Welcome to Noeple Blood, a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky,

listener discretion advised.

It was a cold September day in 1836 when the police arrested an enigmatic newcomer

to the remote Russian town of Cross-Nuffinsk. The man looked to be about 50-something.

He was tall and handsome, regal in comportment. And although he was wearing a peasant's tunic,

he had ridden into town on a towering horse of the purest white. Outside the Cross-Nuffinsk police

station, a cold wind blew. Inside the Russian police questioned the stranger relentlessly.

Where was he from? Who was his family? What did he do for a living?

But the man only said that his name was Fedor Kuzmich. He was a believer in the Orthodox Church.

And then he offered nothing more. No family members names, no hometown, no home, no suggestion

at all about what his past might have been. He carried no identification. Even on penalty of

20 lashings, he refused to provide any further information about himself. He held himself high

and calm throughout the entire interrogation. And so the man calling himself Fedor Kuzmich was

lashed. Then he was exiled to Siberia as a convict in the 43rd Exile settlement at Bogotolsk.

He was sentenced to labor at a vodka distillery. But within a few months, the director

meekly said that Fedor Kuzmich didn't need to work anymore. No one quite knew why.

Rumors flew on the streets of Krasnuffinsk, quickly spreading along the winding roads of Russia

as winter settled in. There was no way this mysterious stranger was just some peasant or monk.

He was too well spoken, too high-minded in his bearing. He had to have noble blood.

Perhaps he was an imperial criminal in disguise, running from a wicked past.

At last, a Siberian girl who had had one audience with the Tsar Nicholas I returned home.

My dear father, Fedor Kuzmich, she said, you look exactly like Nicholas's brother,

...