Nadia. “Do you have any ideas about who Our Friend was?”
Nadia eyed them, cautious, and turned to Vera, who was studying the album with care. “It did not
refer to just one person. The tsarina Alexandra used this moniker as a code name for her spiritual
advisers. When writing to her husband, she never committed her guru’s name to paper but tried to
mask him in order to avoid scandal. Alexandra used the name Our Friend for the first time with a man
called Monsieur Philippe, who came into their life in 1897. He was a French mystic and charlatan
who entranced the empress—Alexandra was a woman prone to mystical spells and esoteric beliefs—
and he became a kind of court priest.”
“Like John Dee to Queen Elizabeth,” Vera said.
Bruno held Vera’s eye for a moment, impressed. John Dee was an obscure angelologist who had
conducted some of the first angel summonings on record. He was starting to like Vera.
“John Dee was not a spiritual adviser so much as a court renaissance man,” Nadia said. “But that
said, the analogy is appropriate. It was only one of the many similarities between the Russian and
British royal families. They were intricately linked.”
“The tsarina was the granddaughter of Victoria and Albert of England,” Vera said. “The tsar
Nikolai himself was the cousin of King George V of England on his mother’s side. And Nikolai’s
father was Alexander III, a Romanov.”
“Exactly right,” Nadia said. “All of these branches of the imperial family had been heavily
infiltrated by the Nephilim, and all of the children of these families—save a select few who by
genetic fluke had human characteristics, the Grand Duke Michael II for example—were Nephilistic
by birth. Their reproduction was watched with great interest by all of Europe’s angelologists, as the
children of these families set the course of our work and, of course, history. The story of how
Alexandra and Nikolai tried desperately to produce a son and heir to the throne is a common tale, one
that can be found in any history book. They had daughter after daughter, each one beautiful and
intelligent but considered a nonentity as far as the succession went: The Romanov daughters were
unable to become regent.
“As royal governess to Alexandra’s daughters, my mother was given a window into a more hidden
dimension to her household. The empress was a formidable creature who dominated Nikolai from the
very beginning of their marriage. While Nikolai was weak—he had small white wings that resembled
the unimpressive plumage of a goose—Alexandra was a particularly pure breed, like her
grandmother. Her mauve wings were strong and full, with a span of over ten feet; her eyes were deep-
set and steely blue; her will was indomitable. Alix, as she was called by her husband, was extremely
proud of her inheritance and her gifts. She spent hours and hours grooming her great pink wings. She
would use her leisure time teaching her daughters to fly in the private garden of their country estate in
the Crimea. All of this is to say that she was an extremely determined woman. Alexandra would stop
at nothing to create an heir.”
“And Our Friend was involved in all of this?” Bruno asked.
“In a word, yes,” Nadia said. “But not in the manner you are imagining. Monsieur Philippe’s
primary attraction for the empress was the predictions about her future heir. He used prayer and a
form of hypnosis to win her trust, and when she became pregnant, he told her that the child would be a
boy. Alexandra announced her pregnancy and dismissed the court doctors. The whole of Russia
waited. In the end, no child was delivered. It was kept quiet, but the servants and doctors gossiped
that the tsarina had a phantom pregnancy: She had believed M. Philippe so strongly that her body
produced all the symptoms of a normal gestation.
“But the biggest disappointment came years later. Another holy man, a seer and mystic like M.
Philippe—with his knowledge of medicines and tinctures and potions—entered Alexandra’s life.
That man came to be their closest adviser, her primary doctor, priest, and confidant. He, too, was
referred to in many letters as Our Friend. This man eventually became notorious as the peasant who
ruined the great Romanov dynasty and changed the course of the twentieth century.”
“Grigory Rasputin,” Vera said, her eyes bright with recognition.
Nadia turned to the first page of the album, where two Cyrillic words were scribbled in ink.
“Can you read it?” Verlaine asked.
“Of course,” Nadia said. “Your colleague is correct: It is the name Grigory Rasputin.”
Bruno took the album and looked at it more closely. “This album belonged to Rasputin?”