Romanov(30)

I smirked and she rushed down the stairs after the rest of the family. I gathered a bowl of Mamma’s lentil soup from the kitchen and brought it to her bedside.

“Privyet, my little one.” Mamma sat up and her hand went instantly to her forehead. I waited for her headache to lessen enough for me to hand her the bowl.

Perhaps this wasn’t the best time.

Mamma was always so ill. Besides, who was I to doubt her integrity? But if I was to engage Zash—or any other guard, for that matter—regarding their suspicions about Rasputin and Mamma, I needed answers.

“What a gift to have you by my side today.”

I straightened her blanket as she sipped her soup. I could do this. “Mamma, I stayed inside because . . . some of the guards have been talking to me.”

“Are they keeping their hands to themselves? They are not as kind as the ones at Tobolsk.”

“They are not harassing me. They’ve just been . . . saying things that I wanted to talk with you about.” Spit it out!

Mamma set her soup on the bedside table and rubbed a hand over her forehead. “What is it, Nastya? Izvini, but my headache is terrible today.”

“It’s about Rasputin,” I blurted.

She stilled. Then, in a bitter voice, she said, “I can only imagine what shameful propaganda they are spewing.”

“Why did you never allow us in the room with you two?” The garden time was already almost half gone. I needed to get to my questions. “Why did you visit him alone so often? Mamma . . . what happened? Forgive my prying, but I think I see why the guards were so untrusting and the people so suspicious. I don’t know how to set them straight!”

I didn’t think it possible, but Mamma paled more than her usual weak pallor. “What do you think of me, Nastya?”

“I don’t know what to think!” My voice turned teary. “I don’t think ill of you. I love you. I seek only understanding.” She’d spent so much time with Alexei once he was born, hardly any of us sisters had more than a half relationship with her. We didn’t know her deeply the same way we did Papa. Maria and me least of all.

“Grigori Rasputin saved your brother’s life countless times. Do you doubt his goodness?”

She was affronted by the attack on his character? What about her own? “Nyet. I do not doubt his goodness. But tell me, Mamma. Why the visits to his home? Why the closed doors?” I hated being at unease. I hated the gnawing in my mind. I wanted to return to my confidence.

“Some secrets are not meant for you, Nastya. You must trust my words. I have never dishonored your papa.”

So she chose to hoard her answers. “Perhaps not through intentions, but due to your secrecy the entire country thinks he was a weak-minded tsar who couldn’t keep track of his own wife!” I gasped the moment the words left my lips. How dare I? I dropped to her side and clasped her hand. “Forgive me, Mamma.”

She pulled her hand from mine.

Shame overwhelmed me, yet ought I be ashamed of speaking my heart? “I trust you, Mamma, but I do not know how to answer the soldiers when they tear apart my family’s integrity. When they accuse Papa of being weak and you of . . . unmentionable things.”

“Even if I shared my secrets with you, they would not be for you to tell the soldiers. It would not ease your predicament.”

“It would ease my mind,” I croaked. “It would ease my heart. This tortures me far more than our exile.”

She fell back against her pillow, her soup abandoned. At this point I would usually go fetch some sort of medicine or Olga to read soothingly to her. Instead, I waited through her discomfort. Through her pain. Hoping—praying—that she would not withdraw her love from me.

I had crossed a line I’d no right to cross. I never should have stayed. I never should have asked.

“We are to die soon anyway,” she mumbled beneath a frail hand, now a broken shell of a woman. “Do with my secrets what you must.”

My heart tripped over its own rhythm. I overlooked her despair about our exile and waited for her to speak.

“Rasputin used . . . uncommon magic. We’d consulted countless spell masters and doctors about Alexei’s condition. Only Rasputin could heal his episodes. But that was because Rasputin and I had an agreement. An agreement your papa did not condone.”

Her voice turned as mechanical as a record on a turntable. “Rasputin’s spell work alone was not enough to help Alexei. So I allowed him to draw from my health. It was an exchange. He channeled my good health into Alexei during the direst times. That is why I grew ill.”

“But . . . how is that possible?” I breathed. “I’ve never heard of such spells.”

Mamma shrugged. “I did not question his ways.”

“Is that why you have a weak heart?” Rasputin did this to my mother? Spell masters were supposed to help the people. Heal them. How did I not connect her illness with his arrival at our palace?

“I demanded it, Nastya! It was a small sacrifice to keep my son alive. Any mother—peasant or royal—would have done the same.”

Perhaps that comforted her, but instead of relief I felt only fear at such raw power. For the first time I understood the people’s caution. They had known Rasputin had mysterious spell powers, and in their fear they destroyed the line of spell masters.