‘Really, Grisha, no,’ said Stana.
‘I COMMAND it!’ he shouted.
‘Thank you, but no,’ said Stana.
‘Dance!’ he spat. ‘I have people queuing down the street wanting to give me money, presents, paintings, carpets for five minutes with me and you, you won’t dance with me when I command it!’
‘Just dance with him,’ hissed Militza.
Stana reluctantly rose from the divan. It was a sultry night and the air hung close; Rasputin smelt high and acrid with old sweat. He grabbed her and pulled her towards him as he rocked her from side to side. Stana’s heart was beating fast. She was desperate to pull away from him but his grip was firm, almost as firm as his shaft that she could feel through the folds of her dress.
‘Oh Stana, Stana, Stana,’ he whispered in her ear, his spittle spraying the side of her neck as he spoke. ‘You’ve come to me at last. All those years, all those years I have watched, all those years I have longed for you…’ He pulled her tighter towards him. ‘I knew you’d come in the end. Women can’t resist power, my power; the power of Grisha, they bounce up and down on it like whores at an orgy. Come closer, my little whore…’
‘That’s it!’ declared Stana, pushing him so hard in the chest that he stumbled back a step. ‘I am leaving. Goodnight, sister!’ Grabbing her fan and her wrap, she ran out of the room and down the front stairs, bursting through the front door and out into the evening air. She inhaled deeply, looking up at the pale blue sky and the stars. What an odious creature that man was! Truly he was unbearable.
She glanced around the drive. Her car was on the other side of the fountain. She stumbled across past Rasputin’s car that was waiting, complete with Okhrana driver snoozing at the wheel. Stana opened her car door and slipped into the back seat. Where was her driver?
‘You should be a little nicer to me,’ came a voice right next to her in the shadows.
Stana screamed! He covered her mouth with his rough, gnarled hand. How did he get there? How did he leave the palace quicker than her? He truly was the Devil himself! ‘Shhhhh,’ he hissed in her ear as he heaved himself on top of her. ‘I don’t know who you think you are, little witch, but I control armies, I control governments and I control the imperial family. You have not been nice to Grisha and so Grisha won’t be nice to you.’
‘I am a married woman!’ spat Stana. ‘Leave me alone. I love my husband.’
‘Your husband?’ He stared. ‘You wouldn’t have that husband if it weren’t for me. And what I have given I can also take away.’
‘No you can’t. He’s much more powerful than you, he’s head of the army.’
‘No one is more powerful than Grisha.’
‘What utter rubbish, I am not afraid of you. I have never been afraid of you!’
‘Silly girl.’ He smiled. ‘I shall have him sent to the Caucasus!’
He leant forward and forced his hard tongue in her mouth. He worked his way deep down in her throat, jabbing and rolling it around, making sure he probed every corner and then he licked her face, her cheek and her lips as he slowly pushed himself off her. He opened the car door and slammed it, without another word. Stana was left, her clothes crumpled, her face covered in saliva, rigid with indignation and fury. Her driver suddenly got into the car, and along with him came a trail of cigarette smoke.
‘Sorry, Grand Duchess, I didn’t see you leave the palace,’ he apologized. ‘Where to?’
‘Home,’ she said quietly.
It took less than thirty-six hours for Nikolasha to learn he was to be relieved of his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Forces. He was to be replaced by the Tsar himself. He and his wife were told to leave the city, to move south. To the Caucasus.
34
16 December 1916, Petrograd
It was chance. Or was it?
How many things in life happen by chance? How many paths are preordained? How free is our own will? And how much is down to the Fates?
It had been over a year since the sisters had seen each other. With Nikolasha relieved of his post and sent south, Stana had been living in Tchair, their house in the Crimea, while Militza and Peter had been based in Petrograd and of course Znamenka. In normal times, the sisters would have managed to see each other, but times were anything but normal. There were riots in the streets, strikes in every province, rebellions in the cities, food shortages and power cuts everywhere; none but essential travel was advised, especially among members of the aristocracy – the stories of those who’d succumbed to banditry were too numerous to mention.
But a year in the Crimea, while lovely and most certainly full of charm, had left Stana desperate to see her sister and her nieces and nephew, so she finally made it to Petrograd in the middle of December, despite the war, the misery and the constant fear of attack. Militza was beside herself with excitement.
‘Are you sure it is open?’ asked Stana as they sat, muffled together, holding hands, in the back to the car.
‘I heard it was,’ said Militza. ‘Although nothing is sure these days.’
‘If not?’
‘If not the Yacht Club, then I am not sure if anything else will be open – all the nice restaurants are shut because there is not much food in the city.’
‘It looks very different,’ said Stana, staring out of the window at the grey, intimidating streets.
‘Yes – and it is dangerous to go anywhere alone at night,’ said Militza. ‘You never know who you might bump into.’
They pulled up outside the club and looked up at the windows; a few rays of light seeped hopefully through the tightly shut curtains. There was a smell of boiled cabbage in the street as they picked their way through the salted slush on the pavement. Militza knocked on the door and it was opened a crack; a pair of eyes looked her up and down.
‘Grand Duchess Militza Nikolayevna,’ she announced, and the footman opened the door.
Upstairs in the dining room the place was packed. In comparison to the gloom and misery outside, here life was joyful; there was laughter – and most importantly of all, there seemed to be a fully functioning kitchen and plenty of wine. The textile workers might be on strike across town due to the shortage of bread, but here there was sturgeon, morels in a cream sauce, pommes dauphinoise and braised cabbage leaves, plus plenty of fine Bordeaux and even a small glass or two of champagne.
‘He is unstoppable,’ said Stana, eating a little fish off her fork. ‘Nicky came to Kiev and both Nikolasha and Minny told him to get Rasputin out of the palace.’ She leant forward, her eyes glancing left and right. One never knew who was listening. ‘And Ella went to Tsarskoye Selo to plead with her. Her own sister – a nun – and she still didn’t listen.’ Stana shook her head. ‘Apparently she drove her away like a dog! It is so so sad.’
Little did anyone know that it was the last time the Tsarina would ever see her sister, Ella, again. Both would be brutally murdered, one day after the other, in less than eighteen months’ time.
‘But there is nothing to be done,’ continued Stana. ‘If the Tsar persists in being ruled by his wife and his wife persists in being ruled by him—’
‘Your Imperial Highnesses!’
Militza looked up. ‘Mr Rayner?’ she asked, a little unsure, for the light was behind him and the man appeared to have slicked back his hair. ‘Mr Oswald Rayner?’
‘Lieutenant Rayner now,’ he said, with a little nod. ‘How very charming to see you again.’
‘Absolutely,’ agreed Militza.
‘And how is your friend Yusupov?’ enquired Stana.
‘Well. Prince Felix is even entertaining tonight, I believe,’ he said.