The Fabergé Secret Read online

  Lara just smiled and bit into her honey tart.

  ‘Larissa, must you leave today? I wanted to show you the palm trees in the new conservatory,’ the Countess wailed in a disappointed voice. ‘And hear much more delicious, malicious gossip.’

  ‘I really must, ma chère amie. I have a fitting for a new gown I’m wearing to the ballet on Thursday. But we still have time before our train to St Petersburg, Elena. Time enough to tell you the details about Baron Volkonsky’s ménage à trois with his wife, Natasha, and his brother.’ Her revelation brought a hush over the guests, then they immediately exchanged coy looks and began talking between themselves in low voices.

  ‘His brother, Kirill?’ Princess Tremenisky said.

  ‘As you know, the Baron was brought up to share everything with his brother,’ Lara retorted.

  ‘Hurry and finish your tea, Larissa. We want the minutest details, we want diagrams!’ the Countess said in a giddy voice.

  Dimitri rolled his eyes.

  ‘Our train leaves at seven, Lara. Please have the two hundred trunks you brought packed and ready to leave,’ he ordered in a stern voice. ‘The team of ten oxen to pull the wagon will be waiting.’

  His remark got a good laugh from the guests as Lara shot him a withering look.

  Bykov clapped his hands and stood to make an announcement. ‘Now for some entertainment!’

  Aristocratic estate owners had their own private ballet companies along with resident orchestras and small theatrical troupes. Bykov motioned for the group to follow him to a palatial private theater Dimitri had designed in red and green granites with a huge white marble proscenium arch and a scarlet velvet curtain.

  ‘The “Lake in the Moonlight” scene from Swan Lake will start us off,’ Bykov bellowed. The curtains parted, the music began, and six pretty ballerinas started dancing.

  The Count’s open landau carriage bringing Dimitri and Lara to the train station rumbled along the stone-paved streets of Kishinev, the capital city of Bessarabia. The province also happened to be in the Pale of Settlement, where all Jews in Russia were required to live. A carriage with the valet, the lady’s maid, and baggage followed behind. It was nine hundred miles from their home in St Petersburg. The train trip took a whole day, but they would travel in a very comfortable sleeping compartment with a sitting room and a bathroom. On the journey, Dimitri would work on some sketches for a summer palace for his cousin, Prince Andrei Mikhailovich Markhov.

  Everything looked so quiet and normal in Kishinev. The gas lights were being lit in the streets, and people strolled along the boulevards looking in store windows. Their carriage came up behind a slow-moving wagon pulled by a tired-looking horse. To his astonishment, Dimitri saw that the wagon bed was piled with dead bodies carelessly covered by a canvas tarp. When the edge of the tarp shifted, revealing the body of a toddler, Dimitri’s eyes widened in horror and he sprang up from his seat to look at the corpse. The child was a boy of about two and had thick black curly hair. There was a large patch of dried blood on the side of his head. As his carriage passed the wagon, Dimitri twisted his body so he could still catch a glimpse of the boy. When the body was out of sight, he kept standing in the carriage with an expression of revulsion and shock. Lara looked up at him.

  ‘Dimitri, you look as if you’re going to pass out. Sit down at once.’

  TWO

  ‘Their Imperial Majesties!’

  The great fourteen-foot-high gilt double doors of the Malachite Hall in the Winter Palace swung open. There stood Tsar Nicholas II and his Tsarina, Alexandra Feodorovna, the emperor and empress of the Romanov dynasty. Nicholas, the wealthiest man on earth, was the divine autocrat of one hundred and thirty million people living on one sixth of the planet’s surface.

  A shiver went up Dimitri’s spine, and a smile came over his face; he loved this magical fairytale world in which he lived. No court in all of Europe could match the wealth and splendor of the Russian Imperial Court. The magnificent procession about to begin displayed all the majesty and glory of the Romanov throne.

  Arm in arm, the Imperial Couple slowly walked forward. In unison, every male member of the Court in uniform or formal dress bowed. Every female in her beautiful flowing gown executed a deep rustling curtsey, then they all separated to provide a wide path for the royals. The Tsar smiled and nodded at courtiers calling out, ‘Greetings, children.’ In chorus they replied, ‘Good health, Your Imperial Majesty.’ The Tsarina nodded as well and the slightest of smiles crossed her thin lips. A tall, slender woman, she was dressed in a gown of silver brocade embroidered with gold thread. Atop her beautiful reddish-gold hair was a pearl and diamond tiara with a red ruby at its center. The Tsar was a lean handsome man with a beard and mustache and clear blue eyes.

  ‘The Tsar always looks good in white.’

  ‘Nicholas is an attractive man – if you like short men,’ Lara added, which made Dimitri frown. He never could tolerate mean cracks about his best friend, whom he’d known since he was ten.

  Walking backward and holding his ten-foot ebony staff crowned with gold double eagles, the Grand Marshal led the procession which would parade through the Winter Palace’s Great Enfilade, a series of giant interconnected halls to the Palace Cathedral, and back again. Behind Nicholas and Alexandra in the order of succession to the throne came the members of the Imperial Family – the Grand Dukes and Grand Duchesses, the Tsar’s blood relations. They were followed by the top hierarchy of the Court led by the head Minister of the Imperial Court. The Emperor’s military entourage came next, then the ladies-in-waiting who served the Tsarina, all dressed in gowns of white silk with white jackets and green velvet trains. Her maids-of-honor who followed wore crimson velvet jackets.

  ‘I’m surprised Grand Duke Alexis showed up after all he drank last night,’ Lara said under her breath to her best friend, Princess Betsey, who with her husband, Prince Paul, was standing next to her.

  ‘He’s not human. He could drink the entire Black Sea and still get up in the morning,’ Princess Betsey giggled.

  Dimitri ignored the women’s comments. He loved watching this incredible spectacle. It was part of an unbreakable court protocol: since the reign of Catherine the Great, the trappings of palace life had stayed exactly the same. Dimitri’s father, grandfather, great- and great-great-grandfathers were all part of the exact same Imperial Court that now consisted of fifteen thousand people in seven palaces.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ Dimitri whispered happily to Lara, who in turn smiled.

  The Imperial Couple’s oldest child, Grand Duchess Olga, who was eight years old, followed right behind her parents. She wore a white silk dress trimmed with lace and with a pale-blue sash, and she smiled at the crowd who were delighted by her appearance.

  ‘I bet she had asked to be part of the court ceremony today because she made her first communion,’ Dimitri said. ‘Olga thinks she’s a big girl now.’

  As the Tsar came nearer, Dimitri could see his friend was tired. And why wouldn’t he be? On Easter Monday, the Tsar and Tsarina had to give Easter greetings to five thousand soldiers in the Winter Palace. On Easter Sunday, the Tsar kissed every male of the Imperial household on both cheeks, and the Tsarina did the same with all the women. They had to do it because it was a tradition.

  When the Tsar passed Dimitri and Lara, he smiled broadly and silently mouthed the words, ‘Come for lunch.’ When the Tsarina’s eyes rested on Lara, a slight frown came over her usually impassive face. Dimitri knew what she was thinking. Although he was a childhood friend of her husband’s, she disapproved of Lara because she thought her a frivolous courtier who wasn’t at all religious and gossiped too much. He returned the Tsar’s smile and bowed.

  Lara leaned close to Dimitri’s ear and whispered, ‘I suppose I have to change into something simple for the luncheon like a nun’s habit or a peasant’s sarafan for the Mother Superior.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re not going.’

  ‘What wonderful news!’
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  Lara disliked Alexandra intensely. The Tsarina, the former Princess Alix of the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, was a Lutheran who had converted to the Russian Orthodox faith upon marrying Nicholas. Alexandra threw herself into her new religion with a zeal that Lara and the rest of the Court thought ridiculous: collecting rare ikons, voraciously reading about Church history, and consulting holy hermits. Lara and the men and women of the Court criticized Alexandra for being cold and distant, speaking rotten Russian, and worst of all, being a prude – especially because she didn’t approve of the Court’s tradition of extra-marital affairs. She also hated low décolletage. Lara and the Court treated Alexandra unfairly, Dimitri thought. She was unpopular because she was a preternaturally shy person not suited at all for a royal life. But Dimitri knew she actually had a sweet, charming personality in private, and he admired her greatly. She was also very thoughtful. Last year, she had heard that Lara was quite ill with typhoid fever, and she personally brought to their St Petersburg mansion a gift of holy water from Sarov, a greatly venerated site. After she left, Lara got out of her sick bed and flushed it down the toilet. The water was useless, but Dimitri thought what Lara did was outrageous and ungrateful.

  Dimitri winked at Olga, who giggled, then caught herself. She loved Dimitri and called him her ‘handsome fairy tale prince.’ He enjoyed playing games with her and her three younger sisters, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, who were all two years apart in age. Collectively, they were known to the court as ‘OTMA.’ Dimitri knew that part of his attraction to the Tsar’s family was because he and Lara could not have children: one reason the Tsar let him be on such intimate terms with the Imperial Family. At the outdoor court functions where children were sometimes allowed, he always beamed when observing the boys and girls at play. Watching them made him both happy and sad. Their good cheer and boisterousness delighted him, but every time, it drove a stake into his heart – he would never have any children of his own or an heir. His mansions and country estates would never be filled with the noise of happy children.

  Princess Betsey smirked as Grand Duchess Ella Feodorovna passed in the procession with her husband Grand Duke Sergei, an uncle of the Tsar. She wore a white silk gown with huge diamond buttons down the front and a necklace of brilliant red rubies.

  ‘Poor Ella, the only woman in Russia who doesn’t know her husband’s a homosexual,’ Lara whispered.

  ‘Sergei went a bit far buggering that handsome priest. One has to draw the line at the Church,’ Princess Betsey replied disdainfully.

  ‘Going after his nephew, Pavel, was the limit, but you’re right, the Church is out of bounds, ma chère,’ Lara agreed.

  ‘Goddamn it, woman, do you ever stop?’ Dimitri hissed. He was quite fond of Ella, who like her younger sister, Alexandra, had a heart of gold.

  When the Imperial Couple and the entourage moved on to the next room, the members of the Court again filled up the room, talking and laughing. Lara chattered away in French to Princess Betsey, Countesses Eugenia and Nadia, reminding Dimitri of magpies. Although Nicholas preferred Russian, the official court language had always been French. That was the great irony of the Russian Court, they adored everything French. They lived in villas in France for part of the year, had French chefs, French tutors and governesses for their children, and preferred speaking French at home. At least the aristocrats preferred Russian music and song.

  Count Alexis Zubov came up to Dimitri. A long-time servant of the Empire, there was not a square inch of empty space on his ribbon-and-medal-covered breast.

  ‘Will you be dining with His Majesty today, Prince Dimitri?’ Zubov asked.

  Dimitri smiled. There were two problems with his friendship with the Tsar. Many members of the Court were bitterly jealous of the relationship, and second, many tried to get Dimitri to influence His Majesty on a favorite project of theirs.

  ‘Yes, Your Excellency.’ He knew what Zubov was going to ask.

  ‘An Imperial charter for a concrete company in Kiev would be most beneficial to the Empire. As an esteemed architect and engineer, you know the possibilities of this material.’

  They always throw in some flattery in their request, Dimitri thought.

  ‘Yes, I do. There have been great strides with concrete. I read that the Americans are constructing a skyscraper of reinforced concrete.’

  ‘Exactly. This is a new material we need to use for Russian factories. None of this wood nonsense anymore. Russia needs to modernize.’

  ‘I agree wholeheartedly, Count Zubov. I may mention it to his Majesty.’

  ‘Wonderful. You must come to my villa in Peterhof. It has become much too small for my family; maybe we can discuss designing a more suitable one.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m always looking for new architectural challenges.’

  And he was. Dimitri was one of the rare members of the noble families in Russia who actually knew how to do something. Almost all the aristocracy did was attend the ballet and opera, have sexual affairs, go to endless parties and balls, and above all, gossip. Typically, it was beneath contempt for a nobleman to engage in anything resembling real work, but Dimitri was raised differently. His father, Prince Sergei, didn’t want his son to become the usual aristocratic wastrel, and when he saw Dimitri’s artistic talent, he encouraged it. When Alexander Kaminsky was designing a new villa for the Markhovs overlooking the Black Sea, Dimitri’s father asked him to look at his son’s drawings. Dimitri was flattered by Kaminsky’s praise and from then on took a keen interest in architecture. When he was of age, his father enrolled him in the Imperial Academy of Arts in St Petersburg to study painting and architecture. To complement his studies, he took classes at the Institute of Civil Engineering to understand the new iron and steel structures used in building and bridge construction. During his education, he still found time for aristocratic fun. He attended his share of parties, hunts, balls, and theater mainly because of the beautiful females present. He adored his gay social world of privilege, but it came a close second to architecture.

  After apprenticing a year with Kaminsky, Dimitri wanted to try his own hand at designing. His father had no problem with this, as long as he took no money for his work. A nobleman never asked for payment, so Dimitri had worked for free for Kaminsky. While many Russian aristocratic fortunes had melted away like the winter snows in the spring, Dimitri’s family was still immensely rich. So, starting with a small pavilion for the niece of Count Bobrinsky, Dimitri began his career as a gentleman architect, though he did insist on payment for his assistants. Villas, estates, libraries, and a bank came his way through his social connections. Because of his engineering training, he also designed bridges and a railway station shed. The Tsar greatly admired his abilities. No one else in Court had such talents, so Nicholas came to rely on him for architectural and engineering advice especially for the Trans-Siberian Railway that was under construction. The Tsar once told him, ‘You can train me to be an architect and engineer, Dimitri.’

  Dimitri had been disappointed that he wasn’t able to spend Easter with the Tsar’s family this year like he always did. Anxious to see the girls and his old friend, he rushed back to his St Petersburg mansion to change into something more comfortable. Luncheon with the Tsar’s family was always an informal, casual affair which he loved attending.

  THREE

  Now dressed in his favorite brown three-piece tweed suit, Dimitri was led to a door of the Imperial Couple’s private apartments in the Winter Palace. He was always punctual because Nicholas was a man of strict habits. There before the door stood a huge black servant dressed in scarlet trousers, gold-embroidered jacket, pointed silver slippers, and a fez with a gilded tassel, one of four ‘Abyssinians’ who silently stood guard before the doors of the private apartments. Their only job was to open and close the doors; they were a left-over from the days of Catherine the Great, when dwarves and exotics played a big part in court ceremony.

  ‘Hello, Jim,’ Dimitri said in English.

  Jim beame
d a white toothy smile. ‘Good day to you, sir.’

  Jim Hercules was not actually from Abyssinia, but from the Alabama province of America. Originally a servant of Alexander III, the Tsar’s father, he was totally loyal to the Imperial Family. Each year, he brought back jars of guava jelly from his vacation in America for the Tsar’s daughters. He opened the ten-foot-high door for Dimitri to enter.

  The Winter Palace was the symbol of the Tsar’s power. Used as the center for the ceremonies of the Russian Court and military parades, it contained one thousand cold empty rooms. But the Tsar’s private apartments on the first floor had exactly the opposite feel; warm and homey, crammed with over-stuffed furniture and personal mementoes. Lunch was always served at one o’clock in the White Dining Room. Dimitri walked into the room and bowed to the Tsar, who was standing alone by the sideboard.

  ‘Dimitri, so good to see you. Let me pour you a glass of vodka.’ Nicholas always drank one glass before sitting down to lunch, and Dimitri joined him.

  ‘The procession was magnificent as usual, Nicky,’ Dimitri said. Only when they were alone could Dimitri address his friend by his Christian name. The same with the Tsarina, whom he called Alix.

  ‘Oh, that. Whenever we have those, I miss my morning walk with my dogs,’ Nicholas replied with a frown. The Tsar had ten magnificent English collies with whom he loved to romp about.

  He let out a loud whistle that sounded like a warbling bird call. This was his way of calling for his children and the Tsarina, whom he called ‘Sunny.’ Within a minute, Alexandra appeared with her black Scotch terrier, Eire, under her arm. She welcomed Dimitri with a radiant smile few people ever saw. Lara hated the dog because it nipped at people under the table, and once ripped her silk stocking. Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, in white linen jumpers with blue sashes, skipped along behind their mother. They ran over to Dimitri to get hugs. To the distress of Monsieur Cubat, their master French chef, the Tsar preferred very simple food like borscht and fish. His favorite meal, roasted suckling pig with horseradish, was being served for lunch today.