The House of Special Purpose

The Prince of Kashin

IT WAS MY ELDEST SISTER, Asya, who first told me of the world that existed outside of Kashin.

I was only nine years old when she breached that naive insularity of mine. Asya was eleven and I was a little in love with her, I think, in the way that a younger brother may become entranced by the beauty and mystery of the female who is closest to him, before the urge for a sexual component appears and the attentions are diverted elsewhere.

We had always been close, Asya and I. She fought constantly with Liska, who was born a year after her and a year before me, and barely tolerated our youngest sister, Talya, but I was her pet. She dressed me and groomed me and saw to it that I was kept away from the worst excesses of our father’s temper. To her good fortune, she inherited our mother Yulia’s pretty features, but not her disposition, and she made the most of her looks, braiding her hair one day, tying it behind her neck the next, loosening the kosnik and allowing it to hang loosely around her shoulders when she was so inclined. She rubbed the juice of ripe plums into her cheeks to improve her countenance and wore her dress pinned up above her ankles, which made my father stare at her in the late evenings, a mixture of desire and contempt deepening the darkness of his eyes. The other girls in our village despised her for her vanity, of course, but what they really envied was her confidence. As she grew older they said she was a whore, that she spread her legs for any man or boy who desired her, but she didn’t care about any of that. She just laughed at their taunts, allowing them to slip away like water off a rock.

She should have lived in a different time and place, I think. She might have made a great success of her life.

‘But where is this other world?’ I asked her as we sat together by the stove in the corner of our small hut, an area which acted as bedroom, kitchen and living area for the six of us. At that time of the day, our mother and father would have been returning home from their labours, expecting us to have some food prepared for them, content to beat us if we did not, and Asya was busy stirring a pot of vegetables, potatoes and water into a thick broth which would act as our supper. Liska was outside somewhere, causing mischief, as was her particular talent. Talya, always the quietest of children, was lying in a nest of straw, playing with her fingers and toes, observing us patiently.

‘Far away from here, Georgy,’ she said, placing a finger carefully into the foam of the bubbling mixture and tasting it. ‘But people don’t live there like they live here.’

‘They don’t?’ I asked, unable even to imagine a different manner of existence. ‘Then how do they live?’

‘Well, some are poor, of course, like we are,’ she conceded in an almost apologetic tone, as if our circumstances were something of which we should all have been ashamed. ‘But many more live in great splendour. These are the people who make our country great, Georgy. Their houses are built from stone, not wood like this place. They eat whenever they want to eat, from plates encrusted with jewels. Food which is specially prepared by cooks who have spent all their lives mastering their art. And the ladies, they travel only by carriage.’

‘Carriage?’ I asked, crinkling my nose as I turned to look at her, unsure what the word could possibly mean. ‘What is this carriage?’

‘The horses carry them along,’ she explained with a sigh, as if my ignorance had been designed for no other reason than to frustrate her. ‘They are like… oh, how can I put this? Imagine a hut with wheels that people can sit inside and be transported in comfort. Can you picture that, Georgy?’

‘No,’ I said firmly, for the idea seemed both preposterous and frightening. I looked away from her and felt my stomach start to ache with hunger, and wondered whether she would allow me a spoon or two of this broth before our parents returned.

‘One day I shall travel in such a carriage,’ she added quietly, staring into the fire beneath the pot and poking at it with a stick, hoping perhaps to find some small coal or twig that had not yet caught flame and which could be cajoled into providing us with just a few more minutes of heat. ‘I don’t intend to stay in Kashin for ever.’

I shook my head in admiration for her. She was the most intelligent person I knew, for her awareness of these other worlds and lives was astonishing to me. I think that it was Asya’s thirst for knowledge which fuelled my own growing imagination and desire to learn more of the world. How she had come to know of such things I did not know, but it saddened me to think that Asya might be taken from me one day. I felt wounded that she should even want to seek a life outside of the one that we shared together. Kashin was a dark, miserable, fetid, unhealthy, squalid, depressing wreck of a village; of course it was. But until now I had never imagined that there might be anywhere better to live. I had never stepped more than a few miles from its boundaries, after all.

‘You can’t tell anyone about this, Georgy,’ she said after a moment, leaning forward in excitement as if she was about to reveal her most intimate secret. ‘But when I am older, I am going to St Petersburg. I’ve decided to make my life there.’ Her voice became more animated and breathless as she said this, her fantasies making their way from the solitude of her private thoughts towards the reality of the spoken word.

‘But you can’t,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You would be alone there. You know no one in St Petersburg.’

‘At first, perhaps,’ she admitted, laughing and putting a hand over her mouth to contain her mirth. ‘But I shall meet a wealthy man soon enough. A prince, perhaps. And he will fall in love with me and we will live together in a palace and I will have all the servants that I require and wardrobes filled with beautiful dresses. I’ll wear different jewellery every day – opals, sapphires, rubies, diamonds – and during the season we will dance together in the throne room of the Winter Palace, and everyone will look at me from morning till night and admire me and wish that they could stand in my place.’

I stared at her, this unrecognizable girl with her fantastical plans. Was this the sister who lay on the moss-and-pine floor beside me every night and woke up with the imprint of the grainy branches upon her cheeks? I could scarcely comprehend a single word of which she spoke. Princes, servants, jewellery. Such concepts were entirely alien to my young mind. And as for love. What was that, after all? How did that concern any of us? She caught my look of incomprehension, of course, and burst out laughing as she tousled my hair.

‘Oh, Georgy,’ she said, kissing me now on either cheek and then once on the lips for luck. ‘You don’t understand a thing I’m saying, do you?’

‘Yes,’ I insisted quickly, for I hated her to think of me as ignorant. ‘Of course I do.’

‘You’ve heard of the Winter Palace, haven’t you?’

I hesitated. I wanted to say yes, but if I did, then she might not explain it in further detail and the words were already holding a certain allure. ‘I think I have,’ I said finally. ‘I can’t remember exactly. Remind me, Asya.’

‘The Winter Palace is where the Tsar lives,’ she explained. ‘With the Tsaritsa, of course, and the Imperial Family. You know who they are, don’t you?’

‘Yes, yes,’ I said quickly, for His Majesty’s name, and that of his family, was invoked before every meal as we offered a prayer for his continued health, generosity and wisdom. The prayers themselves often lasted longer than the eating. ‘I’m not stupid, you know.’

‘Well then you should know where the Tsar makes his home. Or one of his homes, anyway. He has many. Tsarskoe Selo. Livadia. The Standart.’

I raised an eyebrow and now it was my turn to laugh. The notion of more than one home seemed ridiculous to me. Why would anyone need such a thing? Of course, I knew that Tsar Nicholas had been appointed to his glorious position by God himself, that his powers and autocracy were infinite and absolute, but was he possessed of magical qualities also? Could he be in more than one place simultaneously? The idea was absurd and yet somehow possible. He was the Tsar, after all. He could be anything. He could do anything. He was as much a god as God himself.

‘Will you take me to St Petersburg with you?’ I asked a few moments later, my voice sinking almost to a whisper, as if I was afraid that she might deny me this ultimate honour. ‘When you go, Asya. You won’t leave me behind, will you?’

‘I could try,’ she said magnanimously, considering it. ‘Or perhaps you could come and visit the prince and me when we are established in our new home. You can have a wing of our palace entirely for yourself and a team of butlers to assist you. And we will have children, of course, too. Beautiful children, many of them, boys and girls. You will be an uncle to them, Georgy. Would you like that?’

‘Certainly,’ I agreed, although I found myself growing jealous at the idea of sharing my beautiful sister with anyone else, even a prince of the royal blood.

‘One day…’ she said with a sigh, staring into the fire as if she could see depictions of her glorious future flickering and bursting into life within the flames. Of course, she was only a child herself at the time. I wonder whether it was Kashin that she hated or just a better life that she longed for.

It saddens me to recall that conversation from such a distance of time. My heart aches to think that she never achieved her ambitions. For it was not Asya who found her way to St Petersburg and the Winter Palace. It was not she who ever knew how it felt to be surrounded by the seductive power of wealth and luxury.

It was me. It was little Georgy.

The closest friend of my youth was a boy named Kolek Boryavich Tanksy, whose family had lived in Kashin for as many generations as my own. We had many things in common, Kolek and I. We were born only a few weeks apart, during the late spring of 1899. We spent our childhood playing in the mud together, exploring every corner of our small village, blaming each other when our escapades went wrong. We both came from a family of sisters. I, of course, was blessed with only three, while Kolek was cursed with twice that number.

And we were both frightened of our fathers.

My father, Daniil Vladyavich, and Kolek’s father, Borys Alexandrovich, had known each other all their lives, probably spending as much of their boyhood in each other’s company as their sons would thirty years later. They were passionate men, both of them, filled with degrees of admiration and loathing, but their political opinions diverged considerably.

Daniil treasured the country of his birth. He was patriotic to the point of blindness, believing that man was given life for no other purpose than to obey the dictates of God’s messenger on earth, the Russian Tsar. However, his hatred and resentment of me, his only son, was as incomprehensible as it was upsetting. From the moment of my birth, he treated me with disdain. One day I was too short, the next I was too weak, on another I might be too timid or too stupid. Of course, it was the nature of farm labourers that they wanted to breed, so why my father saw me as such a disappointment after already siring two girls is a mystery. But nevertheless, it was how things were. Having never known anything different, I might have grown up believing that this was how all relationships between fathers and sons were cultivated, were it not for the other example that played out before me.

Borys Alexandrovich loved his son very much and considered him to be the prince of our village, which, I suppose, means that he thought himself to be its king. He praised Kolek constantly, brought him everywhere with him and never excluded him from adult conversation in the way that other fathers did. But unlike Daniil, he nurtured an obsession with criticizing Russia and its rulers, believing that his own poverty and perceived failure in life was entirely the result of the autocrats whose whims dictated our lives.

‘One day, things will change in this country,’ he told my father on any number of occasions. ‘Can’t you smell it in the air, Daniil Vladyavich? Russians will not stand to be ruled over by such a family for much longer. We must take control of our own destinies.’

‘Always the revolutionary, Borys Alexandrovich,’ my father replied, shaking his head and laughing, a rare treat, and one which was only ever inspired by his friend’s radical pronouncements. ‘All your life spent here in Kashin, tilling fields, eating kasha and drinking kvas, and still your head is full of these ideas. You will never change, will you?’

‘And all your life, you have been content to be a moujik,’ said Borys angrily. ‘Yes, we work the land, we make an honest living from the soil, but are we not men like the Tsar? Tell me, why should he have everything, be entitled to everything, own everything, when we live out our days in such poverty and squalor? You still say prayers for him every night, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ said my father, starting to grow irritated now, for he hated even engaging in any conversation which criticized the Tsar. He had been bred with an innate sense of servitude and it flowed through his veins as freely as his blood. ‘Russia’s destiny is inextricably linked to that of the Tsar. Think, only for a moment, of how far back this generation of rulers goes. To Tsar Michael! That’s more than three hundred years, Borys.’

‘Three hundred years of Romanovs is three hundred years too many,’ roared his friend, coughing up a mouthful of phlegm and spitting it on the ground between his feet without shame. ‘And tell me, what have they given us during that time? Anything of value? I think not. Some day… some day, Daniil…’ He hesitated there. Borys Alexandrovich could be as radical and revolutionary as he wanted, but it would have been a heresy, and perhaps a death sentence, to have continued.

Still, there was not a man in our village who did not know the words that he intended to come next. And there were many who agreed with him.

Kolek Boryavich and I, of course, never spoke of politics. Such matters meant nothing to either of us as children. Instead, as we grew up, we played the games that boys played, found ourselves in the trouble that boys find themselves in, and laughed and fought, but were around each other so much that strangers passing through our village might have taken us for brothers, were it not for the difference in our physical appearance.

As a child, I was small in stature, and cursed with a mop of blond ringlets, a fact which might lie at the root of my father’s contempt for me. He had wanted a son to carry on his name and I did not look like the kind of boy who might accomplish such a task. At the age of six I was a foot shorter than all my friends, earning myself the nickname Pasha, which means ‘the small one’. Because of my golden curls, my older sisters called me the prettiest member of our family, garnishing me with whatever ribbons and fancies they could find, which caused our father to scream at them in fury and rip the garlands from my head, handfuls of hair often being extracted in the process. And despite the frugality of our diet, I had a tendency towards weight gain as a child too, which my father Daniil considered a mark of dishonour against him.

Kolek, on the other hand, was always tall for his age, lean, strong, and handsome in a very masculine way. By the age of ten, the girls in our village were looking at him with admiring eyes, wondering how he might develop in a few years’ time when he had grown to manhood. Their mothers vied with each other for the attention of his own mother, a timid creature named Anje Petrovna, for there was always a sense about him that he would be a great man one day, that he would bring glory to our village, and it was their fervent desire that one of their daughters would eventually be taken to his bed as his bride.

He enjoyed the attention, of course. He was more than aware of the glances that came his way and the admiration everyone had for him, but he too had fallen in love and with none other than my own sister Asya. She was the only person who could make him blush and lose confidence in his remarks. But to his dismay, she was also the only girl in the village who seemed utterly immune to his charms, a fact which I believe only fuelled his desire for her. He hovered around our izba daily, seeking opportunities to impress her, determined to break through her steely exterior and make her love him as everyone else did.

‘Young Kolek Boryavich is enamoured of you,’ our mother remarked one evening to her eldest daughter as she prepared another miserable pot of shchi, a sort of cabbage soup that was almost indigestible. ‘He cannot bear to look in your direction, have you noticed?’

‘He cannot look at me, so that means he likes me,’ remarked Asya casually, brushing his interest aside like something unpleasant which had found its way on to her clothing. ‘That’s a curious logic, don’t you agree?’

‘He is shy around you, that’s all,’ explained Yulia. ‘And such a handsome boy too. He will make some lucky girl a worthy husband one day.’

‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘But not me.’

When I quizzed her about this afterwards, she seemed almost insulted that anyone would think that Kolek was good enough for her. ‘He’s two years younger than me, for one thing,’ she explained in an exasperated tone. ‘I’m not interested in taking a boy for my husband. And I don’t like him anyway. He has a sense of entitlement about him that I cannot bear. As if the world exists only for his benefit. He’s had it all his life and everyone in this miserable village is responsible for giving it to him. And he’s a coward, too. His father is a monster – you can see that, Georgy, can’t you? A horrible man. And yet everything your little Kolek does is designed for no other purpose than to impress him. I’ve never seen a boy so in thrall to his father. It’s loathsome to watch.’

I didn’t know how to respond to such a litany of disdain. Like everyone else, I considered Kolek Boryavich to be the finest boy in the village and it had always been my secret delight that he had chosen me to be his closest friend. Perhaps it was the difference in our appearance which allowed our relationship to thrive. The fact that I was the short, fat, golden-curled subordinate standing next to the tall, slim, dark-haired hero, my pathetic proximity making him appear even more glorious than he really was. And this, in turn, made his father even more proud of him. On that, I knew Asya was correct. There was nothing that Kolek would not have done to impress his father. And what was wrong with that, I wondered. At least Borys Alexandrovich took pride in his boy.

But finally, I grew tired of being Pasha and wanted to be Georgy again, and around the time of my fourteenth birthday, the changes in my own appearance, from boy to man, finally took a sudden and unexpected hold, and I encouraged them through exercise and activity. Within a few months, I had grown a considerable amount and suddenly stood just over six feet in height. The heaviness which had cursed me throughout my childhood fell away from my bones as I began to run miles around our village every day, waking early in the morning to swim for an hour in the freezing waters of the Kashinka river that flowed near by. My body grew toned, the muscles at my stomach became more defined. My curls began to straighten out and my hair darkened a little from the shade of bright sunlight to the colour of washed sand. By 1915, when I was sixteen years old, I could stand beside Kolek and not be embarrassed by the comparison. I was still the lesser of the two, of course, but the gap between us had diminished.

There were girls who liked me, too, I knew that. Not as many as fell for my friend, that is true, but nevertheless, I was not unpopular.

And through it all, Asya shook her head and said that I should not aspire to be like Kolek, that he would never be the great man that people expected, and that sooner or later the young prince would not bring honour on Kashin, but shame.

It was Borys Alexandrovich who first imparted the news that would change my life.

Kolek and I were standing at the corner of a field near my family’s hut, stripped to the waist on a frosty spring morning, laughing together as we chopped a pile of logs into firewood, while doing all that we could to impress the village girls who walked past us. We were sixteen years old, strong and handsome, and while some ignored us completely, others glanced in our direction and offered teasing smiles, biting their lips as they laughed and watched us swing our axes high in the air before bringing them down into the heart of the timber, cleaving it in half, the splinters spitting out from the wreckage like fireworks. One or two were flirtatious enough to make the kind of indecent comment that encouraged Kolek, but I was not yet confident enough to engage in such banter and found myself feeling self-conscious and turning away.

My father, Daniil, emerged from our izba and stared at us for a moment, curling his lip a little in distaste as he shook his head. ‘You bloody fools,’ he said, irritated by our youth and physicality. ‘You’ll catch pneumonia like that, or do you think that young men can’t die?’

‘I’m made of strong stuff, Daniil Vladyavich,’ replied Kolek, winking at him as he lifted his muscular arms once again so his biceps might pulse and flex for all to see. The axe glistened in the air, its clean steel catching the light for a moment and sending a series of black and golden polka-dots dancing before my eyes, so that when I blinked away the obstruction, it seemed as if a magnificent halo had suddenly materialized around my friend. ‘Can’t you see that?’

‘You might be, Kolek Boryavich,’ he said, glaring at me as if he wished that it was Kolek who had been born his son and not I. ‘But Georgy follows your example too much and lacks your strength. Will you take care of him when he’s shivering in his bed, sweating like a horse and crying out for his mother?’

Kolek looked at me and grinned, delighted by the insult, but I said nothing and continued with my work. A group of young children ran past and giggled as they saw us there, delighted by our near indecency, but then looked towards my father, with his deformed head and terrible reputation for anger, and their smiles quickly faded as they hurried on their way.

‘Are you going to stand there and watch us all afternoon or do you have any work of your own to do?’ I asked finally, when Daniil showed no sign of leaving us to our labours and conversation. It was unusual for me to speak to him in this way. Typically I addressed him with some degree of respect, not out of fear, but because I did not wish to involve myself in any arguments. On this occasion, however, my defiant words were designed more to impress Kolek with my fortitude than insult Daniil with my insolence.

‘I’ll take that axe from your hands and slice you in two with it, Pasha, if you don’t keep quiet,’ he answered, stepping towards me and employing the diminutive which he knew could keep me in my place. I held my position for only a moment before retreating a little and hanging my head. He maintained a power over me, one that I did not fully understand, but he could intimidate me back to my childhood obedience with a simple word.

‘My son is a coward, Kolek Boryavich,’ he announced then, delighted by his triumph. ‘This is what happens when you are reared in a family of women. You become one of them.’

‘But I was reared in such a family,’ said Kolek, burying the blade of the axe in the timber before him, the handle stretching upwards into the crease of his folded arms. ‘Do you think me a coward too, Daniil Vladyavich?’

My father opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, Kolek’s own father came stomping around a corner towards us, red-faced and angry, his breath transforming into steam in the chill of the morning. He stopped for a moment when he saw the three of us gathered together, shook his head and then threw his arms in the air in disgust in such a dramatic fashion that I found myself having to bite my lip to stop myself from laughing and insulting him.

‘It’s a disgrace,’ he roared, so loudly and aggressively that none of us said anything for a moment, but continued to stare at him, waiting to learn the source of his displeasure. ‘An absolute disgrace,’ he continued. ‘That I have lived to see such a moment! You have heard this news, I take it, Daniil Vladyavich?’

‘What news?’ asked my father. ‘What has happened?’

‘If I was a younger man,’ he replied, wagging a finger in the air in the manner of a teacher chastising a group of errant schoolboys. ‘I tell you now, if I was a younger man and had all my faculties about me—’

‘Borys,’ said Daniil, interrupting him and looking almost amused by his friend’s fury. ‘You are ready to kill this morning, I think.’

‘Do not joke about it, my friend!’

‘Joke? What joke? I don’t even know what has caused you to feel such anger.’

‘Father,’ said Kolek, walking towards him, his face so filled with concern that I thought he was near to embracing him. It was a continual source of fascination to me, this obvious affection between father and son. Having never experienced such warmth myself, I was always curious to observe it in others.

‘A merchant I know,’ explained Borys finally, stumbling over his words in his anxiety and anger. ‘A virtuous man, a man who never lies or cheats, has passed through our village this morning and—’

‘I saw him!’ I announced cheerfully, for it was unusual enough to see a stranger passing through Kashin, but an unfamiliar man had walked past our hut wearing a coat of fine goats’ hair only an hour before and I had taken note of him as he had passed and offered him a good morning, which he had ignored. ‘He came by here not an hour since and—’

‘Hold your tongue, boy,’ snapped my father, irritated that I should have some part in this at all. ‘Let your elders speak.’

‘I have known this man for many years,’ continued Borys, ignoring us both, ‘and a more sincere person it would be difficult to find. He was making his way through Kalyazin last night and it seems that one of the monsters intends to journey this way as he travels on to St Petersburg. He is passing through Kashin! Our own village!’ he added, spitting out the words, so deep was the level of insult he felt. ‘And of course he will demand that we all step out of our huts and bow down before him in adoration, as the Jews did when Jesus entered Jerusalem on a colt. A week before they crucified him, of course.’

‘Which monsters?’ asked Daniil, shaking his head in confusion. ‘Who are you referring to?’

‘A Romanov,’ he announced, searching our faces for a reaction. ‘None other than the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich,’ he added, and for a man who held the Imperial family in such low regard, he rolled the royal name off his tongue as if every syllable was a precious jewel that must be handled with care and consideration, lest its glory be shattered and lost for ever.

‘Nicholas the Tall,’ said Kolek quietly.

‘The very same.’

‘Why the Tall?’ I asked, frowning.

‘To distinguish him from his cousin, of course,’ snapped Borys Alexandrovich. ‘Nicholas the Short. Tsar Nicholas II. The tormentor of the Russian people.’

My eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘The cousin of the Tsar is to pass through Kashin?’ I asked. I could not have been more astonished if Daniil had thrown his arms around my shoulders, embraced me and praised me as his son and heir.

‘Don’t look so impressed, Pasha,’ said Borys Alexandrovich, insulting me for not joining him in his anger. ‘Don’t you know who these people are? What have they done for us anyway other than—?’

‘Borys, please,’ said my father with a deep sigh. ‘Not today. Your politics can wait until another time, surely. This is a great honour for our village.’

‘An honour?’ he asked, laughing. ‘An honour, you say! These Romanovs are the ones who keep us in our poverty and you think it a privilege that one of their number chooses to use our streets to stop for a moment to allow his horse to drink our water and take a shit? An honour! You dishonour yourself, Daniil Vladyavich, with such a word. Look! Look around you now!’

We turned our heads in the direction in which he was pointing; most of the villagers were rushing towards their huts. They had no doubt heard the news about our illustrious visitor and were seeking to prepare themselves in whatever way they could. Washing their faces and hands, of course, for they could not present themselves to a prince of the royal blood with streaks of mud stained across their faces. Stringing together a few small flowers to create a garland to throw beneath the feet of the Grand Duke’s horse.

‘This man’s grandfather was one of the worst of all the tsars,’ continued Borys, ranting now, his face growing redder and redder in his rage. ‘Had it not been for Nicholas I, Russians would never even have heard of the concept of autocracy. It was he who insisted that every man, woman and child in the country believed in his unlimited authority on every subject. He saw himself as our Saviour, but do you feel saved, Daniil Vladyavich? Do you, Georgy Daniilovich? Or do you feel cold and hungry and desirous of your freedom?’

‘Go inside and prepare yourself,’ said my father, ignoring his friend and pointing a finger in my direction. ‘You will not disgrace me by appearing before such a great man in your nakedness.’

‘Yes, Father,’ I said, bowing quickly to his own autocracy and rushing inside in search of a clean tunic. As I rustled through the small pile of clothes that constituted my entire wardrobe, I heard more raised voices outside the hut, followed by the sound of my friend, Kolek, telling his father that they should go home and prepare themselves too. That shouting on the street was of no use to anyone, loyalist or radical.

‘If I was a younger man,’ I heard Borys Alexandrovich say as he was led away. ‘I tell you, my son, if I was only—’

‘I am a younger man,’ came the reply, and I thought nothing of Kolek’s words at the time, nothing at all. It was only later that I remembered them and cursed myself for my stupidity.

It was no more than an hour later when the first advance guards appeared on the horizon and began to make their way towards Kashin. Although common moujiks such as we knew only the names of the immediate Imperial family, the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, the Tsar’s first cousin, was famous throughout Russia for his military exploits. He was not loved, of course. Men such as he never are. But he was revered and blessed with a fearful reputation. During the revolution of 1905, it was rumoured that he had brandished a revolver in front of the Tsar and threatened to blow his own brains out if his cousin did not permit the creation of a Russian constitution, and for that he was admired by many. Although those who were more inclined towards radical thought, like Borys Alexandrovich, cared nothing for such bravery; they saw only a title and an oppressor and a person to be despised.

However, the idea that the Grand Duke was close at hand was enough to send a frisson of excitement and fear through my heart. I could not recall when we had last experienced such anticipation in Kashin. As the riders grew ever closer, almost everyone in the village swept the street clean before their izba, creating a clear route for the horses of this most illustrious of visitors.

‘Who will he have to accompany him, do you think?’ my sister Asya asked me as we stood by our doorway, a family gathered together, waiting to wave and cheer. Her cheeks were even more rouged than usual and her dress was pulled up towards her knees, displaying her legs beneath. ‘Some of the young princes from St Petersburg, perhaps?’

‘The Grand Duke has no sons for you,’ I replied, smiling at her. ‘You will have to cast your net wider still.’

‘He might notice me though,’ she said with a shrug.

‘Asya!’ I cried, appalled but amused by her. ‘He’s an old man. He must be nearly sixty if he is a day. And he is married, too. You can’t believe that—’

‘I’m just teasing you, Georgy,’ she replied, laughing as she slapped my shoulder playfully, although I wasn’t entirely sure that she was. ‘But nevertheless, there are sure to be some available young soldiers among his retinue. If one of them was to take an interest in me… oh, don’t look so scandalized! I’ve told you before that I don’t intend to spend my life in this miserable place. I’m eighteen years old, after all. It’s time I found a husband before I grow too ancient and ugly to marry.’

‘And what of Ilya Goryavich?’ I asked, referring to the young man with whom she spent much of her time. Like my friend Kolek, poor Ilya was madly in love with Asya and she offered him a little affection in return, no doubt encouraging him to believe that she might give herself to him entirely in time. I pitied him for his stupidity. I knew that he was little more than a plaything for my sister, a marionette whose strings she controlled to stave off her boredom. One day she would cast her doll aside, that much was obvious. A better toy would come along – a toy from St Petersburg, perhaps.

‘Ilya Goryavich is a sweet boy,’ she said with a disinterested shrug. ‘But I think, at twenty-one, he is already everything that he will ever be. And I’m not sure that’s enough.’

I could tell that she was about to make some unnecessarily disparaging comment about that good-hearted oaf, but the soldiers were starting to approach now and we could make out the lead officers, sitting tall on their horses as they paraded slowly along the street, resplendent in their black double-breasted tunics, grey trousers and heavy, dark greatcoats. I stared at the fur shapkas on their heads, intrigued by the sharp V cut through the front of them, just above the eyes, and fantasized about how wonderful it would be to be part of their number. They ignored the noisy cheers of the peasants who surrounded them on either side, calling out blessings to the Tsar and throwing garlands before the hooves of the horses. They expected nothing less from us, after all.

Little news of the war ever came to Kashin, but from time to time a trader might pass through our village with information about the military’s successes or failures. Sometimes a pamphlet might arrive at the home of one of our neighbours, sent by a well-intentioned relative, and we would each be allowed to read it in turn, following the advance of the armies in our imaginations. Some of the young men of the village had already left for the army: some had been killed, some were missing, while others still remained in service. It was expected that boys like Kolek and I, when we reached seventeen, would be called upon to bring glory to our village and join one of the military units.

The great responsibilities of Nicholas Nicolaievich were well known to all, however.

The Grand Duke had been appointed Supreme Commander of the Russian forces by the Tsar, fighting a war on three fronts, against the Austro-Hungarian Empire, against the German Kaiser, and against the Turks. By all accounts he had not been tremendously successful in any of these campaigns so far, but still he commanded the admiration and absolute loyalty of the soldiers under his command, and this in turn was filtered down through the peasant villages of Russia. We considered him to be among the very finest of men, appointed to his position by a benevolent God who sent such leaders to watch over us in our simplicity and ignorance.

The cheers grew even louder as the soldiers passed us by, and then, approaching like a glorious deity, I could make out a great white charging horse at the centre of the throng and seated atop the steed, a giant of a man in military uniform, his mustachios waxed, groomed and teased to a fine point on either side of his upper lip. He was staring rigidly ahead, but lifting his left hand from time to time to offer a regal wave to the gathered crowd.

As the horses passed before me I caught sight of our revolutionary neighbour, Borys Alexandrovich, standing among the crowd on the opposite side of the street and was surprised to see him there, for if there was one man who I thought would refuse to come out and pay tribute to the great general, it would have been him.

‘Look,’ I said to Asya, nudging her shoulder and pointing in his direction. ‘Over there. Borys Alexandrovich. Where are his fine principles now? He is as enamoured of the Grand Duke as any of us.’

‘But aren’t the soldiers handsome!’ she replied, ignoring me and playing with the curls of her hair instead as she studied each man that passed us. ‘How can they fight in battle and yet keep their uniforms so pristine, do you think?’

‘And there’s Kolek,’ I added, noticing my friend pushing his way to the fore of the crowd now, his face a mixture of excitement and anxiety. ‘Kolek!’ I cried, waving across at him, but he could neither see me nor hear me through the noise made by the marching horses and the cheering of the villagers. At any other time, I would not have thought anything of this unremarkable fact and would have turned to look back at the parade instead, but there was an expression on his face which confused me, a look of utter disquiet that I had never observed on the countenance of this thoughtful boy before. He stepped forward a little and looked around until he had reassured himself that his father, the man whose approval meant more to him than anything else in the world, was among the watching crowd, and when he was certain of Borys Alexandrovich’s presence he turned back to stare at the Grand Duke as the white charger marched towards him.

Nicholas Nicolaievich was perhaps twenty feet away, no more, when I saw Kolek’s left hand reach inside his tunic and remain there for a moment, trembling slightly.

Fifteen feet away, when I saw the wooden handle of the gun emerge slowly from its hiding place, my friend’s fist wrapped tightly around the grip, his finger hovering over the trigger.

Ten feet away, when he drew the gun, unobserved by any but I, and released the safety catch.

The Grand Duke was only five feet away when I shouted my friend’s name – ‘Kolek! No!’ – and tore through a gap in the passing riders, running across the street as the heads of the soldiers, aware of something untoward taking place, turned in my direction to see what was happening. My friend saw me now too and swallowed nervously before lifting the gun in the air and aiming it in the direction of Nicholas Nicolaievich, who was before him now and had finally deigned to turn his head to look at the young man to his left. He must have seen the flash of steel in the air but there was no time for him to draw his own gun, nor to turn his horse and make a quick escape, because the pistol went off almost immediately with a loud thunderclap, sending its murderous gunpowder in the direction of the Tsar’s cousin and closest confidant at the very moment when I, failing to consider the consequences of such an action, leapt in front of it.

There was a sudden flash of fire, a piercing pain, a scream from the crowd, and I fell to the ground, expecting to feel the shod-hooves of the horses crush my skull beneath their enormous weight at any moment, even as a pain unlike any that I had ever felt before seared through my shoulder, a feeling that someone had taken an iron rod, smelted it in a furnace for an hour and driven it through my innocent flesh. I landed hard on the ground, experiencing a sudden sensation of peace and tranquillity in my mind before the afternoon went dark before my eyes, the noises became hushed, the crowds appeared to vanish into a misty haze, and there was only a small voice left whispering to me in my head, telling me to sleep – sleep, Pasha! – and I obeyed it.

I closed my eyes and was left alone inside an empty, soporific darkness.

The first face I saw when I awoke was that of my mother, Yulia Vladimirovna, who was pressing a wet rag across my forehead and staring down at me with a mixture of irritation and alarm. Her hand was trembling slightly and she seemed as nervous to be offering maternal consolation as I was to receive it. Asya and Liska were whispering in a corner while the child, Talya, was watching me with a cold and disinterested expression. I did not feel a part of this unusual tableau at all and simply stared back at them, confused as to what had taken place to inspire such a display of emotion, until a sudden explosion of pain in my left shoulder caused me to grimace and I let out an anguished cry as my hand reached across to ease the pressure on the injured area.

‘Be careful there,’ said a loud, deep voice from behind my mother, and the moment it spoke, she jumped noticeably and her expression transformed into one of frightened anxiety. I had never seen her so intimidated by anyone before and thought at first that it was my father, Daniil, who was ordering her to make way, but the voice did not belong to him. My vision was slightly blurred and I blinked several times in quick succession until the haze began to dissipate and I could see clearly again.

I realized then that it was not my father who was standing over me; he was positioned towards the back of the hut, observing me with a half-smile on his face, a look that betrayed his confused emotions of pride and hostility. No, the voice which had addressed me was that of the supreme commander of the Russian military forces, the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich.

‘Don’t try to move,’ he said, leaning over me and examining my shoulder, his eyes narrowing as he scrutinized the wound. ‘You’ve been injured, but you were lucky. The bullet went straight through the soft tissue of your shoulder but missed the arteries and the vein. It just shot directly out the other side, which was fortunate. A little more to the right and your arm might have been paralysed or you might have bled to death. The pain will continue for a few days, I imagine, but there won’t be any lasting damage. A small scar, perhaps.’

I swallowed – my mouth was so dry that my tongue stuck uncomfortably to my palate – and I asked my mother for something to drink. She didn’t move, just stood there with her mouth open as if the scene playing out before her was one in which she was too terrified to take a part, and it was left to the Grand Duke to take the hip flask from around his waist and fill it from a barrel that stood near by before handing it across to me. I was almost too intimidated by the finery of the leather to drink from it, particularly when I noticed the Imperial seal of the Romanovs that was stitched in golden thread across its casing, but my thirst was so extraordinary that my hesitation did not last long and I gulped it down quickly. The sensation of the ice-cold water entering my body and making its way along my gut helped to alleviate the pain of my shoulder for a few moments.

‘You know who I am?’ asked the Grand Duke, raising himself to his full height now, filling the room with his imposing figure. At least six feet and the same number of inches in height. A large, muscular body. Handsome and imposing. And that extraordinary moustache which served to make him look even more dignified and majestic. I swallowed and nodded my head quickly.

‘Yes,’ I replied weakly.

‘You know who I am?’ he repeated, louder now, so I thought that I was in trouble of some sort.

‘Yes,’ I said again, finding my full voice now. ‘You are the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, commander of the army and cousin to His Imperial Majesty, Tsar Nicholas II.’

He smiled a little and his body jolted slightly as he offered me a small laugh. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, dismissing the grandeur of my response. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your memory then, boy, is there? If you remember so well, can you recall what happened to you?’

I sat up a little, ignoring the shooting pains that were exploding along my left side from the top of my shoulder to the crook of my elbow, and looked down at my body. I was lying on the small hammock that functioned as my bed, wearing trousers but no shoes, and I was embarrassed to see the layer of filth from the floor of our hut that clung to my bare feet. My clean tunic, the one that I had worn especially for the Grand Duke’s parade, was lying in a bundle on the floor beside me, and it was no longer white, but a malevolent mixture of black and dark red. I wore no shirt and my chest was streaked with blood from the wound on my arm, which was wrapped tightly in bandages. The first thought I had was to wonder where these dressings had been found, but then I remembered the soldiers who had been trooping through our village and assumed that one of them had attended to my wound with their own army supplies.

Which in turn led to a sudden recollection of the events of the afternoon.

The parade. The white charger. The Grand Duke seated astride it.

And our neighbour, Borys Alexandrovich. His son, my best friend, Kolek Boryavich.

The pistol.

‘A gun,’ I cried suddenly, leaping up, as if the events were taking place once again, directly before my eyes. ‘He has a gun!’

‘It’s all right, boy,’ said the Grand Duke, patting me on my uninjured shoulder. ‘There is no gun now. You committed a great act, if you can recall it.’

‘I… I’m not sure,’ I replied, struggling to remember what I might have done to earn such a compliment.

‘My son has always been very brave, sir,’ said Daniil, stepping forward now from the rear of the hut. ‘He would have given his life for yours without question.’

‘There was an assassination attempt,’ continued Nicholas Nicolaievich, looking directly at me and ignoring my father. ‘A young radical. He aimed his pistol at my head. I swear that I saw the bullet preparing to quit its chamber and plant itself in my skull, but you rushed before me, brave lad that you are, and took the bullet in your shoulder.’ He hesitated before continuing. ‘You saved my life, young Georgy Daniilovich.’

‘I did?’ I asked, for I could not imagine what might have inspired me to do such a thing. But the fog in my mind was beginning to lift and I could remember rushing towards Kolek in order to press him back into the body of the gathered crowd, so that he would not commit an act that would cost him his life.

‘Yes, you did,’ replied the Grand Duke. ‘And I am grateful to you. The Tsar himself will be grateful to you. All of Russia will be.’

I didn’t know what to say to such a remark – he certainly had a high regard for his importance in the world – and lay back, feeling a little dizzy and desperate for more water.

‘He doesn’t really have to go, does he, Father?’ asked Asya suddenly, stemming her tears for a moment as she asked the question. I looked in her direction and was touched that she was so upset by what had happened to me.

‘Quiet, girl,’ replied my father, pushing her back against the wall. ‘He will do as he is told. We all will.’

‘Go?’ I whispered, wondering what she could have meant by that. ‘Go where?’

‘You’re a brave lad,’ said the Grand Duke, putting his gloves back on now and taking a small purse from his pocket, which he handed to my father; it immediately disappeared inside the mysterious caverns of his tunic, out of sight of any of us. I have been sold, I thought immediately. I have been traded to the army for a few hundred roubles. ‘A boy like you is wasted in a place like this. You were planning on joining the army this year, of course?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied hesitantly, for I knew that day was approaching quickly but I had hoped to delay it for a few months yet. ‘It was my intention, only—’

‘Well, I can’t send you into battle, where you will only face more bullets. Not after what you have done today. No, you may stay here and recover for a few days and then follow me. I will leave two men to escort you to your new home.’

‘My new home?’ I asked, thoroughly confused now and attempting to sit up again as he stepped towards the door of our hut. ‘But where is that, sir?’

‘Why, St Petersburg, of course,’ he said, turning around to smile at me. ‘You have already proved that you would be willing to step in front of a bullet for a man such as I. Just imagine how much loyalty you would show to one even greater than a mere duke.’

I shook my head and swallowed nervously. ‘Even greater than you?’ I asked.

He hesitated for a moment, as if he was unsure whether to let me know what he had in mind, in case the shock of the revelation caused me to faint away entirely. But when he finally spoke again, he behaved as if this most extraordinary idea was the most obvious thing in the world. ‘The Tsarevich Alexei,’ he said. ‘You will be one of those assigned to protect him. My cousin, the Tsar, mentioned in his most recent communication how he was looking for just such a young man and asked whether I knew anyone who might make an appropriate companion. Someone closer to his own age, that is. The Tsarevich has many guards, of course. But he needs more than that. He needs a companion who can also tend to his safety. I believe that I have found what he is looking for. I intend to make a gift of you to him, Georgy Daniilovich. Assuming that he approves of you, that is. But stay here for now. Recover. Get well. And I will see you in St Petersburg at the end of the week.’

And with that he stepped outside our hut, leaving my sisters staring at him in awe, my mother looking as scared as she had ever been, and my father counting his money.

I forced myself to sit up even further and as I did so, I could see through the door on to the street beyond, where a yew tree stood, in full flower, strong and thick and hearty. But something was not quite the same. A great weight appeared to be swinging from its branches. I narrowed my eyes to identify it and when I finally focussed, I could do nothing but gasp.

It was Kolek.

They had hanged him in the street.