Rasputin's Daughter (17 page)

There was a whoop of hushed excitement as they examined the stack of rubles, a veritable fortune to them. Then, as one held me from behind, the other three were upon me, crudely exploring, poking through the folds of my garb and over my body, hands plunging over breasts, earlobes, and privates. I twisted and kicked, all to no avail, as they checked my clothing over and over, pulling out a bit more money and then, of course, grabbing something strange to them. The little stack of notes.

“What’s that?” the lanky one asked, leaning forward. “It’s something written…what’s it say?”

The bit of candle was lifted higher, and while one man held me from behind, the other three peered at the notes. I watched as they focused on the scraps of paper, as they examined the writing and tried to tell what it was. One of them scratched his head. Another moved his lips. These deserters were like ninety percent of our pathetic, worn army: simple uneducated, illiterate peasants, who wanted nothing more than to go home to their huts, their families, and their tiny plots of land.

The shortest of them all, a round fellow, studied the papers closely, and said, “I think they’re little letters.”

“But what do they say?” asked the bald man.

“It’s all from the same hand, that much I can tell. And…and look down here. I think they all have the same signature.”

“Sure, but…”

The round one began to sound: “Fa…Fath…Father…” So shocked was he that he stopped and stared right at me. “Father Grigori!”

A collective groan of amazement erupted from them all. The three in front simply stared, while the man who held me tightened his grasp from behind. Just who did these soldiers think I was? Some member of the nobility drawn into a plot? A messenger of the Tsaritsa? A German spy?

The square-jawed one gazed at me as if he meant to rip out my throat. “Who are you? And why do you have these notes?”

When the hand loosened only slightly from my mouth, I gasped, and said, “My name is Matryona Grigorevna.” I took in a gulp of air. “I am the elder daughter of Grigori Effimovich Rasputin.”

“What?” gasped the square-jawed thug, crossing himself fervently. “You mean to tell us you’re Father Grigori’s child?”

I nodded.

“Where are you from?”

“The village Pokrovskoye.”

“Who was your grandfather?”

“Effim. Effim Yakovlevich.”

The tall one muttered, “That’s right. Effim Yakovlevich, that’s Rasputin’s father. That’s who my own father used to trade wheat with, the very one.”

What was this all about? My eyes ran from one filthy face to the next. Was I not about to be raped and murdered?

Suddenly the man behind me loosened his grip. Indeed, he quickly released me, and when he stepped aside I saw that he was lean and hard. To my complete astonishment, he bowed his head to me and crossed himself. The other three did so as well. In a blink of an instant they were all beating their foreheads and chests and bowing to me as if I were some kind of saint. One of them even reached out, took my cold trembling hand, and kissed it.

The round one pointed to the tall one. “Me and him are from Tobolsk. These other two are from Tyumen.”

I nearly collapsed. In a faint of relief, I nearly dropped right into the shallow waters. These were my people, my neighbors, my fellow Siberians. All of them were from towns within a few versts of my own. And instead of seeing me as someone from the upper ruling class, instead of branding me an enemy, they knew I was one of their own. Only more, for I was his. Right then and there I knew there was a God, for he had seen the dangers upstairs and led me down to them, these poor filthy muzhiki, my islands of safety.

“But what are you doing down here?” said the tall one. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s far too dangerous for a young woman such as you.”

“My father’s life is being threatened, and I came here seeking information,” I explained. “But someone’s after me now. Some men are looking for me upstairs. I don’t know who and I don’t know why they want me, but I’ve got to get out of here-out of the palace. And I don’t know how.”

Long fearful of the master’s whip, my countrymen had learned centuries ago not to speak their minds, at least not outside their own huts. Instead they had perfected the art of communication by discreet glance-a downward gaze, a raised eyebrow, a narrowed eye. An entire silent conversation could be carried on in this manner, as it was just then, right before me.

The lean hard man who’d first captured me said, “Pasha and me will stay here and make sure no one follows.”

The short round one nodded. “Right, and Volodya and I will get you out.”

They all started scrambling to their jobs, but then the lanky one said, “We got to give back the money.”

“No,” I said quickly. “Keep the rubles. Go buy yourselves some food and clothes. And use the notes-they’ll open doors everywhere. Use them for permission to board a train and get back home to your families.”

As if they were His Majesty’s Own Hussars and I a princess of the royal blood, they all kissed my hand, one by one. And then Volodya, the lanky soldier, took the lone candle, and the round one, whom he called Ivan, took me by the arm, and together they led me from the large wet storeroom through a rotted oak door and down a tunnel that led beneath the street to the River Fontanka. We scrambled along this dank underground passage that had once been used to carry goods directly to and from the river, and within a matter of three or four minutes a miracle did occur. Volodya and Ivan heaved open an ancient door, the one they used to get in and out of the palace, and which I now stepped through. Emerging like a squinting mole onto the edge of the icy River Fontanka, I found myself standing on a thick wooden platform tucked directly beneath the dark stones of the Anichkov Bridge.

Volodya bowed to me, and said, “It’s nothing less than a miracle that one of us, a real muzhik, finally has the ear of God’s Own Anointed.”

“Absolutely,” said Ivan, with a shy smile. “It finally seems that God has heard our prayers, for as long as Father Grigori dines with the tsars, then maybe, just maybe, there is hope.”

With tears in my eyes, I turned and hurried off, my wet feet quickly turning numb and my damp skirt icing over.

You have no idea what fear shot through us when Maria Rasputina was spotted sneaking into the Sergeeivski Palace. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich was home at the time, just upstairs, and he flew into an absolute panic. He sent some of his guards to find her, but they searched everywhere without success. Somehow, Rasputin’s daughter had got in and out completely undetected. Can you imagine?

Almost immediately the grand duke called us all to his palace. I was sure that our plot had been found out and the Tsar or the Tsaritsa would imprison us all before we could act. I remember we gathered in the corner drawing room, the one overlooking the Fontanka and Nevsky. All afternoon we just sat there, drinking shot after shot of vodka and waiting for arrest. But nothing happened. Nothing.

Finally Dmitri Pavlovich, who had definitely drunk too much, got up and started shouting, “That little whore is on to something, I tell you. She knows what we’re up to, so now we have to kill her too! We have to kill that monster and his daughter as well!”

It was decided then and there that we had to move the whole thing up by five days. We chose the palace on the Moika Kanal because, of course, of the chamber in the basement. The walls were so thick that we were sure no one would hear the screams.

When I finally returned home, my body trembling, my shoes frozen solid, Dunya, like all women of Siberia, was appropriately horrified.

“Have you lost your mind, child?” she screamed, for like any villager she’d seen death start with a sniffle that roared into death. “Look at you, you’re soaked and your teeth are chattering like a monkey’s! What did you do, jump in the river? Or did someone push you? Is that what happened, did someone attack you simply because of your name? Ai, what horrible days these are when a daughter of Rasputin cannot safely walk the streets!”

“Papa,” I mumbled, not fully aware of how much I was shivering. “I have to speak with Papa!”

“Well, not now you’re not! Not until you get out of those wet clothes and into a hot bath! What are you trying to do, catch death by the tail? Bozhe moi, we’ve got to drive the cold out of you right away. Remember what happened to your uncle, the uncle you never knew because he got wet and died?”

“But where’s-”

“Your father’s gone out,” she said, unbuttoning my cloak as quickly as an army medic treating a mortally wounded soldier.

“Is he visiting someone?” I asked desperately. “He hasn’t gone out…alone, has he?”

“Yes, he just slipped out by himself. Right out the door like a determined tomcat. You know him and his ways.”

“I have to find him,” I moaned.

I needed my father. I needed to scream at him, cling to him, and sob on his shoulder. How could he be out there wandering the dangerous streets when I needed him more than ever? When he needed me the most? Bozhe moi, what if I was too late? What if he didn’t come back? What if it happened now, this afternoon? What if those plotting grand dukes and conniving grand duchesses snatched him away and stabbed him in the heart or hung him from a lamppost?

“I’m going back out!” I said, crazy with fear and pushing away from Dunya. “I have to find him! I have to find him right now!”

“You’ll do no such thing, child!” our housekeeper shouted back, catching me like a thief by the collar.

“But I have to warn him!”

“Just look at you, you’ve caught death’s chill! Look at how you’re shaking! And your lips…they’re absolutely blue!”

It was only then, as Dunya stripped me and I began to thaw, that I started to comprehend the fear in her words. As my frozen shoes were ripped from my feet, my toes began to throb with pain. Next, my cloak and dress were pulled off and thrown aside, and I began to shake and shiver all the more. Warmth burned away cold, and my head began to throb, and I felt suddenly, oddly, weak, even sick to my stomach. Where had I been? How had I gotten home?

Suddenly I realized I was standing there in nothing but my underlinens. All around me were little piles of soggy clothing, and Dunya was pressing something burning hot into my hands. It was a tall thin glass nestled in a metal standard. Steam was billowing into my face and burning my nostrils. I stared at the glass-where had it come from?-then up at her.

“Drink it down, my little one,” coaxed Dunya. “Drink it all the way down. It’s good black tea from the Caucasus. Lots of sugar, too, and a big slice of leemoan. It’s nice and healthy and will warm you from the inside out. Drink this down while I heat you some milk. That’s what you need next, hot milk to ward off a chill. Da, da, da, a cup of fresh hot milk loaded with rich dark honey. I’ve been hiding a jar of birch-forest honey from back home just for something like this. Now drink up, drink to the bottom!”

But I was not only swaying, I was trembling so much I could barely hold the glass.

“Here, dorogaya maya,” my dear, cooed Dunya, holding the glass to my lips, “let me help you.”

I took in a bit of hot tea, fresh from the samovar, and it burned like liquid hell all the way down. “Oi!”

“Good, that’s good, Maria. Just drink it down. Oh, if only we were home, I’d throw you in a hot banya this very second!” she said. “I’d throw you in and then march right after you and thrash you with a bundle of fresh birch branches-that would draw the cold right out of you, for sure! So what am I going to do here in the city? Hmm… Perhaps I’ll get out my cups. Yes, that would work. We’ve got to get the chill out of you right away.”

“Nyet,” I pleaded, almost in tears.

I hated being cupped. I hated lying naked on my stomach, perfectly still, as Dunya heated her thin glass cups and placed them one by one in a thoughtful pattern up and down my spine and across my shoulders. The big purplish welts they left were horrible. Even having my back massaged with sweet butter afterward did little to help the discomfort. Whether it either prevented or cured bronchitis and pneumonia, I didn’t know. But both Mama and Dunya were convinced it was the only way to draw cold and congestion out of one’s body, the only sure way to get the blood properly flowing in the lungs.

“Please, just a hot bath, that’s all I want. Please, you don’t understand-I can’t waste any time. I have to find Papa!”

“You’re not going anywhere, child!” she commanded, as sternly as a wardeness at the Fortress of Peter and Paul.

“But-”

“Be quiet and drink your tea!”

I sipped as fast as I could, but it burned my tongue.

And then Dunya was screaming, calling out to my sister. “Varya! Varya, draw your sister a bath! Now! At once! And make it good and hot! I want clouds of steam, do you hear? Big, huge clouds like in a real banya, yes? Clouds and clouds of steam for her to breathe in and melt away the chill!”

Off in the distance I heard my sister’s lazy steps, hesitant, even reticent. A few moments later she poked her curious head around the corner.

“Oi!” she gasped upon seeing me, her eyes opening as large as fifty-kopeck pieces.

I must have looked awful, half naked, shivering and dripping.

“Go on, Varya, do it!” shrieked Dunya. “A hot bath for your elder sister-now!”

Varya disappeared as fast as a terrified mouse, Dunya wrapped her large warm body around me like a living blanket and started rubbing my back in firm, quick strokes, and I took several more sips.

“That’s it, dorogaya maya. Drink up, Maria. I’m going to get you in a hot bath, and then I’m going to heat you some sweet fresh milk with forest honey gathered not too far from your very own home, just past the fields where your brother and mother work. You know the place-yes?-where the birch trees are so thick and the bees so busy? Now, don’t you worry, child, everything’s going to be all right.”