guarantee that God is on our side.’
‘What does this have to do with me?’ replied Pekkala.
The Tsar smiled at Pekkala’s impatience. ‘Normally, I would have said that it has very little to do with a heathen like yourself.’
‘I am not without faith, Majesty.’
‘But yours and mine are not the same, Pekkala. What spirits guide you live out there,’ he gestured at the wilderness that lay beyond the cushioned walls, ‘and their names are hidden from all but the savages who gave them life.’
‘Savages?’ He thought about his mother, a Sami from the tundra of northern Finland, and the parallel worlds she inhabited, shifting from one to the other like the steam which drifted off their tea.
‘Yes,’ replied the Tsar, ‘and I mean it as a compliment. It is why I have chosen you for this particular task, Pekkala. You are not bound by the same attachments as we who must struggle with the trappings of our Orthodox religion. The very thing that separates us is the basis for my trust in you. You may not care for this icon, Pekkala, but to millions of Russians, its safety is as important as the safety of Russia itself.’
‘Has something happened to The Shepherd ?’ asked Pekkala.
‘No,’ replied the Tsar. ‘For the moment, it is safe in its usual place at the Church of the Resurrection at Tsarskoye Selo.’ He paused as he hooked a finger through the brass loop handle of the glass and drank a mouthful of the tea, breathing in sharply as he sipped. ‘And if I had my way,’ he continued, ‘that’s exactly where it would remain. But my wife has decided that the icon should be placed in the care of Rasputin.’
An image of the Siberian flashed behind Pekkala’s eyes. The unwashed hair combed down about his ears, the lower part of his face hidden behind an unkempt beard and the stare of his sledge-dog-grey eyes.
‘You know how much he is despised,’ said the Tsar. ‘If it were not for the lengths to which my wife and I have gone to protect him, he would have been thrown in a dungeon long ago.’
And if it were not for your own fascination with the man, thought Pekkala, no one would have cared enough to hate him in the first place.
There were many reasons why the Romanovs protected Rasputin, but the most important reason was one that most people didn’t know about. Their only son, Alexei, had been born with haemophilia, what Russians referred to as ‘The English Disease’ because of the fact that it had been passed down through several generations of British royalty, and put at risk the children of anyone whose bloodline, which included that of both the Tsar and the Tsarina, intersected with the British kings and queens. The disease could not be cured, and it almost always proved fatal. His blood unable to clot, Alexei could have bled to death from the kind of nicks or scrapes a normal boy might expect to receive every day. This frailty had required him to live as a person might if they were made of glass.
Even Alexei’s friends were hand selected by the parents for their ability to play gently. Pekkala remembered the soft-spoken Makarov brothers – thin and nervous boys whose ears stuck out and who carried their shoulders in a perpetual hunch, like boys do when they are waiting for a firework to explode. In spite of his fragility, Alexei had already outlived them, since both boys perished in battle.
No matter what precautions they took with their son, the parents seemed always to be waiting for that moment when Alexei would simply fade away. In doing so, it was as if the Tsar, and the Tsarina Alexandra in particular, had absorbed the disease into their own bodies.
Fearing that news of this disease might be interpreted as some kind of curse by the superstitious masses, who were only too ready to find the hand of God, or of the devil, in every deviation from the norm, the haemophilia was kept secret from all but the Romanovs’ doctors, and the closest associates of their family.
The secrecy
‘What does this have to do with me?’ replied Pekkala.
The Tsar smiled at Pekkala’s impatience. ‘Normally, I would have said that it has very little to do with a heathen like yourself.’
‘I am not without faith, Majesty.’
‘But yours and mine are not the same, Pekkala. What spirits guide you live out there,’ he gestured at the wilderness that lay beyond the cushioned walls, ‘and their names are hidden from all but the savages who gave them life.’
‘Savages?’ He thought about his mother, a Sami from the tundra of northern Finland, and the parallel worlds she inhabited, shifting from one to the other like the steam which drifted off their tea.
‘Yes,’ replied the Tsar, ‘and I mean it as a compliment. It is why I have chosen you for this particular task, Pekkala. You are not bound by the same attachments as we who must struggle with the trappings of our Orthodox religion. The very thing that separates us is the basis for my trust in you. You may not care for this icon, Pekkala, but to millions of Russians, its safety is as important as the safety of Russia itself.’
‘Has something happened to The Shepherd ?’ asked Pekkala.
‘No,’ replied the Tsar. ‘For the moment, it is safe in its usual place at the Church of the Resurrection at Tsarskoye Selo.’ He paused as he hooked a finger through the brass loop handle of the glass and drank a mouthful of the tea, breathing in sharply as he sipped. ‘And if I had my way,’ he continued, ‘that’s exactly where it would remain. But my wife has decided that the icon should be placed in the care of Rasputin.’
An image of the Siberian flashed behind Pekkala’s eyes. The unwashed hair combed down about his ears, the lower part of his face hidden behind an unkempt beard and the stare of his sledge-dog-grey eyes.
‘You know how much he is despised,’ said the Tsar. ‘If it were not for the lengths to which my wife and I have gone to protect him, he would have been thrown in a dungeon long ago.’
And if it were not for your own fascination with the man, thought Pekkala, no one would have cared enough to hate him in the first place.
There were many reasons why the Romanovs protected Rasputin, but the most important reason was one that most people didn’t know about. Their only son, Alexei, had been born with haemophilia, what Russians referred to as ‘The English Disease’ because of the fact that it had been passed down through several generations of British royalty, and put at risk the children of anyone whose bloodline, which included that of both the Tsar and the Tsarina, intersected with the British kings and queens. The disease could not be cured, and it almost always proved fatal. His blood unable to clot, Alexei could have bled to death from the kind of nicks or scrapes a normal boy might expect to receive every day. This frailty had required him to live as a person might if they were made of glass.
Even Alexei’s friends were hand selected by the parents for their ability to play gently. Pekkala remembered the soft-spoken Makarov brothers – thin and nervous boys whose ears stuck out and who carried their shoulders in a perpetual hunch, like boys do when they are waiting for a firework to explode. In spite of his fragility, Alexei had already outlived them, since both boys perished in battle.
No matter what precautions they took with their son, the parents seemed always to be waiting for that moment when Alexei would simply fade away. In doing so, it was as if the Tsar, and the Tsarina Alexandra in particular, had absorbed the disease into their own bodies.
Fearing that news of this disease might be interpreted as some kind of curse by the superstitious masses, who were only too ready to find the hand of God, or of the devil, in every deviation from the norm, the haemophilia was kept secret from all but the Romanovs’ doctors, and the closest associates of their family.
The secrecy
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