The air in Mamma’s reception room was thick with smoke and rumors, unsettlingly quiet despite the crowd of people gathered within. Flanking the double doors, two footmen stood at the ready, their glittering livery bright against the marble walls. Olga’s aunts and uncles gathered near the immense windows, waiting for dawn as light from the ruby chandelier pooled bloody shadows on the parquet floor.
From down the hall, Olga could hear cries of pain, the hurried tattoo of feet along the corridor mirroring the frantic thrum of a distressed heartbeat. She winced, wishing she could drown out the noise. By the fireplace, Aunt Olga paused midsentence, gripping Aunt Xenia’s fingers as they waited for the noise to subside. Uncle Sandro, his arms wrapped around Tatiana and Maria as he read to them from a book of fairy stories, pressed his eyes shut, his face lined with grief; Anastasia, playing on the carpet with a set of building blocks, looked up uncertainly, pushing ringlets from her cheeks with pudgy fingers. At six years old, even she seemed to understand the significance of their younger brother’s screams.
Still. In its own ghoulish way, the noise was reason to hope. If Alexei Nikolaevich—Olga’s only brother—was able to cry, it meant that Russia still had an heir to the throne.
Seated beside Olga on a cream-colored love seat, Grandmamma turned, her lips pursed into a thin line. As dowager empress, Grandmamma had long learned the art of concealing her emotions from view, but today she, too, looked beaten. She ran a hand along the diamond necklace that hung low on her breast, grasping the jewels as if they were beads in a rosary.
“Courage, child,” she whispered, allowing Olga to snug closer to her side. At twelve, Olga knew she was too old to crave the comfort of her parents—too old, certainly, to require their attention while they dealt with the doctors. It was her job, after all, to be strong for her younger sisters. They’d need her, in the weeks to come. But for the moment she let Grandmamma comfort her as though she were as small as Anastasia, and wordlessly crawled onto her lap.
Grandmamma placed her hand on Olga’s head, letting her fingers fall over Olga’s unruly braid. “This is a difficult day, my girl,” she said, her voice creaking with sorrow. “Perhaps the most difficult day we will ever face.”
Olga could feel her grandmother’s diamond necklace digging into the bony ridge of her shoulder blade. Today had indeed been difficult, the long hours of prayer an inadequate distraction from the dread that awaited any news about Alexei.
Hemophilia. Olga’s sisters didn’t yet know the word, but Olga did: she’d been told never to utter it aloud, never to hint to anyone—not even to family members outside this room—that her brother was ill. Because he’d been born without the ability for his blood to clot, any chance accident risked leaving Alexei in terrible, life-threatening pain. A fall or bump that any other child might laugh away would result in days of agony as blood coursed to places in Alexei’s body where it didn’t belong: joints, muscles, his blood a tidal surge beneath his skin.
Olga wished there was some way to relieve her brother’s pain, but she’d been told that his condition was incurable, irreversible in its finality. For what was blood, after all, if not finite? There was only so much of it coursing through her three-year-old brother’s body—only so much pain he could stand to endure.
“What will happen if we lose him?” asked Olga, whispering to conceal her fears from her sisters.
Grandmamma sighed. “We will grieve,” she replied simply, pulling Olga closer into her arms.
Grief. Olga had seen too much of it already in her short life: grief beneath the shine of Papa’s smiles; grief in Mamma’s relentless prayers. Though Olga knew that her parents loved her and her sisters, grief had attended each one of their births—how could it not, when Mamma and Papa’s most important job was to secure the Romanov dynasty with the birth of a son? Three times, Olga had listened to the church bells ring out in St. Petersburg, announcing the arrival of her sisters—grand duchesses, like herself. But she had never seen such joy—such relief—from her parents as on the day the bells rang ceaselessly to herald the birth of Alexei.
Her parents had been grieving ever since.
“But what will happen to Russia?” Olga whispered.
“Russia...” Grandmamma let out a deeply held breath. “Russia will endure,” she said. “It has weathered the storms of succession in the past; it will do so again.”
Lessons flashed through Olga’s mind: her family tree, reproduced in her tutor’s elegant script; branches cut short by disease, by revolution, the golden thread of the dynasty running into the blooming abundance of another son’s heirs.
“Could they not have another baby?” she asked. “Another boy?”
Grandmamma hesitated, and in her silence, Olga could tell she was weighing the balance of what to say. “A woman reaches an age when she can no longer bear children. I’m afraid it’s too late for your parents to have another child.”
Olga knew she was pushing past the bounds of propriety—that such questions were impertinent at the best of times. The fact that Grandmamma was willing to discuss such matters at all was surprising to Olga—but then, perhaps Grandmamma was too weary to object.
“If Alexei is—if he’s taken into God’s arms...” Olga paused. Voicing the possibility aloud was enough to make her feel as though she was falling, but she took a breath and continued. “If the worst is to happen, tell Mamma and Papa not to worry about Russia. I will carry on. For Alexei. For Papa. I will become the tsarevich.”
Grandmamma’s eyes welled with tears; she looked across the room, blinking them back as best she could. “Bless you, my dear,” she said. “You’re a good girl, and I know you mean well. But that’s simply not the way of things.”
“Why not?” asked Olga, trembling. Much as the prospect terrified her, she knew it was right: it would ease Papa’s burden, if she were to take on the heavy mantle of his succession. “If they can’t have another son, someone needs to do it. Someone needs to inherit Papa’s throne. I’m his eldest child; I can be his heir.”
Grandmamma kissed the crown of her head; across the room, Aunt Olga lifted a sleeping Anastasia into her arms. “I’m afraid it’s not that simple. There are laws in place that prevent a woman from becoming tsar.”
“But Grandmother Victoria was queen of England.”
“That’s true,” said Grandmamma. “Russia, however, is a very different country.”
“Catherine the Great?”
Grandmamma sighed. “They changed the law after Catherine. It would have been much easier for your parents if that hadn’t been the case, but it’s God’s will. When you and your sisters are grown up, you’ll marry into other royal families. That is the destiny of a grand duchess: to bear children, and to build a life in a new country. Like your mother; like me before her.”
The idea was unthinkable: Leave her family to carry on without her? Leave Russia without a tsarevich? Olga’s future loomed before her, bleak and terrible: Alexei, constantly battling this incurable disease; Olga herself, cast out of Russia, out of her family, because she was born a girl. Mamma and Papa, locked forever in their grief, watching the dynasty crumble in their hands while Olga was too far away to help them, powerless to save her brother, powerless to save Russia—
“Courage, my dear,” said Grandmamma. “God may yet provide.”
Olga let the tears she’d tried so hard to hold back fall, unconcealed, down her cheeks. “How can I have courage when I’m so scared?”
Grandmamma gathered Olga close, enveloping her in the comforting scent of lily of the valley. “My darling girl. Courage does not mean a lack of fear,” she said. “It means meeting whatever the future may hold with grace.”
Grandmamma looked over Olga’s shoulder at the sound of approaching footsteps, the tension in the room ripening as Olga slid off of Grandmamma’s lap.
The footmen pulled open the doors and Papa strode in, his expression enough to break Olga’s heart.
Grandmamma rose to her feet, clutching her necklace. “Alexei?”
Papa’s chin quivered beneath the chestnut brown of his beard. “The doctors have told us there’s nothing more they can do,” he said, his eyes darting around the room as though he was looking for something he’d lost; he rummaged in his pocket and lit a cigarette with trembling hands. “My advisors tell me we can no longer conceal his condition from the people. They’re drafting a—a statement for the newspapers...”
Olga turned away as Grandmamma wrapped Papa in a hug, the sight of Papa’s anguish too overwhelming, too final, for her to bear. How could the doctors have failed? How could God have turned His back on her family? Olga pressed her face into the hard fabric of the sofa cushions, thinking of every harsh word she’d ever said, every unkind action and uncharitable thought she’d ever had. Had she brought it on them, in some way—had she been too short with her sisters, too resentful of Alexei?
Someone rested a hand on her back and Olga shook her head, pressing further into the cushions. If she could stay here, like this, perhaps she’d never have to hear the words she dreaded. Perhaps Alexei might survive.
“Olga.” Papa’s voice was low but steady once more, his hand a comforting weight as he squeezed her shoulder. “My dear, it’s time. You and your sisters must come to say goodbye.”
Olga gripped Tatiana’s hand as they walked into the enveloping dark of Alexei’s bedroom, careful not to let her steps falter as she passed over the lintel. Courage, she reminded herself as she breathed in the spiced incense. Candlelight glittered in the gilded alcoves of the iconostasis that had been pulled in from the chapel, making the painted faces of saints and angels on its panels dance in the light of the flame: they watched, impassive, over the small assembly that clustered around the listless figure in the bed.
Mamma knelt at Alexei’s bedside, gripping his hand in hers as she strove to keep him tethered to life. Behind her, nurses circled the bed, carrying bowls of water, bandages—with a jolt, Olga realized that they’d stuffed cotton in their ears to block out the worst of Alexei’s screams, but Alexei was no longer crying. In the silence, Olga could hear the dry rattle of his shallow breath.
Mamma closed her eyes. “My baby,” she whispered, lifting Alexei’s limp hand to her lips.
Papa crouched beside her. “The priest is coming to perform the last rites,” he murmured as Mamma gazed at Alexei. “And our girls are here,” he continued. “To pray.”
Mamma blinked, as though stirring from a trance. “Of course.” She pulled the covers up to Alexei’s neck, but not before Olga caught a glimpse of the bruise that blackened his chest from collarbone to waist. Courage, she told herself once more as she drew up to the bed, hoping that she would find within herself the grace she so desperately needed to face him.
Olga looked down at Alexei, swallowing her panic at the sight of him lying so still. How could this be happening? He was her little brother, her lovable little brother, who laughed when she played with him in the nursery, who tromped across the dining room at teatime to offer her his cookies. How could she go on without him? There would be a hole at the center of her family forevermore, a void that would drown them all in the enormity of his absence.
She pressed her lips to his forehead, alarmed to feel fire beneath his skin.
“Don’t go,” she pleaded; behind her, Mamma let out a ragged sob. “Please, Alexei, don’t go, not when we love you so much—”
Mamma buried herself in Papa’s chest. “How can we live without our little boy?”
A knock sounded softly from the door—the priest, Olga supposed, as she stepped away from the bed. She turned as a nurse opened the door, letting a stream of light from the hallway flood into the candlelit bedroom.
A man stepped forward and bowed. Tall and slender, he wore a rough-spun tunic and bagged trousers, a wooden cross swinging from a leather string around his neck. Though he’d attempted to smooth back his unkempt hair, the man’s ragged beard and mud-caked boots made him look as though he’d arrived at the palace having crossed the length of Russia without rest. But his eyes were what made him truly distinctive: they glittered, green and restless, beneath his heavy brow.
“Where is Father Vasily?” Papa barked, pulling Mamma close before addressing the nurse who’d opened the door. “Get him out of here. Get out!”
“I am a friend,” the man replied, holding his hands up in supplication. “Summoned by a higher power than you or I alone, Little Father. A friend sent in your hour of need.”
Mamma’s breath hitched. She looked up, her tearstained face slack. “What did you say?”
“I am a friend, Little Mother.” He inclined his head, and despite his alarming appearance, Olga found herself soothed by his gentle voice. “A priest; a wanderer. A simple pilgrim seeking the Lord’s grace.” He paused. “A healer, some have called me.”
“I asked for Father Vasily,” Papa began as the priest sidled farther into the room. “The last rites; they’re all that remain...”
“I’m not here for last rites.” The priest stepped closer to Alexei’s bed; Papa made as if to stop him, but Mamma held him back.
“Let him approach,” she breathed.
The priest stared down at Alexei, his fingers threading through his unruly beard. “This earthly realm has failed you, child,” he said, pacing slowly to the side of Alexei’s bed. “Medicines, machinery...these are solutions borne of men. But what use are man’s weapons against an evil such as this?”
Mamma broke free from Papa’s grasp. “You can heal him?” she said, clutching the priest’s arm. The priest looked at her with surprise; Mamma stepped closer still, tilting her chin to meet his gaze. “You can save the tsarevich?”
“If God wills it,” the priest replied.
“Please,” Mamma whispered, her face lined with desperation, “please, save my son. I will give you anything—anything at all, whatever you wish. You simply have to say the word, and it will be yours. Whatever is in my power to give... Please, I beg of you.”
Olga watched the priest’s smile broaden, his eyes glittering as though lit by an inner fire. He studied Mamma a moment longer, his green eyes locked on her blue ones, and Olga felt the emptiness in the pit of her stomach twist—with hope or in dread, Olga didn’t know.