Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg (18 page)

Such constant cosseting by Alexandra and the fussing round him of four loving sisters, all of whom allowed him to get away with naughtiness that would never be countenanced in a normal child, inevitably combined to create a little boy who was insufferably spoilt. Alexey was suffocated by so much female affection; he had a naturally boisterous nature that he found hard to contain. So instead acquired a taste for infantile pranks, such as head-butting people and crawling under tables and pulling off the shoes of lady courtiers. He derided his sailor attendant Derevenko as ‘fatty’ and was frequently bad-mannered and disruptive at table, licking his plate and rolling bread into pellets and throwing it at people. His childish and wilful behaviour was the despair of his tutors at times, and even his exasperated father dubbed him ‘Alexey the Terrible’, though with the tongue-in-cheek pride of a doting parent, confiding in his quaintly affected English to a British officer one day, ‘Lor, he does love ragging.’

Alexandra tried half-heartedly to suppress her son’s capriciousness, but it was only to his father’s authority that Alexey ever capitulated. For while he had clearly inherited his mother’s streak of imperiousness and was aware of his regal importance thanks to her constant reminders, he had a natural charm and empathy like his father that often shone through. He was a bright, inquisitive child with a quirky originality of thought that was never exploited, for his studies were frequently interrupted by attacks of haemophilia and his natural intelligence, when he did get down to his books, was dissipated by a lack of concentration. In one respect, however, he did outstrip his sisters; thanks to Pierre Gilliard’s diligent tuition Alexey learned to speak much better French than the girls and prided himself on being able to write notes to his father in that language. But like his sister Anastasia, whom he adored, he did not enjoy being sedentary and was always restless, preferring to be out of doors, playing
games with his pet animals – a King Charles spaniel called Joy to which he was devoted, an elderly donkey called Vanka and a cat called Zubrovka; he also had a very good ear for music and was a gifted balalaika player.

Meanwhile, for Alexandra, her son’s fragile health had become a daily crusade, a battle for the Tsarevich’s survival and with it that of the dynasty. It changed her irrevocably, opening the door wide to the pernicious influences of every faith-healer, soothsayer, clairvoyant, charlatan, and miracle-worker who came offering a cure. Not the least among them was the ‘holy man’ Rasputin, whose appearance in 1905 and the Tsaritsa’s subsequent dependence on him set the doomed dynasty on its final one-way path to vilification and eventual annihilation. Trapped in a perpetual state of denial that her son was doomed to die young, Alexandra became hostage to endless self-torment for having been the unwitting conduit of his condition. Her escalating desperation, bordering on hysteria, to find a miracle ‘cure’ meant she was perfectly primed to embrace Rasputin’s powers as a
bozhii chelovek
– a man of God and healer. When Alexey had attacks of bleeding, Rasputin demonstrated an uncanny ability to calm, if not mentally ‘tranquillise’ him through the medium of hypnotism or autosuggestion of some kind, thus slowing down the bleeding by lowering the stress that raises blood pressure. No one could explain Rasputin’s power except the Tsaritsa; she put it all down to God’s intervention, and thus she would defend the man she called ‘Our Friend’ as her son’s last hope to the bitter end, no matter what odium it brought on her and the monarchy. She refused to listen to tales of Rasputin’s lasciviousness, drunkenness and womanising, or accusations about his meddling in political matters, at the risk of alienating her last few friends and closest relatives. As for the Tsar, he capitulated to his wife’s neurotic dependency on the man and kept his reservations about Rasputin to himself: ‘Better one Rasputin than ten fits of hysterics a day’ had been his weary comment.

The Tsarevich’s haemophilia inevitably also transformed the lives of his four adoring sisters, pushing them irrevocably into the background in their mother’s heart, for Alexey now consumed her every waking concern. It fell to the Romanov girls to take on the role of carers and watchers – over both their brother and their increasingly sick mother. There were many times when both would be laid up in bed – Alexandra with one of her vast array of complaints; Alexey with bouts of haemorrhage and swelling to the joints. Physical suffering was now a constant in the Romanov household, and with it came the unending apprehension of what might happen to Alexey when he next had an attack. For when they came, there was little anyone could do for the
suffering boy other than administer ice packs to counter the pain and his raging temperature, and sit and talk and amuse him in any way they could in order to distract him, his parents having vetoed the used of morphine. To compensate, Alexandra would sit for long hours by Alexey’s bedside, stroking his head and kissing him, tormented by the child’s pitiful groans as his body contorted in spasms of pain. For the boy, his mother became the constant light in his moments of darkness, just as he was the ‘Sunbeam’ who had brought light into hers.

Through it all Alexey suffered his debilitating condition with extraordinary stoicism and never dwelled self-pityingly on it. He developed a precocious wisdom and dignity uncanny for his age, and this, combined with his transparent sympathy when confronted with the suffering of others, redeemed his often monstrously spoilt behaviour. But there were times when the face of the child seemed too old for its years, too exposed already to too much suffering. Yet for all that, Alexey’s simple, childlike acceptance of his own mortality remained uncoloured by his mother’s prevailingly morbid obsession with sickness and death. Whilst Alexandra could never face up to the possibility of her son’s death, Alexey himself lived his life fully aware that it could at any time be snatched from him. But it did not stop him from wanting to take risks and be like other boys. At times, such was his restlessness at being so restricted that he seemed almost deliberately to challenge his body by taking physical risks, sliding down stairs on silver salvers, climbing on tables, jumping in and out of baths and boats, tumbling in the snow when he knew he shouldn’t. At other times, when sick, he became thoughtful and contemplative and would lie outdoors on a couch, watching the birds and staring up at the sky, commenting that he ‘liked to think and wonder’ and enjoy the sun in case his health should one day prevent it. One day, when he became Tsar, he was determined that ‘nobody would be poor or unfortunate’. He wanted everybody to be happy, as he himself inherently was.

The obverse of the doom and gloom around the palace when Alexey was sick was the transformative power of his good health when he did enjoy it, and he was often fortunate enough to do so for months at a time. When the Tsarevich was well, as Pierre Gilliard observed, everything and everybody at Tsarskoe Selo ‘seemed bathed in sunshine’. Alexey would take centre stage as the adorable, happy boy in a sailor suit – innocent, vibrant and lovable, Russia’s great hope for the future.

But the realists in the Imperial entourage, such as the Tsar’s physician Dr Evgeny Botkin, were doubtful that the boy would ever live to become Tsar. They did their best for him, administering regular massage and electrotherapy during the prolonged enforced periods of rest that followed attacks, which left his leg muscles weak and atrophied. But sooner or later
they anticipated his premature death. In October 1912 in Bialoveza in Poland, Alexey cheated it by a whisper. Showing off in front of his attendant Derevenko one day by jumping into a sunken bath, he stumbled and hit his groin. The ensuing swelling seemed to go down, but two weeks later when out with his mother for a carriage ride at the family’s hunting lodge at Spala, the jolts of the road caused him to cry out with pain in his back and stomach. A haemorrhage in his upper left thigh had spread, with blood from the injury seeping into his abdomen, the pressure of the swelling on the nerves of his leg causing agonising pain. Huddled on his side with his left leg drawn tightly up against his body, Alexey shrieked as the spasms came and went, his cries reverberating along the dark, damp corridors of the wooden hunting lodge. His temperature rocketed to 40 degrees; as the days wore on, he became too exhausted even to cry but simply moaned and kept repeating ‘O Lord have mercy upon me’. Thinking their son was dying, Nicholas and Alexandra capitulated to Alexey’s pitiful pleas for help and finally allowed the administering of morphine. With Alexey hovering between life and death, on 8 October the first of several official communiqués was released to the public about his perilous condition. Prayers were said across Russia and a flood of letters, telegrams and icons arrived praying for Alexey’s recovery.

For II days Alexandra refused to leave her son’s bedside, rarely taking time to rest or eat and only occasionally allowing the Tsar to replace her. Privately, Nicholas wept for his son, his only way of dealing with the situation being to internalise his grief and carry on hunting. For four days Alexey drifted in and out of delirium; at one lucid moment entreating his mother in a whisper, ‘when I am dead build me a little monument of stones in the wood’. A priest administered the last rites and the whole of the Imperial entourage at Spala held their breath. As a last desperate act Alexandra begged Anna Vyrubova to send a telegram to Rasputin in Siberia. The message came back that the doctors should not attempt to intervene; ‘the little one will not die’. Within an hour the crisis was over and the haemorrhaging stopped. The combined medical specialists of Russia were baffled: they could find no explanation for this spontaneous recovery. So severe had been the attack that Alexey, now painfully thin and pale, was kept in bed for a month. He was not able to walk again properly for a year and had to have a metal brace fitted to his leg to prevent him becoming permanently lame. For Alexandra, Spala was final vindication of her faith in Rasputin, the absolute, incontrovertible proof she needed to silence his critics. She would not tolerate a word said against him thereafter – by anybody, including her own sister, Ella, whose words of warning about Rasputin’s destructive influence prompted Alexandra to turn her back on her for ever.

Alexey’s slow recovery after the attack at Spala meant that during the crucial Romanov publicity campaign for the tercentenary in 1913 he had to be carried in public ceremonials, prompting people to ask themselves whether the future of Russia was to be in the hands of ‘a cripple’. Rumours went about that the Tsarevich was seriously ill with tuberculosis, but the lid was kept tightly shut on the true cause of his disability. Something changed in Alexey after 1912; he became more subdued, less childish in his behaviour and more considerate of others. He seemed finally to have grasped the seriousness of his condition. In October 1915 Alexandra allowed him to join his father at Army HQ at Mogilev. Alexey was delighted: he was glad to get away from all the women fussing round him at Tsarskoe Selo and the monotony of his closely monitored life there. The outbreak of war had at last allowed Alexandra’s ‘Sunbeam’ – her ‘Baby’ – to leave off the childish sailor suit and put on a soldier’s greatcoat. He wanted so desperately to be a man. Given the rank of an ordinary private (he was promoted to corporal the following June) and a made-to-measure army uniform and miniature rifle to match, Alexey loved the life at Mogilev with his father. They slept together on camp beds in the same simple room; Alexey accompanied Nicholas when he reviewed the troops and visited the wounded, and took great pleasure in talking with his father’s entourage of officers. The all-male environment matured him, even if his education suffered; his male tutors came with him but despaired at how far behind Alexey was falling with his studies. But the idyll at Mogilev did not last long. A fit of sneezing in December brought on a nosebleed and another attack of haemophilia. Alexey was rushed back to Tsarskoe Selo and the healing powers of Rasputin.

After the Revolution and their journey into exile, for seven months at Tobolsk Alexey had been well again. But then in a typical act of daredevil defiance of the illness that had haunted his life, he had provoked another serious attack by hurtling down a staircase in the Governor’s House on his sled, falling and injuring his groin. Before his mother departed for Ekaterinburg, forced to leave the sick Alexey in the care of his sisters, he told her in one of his moments of pain: ‘I would like to die, Mama; I’m not afraid of death, but I’m so afraid of what they might do to us here.’ When finally he was able to travel with the others to join his parents in mid-May, he was still extremely frail. His carer Nagorny had carried him from the train at Ekaterinburg station that day, so pale and delicate, his collar bones sticking out and his thin hand clutched tight round Nagorny’s thick bronzed neck. Those who saw him arrive were moved by the protective loyalty of Nagorny and had little doubt about the look of mortal resignation in the Tsarevich’s huge sad eyes. He had the look of a martyr to suffering, and one not long for this world either. It was a
sight that shocked the hardest of hearts, not least the guards at the Ipatiev House. Alexey’s spectral, jaundiced appearance reminded his mother of Spala, and she was filled with dread.

Approaching his fourteenth birthday, Alexey had spent a lifetime being watched by a retinue of family and carers, and now he was doubly watched in an even closer place of confinement at the Ipatiev House. It was hard for him, very hard and he seemed to have a sense of foreboding that he and his family were doomed. For the first three weeks after his arrival he was in a lot of pain with a swollen knee, and Dr Derevenko was allowed in to put on a plaster of Paris splint. Later, as the leg recovered, Dr Botkin applied electrotherapy to his wasted leg muscles with the Fohn apparatus they had brought with them. His only playmate now was the young kitchen boy Leonid Sednev, his carer Nagorny having been taken away in May. Nicholas, or sometimes Maria or Dr Botkin, carried Alexey downstairs on the rare occasions he went out into the garden, but he could rarely walk let alone run in the sunshine. If he went out at all, he mainly sat with his mother under the balcony. Lately, however, both invalids increasingly remained in their bedroom, taking their frugal meals there together.