The Last Tsar's Dragons

Chapter 24

I could not believe my ears. The prince had actually begun singing, slightly off-key.

I moved back and peeked carefully through the window. Rasputin was still on his feet, though there seemed to be cakes missing from the table. An empty glass stood on the table as well. And Yusupov, that damned upper-class clown, was strumming his guitar and singing lustily. Had he gone faint with worry? It certainly did not sound so. Had he decided not to kill his old friend after all? I ground my teeth. It was hard to tell.

I turned away from the sight, raced up the servants’ stairs, and found Dr. Purishkevich and Grand Duke Dmitri at the top of the stairs that led down to the cellar.

“For the Lord’s sake, what is going on?” I asked, my voice barely more than a whisper. “To my certain knowledge, the monk has eaten several cakes. And had a glass of wine.”

“Two at least,” said Dr. Lazovert, joining us on the stairs. “We heard him ask for a refill. He is….” he whispered as well, “not a man at all, but the very devil. There was enough poison to fell an entire unit of Cossacks. I know, I put the stuff in it myself.” He looked wretched and stank of fear-sweat and rough liquor.

“Pull yourself together,” I began, but it was too late. The doctor’s eyes had rolled back, and he sank into a stupor.

Purishkevich caught him before he tumbled down the stairs and broke his fool neck. I took his hands to try to revive him.

The grand duke just looked disgusted. At me. “The plan was yours. So what next?”

I finally took it upon myself to slap the doctor’s face hard enough that my own hand hurt from the blow. It was more frustration than medicinal, and either way, it did nothing to revive him.

All the while we whispered together, Yusupov’s thready voice singing tune after tune made its way up the stairs.

“Should we go down?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“No, no, no,” Purishkevich whispered vehemently, “that will give the game away.”

“But surely he is already suspicious.”

“He is a peasant,” said the grand duke, which explained nothing.

I was suddenly a-tremble. After all we had planned—I had planned—for it to come to this? This is the worst possible outcome. Oh, had I but known.

Suddenly the door to the cellar opened, and we conspirators all backed up. I have to admit, I was the fastest. But it was just poor Yusupov, saying over his shoulder, “Have another cake, Father. I will see what is keeping my wife.”

And Rasputin’s voice, somewhat hoarsened, called up to him, “Love and eggs are best when they are fresh!”

“A peasant,” the grand duke repeated, as Yusupov came up to find us.

If the doctor had been trembling, the prince was a leaf on a tree, all aflutter and sweating. “What should I do? What can I do?”

“He cannot be allowed to leave half-dead,” Purishkevich said.

The grand duke handed Yusupov a pistol. “Be a man.”

At that, Yusupov bent over like an old man from the weight of what he had to do, then went back down the stairs, holding the pistol behind him.

We heard Rasputin call out, “For the Lord’s sake, give me more wine.” And then he added, “With God in thought, but mankind in the flesh.”

A moment later we heard a shot. Though I’d expected it, I still jumped in shock. Then a scream. I didn’t think it was Rasputin. Dr. Lazovert sat bolt upright, though I had no idea why a slap and a gunshot couldn’t wake him but a scream did.

“Come,” said the grand duke, “that will have done it.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure, but in this company, it was not my place to say.

Two of them ran down the stairs one right after another, the grand duke first, and the quickly recovered Dr. Lazovert second. Purishkevich stayed behind. And I, trailing a bit later, because I was not actually supposed to be there, came last.

Rasputin had fallen backward onto the white bearskin rug, his eyes closed. There was blood. Much blood.

I felt faint. “Definitely faint,” I heard myself saying.

Dr. Lazovert knelt by Rasputin’s side, felt for his pulse. He did not seem moved by the blood. In fact, the sight of it seemed to recover him even more.

Perhaps in his profession he is more at ease with blood than poison.

He looked up at us, saying phlegmatically, “He is dead.”

But, as it turned out, that was premature. I began to wonder about the doctor’s qualifications, for not a moment later, Rasputin’s left eye, then his right, opened, and he stared straight at Yusupov with those green eyes that reminded me of dragon eyes. Eyes that were suddenly filled with hate.

The doctor fell back on his rather large behind.

I found myself saying, “I gather that a man arising from sure death is no ordinary occurrence for a doctor.” Nobody paid me any attention.

Yusupov screamed. Not like a man, but like some kind of monkey. It had definitely been he who’d screamed earlier, and not Rasputin. Then he began to gibber. Any second, I thought, he will climb the curtains and be away. And I will be right after him.

But in fact I could not move at all. It was as if we were all in some sort of horrific fairy tale and had been turned to stone. Neither could poor Yusupov move, though at least he’d stopped screaming.

The grand duke was cursing under his breath. And I thought we were about to lose Dr. Lazovert again, who had struggled to his feet but was looking mighty wobbly, like a man standing in a very high wind.

“Long whiskers cannot take the place of brains,” said Rasputin, foam bubbling from his mouth as he spoke. He leaped up, grabbed poor Yusupov by the throat with one hand, and tore an epaulet from the prince’s jacket with the other. But Yusupov was sweating so badly, the monk’s hand slipped from his throat, and the prince broke away from him, which threw Rasputin down on his knees.

That gave Yusupov time to escape, and he turned and raced up the stairs. He was screaming out to Purishkavich to fire his gun, shouting, “He’s alive! Alive!” His voice was inhuman, a terrified scream, more like a strangled cat than a man.

The three of us left in the room watched, frozen with horror and amazement, as Rasputin, down on all fours, foaming and fulminating, climbed the stairs after him.

Prince Yusupov made it to his parents’ apartments and locked the door after him, but the mad monk, maddened further by all that had happened to him, went straight out the front door into the frigid night. He no longer had on a coat, and we could only hope he would die soon of both frost and the poisoned drink. Not to mention the gunshot.

The others, equally underdressed for the weather, followed him to see what he would do, Dr. Lazovert muttering all the while that Rasputin was a devil and would probably sprout bat wings and fly away.

But the mad monk neither opened bat wings nor flew. Instead, he careened across the snow-covered courtyard toward the iron gate that led to the street, shouting all the while, “Felix, Felix, I will tell everything to the empress.”

At last, Purishkevich raised his gun and fired.

The night seemed one long, dark echo. But he had obviously missed because Rasputin was still standing.

“Fire again!” I cried. “If he gets away and tells his story to the tsar, we are all dead men.” Though we had been making so much noise in public now, we were probably dead men anyway.

Purishkevich fired again and, unbelievably, missed once more.

“Fool!” the grand duke said as Purishkevich bit his own left hand to force himself to concentrate.

That there were only a few streetlights made things even more difficult. But as if he were out hunting deer, Purishkevich carefully sighted down the barrel on the running figure. Amazingly, when he fired a third time—his most difficult shot of the evening—it seemed to strike Rasputin between the shoulders. He shuddered, stopped, but did not fall.

“A devil, I tell you,” cried the doctor. I could hear his teeth chattering with the cold. Or just with fear. Or both.

“I am surrounded by fools,” the grand duke said, and I was inclined to agree with him.

Then Purishkevich shot one last time, and this one hit Rasputin in the head for certain, and he fell to his knees. Purishkevich ran over to him and kicked him hard, a boot to the temple. And with that, the monk finally fell down on his back in the snow.

Suddenly, Yusupov appeared holding a rubber club and began hitting Rasputin hysterically over and over and over again.

The grand duke took hold of the prince’s shoulders and led him away. And not unkindly, for someone who had decried him as a fool mere moments ago.

Only then did I take out the knife that was in my shirt and, unsheathing it, walked over to the body and plunged the blade deep into Rasputin’s heart. It went into his body so smoothly, I could not believe the ease of it.

I wanted to say something profound, anything—but there was nothing more to say. This time, the mad monk’s eyes stayed closed, and he did not arise again.

A servant from the princess’s apartment came out a little later with a rope, and they pulled the body over to the frozen Neva and left it there.

“Should we find a hole and push him in?” I asked, eager to be rid of the evidence.

“Let the world see him,” the grand duke said. “Dead is dead.”

I looked at the mad monk splayed out on the ice and wondered at that. By my count, Rasputin should have died five times that night before the knife decided the end. But despite my earlier worry about the monk’s death being called into question, all I felt then was relief.

“Dead is dead.” I agreed and left the body lying there on the river ice.

When I got home, I soaked for an hour in the tub but could not scrub away the feel of my hand touching Rasputin’s back, when the knife went deep into his body, as if through fresh butter.

“It is ended,” I told my image in the mirror.

But really, it had only begun.