The Witches of St. Petersburg

³ 1 November 1894, St Petersburg

‘It happened again!’ declared Stana as she marched into Militza’s cavernous red salon on the first floor of the Nikolayevsky Palace on Annunciation Square. Dressed in a dark green skirt with a matching fitted jacket, she flounced towards the crimson velvet divan, plucking her black gloves off one finger at a time. ‘I was just coming out of the dressmaker’s on Moika and I heard two women giggling, whispering, always whispering, about the terrible smell of goat. Again!’ Her black eyes narrowed as she flopped on to the divan and, slapping her gloves down on the marble-topped table, crossed her arms firmly across her chest.

‘Who were they?’ asked Militza sitting up. She closed her copy of Isis Unveiled by Helena Blavatsky and rearranged her navy silk kimono. Despite the late hour, approaching three, she had not yet dressed for the day. While other society ladies had already donned their diamonds, muffled themselves in furs and called a troika with a bespoke, livery-clad postilion to the door, to pay their daily calls, Militza had spent the morning going through a package of esoteric books that had arrived from Watkins, Cecil Court, London.

‘I didn’t know who they were and neither did George.’

‘George was there?’

‘He told me I was hearing things, being hysterical, foolish. He said I was making it up. You know what he’s like. If it doesn’t please him, he doesn’t hear it.’ She sighed, hugging her arms more tightly around her. ‘Honestly, Militza, it has been three years – and I thought it would be better after the children. That’s what Mother said, didn’t she?’ Stana’s voice cracked a little. ‘“Have children as soon as possible, they respect you more.” Didn’t she say that?’

‘Children are power.’ Militza nodded. ‘She used to say it all the time.’

‘All the time,’ agreed Stana, picking up her gloves and throwing them back down on the table in frustration. ‘Well, it’s made no difference to me. Pregnant within three months of marriage and with a son at that!’

‘Surely George is delighted with Sergei and little Elena? Two children in two years, and one a son – it’s more that I have managed.’ She laughed a little. ‘Any husband would be satisfied by that?’

‘One would have hoped,’ declared Stana, tugging at the covered buttons on her left sleeve and then her right. ‘One might have thought so.’ She sighed and looked out towards the window.

It was beginning to snow outside. Large, fat, white flakes were falling swiftly, swirling in the wind, like the flurries of blossom buffeted by the breeze that the sisters ran through as children in the orchards of Cetinje. Except here the sky was not a bright, clear, cobalt blue but a flat, yellowish, impenetrable grey.

‘It really is truly miserable here. Don’t you think?’ Stana asked, looking back at her sister. Her dark eyes were clouded with melancholy. ‘Miserable,’ she repeated. She slowly shook her head. ‘And now winter is coming, again.’ She gestured towards the window. ‘And George will be frustrated and angry, again. For no matter how many elegant court dresses he buys me, I’ll still not be embraced by the beau monde. It frustrates him, you know, our lack of invitations. And as the Season approaches it galls him even more.’

‘But—’ began Militza.

‘We are, of course, invited to the official events. To the balls. Those numerous, endless balls. But to the dinners, the luncheons, the soirées – no.’

‘We are not very much either,’ said Militza, gesticulating to her dark silk kimono. ‘The rest of the city might be looking forward to not seeing the light of day for three months of parties, but I shall be very well rested!’ She laughed dryly. ‘And now I have little Marina as well…’

‘How is Marina?’ enquired Stana, with a brief smile.

‘Growing up fast, she’s over two and half, can you believe it,’ smiled Militza, stroking her flat belly.

‘Good.’ Stana nodded slowly, as if thinking about something else. ‘But the difference is that Peter has his position,’ she said suddenly, ‘his money, his status. He has his estates to manage, his paints, his drawings, his books on architecture. George has nothing. He has no real title, no land because his family home was sold to clear their debts…’

‘But he was brought up in the court.’

‘With a mother in exile and a marriage no one could speak of.’

‘The grandson of Nicholas I. His mother was the Tsar’s favourite child.’ Militza paused and shivered a little. ‘Imagine being so close to power you can taste it, only for it to suddenly slip away, it’s enough to send you mad. Don’t you think? It would corrupt the soul.’

‘Well…’ Stana shrugged her shoulders. ‘I barely see the man, hardly talk to him. I’m like a window to him – I honestly think he actually sees through me.’ She laughed. ‘He tries hard not to acknowledge my presence. All he really wanted was a mother for his son. He’d run out of governesses and I was a cheaper alternative!’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Then what deal did our father make? Drinking brandy round that dinner table at your wedding?’

Militza shook her head. A heavy silence came between them. It was difficult not to feel that they were both pawns in a game they had yet to comprehend.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Excuse me, Your Imperial Highness,’ announced a butler, dressed in burgundy livery, his head bowed. ‘Everything is prepared for you downstairs.’

Stana looked across at Militza and smiled. Despite everything, an afternoon in her sister’s company always made her feel a little better.

They followed the butler’s padding footsteps along the marble corridors that led from one ornate salon to another, past high-arched windows with views out on to the square. They walked alongside Corinthian half-columns and on towards the immense U-shaped staircase with its sixteen grey granite columns and elaborate vaulted ceiling, with ornate black iron-worked balustrades featuring doubled-headed eagles and the initials from the Nikolayevich family. Their entire palace at Cetinje could fit into the staircase alone. Still they continued on, through one great hall after another, each more elaborate than the last. The most beautiful was the Moorish room with its star-tiled floor and carved walls painted in red, blue and gold.

‘Down here,’ said Militza, lifting the hem of her kimono.

‘I remember,’ Stana nodded.

Both of them had trodden this route before.

‘One second…’ Militza paused as she turned back towards the butler who was poised at the top of the stairs, his buckled shoe slightly recoiling; he was not a servant who ever ventured below. ‘When is my husband due home?’

‘The Grand Duke will be home this afternoon,’ replied the butler, his tone not entirely courteous.

‘Any particular time?’

‘This afternoon.’ He bowed.

‘Then we must be quick,’ said Militza. ‘Come.’

Down they went, clinging on to the thin metal handrail to steady themselves, their silk and leather-soled shoes slipping a little on the well-worn staircase. As the smell of cabbage and boiled meats increased, so the light began to fade. A few minutes past three in the afternoon and, after just over six hours of daylight, it was already dusk below stairs. Oh, how Militza found those long, dark days depressing! How she hated the weak sun, barely able to raise its head above the city skyline for months at a time. Born of the south, of the land of apricots and almonds, such a protracted twilight made her listless and melancholy. And with few afternoon calls to make, there were only so many games of cards, or massages at the banya, before those long afternoons really began to pall and the sisters found other ways to amuse themselves.

‘Do you have it?’ asked Militza walking into the crepuscular kitchen. Brana stood up. Her pinched face was bound in a tight grey handkerchief and she reached into the pockets of her long, black cotton skirt to retrieve a perfect white egg. She proffered it.

‘Freshly stolen?’ asked Militza.

‘From right underneath her feathered belly,’ came Brana’s grinning reply.

‘Shall I do it?’ asked Militza, deftly picking up the warm egg between her thumb and forefinger. Her long fingernails curled around the edge of its shell as she held it expertly up to the candlelight.

‘Go on,’ shrugged Stana. ‘I am a little out of practice and you were always so much better at it than me.’

‘Are you ready?’ asked Militza, looking at the round-faced lady’s maid.

Sitting at the end of a long wooden table in the centre of the room, its walls festooned with copper cooking pots and pans, were the elderly housekeeper, two younger housemaids and Natalya, Stana’s lady’s maid, who was nervously clasping her hands and licking her plump lips, a round bulge protruding out from under her skirts. She must be six months gone, at least.

‘Oh, I’m more than ready, I’m excited, Your Imperial Highness,’ she said, fluttering her sandy eyelashes. ‘Honestly, I don’t mind either way.’

‘But you’d like a boy?’ suggested Militza, sitting down.

‘Just so long as it’s healthy,’ said Natalya, giggling anxiously. ‘I have heard your mother doesn’t need eggs – she can tell what sex a child is just by looking at your belly!’

Militza fixed her with a dark stare. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I did,’ interrupted Stana. ‘But my sister is just as talented.’ She patted her maid’s pink hand to reassure her. ‘She predicted my Sergei and Elena perfectly.’

Militza could feel a wave of irritation. Why was Stana always so indiscreet? The maid didn’t need to know about their family, their business. Ever since the wedding the sisters had deliberately decided to keep their ‘customs’ to themselves. And although there was an embryonic movement amongst the more enlightened at the fringes of St Petersburg society, it was not so long ago that witches were being hounded, ducked and burnt. Women still had to make cakes and hold ‘phantom’ tea parties, even if they were going to do something so rudimentarily primitive as tasseomancy – reading tea leaves. So both she and Stana had to be careful to protect themselves. They had not survived along with generations of other wise women without the use of their substantial wits. In fact, they had both so overtly and wholeheartedly converted to the Russian Orthodox faith on the eve of their marriages that no one could possibly question their piety or probity.

Militza would have admonished her sister then and there had she not been so anxious to get on. She was worried that Peter might return and she’d been warned by him before not to get involved with the servants. Quite apart from the fact that it was unseemly for a woman of her position ever to venture below stairs, it was dangerous to tell the servants too much of anything, he insisted. That way gossiping lies.

‘Well, let’s see, then, shall we?’ asked Militza, cracking the egg swiftly down on the edge of the white plate. Everyone stared as she forced her sharply filed thumbnails through the fissure in the shell and pulled them apart. The egg broke and spilt its bloody contents all over the plate. In silence, the maids watched the writhing gasps of the premature chick as it slithered around on the cold plate in its own womb sac. Unable to breathe, its unformed eyes still firmly glued shut, its pale beak frantically opened and closed as it panicked and snatched at the air. Its puny legs and soft-boned feet skidded back and forth on the smooth porcelain until, eventually, its brief life and struggle was over and, as its beak shuddered open one last time, it died.

Natalya glanced across at the shocked faces of her friends, covering her own mouth with her hand to prevent herself from vomiting. The wave of nausea was immediate. She had not really thought through what she had asked. It was supposed to be a bit of fun, something to while away the boredom of a cold, grey afternoon, finding out the sex of her unborn child, but she certainly had not expected anything quite so visceral.

‘Poor chick,’ she whispered.

But neither Stana nor Militza appeared to notice the servants’ reactions. Accustomed to such sights since early childhood, they were more intent on finding out the sex of the bird. Militza picked up the flaccid chick and, turning over its soft body, she pressed her thumb hard between its legs.

‘Boy,’ she announced. She nodded down at Natalya’s stomach. ‘Congratulations.’ She smiled before dropping the dead bird back down on the plate.

‘Well done! A son!’ added Stana, giving Natalya’s broad shoulder a small squeeze.

Natalya promptly burst into tears.

‘I really must go,’ declared Militza, anxiously glancing up at the wooden clock above the large open fireplace. ‘The Grand Duke will be home soon.’

In fact, he was sitting in the red salon, smoking a cigarette, leafing through a copy of What Is To Be Done? by Leo Tolstoy, having just returned from a luncheon. His face lit up as she walked into the room.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked, getting out his chair to embrace her. His question was not accusatory, but his eyes were enquiring.

‘Just been upstairs to check on Marina,’ said Militza, with a little wave of her hand.

‘But the nurse said she’s been out in her perambulator all afternoon.’

‘Did she?’ Militza frowned. ‘She’s mistaken. We have just been up to see Marina.’ Militza turned and smiled at Stana.

‘And what a sweet fat thing she is too,’ replied Stana.

‘Elegant fat thing,’ corrected Peter, flicking his ash into a small silver tray. ‘Soon to be just elegant – oh, and extremely intelligent; fortunately, she has her mother’s attributes.’ He smiled. ‘Are you well, Stana?’ he asked.

Peter was extremely fond of his sister-in-law, only he wished she’d spend a little more time in that rented mansion of theirs on Sergeivskaya Street, for it was rare for him to find his wife alone.

‘Just as well as I was yesterday,’ she said, smiling.

‘Is George still angry about not being invited to Minny’s birthday at the end of the month?’ he asked.

‘What do you think?’ replied Stana, helping herself to a small sugared almond from a silver bowl on the gilt table in front of her. ‘He’s known the Tsar ever since he was a child and now the Tsarina won’t invite him to her birthday party.’

‘It is supposed to be a small event.’

‘Since when has the Empress Maria Fyodorovna ever done anything small? She and the Grand Duchess Vladimir rule this city.’ Stana crunched the almond and stared out of the window.

‘I think it’s smaller this year. The Tsar’s not well; he’s travelling south at the moment to recuperate,’ said Peter.

‘He hasn’t been well for a while,’ agreed Militza.

‘It’s his kidneys. Ever since that accident at Borki, when he held the train roof aloft to save Minny and the children,’ agreed Peter. ‘I think that must have broken something in him.’

‘Anyway, George is still furious at not being invited and blames me, naturally,’ said Stana. ‘Much as he blames me for all his ills.’ She sighed. ‘I’m quite sure I don’t know why he married me in the first place. Are you invited?’

‘If we are, I shan’t go,’ declared Militza. ‘I am not sure I want another evening of being stared at, giggled at, whispered about or almost entirely ignored. I don’t know what to tell Father. All those letters and requests badgering me to ask the Tsar for help or a bit more money – it’s not as if Maria Fyodorovna allows us anywhere near him!’

‘Anything to help shoe that barefooted army of his!’ added Peter, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘What?’ he said, looking up and catching his wife’s eye. ‘We all know your country is perfectly charming, but the roads are impassable, the peasants don’t want to work – frankly, its only use is its warm-water ports. Am I not speaking the truth?’

‘Sometimes the truth is not always necessary,’ replied Militza.

‘Well, personally, I think you need to make more of an effort,’ he said, glancing from one sister to the other. ‘Get out of the palace. When was the last time you went skating, for example?’

‘My darling, we are not children,’ smiled Militza.

‘All the ladies skate on the Neva in the morning,’ he said. ‘It’s excellent exercise. And Minny’s in the Crimea!’

So the next day, 1 November 1894, Militza packed the elderly skates she hadn’t used since her days at the Smolny Institute and met Stana, just in front of the house, on the English Embankment.

In contrast to the dull, moribund afternoon before, that day was bright and crisp. The snow was dazzling and the ice crystals that hung in the air sparkled more brightly than the Grand Duchess Vladimir’s latest tiara. And the air was cold, so cold it cut like a knife as Militza inhaled. But it was, at the same time, so delightfully pleasurable. After days spent cooped up in her palace with only her sister and the servants for company, there was something incredibly liberating about filling her lungs with little sharp daggers of cold and feeling her eyes water in the brightness.

‘Glorious, don’t you think?’ she said as she found her sister waiting for her by the river. Sporting a white mink hat with a matching muff, trimmed with little white mink tails, Stana looked particularly beautiful in the surprisingly warm sunshine. ‘Do you have your skates?’ asked Militza shielding her eyes with her black-gloved hands. She too had made an effort with her attire. Dressed in a bitter-chocolate coloured suit, trimmed with sable, with a matching hat and muff, she felt excited and braced for any eventuality.

‘I couldn’t find mine,’ said Stana. ‘I looked through all the pairs we had at home and I couldn’t find any to fit. I shall hire some when we get there.’

‘Perfect. Shall we take a troika to the Winter Palace?’

‘I think I’d rather walk.’

So they walked alongside the river, up English Embankment towards the Admiralty, in the bright sunshine. After days of grey blizzards, the streets were surprisingly busy. The roast-chestnut sellers were out; their smoking stalls sending curls of toasted deliciousness into the air. The postcard painters had taken up their spots, trying to the catch the beauty of the frozen Neva in the glorious winter sunlight. Others were wrapped up against the cold, their heads determinedly looking at the ground as they marched along, focussed on the day’s business. Occasionally a child would pass by, pulled along on a sledge, bundled up tightly against the cold, arms and legs rigid, the only thing exposed to the elements were their bright pink cheeks.

On past the Bronze Horseman, rearing at the river, and the giant golden dome of St Isaac’s Cathedral, they walked towards the Winter Palace, eventually stopping at the two giant bronze lions either side of the Palace Pier.

Below, at the bottom of the granite steps, the Neva was frozen as solid as steel and all the recently fallen snow had been swept aside into large mounds, clearing the way for skating on the smooth, shiny ice underneath. To the left of the steps were simple wooden chairs and tables and rugs thrown across the ice which created what appeared to be the most commodious of salons in the open air. The tables were laid with glasses and a giant silver bowl of punch, while servants in scarlet livery, with black leather gloves and boots, were handing around small shots of fruit-flavoured brandies and vodkas on gleaming silver salvers. To the right was a brass band, complete with accordion, playing the sort of jovial, upbeat, oompah music one might hear at a country fair.

Militza stood next to her sister, clasping her hands under her muff, searching the crowd of spinning skaters for anyone familiar. It was difficult to tell under the fur hats in the bright sunshine, but she thought she saw Zinaida Yusupova in a floor-length sable cloak and next to her was the distinctive figure of the Grand Duchess Vladimir.

‘I see simply tout le monde is here,’ said Militza, watching the two women over the other side of the skaters notice their arrival.

‘Oh really,’ exhaled Stana, following her gaze. ‘I suppose it was too much to ask just to be able to enjoy oneself a little, for once.’

‘Let’s ignore them,’ smiled Militza, looking around the rest of the crowd. ‘Over here,’ she said, indicating a small hut. ‘He looks as though he rents skates.’

They walked over to a small wooden hut erected on the ice. Inside, an elderly man with cheeks the colour of beetroot was leaning on the diminutive counter gazing at the skaters.

‘Excuse me,’ said Militza. ‘We were looking for some skates?’

He turned slowly and looked them both up and down. ‘I do skates for gentlemen,’ he sniffed. ‘Ladies have their own.’

‘Well, this lady has lost hers.’ Militza pointed down at Stana’s feet.

‘Well.’ He wiped his nose on his large black mitten and looked over the counter at Stana’s feet. ‘I’m not sure what I can do about that.’

‘Do you have anything, sir?’ asked Stana, placing her white-tailed muff on the counter.

‘Well…’ He turned and looked under the counter, before grabbing hold of a pair of skates and slamming them down on it. ‘These?’

They all looked at the skates. They were black, old and well-used, the blunt blades in need of grinding. They looked like a pair of workman’s boots with metal rods attached. Stana took a small step back and hesitated. Militza glanced over her shoulder; they had an audience. The Grand Duchess Vladimir and her small entourage of ladies were all watching; their smiles were tight and they could hear the whispering over the noise of the band.

‘Perfect!’ Militza declared loudly. ‘How much are they?’

‘Three kopeks,’ he replied.

It took Stana about fifteen minutes of huffing and pulling to get the skates on and even then they were distinctly too large.

‘They’re enormous,’ she hissed. ‘I can’t possibly skate in these.’

‘Of course you can,’ said Militza, her head high, pretending to take in the view. ‘Everyone’s watching.’

So the band played, the silver salvers circulated and Militza and Stana took to the ice. Within seconds, as they skated side by side, Militza rather more successfully that Stana in her rented skates, the ice began to clear. First some rather indignant ladies left, then a few children were dragged out of their way. By the time the sisters had been around the small circuit five or six times, they more or less had the rink to themselves.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Stana over the slicing sound of her skates, as she glided left and right.

‘It looks as if everyone is having a break,’ replied Militza.

‘Of course,’ said Stana. ‘Nothing to do with our arriving.’

‘Nothing at all,’ said Militza, as they continued to skate around and around the empty rink. ‘If we keep going, they’ll soon get bored.’

‘I’m sure they will,’ agreed Stana. ‘Although I have to say my feet are killing me!’

‘So are mine!’ Militza replied and they both laughed.

Neither of the sisters had ever skated so long and so determinedly in their lives. Their feet were freezing, their breath was landing in small crystals of hoar frost all over their furs, but still they carried on.

‘I am not sure how much longer I can do this,’ muttered Stana, her ankles beginning to burn.

‘I shall skate until the aurora borealis comes dancing up the river,’ declared Militza, clasping her hands a little firmer in her muff.

It was the children who returned to the ice first. Unable to hold them back any longer, reluctant mothers and governesses released them, scrambling and skidding, back onto the ice. They were rapidly followed by the young couples and giggling groups of girls. The day was too beautiful and too rare not to be taken advantage of. In fact, it was only the old guard, sitting on their benches, stiffening in the breeze, who seemed to be able to smell the heady lemon musk at all.

At just after 3 p.m., the ice began to empty. The Grand Duchess Vladimir was one of the first to disappear, along with her silver salvers and gloved servants.

‘I am not sure I have ever seen skates like those!’ she declared as she walked past the sisters. Stana and Militza simply smiled in reply.

After the Grand Duchess, the other skaters dissipated quickly, leaving the sisters among the last out on the ice. They sat on a wooden bench, untying their skates as the sun slipped behind a cloud.

Suddenly, it was deeply cold and the drop in temperature was accompanied by a sudden rush of wind. Militza looked up. Flying towards them, at low level, was a flock of starlings, some two to three thousand strong. They swarmed past her and up in the air over the spires of the Peter and Paul Fortress on the opposite bank, their beating wings swooping overhead, sounding like the smacking of waves or the gentle clapping of applause. They curled up like smoke, spun like a top, flowed like a great river. Militza had never seen a murmuration like this before. They dispersed; they came back together. They seemed to disappear completely and then gather like a large, dark, ominous cloud over the golden spires, snaking around them like a giant serpent. They ebbed and flowed, morphing from the shadow of a great black beast into a disparate cloud of nothing, only suddenly to reappear, racing across the river like a swarm of locusts. Once, they flew so low and fast over the ice, Militza could feel the wind of their wings on her face. She closed eyes and inhaled slowly. She could feel their energy. They made the hairs on her arms stand up. She felt a sudden rush of adrenaline.

‘The Tsar is dead,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘He’s dead,’ she said, turning to look at her sister sitting next to her on the bench.

‘Who?’

‘The Tsar is dead.’

‘Long live the Tsar,’ replied Stana, staring across the frozen river at the heaving black swarm. ‘Long live the Tsar.’