The Witches of St. Petersburg

‘So are mine!’ Militza replied and they both laughed.

Neither of the sisters had ever skated so long and so determinedly in their lives. Their feet were freezing, their breath was landing in small crystals of hoar frost all over their furs, but still they carried on.

‘I am not sure how much longer I can do this,’ muttered Stana, her ankles beginning to burn.

‘I shall skate until the aurora borealis comes dancing up the river,’ declared Militza, clasping her hands a little firmer in her muff.

It was the children who returned to the ice first. Unable to hold them back any longer, reluctant mothers and governesses released them, scrambling and skidding, back onto the ice. They were rapidly followed by the young couples and giggling groups of girls. The day was too beautiful and too rare not to be taken advantage of. In fact, it was only the old guard, sitting on their benches, stiffening in the breeze, who seemed to be able to smell the heady lemon musk at all.

At just after 3 p.m., the ice began to empty. The Grand Duchess Vladimir was one of the first to disappear, along with her silver salvers and gloved servants.

‘I am not sure I have ever seen skates like those!’ she declared as she walked past the sisters. Stana and Militza simply smiled in reply.

*

After the Grand Duchess, the other skaters dissipated quickly, leaving the sisters among the last out on the ice. They sat on a wooden bench, untying their skates as the sun slipped behind a cloud.

Suddenly, it was deeply cold and the drop in temperature was accompanied by a sudden rush of wind. Militza looked up. Flying towards them, at low level, was a flock of starlings, some two to three thousand strong. They swarmed past her and up in the air over the spires of the Peter and Paul Fortress on the opposite bank, their beating wings swooping overhead, sounding like the smacking of waves or the gentle clapping of applause. They curled up like smoke, spun like a top, flowed like a great river. Militza had never seen a murmuration like this before. They dispersed; they came back together. They seemed to disappear completely and then gather like a large, dark, ominous cloud over the golden spires, snaking around them like a giant serpent. They ebbed and flowed, morphing from the shadow of a great black beast into a disparate cloud of nothing, only suddenly to reappear, racing across the river like a swarm of locusts. Once, they flew so low and fast over the ice, Militza could feel the wind of their wings on her face. She closed eyes and inhaled slowly. She could feel their energy. They made the hairs on her arms stand up. She felt a sudden rush of adrenaline.

‘The Tsar is dead,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘He’s dead,’ she said, turning to look at her sister sitting next to her on the bench.

‘Who?’

‘The Tsar is dead.’

‘Long live the Tsar,’ replied Stana, staring across the frozen river at the heaving black swarm. ‘Long live the Tsar.’

4 10 January 1896, St Petersburg

It was on a night in early January 1896 that things began to change. There was a significant shift in power. The moment, Militza later remembered, that she and Stana slowly and determinedly, like a couple of well-rehearsed chess pieces, made their opening move.

The Nicholas Ball was the first and the largest of the season. Just after Orthodox Christmas, it was the precursor to almost three months of solid parties and dancing. The balls themselves decreased in size and increased in importance as the season wore on. The final Palm Ball, just before Lent, was therefore the most exclusive, most intimate evening. For a mere 500 guests, it was the most sought-after soirée in town. However, since the death of Alexander III; there had been no parties, there had been no soirées, no balls, and very few had managed to make the acquaintance of the new Tsarina, Alexandra. Fresh from her little provincial town of Hesse, no one outside a very select circle had managed to meet her face to face.

But tonight was her social debut. Expensive court dresses had been ordered from Madame Olga Bulbenkova’s workshop on Yekaterinsky Canal. Bolin and Fabergé kokoshnik tiaras had been unpacked and dusted down and now troops of hairdressers and manicurists were speeding from palace to palace, trying to keep warm between appointments.

With as many as eight thousand guests attending the Nicholas Ball, and with carriages and drivers to accommodate, an early arrival in Palace Square was essential. Not only was the carriage-jam unbearable, sometimes lasting up to three hours, but also the flaming braziers closest to the Winter Palace were at a premium for the thousands of coachmen who had to wait around for hours in the stamping cold, braving the arctic winds gusting up the Neva.