The Lost Crown (17 page)

“How absurd,” Tatiana says. “How do they expect us to pack in that amount of time without knowing the destination or duration?”

“Thank you, Colonel,” Papa says. “We will do our best to prepare.”

Tatiana huffs and stalls like a train without tracks, for an hour or so, anyhow. Then she goes upstairs and starts packing in a great flurry, for herself and everyone else, whether we need help or not. “Remember your hairpins and ribbons,” she insists, even though my hairpins will probably rust before I have enough hair to use them again.

“Think of the Crimea,” Mashka gushes. “Babushka and Auntie Ksenia, and all the cousins! I wouldn’t care if we’re still under arrest. And Auntie Olga—her baby must be due any minute! We could even be there in time for her delivery. I wonder if she’ll make us godmothers?” She sighs and leans her dreamy head against her fist. “Can you imagine smelling the sea and the cedars again? And the violets and peach blossoms in the spring?”

Of course I can. “In St. Petersburg we work,” Olga likes to say, “but at Livadia, we live.” My nose tingles and my chest feels like it’s folding up, I want to go so badly, but I’m afraid to hope as brightly as my sister.
I’ll pretend,
I tell myself. Pretending is safer than believing.

Even if we don’t know where we’re going, there’s heaps of stuff to pack, especially if we might not be allowed back. Downstairs, Kharitonov and Sednev jam sawdust into crates filled with portraits, lamps, clocks, vases, and statues. Trupp carefully bundles up the gramophone and its discs, the cinema projector, magic lantern, and all the films and pictures that go with them. Nyuta folds tablecloths and bed curtains while others roll up rugs and lug furniture. Even our foot-wiping machine is coming with us. Maids and valets swarm all over the place, carrying things back and forth like ants, but the idea of packing my things leaves me thick and sluggish as a tube of oil paint.

Two days later Colonel Kobylinsky comes back with one hint: “Kerensky advises that you pack warm clothing.”

“There goes the Crimea,” I tell Mashka.

“What about England?”

“Silly. It’s heaps colder in Petrograd than it is in England.”

“Then, Siberia?”

“I don’t know where else—unless they’re going to ship us to Iceland.” I didn’t think we could sink any lower, but after that all of us mope around as if we’re dragging our hearts on strings behind us. That doesn’t stop Tatiana from remembering to have our skis, sledges, and skates boxed up, though. Typical.

Once we know we aren’t going anywhere familiar, we stop loading up big things and start paying attention to the smaller bits of our lives. Mama leaves most of her Faberg é Easter eggs in their cabinet in the Maple Room but spends hours wrapping the hundreds of icons that hang over her bed, and all the trinkets Aleksei and my sisters and I have given her for Christmas since we were little. Papa’s chin-up bar goes into a crate, and he fills another up himself with his diaries, all arranged by year.

Upstairs, I pile up my paints and photo albums and diaries until my lip starts trembling for no good reason. Leaving Mashka behind, I stick my dribbly nose into the Big Pair’s room to spy. Tatiana already has a box crammed with fat books labeled religion and history in her sideways writing, and her best dresses wrapped in tissue. Olga sits on the carpet in front of her shelves with stacks of books scattered around her, struggling to pick between her old favorites. She’s all bent over, like a puppet without a hand inside it.

“
Dushka
, perhaps you will want a few new things to read?” Tatiana suggests.

Olga runs her fingers over an inscription. “We can get new books anywhere. I’ve had some of these since I was a little girl. Listen: ‘For darling Olga, from Aunty Irene, 1903,’” she reads. “It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve read
The Princess and the Goblin
. I can’t replace that signature.”

Either way they’ll both be bored stupid. But with that, I dash to my room and dig my poor old one-armed Vera from the back of our baby cupboard and bury the doll into the middle of one of my trunks.

All day long, Nagorny passes by with great armloads of things from Aleksei’s rooms: balalaikas, board games, puzzles, regiments of lead soldiers, a pair of toy boats. The next day our brother turns thirteen.

To give thanks for his birthday, Mama has the icon brought from the Church of Our Lady of Znamenie for Liturgy. The priests come in a procession from Tsarskoe Selo, through the palace, and we follow them into chapel to pray. Everything’s so solemn, I can’t help remembering the day Russia declared war on Germany. Then the whole country had looked toward Papa. Now it seems like Russia is looking away from us. Prayers are chanted for our safe journey, but they feel like the half-finished sentences in my English exercise books. Our safe journey
where
?

By the time the service is over, everyone, right down to the servants and commandant, is teary-eyed. Some soldiers even step forward to kiss the holy icon as the procession moves past them. We seven follow the icon as far as we’re allowed. It isn’t the proper hour for us prisoners to be outdoors, but Colonel Kobylinsky looks the other way when we step out on Mama’s balcony for the first time in months. The procession winds down the path and disappears into the park.

“I wonder if the icon will ever come back to this place,” Tatiana whispers as she crosses herself.

I wonder if
we
will ever come back,
I think, and cross myself, too.

In the morning our bedroom screens and cots are folded up, our mattresses, cushions, and satin comforters packed away. Our walls go bald in patches where we take down the last of our favorite picture frames and icons. When I think we’re finally done, it’s Tatiana who stops for a moment on our way downstairs to reach into a curio cabinet and slip a tiny Fabergé French bulldog figurine into her pocket.

Outside, we walk slowly through the gravel paths of the park and in and out of the rows of our kitchen garden. While Aleksei has one last swim in the pond, Maria and I row to the Children’s Island and say good-bye to the playhouse, then wander through the little cemetery where our pets are buried under engraved granite pyramids.

“Should we take a picture?” Maria asks.

I bend over her camera. “Don’t spend your last photo on a bunch of stones. I’ll find you something better.”

By the time we row back, Aleksei’s in his uniform again but still damp, wading along a little plank with his trousers rolled up. Olga lifts her skirt to tiptoe out and linger beside him, gazing forlornly over the pond and park.

“Hey, you two,” I call from the shore, lifting up Maria’s camera. “Can you still smile?” They both turn around. “We have one picture left on this roll, and I don’t want long faces on it.” Olga tries her best not to look sad, and Aleksei stands there smirking with one toe dipped into the water while Maria focuses the photo. “He’s up to something,” I mutter, but we both still gasp when he leaps forward the instant after Maria clicks the shutter button, giving Olga a shove right into the water! She keels backward, her arms rotating like propellors, then rises up dripping and spluttering, drenched through. For a minute she looks like she wants to thrash Aleksei something fierce.

“This is the only summer dress I have that isn’t packed up, you know!” she shouts. Maria and I muffle our giggles into each other’s shoulders as the water flies off Olga’s wagging finger.

Aleksei grins. “I know. But at least you won’t have to wait for your hair to dry.”

That takes the steam out of her! She reaches up to her gleaming bare scalp and laughs. Then Olga scoops up her hat and bails water onto Aleksei until he dances out of her way. “You’re getting my medal wet!”

“Serves you right if it rusts to your shoulder,” I tell him. “You’re lucky Mama and Tatiana didn’t see any of that.”

But
now
that I think about it, after being herded into the semicircular hall in the wee hours of the morning, waiting for a train that won’t come, to be taken who-knows-where, I wish Tatiana had been there, even if she would’ve scolded. That was probably the last bit of fun we’ll ever have here at home.

I shift against Maria and yawn. “What time is it?”

“Nearly three o’clock,” Tatiana answers.

Maria screws her eyes shut, nuzzling her shaved head against my shoulder. Waiting is horrible. I’ve spent the last four days wishing we didn’t have to go, and now? All I want is for the train to come.

21.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

August 1917
Tsarskoe Selo

M
otorcar horns blare, their honks sharp as angry geese, and we all startle. My sisters and I rub our eyes and look at our watches. Twenty minutes past five. Time to go. I think of the old Russian custom that says we should sit down for a moment before going on a journey. Even though we have been sitting here all night long, it feels wrong to jump up and leave.

Our legs and feet tingling with sleep, we fumble with our valises of trifles, trying to look at nothing and everything at once. Anastasia juggles Jemmy in her arms; her little legs are too short to climb stairs, much less clamber into a motorcar. Eyeing the door, Joy and Ortipo both whine softly, but not one of us moves until Papa offers Mama his arm.

“Come along, Sunny.”

Together they walk past the officers. Papa shakes hands with every man willing. Mama’s face betrays nothing, except for a final flicker of her eyes round the room. With Joy straining at his leash for one last chance at the grass of Tsarskoe Selo, Aleksei follows.

The four of us are left with our noses beginning to run, no matter how stoutly we try not to cry. One of us must take the first step, and I know it will have to be me. My whole body begs me to scoop up Ortipo and go running after Mama, Papa, and Aleksei, yet I cannot make myself move. Beside me, Mashka’s eyes have gone brimful enough to drown the last of my composure, so I put my hand gently on her back and ease her forward. Anastasia comes along as if they are stitched together, but they stall after an
arshin
or two. I cannot drag them out any more than I can drag myself. My face threatens to fall; I glance desperately at Olga. She reads my expression as easily as a psalm, and with a nod, we understand each other. Olga and I will wrap ourselves round the Little Pair like a bandage and cushion their leaving. God give us strength!

With a parting caress of the door frame, Olga squares her shoulders and takes the first step out the door. Maria and Anastasia follow like ducklings, God bless them. I cross myself, murmur a quick prayer for our safe journey, and leave our home behind me to join my family on the gravel path.

Outside, we pile into the idling motorcars. Mama, Papa, Aleksei, and Olga in the first; Maria, Anastasia, and I in the second with Nyuta, Sednev, and his nephew Leonka. Behind us, Monsieur Gilliard and Dr. Botkin climb into yet another with more members of the suite and their families. I wish I could be in the same motor with Mama, but I think the Little Pair is glad to have me beside them. For once, they split in two and sit on either side of me, the three of us meshing together as the line of motorcars pulls away. Maria cries unashamedly on my shoulder while I whisper and pet her cheek, but Anastasia grips my other hand and stares fiercely back at our Alexander Palace with her wet blue eyes until it is no more than a lemon-colored speck against the sunrise.

As we pass through the imperial gate, an armed escort of dragoons falls into place beside our convoy. Through the sleeping streets of Tsarskoe Selo, the horses’ hooves clatter over the pavement. Even more guards with loops of bullets ringing their shoulders circle the railway station.

At the platform a strange black train huffs impatiently while we stand bewildered for a moment. I suppose it was stupid to presume we might be allowed to use our familiar imperial train, but this one seems so indifferent. There are not even any steps leading up into the carriages. Mama has to be hoisted aboard by some of the men. Even though they try to be gentle and proper, they have not had the practice of our loyal Cossacks, and it wrings my chest like an inside-out stocking to watch her being jostled by clumsy strangers.

Behind us, another train fills with soldiers. Over three hundred men and officers from three different regiments are coming to guard us. “They must think we are made of dynamite to send so many men,” I whisper to Olga.

“We are, Tatya. Think of how the people lined up behind our gates to gawk and shout at Papa after the abdication. You’ve seen the pictures in the papers of the crowds demonstrating in Petrograd. It isn’t safe here anymore.” It begins to dawn on me why Kerensky paced and fretted waiting for the train all night long. Christ be with us. I must pay more attention from now on.

A soldier offers his hands for me to use as a step, and I swing myself awkwardly up into the carriage. Olga follows, steady at first; then she lurches as her left ankle gives way, and sways as if she is about to faint. “
Dushka!
Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Such a thin smile cannot convince me, but suddenly she feels sturdy again. “I only lost my balance for a moment,” she says, and leans on my elbow to adjust the cuff of her left boot.