The Witch's Daughter, page 2
‘I apologise for my daughter’s lack of patriotic fervour,’ said Peter, as he bent down to pick up his papers.
‘Allow me, sir,’ said Oleg, kneeling down next to him.
‘It’s her fervour we should be watchful of,’ retorted Militza, reaching for her small dark blue glass bottle on the table and squeezing some steadying cocaine elixir into the pipette before releasing the drops directly in her mouth. ‘And you, Oleg, I presume will be staying with us a little longer?’ she asked, again patting the corners of her mouth with her linen napkin.
‘I have my mobilisation papers.’ He smiled.
‘But you’re not long recovered from pneumonia and pleurisy. You’ve only just returned from Bari. And your parents are only just back from Germany, and we all know how difficult that journey was. Stuck behind enemy lines, as war was declared. How is your father?’
‘A little better,’ said Oleg. ‘Still confined to his rooms.’
‘And you are still so very thin.’ She looked him up and down.
‘But well enough for the front.’ Oleg stood up and smoothed down his trousers. ‘I want to fight for my country. I want to fight for the Tsar and Mother Russia. The people need to know that the Imperial House is not scared to send its sons in to battle. And I am not scared to die.’
‘No one is scared to die, until they stare death straight in the face,’ replied Militza.
‘“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”’ Oleg was pleased with his erudition.
‘Marcus Aurelius.’ Militza nodded, acknowledging his quotation. ‘All very noble, I am sure. But it is those left behind who truly feel the pain.’
Oleg’s pale face and clear blue eyes shone, bathed in the morning light. His soul was so pure, his spirit so guileless and his innocence so luminous he could easily, Militza thought, be taken for an angel. Not worthy of this dark depressing world full of war and death and misery. She smiled. What a beautiful soul he was.
Little did she know that this was the last time she’d ever see him alive again.
Oleg was to be mortally wounded less than one month later. His riderless horse would be found pawing the ground next to him on the muddied, bloodied battlefield, his broken body brought back from the front as they fought to save his life. He would be returned to his parents in a coffin, pulled by a gun carriage, covered in flowers. The only member of the Imperial family to be killed in battle during the whole of the war.
‘I am so happy,’ he’d said, with his dying breath as he seeped gangrene and putrefaction. ‘It will encourage the troops to know the Imperial House is not afraid to shed its blood.’
*
Nadezhda’s scream on receiving the news of her beloved’s death was so long and loud and piercing Militza imagined it to be the sound of a soul being wrenched in two. Such was her grief, such was her misery that Nadezhda took to her bed and did not rise again from it for six whole months. Just as the war ravaged Russia, so heartache consumed Nadezhda; it ate away at her body and sucked her flesh of all its force. She lay like a husk in the crepuscular darkness of her bedroom, hovering between life and death, tormented by the throes of Limbo, haunted by the images of the battlefield and the screams of the dying. And all the time Militza prayed. She and Stana chanted and mixed herbs and tinctures and called upon Spirit and the thousands of wise women who’d come before them to help. Those mavens of the soul who’d been burnt, ducked and drowned, they asked them to rise up and come to their aid in their hour of need. Just as they had begged the Four Winds once before for help, they called on all that they knew, all that they had, to save her.
Nadezhda called for Rasputin in her delirious sleep. Even Peter suggested they contact the Mad Monk, ask him to come to their aid. He owed them that much. But Militza would rather dance with the Devil himself than abase herself in front of that man. If Spirit wanted to take her daughter, the combined forces of her and her sister Stana would be powerless to stop it. What would be, would be.
Who, having raised his hands against the Lord’s Anointed, will remain unpunished?
1 Samuel 26:9
CHAPTER 1
30 December 1916, Petrograd
It was dark; dawn would not raise its head and the moon resolutely refused to show its face, as the droshky pulled up outside the palace on Petrovksy Embankment. Militza had said nothing to the driver. She’d kept her eyes down, while her scratched, freezing hands shook uncontrollably on her lap. Her back was rigid and her black sable-lined cloak draped closely around her face. She tried not to move. She wanted to remain as anonymous and as unmemorable as possible, a vague shadow of a figure for whom Dr Stanislaus de Lazovert had hailed a taxi at 6 a.m.
He’d been the only one brave enough. The others had thrown themselves into the shadows as the droshky appeared through the gloom, moving slowly and silently, its wooden wheels slicing its way through the snow-covered street. Militza could hear them panting with fear, she saw the flashing glint of terror in their eyes as they flattened themselves against walls and doorways on Petrovsky Prospekt, desperately hoping not to be seen. But it was the doctor who stepped forward into the streetlight and mumbled something along the lines of ‘allow me’ before cupping his leather-gloved hands and hollering.
The driver was half asleep. His frost-blown nose was just visible over his scarf. His tired horse snorted clouds into the silence. The driver coughed and eyed her up and down as the doctor said the address and, on seeing the cloak and the shine of her jet evening bag, he immediately demanded double the fare. They were all at it these days. Bread was triple the price and vodka was impossible to find; even the most basic of supplies had to be bought on the black market. The good doctor agreed the price because Militza couldn’t speak – her mouth was dry, her cracked lips were parched and her heart was pounding uncontrollably in her chest. What had she done? Try as she might she could not unsee what she had seen. She climbed unsteadily up the steps into the small carriage, sat rigidly on the black leather-buttoned seat and closed her eyes. But the horror, his face, those pale eyes, the sign of the cross and the look he’d given her as he slowly sank into the depths of the freezing Neva, weighed down by the sodden fur of Prince Yusupov’s coat: they were images imprinted on her soul. No matter how tightly she shut her eyes, they would not disappear. Every night she would see them. Every night she would see his face and hear his whisper. And, she knew it then, he would haunt her forever.
‘Right here, please,’ she said, rapping the roof of the carriage with her knuckles.
‘I could take you in,’ he shouted down, straining his head to glance in through the steamed-up window.
‘The street is fine,’ she mumbled, opening the carriage door. ‘I don’t want to wake the house.’
She pulled herself off the seat and stepped down; her frozen toes could not feel the snow through her sodden silk slippers.
‘Thank you,’ she said, careful not to catch his eye as she fumbled through her handbag. She pulled out some roubles that immediately sprang through her fingers and tumbled into the snow. ‘Sorry.’ She bent down slowly, hardly able to move. The strain of lugging the body, wrapped up in a curtain, and throwing it over the railings of the bridge, had taken its toll. Not that she had done much of the heavy lifting. Vladimir Purishkevich, Lieutenant Sergei Mikhailovich Sukhotin and Dr Stanislaus de Lazovert had thrown the corpse off the bridge, while Militza and Prince Dmitry Pavlovich had looked on. But the panic before – loading the car and tearing the blue curtains off the wall of the Yusupov Palace – had exhausted her. She was now cold and stiff and it was hard for her to move. She realised, also, as she scrubbed about in the snow picking up the furls of money, that she had lost her gloves. Black kid. Monogrammed. In golden thread. Her distinctive initials were sewn into the backs of the wrists.
‘Here,’ she said, handing the fistful of money up to the driver. ‘Take it all.’
He didn’t need telling twice. His heavily mittened hand snatched the wad of roubles and shoved them quickly into his greatcoat pocket. He didn’t even count them.
‘Good night,’ she said.
‘Is it?’ he replied and, with a shake of the reins, he was off.
Alone in the street, Militza stood, staring into the darkness. She inhaled the cold, sharp air deep into her lungs and then slowly exhaled. The enormity of what she had done was only just beginning to hit her. The Devil was dead. The horned satyr she and Stana had called upon all those years ago, when desperate and demoralised, that Holy Monster of depravity who’d been carried to them by the Four Winds, was no more. Why was she not more relieved? Elated even?
Fate had dealt her the cards and she had snatched at them with both hands. She’d met Oswald Rayner in the Yacht Club for a reason. He’d drunk too much cognac and told her the game was afoot and Prince Yusupov was planning to pull off the most important political assassination of the century with some wine and cakes, like a child in a fairy tale. Fate had brought her to the palace that night and Fate had made her pull the trigger.
She slowly pushed at the wrought-iron gates of the palace. Black and embossed with the Nikolayevich coat of arms, they squeaked in the cold. A dog barked his response from over the other side of the wall. She ran swiftly across the courtyard. Should she ring the enormous doorbell and wake the house? Or hope the door to the entrance at the side was open?
It was almost 6.30 a.m.; the kitchen maids were surely up. Militza tried the handle to the side door and thankfully it turned. She slipped quickly through the double doors and, silent as a shadow, made her way along the unlit corridor towards the hall. All she had to do was fly up the stairs to her bedroom and pretend that she had been there, asleep, for the whole night. If she could only make it there, unseen, she’d have an alibi, even if the droshky driver were to remember her. No one would doubt the word of a Grand Duchess.
The hallway was dark; the servants had yet to turn on the lights. Militza slowed her pace and rose up on her toes; she lifted her snow-dampened skirts and held her breath, terrified to make a sound. She approached the long divan at the bottom of the stairs; she had a foot on the bottom step. Suddenly, something leapt up in the blackness. A giant dark shadow with whip-long hair and a rustle of skirts sprang from the divan, throwing a thick cloak to the floor. Militza flattened herself against the marble banister, her heart pounding, her eyes firmly shut, not daring to look.
‘Is that you?’ hissed a voice.
There was a click of a lamp switch and a bright blinding light. Her sister Stana was standing by the divan still wearing the dark green silk dress she’d worn out to dinner at the Yacht Club the night before. Her long black hair hung in strands around her shoulders, her face was as white as wax and just as luminous. She had clearly not slept and had been waiting all night, coiled like a cobra, for her sister to return.
‘And?’
‘And what?’ replied Militza, dazed by her sister’s appearance.
‘Has he gone?’
‘Who?’
‘Rasputin.’ Stana stepped forward and grabbed her sister by the shoulders, staring feverishly into her black eyes. ‘Did you throw him into the river?’ she whispered, gripping the shoulders even tighter. ‘Did you drown him? Is he dead? Did you make sure the water filled his lungs and the ice froze his blood and his breath left his body? Did you make sure the ripples closed over his face and that he shall never… ever… be made a saint?’
‘I did.’ Militza was shivering. With cold? Or the memory? ‘I watched him sink, I watched him open his eyes and smile. And worse…’
‘How can there be anything worse?’
‘I watched him forgive me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He forgave me, you, us… both of us. He made the sign of the cross as he sank into the depths. I heard his soul scream as he disappeared down into the deep.’
Stana shook her head. ‘So he went to the Devil.’ She stared at her sister. ‘The Beast was happy to collect one of His own.’ She inhaled deeply. Her mouth hardened with resolve. ‘So that’s it then.’ She smiled. ‘It’s over.’
There was a noise at the top of the stairs and the two sisters looked up. Standing on the landing in her white lace nightgown, her dark hair tied loosely at the nape of her neck, was a beautiful young woman. Nadezhda. She looked like a ghost. Her pale skin and sharp features shone in the half-light from her upstairs bedroom. She stared down at her mother, a frown on her eighteen-year-old face.
‘What are you doing?’ she mumbled, as if still half asleep.
‘Why are you awake?’ responded Militza, keeping her tone light, hoping to reassure her daughter and send her back to bed.
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘Oleg?’ asked Militza.
‘Not tonight,’ she replied. ‘Tonight was different, Mama.’ Her eyes were wide and glassy. ‘Tonight I had a terrible feeling something had happened… It was as if I was gasping for air, struggling, drowning and so terribly… terribly cold. It was a horrible dream, Mama, truly horrible.’ She placed a fine hand on the white marble staircase and began to walk down. ‘What’s happened?’ she asked, taking in the scene below her. ‘Why are you up? Why are you both dressed? What did I miss?’
‘Nothing, my love,’ reassured Militza.
‘Nothing,’ agreed Stana. ‘We’ve just been out, and we are back very late. They had some gypsy dancers at the Yacht Club and your mama and I could not resist. It’s been so long… what with war… we thought…’
‘Gypsy dancers at the Yacht Club? How bizarre. Was Rasputin there?’
‘No.’ Militza could feel the sudden rush of blood to her cheeks at the mere mention of his name. ‘Why would he be there?’
‘Only he loves gypsies, he loves dancing. Life. I’m surprised.’ She shrugged. ‘Oh, what a horrible dream that was,’ she added with a shiver. ‘So very vivid, Mama, it really was, as if I were drowning in the river just outside there.’ She pointed towards the locked front door. ‘Weighed down by a giant fur coat.’
Suddenly the double front doors burst open with a smash and clatter of broken glass and the hammering of wood on wood, as a tornado of wind and snow tore through the hall. Nadezhda screamed, her hair flew around her face, her white lace nightie swirled around her knees in the maelstrom. Both Militza and Stana stood stock-still, their fists clenched, their eyes fixed at the entrance, too terrified to move. Surely he couldn’t be back? Surely he was dead at the bottom of the river, never to resurface? Surely not even he could cheat death for the fifth time? Gutted by a whore, beaten by a priest, poisoned by cakes, shot through the head and drowned. The wind swirled up and up, through the house, rattling the chandeliers that sang like tinkling glasses at a ball. The curtains bellowed and ballooned and a lamp crashed to the floor. Nadezhda’s high-pitched screeching continued to echo and bounce off the marble columns and porphyry pillars in the hall.
‘I do apologise,’ came a voice from the threshold. A silhouette of a man swiftly removed his hat. ‘I only gave the door the gentlest of pushes…’ He walked urgently towards them. ‘How are you? Are you all right? What happened? Did you—’
‘Mr Rayner!’ Militza interrupted, raising her gloveless hand sharply in the air, for fear the man might say more. ‘I don’t believe you have met my daughter? Nadezhda.’
‘Your daughter?’ Rayner looked confused as he slammed the front doors and scanned the snow-scattered, darkened hall. His hair was immaculately parted down the middle and greased flat over his skull. His white shirt, just visible below his buttoned, fur-collared coat, looked freshly laundered and ironed. Unlike Militza and Stana, Oswald Rayner appeared to have gone home to change after the murder.
‘Yes.’ Militza smiled tightly, rubbing her scratched and scraped hands together before clasping them behind her back. ‘My daughter.’
‘Mama! I am not dressed for visitors,’ replied Nadezhda hotly, pulling the frills of her nightdress tightly around her neck.
‘Princess.’ Rayner bowed, fiddling nervously with his brown felt hat. ‘How very delightful to make your acquaintance.’
‘Sir.’ Nadezhda smiled briefly, before glancing furiously across at her mother.
‘Now run along, dear, and back to bed,’ said Militza.
‘But—’
‘But nothing,’ insisted Militza, waving her hand dismissively.
Militza’s reply was sharp and Nadezhda knew better than to respond. Her mother was not someone you crossed, even if she were still wearing an evening gown at six forty-five in the morning and had cuts and scrapes on her hands. Her mother’s appearance was posing more questions than answers. But it could wait. She turned to go back up the stairs.
‘Rasputin is missing,’ blurted Rayner.
‘No!’ Nadezhda gasped as she paused on the third step. She looked back at her mother, whose face remained inscrutable.
‘Missing?’ Militza’s voice was barely audible.
‘Bertie Stopford left me a message at five thirty this morning.’
‘Five thirty?’ asked Stana, glancing across at her sister and then at Rayner.
All three of them were thinking the same thing.
Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin was surely dead by 5.30 a.m. on 30 December 1916. Militza had fired the bullet into his brain, right through his frontal lobe, using Oswald Rayner’s gun. The only .455 Webley revolver in all of Russia. Standard issue for British Secret Service. Standard issue for a British secret agent. Rayner: the fluent Russian speaker. The spy. Best friend of Prince Felix Yusupov in whose palace Rasputin had been shot. Best friends since Oxford University, best friends since they both joined the Bullingdon Club, the only ‘murderers’ to do so in its entire history, since it was founded in 1780. She had shot him and then helped the Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich shove the bound and hooded body, wrapped in Yusupov’s fur coat and the blue velvet curtain ripped from the walls of the Yusupov Palace, into the car. The car that wouldn’t start properly, the car that stopped and stalled all the way to the Bolshoi Petrovsky Bridge. But what time did they get to the bridge? Was even he alive then, despite the shot through his head? What time did they throw him over the railings into the frozen river? What time was it when his bloodied galosh flew off, the one they left on the opposite riverbank? What time was it that she watched him sink to the bottom of the river, weighed down by the coat? When she saw him open his pale blue eyes and stare into her soul and make the sign of the cross as he disappeared into the depths?
