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Chapters (54)
  1. Cover
  2. The Summer Queen
  3. Dedication Page
  4. Family Tree of King George III
  5. Family Tree of Queen Victoria
  6. PART ONE
  7. Chapter One
  8. Chapter Two
  9. Chapter Three
  10. Chapter Four
  11. Chapter Five
  12. Chapter Six
  13. Chapter Seven
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. PART TWO
  21. Chapter Fourteen
  22. Chapter Fifteen
  23. Chapter Sixteen
  24. Chapter Seventeen
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-One
  29. Chapter Twenty-Two
  30. Chapter Twenty-Three
  31. Chapter Twenty-Four
  32. PART THREE
  33. Chapter Twenty-Five
  34. Chapter Twenty-Six
  35. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-One
  40. Chapter Thirty-Two
  41. PART FOUR
  42. Chapter Thirty-Three
  43. Chapter Thirty-Four
  44. Chapter Thirty-Five
  45. Chapter Thirty-Six
  46. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-Nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. Chapter Forty-One
  51. Acknowledgements
  52. Select Bibliography
  53. The Summer Queen
  54. By Margaret Pemberton

On the sixth day the doctors told Alicky and Nicky that Alexei’s stomach had begun to haemorrhage and that Alexei couldn’t be saved. Bulletins were issued to prepare the public for the Tsesarevich’s death. A priest came to perform the last rites.

Swaying with fatigue and almost insensible with grief, Alicky said, ‘If Alexei is dying, then Father Grigory has to be told, so that he can pray for his soul.’

In the early hours of the morning, and thousands of miles away in Siberia, Rasputin responded to her telegram:

GOD HAS SEEN YOUR TEARS AND HEARD YOUR PRAYERS STOP DO NOT GRIEVE STOP THE LITTLE ONE WILL NOT DIE STOP DO NOT ALLOW THE DOCTORS TO BOTHER HIM TOO MUCH STOP

Peace and certainty flooded through Alicky. It was going to be all right. Incredibly, miraculously, even from a hamlet in far-distant Siberia, Father Grigory had been able to perform a miracle and save Alexei’s life.

When she told the doctors and showed them the telegram, they looked at her with pity in their eyes. Alexei had by now received the last rites and there could be no further hope. As if to prove it, over the next few hours nothing in Alexei’s condition changed.

But then came the dawn, when, to their utter disbelief, Fedorov, Derevenko, Ostrogorsky and Botkin saw that not only – against all their expectations – was Alexei still alive, but the haemorrhage had stopped. From the very brink of death he had begun to make a recovery, and it was a recovery they had no explanation for.

Their stunned bewilderment wasn’t shared by Alicky. She knew it was Father Grigory’s prayers that had saved Alexei’s life; that, incredibly, he hadn’t had to be with Alexei for his prayers for him to be answered; that in far-away Siberia all he had needed to do was go down on his knees and pray.

And she knew something else as well. Father Grigory’s banishment was going to come to an immediate end and, no matter how loud and insistent the complaints from Nicky’s ministers, or the demands of the newspapers and the Russian people, she and Nicky were going to continue to rely on him, not only for the way he kept Alexei alive, but for advice in every other area of their lives – political as well as personal. Any alternative was unthinkable.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

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MAY 1913, NEUES PALAIS, POTSDAM