Pekkala stopped outside the room, trying to catch his breath from all the rushing he had done to be on time. Then he heard the voice of the Tsarina and the Tsar’s furious reply. As their words filtered into his brain, he realized they were talking about him.
“I am not going to dismiss Pekkala!” said the Tsar.
Pekkala heard the faint creak of the Tsar’s riding boots upon the floor. He knew exactly which pair of boots they were—they had been special-ordered from England and had arrived the week before. The Tsar was trying to break them in, although his feet were suffering in the meantime. He had confided to Pekkala that he had even resorted to the old peasant trick of softening new boots, which was to urinate in them and leave them standing overnight.
Now Pekkala heard the Tsarina speaking in her usual soft tone. He had never heard her shout. The Tsarina’s low pitch always sounded to him like a person uttering threats. “Our friend has urged us,” she said.
At the mention of “our friend,” Pekkala felt his jaw clench. That was the phrase the Tsar and the Tsarina used between themselves to describe the self-proclaimed holy man Rasputin.
Since his first appearance in the court of Tsar Nicholas Romanov, Rasputin’s hold upon the Imperial Family had grown so strong that he was now consulted on all matters, whether about the war, which was now in its second year and moving from one catastrophe to the next, or about appointments to the Royal Court, or about the illness of the Tsar’s youngest child, Alexei. Although it was officially denied, Alexei had been diagnosed with hemophilia. Injuries which would have been laughed off by any healthy boy confined him to his bed for days at a time. Often he had to be carried wherever he went by his personal servant, a sailor named Derevenko.
The Tsarina soon came to believe that Rasputin held the cure to Alexei’s disease.
Disturbed by the power Rasputin held over the royal family, the prime minister, Peter Stolypin, had ordered an investigation. The report he delivered to the Tsar was filled with stories of debauchery in Rasputin’s Petrograd apartment and secret meetings between the Tsarina and Rasputin at the house of her best friend, Anna Vyrubova.
The Tsarina was not well liked among the Russian people. They called her Nemka, the German Woman, and now that the country was at war with Germany, they wondered where her own loyalties lay.
After reading the report, the Tsar ordered Stolypin never to speak to him again about Rasputin. When Stolypin was shot by an assassin named Dimitri Bogrov at an opera house in Kiev, dying five days later, the lack of concern shown by the Tsar and Alexandra caused a scandal in the Russian court.
When the assassin Bogrov was arrested, he turned out to be a paid informant of the Okhrana. Lawyers at Bogrov’s trial were not permitted to ask whether there had been any connection between the assassin Bogrov and the Romanov family. Less than a week after Stolypin’s death, Bogrov himself was executed.
From then on, Rasputin’s meetings with the Tsarina continued unopposed. Rumors of infidelity spread. Although Pekkala himself did not believe that they were true, he knew many who did.
What Pekkala did believe was that the Tsarina’s anxiety over her son’s precarious health had pushed her to the brink of her own sanity. In spite of all the riches of the Romanovs, there was no cure their money could have bought. So the Tsarina had turned to superstitions, which now so governed her life that she existed in a world seen only through a lens of fear. And somehow, through that lens, Rasputin had taken on the presence of a god.
The Tsar himself was not so easily convinced, and Rasputin’s influence might have faded if not for one event which secured for him the loyalty of the entire royal family, and also sealed his fate.
At the Romanovs’ dreary hunting lodge of Spala, the young Tsarevich slipped when getting out of the bath and suffered a hemorrhage so severe that the doctors told his parents to make preparations for a funeral.
Then a telegram arrived from Rasputin, assuring the Tsarina that her son would not die.
What happened next, even Rasputin’s harshest critics were unable to deny.
After the arrival of the telegram, Alexei began, quite suddenly, to recover.
From that point on, no matter what Rasputin did, he became almost untouchable.
Almost.
Rasputin’s excesses continued, and Pekkala had quietly dreaded the day when he might be summoned by the Tsar to investigate the Siberian. One way or the other, it would have been the end of Pekkala’s career, or even of his life, just as it was for Stolypin. Perhaps for that very reason, or because he preferred not to know the truth, the Tsar had never placed upon Pekkala the burden of handling such a case.
“Our friend,” Pekkala heard the Tsar snap, “would do well to keep in mind that I myself appointed Pekkala.”
“Now, my darling,” said the Tsarina, and there was the rustle of a dress as she moved across the floor, “no one is suggesting that you were wrong to have appointed him. Your loyalty to Pekkala is beyond reproach. It is Pekkala’s loyalty to you that has come into question.”
Hearing this, Pekkala felt a burning in his chest. He had never done anything remotely disloyal. He knew this and the Tsar knew this. But in that moment, Pekkala felt the bile rise in his throat, because he knew that the Tsar was vulnerable. He could be persuaded. The Tsar liked to think of himself as a decisive man, and in some things he was, but he could be made to believe almost anything if his wife had decided to convince him.
“Sunny, don’t you understand?” protested the Tsar. “Pekkala’s loyalty is not to me.”
“Well, don’t you think it should be?”
“Pekkala’s duty is to the task I gave him,” replied the Tsar, “and that is where his loyalty belongs.”
“His duty—” began the Tsarina.
The Tsar cut her off. “Is to find out the truth of whatever matter I place before him, however unpleasant it might be to hear it. Such a man strikes fear into the hearts of those who are sheltering lies. And I wonder, Sunny, if our friend is not more worried for himself than he is for the well-being of the court.”
“You cannot say that, my love! Our friend wishes only for the good of our family, and of our country. He has even sent you a gift.” There was a rustling of paper.
“What on earth is that?”
“It is a comb,” she replied. “One of his own, and he has suggested that it would bring you good fortune to run it through your hair before you attend your daily meetings with the generals.”
Pekkala shuddered at the thought of Rasputin’s greasy hair.
The Tsar was thinking the same thing. “I will not take part in another one of Rasputin’s disgusting rituals!” he shouted, then strode out of the room and into the hallway.
There was nowhere for Pekkala to go. He had only one choice—to stay where he was.
The Tsar was startled.
For a moment the two men stared at each other.
Pekkala broke the silence, saying the first thing that came into his mind. “How are your boots, Majesty?”
For a moment, the Tsar just blinked in surprise. Then he smiled. “The English make wonderful shoes,” he replied, “only not for human beings.”
Now the Tsarina appeared in the doorway. She wore a plain white floor-length dress, with sleeves which stopped at the elbows and a collar that covered her throat. Tied around her waist was a belt made of
