‘Keep your voice down!’ Militza’s furtive eyes glanced around the club. ‘The walls have eyes and ears. The Okhrana know everything.’
‘I don’t care who hears, because I will not entertain such a thing.’
‘But he is out of control!’
‘I know!’
‘He’s now so powerful the other day the Tsar sent him to look Stolypin’s replacement in the eye to see if he was a “good man”. And guess what?’
‘What?’
‘He wasn’t. And guess what?’ She paused and leant across the table. ‘He’s not the Prime Minister.’
‘That doesn’t justify killing him,’ said Stana, stirring her tea.
‘Doesn’t it?’ Militza felt her heat beat rapidly in her chest. ‘I don’t know if you have noticed between quadrilles and appointments with your dressmaker, but you and I are not welcome at the palace any more?’
‘No one is welcome at the palace; they don’t see anyone.’
‘But instead of us advising, guiding, smoothing the ruffled feathers, it’s them.’
‘Well, Nikolasha’s heard that Anna thinks we only introduced Rasputin to the Tsarina so that we might later use him as a tool to further our own goals.’ Stana took a sip of her tea. ‘It seems the tool no longer needs its master.’
‘When was the last time Alix was at Znamenka?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘When was the last time Nicky spoke to Nikolasha, the cousin he loves so much?’
‘I can’t remember.’
Militza sighed. ‘Felix Yusupov called our house the axis of evil.’
‘Well, his family have always hated Grisha.’
‘But I thought Felix didn’t?’
‘That was before Grisha tried to cure him,’ Stana lowered her voice to just above a whisper, ‘of his lusts.’
‘Lusts?’
‘Boys.’
‘Homosexuality.’
‘Yes,’ nodded Stana.
‘Well, that’s hardly a secret; the man has been dressing up as a woman ever since he could walk. And he’ll tell anyone that he was so convincing as a girl he once caught the eye of King Edward VII!’
‘Well, Grisha suggested he went to the gypsies in Novaya Derevnaya. He said they would soon coax it out of him!’
‘The gypsies are his answer to every question.’
Stana nodded. ‘Since when is murdering him the answer to yours?’
The argument went back and forth. The more Stana refused to discuss the idea or even entertain such a concept, the more Militza believed herself to be correct. Every time she pondered the future with him still in it, she was overcome with nausea and paranoia.
‘It feels bad,’ she whispered to her sister, as the waiter came to clear away the tea.
‘I think you need to speak to Dr Badmaev about all the elixir you are taking,’ said Stana. ‘It’s affecting your nerves.’
‘Are you scared of Rasputin?’
‘No,’ Stana replied defiantly. ‘I just hate him. According to Nicky “Better ten Rasputins than an hysterical Alix”. Whatever Rasputin does, however duplicitous he is, he makes life more bearable at Tsarskoye Selo. He keeps Alix calm and so Nicky gives him what he wants. His prayers coincide with the recovery of Alexei and now, after Spala…’
‘That child of many prayers,’ said Militza, shaking her head.
‘I could not take that away,’ said Stana. ‘Despite what he’s done to our country and the war.’
‘The truth is you think he made all the difference to your wedding. You think it was all down to Rasputin that you and Nikolasha got married in the first place. Well, it wasn’t. And the person who made the ultimate sacrifice for you was not him, but me!’ Militza stood up from the table. ‘So I don’t need your help, I don’t need your approval. I shall do this with or without you!’ She looked at her sister. ‘Without you, it is!’
And so she waited, as she knew she had to although she was desperate not to. But she would only have one chance, so she bided her time and prepared. On her own, her magic would not be strong enough against him, for he was a formidable force. Quite what the Four Winds had found when they’d scoured the land looking for a koldun, she could not tell. But his magic was strong and his will was even stronger. Perhaps he had been born with a small tail? He certainly had two budding horns on the top of his head. Maybe he had been born with teeth? Or was he the product of three generations of illegitimacy? All she knew was that he had certainly signed a pact with the Devil, using the blood of his left little finger. And it would take all of her powers to stand up to him. She would have to call on the magic of all the ancient sisters who’d gone before her to rid Russia of his evil soul. For days, she disappeared into her salon in Znamenka. She pored over her books while she played with the toenails she’d so painstakingly harvested from him and kept in a beautiful handcrafted box that had been given to her by Papus himself, inlaid with a large Martinist star, the symbol of the order. Rasputin had come willingly to her house, she reminded herself, a fact that would make the spell more powerful. She had not taken her trophies using force.
But the spells of the past seemed weak. What use was an old spell and graveyard dust in his drink or food? ‘As the dead no longer stand up, may the body of Rasputin no longer stand, as the body of the dead have disappeared, may the body of Rasputin also disappear.’ It all seemed so ineffectual. Brana could certainly find the graveyard dust and she might possibly be able to sprinkle it on his food. But the idea he would suddenly keel over did not seem plausible at all.
She must think, she must plan – and all the while she kept reminding herself that she was the one who had the St John the Baptist icon. She was the one who was protected and he was not.
So she waited for 23 June, for Midsummer’s night and the feast of St John’s Eve, then stepping out into the forest, her cape tied tightly around her, she could not help but think how much she missed her sister, of the summers they’d spent gathering herbs wet with morning dew. The last time they’d gone out together was years ago, when they’d tried to help Alix. The woman was so disloyal not to remember that, remember how they had helped her, how Militza and Philippe had come to her rescue when the fifth daughter was born. Funny how the poor child is not mentioned now, funny what people remember, funny what they choose to forget…
It was a beautiful night as she wove her way through the forest. The sky was clear and the sun low in the pale blue sky, trying in vain to set. She loved these white nights, where the days lasted forever and the city was not allowed to sleep. There was always a sort of madness in the air that made malefic spells trip more freely off the tongue. She was looking for foxgloves, known as ‘dead man’s bells’, in the forest so Rasputin might hear them ringing in his ears, for hemlock grown in full sunshine so it would be more virulently poisonous – and of course, henbane. Brana had already secured a mandrake. She’d been dispatched two nights before with a sword and one of Nikolasha’s borzois. Under strict instructions, she’d traced a circle, three times, around the plant and had tied the plant to the dog; then, while she covered her ears, she’d placed a plate of meat outside the circle so that dog pulled up the plant as he lunged forward for the food.
While Militza wandered alone through the forest, Brana busied herself melting down a cross, fashioning the molten metal into a bullet. The only way to kill a klondun as powerful as Rasputin was to force a metal bullet through his heart.
It was about 6 a.m. by the time Militza came back to the palace with her foxgloves, henbane and hemlock, all glistening with St John’s Eve dew, then the two women set to work. Militza fashioned a doll in the shape of Rasputin, just as she’d done all those years before, taking care to reproduce the large member that she and Stana had added out of foolishness. What an appalling act of folly that had turned out to be. She warmed the wax from a fresh corpse in her hands; it was a much softer, whiter fat than the wax she was used to and there was something deeply unpleasant about the way it melted and slid all over her hands, covering them with the grease. The smell was acrid and made her eyes water and she needed to be quick, for the poppet of fat would not keep its shape for long. She placed it in a small metal dish.