Alexandra (21 page)

Though he spoke of endings, and of death, his hearers were rapt, caught up in the idea of his divine mission, feeling themselves to be somehow part of it, filled with certainty that, having
received the benison of his soothing words, their own lives too would become infused with holy purpose. According to KR, who was well informed, Nicky and Alix ‘had fallen into a mystical
frame of mind’. They returned from Znamenka, and their long evenings with Philippe, ‘in an exalted state, as if in ecstasy, with radiant faces and shining eyes’.
¹¹

Alix was quite taken out of herself. She had not only found a community, an emotional home, she had found – or so she was convinced – an escape from the endless series of failures by
which she had been plagued since she first came to Russia. She had found the divine key to success at last.

Guided by Philippe, she could accomplish what had so far eluded her. She could give the Romanov dynasty, and her husband, a son and heir. She could gain respect and authority among her in-laws,
among the courtiers, among the people at large. She could overcome her social discomfort. In short, she could become the triumphant
woman God surely meant her to be,
having called her to her important role as empress.

‘How rich life is since we know him,’ Alix wrote to Nicky when he was apart from her, ‘and everything seems easier to bear.’ Philippe’s ‘thoughts and earnest
prayers’ followed them both constantly, Alix assured Nicky; even though he was away from them in body – he had returned to Lyon late in the summer of 1901 – his presence hovered
near them, watching over them.
¹²

Buoyed by this new-found belief, and surrendering to the divine force she knew resided in Philippe, Alix asked him to return from France to treat her – specifically, to use his powers to
help her conceive a son.

Just what form this treatment took no one recorded. Probably it involved much prayer, Philippe’s trademark magnetic manipulations, and hypnotic suggestions. By January of 1902 Alix was
convinced that she was pregnant, and that her child would at last be the long hoped-for son.

Throughout the winter of 1902 her conviction strengthened. Her periods had ceased, her waist was thickening, her face growing more full and exhibiting the ‘glow’ of a mother-to-be.
Philippe assured her that all was going well, that the child in her womb was the Romanov heir. He advised her to pray to Serafim of Sarov, an eighteenth-century holy man, who would add his
wonder-working powers to the process unfolding within her. Nicky immediately ordered the church to canonize Serafim and, though there was opposition to this canonization by imperial fiat, it
proceeded.

Alix was expecting her baby to be born in August, 1902, but no official announcement of the pregnancy was made.
¹³
In April she confided to
Xenia, who was also pregnant at the time, that she was in fact expecting, and that her swelling abdomen was beginning to be ‘difficult to hide’. She felt well, she told her
sister-in-law. She was hopeful. Only a few more months, and everyone would be gratified.
¹⁴

She did not consult the court accoucheur Dr Ott or the imperial surgeon Dr Girsh. Philippe advised against it and, besides, Alix had had four children; she was an old hand at pregnancy. She
ordered
her dressmakers to let out her gowns, she rested, she prayed in front of the wall of icons in her bedroom.

Among them was one given her by Philippe, from which hung a tiny bell. It was an icon of protection, for Alix herself and for her child. Philippe had warned her that, if the bell rang, it meant
there were ‘evil people all around’. But the holy image, like the Virgin of Vladimir and the Redeemer over the Spassky Gate, would ward off all harm. No evil could penetrate the sacred
barrier. She was held, safely forever, behind the strong and certain shield of the divine.

M
agnificent sunsets fanned out in fiery reds and pinks over the Gulf of Finland in the summer of 1902, their dramatic colours more intense than at
any time in recent memory. Sunrises too were exceptionally vivid, and throughout the long daylight hours the air seemed to hold a pinkish cast that lent gardens, buildings, even people a healthy,
faintly unreal glow.

Alix, sitting on her balcony at Peterhof, watching the gradual deepening of the intense colours in the sky over the blue waters of the gulf, waited calmly for the onset of her labour, the
culmination of her hopes. The unusual beauty of the sky and the rosy light must have seemed to her a fitting backdrop for the birth of her son. She was tranquil, sanguine, serene. Nothing troubled
her when she was at her most reflective, not the recent assassination of the Interior Minister Sipyagin, not the distress of the War Minister Kuropatkin over growing tensions between Russia and
Japan, not the huge increase in the numbers of dissidents and demonstrators being sent into exile – not even the puzzling shape of her own body which, though swollen, had not taken on the
ripe roundness of a full-term pregnancy. Despite appearances, all was well, she believed, for Philippe was always near, and he assured her that everything was working out for the best.

In August the skies darkened and a chill wind blew across the gulf. Rain splashed down in torrents day after day, making the palace fountains overflow and keeping the fretful, irritated members
of the imperial family, who had gathered to await the confirmation of the empress’s pregnancy by the doctors, indoors.

They conferred with one another about the assassination of Sipyagin and its aftermath of increased police activity, about the explosion of the volcano on Martinique
that had sent tons of volcanic ash into the air, causing the lurid sunrises and sunsets; about the dowager empress’s fury at Militsa and Stana for leading Nicky and Alix into religious
extremism and a dangerous dependency on the foreign Dr Philippe.

The best informed among them spoke in serious terms about the deteriorating state of Nicky’s ineffectual leadership, of feared weakness in the army and navy, of the evident lack of clear
direction in the government. Others aired personal grievances. Uncle Vladimir complained that Nicky had had the audacity to tell him whom he could and could not bring into the royal box at the
theatre – of course he ignored his nephew’s directives. Sandro complained about the government post he had been given and insisted on a change. The usual factions that gathered around
Aunt Miechen and Minnie spread gossip about each other.

But there was unusual unanimity about this very odd and unsettling matter of the empress’s state of health, and its connection to the sinister Dr Philippe. Was she or wasn’t she
pregnant? No one knew for sure. She avoided going out, except to her clandestine meetings with the French medium, so the truth could not be discerned by the shape of her body. She had told Xenia
that she was expecting, but was very secretive with Ella, who distrusted Dr Philippe and everything about him; to Ella she simply said that she had taken a remedy of some sort that had helped her
conceive.
¹

Philippe had been thoroughly discredited, his police record in Paris brought to light, yet Alix continued to put her trust in him and Nicky, against all reason, punished the Russian agent who
had revealed his fraud. What motive could Nicky have had for doing this? Speculation burgeoned. Philippe claimed to be able to cure syphilis; was the emperor a syphilitic? Did Philippe know some
other dark secret that gave him a hold over the imperial family? What was going on?
²

Or was there some even more sinister plot at work? It was whispered that Philippe had been brought to court in order to entice
Alix into an unhealthy reliance on him,
so that she could be revealed as mentally unstable, a melancholic, and shut away in an institution.
³

Amid the darker rumours there was also a good deal of laughter about Dr Philippe and the imperials. Nicky and Alix were seen as fools in the grip of a quack – fit subjects for caricature
of the kind Alix had once drawn so unkindly. It was absurd that Nicky and Alix should imagine they could conceal their dealings with the quack, for the secret police knew everything, had spies
everywhere; for all anyone knew, Philippe himself might be a spy!

Tensions rose, the rain poured down, and on the night of August 31, 1902, Alix began to feel contractions.

No one recorded exactly what took place, whether the pains went on all night or only for a short time, whether Philippe was summoned to her bedside, whether Nicky, who must have been present,
was caught up in his wife’s hopes or whether by this time, if not earlier, he had come to realize that there was no child in her womb.

For Alix, the terrible moment of truth must have been among the great shocks of her life. Instead of delivering a child she suddenly began to bleed, as she had not bled for nine months, and, as
Xenia wrote, ‘a tiny ovule came out’. Her abdomen deflated, her pains ceased. Dr Ott was at last allowed to examine her, and ‘confirmed that there was no pregnancy, but that
luckily everything internally was all right.’
⁴
He diagnosed amenorrhoea, the result of anaemia.

‘At last a natural way out of this unfortunate situation has been found,’ Xenia wrote. ‘She is in bed – as a precaution, as there can sometimes be bleeding
[haemorrhaging] in such cases. Thank God so far she is in good health.’

Xenia was sympathetic, but others were far less so. Inevitably, there was laughter – and anger, for had not the foolish empress embarrassed the entire family and the country? She was a
troublemaker, a blight on Russia. Not only was she barren of sons, but she was apparently delusional as well. And why hadn’t the emperor handled the entire awkward matter more capably, so as
to prevent all the confusion and embarrassment? Why hadn’t he been able to control his wretchedly inconvenient wife?

Lying in her bed, emptied of all her hopes, Alix cried. Shock had given way to sorrow and bewilderment. She struggled to understand. She had been so certain that in all
things she was acting under divine guidance. Was this awful emptiness too God’s will? Or had she failed?

Alix ‘cried terribly’ when Minnie and Xenia came to her bedside and she told them what had happened. She had accepted the truth, but was sad and low.
⁵
The shock, the loss, the violent wrenching of all her expectations brought out the vulnerable girl in Alix, a side she almost never showed to anyone but her husband, her late
friend Juju Rantzau and Martha Mouchanow. She reached out to Xenia and Minnie as she might have reached out to her own mother, had she lived. For a brief time, the brittle control she normally
maintained in the presence of her in-laws cracked open, leaving her shattered emotions exposed.

But the moment passed quickly, for Minnie took advantage of the embarrassment over Alix’s false pregnancy to lecture her and Nicky about how misled they were in trusting the tricks and
false promises of Philippe and, as soon as she did that, Alix’s wall of self-protective reserve went up once again.

Minnie confronted her son and daughter-in-law with the contents of the police report on Philippe, but Nicky’s response was that ‘all the rumours were very much exaggerated’,
and he refused to be pinned down as to how intertwined his and Alix’s lives had become with their spiritual mentor.

Dr Ott issued an official announcement about Alix’s indisposition. ‘Thanks to a departure from the normal course,’ it read, ‘the interrupted pregnancy has resulted in a
miscarriage.’
⁶
It was the least embarrassing explanation. There was no mention of anaemia.

Inwardly still in a vulnerable state, Alix was in need of reassurance, and she soon found it, once again, in Philippe and her emotional anchor, the spiritual circle. Within months, by the end of
1902, her hopes and expectations had been raised yet again, all her confusion dispelled. Philippe had convinced her that, with the aid of the holy Serafim of Sarov, she could yet triumph over all
limitations, physical or spiritual, and conceive a son.

The year 1903 was the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of St Petersburg and, all over the city, preparations were under way for a variety of commemorations.
The city’s builder, Peter the Great, whose modest log cabin was still preserved and visited by travellers, was to be honoured with exhibits in the Yekaterinov Palace, the Technological
Institute, and at the Admiralty. There were to be special observances at Palace Embankment and the Petrovsky Embankment, in the Peter and Paul Fortress, on St Isaac’s Square and in the Summer
Gardens. Book stalls were selling Jubilee Almanacs, and special historical publications were issued.

In keeping with the mood of recalling the past, two balls were held at court in February of 1903, historical balls, recalling not the time of Peter the Great but that of his father Tsar Alexis,
whose era, the mid-seventeenth century, was of particular interest to Nicky.

Alix applied herself to preparing for the historical ball with that devotion to minutiae – akin to the cataloguing of her lace and the more recent meticulous inventorying of her
children’s wardrobes – that was becoming her hallmark. She consulted the director of the Hermitage Museum in the design of all the costumes, and had antique jewellery and clothing
brought from the Granovitaia Palace in Moscow for use at the ball. Seamstresses prepared elaborate sarafans for her ladies-in-waiting and maids of honour and others in the imperial household.