The Lost Crown (13 page)

From across the room I hear the shrug in Rodzyanko’s voice. “When a house is burning, the invalids are the first to be taken out.” And then he hangs up. Red splotches rush up Mama’s cheeks like she’s been slapped, and I tuck my chin to my chest, hoping she won’t have to see my shock.

The next morning we open the curtains to find the park empty as a blank checkerboard. Only the abandoned cannon and footprints in the snow are left to show the men were there at all. “My sailors, my own sailors,” Mama moans. “I can’t believe it.”

Beside her, I clutch the curtain until the rod above my head creaks, too frightened to look at Mama’s face. My own face is fighting me too hard to be trusted.

How many times have I told my sisters, “I want to marry a soldier and have twenty children!” I’ve lived alongside these men my whole life. They kept my sisters and me from falling when we roller-skated across the decks of the
Standart
. Aleksei played the balalaika with them, and Anastasia taught some of them to knit. My sisters say I’m boy-crazy, but it was Olga who spent a whole summer falling in love with one of the officers, sweet Pavel Voronov. What’s happened to erase all those golden days of tennis, picnics, and mushroom picking? What could make the big gentlemen who’d kept Aleksei from toddling over the rails when he was small suddenly desert us in the snow?

I want my sisters. I want my sisters and my papa, because it’s only me and Mama and I don’t know what to do. I want Tatiana to take care of Mama, Olga to take care of me, Anastasia to make us all laugh, and our papa the tsar to fix everything.

But there’s still no news of Papa, only the rumors the servants bring with them as they trudge in from the city: Papa’s train is trapped in Pskov and he’s given up the throne.

“Ridiculous,” Mama says, crumpling up the leaflets. “Such trash! My Nicky would never do such a stupid thing. What on earth would he be doing in Pskov? He’s on his way home.” I hardly hear what she says. Her feet are awfully swollen and sore from the stairs, and now this. How much more can her poor heart take?

The news arrives with Papa’s uncle Pavel Friday night. Upstairs in the Crimson Drawing Room, Mama abandons her letter to Papa and shoos Lili and me into my sisters’ classroom so they can talk. Before long, Uncle Pavel’s shouting. No one speaks to my darling Mama that way, not ever. Hearing it makes me feel all wrong, like a plucked chicken.

“Don’t you think I’d better see what’s the matter?” I whisper.

Lili’s eyes go terribly wide. “No, no!” she says. “We should remain quietly here.”

I can’t do it. I just can’t, and I know it, not with that storm going on in the next room. Even the owls stenciled along the ceiling seem to be ruffling their feathers at the sound of it. “You can stay here, but I’m going to my room. I can’t bear to think that Mama’s worried.”

I’ve stopped in the doorway just long enough to touch my fingers to the pencil lines marking my brother and sisters’ heights when the Crimson Drawing Room opens. Lili’s footsteps rush forward, and I hear her gasp, “Madame!”

I hide myself behind the doorway in time to see Lili grab Mama as she totters toward the writing desk between the windows.
“Abdiqué!”
Mama says. Her voice breaks as she clings to the desk.

Abdiqué
. Abdicated. The same word from the leaflets the servants brought from town. My papa, who’d been anointed by God and put the imperial crown on his head with his own hands, is no longer tsar?

Mama’s whimpers cut in and out of my own thoughts. “My God … the poor darling … all alone.”

Lili wraps her arms around Mama, and together they walk up and down the long row of bookcases. “Courage,” Lili tells her. As they pass near the doorway I clap my hands over my own mouth, pulling my knees up to my chin.

Please, God, don’t let them hear me cry.

What could make Papa sign away the throne? Poor Aleksei will be so shocked! The two thoughts bang together: My twelve-year-old brother, asleep in his bed, is probably His Imperial Majesty Tsar Aleksei II. Will the people and soldiers rioting in the streets come after our darling Sunbeam now? A sob shakes in my chest, and I push my eyes against my knees to force back the tears.

While I struggle with myself, Lili settles Mama at the desk and convinces her to finish writing to Papa. “Think how pleased he’ll be, dear Madame,” she says, and Mama obeys as if Lili were the empress. As soon as Mama starts to write, Lili rushes past me. She comes back right away with a little glass of something from Dr. Botkin.

Oh, Papa. My poor golden papa. What is he doing without all of us, far away in Pskov without our loyal Dr. Botkin and kind friends like Lili to comfort him?

Just then old Trupp the footman appears in the doorway. The wispy white hairs at the crown of his head tremble as he bows to Mama. “Dinner is served, Madame,” he says in a husky voice. He pauses a moment as he turns to go, looking up from the floor for the first time, and I see his eyes are almost as teary as mine.

Mama gets up from the desk, takes a deep breath, and heads toward the dining room with Lili right behind her, as if she thinks Mama might fall back into her arms at any moment. “Where is Maria?” Mama asks.

“I’ll fetch her, Madame.”

I’m so ashamed of myself for spying on them, then going to pieces and crying like a baby on the floor, that I can’t look at Lili. But she crouches right down in front of me and lets me put my head against her shoulder. I sob harder than ever. When it seems like I won’t be able to stop, Lili takes my face in her hands and kisses my cheeks. “Darling,” she says, “don’t cry. You will make Mama so unhappy. Think of her.”

It’s like magic—like what
Otets
Grigori used to do for Mama and Aleksei. Just those few calm words make me sit back on my heels and snuffle hard to swallow my tears. I hiccup. “She’s been so brave all this time.” I scrub at my eyes like a sleepy toddler and wipe my cheeks and chin. My eyes and nose have run like the fountains at Peterhof, and I know I look a fright.

“Come along,” Lili says, and offers me her hand. “We can spare a little cold water for your face. Mama won’t notice in the candlelight.”

I let Lili help me up and pat my face with a cool cloth. Then, together we go in to dinner.

17.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

March 1917
Tsarskoe Selo

M
ama’s lips move again and again, but I hear nothing. All I recognize is “Papa.” The room is cold and dim; I cannot even hear myself ask Mama to turn on the light so I might make out what she is saying. Mama shakes her head and her lips move once more, in a different way this time. Sometimes I can hear poor Maria crying out in her fever dreams, but only the wail in her voice, not the words themselves. It seems Mama is telling me Papa will be here soon. I turn to Olga, crying in her bed. Even in the dark, I can tell they are not happy tears. I shake my head to show I still do not understand, and pain flares deep inside my ears.

Mama mimes writing, then taking off a hat and setting it down while her lips repeat, “Papa.” Dumbly, I mimic her motions, then close my eyes and wave my hands in front of my face, too tired and confused to try anymore. After a moment, I feel a nudge at my arm. Beside me, Olga stretches across the space between our cots, holding out a pencil and a page torn from the back of her diary:

Abdication, Tatya.

Papa has given up the crown.

He’ll be home tomorrow, and we are all under house arrest.

God help us! The news clatters against my deaf ears. Mama moves her hands again, telling me to write. What can I say? There is not enough room on the page to answer my questions. So instead of
How, Why
, or
What about Aleksei
, I write only,
When?
and hand the paper to Mama.

Six days ago.

Bozhe moi!
I feel nothing then, except for the tears painting my cheeks.

When I find energy to think, I wonder how Mama did it. Even though I could not hear, I saw the muscles pulling against Mama’s smile as she tried to comfort us, but I never imagined what an awful strain her heart was truly bearing. “Don’t let Mama sleep alone,” we had begged Lili the night measles finally caught up with Maria.

And Mashka! Our Mashka is so awfully ill. She has tossed and flailed so much Mama finally moved her into a sturdy brass bed in the sickroom instead of her little cot. Lili and Mama both nurse her round the clock. When double pneumonia sets in, I wish to God I were well enough to put on my Red Cross uniform and help.

“Please, Lili,” I plead, still too deaf to know whether I am whispering or shouting.

No, darling, it’s too dangerous for you,
she writes on a scrap of notepaper.
You haven’t fully recovered yet yourself.

Konechno
, she is right, but I can hardly lie still for thinking of all Mama endures while I lay idle in my bed.

The best you can do to ease your mama’s worries now is to get well. We’ll take good care of Maria. We’re even sending for another doctor.

Lili’s words send a cold flame of fear through my body. Right then I understand how ill Mashka truly is. Between doctors Derevenko and Botkin, we never had need of another before. When my ears begin to clear at last, I start picking words out of Maria’s delirium.

“Crowds of people … dreadful people … they’re coming to kill Mama!”

Her voice pins me to my bed all over again. What must she have been through that makes her dream such dreadful things? When the sounds stop I praise Christ, but only until I learn the doctors are giving Maria oxygen to keep her alive.

When Papa arrives at last, I do not try to speak. There is nothing I could say without crying. Word has already come that not only did Papa abdicate on behalf of Aleksei as well as himself, but Uncle Misha has also refused the throne. Russia has no tsar at all.

At the sight of Papa’s dear old face my heart swells like the shining dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Beside me, Olga’s lips move and the words are like water. Tears streak her cheeks, but I will be brave for my papa. He looks so tired and worn, like the men when they arrive in the lazaret. I wrap my arms round his neck and wish I could whisper to him,
Ya tebya ochen lyublyu
, Papa.
I love you very much
.

Though Olga and I are still too weak to leave our beds, Aleksei is up and about again, so Papa sits between our two cots, holding our hands with our brother at his feet like a puppy. I try not to let Papa see how I study him. Strands of silver streak his red beard. I cannot remember whether they were there the last time I saw him. He seems sad, almost ashamed of himself at first, but not worried. How long has it been since Papa has not looked worried? For the first time in ages, he smokes his cigarettes in long drags, stroking our hands instead of puffing away and fidgeting with his beard and mustache. Soon the smoke calms me as well, and I drift off to sleep.

“Your Majesty,” Colonel Kobylinsky, the commandant of the new palace guard, says to Mama the first time I meet him, “I am sorry to have to return this to you.” He grips his cap with one hand and holds out a small item in the other. The image of the Holy Virgin that Mama, Anya, and my sisters tucked beside
Otets
Grigori’s cheek before sealing his coffin. My head buzzes at the sight of it, so obviously out of place. I cross myself.

“Where did you get this?” Mama demands.

The colonel’s knuckles smooth a swatch of white hair at his temple. “The grave has been disturbed, Madame. I retrieved this from the soldiers personally. My orders are to move the remains to a safe place to avoid further distress.” Seams of anxiety pull the colonel’s face, and I understand from the soft way he says “disturbed” and “distress” that he is trying to spare us. With men capable of such beastly sacrilege under his command, I do not know how Colonel Kobylinsky hopes to keep order.

It turns out that only one of the three regiments assigned to guard us, the tsar’s own Fourth Rifles, are good, loyal soldiers. Without a dead man to torment, many of the guards from the First and Second Regiments stoop to needling us with petty indignities.

“When the tsar tried to go outside for his usual walk, the sentries from the Second Regiment jeered and pushed at him with their rifle butts,” Anya blubbers into her handkerchief. They have taken to calling him
Gospodin Polkovnik
, or Mr. Colonel. “‘You can’t go there,
Gospodin Polkovnik
. We don’t permit you to walk in that direction,
Gospodin Polkovnik
. Stand back when you are commanded,
Gospodin Polkovnik
.’”

My temper rises like mercury. As if Papa should be ashamed of being “only” a colonel!

“You should have seen him, darlings,” she says, swiping fiercely at her nose. “He turned around and walked back into the palace without a word to those filthy pigs. Such dignity! Your papa is the finest man in Russia.”

Our Anya may be a silly cow sometimes, but this time I cannot argue with her. Wicked and unchristian as it is, after that I cannot stop a blaze of hatred from running up my throat each time I see a member of the Second Regiment.