The Great War of the Quartet (The Imperial Timeline Book 1) (47 page)

Vera was obviously trying to model herself on the governess and didn’t like the girly dresses of the kind Maya was wearing. She wanted to wear skirts like Anna usually wore around the home, and she did so around the house as well, although never outside since Tatyana would make sure that if there was some reason for her to be seen by others she should look more appropriate—and Anna Vladimirovna was also quite sensitive to how the girls and herself should look. Tatyana had been disappointed that the Tsar had declined to make her—and her girls—grand duchesses rather than princesses, and theoretically, she was inferior to all of Pavel’s children with Maya since they were grand dukes and grand duchesses rather than mere princesses like Tatyana and her Vera and little Maya as well as baby Olga and the little prince, Pyotr.

Compared to her mother and sister, little Maya looked rather swarthy, and while Tatyana had a whiff of Caucasian features, Maya looked like a little Georgian like some of Tatyana’s relatives such as her father and brother. Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Tatievsky-Bagration was the third patriarch of the Tatievsky family from the House of Bagration from Georgia. The family had been created when a descendant of George XII who had ruled Georgia shortly before Emperor Paul I had annexed the kingdom into Russia had been made a prince in Russia under the name Tatievsky-Bagration. Despite her long foreign ancestry, Tatyana did not look nearly as Georgian as little Maya with her dark curls and vaguely foreign, non-Russian face, and it seemed like Tatyana’s Caucasian blood had been passed almost straight through her and into the small child.

Pavel was no expert when it came to the science of race, and he could not easily define the way Maya looked racially different from her older half-siblings who had not a single drop of racially distinct blood. Sure, she looked different, but every little child would look a little different from every other child, and the degree to which her differences were on account of her race and just due to individual difference was—at least for him—impossible to ascertain. Even if Georgians generally might be thought of as rodents, Tatyana’s family was obviously refined and sophisticated and was quite distinct from the peoples of the Caucasus more generally. Tatyana had been raised Russian like her father, and whatever could be said about Georgians, the princely Tatievsky family had been recognized by Nicholas I as loyal servants of Russia when General Mikhail Georgievich Tatievsky had been titled Prince Tatievsky-Bagration in 1837 for his distinguished service to Russia. Pavel could even concede that other branches of the House of Bagration could be inferior to even the lowest Russian peasants, but the cadet branch of the House of Tatievsky had a line of loyal servants from Mikhail and down to Prince Andrei Mikhailovich and his second son Georgiy Andreyevich. Tatyana’s older brother Georgiy was a division commander with the Baltic Front while the oldest of Andrei Mikhailovich’s children—Mikhail Andreyevich—was a deputy governor in Siberia.

No, he had been quite confident about the Tatievskys before he had petitioned the Tsar for permission to marry Tatyana, and he was content by the recognition of Tatyana’s family as a senior domestic dynasty rather than a sovereign house. The House of Bagration was obviously not on par with the sovereign houses of Europe and as such were not considered appropriate for the main branch of the imperial house under the Old Pauline Laws promulgated by Paul I. The New Pauline Laws—named after Paul II—had systematized the regulation for dynastic marriages and had liberalized the requirements for imperial wives by adding “domestic dynasties” to the otherwise foreign spouses necessary to comply with the laws. Although the New Pauline Laws had opened up the possibilities for legitimate marriages, no grand duke had put the laws to the test, and Pavel had not asked the Tsar to recognize Tatyana as a grand duchess but had been satisfied by the suggestion that she would be styled by the junior Princess of Russia and her children not be eligible to the Imperial Succession. Whatever horrid calamity might strike and kill all of Pavel’s older sons and the other men in the line to the throne, baby Prince Pyotr would never be tsar, although the girls as princess of Russia would not legally disqualify their progeny from patrilineal succession if they would marry grand dukes of Russia.

While Vera was the one who tried to emulate the governess with her dress, it was Maya who stayed the closest to her. Like a shy little mouse she kept her eyes down, and it was as obvious as ever that she was not comfortable to be near her father. He did not have the time or the interest to bother with little children’s doings, and until they became older he doubted that he would be taking the initiative to get close to their childish ignorance. It had nothing with the swarthy child being ugly and everything to do with her being a child—he actually didn’t think the swarthy girl was nearly as ugly as Tatyana thought but looked about as beautiful as might be expected from a child that age—he found young children and particularly young girls quite revolting to look at.

Whenever Konstantin came over to visit the rather simple home Pavel was very enthusiastic, but Konstantin was old enough to speak intelligently about meaningful subjects as a young man. The little girls could not be expected to be stimulating to the intellectual faculties. The only child of Pavel’s first wife in Constantinople was Konstantin who had been stationed there by Pavel’s request to keep him from the distractions of Moscow. He had always been the most immature and impulsive of Pavel’s sons, and he had decided to ask for his son to be sent to Constantinople rather than a garrison in some desolate part of Russia to deal with his impious inclinations fueled by youthful virility. Pavel did not expect Konstantin to behave like a monk, but he should be a discreet and tactful man who could restrain his passions.

If Vera was still upset and sulking about not being allowed to attend the military review she didn’t show it. In contrast to the fidgeting and shy Maya, Vera was a delightful child, despite her age. Her interest in military reviews was the sort of enthusiasm he had enjoyed in Vanya when he was that age and had been so enthusiastic about watching the changing of the guard of the Moscow Kremlin on Red Square. Vanya had always been the finest of Pavel’s children, perhaps because Sasha by contrast was almost as blind as a baby kitten without his glasses, and seemed quite effeminate as a natural consequence of his handicap.

Vera had been excited about things martial alongside with her rather dubious fascination with the Greeks, and he had been reluctant to agree to hire a Greek tutor alongside Anna Vladimirovna, the oldest Makedonsky girl, and Doctor Konstantinov to educate the girls. She had to promise to learn her German, English, and French like her older half-sisters, and as far as he could tell she was intelligent for her age and had an intellectual bend that none of his girls and perhaps none of his boys except Sasha possessed. Tatyana worried that Maya might be slow, although in the little girl’s defense, her mother had not been as seriously educated as she was being, so she probably didn’t know that Maya was not the first princess to find learning difficult and acted a bit ornery about having to study things that did not interest her little girl brain. Prince Tatievsky-Bagration had not been nearly as interested in his daughters as his sons, and Tatyana’s lack of education showed in particular with regards to language. She only spoke some German after Pavel had tasked old
Fräulein
Scheinmann to help her grasp the language that was essential second-nature to a princess. As much as the war had changed attitudes towards Germans, Pavel suspected that Russian would never become the lingua franca of the royal families of Europe which had become increasingly Germanized in the past century, and there might come a time when his girls would be expected to marry German princes. His own difficulties with French had left him with his German, and it had been the chief linguistic bridge with his late dear Maya from Hesse-Darmstadt deep inside Germany.

Indeed, his and Maya’s Oksana had given birth just two years before the war to a son that would someday become the sovereign Duke of Frankfurt in western Germany since he was second in line to the duchy after only his father, Pavel’s son-in-law. The Duke of Frankfurt was only one of at least a dozen sovereigns of German realms Pavel knew firsthand, and while the dukes of Frankfurt had unusually strong marital ties to the family, it was far from the only German house with strong Romanov blood. After all, Oksana’s mother-in-law was also a Russian grand duchess like her. No matter how vicious this war was, it would be impossible to remember that simple, cold truth—the Germans were family. Presumably most Russian grand duchesses had German husbands, and there was no shortage of German wives of their brothers. It was a shame that family counted for so little and that there had to be dozens of close German relatives who were serving in the enemy army. Well, the war would end someday, and things had to return to normalcy. He obviously could not write to Oksana as much as he perhaps should, but through the British consulate in Constantinople he had been able to communicate with her and learn that her little Duke Otto and his two sisters had just recently been joined by yet another girl at the start of the year, and she had joked that perhaps someday her girl might marry Pavel’s Pyotr who had been born just a month before Oksana’s baby. Indeed, he was sure that things would return to normalcy and perhaps that would be possible. He would not be surprised if at least one of Oksana’s girls would end up marrying a Romanov grand duke or prince in the future.

“Why didn’t you wear your infantry uniform?” Vera asked, noting the cavalry tunic her father was wearing.

“Don’t worry your little head,” he said with a smile, surprised that she would criticize his choice in uniforms, but nonetheless amused that the child had the wherewithal to tell uniforms apart.

He was the honorary colonel of the 10th Odessa Uhlan Regiment, and he tended to wear that uniform for formal occasions despite his colonelcy in the infantry for almost as long as he had been wearing uniforms more elaborate than a sailor outfit for boys. Of his small collection of uniforms, including a Terek Cossack dress uniform, several different infantry uniforms for service and parade, his favorite was the uhlan uniform. It was simple enough to not look odd outside a parade setting like so many guards uniforms were, but as a regular line cavalry dress uniform it was elegant enough to look good to civilian eyes.

“We will have dinner with the Makedonskys tonight,” Tatyana told the governess, reminding Pavel of the unfortunate invitation just at the end of the review from one of the local aristocrats.

There was no shortage of people who would happily have him for dinner, and if he wished to save money on food he could have dinner away from home every day. If Tatyana had not been with him when Count Makedonsky invited him he would have said that he was busy, but she liked the countess and considered her one of her finest acquaintances in Constantinople.

At the news, as expected Vera’s face lit up like a Pavlovian pup hearing her signal. She liked Anastasia Makedonsky who came by every few days to tutor Vera and Maya in literature and conversation, and she was by far Vera’s favorite teacher. Tatyana didn’t dislike the young woman, but she had no idea why Vera was so fascinated by her. Unlike Countess Makedonsky, her daughter Anastasia was a very bookish and plain woman with no charisma whatsoever.

“Can I come too?” Vera asked without bothering to plan what she should say to convince her mother that she was old enough to accompany her parents.

Pavel would not have minded trading places with the child, but he suspected that even Count Makedonsky would be able to tell him apart from Vera. Although he was a dull man, he was not that dull. Although perhaps it would be worth a try…

“Anna can’t teach you anything if you just want to run away,” Tatyana said, knowing that Vera was not nearly as attached to her governess as Maya.

The girls were not just physically different with Maya looking like a little Armenian or some other savage race from down there like Tatyana’s mother but also when it came to their interests. Partly, Maya was bound to be different since she was younger and did not have as well-developed interests as her sister, but the difference was not just in the degree of maturity. Vera was sunny and friendly while Maya was selfish and quiet. She was very attached to her governess Anna Vladimirovna but was otherwise disinterested in other people, and Tatyana naturally didn’t want her child to be an idiot, but she had grown accustomed to accepting it. Vera had been happy about the arrival of Pyotr and Olga in the nursery in the beginning of the year, but Maya was disinterested if not spiteful towards her little siblings. Tatyana had heard that little children could be like that, but she wondered if the ghost of the late Grand Duchess Maya might not somehow have turned up in the girl named after her. Although it was not something she was proud of, Tatyana genuinely disliked Maya and she would have liked to send her back to Russia so she didn’t have to see her every day, although she obviously didn’t want to tell anyone about her fantasies of getting rid of the ugly child.

“But mother, it’s educational to see the city,” Vera argued, quickly realizing that she could try to make the case that going to the old city was in itself a lesson.

Constantinople had originally been built on the small peninsula on the western side of the Bosporus, well to the south of Little Constantinople. The Russian city that was home to the Constantinople Kremlin only had a fraction of the population of the big city, and most people lived in and around the old parts that were home to the Hagia Sophia and other old landmarks in the city proper. All that history made Constantinople like the most historic history since forever.