Rasputin's Daughter Read Online Free PDF Page B

lacked a coat of arms and official markings. When the chauffeur jumped out to open the door for us, I could see by his khaki-colored full-dress uniform and the double-headed eagles stamped on the gold braid around his collar that he was in fact one of the Tsar’s personal drivers. That an unmarked motor had been sent was no surprise, for the Tsaritsa always took great pains not to draw attention to my father’s visits to the palace.
    As we flew off, rushing down the street and then turning along the embankment of the Fontanka River, I leaned over and lowered Papa’s window so the brisk night air might rouse him to his duties. Sitting back in the rich leather seat, I pulled my cloak over my shoulders and buried my hands in my fur muff-which the Empress had gifted me just the year before.
    It was slightly past midnight, and had this been before the war and these the White Nights of summer, the streets would have been flooded with dusky sunlight, people in search of entertainment, and any number of horse cabs. In December, however, the planned boulevards and prospekti of the capital-all of which were big and straight and therefore so very foreign, so uncomfortably non-Russian-were dark and freezing and filled now with droves of wounded soldiers and hungry peasants, some huddled around open fires, others sleeping right out on the pavements, with a few marauders roaming about. Not long ago Papa had had a vision that the Tsar needed to bring trainload after trainload of grain into the capital. And he was right. The liodi-common people-needed food. Back home in our village, we had lived through many hard seasons, and my father knew very well what the Tsar did not-that a peasant without bread was a very dangerous man.
    When we turned onto Nevsky Prospekt I saw only a small handful of sleighs and just one place that looked lively and warm, the Sergeeivski Palace, which had been home to Grand Duchess Elizabeth, the Tsaritsa’s sister, before she’d taken to the cloth. Now it was inhabited by the young Grand Duke Dmitri, and the second-floor windows of the stunning red building were ablaze with electric lights and some sort of revelry, for of course there were not and never would be any shortages among the nobility. After that, all was depressingly quiet, the streets filled with litter and lost souls, who, I began to realize, looked increasingly less like wounded soldiers and more like deserters.
    Within a short time we left the edge of the city and were speeding through the countryside. Father and I sat silent in the rear seat, he gazing out his window, I staring out mine. The moon was surprisingly bright, and as my eyes followed the snow-laden landscape, I saw flat white fields, then a strand of birch, next a cluster of small huts with smoke curling from the chimneys and a tiny church with a gold onion dome, then again dormant fields tucked under a pale blanket.
    There was little doubt in my mind that by morning all good society and then some would know of tonight’s events. I was sure that by sunrise the drunken princess, the half-naked countess, and the balalaika player, even the secret agents, would start spreading the word that the Empress had called Rasputin to the palace yet again-and at such an ungodly hour, no less. By teatime tomorrow afternoon, all the court would probably be gossiping about how a late-night call had been placed for the Tsaritsa, a call begging the besotted Rasputin to rush to her private rooms and soothe her desperate needs. Yes, the tongues would wag, for we Russians were the most vicious of gossips, and there were sure to be nasty rumors of the wild peasant romping in bed with the Empress Aleksandra Fyodorovna-that German bitch-and even with her devoted friend, that slut Anna Vyrubova, perhaps all three of them together. There might even be gossip of a Khlyst act, a “rejoicing.” After all, didn’t the name Rasputin come from the word rasputa-a debauched, depraved good-for-nothing? The counts and