The Last Tsar's Dragons

Chapter 15

The tsarina was waiting for them impatiently, her ladies buzzing around her like bees around their queen. The monk and the boy were an hour past the doctor’s appointment, which had to be rescheduled for after the evening meal. The tsarina was not amused.

“Insufferable….” she began, tapping the gold watch pinned to the bib of her dress, but then she saw Alexei’s face. It was suffused with excitement, not its usual bleached complexion with fever spots on either cheek. She said more quietly, “My dear son, where have you and the good father been?”

“To the dragons, Mama,” he said, adding quickly, “and I learned about my great-great so many times great grandfather, who saved the land from a great dragon. He was so heroic. I want to be like that.”

She turned to Rasputin, “What nonsense have you been filling his head with?”

“Heroism in a princeling is never nonsense, Majesty,” he answered solemnly. “And it gives him much to live up to, don’t you think?” He gazed down at the boy fondly, his hand familiarly on the child’s head.

“And look, Mama,” Alexei said, holding something up to her in an unusually grimy hand. “A strand of hair from one dragon’s head. I should like it in a locket to wear beneath my shirt always, to remind me to be brave.”

“Remind you….” She looked at her child, who was already braver than she had ever had to be. She hoped he never had to have more courage than to face the doctors with their little probes. Or the sudden losses of blood that came with the terrible disease her ancestors had gifted him with. And the swollen limbs and bruises as large as summer plums.

“Of course,” she said, careful not to shudder as she held out her hand for the dark hank of hair, before handing it quickly to one of her ladies. “Kita will have it set in a golden locket for you, a masculine locket. Yes?”

Kita curtseyed and held out her hand for the disgusting piece of hair. She, poor thing, had no ability to control her shudder at the touch. The tsarina gave her a look that might have frozen a dragon in its tracks.

Then the tsarina turned. “Such lateness will not happen again, Father Grigori,” she said to Rasputin. But her voice was warm enough to tell him he had been forgiven.

He put his hand over his heart and bowed, gifting her with that wonderful smile, and a wink for Alexei.

It was an unorthodox thing for a priest to do. But Alexei looked so happy with his whole adventure, the tsarina didn’t have the heart to scold further.

But as the evening wore on, she thought more and more about her precious Alexei being brought down to the dragon pens. It really was the height of arrogance and irresponsibility for the monk to expose him to such beasts. For beasts they were, and useless beasts as well, now that they never seemed to find any Jews to kill. How could Rasputin—her beloved Rasputin—betray her like this?

She didn’t know the answer to that, of course, but she knew who would.

Nicky, my darling, Nicky.

She would tell him of the monk’s overreach when he returned from the front. He would tell her what they should do.