Anastasia and Her Sisters (14 page)

I can’t imagine spending another evening with him, let alone my whole life, and I’ve told Mother and Father NO NO NO to Crown Prince Carol. I also told them this: I will never leave my country, even if it means that I do not marry.

She didn’t write in the notebook what Mama and Papa had to say, but it was easy to see that she was in a vile mood.

CHAPTER 10

Things Go Badly

PETERHOF AND THE
STANDART
, SUMMER 1914

T
atiana turned seventeen, Marie had her fifteenth birthday, and I was thirteen at last! This, I decided, was the beginning of my
real life
, although I wasn’t sure what that would be, or even what I
wanted
it to be—just as long as it was more exciting than the life I had when I was twelve.

Every summer we spent a week by the edge of the sea in Peterhof, at our dacha. We never stayed in the Great Palace, which Mama said was just too big, but in the Lower Palace, which reminded her of places she used to stay in England. I was born in the Lower Palace.

I loved spending my birthday at Peterhof. Aunt Olga came with us, and Anya, too. Whatever had upset Mama had been patched over. Dr. Botkin brought his children, Gleb and Tatiana. I was happy to see Gleb, who was good-humored and
sweet as always and, I believed, truly had forgiven me for joking about his becoming a smelly
starets.

Before luncheon we all went for a walk on the beach, looking for pretty shells and interesting stones. Gleb found a piece of sea glass, polished smooth by sand and water, and presented it to me with a low bow. “A birthday gift for Your Imperial Highness,” he said earnestly, and kissed my hand. I was surprised that he would be so formal and serious, and, without thinking, I kicked sand at him. Poor Gleb—I was always saying or doing the wrong thing and then having to apologize. The sea glass was a deep emerald green, almost the same color as his eyes, and I thanked him and put it away with my other little treasures.

At my birthday luncheon I received a thirteenth diamond for my necklace as well as other gifts, including one I disliked immensely: another porcelain doll, this one with real hair and a French wardrobe, sent by Cousin Willy! I wished somebody would please tell the man that I was now thirteen and practically a woman and had no need for dolls, even beautifully dressed ones. I held two fingers over my upper lip like a mustache and imitated the stiff-legged march of Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops. Papa laughed, but Mama pursed her lips and said I should not be disrespectful.

Aunt Olga, who understood me perfectly, gave me an easel and a new set of watercolors. She knew that more than almost anything else, I loved to paint. I decorated the pages of my photograph album with flowers and leaves.

Later that day the two of us set out by the water, wearing
big straw hats to protect us from the sun. “Someday when I’m older, I’m going to become an artist, like you,” I confided as we walked along, looking for a scene to paint. “Marie is welcome to have twenty children. I can’t imagine that Papa and Mama will allow her to marry a soldier, but maybe by the time it’s the third daughter’s turn, they won’t insist that she marry a prince. I don’t care if I marry or not. I want to be an artist, maybe even a famous one.”

“Better just to focus on painting, and not on being famous,” she advised.

We paused several times and gazed out at the sea toward Kronstadt, where the
Standart
was anchored, until we found a place to have the servants set up our easels and parasols. We arranged our paints and brushes, and Aunt Olga showed me how to make a rectangle with my fingers, framing the scene. We worked for an hour or two, not saying much, and when it was time to pack up and go back to the dacha, Aunt Olga had a lovely picture of a sailing ship, and I had a blotchy mess that had started out as a flowering bush and gone completely wrong, but it didn’t matter. It was still a wonderful day.

At the end of June, before we left for our summer cruise on the Baltic, we visited Grandmère Marie at the Cottage Palace, her favorite palace at Peterhof, for one big birthday party that she gave for Tatiana, Marie, and me. Inside a box tied with a huge pink bow, cradled in a nest of tissue paper, was the most beautiful gift imaginable: a silver music box with a ballerina posed
en pointe
in a graceful arabesque. She turned slowly when I wound the mechanism to play “The Waltz of the Flowers” by Tchaikovsky.

“Don’t forget,
ma chère
,” Grandmère whispered to me as we were leaving. “We’ll visit Paris when you’re sixteen.”

Three more years!
It might as well be a lifetime
, I thought, holding the music box on my lap on the train back to Tsarskoe Selo and entertaining my favorite daydream:
When Grandmère Marie and I come back to Russia from Paris, I’ll concentrate on becoming a very, very good painter. Maybe then I’ll also become famous.

•  •  •

We left for our summer cruise from Peterhof, making the short trip to Kronstadt on the
Alexandria
, where Pavel Voronov now served. It must have been hard for Olga to see him. She had not mentioned him, or her meeting with Crown Prince Carol, but a few words in the notebook said it all.

I saw him today, thanks be to God! It has been so long, and it still breaks my heart. We didn’t speak, only smiled and nodded. I tried not to let it show how much I care.

After that awful meeting in Constanta, I told Mother and Father there was absolutely no possibility of a match with C.P. Carol. “Perhaps you’ll reconsider,” Father said, “when you’re both older and he’s more mature.”

Perhaps NEVER,
I thought, but didn’t say.

Four enormous British battle cruisers steamed into Kronstadt to pay us a visit. They dropped anchor and invited us to luncheon on the flagship
Lion
. It was OTMA’s unanimous opinion that Admiral Beatty of the British Royal Navy was the
handsomest admiral we had ever seen anywhere, and the midshipmen who were our escorts on the
Lion
were so charming and funny that even sour old Olga was laughing and smiling. It had been a long time since I’d seen her enjoy herself as we did that day.

Later, as we were going up the gangway to the
Standart
at anchor nearby, Alexei somehow hurt his ankle. He had been doing so well that we’d all hoped he was better, or that he’d learned to be more careful. But boys in general aren’t careful, and Mama was upset that Nagorny and Derevenko hadn’t seen to it that he made it safely. Alexei was in a lot of pain. Gilliard tried to take his mind off it by reading to him.

Even worse, news arrived that a crazy woman had attacked Father Grigory with a knife while he was visiting his village. He was so badly wounded that it was feared he might die. Anya was nearly hysterical. “Who could wish harm to such a good man?” she wailed. “Who could do such a terrible thing to a man of God?”

Mama, too, was very upset, but she was much quieter about it.

But the most important event that summer, though I didn’t realize it immediately, happened far, far away from where we were cruising along the coast of Finland. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, son of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary, had been assassinated. The archduke had gone on an official visit to Sarajevo, in Serbia. As he and his wife were being driven in an open motorcar through the crowded streets, a revolutionary fired a gun at them and killed them both. Papa got the news of the murders over the wireless, and the possibility that this
would lead to war was all anyone talked about all evening. Papa ordered our cruise on the
Standart
cut short. The
Alexandria
took us back to Peterhof, giving Olga another glimpse of Voronov that must have been like a knife twisting in her heart.
War, war, war
—it’s all we heard.

There were so many agreements and treaties among countries that an incident like this could certainly get everyone involved on one side or the other. Pyotr Petrov tried to explain the alliances to my sisters and me. Russia was on Serbia’s side, Austria and Germany were on the other side, and some countries were neutral. It was hard to keep them straight. The Austrians believed the Serbian government was really responsible for the murders, not just some crazed revolutionary, and Emperor Franz Josef sent an ultimatum to Sarajevo. But he didn’t wait for a response. Austria declared war on Serbia. Papa sent orders to his generals, ordering Russian troops to help the Serbians if Austria attacked them.

Adding to all the tension, the president of France, Monsieur Poincaré, arrived by ship for an official visit that must have been planned much earlier. For four days Papa and Mama went through the motions of the usual ceremonies, speeches, and dinners for all those gloomy Frenchmen with long faces. Probably all they talked about was which country was going to war against which other country. Except for an appearance at a reception, Marie and I were not involved in any of the events, but Olga and Tatiana were forced to sit through a long, tedious dinner. Mama looked very beautiful in a low brocade gown and a diamond tiara, but Olga told us afterward
that she was afraid Mama was going to faint before it ended. When the French delegation finally bid adieu and sailed away, Mama was exhausted and relieved and Papa looked tired and worried, with huge bags under his eyes.

A week later, on a Sunday, the thing that Papa had been most worried about actually happened. After early evening prayers in our chapel, Papa went upstairs to his study to read the telegraph messages that had come for him while we were gone. We waited in the dining room for him to come down. We waited and waited, but still he didn’t come. Mama was about to send Tatiana to find out what was delaying him when Papa appeared, his face as white as chalk. “Germany has declared war on us,” he said in a hoarse voice.

Mama let out a little cry. “What? Germany, against us? It can’t be true!” She laid her head on the table and began to sob.

My sisters and I looked at each other. Had Cousin Willy actually done this? He wasn’t joking when he marched around in his dreadful spiked helmet. He and Papa might actually be fighting each other.

Seeing our mother so upset, we began to cry, tears running down our faces and falling onto our napkins. The servants peered in, ready to serve dinner. Papa told them to go ahead. I was the only one with any appetite—no one else seemed able to swallow even a mouthful.

By late that evening, important people had begun arriving by launch and by motorcar from St. Petersburg. I recognized Sergei Sazonov, the minister of foreign affairs who had been so keen to match Olga up with Crown Prince Carol. Next, the
English ambassador stepped out of a sleek limousine. Voices were low, somber. There was no laughing, hardly any smiling.

Mama was calmer now and sent us to bed, promising, “There is nothing to worry about, girlies, all will be well.” We desperately wanted to believe that. “But we must be up early tomorrow to go to St. Petersburg with Papa. He will make an announcement to the Russian people that our beloved country is at war.”

The door closed and only a nightlight was left burning. Marie and I lay talking quietly as we usually did before we fell asleep. “What do you think it will be like, Nastya, being at war?”

“I don’t know. Probably awful. But it does mean there will be a lot of soldiers around. Maybe you’ll meet the one you want to marry and have twenty children with,” I said brightly, trying to cheer her.

It had the opposite effect. “And then he’ll be killed!” she choked between sobs. “That’s what happens in war, Nastya. People get killed. Especially soldiers.”

I was sorry for saying something to upset her, but Marie was like that. Madame Becker must have been paying her a visit. She was always glum and weepy during that time of the month.

We were silent for a while and I thought Marie was asleep, until she whispered, “Nastya? Are you awake?”

“Umm.”

“I’ve been thinking about Mama,” she said. She was sitting straight up in bed. “She must feel terrible. Her mother was English, but her father was German! She was born in Germany!
Her brother, Uncle Ernie, lives in Germany. She might still be there if she hadn’t fallen in love with Papa and come to Russia to marry him. She had to learn to speak Russian, and she even gave up her religion for ours. Mama is as Russian as anybody, and she must hate it that Cousin Willy is doing this wicked, awful thing.”

I’d been so sad for Papa that I had forgotten how bad Mama must have also been feeling. I crawled out of my bed and went to sit next to Marie, my arm around her, and the two of us cried and cried.

•  •  •

Shura woke us very early, before sunrise. “Your papa wants both of you to go with him for morning prayers. Quick, quick now, my girls!”

Papa looked as though he hadn’t slept at all. He took the two of us by the hand, as if we were still small children, and led us to the chapel. “Pray hard, my darlings,” he said. “Harder than you ever have in your life.” And we did.