Robert Alexander - The Romanov Bride

“Matushka, you must run away!” called Sister Mariya.

“They want to hurt you!” exclaimed the novice Makrina.

Even Father Mitrofan, usually so rational, frantically urged, “You must flee through the kitchens and out the back door!”

I slowed, gathering my thoughts and prayers. In all things there was wisdom, in all things there was His plan.

“Please, step aside and allow me to handle this,” I said to my sisters. “One must be ready at any time to wear the martyr’s crown of thorns.”

At first they hesitated, but my young ones meekly obeyed, retreating as one into the next room. As the beating on the doors grew steadily rougher and harsher and the screaming beyond louder and coarser, I knew absolutely what I must do. I reached for the iron bolts and drew them open, and then I threw wide the double doors. A great cry went up from the mob, which seemed poised to run right over me, but then the advancing horde stopped, stunned by the sight of me standing there in my gray working robes.

“Welcome to my community,” I said with a gentle bow of my head. “I am the Matushka of this obitel-is it to me you wish to speak?”

At first none knew what to say, how to act. There was some grumbling, some brandishing of the sticks.

Finally, one of them shouted, “We want your German brother, the Grand Duke of Hesse!”

“Give him to us!” yelled a handful of others.

“I, too, have heard such stories,” I began, my voice strong and clear, “but I can assure you that my brother is nowhere to be found within this community. In fact, he is nowhere to be found in Russia.”

“But he’s hiding in the cellar, I know it!” called one.

“I’m afraid you are mistaken, for I would never permit such a thing,” I replied. “It would be tantamount to treason.”

“Nemka, doloi!”

“German bitch!”

“Shpionka, suda!”

“Listen to her speak-she’s pure German!”

For half an instant it seemed they would rush forward and seize upon me, then ransack the entire community. I felt as if I were overlooking a kettle about to boil over, so evident was their anger and exhaustion.

“Once again,” I began, my words measured, “I can assure you that my brother is not here, nor has he ever been. However, a handful of you are welcome to enter our buildings and look throughout every room. I only ask that it be no more than six of you who come in because behind these walls and under these roofs are many sick and wounded, not to mention our orphans. Please, I entreat you, do not disturb my patients and do not frighten the children, for they have already been through so much.”

A voice from the back, certainly an agitator, shouted, “But I saw that German spy with my own eyes! I know he’s in here!”

“He’s hiding in the cellar!”

“There must be a secret room!”

“Please come in,” I quickly replied, “and look for yourselves. If only you would be so kind as to put down your sticks and rakes, you may spend all afternoon with us, you may search everywhere. Only again I ask you, please do so quietly.”

A man shouted, “She’s lying!”

“Let’s all go in, we’ll get him then!”

“Nemka, doloi!”

The crowd seethed, there was obviously nothing I could do to soften them, to appease them. It was only at this moment, only just then, that I feared all would be lost, and I worried not for myself but for the others, my sisters and our sick ones. I could see these unruly brigands shift from side to side, see their sticks and rakes start to tremble. Standing there calmly, quietly, I called upon the Lord for strength.

And then I heard it, the pounding of hooves. This time it was not the Cossacks but mounted gendarmes, and they came pouring through our broken gates, fifteen, no, twenty of them. As the crowd of bandits turned to see what was bearing down upon them, I quickly shut and bolted the doors, and I stood there behind the thick wood, listening to the mayhem, the screams, the shouts, the sound of gunfire. I closed my eyes and slumped against the doors, praying that there would be no loss of life.

It was all over quickly. Not even ten minutes later, when all was essentially quiet, I opened the doors again. What had once been a tranquil garden was now a battlefield, our lilacs and laburnums broken and dashed, and everything else torn apart by the fight. The sticks and rakes had been dropped helter-skelter, the rocks, too, as the people had fled, and all that was to be seen were some of the gendarmes arresting a few of the ringleaders and another handful of injured souls lying about.

“Quickly, sisters,” I said, leading the way into the garden and to the wounded. “Our help is needed.”

It was in this way that we tended to those who had meant us harm. There were many bruises, some broken bones, but fortunately there was no loss of life. While most of those hurt needed only some careful bandaging, there were four who remained in our hospital for more than a week, so serious were their injuries.

Later that day, I received a visit from the Metropolitan and the Governor-General himself, both of whom wanted to see what damages had been done and whether any of us had been harmed. I assured them that all were fine excepting Sister Evrosinia, the nun who had been hit on the back with the stone, for her bruise was so large that the doctors had ordered complete bed rest for a week. I felt no anger over the incident, only grief that my own people should feel that violence was their only avenue of hope. Yes, their poor lives were being stretched beyond limits-husbands off at war and being killed, impoverished wives at home trying to feed hungry mouths. How I longed to soothe their souls and fill their spirits right up with joy.

There were only two aftershocks from that day which weighed heavily upon my heart. First, the Metropolitan himself wondered if the times were so troubled that it might be best if I retired for a while to a distant monastery, perhaps even the one I’d visited not long ago up in the northern seas. I assured him, however, that my place was there in Moscow and that I would sooner die at my obitel than leave. Second, the Governor-General, realizing that I would not be leaving, ordered increased security be posted round our walls, which saddened me greatly, for not once had I ever wanted to be separated from the outer world and those in need.

Of greater concern, both of these men individually took me aside and pressed me on the same issue: Would I not, for the sake of the Empire and the Monarchy itself, please speak to both the Empress and the Emperor about the dark influence upon the Throne, namely, that man Rasputin?

Who would have thought that in this cesspool of wounded soldiers and overworked women the Revolution would be reborn! Who would have thought that the Russian peasants and workers, beaten down for so many centuries, would finally snap? In short, the more rotten the war made things for the people, the better things got for the Organization.

And so that became my job, to somehow make things as rotten, rotten, rotten as possible.

My revolutionary comrades fished me out of some pit, brought me back into the fold, and this became my job: gluing up posters. It didn’t seem very important, but they assured me it was, and they even had a name for it: agitprop. And so they gave me a pot of glue and posters by the stack, and I put them up everywhere and by the thousands, too. Only I had to do it so I wouldn’t be caught, because if I was that would be the end of me, a necktie from a lamppost!

In the following weeks I scurried around Moscow like a rat, fixing posters up on buildings, doors, walls, stairs. Usually the police ripped them down in a matter of hours, and then I had to just go round and round, fixing them up again. Sometimes I just dropped the posters on the street or left them on seats of the trams. But people saw them everywhere. Pictures of the Tsar and his religious popes riding on the backs of the toiling workers. Pictures of the capitalist pigs, all dressed up in expensive coats, licking the Tsar’s feet. The laughing Tsar drinking champagne while he stood at a cannon using peasants as cannonballs to fire at the Germans.