CHAPTER ELEVEN

Just before dawn on the 13th of September, a carriage drawn by three horses reined in at the barrier before the city of St. Petersburg. The hood was lowered, and a tall man dressed in a plain military uniform and greatcoat, stood upright and looked out over the scene.

The night was very still; the dark tide of the Neva lapped the stone parapets, a few lights twinkling in the houses along the bank were reflected in the black water; sentries stamped and marched along their beats under the city walls; the sharp spire of the church built on the St. Peter and Paul Fortress stood out in the sky, outlined against a faint glow where the night was fading.

Petersburg. The great Admiralty building, the splendid Nevsky prospect with its lovely mansions, the trees and park-lands, the towering churches and the dazzling façade of the Winter Palace, rising like a cliff from the banks of the great river. Petersburg, the monument of a crazy, epileptic Czar who’d built it on a foundation of sinking marshland and the bones of thousands of serfs. Alexander Pavlovitch, Czar and descendant of Peter the Great, stood for some moments looking down on the city which had been the scene of so many of his triumphs, the city which stood in all her beauty, unscathed by the war which had destroyed Moscow. Petersburg, untouched and unoccupied; the monument to his victory and the defeat of the French.

He prayed for his Capital of the North, for God to protect it and its people, because God knew now that he would never see it again. In the monastery of St. Alexander Nevsky, he had just attended his own Requiem and heard the monks sing a solemn Te Deum in thanksgiving for his glorious reign. He had knelt alone in the vast church, joining in the service for the repose of his own soul, with the doors bolted and the plain carriage waiting for him outside, and fervently offered his past life with all its imperfections to Almighty God.

The reign of Alexander I was coming to an end. He sat down and gave an order to his coachman. The hood was raised and the horses whipped; dawn was coming up behind St. Petersburg as the carriage turned on the road that led southwards to Taganrog.

“Whatever possessed them to come to this place!” Sir James Wylie exclaimed. “There’s not even a proper house for them. These quarters are cramped and the winter winds will be enough to kill the Empress!”

The Russian Court Doctor, Tarasov, shrugged.

“The Czar likes informality,” he explained. “They live a simple domestic life here, and the Empress and he seem very happy.”

“Hmm,” Wylie snorted. “The Empress isn’t well again, and the Czar’s leaving for this tour of the Crimea to-morrow; I’ll admit he’s taken a new hold on life, I’ve never seen a man so pleased with himself! Why the devil he’s taking us on the tour with him when it’s the Empress who needs attention, I can’t imagine!”

“The Empress has her own physician here,” Tarasov said quickly. He disliked the conversation and dreaded being overheard. Wylie had a loud voice and tactless opinions; he curbed neither, and Tarasov’s long experience of the Czar warned him that he was planning something, and that he and Wylie and Taganrog were all part of that plan. He knew as well as the Scot that the Empress was a dangerously sick woman who needed more than one doctor to attend her, but he also knew better than to call attention to the fact.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he murmured, and hurried away.

Wylie stood looking after him. “Will ye look at him scuttling away like a scared rabbit!” he demanded aloud, lapsing into his native accent. “There’s some damned mystery going on here!”

“Try not to be away too long, Alexander; you don’t know how much I shall miss you.”

Alexander bent over Elizabeth Alexeievna and kissed her.

“I won’t be long, my dear. How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” she smiled at him. He sat beside her and she slipped her arm through his. It was true; she felt almost well as long as he was with her and prolonged this platonic honeymoon which was happier than any other relationship she had ever known. She wanted so often to tell him she loved him, was indeed in love with him, but some instinct advised against it. He was a strange man, her husband; if anything upset him and things changed between them, she would never be able to bear it again.…

“What have you been doing to-day?”

“Walking through the town,” he said. “You know, it’s a wonderful feeling, Elizabeth, just to be able to walk down the streets like any ordinary person … nobody recognized me,” he added in an odd voice. “Nobody. I could live here or anywhere far from Moscow or Petersburg and no one would ever know who I was.”

“It wouldn’t be possible,” the Empress said. “People in our position often envy their subjects their private lives, but we couldn’t exchange; I could never forget my birth and live in some miserable little town without an equal to speak to; neither could you.”

He stared over her head.

“I suppose not,” he answered. “As you say, my dear, it wouldn’t be possible. It’s just a dream, that’s all. A King’s dream.…”

“More like a nightmare if one did it,” Elizabeth retorted. “Tell me, are you looking forward to this Crimea trip?”

“Very much,” he said cheerfully. “Very much indeed. I hope I shan’t ever have to make another.”

He left Taganrog on November 1st, and made an extensive tour of the Crimea, reviewing his fleet at Sevastapol, visiting towns and villages, inspecting hospitals, churches and arsenals. The melancholy of the past years seemed to have left him; his carriage was upright and his old charm shone forth, recalling that splendid figure of repute, ‘the autocrat of waltzes and of war’ as Byron called him. This line was quoted all over Russia; the rest of the poem, a bitter attack on Alexander’s suppression of liberty and the tyranny of the Holy Alliance, was not printed.

He found kind words for everyone, even the most pompous officials were received graciously. Nothing was too much trouble, no ceremony too long or journey too far; his temper, usually so capricious, was even and cheerful. He seemed a happy and contented man, determined to fulfil his duties as well as he could. He looked out on his fleet with tears of pride, saying a private farewell as he had done to his beloved St. Petersburg. He was leaving it all, and with it a tradition of glory which would live on long after he was dead. His great antagonist was dead, and legends were gathering like mourners round the grave at St. Helena. Now he too must die, the public death of a Czar of All the Russias.

Everyone who saw him agreed on one impression of him afterwards. He combined dignity and grace with the most striking humility.

When his duties were over for the day, he prayed with ecstatic concentration, and on the 15th of November God solved one vital problem for him. The courier, Maskov, who brought State papers from Petersburg, was killed when his carriage overturned on the road. The Emperor sent Tarasov to find out if the man were really dead; when the doctor confirmed it, the Czar wept for him, but not before Tarasov had surprised an expression of excitement on his face.

The following day both Wylie and Tarasov were summoned to Alexander’s apartments, where they found him tossing with fever; Wylie, who knew his tendencies to run high temperatures, forecast another outbreak of erysipelas on his leg and ordered him to stay in bed. But Alexander refused; he insisted on reaching Taganrog by the seventeenth. He had promised the Empress, he said, and they dared not oppose him. He travelled the last miles to Taganrog in a closed coach, wrapped in rugs, and lay back dozing against the cushions, complaining that he felt very ill. Behind him, the body of the humble courier took the same road.

“You really shouldn’t talk, when you’re not well,” the Empress protested. She had been sent for, and was sitting by Alexander’s bed; he had been back in Taganrog for several days; neither his wife’s pleas nor the warnings of his doctors had prevented him from getting up each day and dealing with his papers. His fever continued and he complained of pain and sickness, but the erysipelas had not appeared and neither Wylie nor Tarasov could diagnose his illness.

“Elizabeth, sit down here beside me,” he said gently. He noticed how tired she looked, and for a moment he hesitated. A shock, Wylie had warned him.… So he had to protect her as well as enlist her help.

“Sit down, my dear,” he repeated. “I have something I must tell you.”

At the end of an hour he had finished and they sat together, Alexander smiling and holding his wife’s hand, the Empress white-faced and trembling. She looked at him once and seemed about to speak, but he said quietly, “Now send Volkonsky and Sir James to me. And you had better go and rest now.”

Both men remained shut in with him for some time; then they left together and walked down the short corridor leading away from the Emperor’s rooms. His lifelong friend, Volkonsky, spoke first.

“Where’s Tarasov? Why wasn’t he sent for?”

“Tarasov’s busy,” Sir James replied. “He’s been busy since we came back to Taganrog. He’s been embalming the body of that courier who was killed.”

On November 21st the funeral of the courier, Maskov, took place in the local cemetery with military honours, and a large wreath with the Imperial Crown and the Emperor’s initials was placed on the grave. Long afterwards the bearers remembered that the coffin was surprisingly light, for Maskov was a big man, as tall and of the same build as the Czar himself.

On the evening of the 26th a footman on duty outside the Czar’s apartments saw the door of his room flung back with a crash. He recognized the figure of Prince Peter Volkonsky standing in the opening.

“The Emperor!” he shouted. “Get Sir James Wylie! Hurry, hurry, for God’s sake!”

The terrified footman ran down the corridor and threw himself at the door of Sir James’s suite, hammering on the panels with his fists. Within minutes the doctor had raced to the Emperor’s apartments, followed by Tarasov, while members of the household gathered in groups, watching the Empress brought from her room and heard the door of Alexander’s bedroom open and close every few minutes. Slowly the sounds of panic died away; the hurried footsteps ceased and the door remained shut, with a pale streak of light shining under it, blotted out by a shadow as someone moved in the room.

As dawn broke, a courier mounted in the courtyard and galloped out of Taganrog, taking the road to St. Petersburg. In less than half an hour another followed him, but turned off towards Poland. Word had spread through the town; already weeping crowds had gathered outside the little stone house, and they murmured as they watched the couriers go. St. Petersburg and the Dowager Empress Marie.… Mother of God, pity the mother in her grief! Warsaw, and the Grand Duke Constantine, the heir to his brother’s throne.

Alexander Pavlovitch, Czar and Autocrat of All the Russias lay dying.

The morning of December 1st was cold and grey; Taganrog was empty, most of the population were attending Mass for the Emperor’s recovery or standing outside his house watching the windows. There was only one ship in the bay; the rest had sailed before ice formations closed the entrance to the Sea of Azov. The lone ship was British, the private yacht of Earl Cathcart, who had been Ambassador to Petersburg and a friend of the Czar.

By half-past ten that morning a large crowd had gathered round the Royal residence; a door opened and someone posted a notice. There was a rush forward and someone who could read was pushed to the front. It was a few minutes before eleven, and suddenly a wail went up from the crowd. One old peasant lifted his voice above them.… “Far flies the Eagle to rest with God.…” The Czar was dead.

The Empress Elizabeth heard them as she stood by a window, looking down on the heads of the people, seeing them sink to their knees to pray for the flight of the White Eagle of legend and ballad, who had delivered his soul to God. It was the name his humble millions of subjects had given him after 1812.… She went to her dressing-table, opened her jewel-case and took out the miniature of Alexander in its frame of large diamonds. The painted face stared up at her, young, incredibly handsome; but it was a dead face; the artist had not been able to catch the expression. Neither had anyone else who painted him.… She fastened the miniature to her black dress and then walked slowly out of the room; Prince Volkonsky and Sir James Wylie were waiting to escort her to Alexander’s suite, where the body, its face swathed in bandages, was laid out on the Emperor’s bed.

On December the 26th the Grand Duke Nicholas ascended the throne according to the terms of Alexander’s will, and Constantine renounced his claim for ever. The body of the dead Czar remained in Taganrog until the funeral procession to St. Petersburg started on January 10th. By then there were no ships left in the harbour; Lord Cathcart’s yacht had sailed suddenly after December 1st and was on its way to the Holy Land.

The candles were lit in the Czar’s study in the Winter Palace, the red curtains drawn across windows covered by a crust of snow, and the portrait of Catherine the Great looked down on a new Czar sitting at the desk she had used more than fifty years before. The year was 1837, and the Czar was Nicholas. He was reading a long report and frowning; the room was very quiet except for the rustle of paper as he turned a page; the silver candelabra shed their light at his elbow, placed at the same angle as when his brother read and worked in that room and at that same desk. He put the report down and began to write a letter. It was addressed to the Governor of a Siberian province which included the penal colony of Bogoyavlensk. It was a terse letter, for Nicholas wrote and spoke in parade ground brevity.

‘A saintly hermit known at Feodor Kusmitch, who lived in Bogoyavlensk, came under the Imperial protection like all religious pilgrims, and was on no account to be pressed into labour gangs or supervised by the police. The Governor himself would be held responsible.…

‘Any person claiming to have seen the late Emperor Alexander living in the Governor’s district, or that the said Feodor Kusmitch resembled him, was to be flogged, irrespective of age or sex, and deported to the mines.’

Eighty years afterwards, the great-grandson of the Czar Nicholas I was marched down a flight of steps into a cellar in a house in Ekaterinburg, the town named by Potemkin in honour of Catherine the Great. The little cavalcade moved slowly down into the gloom, for the Czarevitch was scarcely able to walk. A few moments later the Czar, his Czarina, their daughters and the little sick Czarevitch were shot dead. The Emperor Nicholas II was the last to die, after being forced to watch the execution of his family.

The last fusillade of shots ended the Romanov dynasty. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were ruling Russia from the Kremlin.

The Revolutionaries had been in power for some time before they heard rumours that the tomb of one of the greatest of the Russian Czars was full of priceless jewellery and valuables which had been buried with him. The order was given to open the grave.

The tomb was in the vault of the church of the St. Peter and Paul Fortress; it was inscribed with the name Alexander the First, and the date, December 1st, 1825. It took the efforts of a squad of men working with picks to dislodge the monument; when the hollow beneath it was uncovered, a gust of foul air rose in the stuffy vault. Ropes and tackle were lowered into the pit by torchlight and round the shell of a coffin lying at the bottom. With great care it was hauled to the surface, edged on to the floor, and the ropes untied. There was a long pause, while the men who had brought the dead out of his grave hesitated, their lights shining on the old stained casket, with the remains of gilding still gleaming on the sides.

The tombs of other Czars made high shadows on the walls. Peter the Great, the Empresses Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth; the murdered Peter III and his wife, the Great Catherine … Paul I. The grave of the Empress Elizabeth Alexeievna, Consort of the Czar Alexander I with the date May 16th, 1826 … Nicholas I, Alexander II, the gentle Czar who liberated the serfs and was killed by a Nihilist bomb … the tyrant Alexander III. And the place where the last Nicholas should have lain. But his body, and those of his wife and their children had been burnt and thrown into a pit full of quicklime.…

“Open it!” The order echoed through the silent place. A blow from a pickaxe split the coffin lid. The Commissar in charge of the exhumation knelt by the casket and levered the lid off with a chisel; impatiently he pushed it aside and plunged his torch into the inside.

One of the men on the edge of the group stood on his toes to look, and then quickly made the gesture now forbidden by the new régime, the Sign of the Cross.

No one saw him; they were all staring at the coffin of the Czar Alexander. It was empty.