Enchantments: A Novel of Rasputin's Daughter and the Romanovs Read Online Free Page B

walking a few yards. Too faint to stand and put my hair to rights before the mirror, I took the brush back to bed with me, where I found I wasn’t any more equal to the effort of sitting up for as long as it would take to untangle so many snarls.
    “What are you staring at like that?” Varya asked.
    “Nothing. I was just trying to sort out the date.” And to separate the nightmares I’d dreamed from the one I was living.
    “The ninth.”
    “Of January? That’s impossible.”
    “Ask Doctor Botkin. He should know—he’s been in to see you every day.”
    “The admiral? The one with the gold buttons?”
    “He’s not an admiral. He’s a physician.”
    He looked like an admiral, though, with a navy-blue military coat trimmed with enough gold braid to inspire nautical fever dreams, and he wore so much cologne it made me sneeze, which he interpreted as evidence of continued infection, keeping me to my bed for a full week more and quarantined to my room for another one after that. It was February before I made the tsarevich’s acquaintance, stepping into our friendship on a more querulous note than I might have had the tsarina not saddled me with a responsibility I knew I couldn’t meet.
    “You have the reputation of being a rather difficult person,” I said, aborting a curtsy and offering him my hand. I didn’t mean to say it—the words just popped out of my mouth.
    “Really?” he said, squeezing my fingers hard, as if to assert his station. “Who told you that?”
    “I don’t know. Someone must have, but I don’t remember who.”
    “It wasn’t your father, was it?”
    “No,” I said. “A girl at school, most likely. Father never criticized.” Alyosha said nothing. He was more handsome a boy than I’d gathered from photographs, with dark hair and gray eyes. “Do you know why I’m here?” I asked, finding myself annoyed by his good looks and by his height, which allowed him to look down his straight nose at me. “Here at Tsarskoe Selo?”
    “Because my father wished it.”
    “Yes, I suppose that is true, in that nothing happens outside your father’s wishes.” I wondered suddenly—but only after the words left my mouth—if the tsarina had meant me to keep our conversation in confidence. “My understanding is that Father believed Varya and I would be safer here than anywhere else he might send us in his absence. Your mother imagines I will be able to do for you what he did,” I said. “That I can cure you.”
    “Does she?” the tsarevich said. He studied me from where he was standing, leaning against one of the schoolroom desks. There were five, one for each of the Romanov children.
    “She told me she did. She seems to believe Father bequeathed me to your family for the purpose of preserving your health.”
    The tsarevich nodded. “That sounds like Mother.”
    “You seem quite well to me,” I observed.
    “I am at the moment,” he said. “It won’t last though. It never does.” His expression was one of resignation, but he didn’t feel sorry for himself. I could see that much.
    “Well, then,” I said, “I suppose I will be tested when the time comes, and we will discover if I’m of any use to you.”
    Alyosha smiled, his eyes on my face.
    “What are you looking at?” I asked him.
    “Nothing. Your father called you his ‘little magpie.’ I was wondering why.”
    “A pet name, that’s all.” One inspired by my talking too much when excited. “Like a bird in a tree,” Father used to say. But I didn’t explain this to the tsarevich. I was still holding tight to whatever I could that was left of my father, guarding it jealously and keeping it for my own. It wasn’t fair to blame Alyosha, and I didn’t. Still, I had to push the thought away: if it weren’t for his everlasting illness, my father would never have been murdered.
    “You’ll have to …” he said, “I mean, I hope you will forgive my mother. She is … I’m afraid she can be a little unreasonable.