The House of Special Purpose (36 page)

‘Very good,’ said Father Gregory, smiling at me and stroking my cheek in a fashion which made me want to lay it closer against his hand and sleep. ‘Very good, Pasha. Now sit down, won’t you? Let me introduce you to my friends. I think there will be some here who can give you pleasure.’ He reached across to a shelf as he said this, took another pipe and held it over a flame; his hand did not seem to notice or care about the pain of the burn. ‘You will partake of this too, Georgy,’ he said, handing it to me. ‘It will relax you. Trust me,’ he whispered. ‘You do trust me, Pasha, don’t you? You trust your friend Gregory?’

There was only one response to this. I was hypnotized by it all. I could feel hands reaching out from the sofa behind me, stroking my body. The prostitute. The boy. Inviting me to join them in their play. Across the room, the countess was watching me and caressing her breasts, which she revealed to me without embarrassment. Before her, the prince had sunk to his knees. The other young men and women whispered to each other, and
smoked, and drank, and looked at me, and looked away, and I felt my body drift as if it was an unnecessary encumbrance as I allowed myself to fall, to become one with the room, to unite with their merry party, and when my voice came, it did not sound like mine at all, but like the sigh of another, a person I did not know, speaking from a distant land.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Yes, I trust you.’

As 1916 drew to a close, St Petersburg felt like a volcano preparing to explode, but the palace and its inhabitants remained blissfully unaware of the unrest which circulated through the streets and we all continued with our regular routines and customs as if nothing was wrong. In early December, the Tsar returned from Stavka for a few weeks and an atmosphere of joy and even frivolity lingered over the Imperial Family, until, that is, the afternoon when the Tsar finally discovered that his beloved daughter was engaged in an illicit relationship with one of his most trusted Leib Guards. And then it seemed as if the war had moved from the German borders, the Russian borders, the Baltic borders, the Turkish borders, and concentrated its fury entirely on the second floor of the Winter Palace.

Neither Anastasia nor I ever discovered for sure who betrayed this long-held secret to the Tsar. The rumour went about that some mischief-maker had written an anonymous note and left it on the desk in Nicholas’s study. Another was that the Tsaritsa had learned of it from one of the gossiping maids, who had seen evidence of it herself. Yet a third, entirely untrue, involved speculation that Alexei had observed a clandestine kiss and told his father about it, although the boy would never have done such a thing. I knew him well enough for that.

The first I knew of the discovery came late one evening when I was leaving the Tsarevich’s room and could hear a storm brewing further along the corridor, where his father’s study was located. On any other occasion I might have stopped to try to overhear the
reason for the commotion, but I was tired and hungry and continued on my way, only to be grabbed by the arm, entirely by surprise, and dragged into a reception room, where the door was quickly closed and locked. I spun around, startled, to face my kidnapper.

‘Anastasia,’ I said, delighted to see her, convinced in my arrogance that she had been overcome by her desire for me and had waited until she knew that I would be passing. ‘You have an adventurous side tonight.’

‘Stop it, Georgy,’ she replied quickly, releasing me from her grasp. ‘Haven’t you heard what’s happened?’

‘Happened?’ I asked. ‘Happened to whom?’

‘Marie,’ she said. ‘Marie and Sergei Stasyovich.’

I blinked and thought about it. I was tired that evening, my mind was not working as quickly as it might have, and I failed to understand immediately what she meant.

‘Marie, my sister,’ she explained quickly, seeing the lack of comprehension on my face. ‘And Sergei Stasyovich Polyakov.’

‘Sergei?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘Well, what about him? I haven’t seen him this evening, if that’s what you mean. Wasn’t he to be part of your father’s retinue this afternoon when he attended the Peter and Paul Cathedral?’

‘Listen to me, Georgy,’ said Anastasia, snapping at me in my stupidity. ‘Father has found out about them.’

‘About Marie and Sergei Stasyovich?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘
What
Marie and Sergei Stasyovich? There is no Marie and Sergei Stasyovich, is there?’ I heard the sentence even as it came out of my mouth and the explanation became suddenly clear. ‘No!’ I cried, my mouth opening wide and my eyes opening even wider in surprise. ‘You don’t mean—’

‘It’s been going on for months now,’ she said.

‘But I can’t believe it,’ I replied, shaking my head in
astonishment. ‘Your sister is an Imperial Grand Duchess, a daughter of the royal blood. And Sergei Stasyovich … well, he’s a pleasant enough fellow and good-looking, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing, but she would hardly fall for …’ I hesitated and chose not to complete that sentence. Anastasia raised an eyebrow at me and, despite the concern on her face, could not help but smile a little. ‘Of course it’s possible,’ I ventured then. ‘What was I thinking of?’

‘Someone told Father,’ she replied. ‘And he’s furious. Simply furious, Georgy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so upset.’

‘It’s just … I can’t believe that Sergei never told me,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I thought we were friends, after all. In fact, he’s about the closest friend I have here.’ As I said these words, my mind was suddenly filled with images of the last boy I had called my closest friend. The boy I had grown up with from infancy to manhood. The friend whose blood remained on my hands.

‘Well, have you told him about us?’ she asked, stepping away from me now and pacing the floor in concern.

‘No, of course not. I would never trust him with such an intimacy.’

‘Then he must feel the same way about you.’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, and despite the hypocrisy of it, I couldn’t help but feel slightly aggrieved. ‘And what about you?’ I asked. ‘Did you know that this had been going on?’

‘Of course I did, Georgy,’ she replied, as if the answer was obvious. ‘Marie and I tell each other everything.’

‘And you never told me?’

‘No, it was a secret.’

‘I didn’t think we had secrets,’ I said quietly.

‘Didn’t you?’

‘We are all hiding something,’ I muttered to myself, looking away from her for a moment. She stared at me, looking directly into my eyes, with as much intensity as the
starets
had on that terrible night some weeks before. The association, the memory,
was like a knife being plunged through my heart and I grimaced and felt ashamed. ‘And what about us?’ I asked eventually, trying to recover my composure. ‘Does Marie know about us?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘But I promise you, Georgy, she won’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.’

‘Marie and Sergei Stasyovich were your secret too. And that got out.’

‘Well
I
didn’t tell Father,’ she said angrily. ‘I would never do that.’

‘And what about Olga and Tatiana? Did they know about Marie and Sergei? Do they know about us?’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘These were things that Marie and I spoke about at bedtime. They were nothing more than the secrets we shared with each other.’

I nodded and believed her. Despite the fact that there were hundreds of rooms in each of the Imperial Family’s palaces, the two elder sisters, Olga and Tatiana, always shared a bedroom with each other for company, as did Marie and Anastasia. It was not surprising that each pair of sisters should have their own secrets and intimacies.

‘Well, what’s happened?’ I asked, recalling the shouting that I had heard emerging from the Tsar’s study a little earlier. ‘Do you know what’s going on up there?’

‘Marie was dragged into my father’s study by Mother an hour ago. When she came back she was nearly hysterical with tears. She could hardly talk to me, Georgy, she could barely speak. She said that Sergei Stasyovich was being sent into exile to Siberia.’

‘Siberia?’ I asked, inhaling quickly. ‘But it can’t be.’

‘He is to go tonight,’ she said. ‘They are never to see each other again. And he is lucky, she said. He might have been executed for it, had their relationship gone deeper.’

I narrowed my eyes and stared at her and she blushed, a deep shade of scarlet. Despite the fact that we had been connected to each other for so long, nothing sexual had yet taken
place between us, save the romance of our endless kisses.

‘They called in Dr Federov,’ she said quietly, her cheeks reddening even more as she mentioned his name.

‘Dr Federov?’ I asked. ‘But I’ve never seen him summoned for anything other than to protect the health of your brother. Why did they need him?’

‘He examined her,’ she replied. ‘My parents instructed him to discover whether or not … whether or not she had been violated.’

My mouth fell open in surprise; I could scarcely imagine the horror of it. Marie had only turned seventeen a few months before. To be subjected to such a humiliating examination at the hands of the aged Federov, and with her parents in the next room – I assumed that they were in the next room, anyway – was an experience so ghastly that it didn’t bear thinking of.

‘And she …?’ I began, hesitant to say the words.

‘She is innocent,’ insisted Anastasia, a ferocity appearing in her eyes now as she looked up at me again, determined to hold my gaze.

I nodded and considered this for a moment before checking my timepiece. ‘And Sergei Stasyovich,’ I asked. ‘Where is he? Has he left yet?’

‘I think so,’ she said, sounding confused. ‘I’m not sure. Georgy, you can’t go looking for him. It will go badly for you if you are seen to sympathize.’

‘But he’s my friend,’ I said, reaching for the door handle. ‘I have to.’

‘He’s not so much your friend that he told you what was happening.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘He will be in pain right now. I can’t let him go without speaking to him. I betrayed a friend once before and it is all that I can do to endure the shame of it. I won’t do it again, no matter what you say.’

She stared at me and looked as if she wanted to make further protest, but could recognize an equal determination in my
face and so finally nodded, but looked anxious nevertheless.

‘We must be careful from now on,’ she said as I opened the door. ‘I couldn’t bear it if they found out. If you were sent away from me. No one can ever know.’

I rushed over and held her in my arms and she began to weep, half for us, I suspected, and half for her sister’s broken heart.

‘No one will know,’ I confirmed, already worried because
someone
already did.

I found Sergei Stasyovich just as he was leaving the palace, held under guard by two other young officers, friends of both of ours, with whom we had got drunk on many leisure evenings. They looked miserable to have been entrusted with this task. I begged them for a few minutes alone with my friend and they agreed, stepping away from us so that we could say our goodbyes.

‘I can’t believe it,’ I said, staring at his tired, unhappy face. He wore a haunted expression, as if he could not quite believe that the events of the previous few hours had taken place at all.

‘Try, Georgy,’ he replied with a smile.

‘But do you really have to leave us? Won’t they …’ I looked across at our friends, his guards. ‘Won’t they set you free somewhere along the way? You could go anywhere. You could start a new life.’

‘They cannot,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It would be more than their lives were worth. There will be someone at the other end to receive me. He will write to the Tsar. These are their orders, after all. And I cannot disobey. I’m sorry to be saying goodbye to you, Georgy,’ he added, his voice catching a little in his misery. ‘I don’t know if I have been much of a friend to you—’

‘Or I to you,’ I said quickly.

‘Perhaps we have both had our minds elsewhere, yes?’ He smiled at me and I felt myself grow pale. He knew, of course. He knew of me what I had not had the wit to realize of him. ‘Just be
careful
,’ he insisted, lowering his voice as he looked around nervously. ‘He will wait for his moment. And he will cut you down, as he did me.’

‘He?’ I asked, frowning. ‘He who?’

‘Rasputin!’ he hissed, pulling me to him now and wrapping me in a bear hug. ‘The author of my misfortunes. Rasputin knows everything, Georgy,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘He treats us all as if we are nothing more than players in his endless games. From the Tsar and the Tsaritsa right down to the insignificant people like us. He has toyed with me for months.’

‘In what way?’ I asked as we separated.

He shook his head and offered a bitter laugh. ‘It doesn’t matter. It shames me to think of it. But this is not a man who you want to know your secrets,’ he added. ‘This is not a man at all, I think. He is a devil. I should have killed him when I had the chance.’

‘But you could never do such a thing,’ I said, appalled. ‘Not without cause.’

‘And why not? What will my life be now without her? What will hers be without me? He’s up there right now, I promise you, laughing at us both. In my foolishness I believed he would not betray us if … if …’

‘If what, Sergei?’

‘If I did what he asked of me. I should have killed him, Georgy. I should have slit his throat from ear to ear.’

I looked up towards the palace windows, half expecting to see the dark shadow that I had observed there on more than one occasion in the past, but there was no sign of Father Gregory now. I wished that I could see the note that was left for the Tsar, examine the envelope, the letter paper, the handwriting. I could picture it perfectly.

The perfect Cyrillic handwriting.

‘I must go,’ said Sergei, looking across at the guards, who had brought three horses around now. ‘We won’t meet again. But think of what I have said. My life is over now. Mine and Marie’s. But yours and Anastasia’s … you still have time.’

I opened my mouth, ready to protest, but I did not know what he meant. And so I said nothing more, simply watched as he
rode away from the palace towards his lonely, desperate future.