Enchantments: A Novel of Rasputin's Daughter and the Romanovs (40 page)

For a moment I couldn’t see anything, it was so bright within the egg, everything shining like sunlight reflected on water’s surface. I had to squint to make anything out.

Spring, richly green. Even as my eyes were dazzled, every other sense was sharpened. I could smell the grass and feel sun on my skin. There was a riot of birds in every tree. It was the park outside the Alexander Palace, and the poplar grove had been restored to life. A bicycle, painted red with chrome mudguards, leaned against one of them. Handsome Alyosha’s. I recognized it as the one I’d given him, and Alyosha was there too, with the most mischievous
look on his face. I’d caught him doing something, and he put his finger to his lips, as if asking me not to tell on him. He’d disabled the sundial—not dismantled it completely but taken away the part that casts the shadow around the dial of Roman numerals. I could see he was very pleased with the prank. His smile was so radiant I couldn’t help but smile back at him.

But at just that moment, when Alyosha had stopped time’s shadow within the egg, one of the imperial eggs that contained a clock began to chime, startling me.

Tatiana put her hand on my shoulder, and I turned away from the window to look at her. “Say goodbye,” she said.

“Oh, no,” I said, stricken at the idea of leaving. “Please, no.”

“I’m sorry,” Tatiana said, and now all the clocks were chiming. “It’s time.”

“May I come back?” I asked, taking the hand she offered to help me up from my knees.

“Of course, as often as you like.”

“But the egg—the window—it won’t be the same next time?” As I spoke the words, I understood I’d already lost him. I dropped to my knees, and Tatiana moved between me and the egg, covering the little window.

“No,” she said. “It won’t be the same.”

For Joyce

Acknowledgments

•  •  •

T
HANK YOU
Millicent Bennett, Dylan Brock, Nicole Bufanio, Janet Gibbs, Joan Gould, Julia Harrison, Courtney Hodell, Jynne Martin, Kate Medina, Sara Nelson, Kate Norris, Beth Pearson, Lindsey Schwoeri, and Amanda Urban—all of you, each of you, for your support, which extends beyond any single book.

When I first arrived in prerevolutionary Russia, my guide to that world was
Nicholas and Alexandra
by Robert K. Massie. It was an odd book for an eleven-year-old to fasten on; yet I reread it several times as a teenager. Massie, whose son suffered from hemophilia, gave the tsarevich’s illness center stage where other historians might not, and it was this particular narrative thread of the Romanov tragedy that caught the attention of a girl (and, later, a woman) who sought out stories of violent martyrdom, stigmata, vampires—anything that presented bleeding as a vehicle of transformation. Once I was introduced to Russia, there was much to hold that girl’s (that woman’s) attention, and I lingered, reading novels and history books.

Upon discovering, in middle age, that Grigory Rasputin had a daughter whose career as a lion tamer ended in 1935 in Peru, Indiana, where she was mauled by a black bear and nearly bled to death, my excitement didn’t fade but began, slowly, to eclipse other interests.

The Devil and his entourage, who appear in the chapter “Coronation,” will be familiar to readers of
The Master and Margarita
, a
novel that no amount of rereading has diminished for me. As it is Mikhail Bulgakov’s characterization of devilish high jinks to which I turn as one of the few reliable remedies for a great number of existential complaints, I take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the author of that inimitable work.

ALSO BY
KATHRYN HARRISON

FICTION
Envy
The Seal Wife
The Binding Chair
Poison
Exposure
Thicker Than Water

NONFICTION
While They Slept
The Mother Knot
The Road to Santiago
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
Seeking Rapture
The Kiss

About the Author

•  •  •

K
ATHRYN
H
ARRISON
has written the novels
Thicker
Than Water
,
Exposure
,
Poison
,
The Binding Chair
,
The Seal Wife
, and
Envy
. Her autobiographical work
includes
The Kiss
,
Seeking Rapture
,
The Road to
Santiago
, and
The Mother Knot
. She has also written a
biography,
St. Thérèse of Lisieux
, and, most recently, a
book of true crime,
While They Slept: An Inquiry into
the Murder of a Family
. She lives in New York with her
husband, the novelist Colin Harrison, and
their three children.