maimed for life. Glancing down at her damaged feet, I was sure she would never walk again.
As I crouched by the girl, holding her hand and soothing her, I suddenly felt a firm hand on my shoulder. Turning and looking up, my heart leaped when I saw that it was none other than the bastard, Mr. Minister Stolypin, bearing over me in his ink-stained finery. My first thought was that I had been found out and he himself had come to do me in. But rather than punching me or ripping out my throat or stringing me up from a tree, he looked at me gratefully.
“Thank you, my good man, for finding my daughter,” he said, tears of relief filling his eyes.
I should have shot him right then and there and finished the job, but of course I had no gun. It occurred to me that I should have shoved him back and strangled him to death, but he was a bigger, stronger, mightier person than me. In fact and quite oddly, I realized that there was not a crumb of strength left in me. I felt completely drained, and it was all I could do to stand.
And so as I rose directly by his side I nodded toward his daughter’s mangled feet, and quietly offered but one thing, perhaps the only piece of village wisdom that I, a peasant, could give to such a highly placed Minister, saying, “The doctors will want to amputate-do not let them.”
This man, nothing more at that moment than the most devoted of fathers, gasped in horror and half fell against me, clutching my arm for support. Despite all that I had been taught by my comrades and the hatred that burned within my own heart, I steadied Stolypin, hanging on to him until he regained his composure.
Then finally dropping to his knees by his daughter, Stolypin gently said, “My beautiful Natasha… do not worry, my sweet one, everything’s going to be all right.”
“You’re here, Papa, and not hurt.”
“Not in the least, and I won’t leave your side.”
I disappeared then, traipsing off through the mayhem completely unnoticed, not a soul suspecting me of my role in this messy affair. I walked all the way back into the city and across the Troitsky Bridge, where I paused midway and stared across the vast waters of the Neva River. From there I proceeded through the Field of Mars, eventually finding my way into the much less glorious corners of the capital, where my comrades took me in. They tried to feed me tea, but I refused. I told them everything-excepting how I had come face-to-face with our number-one enemy, not to mention the human words we had exchanged, which became the darkest secret of my life.
Yes, and although we had failed to eliminate our target, I later heard that thirty people had been killed immediately by the blast, and that many more died in the following days. It was a pity that so many had to give their lives for the cause, but such was the price. And while we failed to eliminate our main target -the Minister himself-news of the attack spread through the Empire so that everyone learned of our determination to help the downtrodden and needy. In that way we succeeded greatly, and in that way we were more greatly feared than ever.
I heard, too, that when young Natasha was rushed to the best hospital the chief doctors were, just as I had guessed, determined to cut away both of the girl’s feet, certain that that was the only way to save her life. With tears streaming down his big cheeks, Stolypin, perhaps heeding my words, pleaded for the doctors to wait at least until the next morning, and to this, despite their fears of gangrene setting in, they agreed. The girl, I was told, survived the night without incident, and the doctors waited another day after that, and then another. Much to their astonishment and the joy of father and mother, the child began to improve almost miraculously, and her feet, though forever maimed, were saved. I heard, too, that a peasant from the Tobolsk District had a very strong desire to bless Stolypin’s injured daughter with an icon, and he was granted entry and came to her and prayed by her side. Perhaps this was why she recovered so well. This peasant-his name was Grigori Rasputin.
That was the first time I had ever heard the name.
As for the youngest child, the boy, in the following weeks I went to great lengths to learn his fate, and found out that both of his legs had been broken, as well as his hip. However, a medical sister told me that I mustn’t concern myself, that both he and yet another of the Minister’s children, a daughter whose kidney had been torn by the blast, were recovering just fine.
Soon after the bombing the Tsar moved Stolypin and his entire family into the Winter Palace, placing them behind the tall iron gates and thick doors of the imperial home. They hid them there, the best soldiers guarding them day and night, and each time the Minister left the Palace he snuck out a different door, and with great secrecy too. As for the exercise and fresh air that Mr. Minister Stolypin so greatly craved, he was forced to pace the paths laid up there on the roof of the Winter Palace, and I think I once saw him up top, going around and around among the decorations along the edges of the roof.
Because of our failure to kill him, the hangman Minister lived and pressed on, more determined than ever to string up as many members of our Organization as he could, and he nearly succeeded in this, nearly wiped us out completely. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in assassinating him for another five years, not until 1911, when one of ours, the Jew named Bogrov, shot Stolypin with a Browning revolver at the Kiev Opera House, there in the presence of the Emperor.
That finally brought the end to “Stolypin’s neckties” and to his reforms, and in this way we hoped to speed up the struggle of the Oppressed.
Chapter 29 ELLA
Honestly, I was quite taken aback when a family battle broke out to prevent me my plans, to frighten me about the difficulties -all with great love but with utter incomprehension of my character. More than once I had to assure Nicky dear that I had not fallen under the influence of a prelest duxha-a charmed spirit-and that I alone, without any outer influence, had decided this course. And poor Alicky. In the beginning she was quite disturbed, for she worried that my steps toward chastity and poverty would demean the Family. I knew she imagined I let people call me a saint-she told one of my countesses this-but good gracious, what was I, no better and probably worse than others. In any case, people never said such exaggerated things to my face, for all knew I hated flattery as a dangerous poison.
So I wrote to the two of them, Nicky and my sister:
My Dearest Ones,
Forgive me, both of you. I know and feel alas, I worry you and perhaps you don’t quite understand me, please forgive and be patient with me, forgive my mistakes, forgive my living differently than you would have wished, forgive that I can’t often come to see you because of my duties here. Simply with your good hearts forgive, and with your large Christian souls pray for me and my work.
Only my older sister, Victoria, in England, understood my need-it was only she who from the start thought it was right that I fill up my life with good work. As to those of proper society who said I could definitely do more good in my previous role, I could only answer that I didn’t know if they were right or wrong, only that life and time would show, but certainly God who was all love would forgive me my mistakes, as He certainly saw my wish of serving Him and His. In any case, for me the bitter bite of gossip had long lost its sting.
Suffice to say that during all this time I felt calm and at peace, really it was so, even with so many momentous decisions. I never had one moment of despair or loneliness, surely because the living and dead were near me and I didn’t realize entirely the earthly separation.
Within short years I had accomplished much. I arranged for Maria a marriage to the second son of the Crown Prince of Sweden, for by family law she was of course allowed only this, marriage to another royal, and this match seemed reasonable. Too, I built them a palace in Stockholm, and saw that Maria was set with a proper dowry. As for her younger brother, Dmitri, I took him to the capital, where he was enrolled in the cavalry school to prepare him for his life in the Horse Guards.
Content that my duties to the children had been discharged, I set about my project with even more energy. Day and night I devoted myself entirely to the study and establishment of my Marfo-Marinski Obitel Miloserdiya vo Vladenii Vlikoi Knyagini Elisavyeti Fyodorovni, otherwise to be known in English as the Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy Under the Direction of Grand Duchess Elisabeth Fyodorovna. It seemed quite a daunting name, but the idea was clear, for it was to be inspired by Christ’s own simple words: “I was hungry and you fed me, sick and you cared for me.” The territories that I had purchased for my community along the cobbled Bolshaya Ordinka were
