‘Much improved, sir,’ I replied through gritted teeth. ‘There is a scar, as you predicted, but—’
‘A man should have a scar,’ he said quickly. ‘I’ve got scars all over me, you know. My body’s full of them. Naked, I resemble something that a cat’s crawled over with untrimmed nails. I must show you some time.’ I stared at him, astonished by the remark. The last thing I wanted was to be offered a tour of the Grand Duke’s scars. ‘There’s not a man in this army who isn’t scarred,’ he continued, oblivious to my surprise. ‘Take it as a mark of honour, Jachmenev. And as for the women … Well, when they see it, I promise you it will take their fancy more than you would imagine.’
I blushed, innocent that I was, and looked down at the ground, quite silent.
‘All the saints, boy,’ he said, laughing a little. ‘You’ve gone quite scarlet. You’ve been showing the scar to every whore around the Winter Palace already, have you?’
I said nothing and looked away. The truth was that I had done no such thing, that I remained as innocent of carnal pleasures as on the day when I was born. I had no interest in whores, although they were accessible to me for they were a staple of palace life. Nor did I have any interest in women who did not require compensation for their charms. There was only one girl who attracted my attentions. But to reveal it would have been impossible, for it was so inappropriate an attachment that its revelation might have cost me my life. The last thing I was going to do was admit it to Nicholas Nicolaievich.
‘Well, good for you, boy,’ he said, slapping my arm once again. ‘You’re young. You might as well take your pleasures where you—Good God!’
The sudden change in his tone made me look up and I saw that he was not looking at me any more, but staring out of the window towards the garden, where the Tsarevich’s fort was coming along nicely. Alexei himself was nowhere to be seen, however, and as I followed the direction of the Grand Duke’s eyes, I caught sight of him, perhaps fifteen feet off the ground, sitting on a thick branch which extended from an oak tree.
‘Alexei!’ whispered the Grand Duke under his breath, the word filled with trepidation.
‘Ho there!’ shouted the boy from his vantage point, his voice reaching us now, delighted by how high he had climbed. ‘Cousin Nicholas, Georgy, can you see me?’
‘Alexei, stay where you are!’ roared the Grand Duke, running out into the garden. ‘Don’t move, do you hear me? Stay exactly where you are. I’m coming for you.’
I followed him outside quickly, astonished by how seriously he seemed to be taking this matter. The boy had managed to get himself up the tree, it would hardly be any more difficult to get himself down again. And yet Nicholas Nicolaievich was sprinting towards the oak as if all our lives and the fate of Russia itself depended on our rescuing him.
It was too late, however. The sight of this monster of a man charging towards him was too much for the boy, who tried to stand up and descend the trunk – convinced, perhaps, that he had broken some unknown rule and would be wise to run away before being caught and punished – but he caught his foot in a branch and in a moment I heard a surprised cry emerge from his lips as he struggled to find purchase on one of the smaller branches and twigs beneath him before falling hard and noisily to the ground below, where he sat up, rubbed his head and elbow, and grinned at us both as if the entire thing had been a great surprise to him, but not an entirely unpleasant one.
I smiled back. He was fine, after all. It was boyish mischief. No harm had been done.
‘Be quick,’ said the Grand Duke, turning to look at me now, his face pale. ‘Call the doctors. Get them here now, Jachmenev.’
‘But he’s fine, sir,’ I protested, surprised by how seriously he was taking this accident. ‘Look at him, all he did was—’
‘Get them now, Jachmenev,’ he roared, practically knocking me over in his anger, and this time I did not hesitate.
I turned, I ran, I summoned help.
And within a few minutes the entire household had come to a dramatic stop.
The evening came and went without dinner being served; the night passed by without any entertainment being offered. Finally, just after two o’clock in the morning, I found an excuse to leave the room where the other members of the Leib Guard had gathered, each one staring at me more contemptuously than the last, and made my way back to my bunk, where I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes, fall asleep quickly and put the events of that horrible day behind me.
In the time between the accident and the early morning I had endured feelings of confusion, anger and self-pity, but was still ignorant as to why Alexei’s fall was considered to be such a terrible disaster, for he displayed no outward sign of injury except for a few small bruises dotted along his elbow, leg and torso. Of course, I had begun to realize that the care which was extended towards the Tsarevich was not purely because of his proximity to the throne, but that something more serious lay at its heart. Looking back, I could recall conversations with the Tsar, with some of the guards, even with Alexei himself, where matters had been implied but not stated fully, and I cursed my stupidity for not having made further enquiries.
As I made my way along the corridors, feeling increasingly sorry for myself, a door to my left opened and before I could even turn my head in that direction to see who was inside, a hand had gripped my lapel and practically lifted me from the floor to pull me inside.
‘How could you have been so stupid?’ Sergei Stasyovich asked me, closing the door and spinning me around to face him. To my great surprise, I saw that the only other person in the room was Alexei’s older sister, the Grand Duchess Marie, who was standing with her back to a window, her face pale, her eyes red with tears. One of the guards had mentioned earlier that the Tsaritsa Alexandra had already arrived from St Petersburg, and upon hearing this I had felt a sudden burst of hope that she would not have come alone. ‘Why weren’t you watching him, Georgy?’
‘I was watching him, Sergei,’ I insisted, upset by how the entire world seemed to have decided that everything that had taken place was the fault of this poor moujik from Kashin. ‘I was in the garden with him, he wasn’t doing anything dangerous. I only stepped inside for a moment and was distracted by—’
‘You should not have left him,’ said Marie, stepping towards me. I offered her a low bow, which she waved away as if it was an insult. She was the same age as I – we had both turned seventeen a few days earlier – and had a porcelain beauty that turned men’s heads whenever she walked into a room. To some, she was considered the great beauty of the Tsar’s daughters. But not to me.
‘This is what happens when amateurs are allowed within our ranks,’ said Sergei, turning around in frustration and pacing the room. ‘Oh, I’m sorry to say it, Georgy, it’s hardly your fault, but you don’t have the experience for such responsibility. It was quite ridiculous of Nicholas Nicolaievich to have recommended you. Do you know how long I have trained to protect the Tsar?’
‘Well, as you’re only two years older than me, I can’t quite see the difference,’ I said, for I was damned if I was going to be spoken down to by him.
‘And he has been in the palace for eight years,’ snapped the Grand Duchess, stepping closer to me now, infuriated by this last remark. ‘Sergei spent his youth in the Corps of Pages. Do you even know what that is?’ She stared at me contemptuously and shook her head. ‘Of course you don’t,’ she said, answering her own question. ‘He was among 150 boys drawn from the court nobility and trained in the ways of the Leib Guard. And only the very finest members of the corps are assigned to protect my family. Every day he has learned what to look out for, where the dangers lie, how to prevent any tragedy from taking place. Do you have any idea how many of my ancestors and relatives have been murdered? Do you realize that my brother and sisters and I walk in the shadow of death at every moment of the day? All we have to rely on is our prayers and our guards. Sergei Stasyovich is the type of man we need around us. Not you, not you.’
S
he shook her head and looked at me pitifully. I found it quite extraordinary that her anger appeared to be divided between what had happened to her brother and what I had said about Sergei. What was he to her, after all, except just another member of the Leib Guard? For his part, the object of her defensiveness was fuming now by the window, and I watched her go to him and speak quietly before he shook his head and said no. I wondered whether Marie was not a little enamoured of him, perhaps, for he was a striking young man, tall and handsome, with piercing blue eyes and a shock of blond hair that made him seem more Aryan than Russian.
‘I don’t know what is expected of me,’ I said finally, growing close to tears now in my distress. ‘I’ve looked out for him all that I can since the moment I was appointed to my duties. It was an accident, why is that so hard to understand? Young boys have accidents.’
‘Get some sleep, Georgy,’ said Sergei quietly, turning around now and walking over to pat my shoulder in commiseration. I brushed his hand away, not wishing to be patronized by him. ‘Tomorrow will be a busy day, no doubt. They will want to talk to you. It’s not your fault, not really. The truth is that you should have been told before now. Perhaps if you had known …’
‘Known?’ I asked, my brow furrowing in confusion. ‘Known what?’
‘Go,’ he said, opening the door and pushing me back out on to the corridor. I was about to argue further, but he was talking quietly with the Grand Duchess again. Feeling myself entirely surplus to their interests, I grew utterly frustrated with the situation and left quickly, not going to my bed as I had initially planned, but returning instead to the garden where these events had begun.
There was a full moon that night and I found myself standing in the same spot where I had been talking with the Grand Duke earlier in the afternoon, content now to be alone with my private thoughts and regrets. A gentle breeze was blowing outside and I closed my eyes in front of the open doors and let it wash over me, imagining that I was far away from here, in a place where so much was not expected of me. In the darkness, in the gloomy solitude of that corridor at Stavka, there was some element of peace to be found, a small respite from the drama which had engulfed us throughout the afternoon and evening.
I heard the footsteps marching along the corridor for some time before I even thought to turn and look in their direction. There was an urgency to them, a determination that made me nervous.
‘Who’s there?’ I called. Despite what Sergei and the Grand Duchess Marie might have thought, I had been trained over the previous few months in ever more ingenious ways to deal with a suspected assassin, but surely there could not be one here, at Army Headquarters of all places. ‘Who’s there?’ I repeated, louder now, wondering whether I might yet have a chance to redeem myself in the eyes of the Imperial family before the sun rose. ‘Make yourself known.’
As I said this, the figure finally emerged into the brightness of the moonlight and before I had a chance to catch my breath she was standing directly before me, raising her hand in the air, and with one sharp and determined motion, she struck me forcefully across the face. So taken by surprise was I by both the strength and the unexpected nature of the act that I fell out of my stance, tripping backwards and stumbling on to the floor, landing painfully on my elbow, but I made no cry, merely sat there, dazed and nursing my wounded jaw.
‘You fool,’ said the Tsaritsa, taking another step towards me, and I retreated a little, like a crab rearing backwards along a beach, although I didn’t think that she intended to strike me again. ‘You stupid fool,’ she repeated, her voice devastated from anger and fear.
‘Your Majesty,’ I said, standing up now, but keeping a safe distance from her. There was a look of absolute terror in her eyes, a panic unlike any I had ever seen before. ‘I keep telling people, it was an accident. I don’t know how it—’
‘We cannot afford accidents,’ she shouted. ‘What is the point of you if you do not look after my son? If you do not keep him from harm?’
‘The point of me?’ I asked, certain that I did not care for the expression, even if it did come from the Empress of Russia. ‘I cannot keep my eyes on him at every moment of the day,’ I insisted. ‘He is a boy. He looks for adventure.’
‘He fell from a tree, this is what they tell me,’ she replied. ‘What was he doing in a tree in the first place?’
‘He climbed it,’ I explained. ‘The Tsarevich was building a fort. I expect he was looking for more wood and—’
‘Why were you not with him? You should have been with him!’
I shook my head and looked away, unable to understand how she could think that I could possibly be always by the boy’s side. He was an active fellow, no matter what they thought of him. He escaped me constantly.
‘Georgy,’ said the Tsaritsa, putting her hands to her cheeks now and holding them there for a moment as she exhaled lengthily. ‘Georgy, you don’t understand. I told Nicky that we should have explained it to you.’
‘Explained it?’ I asked, raising my own voice now, despite the difference in our rank, for whatever it was could be held back from me no longer. ‘Explained what? Tell me, please!’
‘Just listen,’ she said, putting a finger to her lips for a moment and I looked around, waiting to hear something that might explain everything.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘I hear nothing.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It is silent now. There’s not a sound. But in an hour’s time, perhaps less, these corridors will echo with the sound of my son’s cries as the first agonies begin. The blood around his wounds will fail to clot. And then he will start to suffer. And you might think that you have never heard such anguished cries, but …’ She released a small, bitter laugh as she shook her head, ‘they will be nothing, nothing, in comparison to what will follow.’
‘It was not a heavy fall,’ I protested, hearing the weakness of my words, for I had started to realize that there was a reason for such protectiveness.
‘A few hours after that and the real pain will begin,’ she continued. ‘The doctors will not be able to stem the flow of blood, for his wounds are all internal, and it is impossible to operate upon him, for we cannot allow him to bleed even more freely. Having no natural release, the blood will flow into Alexei’s muscles and joints, trying to fill spaces that are already full, expanding those injured areas ever further. He will start to suffer in ways that neither you nor I can possibly imagine. He will cry out. And then he will scream. He will scream for a week, perhaps longer. Can you imagine that kind of suffering, Georgy? Can you imagine what it must be like to scream for so long?’
I stared at her and said nothing. Of course I couldn’t imagine it. The idea was beyond imagination.
‘And throughout this time, he will drift in and out of consciousness, but mostly he will be awake to experience the pain,’ she continued. ‘His entire body will go into seizure and he will become delirious. He will be torn between nightmares, between screaming out in pain and praying for his father or me to help him, to relieve some of his suffering, but there will be nothing we can do. We will sit by his bedside, we will talk to him, we will hold his hand, but we will not cry, because we cannot be weak in front of the child. And this will last for who knows how long? And then do you know what might happen, Georgy?’
I shook my head. ‘What?’ I asked.
‘Then he might die,’ she said coldly. ‘My son might die. Russia might be left without an heir. And all because you allowed him to climb a tree. Do you understand now?’
I knew not what to say. The boy was a haemophiliac; he had what they called the ‘royal disease’, an affliction I had overheard servants gossiping about but had never given much thought to. England’s late queen, Victoria, the Tsaritsa’s own grandmother, had been a carrier, and having married off most of her children and grandchildren to the princes and princesses of Europe, the ailment was a shameful secret in many regal courts. Including our own. They should have told me before this, I thought bitterly. They should hav
e trusted me. For after all, I would sooner have put a knife through my own heart than cause the Tsarevich any suffering.
‘Can I see him?’ I asked and she smiled at me for a moment, her expression softening slightly, before she simply turned away and disappeared back into the shadows of the long corridor, in the direction of the Tsarevich’s room. ‘I want to see him!’ I shouted after her, not even considering how inappropriate this was. ‘Please, you must let me see him!’
But my cries fell on deaf ears. In a reversal of the earlier moments, the Tsaritsa’s footsteps marched quickly away but grew quieter now, fading into the distance until I was left alone again, staring into the garden, desperate and grieving for my actions.
And it was at that moment that Anastasia came to me.
She had been listening to every word that had been said between her mother and me She must have arrived in the carriages earlier, as I had hoped. She had come for her brother.
And, I thought, for me.
‘Georgy,’ she cried, her voice rising above a whisper and carrying across the tops of the hedgerows and bushes to land like music on my ears. I turned my face in the direction from which it had come and saw the flutter of her white dress behind the dark-green plants. ‘Georgy, I am here.’
I looked around quickly to ensure that we were not being observed and ran outside. She was waiting for me behind a cluster of hedgerows, and when I saw her anxious face, I felt like weeping. Her brother was in his bed, terrified, preparing for weeks of agony, but none of it seemed to matter suddenly and I felt ashamed. For she was here before me.