Siberian Treasure

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Through the pain that never seemed to leave her, Anastasia Romanovna, wife of Tsar Ivan Vasiljevich, the Fourth, heard her nurses muttering.

“The tsarina grows weaker with each moment. She will not live another night.”

“When she goes, the tsar will go mad!”

Anastasia did not want to hear more. The nurses spoke the truth.

She was dying, and her husband’s hold on sanity was tenuous at best. The boyars and peasants alike called him Ivan Grozny—Ivan Awesome, Ivan Terrible.

Anastasia’s death would leave him alone and vulnerable to his bouts of rage, his madness, and his rampages of violence, for she was the one who helped him control them.

Gathering all of her strength, she called for one of the nurses, one of the few members of her husband’s court that they trusted. “Adejana.” The nurse whom she’d named came to her bedside. “My husband…please find him for me.”

“I will call for him.” The nurse bobbed a bow and dashed from the room, but not before Anastasia saw pity in her face — and then fear.

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