Имоджен Эдвардс-Джонс: The Witches of St. Petersburg

Naturally, she didn’t tell her sister. Anastasia was two years younger and upset enough already, so much so she’d woken up in tears. What sort of bride wakes up in tears on her wedding day?

‘I can’t,’ she sobbed, propped up by a pile of soft, white pillows. ‘I just can’t.’

At the time, Militza didn’t know what to do. Anastasia was weeping copiously; her black hair, loose around her face, clung in damp curls to her wet cheeks. Her huge black eyes were mournful and completely piteous.

‘You’ve got to help me!’

‘He’s not so bad,’ Militza heard herself lying to her sister. ‘He’s a good match.’

‘How can you say that? He is sixteen years older than me, he has been married before and—’

‘And he’s been hand-picked by Papa.’

‘I’ve only known him for four weeks. Four weeks! His eyes are cold and his heart is even colder. Oh God! Why didn’t Papa choose someone else?’

‘He has his reasons – and he expects both of us to do our duty.’ Militza stroked her sister’s damp hair, trying to placate her. But it was no use.

‘I want to marry for love!’ she exclaimed, collapsing back on her bed and staring up at the ornate ceiling of the Grand Palace.

The floral gilt border shone in the early morning sun, the crystal chandelier glittering and swinging a little in the breeze. The opulence and splendour of their surroundings were completely overwhelming.

Militza laughed, she couldn’t believe what her sister had just said. ‘Don’t be so naive, Stana! Women like us don’t marry for love .’

How typical of Anastasia! Even when the sisters were growing up in their father’s court in Cetinje, Montenegro, running along the narrow corridors of their cosy little palace with its russet walls and white shutters, Anastasia had been the romantic, the one who believed the fairy tales their mother told. She’d listen, wide-eyed, sitting on her knee playing with wooden poppets and planning her own wedding. She’d always fantasized, had always thought, always known, that one day her prince would come. Out of all the sisters – and there were nine of them at the last count – Anastasia was the dreamer, the romantic. Even the Montenegrin belief that daughters were a misfortune seemed to pass her by. She ignored her parents’ endless conversations about money and about the dearth of suitors, she was impervious to their father building a nunnery on the shores of Lake Skadar in case he needed to house his ever-growing cabal of useless daughters – and she was deaf to her mother’s schemes and plans as to how to rid themselves of so many costly women.

So, when the two sisters were invited to St Petersburg, at the behest of the Tsar Alexander III, Stana was the first to be thrilled, the first to be excited, giddy with the idea of the clothes, the parties, the whirl and, unlike Militza, she was the last to realize: the plan.

‘Women like us marry for money,’ Militza reminded her sister. ‘We marry for position, security and status and, as we have none—’

‘But we are Princesses!’

‘Of a feudal backwater, with barely an army to call its own.’

Stana looked shocked.

‘We both know that is true,’ continued Militza, ‘and so we have to take what we are given, take who our father chooses, which will always be whoever he deems useful, who can advance him and our country. And our job? Our job is to produce children. Sons. We’re a couple of brood mares! That’s why the Tsar invited us here. We’ve been told as much.’

‘A brood mare…’ she sighed.

‘You’re almost twenty-one, Stana! You are not young any more. You can’t have little girl fantasies of a handsome prince rescuing you from your fate.’

‘So we’re to be sold off for thirty pieces of silver!’

‘A little more than that, I hope!’ Militza laughed. Stana did not. ‘We do not have a choice,’ her sister conceded quietly.

‘A life without choice,’ Stana stared at her sister and slowly shook her head, ‘is no life at all.’

‘It’s our duty.’

‘Duty to whom?’

‘Our father, our country.’ She paused. ‘Honestly, it is not so bad. And you hope, you pray, that eventually, over time, you can grow to love your husband.’

‘Do you love your husband?’ asked Stana, sitting up.

Militza smiled. ‘It hasn’t been long.’

In fact, it was just four weeks since she herself had been a bride. Her marriage had also been arranged by her father and the Tsar. She’d even sat next to Alexander III as he toasted the union between her and her husband, his cousin Grand Duke Peter Nikolayevich.

‘I drink to the health of the only sincere and faithful friend of Russia,’ Alexander had said, before placing the golden goblet to his lips. There had been no mention of happiness, or of joy, or love of any kind. That’s not to say that Peter was not charming, he most certainly was, but the real reason behind the union did not go unnoticed by the newspapers.

‘ It would be unwise to ignore the tender feelings which prompted this celebration ,’ said one. ‘ But it would be foolish not to recognize all the great national and political reasons, which have joined together, in friendship and family ties, the mighty Royal House of the Romanovs of Russia and the modest court of Montenegro .’

‘The modest court of Montenegro…’ Militza smiled ruefully. That phrase had made her father furious, incandescent. She turned to stare out of the window at the manicured gardens below. It was such a beautiful day. The morning sky was fresh and cloudless, perfect for a wedding; the fountains at Peterhof were sparkling like decadent glasses of fizzing champagne and a warm wind was blowing off the Gulf of Finland. She and Stana were young and beautiful, they should both be so happy.

So why did she feel the desperate sickness of foreboding in her throat and the tight knot of dread deep in the pit of her stomach?

Militza dared not look Stana in the eye. What could she tell her? She was supposed to be the strong one, the cleverest of all the children, fluent in Persian, Russian, French as well as all the languages of her motherland. She was the one who had the sensible head, the clear vision. Zorka, the eldest, might well be able to predict earthquakes and their mother could tell the sex of unborn babies, but it was she, Militza, who had the real power, the one who could really see things. She was the one who spoke to Spirit, the one who was headstrong, who had an answer for everything. Known in her family as a reader of runes and oracles, a sibyl who always found it hard to curb her tongue, why was she so quiet now? What was she to say? That Stana had no choice but to accept this widower duke as her husband? That marriage was lonely? That she herself was struggling to find happiness? That the wedding night was something you just had to get through?

And she knew her husband, Peter, and he also knew where she had come from. He had toured Montenegro with her, witnessed the toasting and fireworks that greeted their engagement. He’d sailed down the Croatian coast in his beautiful white yacht to stay with her family in Cetinje, had seen their unprepossessing palace, its narrow corridors and wooden shutters, he had walked through their scrub of a garden without so much as a fountain, or a manicured lawn, and they’d travelled back to Russia together to be married.

But Stana, poor Stana, had not been so fortunate. She had met her soon-to-be husband just four weeks before, their father selecting him from the shallow pool of eligible suitors at Militza’s wedding. Quite what made the widower, with a motherless seven-year-old son, stand out for their father, neither of them knew.

All Militza knew was there was to be no celebratory cannon fire on Stana’s wedding day, no party at the Tsar’s palace. In fact, neither the Tsar nor even their father were going to attend. It was as if Nikola could not wait to give Stana away, at any price.