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dukes and princes might even hold an emergency meeting at the Yacht Club, where they would smoke and drink and mutter that something had to be done about that filthy monk who was ruining the prestige of the Tsar, the peasant who was nothing but a stain on the entire House of Romanov. After all, wasn’t he more than likely spying for the Germans, even quite possibly drugging the Tsar himself? Gospodi-good heavens-for the sake of Holy Mother Russia, shouldn’t he be eliminated?
    Yes, I thought with a shudder, Papa’s visions of his own end were not so hard to believe.
    The closer we came to Tsarskoye Selo, the more I could see that the bite of cold night air was invigorating Papa like a dip in the Gulf of Finland. Indeed, as the wintry countryside gave way to villas and small palaces tucked in parks, I was relieved to see that my father appeared in complete control of himself.
    Within minutes of entering the royal village, we came to the long iron fence surrounding the vast palace grounds. Staring across a plain of snow and into the deep night, I caught a distant glimpse of the buttery-yellow walls and white columns of the home Catherine the Great had built more than a century earlier for her favorite grandson, Aleksander I. When we reached the entrance itself, the guards hurriedly swung open the gates without so much as a single question, and the limousine followed the drive up a slight hill. I couldn’t hide my surprise, because for years my father hadn’t been allowed to approach the home of the tsars so directly. Because of an uproar of protest from, among others, nearly the entire Romanov clan, the infamous Rasputin had been forced to sneak into the imperial home via a pretend meeting with a maid in the right wing of the palace. In fact, the outrage against him had grown so vocal recently that the only place he could meet their Imperial Highnesses was down the road at Madame Vyrubova’s tiny house. All this because the chamberlain’s staff listed any visitor to the palace in the Kammerfurier-the court log-available to many officials. Needless to say, whenever the name Rasputin appeared, it sparked another wave of protest about his dark influence on the throne.
    Tonight, however, none of that apparently mattered, for the Delaunay-Belleville limousine pulled up not to the main entrance at the rotunda, or even the right wing, but directly to the left wing, which contained the private apartments of the Tsar and Tsaritsa. And there, dressed in a huge fur coat and perched on the fountain of steps, was plump Madame Vyrubova herself.
    “Come this way at once, Father Grigori,” she pleaded anxiously, leaning heavily on a cane.
    The Empress’s confidante led my father into the palace, and I, ignored, scurried after them. Madame Vyrubova limped horribly, for several years earlier she had nearly been killed in a train accident. When she’d been pulled from beneath a steam radiator and steel girder, no one thought she would live, let alone walk. Taken to the hospital, she received the last rites as the Emperor and Empress, who had been quickly summoned, wept by her side. It was then that Papa had appeared, pushing everyone aside as he rushed to the wounded woman. Taking her limp hand in his, Papa used all his forces, commanding her back to us, the living.
    “Anushka! Anushka!” he called, as the Tsar and Tsaritsa watched in amazement.
    She stirred and opened her eyes for the first time.
    “Speak to me!”
    Her lips trembled and she barely spoke. “Pray for me, Father…”
    “Wake up and rise!”
    Her eyes opened wider but she did not move.
    Father dropped her hand and stumbled in exhaustion from the room, muttering, “She will be a cripple, but she will live.”
    Now, wasting no time, Madame Vyrubova hobbled along, steering us through the large doors and into a reception area, forgetting the registry-where our presence was, nevertheless, duly noted by an official who had worked for this tsar’s father and even the one