Имоджен Эдвардс-Джонс - The Witches of St. Petersburg

‘It is a capital.’ Stana’s voice was quiet. ‘And it is a beautiful capital, with wide streets and pretty houses. In the spring it smells of juniper and you can hear the waterfalls splashing through the gorges of the Black Mountains. The Monte Negro that fell as rocks from Satan’s sack…’

George slowly put his glass down on the table and stared at his wife. Small, lean and lithe, his brown hair was swept back off his forehead and his neat beard and moustache covered the lower half of his face. He was certainly handsome and yet at the same time unattractive. His cruel eyes were narrow with disdain.

‘Satan’s sack! I have never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life! Satan doesn’t exist, any more than there’s a God.’ George snorted with derision as he picked up a half-empty bottle of Burgundy. ‘Your father thinks he’s moving up in the world, consorting with kings. But you two are nothing! And you’ll always be nothing. You’re not even pawns! You’re two out of nine sisters. Nine! You were going cheap, my dear. A few thousand roubles each! Brood mares! Fresh blood, brought here to replenish St Petersburg’s stock. Just what the Tsar ordered! Everyone knows that!’ His head wobbled as he smirked.

‘You’re drunk,’ whispered Stana, her hands beginning to shake as she sank slowly into a chair.

‘Of course I’m drunk!’ he replied, pouring himself another glass of wine. ‘It’s my wedding day. Every man gets drunk on his wedding day! It’s the only way to drown the bitter taste.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ said Peter, striding towards George. ‘You’re upsetting everyone.’

‘Leave me alone!’

‘Listen, my friend, I think you should leave.’

‘Leave!’ George sneered. ‘It’s my wedding!’

‘Indeed it is. But your bride is very distressed. Let me get you to bed.’ Peter moved to take George by the arm.

‘Get your hands off me!’ shouted George as he staggered towards the door. ‘I’m more than capable of taking myself off to bed! In fact, I can drink more than this and still rut like a ram!’

Stana looked horrified. The colour rose in her cheeks and her black eyes shone with tears. This was not how she and her little wooden poppets had imagined her wedding day; this was not how she’d imagined it at all. Militza rushed over to hold her hand.

‘Don’t worry. He doesn’t mean it.’

‘Go on!’ George goaded, turning around. ‘Everyone says you’re a couple of witches. Gossip says you can call up the devil himself, that you’re his daughters! The devil’s daughters! With your black hair and your black eyes from the Black Mountains. Well, get out your cauldron, witches! Give it a stir!’

‘You underestimate us at your peril!’ Militza hissed.

George simply laughed in her face. Militza stared back at him, the blood pumping through her veins. ‘Now I am scared!’ he scoffed as he left the room. ‘Very scared!’

‘Please!’ said Stana, tugging at her sister’s arm, tears now tumbling uncontrollably down her cheeks. ‘Forget him. Do it for me. Don’t let her die. You promised me. You did. Today…’ Militza hesitated. ‘You crossed your heart and you kissed me.’

‘There will be a price,’ declared Militza, slowly turning to her sister.

‘There is always a price.’ Stana shook her head in agreement. ‘We both know that.’

‘What price?’ asked Peter.

‘Don’t ask questions,’ Stana shot back. She turned once more to face her sister. ‘You heard them as they left. Our life isn’t going to be worth living if she dies—’

‘Very well, then,’ Militza replied. ‘Call Brana and tell her to get my things.’

That long, hot August night, the court held its collective breath. And the fact that the Grand Duchess Vladimir survived to see the pale light of dawn was, according to Dr Sergei Andreyevich, nothing short of a miracle.

All the next day, snippets of gossip flew back and forth, recounting how the doctor had apparently prepared the Grand Duke for his wife’s imminent death. They’d been spotted taking a late-night walk through the gardens at Peterhof, where the Grand Duke had nodded repeatedly, tugged anxiously at his moustache and looked very grave indeed. Come daybreak, when the good doctor returned to the yellow salon to find the Grand Duchess sitting up, awake, he could not believe his eyes. He never questioned Militza as to her methods – and she never offered up any explanation.

The Vladimirs went on to hold a discreet burial for one of the babies just outside the grounds of the family church on their estate at Peterhof. It was quiet and quick, the spot unconsecrated but peaceful; a young silver birch tree was planted and the priest kindly said some prayers. But as to what happened to the second baby, the other clot, and who exactly the shuffling old woman was who tidied up the yellow salon, no one ever knew.

And just as Stana had predicted, the result of the Grand Duchess’s double miscarriage was a rigid, intractable frostiness that was colder and more impenetrable than the frozen taiga itself.

For in lieu of any concrete details that she could recall, the Grand Duchess Vladimir simply created her own story, her own narrative that, rather than placing the sisters at the heart of her recovery, blamed them for her terrible plight in the first place.

‘They are the sort of women who could sour milk with one glance,’ she would say, taking a sip of champagne. ‘All I can really remember was the distinct smell of goat,’ she’d declare, laughing uproariously, ‘goat!’

‘Goat!’ they’d laugh. ‘The Goat Princesses!’

Truth be told, what Maria Pavlovna could remember of that long, white night perturbed her so much she preferred not to think about it at all. It haunted her in the early hours and whispered to her from the quiet shadows. So, like most things unpleasant or taxing, she simply decided not to engage with it. She liked to flap anything disagreeable and unlikable away with a little waft of her fan. It was far better to tell a different tale, much easier to sow different seeds.

And the court of St Petersburg proved to be the most excellent and fertile of grounds; it wasn’t long before the sweet, heady, lemon musk of goat could be smelt in the most unlikely of places.

‘It happened again!’ declared Stana as she marched into Militza’s cavernous red salon on the first floor of the Nikolayevsky Palace on Annunciation Square. Dressed in a dark green skirt with a matching fitted jacket, she flounced towards the crimson velvet divan, plucking her black gloves off one finger at a time. ‘I was just coming out of the dressmaker’s on Moika and I heard two women giggling, whispering, always whispering, about the terrible smell of goat. Again!’ Her black eyes narrowed as she flopped on to the divan and, slapping her gloves down on the marble-topped table, crossed her arms firmly across her chest.

‘Who were they?’ asked Militza sitting up. She closed her copy of Isis Unveiled by Helena Blavatsky and rearranged her navy silk kimono. Despite the late hour, approaching three, she had not yet dressed for the day. While other society ladies had already donned their diamonds, muffled themselves in furs and called a troika with a bespoke, livery-clad postilion to the door, to pay their daily calls, Militza had spent the morning going through a package of esoteric books that had arrived from Watkins, Cecil Court, London.

‘I didn’t know who they were and neither did George.’

‘George was there?’

‘He told me I was hearing things, being hysterical, foolish. He said I was making it up. You know what he’s like. If it doesn’t please him, he doesn’t hear it.’ She sighed, hugging her arms more tightly around her. ‘Honestly, Militza, it has been three years – and I thought it would be better after the children. That’s what Mother said, didn’t she?’ Stana’s voice cracked a little. ‘“Have children as soon as possible, they respect you more.” Didn’t she say that?’