Chapter 18: The Pious Boy

In the past, Russia’s succession law had been a fairly loose affair.

Even a woman could take the throne, and the heir was whomever the emperor designated.

But that very looseness meant the court spent the entire eighteenth century awash in coups, until finally, in 1797, Paul I wrote primogeniture into law.

In present-day Russia, so long as even one member of the male line still draws breath, no woman can succeed.

Furthermore, the eldest son takes absolute precedence, and not even the emperor himself can name an heir.

In other words, Nicholas II, who had produced four daughters in a row, could not pass the throne to his children even if he wanted to.

Which was why the Empress’s standing within Russia kept shrinking.

When Olga was born, everyone laughed it off.

The birth of a first daughter was a joyous occasion all Russia was glad to celebrate.

Things were still fine when Tatiana was born.

If the Empress conceived this often, surely the birth of a Tsesarevich was just around the corner; people could still hold on to that hope.

But then Maria was born, and murmurs started that this was getting a little dangerous.

And when Anastasia arrived, distrustful looks wondering whether the Empress was fated to bear nothing but daughters spread across the whole court.

It got bad enough that even among the common people, a rumor began to spread that the German woman had come to finish off the Russian imperial house.

“But the one being born this time is the Tsesarevich, right?”

-True enough. The only problem being that he’s a hemophiliac.

“What a wretched twist of fate. Four daughters, and then the son she wanted so badly is born with hemophilia.”

Hemophilia is a hereditary disorder in which a shortage of clotting factors in the blood causes persistent bleeding.

A mild case is not so different from an ordinary person’s life, but sadly, the Tsesarevich Alexei who would be born as my little brother was going to be a severe hemophiliac.

Even without any particular impact, blood would burst out inside his joints and muscles, and he would suffer bleeding that refused to stop for days on end.

-In a case like that, he usually wouldn’t live past thirty at best. Though the irony is that even that short lifespan never meant anything in the first place.

If the original history held, Tsesarevich Alexei was fated to be shot along with his family, so he would not even live out that short span.

All the more reason there was no time to sit around feeling bitter.

If only to keep the family from meeting such a tragic end, I had a duty to make the most of this situation.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty the Empress! Congratulations!”

Summoned to the Tsar’s study, I clasped my hands together and beamed brighter than anyone.

“Ho ho, thank you, Misha.”

“I’ll pray every single day that this time His Imperial Highness the Tsesarevich is born.”

“Oh, will you?”

“Yes. Starting tomorrow, I’ll get up at dawn every day and pray to the Lord. I’ll ask Him to please send Her Majesty the Empress a Tsesarevich this time for sure.”

“The thought alone is a gift.”

Nicholas II’s eyes went misty.

The Empress seated beside him, meanwhile, wore an expression tangled beyond words.

She was so flustered that not a shred of what scheme is that brat cooking up this time… was staying hidden.

But however suspicious she might be, the words that had come from an eight-year-old’s mouth were so admirable, so lovely, that she could hardly object.

Her husband’s illegitimate son was offering to pray for her safe delivery; she could not very well tell him no.

“…Thank you, Misha.”

The Empress’s thanks, when it finally made it out of her mouth, came out about half a tone lower than usual, but that much I could let slide as charming.

Judging by their reactions, they were taking it as nothing more than the sort of thing a child says, so explaining myself at length would only have wasted everyone’s breath.

And so at dawn the next day, I genuinely offered a dawn prayer.

“Holy Lord, please watch over Her Majesty the Empress so that she may bear a healthy Tsesarevich. Please send us the child who will become the pillar of our Russian Empire….”

Five in the morning, before the sun had even risen.

I heard later that the prayer aloud ringing out from my room startled the chamber attendant dozing in the corridor half out of his skin.

Why pray aloud, of all things?

It was not merely to let the people outside know that I was praying.

-If you keep your mouth shut and pray silently, who knows what the Empress will find to pick at. You could get people saying, that boy’s shut up in there muttering something; you don’t suppose it’s a curse?

Exactly.

But if I prayed out loud like this, wouldn’t the attendant listening in the corridor pass the contents along word for word?

Every dawn, Young Master Misha prays aloud for the safe delivery of His Imperial Highness the Tsesarevich, they would say.

Of course, I had no intention of spending such precious time on prayer alone.

The quiet dawn was also a time when I could calmly organize my plans without anyone disturbing me.

-All right, I’ll lay it out for you, so listen up and we’ll move on it this afternoon. Today’s briefing starts with the Far East. You know Japan’s riding the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and going all-out on its military buildup, right? Going by the timing, figure less than six months until war.

Since I was praying out loud, no one outside came anywhere near, saying the Young Master was still at his prayers.

In other words, there was no more perfect sealed room anywhere in the palace right now.

-The War Ministry’s reports say the Far East Command’s combat readiness is a mess. The supply line depends on the single track of the Trans-Siberian Railway, and the defensive works at Port Arthur aren’t even half finished. We’ll deal with that later, so today let’s just sort out what we can actually touch.

“…Lord, please grant Russia peace….”

Maybe it was the dual-core processor installed in my brain, but keeping the prayer going while drawing up war-preparation plans in my head did not feel awkward in the slightest.

-The very first thing we need to do is plant the impression that you’re not just clever, but a child who cares about the imperial family more deeply than anyone.

Astonishingly, this country still ranks piety above brilliance as a virtue.

Isn’t the Tsar himself the prime example?

The pride of being Russia’s Tsar, set upon the throne by God, is the alpha and omega of the man called Nicholas II.

How would a man like that look upon a son who offers dawn prayers every single day?

If the Empress bears a son?

The first thing he will think of, inevitably, is a certain small child who prayed at dawn every day, rain or snow.

If she bears a daughter, things will get a bit strange, but I know perfectly well that this is an investment that cannot fail.

-Best of all, it feels sincere, doesn’t it. Don’t lose that first resolve; let’s keep the act up properly.

How rude. It is sincere.

The hope that my adorable little siblings would enjoy long lives instead of dying violent deaths was absolutely no lie.

I had merely stacked a few calculations on top of that sincerity.

-Yeah, yeah, got it, now keep listening to the briefing. The Tsesarevich arrives in ten months, but the war breaks out in four. So let’s get our priorities straight.

“…Please reward the faithful hearts of His Majesty and Her Majesty the Empress….”

At a mere eight years old, going to war myself was out of the question, but I knew one secret that could dramatically raise Russia’s fighting strength.

Before the war breaks out, use the reorganized Okhrana to cut away the incompetents whose absence would be a blessing.

“…Send us the sturdy pillar who will hold up this Russian Empire….”

After all, the greatest threat in any war is never the enemy’s fiercest general but the troll within one’s own ranks.

Before the year was out, I would finish the housecleaning first.

* * *

“Your Majesty. It is reported that Young Master Mikhail has been rising at dawn every day of late to offer prayers.”

At the chamber attendant’s report over breakfast, Nicholas II’s head and Empress Alexandra’s turned almost in unison.

“It wasn’t just talk?”

“No, Your Majesty. Ever since the Young Master heard the news that Her Majesty was with child, he has risen at five o’clock every morning to pray aloud.”

“…Ohh.”

“The content of the prayers is a plea that Her Majesty the Empress may safely deliver a healthy Tsesarevich. The attendants and ladies-in-waiting on duty in the corridor hear it every day and marvel at it….”

The Tsar’s eyes reddened in an instant.

“Misha… truly, every day…?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. Today makes the third day.”

“Ohh… how can a child be so good….”

Unlike the Tsar, overcome with emotion, Empress Alexandra wore an expression difficult to define in a single word.

That child, that impurity of an illegitimate son who had come attached to the palace, was praying every day for the birth of the Tsesarevich?

Think as she might, it was hard to put a bad interpretation on it.

Could diligence enough to rise at five every morning at that age and pray really be faked?

Whatever calculation might lie beneath it, the content itself was a prayer for her and her unborn child, was it not?

She was beginning to feel that she herself was the ugly one for trying to read it badly.

“Well… he’ll keep it up a few more days and then quit, no doubt.”

The Empress murmured as much and picked up her knife.

Four more days passed after that.

Mikhail’s dawn prayers did not stop for a full week.

“Young Master, today makes a week. Are you truly all right? The sun isn’t even up yet….”

“I’m fine. I want to repay the kindness His Majesty the Emperor and Her Majesty the Empress have shown me, even if only like this.”

An eight-year-old child, beaming brightly at the attendant’s words.

Around this time, the mood inside the palace slowly began to shift.

“Have you heard? Young Master Mikhail prays every dawn, and it’s already been a week.”

“Not a single day missed, they say. Truly remarkable. There’s a reason His Majesty brought him to the palace, after all.”

At first it was nothing more than a curiosity.

“They always said he was clever, but who knew his faith ran that deep?”

“Truly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in this palace pray so steadfastly, apart from the priests.”

“You couldn’t do it without meaning it. Five o’clock every single morning….”

The whispers soon turned to admiration, and the admiration, in turn, to awe.

It was only natural that the epithet attached to Mikhail within the palace changed as well.

From the prodigy the Tsar had brought home, to the Pious Boy.

“They say even His Excellency Pobedonostsev heard the Young Master’s prayers in person and wiped away tears.”

“But of course. He is the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod; how proud he must be, seeing how deeply his young pupil cares for the imperial house.”

A fortnight passed, then three weeks, and Mikhail’s prayers never lapsed even once.

“Sunny, you’ve heard, haven’t you? Misha has been offering dawn prayers for three weeks now.”

“Yes… I know.”

“It would be impossible unless he meant it. How can a child be so admirable?”

There was no doubting that the emotion in the Tsar’s eyes was genuine.

Illegitimate or not, the fact that such a son stood at his side must have filled his heart to bursting.

Instead of answering, the Empress raised her teacup to her lips.

Something complicated was welling up in her, but she could no longer find fault.

To doubt a child who had prayed for her every single dawn, unwavering, for nearly a month; no matter how skilled at self-justification one might be, conscience would not permit it.

Not that she had entirely withdrawn her suspicion of the boy.

But her conscience as a human being and her faith as a devout Christian kept catching her by the ankle.

The very act of harboring hostility toward such a small child was becoming a source of shame.

“Niki.”

“Hm?”

“…Tell Misha I’m grateful.”

Gratitude was gratitude.

At the Empress’s decision to leave it at that for now, the Tsar’s mouth shot skyward in a grin that hooked over both ears.

In the end, Nicholas II found fewer and fewer reasons to refuse the proposals this darling son sent up through the Okhrana.

Reborn as the Tsar’s right hand, the Okhrana threw itself first into weeding out the disloyal, the men who ignored and trampled the Tsar’s authority.

The first site to go under the scalpel, as it happened, was the Far East.

When the Okhrana dug into things as Misha advised, traces of funding ties between Viceroy of the Far East Alexeyev’s circle and the remnants of Bezobrazov’s clique came spilling out one after another.

Next was Stoessel, fortress commander of Port Arthur.

“Your Majesty, the evidence of embezzlement from the construction funds for the fortress’s defensive works is entirely unambiguous.”

“Then… he must be dismissed?”

“In addition, an analysis has come up holding that it is inappropriate for Admiral Abaza, patron of Bezobrazov, the ringleader of the Reka Yalu (Yalu River) funding scandal, to hold on to his current post.”

“Hm, there is sense in that as well.”

While the pregnant Empress devoted herself to prenatal care in hopes of bearing a son.

Nicholas II, quite unlike his usual self, methodically confiscated the positions of the freeloaders who did nothing but diligently devour the state’s grain.

His conviction grew ever firmer that if he did this now, then one day, when Mikhail was grown, he would serve the Tsesarevich yet to be born and make Russia stronger still.

Wasn’t it obvious?

A child who longed for the Tsesarevich’s birth more ardently than anyone could hardly be weak in loyalty.

With the Tsar’s wholehearted backing, the Hundred Days’ Miracle Plan to Overhaul Russia began.