“You said you returned to the capital to tell Prince O’ksandr something, but you haven’t said what. I can only assume it’s something terribly important. What is it? What does he need to know?”

With eyes nearly as intent as my father’s, I stared right back at him. “I want him to know that I’m planning to leave not just Petrograd but Russia, and I’ll never be back.” Somehow I knew it was safe to tell Blok the rest, so, gently touching my stomach, I added, “And I want Sasha to know that I’m pregnant with his child-yes, he is the father of a new generation of Rasputins. The shaman back home in our village believes it will be a girl, so if by chance you ever see him, tell him that too. Tell him he is the father of this Rasputin’s daughter.”

Blok watched the young woman cross the large room defiantly, her figure tall and confident, her stride direct and determined. He didn’t doubt that Maria had spoken the unfettered truth of her father’s life and death. It was amazing how much she knew and understood. Almost everything, actually.

But he had to remain focused. The old order was gone, the new had arrived. It was not about these little personal tragedies but the future and what it would bring. Right now a great storm had swept across Russia, changing and electrifying everything. He knew they were in the middle of it, these days so dark and turbulent…but then? When the storm passed and the skies cleared, would the transformation be complete? Once he had been so sure, now he was not.

Blok gazed across the huge throne room and watched as Maria Rasputin reached the tall gilded doors, slipped through one, and pulled it shut behind her, disappearing into history. So be it, thought Blok, as he took his pen, dabbed it in his pot of ink, and jotted down notes for the report he would write on Matryona Grigorevna Rasputina for the Thirteenth Section. He already knew he wouldn’t mention that she was with child. Indeed, he decided he would deem her harmless and of no further interest. Odd, he thought, how her openness, her story-the truths she so freely gave-in turn protected her from other truths, albeit very painful ones. No, he was glad he hadn’t told her.

Laying down the pen, Aleksander Blok took a deep breath and ran both hands through his thick wavy hair. Rising, he headed from his simple oak desk toward the pair of doors just to the left of the dais. It had been through these doors that the tsars had entered St. George’s Hall. And as he walked, Blok’s eyes fell on the exquisitely carved wooden grate located next to the dais, open on this side but covered on the rear with a silk curtain. Not only had trumpeters, tastefully unseen, once stood behind the fancy grillwork heralding the royal entry, but advisers and ministers had huddled there unseen, overhearing all that transpired before their tsar.

Blok, who’d noticed Maria glance at the grate several times, wondered if she had suspected.

Taking hold of the large gilded door lever, he pressed down, pushed open the door, and entered a much smaller albeit regal room, the plaster walls painted a pale blue, the cove ceiling covered with detailed plasterwork that was akin to filigree. Here the tsars had gathered before making their grand entry. Now, however, the atmosphere was decidedly somber, for on this side of the grate were two armed guards and their prisoner, a severely ill man who sat securely tied to a chair, his mouth covered with a thick white cloth.

“Remove the gag,” ordered Blok.

One of the guards, a broad-shouldered man with a bushy mustache, reached down and all but yanked the cloth away. The prisoner, his face covered with a shaggy beard, coughed sharply and gulped in a large breath of air.

He did indeed look horrible, thought Blok, staring down upon the young man, who’d been captured and imprisoned the very day after Rasputin’s murder. True, mused Blok, the months of deprivation and interrogation, even torture, had left the young man as pale as a winter field and as thin as a shaft of wheat. Even worse, a deep red rash was crawling up his neck, he was having trouble breathing, and, by the perspiration beaded on his forehead, it was obvious he was running a high fever.

“Prince O’ksandr?”

“Y-yes?” came the dazed reply.

“To be honest, Prince, the Provisional Government doesn’t quite know what to do, whether to treat you as a national hero or a common murderer.”

“Please…just let her go.”

“Don’t worry. I can see she’s harmless. She’s already left, and I’ll make sure she’s bothered no more. The commission will be interested in her observations, of course, particularly of the last night, but I’ll keep certain things confidential.”

While Blok didn’t know whether or not Maria had suspected anyone was lingering in this room, he was sure she had never guessed it was her Sasha.

“So will you release what she told you about her father, or-as Maria said-will it be buried? Will the people ever be allowed to know the real Rasputin?”

“That’s a complicated question with a simple answer: No.” Blok slipped his hands into his pockets and turned and gazed out a window. “Before the revolution the stories of Rasputin served the anti-tsarist movement very well, just as they now serve the revolution, the more exaggerated the better. Rasputin soiled the image of Tsar Nikolai as no one else could, and once liodi stopped seeing the Tsar as a demigod, the revolution was both easy and inevitable. Otherwise, Rasputin, not to mention the Empress, are guilty of only one thing: exceedingly well-intentioned but horrible judgment. In other words, Maria was absolutely correct. To allow any of what we really know about Rasputin and the former imperial family to become public knowledge would be political suicide, even today. The man himself continues to serve the revolution best in myth.”

“But that myth is so dangerous-rather like a stick of dynamite. Even behind the prison walls there’s talk of civil war.”

“Of course. Russia is a very big bear-a wild one, at that-and we have many difficulties ahead. Perhaps we’re doomed to a second revolution, as so many suspect.” Blok folded his hands behind his back and gazed down at his feet. “You heard what she said, that she’s pregnant with your child?”

Staring into his lap, he nodded ever so slightly.

“So maybe instead we should charge you with treason. After all, rather than extinguish the Rasputins, you’ve ensured that they will live on.”

“She’s not…not like her father. She has a very pure soul-and a real gift with words.” His hands still tied tightly behind the back of the chair, Sasha did not look up. “Prince Felix sent me to infiltrate the Khlysty and his family-to find his religion, charm his daughter, enter his home-all in the hopes not of simply getting information but of unearthing scandal. Scandal that we could plant like dangerous propaganda. After all, don’t you think fear and rumor and innuendo are-”

“More powerful than the mightiest cannon? Yes, absolutely.”

Sasha looked up, his brown eyes pleading. “It’s better that she move on with her life, so please…please don’t tell her I’m alive.”

With a shrug, Blok turned on his heel and started out. “Don’t worry, I won’t.” Reaching the door that led back into the throne room, he took hold of the lever…and then turned and stared back at the pathetic young man. “After all, it’s obvious you haven’t got much longer.”

As Blok left the room, he heard the young man begin to weep gently, perhaps as much out of relief as anything else. But there was no need, thought Blok as he returned to his desk, to tell Maria that the father of her unborn child was alive. There was no need because Prince O’ksandr would soon be dead, for it was obvious the typhus was well along. What did he have-a week, two at the most?

Yes, he thought as he sat down at his desk, one more death. In the greater scheme of things, this young man, no matter how highly born, was insignificant, just another soul. But how was this to end and when would the cleansing of the country be complete? How many more millions would have to die before the war against the Germans would be over and the revolution within Russia would stop roiling?