The Last Tsar's Dragons

Chapter 20

Rasputin looked in the great mirror and saw the effects of two weeks of self-administered flagellations and hours of kneeling in prayer. He decided he was wolf-lean and wild-eyed, but still handsome. Still, what did that matter when he had never discovered who it was who had engineered his exile, for exile it was, weeks without a summons to attend the tsarina or her son, or even another note. He had finally turned to God to explain the silence from the palace and for the first time in his life had received naught but silence from Him as well.

He had howled in his apartments as the cat bit into his back, threw prayers skyward at the top of his lungs, but still nothing.

Then finally today, a letter. An invitation. But not from the tsarina….

He grimaced at his reflection, his teeth ice-white compared to the smiles of the peasants he had known. Brushing his fingers through his beard, he loosened a few scattered bits of bread stuck in the hairs.

Always go to a dinner full, his mother had warned. The hungry man looks like a greedy man. He had no desire to look greedy to these men. Hard, yes. Powerful, definitely. But not greedy. A greedy man is considered prey.

An intimate supper in Prince Yusupov’s house in Petrograd at 9, the invitation had read.

Perhaps it was to be the end of his estrangement from the royal family. Or at least a new way back in.

He knew that Yusupov’s palace was a magnificent building on the Moika, though he’d never before been invited to dine there. He and the prince had parted company some time ago; he never quite understood why.

He’d heard in the gossipy servants’ quarters that the prince’s great hall had six equal sides, each guarded by a large wooden door. He wondered which door he was to enter through, which door he would leave from. These things mattered.

“Let me go through the door to Heaven,” he muttered to God, part of an ongoing conversation about his new place in the world. “Let me enter and leave in glory.”

His grimace turned to a beatific smile as he felt more than heard the Word of God.

Yes. Glory.

That morning, after receiving the invitation, he’d played the tarot cards and saw that six would be a number of change for him. He was ready. But then, he was always ready. Didn’t he always wear his charm against death by a man’s hand? He never took it off, not in the bathhouse, not in bed. A man with so many enemies had to be prepared. He was delighted that Prince Yusupov was no longer one of them.

And really, Yusupov is but a boy in man’s clothing.

Rasputin was pleased to be in God’s grace again. He knew that Yusupov had gotten his place at court through marriage. He needs me now more than I need him. Still, going to the palace would give him the opportunity to meet the prince’s wife, the tsar’s lovely niece, Irina of the piercing eyes. He had heard many things about her and all of them wonderful. Rasputin had not yet had the pleasure. Well, it would be her pleasure, too.

That dog Vladimir Purishkevich was picking him up in a state automobile. He supposed he could abide the man for the time it took to drive to the prince’s palace. Then he would turn his back and mesmerize the princess right there, in front of her husband and his friends. They’d make a game of it. But it would not be a game. Not entirely.

Really, he felt, no one can stop me now. God had returned to him. Like Isaac or Job or Abraham, he had passed the trials God had set before him. With his whip and his prayers, he had triumphed, and God had returned and given him this gift. This passage back into grace. He began to laugh. It began softly but soon rose to almost maniacal heights.

A knock on the door recalled him to himself.

“Father Grigori,” his man asked. “Are you choking?”

“I am laughing, imbecile,” he answered, but gently, because the man had been with him since the days of the flagellants, and a man of such fervid loyalty could not be found elsewhere. Or bought.

The door opened, and his man shuffled in, hunched and slow. “My… apologies, Father Grigori,” he stuttered. “But I have news.” He hauled one of the dragon boys in with him. The boy had a nose clotted with snot, and he sniveled.

Rasputin waited, but the man said nothing more. He really is an imbecile, the mad monk thought. The boy said nothing, either. Waiting, Rasputin assumed, for a sign from his elders. And betters.

Raising an eyebrow, Rasputin finally cued the man. “And this news is…?”

It was the boy who spoke, trembling, the clot loosened, snot running down towards his mouth. “Your holiness,

I… I have found the Red Terror.”

Rasputin stood and waved them fully inside his chambers, handing the sniveling boy a clean handkerchief to wipe his nose with, since he seemed disinclined to use his own sleeve.

“Quickly, quickly,” Father Grigori said, trying to balance his voice between anger—which might silence the stupid boy forever—and over-eagerness, which might push the boy to augment his report or simply make up parts of the tale. “Come in, where we will not be overheard, and tell me everything.”

“It is about dragons, red dragons, and there is a man called Lenin who will free them, but he will not be here until the month’s end. Three days from now. When the moon is full. Only when he comes….”

The boy babbled on for a few more minutes but said nothing else of interest. It didn’t matter. Rasputin knew all he needed to now.

Dragons, he thought. Red dragons. The news was yet another sign of the love that the Lord God had for his most worthy of servants.

“Heat up water for my bath,” Rasputin said to his man, the boy already forgotten in his haste. “Lay out a clean outfit. This evening I dine with princes.”

But first I will bring this news to the tsar. It is sure to get me back into his good graces.

Lying in the copper tub filled to the brim with steaming water, Rasputin gave thought to the evening ahead. In his mind, it had become a celebration instead of a ploy to insinuate himself back into the palace.

There is no need now! The information he now possessed was too valuable. An upstart Marxist has gotten his hands on some dragons? That is news that could make a man’s fortune.

Rasputin decided that he would not only bring this news to the tsar but also help him with stratagems to destroy the red dragons and trap the revolutionary leader.

And then I shall go to dinner!

How he would charm them all. Possibly one or more of the tsar’s nubile young daughters would be at the dinner. None of them married yet. Maybe the youngest, Anastasia, an untouched blossom.

He sank for a moment below the water, feeling it wash through his hair. Felt it healing the recent scores from the whip.

Dragons. Red dragons. Thank you, dear Lord.