The Witches of St. Petersburg

The Vladimirs went on to hold a discreet burial for one of the babies just outside the grounds of the family church on their estate at Peterhof. It was quiet and quick, the spot unconsecrated but peaceful; a young silver birch tree was planted and the priest kindly said some prayers. But as to what happened to the second baby, the other clot, and who exactly the shuffling old woman was who tidied up the yellow salon, no one ever knew.

And just as Stana had predicted, the result of the Grand Duchess’s double miscarriage was a rigid, intractable frostiness that was colder and more impenetrable than the frozen taiga itself.

For in lieu of any concrete details that she could recall, the Grand Duchess Vladimir simply created her own story, her own narrative that, rather than placing the sisters at the heart of her recovery, blamed them for her terrible plight in the first place.

‘They are the sort of women who could sour milk with one glance,’ she would say, taking a sip of champagne. ‘All I can really remember was the distinct smell of goat,’ she’d declare, laughing uproariously, ‘goat!’

‘Goat!’ they’d laugh. ‘The Goat Princesses!’

Truth be told, what Maria Pavlovna could remember of that long, white night perturbed her so much she preferred not to think about it at all. It haunted her in the early hours and whispered to her from the quiet shadows. So, like most things unpleasant or taxing, she simply decided not to engage with it. She liked to flap anything disagreeable and unlikable away with a little waft of her fan. It was far better to tell a different tale, much easier to sow different seeds.

And the court of St Petersburg proved to be the most excellent and fertile of grounds; it wasn’t long before the sweet, heady, lemon musk of goat could be smelt in the most unlikely of places.

3 1 November 1894, St Petersburg

‘It happened again!’ declared Stana as she marched into Militza’s cavernous red salon on the first floor of the Nikolayevsky Palace on Annunciation Square. Dressed in a dark green skirt with a matching fitted jacket, she flounced towards the crimson velvet divan, plucking her black gloves off one finger at a time. ‘I was just coming out of the dressmaker’s on Moika and I heard two women giggling, whispering, always whispering, about the terrible smell of goat. Again!’ Her black eyes narrowed as she flopped on to the divan and, slapping her gloves down on the marble-topped table, crossed her arms firmly across her chest.

‘Who were they?’ asked Militza sitting up. She closed her copy of Isis Unveiled by Helena Blavatsky and rearranged her navy silk kimono. Despite the late hour, approaching three, she had not yet dressed for the day. While other society ladies had already donned their diamonds, muffled themselves in furs and called a troika with a bespoke, livery-clad postilion to the door, to pay their daily calls, Militza had spent the morning going through a package of esoteric books that had arrived from Watkins, Cecil Court, London.

‘I didn’t know who they were and neither did George.’

‘George was there?’

‘He told me I was hearing things, being hysterical, foolish. He said I was making it up. You know what he’s like. If it doesn’t please him, he doesn’t hear it.’ She sighed, hugging her arms more tightly around her. ‘Honestly, Militza, it has been three years – and I thought it would be better after the children. That’s what Mother said, didn’t she?’ Stana’s voice cracked a little. ‘“Have children as soon as possible, they respect you more.” Didn’t she say that?’

‘Children are power.’ Militza nodded. ‘She used to say it all the time.’

‘All the time,’ agreed Stana, picking up her gloves and throwing them back down on the table in frustration. ‘Well, it’s made no difference to me. Pregnant within three months of marriage and with a son at that!’

‘Surely George is delighted with Sergei and little Elena? Two children in two years, and one a son – it’s more that I have managed.’ She laughed a little. ‘Any husband would be satisfied by that?’

‘One would have hoped,’ declared Stana, tugging at the covered buttons on her left sleeve and then her right. ‘One might have thought so.’ She sighed and looked out towards the window.

It was beginning to snow outside. Large, fat, white flakes were falling swiftly, swirling in the wind, like the flurries of blossom buffeted by the breeze that the sisters ran through as children in the orchards of Cetinje. Except here the sky was not a bright, clear, cobalt blue but a flat, yellowish, impenetrable grey.