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Tsar Alexander III ruled his citizens with the proverbial iron fist, bringing it down upon them at
intervals which seemed to be dictated more by his personal moods than the demand of circumstances.
And no people – even an impoverished and illiterate one – would bear this sort of casual disregard
forever.
And then, on top of Ella’s overwrought and ridiculous letter, lay a terse telegram which had
arrived this morning, and the contents of which had nudged the Queen from merely concerned to
openly alarmed. When she had sent Ella a British lady in waiting, she had chosen a very specific
woman, one ideally suited for her task: persistent but discreet, experienced in the ways of the word,
yet British to the very bone. Cynthia Kirby‘s sole function within the Winter Palace was to observe
and report. The Queen did not think in terms of intelligence or surveillance. She certainly would not
have used the ugly word “spy” to describe the tasks which the respectably widowed Mrs. Kirby had
been sent to perform. After all, this was her own flesh and blood she was speaking of, the beautiful
and much-loved Ella. But if Ella had ceased to tell her grandmother the truth about circumstances in
St. Petersburg, someone had to, and this latest telegram had only confirmed what Victoria had long
suspected. That her granddaughter was sitting atop a very ornate powder keg. Royal carriages were
on the verge of being rattled, it seemed, but not by the cheers of the people.
And finally, on the other side of the desk lay a much larger stack of papers, her notes for the
meeting with the Prime Minister. The Queen did not personally care for Gladstone, whom she
considered a pompous prig, prone to lectures so far-reaching that they were even sometimes
insinuated toward her royal person. But you do not have to like a man in order to use him, and in her
absence, whether it was the three weeks she hoped for or the six weeks she feared, Gladstone’s
already sizable base of power would broaden, so they must consult on any number of issues before
she set sail. It was exhausting to even contemplate. Most pilgrims must only pack their bags to
travel, but when one is the Queen of England, one must pack up an entire country.
The Queen pondered the slow tick of the clock on the desk. Gladstone at eleven, the two
detectives from Scotland Yard at noon. For she now knew that merely taking Trevor Welles would
not be enough. Mrs. Kirby’s telegram had informed her that two dead bodies had been discovered in
the Winter Palace that very morning. Not in the streets of St. Petersburg, where one could only
assume that corpses were piled in every gutter, but within the palace itself. And the mindless brutes
surrounding the tsar had called their deaths a double suicide.
Victoria knew better. The tsar had his people and she had hers. The dead boy was not merely a
dancer, but also the brother of Gregor Krupin. How someone with his family connections had ever
been allowed within the walls of the Winter Palace at all was a troubling question, followed by the