Alexandra (22 page)

Alix’s costume was a marvel of antiquarian reconstruction, if not of comfort. Dressed as Tsar Alexis’s first wife, Tsarina Maria Ilinichna, she wore a sarafan of gold brocade with a
silver design inlaid with emeralds, pearls and diamonds. An antique jewelled headdress crowned her head, and from beneath it a white veil fell over her shoulders. Her long bejewelled earrings, so
heavy they had to be fastened to her ears with loops of gold wire, glittered in the candlelight. The headdress immobilized her so that she had to sit down for most of the evening, and could not
bend her head to eat.
⁷

Nicky was equally magnificent dressed as Tsar Alexis in a rich red caftan thickly embroidered in gold thread, an authentic headdress from Alexis’s time and in his hand a gold staff. Unkind
critics remarked that he was too short to look dignified in his finery.

At both historical balls, the great halls and supper tables at the Hermitage and the Winter Palace were awash in velvet gowns and gleaming golden headdresses, colourful
ribbons, dangling festoons and flashing sequins. The fur hats of the men, hung with jewels, their bright sashes, their gold-trimmed boots and gleaming sabres, all had the effect of creating a
tapestry of the past, brought to life for a few glorious hours.

In that far-off past a respite could be found from the violent dislocations of the present, with its workers’ strikes and assassinations and demonstrations, its omnipresent police, its
massacres and pogroms and ominous rumblings of war and the threat of war.

For as the year 1903 opened, the tsar’s government was racked by conflicts. Its strongest and most capable member, the Finance Minister Witte, despised Nicky for his dreamy impracticality
and, in Witte’s view, his weak grasp of foreign affairs. Diplomatic disagreements with a militarily formidable Japan, victor over China and aggressor in Korea and elsewhere, were worsening.
The Japanese objected to Russian military occupation of the left bank of the Yalu River and, exasperated by the Russians’ intransigence on this issue, eventually turned to England and
negotiated an alliance with the government of Edward VII. Pressure was brought to bear on Russia to withdraw its troops from Manchuria, and the Russian ministry gave its guarantees that a
withdrawal would be accomplished by early October of 1903.

To Witte and Kuropatkin it was nonetheless evident that the tsar, caught up in a vision of a Russian empire stretching eastwards to the Pacific, was bound to entangle the country in a war with
Japan. And it was equally evident that he was bound to bring his vision of an expanded empire into actuality by dangerously unconventional means.

Convinced that he understood far better than his ministers what was best for Russia, Nicky had begun to turn to shady intriguers who convinced him that, if only he gave them enough money, they
could deliver foreign territories into his hands. One such enterprising schemer was a cavalry officer named Bezobrasov, who promised to
put all of Manchuria and Korea
under Russian rule. Financed by two million roubles from the imperial treasury, Bezobrasov installed himself and six hundred mercenaries in the disputed Yalu River region and sent the tsar
encouraging reports – reports that no doubt influenced Nicky, when he thought about the guarantees he had given to withdraw Russian troops, to ignore the diplomatic assurances and risk
conflict.

Events in the international arena were put aside during the summer of 1903 while Russians celebrated the canonization of Serafim of Sarov, the monk Philippe had urged Alix to pray to for a son.
The canonization had gone ahead, and in the last days of July the Diveyevo Convent near Sarov was the scene of a vast gathering of pilgrims, among them many members of the imperial family.

The days were extremely hot, the roads dry and dusty in July 1903. The few thin clouds that floated in the sky were obscured by a film of brown that rose above the roadways to a height of twenty
or thirty feet, and as the slow procession of pilgrims made its way towards the monastery the sound of coughing was constant among them.

They came in a great stream, nearly all of them on foot, nearly all of them poor peasants in thick dark tunics and bast shoes, the women’s faces shrouded by headscarves. They carried icons
of Serafim, baskets of food, sacks with offerings to lay before the shrine. Sometimes they sang as they walked along, though in the hottest part of the day it took all their energy to keep walking,
wary of the mounted Cossacks and police who rode among them, vigilant for stragglers or subversives.

Many among the pilgrims limped, some were carried on litters. Amputees swung themselves along on crutches. Mothers carried sick children in their arms, fathers supported the elderly. They had
come dozens, even hundreds, of miles to kiss the relics of the holy Serafim, who had cured so many thousands both in his lifetime and after his death. They were weary, but ‘full of fervour
and expectation’, as one of them wrote.

They knew the story of St Serafim, how he had gone as a monk to live in a cottage deep in the forest, keeping to himself and fasting,
purifying himself in his solitude
for fifteen years, comforted only by the wild animals who sought him out and brought him food. How he had been attacked by robbers and nearly killed, and how the Virgin Mary had come to him in a
vision and healed his wounds. And how, after this signal instance of grace, Serafim had become a starets, receiving all those who came to him and healing them and advising them, giving to them
freely from his own divine gifts.

Serafim’s miracles were too many to count. Those who kissed his shrine, or bathed in the holy pool where he had bathed, rose up renewed. He straightened crooked limbs, restored sight, made
the barren fertile and gave vigour to the old and weak. Now he had been declared a saint by order of the Holy Synod, and his remains were to be taken from his modest grave in the churchyard and
interred in the new cathedral built for them. His canonization confirmed Serafim’s holiness, the pilgrims believed, and redoubled his healing powers.

And so they streamed towards the monastery day after day, coming from as far away as the Caucasus and Siberia, entire families, almost entire villages, with here and there a priest, a town
councillor stiff and hot in his black suit, babies crying, old men praying, hands lifted heavenwards, the entire massed community orderly in its onward march, under the fierce sun.

In the midst of the vast procession rode the troikas of the imperial family, greeted, as they passed through each village, by crowds of brightly costumed peasants crying ‘Little
Father!’ as Nicky and Alix alighted to talk with them. The heartfelt adoration of the peasants was reassuring; they surged forwards and kissed the tsar’s hands, his clothing, making of
him a living icon. ‘It was too moving for words,’ Nicky’s sister Olga wrote. ‘Nicky was just batushka tsar, Little Father, to all these people.’
⁸

The imperials were much sought-after, yet as they resumed their journey they melted into the sea of humanity, pilgrims among the pilgrims, seeking the blessing of Serafim like all the others.
Alix had come with particular faith and devotion, intending to carry out Philippe’s advice that she bathe in Serafim’s pool – and perhaps also
to seek a
cure for the terrible headaches that had begun to afflict her, and for her sciatic pain. She was only thirty-one, but her pregnancies had taxed her body, making her thick-waisted and at times short
of breath. Her fervour was as great, her attitude as humble and reverent, as those of the peasants as the vast crowd reached the pine wood at Sarov and turned into the narrow path that led to the
convent.

Three days of ceremonies marked the canonization of Saint Serafim. His disinterred relics were placed in a golden coffin and borne on the shoulders of the tsar, his Uncle Serge and his cousins
around the grounds of the cathedral, then brought inside to be displayed in front of the chancel in the presence of the Metropolitan Antony of Petersburg and the bishops of Kazan and Tambov and
other prelates.

The hushed silence inside the immense golden-domed cathedral was full of hope as, with the utmost reverence, the sick began to come forwards to kiss the saint’s relics, murmuring prayers,
as the choir sang quietly in the background. The huge congregation watched, expecting miracles, whispering to one another that a cure had already been experienced, while the saint’s coffin
was carried around the church.

One by one the afflicted came, or were brought forward, some so feeble they could barely shuffle past the coffin, each reaching down to place a kiss on the gilded wood.

‘Oh, what misery, what illnesses we saw, and what faith!’ Ella wrote. ‘It seemed as if we were living in Christ’s time . . . Oh, how they prayed, how they cried, these
poor mothers with their sick children and, thank God, how many were cured! We had the blessing of seeing a little dumb girl speak, but how her mother prayed for her!’
⁹

The extraordinary spectacle went on for nearly four hours, as the congregation stood in wonder, weeping from the extreme strain and overcome with holy feeling. Madmen were led forward, shrieking
and howling, some writhing so violently that it took several people to control them. When they touched the shrine, however, their inhuman cries subsided, their tortured limbs seemed to
relax.
¹⁰

Waves of awe passed through the onlookers with each cure, or perceived cure. Held in the grip of the miraculous, convinced beyond any doubt that they were witnessing
marvels, the faithful prayed and continued to come forward, until at last the metropolitan brought the service to an end.

On the final evening of the ceremonies, in the gathering dusk, Nicky and Alix, Minnie, Olga, Ella and the others made their way in twos and threes down to the holy pool of Serafim and stepped
into the freezing water. They were in a unique frame of mind, beyond doubt, beyond ordinary thought. They had seen with their own eyes the dumb speak and the paralyzed walk.
¹¹
They knew, with all the fervour of belief, that St Serafim could heal them.

And Alix was certain, as she bathed in the holy waters, that her prayers for a son would be answered. She came out of the pool and knelt by the nearby shrine, thanking the saint for the baby he
would give her. Then quietly, their identities cloaked by the darkness, the imperials made their way back to the convent.

‘Truly,’ Nicky wrote in his diary that night, ‘God works miracles through his saints.
¹²
Great is his ineffable mercy
towards dear Russia, this manifestation of the Lord’s grace towards us all brings inexpressible comfort. In you we put our trust, Lord; we shall never be confounded.’

T
he first word to arrive in Petersburg about the Japanese attack on Port Arthur came from a Russian commercial agent, who sent a telegram warning
the navy that the Russian squadron protecting the immense, decaying fort on the Liaodong Peninsula in north China, at the mouth of the harbour adjacent to Peking, was being decimated.

There had been no declaration of war. The Japanese fleet under Vice-Admiral Togo had sent torpedo boats to attack the Russian warships at night, severely damaging the
Tsarevich,
Retvizan
and
Pallada
and leaving a number of other vessels with ruptured hulls and torn rigging.

Phones rang, telegrams went out across the continent. The news was startling. Was it possible that tiny but bellicose Japan could have the daring to take on the entire Russian empire, with its
population of a hundred million and more, its million-man army and its large battle fleet? Japan of the delicate fans and fragile cherry blossoms, of the geishas in their wispy houses? The
disparity between the two countries was almost too great to be comprehended – and besides, the Russians, despite the tinge of the Asiatic in their culture, belonged to Europe; they were
Christian, civilized, Caucasian. They belonged to the dominant bloc, the superior force in the world. The Japanese were unchristian, to the Russians uncivilized (though their culture was,
paradoxically, much admired by Europeans), non-white. For such a nation to even think of challenging a European empire was unsettling to the natural order of things – or so it seemed to
Europeans in the winter of 1904.

When he heard the news of the Japanese attack the Russian Interior Minister Plehve was gratified. There was nothing like a war to stimulate patriotism, to subdue
anti-government feeling and revolutionary activity. Let the conflict go forwards, he advised, but let it be brief, and overwhelmingly victorious for the tsar and his empire. That should stop the
mouths of the critics for awhile.

Kuropatkin, on the other hand, was worried. He knew from secret reports that the fortress of Port Arthur was far from being the impregnable bastion Russians supposed it to be. Its garrison was
weak and short of ammunition, its old walls crumbling from years of neglect. And the ships that rode at anchor in the harbour were also in disrepair, some of them too unseaworthy to risk
manoeuvres, most of them under the command of mediocre officers. No wonder the Japanese had been able to cripple three of them so easily. Most of all Kuropatkin worried about supplying the army in
the event of a full-scale conflict. The Trans-Siberian Railway, which when built would connect Petersburg with Vladivostok, was at least a year away from being completed; in the meantime there was
no efficient way to send supplies and reinforcements to the Russian garrison.