Chapter 5: How to Avoid Ruin

Most of Europe’s royal houses have their young children mingle regularly with aristocratic peers.

It was no different in Britain, Germany, or Austria.

Children need friends their own age, after all, and the connections of the highborn make a fine weapon all by themselves.

The Danish royal family, Nicholas II’s mother’s side, was no exception either.

The problem was Empress Alexandra, who ignored this European custom completely.

Raised under Queen Victoria with a moralistic, cloistered education, she utterly despised the dissolute atmosphere of Russian high society.

In the end, she achieved a dark evolution that left her teacher, Queen Victoria, far behind.

The Petersburg society scene, corruption incarnate, is banned outright.

Even contact with cousins was impossible without the Empress’s permission; contact with any outsider besides tutors and servants, absolutely forbidden.

“…At this point, isn’t she just a little unwell in the head?”

-That’s why they’re a match made in heaven. The Tsar and the Empress are both strange people, so don’t they suit each other perfectly?

It’s sad that my own birth father is being insulted and I can’t even argue the point.

Because the truth is, the only reason Alexandra can run wild like that is her husband the Tsar’s unconditional support.

-The way I see it, the healthiest move is just not getting tangled up with that family at all. Though considering how obsessively they overprotect their kids, there probably won’t be any chance to anyway.

Common sense said that parents who sealed their children off from the outside world that thoroughly would naturally keep them from meeting me, too.

Yet astonishingly, a few days later, the Tsar summoned me himself and said something unexpected.

“Misha. Now that you have come to live in the palace with us, it is time you were properly introduced to my daughters.”

“…Pardon?”

“Olga, Tatiana, and Maria will be out in the garden this afternoon. You should join them.”

The face of the Empress standing beside him froze like a stone statue.

“Darling. That is….”

“Sunny, the boy is a distant relative of mine, in the end. If he lives in the palace with us and we still keep him at arm’s length, that itself could set tongues wagging.”

I don’t know what the Tsar said to talk his wife around, but Alexandra didn’t openly object.

It was just that the glare beaming out of her eyes at me looked, to anyone watching, exactly like a death ray.

-Hey, hey, look at that stare. If people could kill with a look, we’d have died ten times over by now.

Shut up. Keep rattling off that nonsense and I’ll end up answering out loud without meaning to.

Still, in contrast to the Empress’s murderous glare, the garden was peaceful and beautiful.

Flower buds were just beginning to open around the pond, and children in white dresses came into view, running among them.

The tallest of the children spotted us and came scampering over.

“Misha! Are you Misha?”

-The touching moment when half-siblings finally meet, huh.

Siblings in name only. It’s not like they’ll ever know we’re related anyway.

Recalling what I knew about the girl who looked to be about my age, I greeted her as naturally as I could.

“Princess Olga?”

“Huh? How did you know?”

“His Majesty told me. He said his eldest daughter was ever so clever.”

“Really? Papa said that? Your name is Misha… Mikhail Odoyevsky, right? The Odoyevskys are a really, really old family!”

That ghost’s memory really is trustworthy after all.

To think his information about people I’d never met, never even heard of, would line up this perfectly.

Olga Nikolaevna, true to her reputation as the brightest and most curious of Nicholas II’s children, chattered away at my side the whole time.

“Where did you live before? I heard it was somewhere in the south. What’s it like there? Is there a sea? We’ve never been.”

“And what did you study there? Can you speak French? French is so hard for me.”

“Father says you might get to study with us. Is that true?”

The barrage of questions poured down like a waterfall.

The way she strung her thoughts together logically, so unlike a seven-year-old, made it clear at once how sharp she was.

“Olga, me too! Me too!”

Six-year-old Tatiana, who had scurried along behind her sister, took Olga’s hand and shyly peeked her face out.

With the same dress as her sister, the same hairstyle, and such plain clothes, they were girls who looked nothing at all like imperial royalty.

“Hello, Big Brother Misha. I’m Tatiana.”

“Hello, Princess Tatiana.”

“Is it really all right to call you big brother?”

“Of course.”

…Half-blood or not, I am her big brother, aren’t I?

On the lawn a little way off, three-year-old Maria toddled along holding her nursemaid’s hand.

And in the pram beside them, the youngest, Anastasia, only a few months old, slept soundly.

“That baby is our littlest sister. Her name’s still hard to say. A-na-sta-si-a. Complicated, right?”

Olga puffed up as if showing off her own pronunciation.

“She’s cute.”

“Right? I’m so happy I have three cute little sisters.”

Being around little children like this felt healing for the first time in ages.

How should I put it.

It felt like my brain, force-aged 30 years by that damn ghost’s knowledge, had gone back to its real age for once.

These children know nothing.

Not that I’m their half-brother, and not how fast this Russia is hurtling toward ruin.

They’re simply delighted that the distant cousin newly arrived at the palace greeted them so politely.

And yet, strangely, the more we talked, the heavier my heart grew.

Olga, chattering away in front of me.

Tatiana, glued to her sister like a shadow.

Maria, laughing happily as she picked flowers at her mother’s side.

Anastasia, asleep in her pram, knowing nothing.

And Alexei, who will be born a few years from now.

Every last one of them, without exception.

On July 17, 1918, in a remote basement in Yekaterinburg, all of them are shot.

Father, mother, four older sisters, the youngest little brother.

Not one member of the family escapes that tragedy.

Alexei, the youngest, not even born yet, grows up tormented by hemophilia, falls to the bullets as the youngest of the siblings, and his hastily buried body is only dug up again long, long afterward.

Isn’t that too horrific an ending to be the fate awaiting these lovely children?

That their father Nicholas II is an incompetent, benighted ruler is an undeniable fact.

And thanks to that incompetence, this country being turned upside down and the whole family being slaughtered is an unavoidable future.

If Seong-jun had possessed Nicholas instead of me, maybe things would be different; but I’m about to turn 8, and I have no means of reversing the Romanov collapse.

Still, no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t find a single reason these children had to be dragged in and sacrificed along with everything else.

Try as I might not to think about it, the image of the seven- and six-year-old girls now chattering so innocently in front of me, lying crumpled on a basement floor, keeps flashing through my mind.

Even the Empress, still glaring at me from a distance with eyes full of distrust, was no exception.

She’s an aggravating woman, yes, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch her entire family turned into bullet fodder.

And above all.

-These people all getting shot means the imperial house itself has fallen, and the imperial house falling means we, as members of that house, meet the exact same fate.

Right. That’s the biggest problem.

If it ever comes to those children being shot, am I supposed to believe I’d walk away unscathed?

Compassion for my family and my own survival instinct are pointing in precisely the same direction.

-Yeah, I think that conclusion you reached last time was the right one after all.

That’s exactly what I said, wasn’t it?

It wasn’t some passing impulse chosen out of despair at having every exit blocked.

There’s nothing for it but to twist this family’s fate with my own hands.

“Mikhail, you’re making a weird face. Do you need the bathroom?”

“They say holding it in gives you a tummy ache. Go quick.”

Watching my little sisters burst into giggles, my resolve somehow hardened all the more.

Do this halfway and it will certainly fail.

So if I’m doing it at all, I’ll do it ready to burn everything down.

I will become the greatest, mightiest commie this country has ever seen.

* * *

Now that the plan was made, there was no time to waste agonizing over it.

Most of the names written in my mother’s journal were impossible to reach, but a single one was different.

Because the moment Seong-jun saw the name of a certain young priest just beginning to make a name for himself through charity work, he threw an absolute fit of excitement.

Georgy Apollonovich Gapon.

My mother’s journal held one short passage, ‘I saw Father Gapon handing out bread to the slum children. He knew what we were doing, and he pretended not to. Is there another man like him anywhere?’

At this point in time, Gapon is not yet a revolutionary.

But according to Seong-jun’s knowledge, this man will soon rise to a singular position from which he can make contact with both Petersburg’s workers and the police.

A man who genuinely loves the poor but whose political insight is catastrophic; a man so short-sighted he will later stand before his comrades and openly propose cooperating with the police.

Where in the world would I ever find someone better suited to my plan?

A few days later, at dinner with Nicholas II.

Around the time the emptied soup bowls were being cleared away, I carefully opened my mouth.

“Your Majesty. There is something I would like to ask.”

“Speak, Misha.”

“I heard that Her Majesty the Empress sponsors charitable organizations. Might I be allowed to visit one myself?”

Nicholas II’s hand paused for a moment.

Then his face broke into a broad, deeply proud smile.

“…Misha. However did such a thought come to you?”

“I grew up in a poor neighborhood. I know better than anyone how the children there live. Now that I am at last in a position where I can help, I would like to be of some use, even a little.”

The corners of the Tsar’s eyes were threatening to redden again.

Our naive dear old dad… seriously, way too easy.

“Sunny, did you hear that? For Misha to have such an admirable thought….”

Across the table, of course, the Empress dabbed her mouth with her napkin without so much as a flicker of expression and gave a slight nod.

I expected nothing from that woman.

She’s probably just sitting there thinking, ‘So he picked one of my charities to curry favor with me.’

“Which organization would you like to visit?”

“I would like to visit one in the Vyborg District. I heard there is a large charity soup kitchen there.”

The area Gapon is known to frequent.

“Sunny, what do you say? It should be all right to send Misha along with a proxy, shouldn’t it?”

The Empress was silent for a moment, then nodded with a sigh.

“…Do as you please.”

Her gaze at me was as cold as ever, but politically, she had no grounds to refuse.

A young child showing an interest in poor relief makes a splendid picture for the imperial family’s public image, after all.

A few days later, I set out for the Vyborg District with the Empress’s proxy and a few guards.

When we reached the soup kitchen, a young man in a worn cassock came into view, handing out bread to the slum children.

He was a bit younger, but he matched the portrait in Seong-jun’s memory almost exactly.

I’d planned to keep hanging around until I could stage a chance encounter. Lucky me.

“Father, may I have a word with you for a moment?”

At my voice, Gapon looked up.

He seemed briefly flustered that the young child of a princely house, said to be cared for at the palace by the Emperor himself, was speaking to him, but he soon lowered himself with a gentle smile.

“Of course, Young Master. How may I help you?”

“The truth is… I am the son of someone who was once in your debt, long ago. I came because I wanted to thank you.”

“In my debt? I have no acquaintance with the family of anyone as noble as you, Young Master.”

“My mother’s name was Natalya Andreyevna.”

Gapon’s smile froze in an instant.

“…Na, Natalya?”

“Yes. Before she passed away, Mother often spoke of it. She said you shared warm bread with her in hard times, Father.”

“W-wait a moment. Young Master. Did you just say Natalya Andreyevna?”

What little color remained drained completely from Gapon’s already pale face.

A quick glance around showed the guards’ attention mostly fixed on whether any of the paupers might do something unexpected.

Right now, no one would spare a thought for whatever a boy not yet 8 might be chatting about with a priest.

“Father, could the two of us talk alone for a moment? I would like to pass on some words my mother left behind.”

Gapon nodded as if spellbound.

On the pretext of confession, we moved to a small storeroom behind the soup kitchen.

I had the guards wait at the entrance.

The moment the door closed, Gapon asked in a trembling voice.

“Young Master. Are you truly Natalya’s son?”

“Yes.”

“But… she… Natalya was….”

“So you do know what kind of person my mother was.”

Gapon’s mouth hung open and would not close.

Naturally, all he could do was look utterly lost.

“N-no… truly Natalya’s son? But she was a social… no… what on earth is….”

A man overflowing with a sense of justice but with judgment that never quite kept pace; a man who never endorsed socialist ideology, yet regarded the socialists’ passion and effort in a positive light.

Which is to say.

“My mother wished, more than anyone, for the poor workers and paupers of this country to be happy. Father, please help me carry on my mama’s dream.”

“If it is Natalya’s dream, that is a path apart from the faith….”

“Isn’t what truly matters the heart we hold for the poor? More than ideology or doctrine, I believe what matters is whether God’s love lives in this heart.”

“My, my… such an admirable heart already, at so tender an age….”

You’re going to be my courier.