Chapter 4
Mikhail was itching for a fight. Every part of him was on the verge of boiling over.
He had been on the brink ever since the priest propositioned him and was looking for an outlet. A few days later, the itch under his skin hadn’t gone away.
Mikhail grew up around the deranged opulence of the Romanov court. He’d seen the influence of their neglect to rule on the streets. He knew the priests and lords drank, gambled, and fucked their way through the palace, but being privy to their games was another experience entirely.
He hadn’t told his mother what happened. While he figured it was a conversation that could wait until they were home, he found himself tripping over his own anger. He vibrated with it.
He moved silently along the wall, unsure what wing of the palace he was in. Mikhail’s brow was furrowed, and his hands tightened into fists, only to relax, tighten, relax, tighten… he paused as the hallway came to an end.
Mikhail looked up and stared at an oil portrait twenty feet high, depicting some overly pompous lord, sitting on a horse worth more than Mikhail’s entire existence.
He glared up at the artwork. He studied each painted ring and the saber hanging from the man’s jacket, mentally calculating their cost, fueling the anger in his heart. He turned on his heel, truly taking in his surroundings for the first time.
Portraits lined the wall next to an endless row of tables, each with some sconce, vase, or candlestick.
All priceless treasures that could feed a family for weeks, and this was a hallway that led nowhere.
It was a dead end—all the wealth he could ever imagine lining the walls on the way to… nothing.
His blood began to boil, and he forced himself to take a deep breath. He opened his mouth to scream, but someone else screamed for him.
Mikhail stopped, a sudden loud commotion coming from the other end of the hall. The terrified screams sent him running towards the sound. He rounded the corner into a grand set of chambers.
As Mikhail tried to comprehend the scene in front of him, it nearly broke him. Through the doorway, he saw his mother on the floor. The tsarina stood over her, shouting at someone he couldn’t see.
“If there’s any magic in her blood, it will make it stronger —,” he heard a male voice say. Mikhail opened his mouth, every part of him coiled and ready to run to his mother. A rough hand clamped down on his face, and another grabbed hold of his shoulder.
He kicked and thrashed, yet he was no match against the strength of multiple men. They continued to attempt to drag him away from the chamber. Mikhail was determined to reach his mother and fought them just enough to stay in earshot.
“What are you even doing here, you useless…” One of the voices spat in Mikhail’s direction.
Suddenly, there was a sound like a clap of thunder, sending everyone to their knees. All the lights in the hallway went out, plunging them into darkness.
Mikhail tried to regain his senses and get away in the chaos, but hands wrapped around his ankles as he crawled desperately towards what he thought might be the direction of his mother.
He heard the men holding him speaking in angry, muffled whispers, straining for his hearing to come back from the blast.
“That’s her son.” He thought he recognized the tsar’s voice.
“I don’t think…”
“He saw enough!”
Mikhail was going to vomit as he tried to stumble onto his knees, fighting against the hands still pinning him down.
“Handle it,” he heard the tsar’s voice close to his head. Then there was a sudden rush of searing pain at the back of his scalp, and everything went dark.
???
Everything hurt.
Mikhail took a deep breath, blinked his eyes open, and was met with obscurity. He was surrounded by darkness.
Mikhail coughed as he took a few shallow breaths and tried to come to grips with his surroundings. He was lying down and seemed to be moving. Maybe in a carriage? He couldn’t spy even a stitch of light.
His hand reached to the back of his head, and he winced, feeling dried blood and matted hair.
Someone had knocked him unconscious and dispatched him.
Mikhail didn’t know which man in the darkness was responsible.
He slowly pulled his legs up and found something solid beside him, realizing he wasn’t tied up, and sat up.
He leaned against a wall and exhaled slowly.
He tested his body, flexing his fingers and wiggling his toes, making tiny ministrations until he was satisfied he had no other injuries.
Mikhail counted his breaths slowly, in and out, until he reached ten and started again.
He continued until he was able to offset the panic building in his chest. He desperately hoped his eyes would adjust, but with no luck.
He replayed his last few moments before he lost consciousness, trying to keep his grip on reality in the complete darkness.
His mother. Oh God… What had happened to his mother?!
There was a sudden, sharp squealing that sounded like the brakes of a train car.
Mikhail had never ridden in one before. He knew the sound from the depot yards he had run through as a child.
The noise got louder, and Mikhail grimaced, covering his ears and lurching forward as the train came to an abrupt stop.
Pushing himself back up against the wall, he listened closely to the sounds of men yelling and grumbling to one another along with footsteps that seemed to drift closer with the voices, unable to orient their direction.
A door pushed open, and the sudden influx of light was blinding. He blinked rapidly as more strange hands gripped his shoulders, hauling him into the sun. It took Mikhail a few moments to take in the scene.
Mikhail was being held between two men, both dressed in royal guard uniforms. They stood in a train yard, but the landscape around them was nothing like the one Mikhail knew in St. Petersburg.
He could smell the seawater. There was one solitary fortress about half a mile from where they stood near the tracks. The cliffside dropped off ominously behind the building, and Mikhail had a feeling it fell to the sea.
“Where am I?” Mikhail summoned all his courage and tried to posture that he didn’t feel as exhausted as he did. The men holding him were silent. A different voice answered him.
“Welcome to the Solovetsky Monastery, Mikhail,” a serpentine voice made Mikhail’s skin crawl. The owner of it came into view. He fought the urge to spit at the priest in front of him, dressed in full robes that trailed behind him as he turned to face Mikhail.
“Where is my mother?!”
“Your mother is dead.” The priest said the words without inflection as if he were reporting on what he had for lunch that day.
Mikhail’s heart stopped. The words were sinking in his stomach like a stone. He was frozen in place as he stared up at the grotesque face of the holy man in front of him, whose permanently rosy cheeks and pockmarked face reeked of overconsumption.
“You’re lying!” Mikhail yelled, rocking back and forth and trying to dislodge the guards who were holding him.
He fought against their cutting grips. On a typical day, Mikhail could easily take on two versus one. Injured and disoriented, his attempts were feeble as his face turned red. He started crying in frustration.
“You lie, you lie, you lie!” He bellowed out the last word and dropped to his knees, his arms sagging above his head as the guards held tight. He hit the semi-frozen ground and released an earth-shattering scream, so loud and devastating that Mikhail nearly passed out from the exertion.
The guards flinched at such a desperate and unholy sound; the priest blinked twice. With a great, grunting effort that mimicked a pig, the priest got down on one knee in front of Mikhail and looked him in the eye.
“Listen here, boy,” his breath smelled like fish. He leaned in and began whispering in Mikhail’s ear as he quieted down to broken sobs, “The Grand Duchess Anastasia killed your mother. Did you know that? She used the devil’s magic.”
“No…,” Mikhail trailed off, swallowing his cries as he tried to move away.
“She did. Anastasia killed your mother.”
Hatred started to harden in Mikhail’s heart. He swallowed thickly and spat on the ground. His mouth was dry as cotton. His head pounded so aggressively that black spots started to dance in the corners of his vision.
How could this be possible? He wanted to weep and curse his mother for her optimism, making him promise that he would protect the Romanov magic when it would be the thing that killed her.
“Why am I here?” He choked out, turning his head to stare at the priest.
“Someone’s life must be given to God to atone for the death taken by Satan’s dark purposes,” the priest leaned in even closer and clasped a sweaty hand on Mikhail’s shoulder, giving it a libidinous squeeze.
No… no, this couldn’t be happening.
Mikhail's head snapped up as he looked past the priest, towards the fortress on the cliffside. It was a prison masquerading as a monastery. His head started to swim again, but this time, it filled with rage as his breathing picked up. He stared at the priest with wild eyes. The priest chuckled.
“Welcome to the priesthood, Mikhail,” he waved an arm that looked like a sausage towards the monastery. “It is time that you join your brothers in God’s work.”
Mikhail turned and spat in the priest's face, causing the man to rear back and topple over. He jumped up as quickly as his portly figure would allow, his face even redder as he huffed in indignation.
The priest nodded to one of the guards in a subtle movement. The guard boxed Mikhail’s ear sharply, making him lose his vision for a moment. The priest leaned down again and got nose-to-nose with Mikhail, grinning wide and revealing a particularly yellow set of teeth.
“We have many ways to break converts,” he sneered, slapping him on the cheek a few times in a patronizing gesture.
“I’ve never met a man more in bed with the devil than the ones who wear the priest’s clothes,” Mikhail whispered back. His eyes were alight with his own holy hatred as he stared down the reality that he would soon become what he despised most. The priest laughed.
“We’ll make you cry out for God, boy.” he stood up and grabbed a handful of Mikhail’s hair, forcing his head back.
The priest fumbled for a moment, then brought out a small crystal decanter from his pocket.
Mikhail recognized it as being used for holding communion wine.
The priest yanked his head back and threw the wine into his eyes.
Mikhail cried out as the vinegary substance blinded him, sending a current of sharp pain down his spine.
“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he could hear the priest murmuring detachedly, “We divorce thee of the name given to you by the devil. Welcome to your day of new birth, Rasputin.”