The Lost Crown (19 page)

“Did you ever see such bare walls?” Tatiana asks. It’s true. Fresh wallpaper and curtains decorate the rest of the house, but our room is awash in nothing but a seasick shade of blue. “What will we do without our chintz screens and all our picture frames?”

“Thumbtacks,” Anastasia says, and within an hour after Nyuta arrives from town with a box of them, we’ve blotted out whole stretches of the queasy paint with colorful shawls and tacked masses of our favorite photos and drawings over our beds.

Once we’ve unpacked, we seven walk across the street to see the Kornilov house. The moment we return, Colonel Kobylinksy informs us this is not allowed. “The soldiers of the Second Regiment have protested. For the time being you must stay inside the yard.”

“We had hopes of seeing the town,” Papa says.

“And attending services,” Mama reminds him.

“I will take it up with the new commandant when he arrives. Please, for the time being, bear with me, Your Majesties.”

His request seems reasonable enough, but before we know it another fence is going up outside the first one, enclosing the governor’s garden, poultry coops, greenhouse, and a portion of the side street with pointed gray boards. For days, the sounds of hammers and saws stamp their prints on our hours.

While my sisters study their lessons, I have nothing to do but watch the soldiers work outside our windows. I ought to be grateful they’re expanding our yard, but it’s still shorter than the deck of the
Standart
. “The gates at Tsarskoe Selo never felt this way.”

“We should be used to it,” Tatiana reasons. “There have always been lines separating us from the rest of the world, whether they were satin ribbons or iron rails.” She wrinkles her nose at the workmen’s progress. “Though at least the fence back home was attractive.”

“This is the first one built especially to keep us
in
,” Anastasia adds.

“That’s true,” says Maria. “It’s queer being shut in this way.”

“What are you talking about?” Anastasia scoffs. “Maybe Papa and Mama could come and go before the revolution, but not us, and even they couldn’t go anywhere without at least half an hour’s notice and a pack of security agents.”

“It’s the first fence we can’t see through,” I realize.

When the palisade is finished, it’s as if someone has put a lid over the yard.
“Tak i byt,”
is all Papa has to say.
So be it.
He surveys the serrated row of planks, then tries to shake one of the crosspieces. “Well made.”

Leaving Tsarskoe Selo was like tearing a page from my heart, but even penned in like this, Tobolsk isn’t so bad. Right away Maria and Anastasia take to leaning out of our bedroom window to wave at passersby. “You should see how they look at us.” Mashka beams. “You’d think they’d seen a shooting star in broad daylight. Until Nastya pulls a face and sends them scurrying, at least.”

Already we’ve had daily gifts of fresh eggs and milk from local farmers, and nuns from a convent nearby deliver enough sugar and cakes to plump Maria up like a ripe strawberry again. When Mama sits on the balcony, passersby take off their hats and bow or cross themselves.

Could this be how Aleksei’s pet elephant felt, penned up far from home but lavished with treats and curiosity? And yet if the people are so proud to have us in their city, who rechristened this block Freedom Street?

Inside the house, everything carries on as usual. It’s like being part of the scenes in Mama’s Fabergé Easter eggs: the morning prayer service egg, the garden stroll egg, the tea-time egg. Papa and Mama take up nightly games of bezique or dominoes with Dr. Botkin. Tatiana often joins them, while Aleksei plays endless hands of
nain jaune
with Monsieur Gilliard and Nagorny. Those nights, surrounded by our furniture, our people, and our familiar routine, I can close my eyes and almost forget we left home at all. Almost.

“Olga, girlies,” Mama gasps from our doorway, “can you guess who has come to Tobolsk?” My sisters and I gape at one another and shake our heads. It’s enough of a surprise to see Mama outside her drawing room—we can hardly imagine such a thing as a visitor. “Margarita Khitrovo. All by herself!”

I jump from the writing table and pull Mama into the room by both her hands. “Ritka? All the way from Petrograd?” My heart beats in my ears, my throat, the tips of my fingers. Ritka, our dear friend, all the way from the lazaret at Tsarskoe Selo! It’s like something from a fairy tale—a devoted maid following her lady over mountains and across rivers. A hundred questions swarm inside my head: Why did she leave the lazaret? How did she get here alone? What about her mother and sisters and brothers? My voice shakes as I ask the most important question of all. “Where is she now, Mama?”

“At the Kornilov house, with Countess Hendrikova. She arrived this morning and walked right in.”

Right across the street. And yet she might as well be on the other side of the Ural Mountains. It feels as if there’s a fish flopping under my ribs. How I wish we could leave this house and go to her! Instead I lean out our bedroom window like the Little Pair, hoping to catch a glimpse of my dear Ritka until dark.

The next morning I perch in the windowsill again, then run downstairs to pounce on Dr. Botkin the moment he crosses the street. “Where’s Ritka?” I ask him. “When will they let her come see me?”

“I’m sorry, Olga Nikolaevna.” He sighs and pinches the rim of his glasses. “Your friend has been put on a steamship back to Petrograd.”

It’s as if a carpet has been yanked out from under my heart. The excitement that danced inside me all night and day flashes out like a shattered lightbulb. “Why?”

“Miss Khitrovo brought a packet of letters with her from Petrograd. I’m afraid she was quite indiscreet about it. The soldiers searched Countess Hendrikova’s room, confiscated the letters, and sent the young lady home.”

“It’s that awful Second Regiment again, isn’t it?” I blaze. “Will they even let us have our letters?”

“I have my doubts. There was talk of confining us all to the Kornilov house, but Colonel Kobylinsky persuaded the soldiers to compromise: servants and members of the suite may go into town accompanied by an armed guard.”

Disappointment stiffens me like chunks of ice clogging a river, and I mope for days, not caring in the least what anyone thinks of my mood. I’m almost glad when an earache confines me to bed, where I can toss and sigh while Mama pets my hands and hums my favorite hymns.

When the pain clears, I can hardly believe my ears—it sounds as if I’m hearing double voices from Aleksei’s bedroom. Across the corridor, I discover my brother and young Kolya Derevenko sprawled across the floor with Aleksei’s model boats.

“Dr. Derevenko and his family arrived in town Friday,” Tatiana explains. She can’t even look at me. “Kolya has permission to come play with Aleksei once a week.”

If I could go to church, I think I could stand it, but every Sunday when Kolya arrives, jealousy licks at me like the rough tongue of a cat, even when I hear them arguing together over some trifle. Surely Ritka and her letters weren’t any more dangerous than Aleksei’s miniature army.

By September, two new men arrive to take charge of us. Their names are Nikolsky and Pankratov.

On the first day, Papa meets with Pankratov in his study while we wait in our rooms. None of us can hear a thing, but I imagine Papa speaking politely to the commissar, asking to be allowed to walk in the town, to go to church, and to receive foreign newspapers. My stomach mumbles to itself as I wonder how this new man will react. Could he be nervous, the way Kerensky was? Will he be courteous like our Colonel Kobylinsky, or surly as the men of the Second Regiment?

Before my questions settle, Papa appears at our door. “The commissar has asked to meet us. Please come into the corridor.” Outside, Papa organizes us into a neat row, just as we stood when we met Kerensky in our classroom at home—Mama, Aleksei, then me and my sisters arranged from oldest to youngest. Papa steps back and gazes down the line at us. A smile lifts his beard, crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“Otlichno,”
he says. “Now wait right here.”

He strides down the hallway, his back straight as a soldier’s, and disappears into his study. When Papa reappears, a man both smaller and older than himself accompanies him. For an instant, the older fellow looks panicked, as if he’s facing an execution squad instead of a line of captive women and children. “This way, Mr. Commissar,” Papa calls amiably. “May I present my wife and my children. Now you see why you have no reason to fear my running off. How could I leave such a family?”

Pankratov recovers himself and begins to greet us. “How is your health, Aleksei Nikolaevich?”

“Khorosho, spasibo,”
Aleksei answers.

Pankratov turns to my sisters and me. “Have you ever been to Siberia before?” Something about his expectant look makes me think of a schoolteacher. He smiles and holds his eyebrows high, as if to say,
Come along now, children, you know the answer.
We only shake our heads shyly.

“It’s not as terrible as many people say,” Papa interrupts. “The climate here is good, and the weather is marvelous.” They talk agreeably for a minute about Siberia, with its sunny days unlike gray Petrograd, and how severe the temperature might be in the winter.

Their interlude done, Pankratov returns to the four of us. “Do you have books?”

Puzzlement tickles my mouth. What a funny little man, chatting with his prisoners about the weather and books! A giggle squeaks like a pinched balloon from the Little Pair’s end of the line.

“We brought our library,” Tatiana answers over them.

Pankratov seems genuinely pleased. “If you need anything, I ask that you let me know.” With a smart nod, away he goes down the corridor.

After that, the days unfold one like another, until I feel as if I’m caught in a book with its pages glued together. Each morning Papa and I take tea alone at nine o’clock, but for the rest of the day I’m adrift. Tatiana busies herself with Mama. The Little Pair have their passersby. There are the governor’s turkeys and chickens for Aleksei to feed. Papa helps Aleksei dig a shallow pond for the ducks, then retires to puttering over the plants in the greenhouse. Even the dogs have the rubbish pile to nose through.

Just as in Tsarskoe Selo, the world exists around us, but we aren’t a part of it, and it’s no longer concerned with us, except to wonder at our sheared heads when we sun ourselves on the balcony. For the longest time, the only break in our languor is a telegram from the Crimea—sweetheart Aunt Olga has had her baby, a little boy called Tikhon. We cheer and offer up prayers for the little one’s health, until our excitement swallows itself. Perhaps the same question has dawned on us all at once: When will we ever see Tikhon ourselves?

“I have a treat for you children,” Dr. Botkin says one Saturday afternoon, leaning so close my forkful of fish tastes like cologne. His keeps his voice low, as if the words might run over the edge of the table and into the ears of the guards in their barracks. “Come into the heir’s bedroom when luncheon is done and you shall have it.” I know he’s talking to Aleksei and the Little Pair when he says “children,” but I’m already so weary with tedium I find myself trailing them up the steps.

Upstairs, Dr. Botkin eases the door shut and reaches into his coat. “With compliments from my son, Gleb,” he says, handing Aleksei a black album. Inside is a painting of a white teddy bear in a blue uniform tearing the tail from an awful red dragon.

Aleksei reads the lettering along the dragon’s tail. “
The Sacred Truth of the History of the Times of the Monkey Revolution.
” A grin parts his face. “It’s a new Mishka story, isn’t it, Dr. Botkin?” The doctor folds his hands behind his waistcoat and smiles as he rocks forward and back on his heels, just once. It’s as if his whole body is nodding. Gleb is only a little older than Anastasia, but he has a talent with water colors and words. Back home, he invented a storybook world of teddy bears and monkeys just for us. We all crowd around the album as if it’s a beckoning campfire. Even the Little Pair is really too old for such fancies, but in this dull place Gleb’s stories are refreshing as peaches. The glow from their smiles warms my own cheeks. Tatiana quietly thanks our good doctor, and I know he is proud of his boy.

From time to time, Dr. Botkin pats his coat pocket when he arrives in the morning, and we know there is a fresh chapter in the Monkey Revolution from Gleb inside. When I don’t have my own letters to read or write, I linger in Aleksei’s doorway, listening as they untangle the latest twist in the Mishkoslavian plot to overthrow the monkeys and pore over the pictures with their detailed military uniforms. Gleb is a kind young man to go to such trouble for my brother and sisters. I wish I could thank him somehow.

One afternoon Dr. Botkin takes me aside and reaches again into his coat pocket. “My son asks if you will take a look at this for him, Olga Nikolaevna.” He hands me a small exercise book. Inside are a few poems in Gleb’s careful lettering. Has Gleb dashed off these poems just to fill my time—a grown-up version of the Mishka stories? I’m not sure if I should be grateful or insulted by the idea. My teeth grab hold of my lower lip and tuck it over the tip of my tongue as I try to consider my feelings.

“Gleb tells me he is having trouble with some of the rhymes,” Dr. Botkin continues. “I told him you might be willing to give your opinion on the verses and rhythm.” This time there is no proprietary nod or smile. The doctor looks almost as anxious for my reaction as if he’d written the poems himself.

“My opinion?”

“And your suggestions, if you have any.”

My lips unfold. A strange sense of relief sweeps over me. I wrap my fingers around Gleb’s exercise book as though it’s the rung of a ladder. “
Konechno
, Dr. Botkin.
Spasibo.
”

23.

MARIA NIKOLAEVNA