The Last Tsar's Dragons

Chapter 6

Having made it back to my apartment, I felt revived and thought about lovely Ninotchka. Perhaps she would be receptive… even if it was afternoon.

I recalled how we had met, not a year ago at the Bal Blanc, Ninotchka in virginal white, her perfect shoulders bare, diamonds circling that elegant neck like a barrier. I had been between wives—I married young and often—and was so thoroughly enchanted by her, I asked her to marry me after two afternoons. Hastily, yes. It was less than a year after my wife’s death, not quite a scandal, but close enough. However, I had been besotted with Ninotchka and didn’t want to chance someone else claiming her fortune. Or her virtue.

If only I had taken more time. It was not that much later I discovered that the diamonds were her sister’s, and her virtue, like the diamonds, a mirage. It was only much, much later that she discovered how little money I actually had.

I suppose all those discoveries could have crippled the marriage, but we both understood the contract between us was important for our standing amongst the courtiers. To all who saw us on a daily basis, we had to appear astonishingly in love. Even the talkative servants did not know our secret despairs.

One has to learn to be a survivor here. Otherwise, the winters are even colder.

It was very quiet in the apartment. Possibly Ninotchka was napping. Or she might be entertaining. I hoped she was available and not with some of her admirers. My earlier weakness had wakened a great desire, as if I had a need to prove my powers.

My mouth had become slightly sour, the taste of too much tea, or not enough. Perhaps from thinking too much… about Ninotchka. The problem with taking someone so young to wife is getting one’s turn with her. Nights, of course, she is always mine, but who really knew what Ninotchka was getting up to during the day? I am not bothered by indiscretions as long as they are discreet. But I did hope it was with some rich royal, otherwise her beauty would be wasted.

I had already unlocked the door to the apartment, was partway into the Great Hall. Thought about knocking on her bedroom door, about some man scrabbling out of the bed, to hide behind hastily gathered sheets, or a pillow. While lovely Ninotchka lay there smiling her perfect smile.

Suddenly realizing: I don’t want to know, I turned abruptly on my heel, the new boots making a squealing noise on the tiled floor. The sound was not unlike the squeal a sow makes in labor. I had watched many of them at my summer farm. A farm, thankfully not on the dragons’ route. Yet.

I was good at making quick decisions. Unlike the rest of the courtiers, sycophants and toadies all. Unlike the tsar of all the Russias, who is the worst of them all. One day he blows hot, the next cold. And they blow right along with him. Soon there will be no weather at all. Not a bad witticism. I figured I would save it for the next dinner party—though without the tsar’s name attached, of course.

I closed the door behind me with a very quiet but final snick.

And thinking of the weather, it felt as if there were a storm in my brain. Sometimes my thoughts worked that way. And what I was suddenly thinking about were the tsar’s dragons.

I decided, not quite on a whim, to go down to the stalls and visit them, those black creatures out of nightmares. I felt that the dragons were the key. Though I wasn’t sure the key to what. There is a strange, dark intelligence there. Or maybe not exactly intelligence as we humans understand it, more like cunning. If only we could harness that as well as we have harnessed their loyalty—from centuries of captivity and a long leash—much like the Cossacks, actually.

I nodded to myself, liking the dragon/Cossacks analogy. It explained so much. The Cossacks are without guile and incredibly loyal. They are all about the use of physical power, brute strength—as are the dragons, though I suspect the dragons are smarter. With a bit of luck, I might figure out this harrowing business. If the tsar listened to me this next time, he might finally make me a count. Then Ninotchka would be available in the afternoons, too. It all came down to the dragons. And the making of the plan.

As I strode down the hallway, I could feel a great grin wreathing my mouth. Making decisions, even hasty ones, always lifts my spirit. I took several deep breaths, could feel my blood began to race. There was another stirring down below. Good Lord, I felt twenty years old again.

I even began to whistle, which, if any of the royals had been in the hallway, would have been a terrible breach of protocol….

And then suddenly there was the mad monk with the tsarevitch on his back.

The whistle died on my lips.

At least the two were paying me no mind. The boy riding on Rasputin as if the old man were a horse.

All the child needs is a whip. I could probably find one for him.

Just as quickly, I thought: If the monk stumbles… if the boy slips off his back… I could be a hero.

I began moving toward them quickly, walking more on the balls of my feet, swinging my arms.

Rasputin is the only person—noble or servant—who dares carry the child without soft lambs-wool blankets wrapped about him. I knew the boy’s skin was like the oldest porcelain. It could be smashed by the slightest touch.

Well before they reached me, I saluted the monk, saying conversationally, “Father Grigori!”

He nodded back, interrupting his flow of words to the boy only briefly to call out, “Kozzle!” though it wasn’t my name, only sounded somewhat similar. Then he was back to telling the tsarevitch he was a strong and just young prince and would someday be a great tsar like his father. All lies, of course, but something in his big, peasant voice made you believe it. You could read all of Siberia in his speech, and though they weren’t deep thinkers, the moujiks of the steppes weren’t liars, either.

Rasputin, it was rumored, was both.

All the while I was really ready to seize the child if necessary, thinking: Rasputin may be just a moujik by birth, and he may really be as mad as they say, but I would be madder still to neglect the obeisance he demands. He has the ear of the tsarevitch. And the tsarevitch’s mother, Alexandra. Perhaps more than just her ear, if you believe the rumors.

But my mind shuddered at going that far. Besides, the tsarina was much too fastidious for any such thing. She was, after all, the granddaughter of the Upright Queen, as Victoria of England was known hereabouts. Probably stiff as a board in bed. But then that was said of all the English.

Though I suspect Victoria was upright only because her stays were too tight and because who would want to fumble in the dark with her? It’s a wonder that randy German prince could get that many children on her. It was another small joke I would never dare say aloud, even to my few intimate friends. Because that kind of loose talk—even if meant as a joke—gets out and ruins careers, even if it is humorous. The tsar is besotted with his wife and will hear nothing bad about her, even in jest. In fact, no jests about her beloved grandmother, either. I wonder if the tsar has any sense of humor at all. Possibly it was removed at birth, like the Jews removed the foreskins of their sons.

As Rasputin came nearer, he gave me a sullen glance. Peasant to the base, but—I had to give this much to him—possessed of a kind of sardonic wit.

Still, the memory of my almost-name so recently in his mouth seemed to turn everything to ashes. As if the monk had cursed me. And me with no ability to curse him back.

Suddenly my head was filled with too many passing thoughts, all jumbled together: The man is a monster, a peasant, and a lecher. He never addresses me by my title, but this time he looks at me with that slow, sensual grimace that drives all the women of the court wild. I wonder if it’s true that he touches the louche men of the court as well with that throb of a smile. To me it looks like a serpent’s smile. I trust it not at all. It has no warmth, no fellowship in it, only menace.

As he drew even to me in the hall, he finally left off his tale-telling to the boy and whispered sharply to me, “Commend me to your young wife, she of the swan neck and the drawer full of fake pearls.”

Yes, I admit I was startled at what he said.

And then, to compound the insult, the young tsar on his back tittered, as if he understood what had been implied.

At first, I thought that the monk had brought the boy inside while he did his dirty business. But I forced myself to coolly dissect what Rasputin had said. The boy would surely have reported back any such thing as an entry into someone’s apartment to his mother or nannies. At his age, he would know little about the backstairs of life, though I highly suspected his sisters did.

But because of how Rasputin had phrased his taunt, I now knew what I’d only feared before. Even my own naïf Ninotchka may have fallen under Rasputin’s spell. If she’d been dallying with a princeling, all could have been forgiven. But not with this Siberian monstrosity. If it was true—if it was believed by the court to be true, I would have to kill him. My legs got shaky again, but there was nowhere to sit that was close enough. I willed them to stop wobbling. Willed my mind to slow down.

My heart roiled with bitterness as I realized that soon I would be the laughingstock of the court. If indeed I was not already. Maybe this was why the tsar hadn’t listened to me. It could explain everything.

My dear Maman had said, often enough, “Don’t blame the hen when the rooster crows. The fault lies with the sun.” I am not certain I understood that little saw ’til this very moment. Not really.

But Maman, who could grow old sayings in the dirt outside our house, had never had any words for what I was feeling now: this cold anger thrusting its bitter hands into my heart. For honor’s sake, whether he’d had her or not, I would have to kill Rasputin. Alone or with the help of others. For Ninotchka’s sake as well as my own. If word of this got around the court, I would lose my standing altogether, unless I divorced her.

Like Jael in the Old Testament, who killed Sisera with a tent peg, I was left with no other recourse.

But how?

I felt the answer was down in the stalls with the dragons. A small shudder ran between my shoulders, but I nodded to the tsar’s son atop his peasant horse. Then, deciding not to give the monk any more of my time, I turned my back—which had only moments earlier been shuddering with fear—and delivered the cut direct, as they liked to say in English novels, and downstairs I went.

What I hadn’t known then—because I’d never been down in the dragon barns before—was that one could smell the dragons long before one saw them. It is a ripe musk, which fills the nostrils and overflows into the mouth, tasting like old boots. But it’s not without its seductions. It has the smell of power. A smell that I could get used to.

The door squealed when I pulled it open, and the dragons set up a yowling to match, expecting to be fed. It was a sound somewhere between a dog whistle and a balalaika.

They were not at all what I’d expected, being black and sleek, like eels. Or maybe bats. Their long faces, framed with ropey hair, that made them seem as if they were about to speak in some Nubian’s tongue. I could almost imagine Araby issuing forth instead of curls of smoke.

I remembered hearing that dragons are always hungry. That it had to do with the hot breath and needing fuel and sustaining their fires.

Grabbing a handful of what appeared to be cow brains out of a nearby bucket—a disgusting mess dripping blood and a kind of acidic potion that made one’s fingers tingle—I flung the gruesome meal into the closest stall just to see what would happen.

Three or four dragons seemed to be sharing a stall, possibly because it calmed them down. And then, with a quick rustling of their giant bat wings, they swooped onto my offering. It wasn’t a pretty sight. They were hardly dainty eaters. And they clearly did not share. The smallest dragon had little of the meat, which likely meant his chances of becoming a bigger dragon lessened at each meal.

It could be that the dragons were not as bright as the Cossacks, and I might have to revise my previous notions about them. I’d seen the same behavior in wolves and dogs. Politicians, too. Possibly the peasants’ problem, as well.

But the rebels? Would they share equally? There was the question. If I were the rebel chief, I’d promise equality but might not be able to—or want to—deliver it once a revolution was successful.

The dragons in the stall looked up, expecting more.

And that is the problem for any leader. Everyone is always expecting more. Especially the people at the top. The big eaters.

I thought briefly of going back for a second handful of cow brains, but my fingers still stung badly and had a redness and an odd shine on them that made me wince just from glancing at them. I hoped I hadn’t damaged the nails for good. Finding a towel hanging on a nearby peg and, assuming it was to be used, I dried off my hands, though I was certain the smell of both towel and hands was a stench that would never leave me.

Some of the solution had also dripped on my vest, burning holes across the watch pocket. I knew I was going to need to have a thorough wash and change of clothes before going to see Ninotchka, or she would never let me touch her this night.

Before I turned to go, I took a moment to gaze into the eyes of the largest one I’d fed, careful not to look down or away, nor to show fear. Fear—or so I’ve heard—only excited them. Like lions and tigers. Prey shows fear.

And I am no prey.

Never prey!

I stood taller, throwing my shoulders back, taking in a deep breath, and all but clicking my boot heels together like a damned Hessian, just so I wouldn’t show the dragons my fear. But perhaps they smelled it on me.

I felt compelled to turn to look long in the eyes of the largest one. Perhaps I thought to tame it that way; the Lord only knows why I did it.

Its eyes were dark, like the Caspian Sea in winter, and I began to feel as if I were swimming in them. And then drowning in them. Down and down I went, eyes wide open, mouth filled with ashy water.

I knew in the sensible part of my brain that I was still standing by the dragon’s stall, feet on the coarse earthen floor. Then why was my throat filling with water? Why was….

I shook my head, forced myself to look away, and suddenly, as if in a sending from the Good Lord, I could see the future breaststroking towards me: hot fires, buildings in flames. The Russias burning. St. Petersburg and Moscow buried in ash. The gold leaf of the turrets on Anichkov Palace and Ouspensky Cathedral peeling away in the heat.

It was too real not to be true. It was….

“Enough!” I cried aloud, not caring if anyone other than the beasts were there to hear me. “I am no mad monk baying at the moon or seeing prophesies in tea leaves or the future at the bottom of a glass of vodka. I am an educated man.”

At that, I almost physically hauled myself away, finding the surface, breaking the spell. For spell it had to be.

I addressed the dragon. “I will not be guiled by your animal magic. You do not know the name of this palace nor the name of your master, the tsar. You do not even know the word for your captivity. It is only my own fears you waken in me.”

The dragon turned away, not a cut direct but a cut oblique, and nuzzled the last of the cow brains at its scaly feet.

I grimaced, shook my head. I’d been wrong. There’d be no help from these creatures. And I’d be no help to them, either.