The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia (15 page)

The imperial couple completely ignored him.

And so Rasputin returned to his Siberian village. And bided his time.

The spring and summer of 1912 passed pleasantly for the Romanovs. Sailing. Snapping photographs. Playing in the waves in front of their beachfront mansion at Peterhof. They even
“walked
barefoot,” enthused Anastasia. “It was great!” Eight-year-old Alexei was so healthy and suntanned that Alexandra started to believe her fevered prayers had indeed worked a miracle.

In August 1912, as they always did, the imperial family traveled to two of their three Polish hunting lodges. They went first to Bialowieza in eastern Poland. “
The weather is warm and my daughters and I go for [horseback] rides on these perfect woodland paths,” Nicholas wrote his mother.

Alexei cried to go with them. His pleading broke his mother’s heart. She knew he felt smothered and overprotected. And so she let him go rowing on a nearby lake.

But instead of stepping carefully into the rowboat, the high-spirited boy leaped … stumbled … smashed his upper thigh into an oarlock. The accident caused a small bruise and enough swelling to land Alexei in bed for a few days. But it soon disappeared, and he felt fine. “
All in all,” Nicholas wrote, “it did not seem like [much] to bother about.”

Two weeks later, the family moved to their forest lodge in Spala. Days passed. Nicholas hunted. The grand duchesses played tennis. And Alexandra and Alexei rested in the sunshine.

One afternoon, Alexandra took the boy for a carriage ride. At first, all seemed fine. Mother and son, as well as Anna Vyrubova (who often traveled with the family), happily bounced along the rutted road. Suddenly, Alexei cried out in pain. His stomach hurt. So did his back. Alarmed, Alexandra ordered the driver to return home. But there were miles to go, and every carriage bump caused the boy to cry out. It was “
an experience in horror,” recalled Anna. By the time they got back to the lodge, Alexei was “almost unconscious with pain.”

Dr. Botkin quickly diagnosed the problem. The torn blood vessels from the rowboat accident had been seeping blood—first into Alexei’s leg, then into his groin, then into his lower abdomen. To make more room for the blood filling his tissues, Alexei’s leg had
involuntarily drawn itself up, until it pressed awkwardly against his chest. Still the blood kept flowing. Soon, there would be no place else for it to go. Dr. Botkin and several specialists who had been called in could do nothing.

Curled on his side and semiconscious, Alexei shrieked with pain. His face, recalled Anna, “
was absolutely bloodless, drawn and seamed with suffering while his almost expressionless eyes rolled back in his head.”

“
Mama, help me,” Alexei wailed over and over again. “Won’t you help me? Won’t you?”

Like the doctors, Alexandra could do nothing. For the next eleven days, she held her son’s hand, sponged his feverish forehead, and prayed. She felt sure her son was dying.

Alexei believed he was, too. “
When I am dead it will not hurt anymore, will it, Mama?” he asked one day. His words brought her to tears.

Still, she coped with her son’s illness far better than Nicholas. Recalled Anna, “
Seeing his boy in agony and hearing his faint screams of pain … [the tsar’s] courage completely gave way and he rushed, weeping bitterly, to his study.”

Servants stuffed cotton in their ears and went on with their work. Since they did not know the cause of Alexei’s illness, they could only guess at the reason for his suffering. Meanwhile, Nicholas went on with his hunting. The grand duchesses went on with their walks and tennis games. Even Alexandra went on giving the obligatory teas expected by the Polish nobles who arrived at the lodge. It was, noted one historian, “
an extraordinary situation; the heir to the throne lay dying, but everyone carried on as normal.” All of this just to keep Alexei’s hemophilia a secret.

On the eleventh night of his ordeal, Alexei weakly grasped his mother’s hand. “
When I am dead, build me a little monument of stones in the woods,” he whispered.

There was, it seemed, nothing more they could do.

Members of the grief-stricken family—Nicholas, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia—waited for the inevitable.

But Alexandra refused to give up. There was still Rasputin. Since the incident with the letters, her faith in the
starets
had dulled. Should she contact him? The situation, she decided, left her no choice. She sent a telegram to Siberia.

Rasputin immediately cabled back: “
The Little One will not die. Do not allow the doctors to bother him too much.”

Early the next morning, Alexandra entered the drawing room where her family sat waiting for Alexei’s death. Looking around at their sad, tired faces, she smiled. “
The doctors notice no improvement,” she said, her tone suddenly confident, “but I am not a bit anxious myself now.… Father Gregory … has reassured me completely.”

Twenty-four hours later, Alexei’s bleeding stopped. Astonished doctors could find no explanation for it. The boy had been at death’s door. In fact, the episode had been so severe that it would be a whole year before he could walk again. His sudden improvement seemed to defy science. “
It is wholly inexplicable from a medical point of view,” said one of the doctors.

The event wasn’t inexplicable to Alexandra. Rasputin, she believed, had interceded with God on her behalf, wrought a miracle through his power of prayer, vanquished death. Any lingering doubts she may have had about the
starets
were now completely swept away. Convinced that he spoke with God’s voice, she vowed to always listen … no matter what.

Rasputin understood perfectly his strengthened hold over the royal family. Time and again, he warned the empress,
“[The boy] will live only as long as I am alive.”

One day in early 1913, Dr. Botkin arrived at the Alexander Palace to check on Alexei, who was still recovering from his illness in Spala. As the doctor headed along the second-floor corridor, he heard a thump-thumping sound coming from one of the rooms. Curious, the doctor peeked in.

There was Anastasia, red-faced and sweating, and hopping on one leg.

Struggling to keep a straight face, Dr. Botkin asked what she was doing.

Without missing a hop, Anastasia breathlessly replied, “
An officer … told me that to [jump] around … on one leg helps one grow.” And she desperately wanted to grow, “or something,” she admitted.

At eighteen, her oldest sister, Olga, had a round face and high cheekbones.

Sixteen-year-old Tatiana was willowy and tiny-waisted.

Fourteen-year-old Marie had a peaches-and-cream complexion.

And Anastasia?

At twelve, she was short and chubby. True, people often commented on her good, strong Russian features. But they were lost in a face that one courtier called “
lumpy and lacking elegance.” And in the past few months she had gotten so round her family had given her a nickname—
kubyshka
. It meant “dumpling.”

But it wasn’t the girls’ appearance that worried some members of the court. It was their emotional immaturity. They blamed this on Alexandra’s obsessive desire to protect her daughters from the
outside world. “
Even when grown, the empress continued to regard them as little children,” recalled Anna Vyrubova. Isolated from society with no company but one another, the girls existed in a kind of time warp, one in which they never really grew up. Recalled one courtier, “
When the two eldest had grown into real young women, one would hear them talking like little girls of ten and twelve.” They would giggle, poke each other, and run into corners.

The teenaged girls thought it especially fun when Olga led them all in a mock battle involving using toy guns and racing their bicycles through the palace rooms. And they still erupted into embarrassed giggles whenever the palace censor—whose job it was to clip out any unsuitable scenes from the films the family watched in the semicircular hall every Saturday night—missed an on-screen kiss or hug.

Isolated. Immature. Naïve.

These were the grand duchesses on the eve of the biggest celebration Russia had ever seen.

Feeling betrayed by their subjects, Nicholas and Alexandra had rarely appeared in public since the events of 1905, eight long years ago. Once, when the English ambassador urged them to “
break down the barrier that exists between you and your people, and regain their confidence,” the tsar had drawn himself up and replied haughtily, “Do you mean that
I
am to regain the confidence of my people, or that they are to regain
my
confidence?” The rift between ruler and subjects had continued to widen.

But now a momentous event was approaching—the three-hundredth anniversary of Romanov rule over Russia. Nicholas and his advisers saw it as the perfect opportunity to reestablish the
tsar’s relationship with his subjects. They planned an extravagant, weeklong jubilee in St. Petersburg, complete with balls, operas, parades, firework displays, fairs, and concerts in the park. Pictures of every Romanov tsar would be hung on the fronts of stores. And thousands of colored lights would be strung. Each night, the words
God save the Tsar
, as well as a double-headed Romanov eagle, would be illuminated; the Winter Palace would blaze with a huge portrait of Nicholas.

In the workers’ district, factories would be closed for the first day of the celebrations, and free meals served to the poor. Additionally, Nicholas would show his benevolence by granting amnesty to two thousand political prisoners—all from the lower classes. “
Thousands of invisible threads center in the tsar’s heart, and these threads stretch to both the huts of the poor and the palaces of the rich,” read one piece of jubilee propaganda.

Nicholas and Alexandra felt sure this display of power and opulence would inspire loyalty from their subjects. “
No hope seems too confident or too bright,” reported one British journalist.

March 6, 1913—the first day of the long-planned celebrations—dawned with heavy clouds, a cold mist, and the occasional roll of thunder. As the imperial family’s carriages traveled from the Winter Palace, where they had moved weeks earlier in preparation for the anniversary festivities, to a special thanksgiving service at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, nothing seemed especially celebratory. The imperial banners of white, blue, and red that decorated the family’s route hung dripping and dispirited. And the crowds, far smaller than anyone had expected, were subdued when the tsar passed. Where was the cheering? The shouting? The singing? Instead, there was “
little real enthusiasms, little real loyalty,” recalled one spectator. “I saw a cloud over the whole celebration.”

The triple row of guards and policemen standing between the tsar’s procession and the people added to the gloomy mood. Fears
over bombs and assassination attempts had turned the capital into an armed camp.

Meanwhile, inside the cathedral, five thousand invited guests—nobles, diplomats, visiting dignitaries, generals, admirals, and government officials, as well as hundreds of policemen—waited. Everywhere in the flickering light of the candles, gold glinted, from the altar and icons to the priests’ vestments and the great dome overhead. Candlelight reflected off the women’s jewels, too, in
“a fantastic shower of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds … a blaze of fire and flame,” recalled French Ambassador Maurice Paléologue.

But just minutes before the imperial family arrived, a scuffle took place at the front of the cathedral. All eyes turned to see Duma President Michael Rodzianko glowering at Rasputin.

The
starets
had taken a seat in a block of prominently placed chairs reserved for Duma members. Rodzianko could not believe the man’s audacity. By doing so, Rasputin was publicly proclaiming his close ties to the throne.

Infuriated, the Duma president (who believed all the rumors about the
starets
) shouted, “
Clear out at once, you vile heretic.”

Rasputin waved his invitation. “I was invited here by persons more highly placed than you,” he replied.

“Clear out,” repeated Rodzianko, “or I’ll order the sergeant-at-arms to carry you out.”

Refusing to budge, Rasputin looked at him coolly. Then his gaze grew intense. He looked deep into Rodzianko’s eyes.

Rodzianko felt a “tremendous force” surge through his body. Believing the
starets
was using hypnosis, “I suddenly became possessed of an almost animal fury,” he later recalled.

“You are a notorious swindler!” the Duma president shouted.

At that, Rasputin dropped to his knees and began praying.

Unable to control his rage, Rodzianko began kicking the
starets
in the ribs.

But Rasputin remained on his knees.

Finally, Rodzianko grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and heaved him into the aisle.

Rasputin recognized defeat. Pulling himself up off the marble floor, he cried dramatically, “Oh, Lord, forgive him such sin!” Then as all eyes watched, he strode from the cathedral and into his waiting automobile (yet another gift from the empress).