really hope your brother knows what he is doing,’ said Militza.
‘And your sister,’ agreed Peter. ‘I don’t think I have ever seen the Dowager Empress so out of sorts.’
‘Out of sorts?’ Militza looked at her husband. ‘She is furious.’
‘No. The day Nicky married Alix, then she was furious.’ Peter nodded, watching the Dowager Empress make her way through the hall. ‘She disguised it as tears, copious weeping for the death of the Tsar. But, in retrospect, I am convinced it was because her beautiful Nicky, her favourite son, was marrying a provincial with no apparent sophistication at all.’
‘She could have made an effort to like her daughter-in-law,’ suggested Militza.
Peter turned and looked at her and laughed. ‘You really don’t know my dear old Minny at all, do you?’
‘Or maybe she simply hates her because she was the one who chose her?’
‘Possibly,’ agreed Peter. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nicky married Alix at her behest – so dear old Minny introduced the “Curse of the Coburgs” into her own family!’
‘What entertains you so?’
Rasputin was standing next to them. Beside him was the doctor’s wife, her little hand hooked through the crook of his arm.
‘Nothing,’ replied Peter, waving away the question, his mind spinning at Militza’s suggestion.
‘I like jokes,’ persisted Rasputin. ‘I like to be entertained.’
‘There was no joke,’ said Peter.
‘What a shame.’
Rasputin smiled as he slowly stroked the back of the doctor’s wife’s hand. She smiled and the ringlets at the back of her head quivered as she slowly turned her somewhat glassy gaze this way and that.
‘Grisha is very fond of being entertained,’ she said sweetly.
Peter nodded. ‘I hear the gypsies think all their Christmases have come at once when you arrive, you order so much champagne!’
‘Champagne!’ Rasputin looked shocked. ‘I thought you knew me well, brother! There is nothing I dislike more than those weak French bubbles!’
‘And there was me thinking you’d shed your peasant’s coat!’ replied Peter. ‘For those fine silks you are wearing.’
Both men looked down at Rasputin’s crimson silk trousers, gathered loosely at the waist.
‘Another present from an admirer!’ Rasputin laughed, shaking his right leg a little to show them off. ‘The shirt was embroidered by the Empress herself!’ He flung his arms wide open for it to be admired. ‘But the trousers were a little present after a healing.’
‘A healing?’ Militza’s mouth was dry.
‘The Empress embroidered you a shirt?’ asked Peter.
‘Yes,’ he nodded.
‘Grisha heals so many women,’ interjected the doctor’s wife. ‘Hysteria, sadness, woes: they all come to him for help. Some are so desperate, they are on their knees, praying; sometimes there is a queue. And he heals them all.’