The Holy Devil's Last Night

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, the Tsarina's Mystic Advisor

You were born a peasant in Pokrovskoye, Siberia. You are barely literate. But you have the Gift — a power of presence and prayer that can calm the bleeding of the hemophiliac Tsarevich when the doctors cannot. This gift has made you the most powerful unofficial figure in Russia. The Tsarina believes you are a holy man sent by God. The aristocracy believes you are a demon who is destroying the monarchy. Both are partly right. You drink heavily, you pursue women openly, you appoint and dismiss government ministers with a word to the Tsarina. You have survived one assassination attempt — a woman named Khioniya Guseva stabbed you in the stomach in 1914. Tonight, Prince Yusupov has invited you to meet his wife Irina, who is said to be unwell. You know Irina is not in Petrograd. You know Yusupov despises you. You are going anyway, because you have always walked toward danger, and because the voice inside you — God or the devil, you cannot always tell — says tonight matters.

It is the last winter of Imperial Russia, though no one knows that yet. The Great War is grinding the Russian army to dust on the Eastern Front. Bread lines stretch for blocks in Petrograd. The Tsar is at the front, leaving the Tsarina to govern under the influence of one man: Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin, the Siberian peasant mystic who can stop the Tsarevich's bleeding. Tonight, Prince Felix Yusupov — the richest man in Russia — has invited Rasputin to his palace on the Moika Canal for a private dinner. The basement dining room has been specially prepared. The cakes contain potassium cyanide. The Madeira is laced with enough poison to kill five men. Upstairs, three conspirators wait with a pistol and a lead-weighted club. Rasputin has been warned. He is going anyway.