The House of Special Purpose

The Neva

THE NOTE WAS placed under the door of my room and slid so far along the floor that it almost disappeared beneath the bed. Only my name was printed on the exterior – Georgy Daniilovich – in a fine Cyrillic handwriting. It was rare for me to receive communications in this way; typically, any changes to the schedule of the Leib Guard were passed from Count Charnetsky to the divisional leaders, who in turn informed each man under their command. I was curious to open it, but surprised to find nothing but an address and a time printed neatly on the card inside. No instructions or clue as to who might have sent the note. No details of why my presence was required. The entire thing was a mystery which, at first, I put down to Anastasia, but then I recalled that she was due to attend a dinner at Prince Rogesky’s house later that evening with her family, so she could hardly have been arranging a secret assignation. Still, my interest was piqued, my evening was free and my spirits were good, so I went to the bath-house and washed myself thoroughly, before dressing in my finest non-military clothes and leaving the palace to make my way to the proposed address.

The night was dark and cold and the streets thick with snow, so deep that I was forced to lift my boots high above the mounds as I trawled slowly along them. As I walked, my hands buried in my pockets, I found it impossible to ignore the propaganda posters pasted on the walls and lampposts of the central city. Images of Nicholas and Alexandra, disgraceful images, naming them as plunderers of the land, tyrants, despots. Portraits of the Tsaritsa as a whore and a she-wolf, some where she was surrounded by a harem of young, tumescent men, others where she was lying prone and exposed beneath the lusty gaze of the dark-eyed starets. The posters had become a regular feature of the city and were torn down by the authorities every day, only to reappear as quickly as they were removed. To be discovered with any in your possession was to risk death. I wondered how the Tsar and his wife could bear to see themselves depicted in so obscene a fashion as they passed through the streets. He who had spent months and sacrificed his health leading the army in an attempt to protect our borders. She who was at the hospital every day, tending to the sick and the dying. The Tsaritsa was no Marie Antoinette and her husband no Louis XVI, but the moujiks seemed to look at the Winter Palace as a second Versailles and my heart was heavy as I wondered where all this discord might end.

The address on the card led me to a part of the city I rarely visited, one of those curious areas which housed neither palaces for princes nor hovels for peasants. Nondescript streets, small shops, beer taverns, nothing that suggested anything extraordinary might be taking place here that required my attendance. I wondered for a moment whether the note had been intended for me at all. Perhaps someone had meant to put it beneath the door of a fellow involved in one of the numerous secret societies that plagued the city. Someone involved in politics. Perhaps I was being led towards a covert meeting designed to cause further upheaval against the Romanovs and I would be taken for a traitor by them all. I almost considered turning away and heading back to the Winter Palace, but before I could decide for sure, the house that I was searching for appeared before me. I stared cautiously at the unimposing black door, behind which lay someone who wanted me to visit.

I hesitated, surprised by my own anxieties, and knocked quickly upon the wooden frame. I had been invited here, I told myself. The note had been addressed to me. There was no immediate answer, however, so I removed my right glove to knock again more loudly. But at that same moment the door swung open and I stood face to face with a dark-clothed figure, who stared at me for a moment as he tried to identify my face in the darkness of the night, before breaking into a delighted, hideous smile.

‘You came!’ he roared, reaching out and placing both hands on my shoulders. ‘I knew you would! Young men are so easily led, don’t you agree? I could have told you to throw yourself into the depths of the Moyka and you would be lying dead on the riverbed by now.’

I struggled beneath the weight of those great hands and tried to shrug them off, but without success; he pressed down with such determination that it felt like a test of his strength and my endurance. ‘Father Gregory,’ I said, for it was he who had opened the door – the monk, the man of God, the moujik who had made a whore of the Russian Empress. ‘I didn’t realize it was you who had invited me here.’

‘Why, would you have come quicker if you had?’ he asked, grinning. ‘Or not come at all, perhaps? Which would it have been, Georgy Daniilovich? Not the latter, surely. I won’t believe that for a moment.’

‘It’s a surprise, that’s all,’ I said truthfully, for as uncomfortable as I felt around him, and as much as he repulsed me, it was impossible not to be simultaneously fascinated by him, for his was a consistently intoxicating presence. Whenever I saw him, I found myself in a state of near paralysis. In this, I was not alone. Everyone hated him, but no one could keep their eyes off him.

‘You came and that is all that matters,’ he said now, ushering me through the door. ‘Come inside, it’s cold outside and we can’t have you becoming sick, can we? I want to introduce you to my friends.’

‘But what am I doing here?’ I asked, following him as he walked along a dark corridor towards the rear of the house, where a room entirely illuminated by red candles could be glimpsed in the background. ‘Why did you invite me?’

‘Because I enjoy the company of interesting people, Georgy Daniilovich,’ he roared, seemingly enchanted by the sound of his own voice. ‘And I consider you a very interesting person.’

‘I don’t know why,’ I said.

‘Don’t you? You should.’ He stopped for a moment and turned to smile at me, revealing two rows of yellow teeth. ‘I like anyone who has something to hide, and you, my young delight, are filled with secrets, are you not?’

I stared into those deep-blue eyes of his and swallowed nervously.

‘I have no secrets,’ I said. ‘None at all.’

‘Of course you do. Only a dullard has no secrets and I don’t think you’re one of those, are you? And anyway, we are all hiding something. Every one of us. Our betters, our equals. Those who have not had our advantages. No one likes to reveal their true selves; we would fall upon each other if we did. But you are a little different from most, I agree with you on that. For you seem utterly incapable of hiding your secrets. I can’t believe that I’m the only one who has noticed. But please, this is not why I brought you here,’ he added, turning back and continuing along. ‘Such talk can wait. Come and meet my friends. I think you will enjoy each other.’

I told myself that I should turn and leave, but he had disappeared into the red-candled room by now and there was no force on earth that could have stopped me from following him inside. I knew not what I might encounter when I stepped through the door. A small gang of fellow starets, perhaps. Or the Tsaritsa. It was impossible to guess. And as much as I tried to imagine it, the sight that greeted me when I entered was strange, unexpected and immediately intoxicating.

The room was filled with low sofas, each upholstered in deep shades of scarlet and purple, and dominated by expensive rugs and tapestries that looked as if they might have been delivered from the bazaars of Delhi. Spread across the room, lying on the sofas and chaises longues, were perhaps a dozen people, each one dressed more provocatively than the last. A woman whom I knew to be a countess and a former intimate of the Empress, who had earned her displeasure after a troubled visit to Livadia when she had dared to kick the Tsaritsa’s malevolent terrier, Eira. A prince of the royal blood. The daughter of one of St Petersburg’s most notorious sodomites. Four or five younger people, perhaps my own age, perhaps a little older, whom I had never seen before. Some prostitutes. A young boy of quite extraordinary beauty whose face was smeared with rouge and lipstick. Most of them were in a state of undress, their shirts open, bare feet on display, some clothed in nothing but their undergarments. One of the prostitutes, visible through the mist which clouded the room and took hold of my senses, causing me to feel immediately drowsy and anxious for more, was seated on the sofa with a boy’s head in her lap; he was completely naked and his tongue lapped at her body like a cat at a saucer of milk. I stared at the tableau before me, my eyes wide in a mixture of revulsion and desire, the one urging me to run, the other pressing me to stay.

‘Friends,’ roared Father Gregory, spreading his arms wide and silencing the room immediately. ‘My most dear friends, familiars and intimates, may I introduce a delicious young man whose acquaintance I have been lucky enough to make. Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev, late of the village of Kashin, a miserable shithole in the centre of our blessed country. He displayed great loyalty to his royal family, if not, it is fair to say, to his oldest friend. He has been in St Petersburg for some time now, but has never, I think, learned to enjoy himself. I mean to change that tonight.’

His guests stared at me with a mixture of boredom and disinterest, continuing to drink from their wine glasses and take deep breaths from the bubbling glass pipes that passed between them, their conversation starting up again now in a low, whispered murmur. They had a dead look in their eyes, every one of them. Except Father Gregory. He was fiercely alive.

‘Georgy, aren’t you glad that I invited you?’ he asked me quietly, placing an arm around my shoulder and pulling me towards him as he stared across at the woman and the boy, watching them as they began to move and groan in rhythm with each other. ‘It’s so much better here than at that dreary old palace, wouldn’t you agree?’

‘What do you want with me?’ I asked, turning to look at him. ‘Why did you ask me here?’

‘But my dear, it was you who wanted to come,’ he said, laughing in my face as if I was a fool or a halfwit. ‘I didn’t take your hand and lead you through the streets, did I?’

‘I didn’t know who sent the card,’ I replied quickly. ‘Had I known—’

‘You knew perfectly well, but you didn’t care,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘It’s foolish to lie to oneself. Lie to others, by all means, but not to yourself. Anyway, come, my young friend, don’t be angry with me. We don’t allow temper here, only harmony. Have a glass of wine. Relax. Let yourself be entertained. You might like it here, Georgy Daniilovich, if you allow yourself to forget who you think you are and be who you truly want to be. Or should I call you Pasha? Would you prefer it if I did?’

I opened my eyes wide. No one had called me that name in years, and even then it had only been my father. ‘How did you hear that name?’ I asked. ‘Who told you that?’

‘I hear many things,’ he cried, raising his voice suddenly but causing none of his guests to stir in surprise or fright; his tone trembled with righteousness and dread as he spoke. ‘I hear the voices of the peasants in the field, crying out for justice and equality. I hear the sound of Matushka, crying at night over her diseased son. I hear it all, Pasha,’ he cried, his voice piteous now and craven, his face crumpled in pain as he leaned closer to me. ‘I hear the sound of her breath as she turns and sees the vehicle, ready to run her down, to take her life. I hear the cries of the sinners in hell, begging for release. I hear the laughter of the saved as they turn their faces away from us in Paradise. I hear the stomp of the soldiers’ boots as they enter the room, the rifles in their hands, prepared to shoot, prepared to kill, prepared to martyr—’ He stopped there and buried his face in his hands. ‘And I hear you, Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev,’ he said, taking his hands away from his face and pressing them to either side of my own, his fingers warm and soft against my cold cheeks. ‘I hear the things that you say, the things you try so desperately not to hear.’

‘What things?’ I asked, my voice emerging almost too quietly to be heard. ‘What do I say? What do you hear?’

‘Oh, my dear boy,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘You say, What has happened? Who was shooting?’

‘Here, drink some of this,’ said a voice to my right, interrupting us, and I turned to see the prince standing there, a glass of dark-red wine in his hand. I could think of no good reason to refuse it and brought it to my mouth immediately, swallowing it down in one mouthful.

‘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.

Father Gregory. The monk. The starets. Rasputin. Call him what you will. His hand was in this business, of course it was. He had manipulated Sergei Stasyovich in who knew how many ways. And finally my friend had said no and had turned against him. And this was his reward.

I had already tried, unsuccessfully, to block the events of that night from my mind. In truth, I remembered little of it. The alcohol. The drugs. The potions he had given me. The other players in his tableau. I could not even remember everything that I had done. Except that I was ashamed of it. Except that I regretted it. Except that I wished to God that I had never picked up that envelope off the floor of my bedroom.

The only thing that was important to me now was Anastasia. I could not allow him to do to us what he had done to Sergei Stasyovich and Marie. I could not allow him to separate us. And so I admit it. I confess it now, once and for all. I became the man I never thought I would be. I determined that he would not destroy us both.

Finding enemies of Father Gregory was not difficult; they were legion. His influence over every section of society was quite extraordinary. During the years that he had spent in St Petersburg, he had gained enough power to remove both ministers and prime ministers from their offices. His uncontrollable lust had brought him to the centre of more marital breakdowns than could be counted. He had incurred the enmity of the ruling classes for turning the people against the autocracy, for while the great ladies of society, including the Tsaritsa herself, might have been swayed by his hypnotic and seductive control, the moujiks in the towns and villages of Russia were not.

The wonder was not that there were so many people willing to kill him; the wonder was that he lasted so long in the first place.

The days following the revelation of Marie and Sergei Stasyovich’s affair were anxious ones. I was driven half crazy with worry that the starets would find some reason to inform the Tsar of my own relationship with his youngest daughter. Combined with this, I was saddened by the loss of my friend and concerned for Anastasia, who was tending to her grieving and disgraced sister and seemed to be suffering an equal amount of pain.

It seemed impossible that I could continue with such an existence, constantly terrified of every knock at my door, afraid to walk the corridors of the palace in case I ran into my tormentor. And so, a few evenings after Sergei’s exile, without stopping to consider the consequences of my actions, I went to the armoury and took a pistol from the racks, and waited until dark before making my way to the house that I had visited not three weeks before, on the evening when I had debased myself for the starets’ pleasure. I was concerned that I would be seen and so disguised myself well, wearing a heavy cloak that I had purchased from a stall the day before, a hat and muffler, a long scarf. No one would have recognized me or taken me for anything other than a busy merchant, making his way quickly through the streets, aiming for nothing more than to get home and out of the cold. Even to walk those streets again, even to hear the sound of my hand knocking on that black wooden door-frame filled me with shame and remorse; I could feel my gorge rise at the memories of what I had done and what I had tried so desperately to forget. My innocence had been lost, I no longer knew whether I was even worthy of Anastasia’s love.

My hands trembled not just with the frost in the air but with the fear of what I was planning to do, and I kept one hand tightly gripped to the pistol concealed within my greatcoat as I waited for my enemy to appear. Would I shoot him where he stood, I wondered? Would I allow him to say one last prayer, to beg forgiveness, to supplicate himself before whatever god he held dear, in the way that he had forced so many to supplicate themselves before him.

I heard footsteps growing louder on the corridor within and my heart raced with anxiety, my slick fingers sticking on the pistol trigger, and I thought that no, if I was to do it at all, I should do it when he appeared, before he knew what was happening and could seduce me to mercy. To my surprise, however, it was not he who opened the door, but the prostitute whose pleasures I had indulged in a few weeks before. She wore a vacant expression on her face, not recognizing me at first, and I could tell that she was either drunk or had lost her reason from who knew what concoction.

‘Where is he?’ I asked, my voice deep and dreadful as I committed myself to my final purpose.

‘Where is who?’ she replied, unmoved by either my appearance or my determination. I was only one of many the starets had brought here. Dozens, probably. Hundreds.

‘You know who,’ I insisted. ‘The priest. The one they call Rasputin.’

‘But he’s not here,’ she sighed, then shrugged her shoulders and offered a drunken laugh. ‘He’s left me all alone,’ she added in a dreamlike tone.

‘Then where is he?’ I demanded, reaching forward and shaking her by the shoulders; she grew angry then and stared at me with hate in her eyes, before thinking better of it and smiling.

‘The prince came for him,’ she said with a shrug.

‘The prince? What prince? Tell me his name!’

‘Yusupov,’ she said. ‘It was hours ago now. I don’t know where they went.’

‘Of course you do,’ I said, curling my free hand into a fist and showing it to her without remorse. ‘Tell me where they’ve gone or I swear to you—’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, spitting out the words. ‘He didn’t tell me. He could be anywhere. What are you going to do anyway, Pasha?’ she continued in a mocking tone. ‘You think you can hurt me? Is that really what you want to do to me?’

I stared at her, shaken that she recognized me after all, but I said nothing, simply spun around in the street so that I didn’t have to look at her.

‘The Moika Palace,’ I said quietly, thinking of Felix Yusupov’s home. It was the most likely place for them to have gone; after all, the Moika was infamous for its parties and debauched behaviour. It was a place, I thought, where Father Gregory would feel very much at home. I looked at the whore one last time and she began to speak again, to taunt me, but I heard not a word of it, turning away from her and heading in the direction of the river.

I made my way towards the banks of the Moika River and crossed at Gorokhovaya Ulitsa, passing the bright lights of the Mariinsky Palace as I made my way towards the Yusupov home. The river was mostly frozen over, the ice crashed up against itself by the walled banks, freezing in great white-peaked caps, like a snowy mountain range as viewed from above. I encountered not a single soul on that long, chilly walk; all the better, I realized, for the outcome of my actions could only result in my own death – particularly if the Tsaritsa was to hear of them. There were many who would applaud me for what I was planning to do, of course, but they would be a silent majority, unwilling to stand behind me if I was brought to trial. And if I was found guilty, then I would necessarily end my story as his final victim, swinging from a tree in the woods outside St Petersburg.

Finally, the Moika Palace rose up before me. I was pleased to see that there were no guards patrolling the grounds. Perhaps ten, fifteen years earlier, there would have been dozens parading the forecourt, but not any more. It was a sign of how far the ruling classes had fallen. The idea that the palaces might not even last another year was in common parlance. In the meantime, the wealthy were living their debauched lives while they still could, drinking their wine, gorging on their meat, sodomizing their whores. Their end was coming and they knew it, but they were too drunk to care.

I made my way to the rear of the palace and was about to try one of the doors when I heard a gunshot from within. Startled, I stood there as if I had been turned to stone. Had it really been a gunshot or was I imagining things? I swallowed nervously and looked around, but there was no one in sight. I could hear voices shouting, laughing, inside the palace the sound of people hushing others, and then to my horror another gunshot. And another. And another. Four in total. I looked around and just at that moment a great light illuminated me as the door opened and an unknown man threw himself upon me, his arm around my neck, the blade of his knife pressing against the skin of my throat.

‘Who are you?’ he hissed. ‘Tell me quick or you die.’

‘A friend,’ I stuttered, desperate to get the words out without extending my throat too far, lest the knife bury itself in my neck.

‘A friend?’ he said. ‘You don’t even know to whom you are speaking.’

‘I’m…’ I hesitated. Should I identify myself as the Tsar’s man? Or an intimate of Rasputin’s? An enemy, perhaps? How could I know whose body controlled this arm?

‘Dmitri, no,’ came a second voice and a man emerged from the palace whom I recognized immediately as Prince Felix Yusupov. ‘Let him go. I know this boy.’ I was released immediately but held my ground, running a hand across my throat, searching for any cuts, but I was unharmed. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked me. ‘I know you, don’t I? You’re the Tsarevich’s bodyguard.’

‘Georgy Daniilovich,’ I said, acknowledging this.

‘Well, what do you want here? It’s late. Has the Tsar sent you?’

‘No,’ I said quickly, shaking my head. ‘No one sent me. I came of my own volition.’

‘But why? Who are you looking for?’

The man who had held me a moment before came around in front of me and I stared at him with murderous intent. I had seen him on a few occasions in the past, a tall, unhappy-looking fellow. A Grand Duke, I thought, or perhaps a Count. He glared at me, daring me to challenge him. ‘Answer him,’ he snapped. ‘Who were you looking for?’

‘The starets,’ I admitted. ‘I looked for him at his home and he wasn’t there. I thought he might be here.’

Prince Yusupov stared at me in surprise. ‘Rasputin?’ he asked quietly. ‘And why were you looking for him?’

‘To kill him!’ I shouted, no longer caring who knew it. I was damned if I was going to be a pawn in any more of their games. ‘I came to murder him and I’ll do it, even if I have to take both of you first.’

The Prince and his companion looked at each other and then back at me, before bursting out laughing. I felt like shooting them both on the spot. What did they take me for, some child having a tantrum? I was here to kill the starets and I was damned if I would leave without doing so.

‘And why, young Georgy Daniilovich, would you want to do that?’ he asked.

‘Because he is a monster,’ I said. ‘Because if he is not destroyed, then the rest of us will be.’

‘The rest of us will be anyway,’ said the Prince with a disaffected smile. ‘There’s nothing any of us can do to stop that. But as for the mad monk… well, I’m afraid you’re too late.’

I didn’t know whether I felt relief or dismay. ‘He is gone then?’ I asked, imagining him fleeing along the streets back into the arms of his whores.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘But he was here?’

‘He was,’ admitted the Prince. ‘I brought him here earlier tonight. I gave him wine. I gave him cakes. I laced them with enough cyanide to kill a dozen men, let alone some stinking moujik from Pokrovskoye.’

I stared at him and opened my eyes wide in surprise. ‘Then he is dead?’ I asked, astonished. ‘You have already killed him?’

The two men exchanged another look and shrugged almost apologetically. ‘You would think so, wouldn’t you?’ he asked, smiling at me. His manner was not that of one who had attempted murder and I wondered whether he might be drunk or out of his senses too. ‘But it had no effect on him. He is not human, you see,’ he added, as if this was a simple fact of life, something of which every civilized person was aware. ‘He is the devil’s creature. The cyanide did not kill him.’

‘Then what did?’ I asked, a chill running through my veins.

‘This,’ replied the Prince with a smile, removing his pistol from inside his tunic, and sure enough, smoke was still snaking from the tip. I immediately recalled the sound of gunfire that had almost led me to run away from the Moika not ten minutes before.

‘You shot him,’ I said flatly, chilled by the reality of the words, despite the fact that it had been my intention anyway.

‘Of course. I’ll show you if you like.’

He led the way back inside the palace and we walked a short distance to a dark corridor, illuminated on either side by tall white candles. In the centre of the floor, lying face-down, was the unmistakable figure of Father Gregory, his black cloak spread around him, his arms splayed out in a cartoonish pose, his long hair stringy and filthy on the marble floor.

‘I decided that if poison couldn’t do the job, then bullets would,’ said the Prince as I stepped closer to the corpse and looked down. ‘I put one in his stomach, one in his leg, one in his kidneys and one in his chest. Someone should have done it years ago. Perhaps we wouldn’t all be in the mess we are now if someone had.’

I was barely listening to him, but staring at the body instead. I was glad that someone else had done the job and wondered for a moment whether I would have had the fortitude to commit so heinous a crime. I felt no happiness though, no satisfaction that he was gone. Instead, my head was filled with nausea and revulsion and I realized that I wanted nothing more than to be back in the safety of my palace bed, for however much longer it was to be mine. No, given the choice I would have been in the arms of my love, my Anastasia, but for now that was impossible.

‘I’m glad you did it,’ I said to the Prince, turning to reassure him, lest he kill me too for witnessing the crime. ‘He deserved everything he—’

I didn’t get to finish the sentence for at that moment a sound emerged from Father Gregory’s body, his eyes opened wide, and he began to laugh, to screech, to emit a sound that was more animal than human. I gasped as his mouth fixed into a horrendous smile, his lips parting to show his yellow teeth and dark tongue. I wanted to scream or run, but could do neither. Within a second, the Prince discharged a bullet into his heart. His body jumped, collapsed and slumped.

Now he was dead.

Within the hour he was gone. We carried him, the three of us, to the banks of the Neva and threw him in. He sank quickly, his awful face staring up at us as he receded into the black depths, his eyes still open as we took our last sight of him.

That night was one of the coldest in memory and the river froze over for almost a week.

When the ice began to thaw a little and Rasputin’s body was discovered, his arms were extended from his sides, his hands curled into claws, the nails white with scrapings of ice. He had tried to get out. He still hadn’t been dead. He had clawed away at the thick ice for who knew how long. The cyanide hadn’t killed him, four of the Prince’s bullets, drowning. None of it had worked.

I don’t know what it was that took him in the end. All that mattered was that he was gone.