Alexandra (41 page)

The Third Duma opened in November, and its irate members seemed to give vent to all the pent-up resentment in the country. In a ‘thunderous voice’ the ultraconservative delegate
Vladimir Purishkevich denounced the tsar’s ministers who, he said, had been turned into puppets – puppets whose strings were held by the
empress and Rasputin.
The leader of the moderate Cadet party, Paul Miliukov, exposed Stürmer for stealing from the treasury and accused the empress and Rasputin of wielding power illegally and of betraying Russia.
‘Treason!’ shouted the delegates when Miliukov challenged them.

Miliukov’s speech, millions of copies of which were printed illegally and distributed throughout the country, stirred yet more disaffection. Warned not only by his own most perceptive
advisers but by agents of the British Secret Service in London that a revolution would surely come ‘in the very near future’ unless he acted decisively, the tsar dismissed Stürmer
and replaced him with the transport minister Alexander Trepov.

Trepov’s appointment was significant, not only politically, but as a signal of a major turning point in the relations between Nicky and Alix. In appointing Trepov, Nicky had ignored his
wife’s advice. And Alix, who had been feeling invincible, ‘not the least bit afraid of the ministers any more’, as she wrote to Nicky, was immediately aware of the change.

It was a crack in her armour, a rift in her self-esteem. Her letters to her husband became more frantic, more urgent. For the first time in their correspondence, she implored him to listen only
to Father Gregory, not to the generals or ministers.

But Father Gregory had never held a central role in either her decision-making or Nicky’s. Her pleading was gently ignored. She knew, with a deep intuitive knowledge that made her shiver
inwardly, that her power was gone.

She had known for some time that the imperial family was united in its purpose to marginalize her by any means available. They wanted her influence suppressed.
⁶
They were convinced that she and Father Gregory were planning to take over the government entirely. She, in turn, suspected that her mother-in-law and others were planning to
remove Nicky from the throne and to establish a regency until Alexei came of age to rule.
⁷

Her power was gone, and she feared that she would never regain it.

Just before Christmas 1916, Alix went to Novgorod to visit hospitals for the wounded. She took her children with her and Sophie Buxhoeveden and others of her retinue,
and was met at the station by the provincial governor, who escorted the entire party on their tour.

Novgorod was an ancient town, set in the midst of apple orchards, the trees bare and all but lifeless in winter, their trunks black against the snow. Alix was presented with apples from the
previous harvest, kept preserved in cool cellars, and met with a large crowd of townspeople who, if not entirely enthusiastic, did not show her any disloyalty – perhaps because they had been
carefully chosen by the governor.
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She passed through the hospital wards, viewed the town monuments and attended a service in the cathedral, her attention drawn to the dozens of very old icons being restored there. The local
nobility held a tea in her honour, and the members of Alix’s retinue felt a marked coldness in the reception given her, though Alix herself seemed unaware of it.
⁹

She had heard of a celebrated starets living at the Dessiatin monastery, a holy woman, Maria Michaelovna, said to be one hundred and seven years old, and wanted to meet her and receive her
blessing. She turned her visit into a pilgrimage, walking on foot through the wet snow to the small hermitage where the old woman lived.

The afternoon was cold, the sun had long since set as the empress trudged through the snow in the dark. The interior of the hut was dim, and only when a candle was brought was Alix able to make
out the small, frail body of the starets, lying on her bed. She went nearer, and saw the old woman’s face surrounded by an aureole of scraggly grey hair, ‘a sweet fine, oval face with
lovely young, shining eyes and sweet smile’.

The starets held out her thin hand in blessing. ‘Be joyous, uncrowned bride,’ she said softly. ‘Here is the martyr Empress Alexandra.’

A
lix was still feeling the comfort and consolation that followed her visit to the elderly starets Mother Maria when she learned, on December 30,
1916, that Father Gregory was missing.

And not only that he was missing, but that he might be dead, for there were rumours in Petrograd of gunshots fired in the middle of the night at the Yusupov mansion and it was known that Father
Gregory had said that he intended going there the previous night.

‘I cannot and won’t believe he has been killed,’ Alix wrote to Nicky. ‘I still trust in God’s mercy that one has only driven him off somewhere.’
¹

Her heart was bothering her again and Dr Botkin had given her an exceptionally large dose of Veronal, which had made her sleep longer than usual the night before. Drowsy, lulled by the drug, she
could not bring herself to believe that the rumours were true.

She was still basking in her memories of her encounter with Mother Maria, ‘so lovely and restful, warming to the soul’. In the old woman’s presence she had felt blessed and
consoled, hearing Mother Maria say that the war would soon be over, that she need not worry about the children, that they would marry, that she should not ‘fear the heavy cross’. This
Mother Maria had repeated several times, that Alix should not fear the heavy cross.

‘I thank God for having let us see her,’ Alix told her husband. She was sending Mother Maria a gift, three small lamps to light her dim hut, along with an icon. She much preferred to
think about Mother Maria’s shining eyes and sweet smile than to confront the rumours from the capital.

But it soon became apparent that they were more than mere rumours, and again her intuition told her that something was terribly wrong. She had known that there were
plots to kill the starets, and had given orders to Interior Minister Protopopov to make certain that Father Gregory’s guards did not allow him to go out at night.
²
She had known that Felix Yusupov had been spending time with Father Gregory, and that Felix’s mother Zinaida Yusupov was among the starets’s most vehement
adversaries.
³

Bewildered, then frightened by the message from Father Gregory’s daughter, Alix did her best to compose herself and continued to receive her callers.
⁴
But the news grew worse throughout the day.

By mid-afternoon the police investigators had discovered reddish-brown stains on the Great Petrovsky Bridge over the Malaya Nevka river, at a place where the river ice was thin and disposal of a
body was possible. A brown boot was also found there, and when the boot was shown to Father Gregory’s daughters they said that it belonged to their father.
⁵

To the elite of Petrograd, gathered at the Yacht Club to exchange information, these discoveries seemed to prove beyond doubt that the infamous Rasputin had at last been eliminated. Nothing else
was talked of, the news was passed around with excitement and relish. By late afternoon congratulatory phone calls were being made and telegrams sent off saying that it was now certain that the
Siberian was dead; and adding that Felix Yusupov and Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich had killed him.
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Alix sat, ‘very despondent’, with Anna Vyrubov, doing her best to calm Anna, and not to give up hope herself while waiting for definitive news from the police investigation.

‘We are sitting together – can [
sic
] imagine our feelings – thoughts – our friend has disappeared,’ she wrote to Nicky.
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‘Such utter anguish (am calm and can’t believe it),’ she added. Her body languid, her mind agitated, she sent several telegrams as well as writing Nicky a
long letter.

Every bit of news passed on to her seemed to confirm the fatal rumours. Grand Duke Dimitri, seen at the Yacht Club, had looked ‘pale as death’. Felix Yusupov was fervently denying
any involvement
in the alleged crime – an incriminating denial, sent in writing to the palace when Alix refused to allow him to come to her in person. She knew that
he had been seeing a good deal of Father Gregory recently, that a connection between them had been established. Now it seemed that the purpose of that connection might have been murder.

Alix tried not to give up hope – but at the same time she took practical steps to protect herself and those she loved, for her common sense told her that the disappearance of Father
Gregory might be only the first stage in a coup whose ultimate aim would be to eliminate her and replace the tsar with a regency. She protected Anna by moving her into the palace and securing her
rooms with new locks. (‘They will get at her next,’ she told Nicky.) She ordered the guards to prohibit any of the young grand dukes from entering the palace. What precautions she took
to protect herself and her children her letters do not reveal, nor do they reveal what she told her daughters about Father Gregory’s mysterious disappearance.

Nicky had told her that he planned to return to Tsarskoe Selo soon. (‘Oh, the joy, the consolation of having you home again,’ she wrote to him.) Until he arrived, she would do her
best to hold on to her hopes and say her prayers. She ordered an all-night mass to be held in the palace chapel. She would insist that the entire household attend and pray for the safety of the
starets.

‘We women are all alone with our weak heads,’ she told her husband, and her ‘weak head’ was spinning with questions. What had gone wrong? Why hadn’t Protopopov
succeeded in protecting Father Gregory? Could it be that Protopopov himself was no longer to be trusted? And if so, was any safety possible for the family?

The same questions continued to disturb her on the following day, December 31, as word of the notorious Siberian’s presumed death spread throughout the capital and outward into the
countryside. The police continued their interrogations, Alix continued to refuse to speak to Felix Yusupov, now universally presumed to be the principal conspirator and murderer. She clung to the
hope that ‘God would spare her her comforter and only friend’, but the chances of his survival were diminishing, and she knew it.
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Early on the morning of January 1 Father Gregory’s body, frozen and mutilated, was found in the ice of the Malaya Nevka below the bridge at Krestovsky Island. The
palace was informed.

The suspense was over; now her suffering began.

She mourned him. She mourned him, with all the force and depth of her Wagnerian soul. That he was gone seemed to her far more than an ordinary human loss, that he had been murdered was far more
than a mere human crime. It was a catastrophe, a ruinous denouement, a deathblow for her and for Russia.

With Father Gregory gone, who would say prayers over Alexei when he was ill? To whom could she turn in a crisis?

She slumped under the weight of her sorrow, suddenly feeling old. She wrote letters, and signed them ‘An Old Woman’.
⁹
She took
more heart drops, which deadened her and enabled her to sleep. In her waking hours, she sent telegrams to Nicky at Mogilev, told her children that their friend Father Gregory had died, and, ever
analytical, tearfully pondered the meaning of Father Gregory’s murder.

What had happened was grievous, yet even in her worst moments she could not bring herself to believe that it was final. Had not Father Gregory been sent to her to replace Monsieur Philippe? And
had not another messenger from the divine been sent to her only recently, just before Father Gregory’s death? Surely her encounter with Mother Maria was not merely fortuitous, but divinely
ordained. The continuity of divine help was assured.

What was more, just as she had never felt that Monsieur Philippe was entirely gone, so now she sensed that Father Gregory was still with her. She still felt protected by Monsieur
Philippe’s icon with its little bell, the warning bell that rang when danger was near. Father Gregory’s relics too would protect and warn her. Nicky had Father Gregory’s comb, and
his stick from Mount Athos. She had his letters. She sent word to the police to send her everything removed from his body – his blood-stained shirt, a platinum bracelet he wore with the
imperial monogram, the small gold cross inscribed with the words ‘save and protect’ which he wore around his neck.
¹⁰

She had his relics, and she believed that his spirit lived on, and that she could contact it.

‘My dear martyr,’ she wrote in a note placed in Father Gregory’s coffin, ‘give me thy blessing, that it may follow me always on the sad and dreary path I have yet to
traverse here below. And remember us from on high in your holy prayers!’
¹¹

The note was slipped into the coffin by Sister Akulina, one of Father Gregory’s admirers and his sometime mistress, who laid the body out, with the aid of a hospital orderly, after the
autopsy was performed. Alix did not see the corpse. It was not important. The body was only a hollow shell, something he had laid aside. But she gave orders that no one else was to see the body,
besides Sister Akulina, the orderly, and the officials who performed the autopsy. None of Father Gregory’s relatives, nor any of his many followers, were allowed to pay their respects before
the coffin was closed.