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At first Rasputin’s corpse was placed in a crypt at St. Feodor’s Cathedral. Then he was buried secretly—not far from the park and palace, under a chapel that was being built. Right under the altar. He was close by as before.

Nicholas’s diary:

“December 21. Wednesday.… At 9 the whole family went past the photography building and turned right toward the field, where we assisted at a sad scene: the coffin with the body of the unforgettable Grigory, murdered on the night of December 17 by monsters in the home of F. Yusupov, had already been lowered into the grave. Father Alexander Vasiliev finished the eulogy, after which we returned home. The weather was gray with 12 degrees of frost. Walked until reports.… In the afternoon took a walk with the children.”

Nicholas was firm: The decision was made to banish “the monsters Dmitry and Felix” from Petrograd. His wife’s sufferings were not all that forced him to be firm. For a Christian, murder is blasphemous—not only that, the tsar’s own relatives had killed the muzhik! The rest of the Romanov family honored the “monsters.” At the station Felix was seen off by his father-in-law, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich. How poor Dmitry envied everyone who remained in his beloved Petrograd. How many of his relatives—of those who remained in “beloved Petrograd”—would be killed! Felix and Dmitry, though, the “monsters” banished from the capital, would survive.

For the next few days it was as if Alix had turned to stone. At first she had been violent, shouting “Hang them!,” but later she became ominously calm, almost indifferent. She understood that this was the end. The end that the holy man had predicted. Alix showed Nicky the holy man’s will, and he tried to calm her: Grigory’s behests were being carried out. Trepov, whom the empress (and consequently Grigory) did not like, was being driven out. The decrepit Golitsyn was being appointed prime minister, which for all intents and purposes meant that Protopopov, the holy man’s favorite, was to head the government.

Society rebelled. Endless meetings were held—municipal, district, noble—and all against the new government. While everyone was waiting for the revolution, it had already begun. The holy man was right: it began immediately upon his death!

Chapter 8

THE FALL OF ATLANTIS

NEW YEAR 1917

Frost, the sun secreted behind the clouds. The pure snow of Tsarskoe Selo glittering as if splashed with quicksilver. The sovereign’s annual grand entrance in the Great Palace. Another New Year’s in the long line of years of his reign.

“1 January. Sunday. The day passed gray, quiet, and warm.… At about 3 Misha arrived, and he and I left for the Great Palace to a reception of the Ministers, Suite, and diplomats.”

In early 1917 no one had the slightest doubt about the coming revolution. Plots were being hatched in luxurious Petrograd apartments. And in the palaces.

The plot of the grand dukes—here, of course, the name of the army’s favorite immediately surfaced: the former commander-in-chief, Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. Sixteen grand dukes sent an emissary to Tiflis to the out-of-favor Nikolasha. Duma plotters, too, began open negotiations with Nicholas Nikolaevich. In the name of Duma member Prince Georgy Lvov, it was already being openly proposed to Nikolasha that he replace the other Nicholas on the throne. Nicholas Nikolaevich hesitated—and refused. He remained a loyal subject.

The sons of Vladimir Alexandrovich went into action and called the monarchist Purishkevich to the palace of Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich. “Still under the impression of my conversation with them, I left the grand duke’s palace with the firm conviction that he, Guchkov, and Rodzianko were plotting something inadmissible … with respect to the sovereign,” Purishkevich wrote in his diary. In fact, this never went beyond seditious conversations either. Many in the large Romanov family at the time could have repeated the words that burst from Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich: “He [the tsar] infuriates me, yet