The Son of the Czar: an historical romance

Front matter

AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE BY JAMES M. GRAHAM LONDON AND NEW YORK HARPER tf BROTHERS 45 ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1898 [All rights reserved] CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. A FIRST ESCAPE I II. THE PRINCE'S ADVISERS II III. ONE OF THE TRIALS OF A CZAR 30 IV. ALEXIS AMONG HERETICS 44 V. THE PRINCE IN THE PART OF A LOVER ... 59 VI. INTRUDERS _ 74 VII. THE BETROTHAL 101 VIII. HOPE FOR THE CZAR'S ENEMIES 108 IX. A POINT OF HEREDITY I27 X. THE PRINCE'S WEDDING 138 XI. THE CZAREVNA'S HOME LIFE I56 XII. TEMPORARY SEPARATION 184 XIII. A LAST VISIT TO GERMANY I95 XIV. ALEXIS ANSWERS A QUESTION IN GEOGRAPHY . . 211 XV. MORE OF THE CZAREVNA'S HOME LIFE . 226 XVI. ALEXIS ONCE MORE IN THE PART OF A LOVER . . 242 XVII. THE CZAREWITCH A WIDOWER 273 XVIII. THE CZAR'S WARNINGS; AND ANOTHER ESCAPE 279 XIX. A GUEST OF THE HOUSE OF AUSTRIA .... 315 XX.

THE IMPERIAL CAPTIVE 328 XXI. A FEW WORDS IN RUSSIAN 347 XXII. ONCE MORE IN THE TOILS 365 XXIII. THE PRINCE'S LAST WELCOME TO MOSCOW 387 XXIV. ALEXIS DEPRIVED OF HIS COUNSELLORS . . CONTENTS VIII PAGE CHAP. XXV. EUPHROSYNE PROVES HERSELF A LOYAL SUBJECT 419 XXVI. FURTHER CONFESSIONS DEMANDED .... 43° XXVII. ADVOCATES OF MERCY 45*5 XXVIII. A STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE .... 4*57 XXIX. THE WORLD HEARS OF THE PRINCE'S DEATH 476 XXX. THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST 4§3

Chapter I

A FIRST ESCAPE About the close of October, in the year 1709, three men of soldierly bearing strode up and down outside the door of a long, low-roofed house not far from the banks of the Neva. The afternoon of a cheerless day was waning, and the surroundings of the men were far from picturesque. The ground they trod formed part of what was little better than a frozen morass, from which there grimly emerged a wilderness of dwellings, all of wood. Some of these were laid out in even rows, and were designed with a certain severe sym metry. The greater portion were rude hovels, irregularly dispersed over the dismal waste. Through an opening of the road in which the men walked was discernible, to the north-west, a dockyard, on the stocks of which lay a ship that seemed to be approaching completion.

Encircling the horizon beyond was a diadem of forests ; and the landscape was immersed in a still deeper gloom by the ashen haze at present closing over the sombre crown of trees. " He is late : hours beyond the time," said one of the men. " Did you ever know him keep a tryst — signalled though he has been ? " A " I hear a whisper that he will be at length taken to task in earnest." " You have heard right," joined in the eldest of the three. "There's no one but must see the need at last of being decisive, of striking to the heart of things at once. The day of indulgence is over." " Otherwise our dear prince would shift and twist and change hue according to his wont. Though he by no means inclines to feed on light and air, he has all the other qualities of the chameleon." " And the greater the peril of delay and of losing sight of him when he is once caught."

" Well, let us hope his father's abrupt method of aiming at the centre of the target may not scare the young gentle man out of his wits. Leaving the main point, then, this is an unfortunate day for his highness to be impressed by the beauties of Petersburg." " What city in the world would stand a fair comparison in his eyes with Moscow ? Let Petersburg have its chance. In a few months' time — you'll see, you'll see " "What shall we see?" asked the second of the two younger men. " Make any simile you like, a Fury changed into one of the three Graces, Atropos transformed into Venus — and so forth. But to come back to the present world, you both know that my father has taken a good piece of ground here lately ? " " Are we to guess for what purpose?" " I'll disappoint you in the malicious pleasure of making impertinent guesses.

Not to keep you in suspense, he has drawn up plans for a new residence for himself. And what will it be made of, think you ? " " Mud." " Tolstoi, I'll begin to call you vile names. I'll persuade my father to trick you out of that mission to Brunswick you've set your heart upon." " Tell us at once what the residence will be made of." " Stone, Sergius Maranoff ; stone, Peter Tolstoi ; stone, you rascals both. The first house of stone in Petersburg. When I told his majesty last night, he said he hardly knew whether to cane my father for anticipating him, or to make me drunk for bringing him the good news." " He must have decided on the latter alternative," said Tolstoi ; " for the effects have not worn off yet. But stay, do neither of you hear anything ? " The three stopped in their pacing to and fro.

Distinct from the noises of splitting axe and tapping hammer in the near dockyard could be heard the ring of bells and clatter of horses' hoofs in the opposite direction. Tolstoi gazed long to south-eastward ; then with sudden orders to his young companions, Alexander Golovkin and Sergius Maranoff, he hurried into the house. Golovkin remained where he was ; Maranoff went across the road to the window of a barrack-like structure and held up his hand. Then a gateway opened and a score of men-at-arms came forth and took their stand on either side of the door by which Tolstoi had entered. Five minutes later a comfortable sledge drawn by four horses, and followed by a half-dozen smaller con veyances, came rumbling and jolting along the uneven road, and halted near the double file of soldiers. Tolstoi, who had reissued from the house, came forward with head uncovered and face composed to an expression of reverence, and opened the carriage door.

After a pause a young man about nineteen years of age, dressed in thickly furred robes that reached almost to the ground, alighted. He was of good height, but thin and pale ; with a prominent forehead, eyes dark, round and dreamy ; and a moustache and beard in their first growth. He turned a scared face on either side of him, fixed his gaze with special disfavour alternately on Tolstoi and Maranoff, and brushing past with a convulsive movement entered the house in silence. He was met within the threshold by a chamberlain, who ushered him into a room and left him. It was a room some twenty feet square, and furnished with extreme plainness. The plank floor had no carpet. Toward the upper centre was an oak table of moderate size, without a cover. Here and there were a dozen chairs of the same wood, as neatly made as the table, but with a similar absence of elaborate ornamentation.

On the table lay an open box of mathematical instruments, a mariner's compass, a tele scope, some books, a lighted lamp, and a few parcels wrapped in paper. To the walls were nailed a number of models of ships. The young gentleman took in these objects with one glance of shuddering disrelish, then fixed his eyes on a door by the north-western angle of the room. The sound of a firm approaching tread had struck upon his ears. The furred cap which he had removed from his head he now let fall on to a chair beside which he had been standing; and the door opened. There advanced into the chamber a man who seemed not much more than thirty-five years old. He was a little over six feet high, with a well-knit, powerful frame. His complexion was dark. His broad and high forehead surmounted a pair of black eyes, vivid with the lustre distinctive of features of the wild Eastern warrior cast.

He had a clearly chiselled nose and well-cut lips. He wore his own short curling black hair and a small moustache. His cheeks and chin were clean shaven. His dress, a little mud-stained in parts, consisted of a doublet with bronze buttons, left open and reaching slightly below the knees, a flannel shirt, trunks brown in colour like the coat, thick yellow hose and stout shoes. He advanced with a smile to the youth. And Peter the First of Russia and his eldest son Alexis, heir to the throne, stood face to face. The Czarewitch lowered his eyes and made a confused attempt to kneel and kiss the Emperor's hand. The father prevented this by taking the prince's two hands, kissing him, and pointing to a chair. Then he took a seat himself, leant back, and generally comported himself in a way designed to set the Crown Prince at ease.

" I can scarce think the weather favoured you on the way from Moscow ? " "There was a thunderstorm on the second day, sire; later on, snow fell, and we were three times menaced by wolves." " Any mishaps ? " " One man fell off a sledge while drunk, and was torn to pieces — or two men, I think. I forget." " Well, you at least are here and safe, thank God ; and I have prepared as good quarters for you as this place can afford." " May I ask your majesty how long I am to remain?" " Let me trust that you will be my guest in a way for three days at least. It rests with you to stay longer." Alexis bowed, stared on the floor, and did not answer. The expression of mingled timidity and sullenness on his face could not escape notice ; and it was with some thing of an effort that Peter resumed the conversation.

" You are perhaps tired after the journey. Shall I put off till to-morrow or next day what I have to say to you ? " " I am willing to hear your majesty now," was the hasty rejoinder. " Very good," said the Czar, leaning across the table ; " I know your disposition, and I have no desire to take you unawares. I must introduce matters of feeling, but I shall try to make them as little distressing as possible." Alexis began to look uneasier than before. "Take my word for it," continued Peter, "my constant wish to be frank with you, and, if I may say so, to give you the example of sincerity, can never harm you. Let me begin with one of my chief sources of sorrow. You have a swarm of advisers in Moscow to whom, apparently, you reveal your inmost thoughts. Your own father, who should be first among your counsellors, is excluded from all share in your confidence.

Come, now: let us open ourselves to one another heart to heart; why should this be so, Alexis ? " The Czarewitch moved in his chair, but made no answer. " There is one thing which, either of your own accord or under the prompting of others, you seem never to realise. It is with hesitation that I refer to it. You cannot, even with your distaste for troublesome reminders, be more embarrassed in hearing than I am in speaking of my true affection for you, my anxious regard for your welfare." " I never doubted it, sire," stammered the prince. " Listen well while I assure you that this policy of activity, of reform which your intimates view with hatred, or at the best with indifference, dates from the year of your birth, and owes its origin to my thought for you. Yes. When I was younger than you are now, when I was not more than seventeen years old, Heaven gave you to me ; and thence forward the voice of Lefort himself was not a more powerful monitor to me than the mere sight of your baby face.

In that same year a conspiracy broke out which aimed not at my existence alone, but at yours." " I know it, sire." " But has your heart never told you what helped me in such a pass ? My education was far inferior to yours ; yet for many a year even before that date, in my boyhood, my mind had been thronged with brilliant dreams, my heart had been on fire with aspirations for the grandeur of my country. Your helpless infancy, I repeat, was the one impulse I required to point out to me the path of duty. I, your boy-father, crushed the plotters against your life and mine ; and Russia has ever since recognised in me its un disputed master and in you the son whose inheritance none shall dare to question." " I am not worthy of such a father." " You arc pleased to say so," rejoined the Czar in a tone of good-humoured impatience ; then his manner altered to one of intense earnestness.

" I want you to show yourself worthy; indeed, to prove yourself a better man. Believe me, my son, if God would so order circumstances that I should be the Philip of this empire, and you the mightier Alexander to succeed me, I could willingly lay down my life this night." He covered his face hurriedly, for he felt the coming on of one of those convulsions of the nerves which often lent such a pathetic terror to his features in times of supreme passion. And Alexis gazed at him in trepidation, but with no sympathy, and maintained, with an infusion of stubborn weariness, the silence which he had scarcely broken from the commencement of this interview. The Czar looked up after a pause of nearly a minute. His face was once more under control and he resumed with the pleasing smile habitual to him : " Yes : I think that even my good subjects in Moscow will scarcely say that I am selfish in what is done for our common country, that I am an egotist in my patriotism.

Let as many as possible, say I, stand forth and join in the reaping of the harvest ; let every Muscovite heart throb with pride in the doing of the good work ; but above all let me never lose the hope that you will still take a foremost place among my helpers." " I wish I could think myself fitted for such labour as your majesty expects of me." " Do you really wish that ? I am repaid for many an hour of anxiety by hearing you even say so much. And where is the difficulty, Alexis ? Your qualities of mind are good ; as I before remarked, you have had advantages of culture which were denied to me ; you are not wanting in firmness — but that firmness needs to be guided in the right way. Shall I make a suggestion which sums up all that's in my thoughts on this matter ? " " If my father pleases."

"See less of your Moscow advisers and more of your father. Remember, I do not wish to impose my presence irksomely upon you " "Your majesty is too thoughtful of me." " Neither would I insist on your partaking of all the dangers and discomforts to which I subject myself. But let me request you, child, let me entreat you to think less of the entombed past and more of the live world that is yearly changing before your eyes. Three months ago our greatest enemy, Charles of Sweden, was prostrated by a blow from which it is doubtful if he will recover. Yet on that day of our overwhelming of the foreign invaders, I had not you at my side to embrace ; you were not present to share my joy at the triumph of our arms." " I was not well, sire. I was a-bed in Moscow." " And who were the consolers that hurried around you in your sickness ?

Men who, to the best of my intelligence, actually bewailed the victory of Pultava, as nine years ago they exulted in our defeat at Narva. But there, there, I must remember that you are my guest. I'll not seem to reproach you. Hear me when I once more say, abandon these Moscow advisers ; they are neither true lovers of their country nor sincere friends to you." " I agree with you, sire." Peter looked steadily at the downcast face before him, and went on : "I have a plan sketched out for your future which I mean to submit to you — but not to-night ; to-morrow, perhaps." "To-morrow — you will have more to say?" " Yes, I have said enough to you for the present." " Very well, sire," said the prince with alacrity. "Will you sup with me or at your own lodging ? " " At the quarters your majesty has graciously assigned me — if I may," was the hurried answer.

" Then we shall not see each other again this evening," said the monarch after a pause. " Think of what I have said. But do not brood over it. Let me hear to-morrow that you have slept well." Alexis rose from his chair, hastened across the room, and with tears in his eyes knelt and kissed his father's hands. " I shall think over it, sire," he cried, " I shall obey you in every way." The Czar laid his hand for a moment on the prince's head, then raised him, and immediately touched a bell on the table. " Show his highness to his lodging," he said to the groom who answered the summons. And the Czarewitch with a stealthy look of relief glided from the apartment. Peter was no sooner left alone than he commenced to unpack the parcels on the table. They consisted of books on mathematics and navigation, a few optical instruments, and some carpenters' tools, all seemingly despatched from foreign countries.

Among the objects was one which attracted the smiling notice of the Emperor. It was a small axe. The handle was of bronze, worked into the semblance of a covering of rough scales, designed to make secure the grasp of the wielder. The head was of fine steel and the edge was keen as that of a razor. The implement rested in a flexible leather sheath, and the whole might have weighed little more than five pounds. Peter was still examining this weapon when a knock came to the door ; he murmured a word in answer, and Count Tolstoi entered the room. " You have questioned the servants ? " inquired the monarch without raising his head. " I have, sire." " And your opinion — in one sentence ? " " I think your majesty's presence is required in Moscow." " We shall see," was the rejoinder of the sovereign, as he still played with the axe.

" Let Alexander Menchikoff be with me early to-morrow." Menchikoff appeared at eight o'clock next morning in the corridor outside the rude bedroom of the Czar. He was frowning and agitated, and did not wait to be an nounced. " His highness has gone," he shot forth in a stammer. "Left Petersburg?" "With every soul that he brought here, your majesty." Peter's face did not change. He lay looking before him in silence for a few seconds only. " You and Tolstoi and young Alexander Golovkin be in my office below in ten minutes from now," said the sovereign at length. " I start for Moscow at noon," he said when he had come down stairs, " and you three shall accompany me." He caught sight of the little axe which had lain on the table from the night before. "The prince complained of the wolves he fell in with on his way here," he observed.

" On my word, I shall take this pretty weapon with me. If we are menaced, it shall be used for the first time against the brutes that put my son in danger."

Chapter II The Prince's Advisers

Alexis had been taken to a lodging far superior in seemli ness and convenience to that of his father. The Emperor, in those years of the arduous beginnings of Petersburg, had first satisfied his own wants with a hut on the Isle of Yenis sari. Later, he had moved over to the mainland, into a house of three rooms with no carpets, and with furniture plain almost to meanness. The dwelling which he had founded for possible tenancy by the Crown Prince was of wood, like his own, but larger and more carefully built. In its internal arrangements it had even some pretence to luxury. The Czarewitch, however, with mind turned elsewhere, had no place for impressions other than those of consternation and dismay at his present surroundings — the plague-breathing swamp, the sordid hovels ever threatened by the rising Neva, and above all the sea, whose air, borne from the Gulf of Fin land, filled him with dread and abhorrence.

At all risks, therefore, and under his usual prompting of combined timidity and stubbornness, he was bent on bringing to a close with little delay this reluctant visit to his father. On leaving the Czar he had communicated his purpose to his half-glad, half-petrified companions and retainers ; and long before sunrise next morning, with all the precautions of pri soners escaping from a hostile camp, the party had set forth on its return journey south-eastward. It was with something of the fearful gladness of a child who has been through a chamber thronged with imaginary spectres, now left far behind ; something of an exultation, in which comparison with his late environment would have appeared to him literally blasphemous, that Alexis came about eight days afterwards within sight of Moscow.

And, indeed, he had a higher justification than the sentiment of contrasts for the enthusiasm which thrilled him as he now drew near the sacred capital. It was ten o'clock on a clear morning of November; and as the prince looked out from his carriage, his hysterical fancy became more firmly than ever seized with the con viction that this was not a city built by the hand of man, but one which had come forth at the call of some fantastic yet loving angel. There it lay, seemingly less a town of this bustling, war-shaken empire, than one huge monastery held moveless in the now equally torpid folds of the frozen Moskwa. There sprang up in bewildering multitude the fiery steeples and domes of gold, of silver, of star-sprinkled azure, all standing sharp out against the stainless heaven. Above each of the churches towered and flamed five or six cupolas, below which were crowds of roofs almost uniformly painted in a yellowish-green, impart ing to the city the semblance of a verdant plain withered by the sun and overspread with pavilions armoured in shining metal.

Distinguishable from these expanses were numbers of vast concentric enclosures, with walls and towers battle merited and surmounted by gradually ascending scales of little bells. One of these enclosures, the nucleus of ail the others, the heart of the holy city, contained the triangular platform of the Kremlin, the venerable home of the Czars : a congregation of white cathedrals and palaces, a wilderness of golden orbs and crosses and domes and spires, from the midst of which darted aloft the slender structure of the Terem, the Russian Seraglio, in its brilliant garment of enamelled tiles. To the right of the Kremlin was the cathedral of St. Basil, not one church, but a tumultuous assemblage of superposed shrines, a barbaric monument seemingly designed in mimicry of some fantastic monster beheld in a nightmare ; a dragon, or some still more name less animal, with its many-coloured scales and its twelve heads, each cumbrously crowned with a turban of folds intervolved in the most curious fashion.

Beyond the heart of the city was a labyrinth of lanes with irregular houses — a mass of buildings pieced together from painted woods of every colour, buildings whose outlines were lost in the maze of flowerless gardens and the dazzle of frozen ponds. Toward the extreme horizon, on the high banks of the river, rose a vast belt of monasteries with cre nellated ramparts, a relic of the times when the warlike and devoted monks interposed themselves and their conven tual strongholds to guard the holy city against invasion by the Tartars. As the traveller drew nearer, any impression of lifelessness which might have been conveyed by the aspect of the town wore off. It was a festival day. Up and down many a narrow street there came and went, in solemn procession, long lines of variously dressed figures — monks and priests in their sacred vestments, noblemen and beggars, merchants and soldiers in robes of strange forms and vivacious hues, the marching trains dimly seen amid volumes of incense, and having an appearance from afar of rainbows moving under wreaths of thin white cloud.

Again, over the whole of the panorama, from tower and dome and pinnacle, there came ringing along the light winds a clamour of metallic sound, the tiny bells in the steeples aloft mingling their high keen trill with the bass of the droning bronze, and the storm of harmony from the innumerable chimes making the air tremble for leagues around. Almost within the moment of his catching a first glimpse of Moscow, Alexis had knelt down in his carriage and had supplemented the matins already intoned by him with a long prayer of thanksgiving for his arrival thus far in safety. On entering the city he dismissed the whole of his attendants, with the exception of the priest who had accompanied him on his journey. He then proceeded to the Monastery of the Miracle, where he was welcomed with tears of rapture by the monks, and served without delay with a meal of which he partook heartily.

He next asked one of the brethren waiting on him if" His Holiness the Protopope was in." " The Most Venerable Father went to assist at Mass at the Cathedral of the Assumption, your highness." " Mass must be over now. Heaven pardon the sinful delay which prevented me from being in time for the cele bration ! Has he not had time to return ? " "I shall see," said the brother, and left the room. He came back speedily. The Protopope had arrived, had gone to his apartments, and was now waiting for his highness. Thereupon the Czarewitch arose and followed the monk along a tortuous passage, toward the end of which was a half open door. Alexis knocked gently, timidly ; and after listening in patience for an indolently postponed summons, entered, closed the door against his conductor, and stood in presence of the Protopope, Iakoff Ignatieff.

The confessor and religious guide ofthe Czarewitch was a tall, heavily built man of fifty, with a face of no great intel lectual refinement, with little of thoughtful or spiritual calm in eye or cast of feature — the calm of passion suppressed, of doubt dispelled, of resolution serenely but irrevocably formed — but rather with a puffed expression of assurance in eyes and mouth, a sort of arrogant decisiveness in all his movements. He had found time to put off his robes of ceremony, and now appeared in the ordinary attire of a pope of the Greek Church. He looked at his penitent with coldly raised eyebrows and parted lips, and scarcely waited for the door to close on them before saying : " I thought it well to have the evidence of my own eyes that you had returned, before crediting the rumour which I heard within the last half-hour.

Have you been to the new town at all ? " " Yes, holy father." "Went within sight of it, perhaps, and rushed back screaming like a child who has had a glimpse of some terrifying prodigy ? " " Your holiness will not mock or blame me when you know all," said the prince in a pacifying tone. " Let me hear what you have to say." Alexis then gave an account in his own way of what had passed between himself and his father. All reference was left out to such marks of courtesy and even tenderness as he had received ; and careful emphasis, on the other hand, was laid on the Czar's denunciations of the young man's advisers in Moscow. Ignatieff knew his pupil, and had no difficulty in detecting the omissions and exaggerations in the tale. He shot ques tion after question against the shrinking Czarewitch, until he felt convinced of having gained an insight into the true state of affairs.

" You should have remained for the little time he men tioned," said the priest, his sorehead laden with a lowering anxiety. " Remained ?" echoed the prince with something like a screech of dismay. " Are you serious ? Does your holiness not know me yet ? Remain three days, perhaps more, alone with my father ? I thought you would never have forgotten that I'd rather be working at the galleys for twelve months than sitting front to front with him at table for an hour." " You would be a patient and diligent galley slave." " At the least I have escaped a worse penalty." " I find it the harder to understand why you ventured on the journey at all." "Consider, most reverend " " I consider that you should not have left Moscow." " Could I have disobeyed his direct command ? " "You have done worse. It is not hard to guess what he will think.