The Lost Crown (30 page)

When I look up, Anastasia is on her knees before me. “You’ve been just as scared as the rest of us, haven’t you?” she asks.

I can do nothing but nod.

“Poor Tatya!” she cries, and plants a big kiss on my cheek. My baby sister, comforting me! I wrap my arms round her, and together we laugh like church bells.

“Read it, Olga,” Anastasia demands.

“‘In my thoughts I kiss you thrice, my dear Olga, and greet you on this joyous holiday.’” Tears brighten Olga’s cheeks at Maria’s description of the sleeping arrangements and the birds chirping outside the window. It sounds almost like any ordinary letter. Then Olga’s voice skids the slightest bit. “‘We live on the upper floor; around us is a wooden fence; we can see only the crosses on the cupolas of the churches on the square. We unpacked our things in the evening because all the baggage was searched, as well as the medicines and candies.’” She glances at me. That last part is the code Mama and I arranged to signal that my sisters and I must hide the rest of our jewels. “Down at the bottom Mama says, ‘It’s not clear how things will be here.’”

With that one line, it feels as if everything Maria’s letter had begun to set free inside of me has come back to roost.

“What does that mean?” the little ones ask. “Can they be staying in Ekaterinburg?”

My mouth opens, but I have no words to answer them.

32.

OLGA NIKOLAEVNA

April–May 1918
Tobolsk

“T
he train was rerouted at Omsk,” Officer Matveev explains. He has come all the way back from Ekaterinburg to tell us the news about Papa, Mama, and Maria. “I believe Yakovlev intended to deliver them to Moscow, but your family is now under the jurisdiction of the Ural Regional Soviet.”

My mind won’t let me think about what any of this means until I know one thing: “But they’re all right?”

“Konechno,”
Matveev assures us. “I saw them safely to their new lodgings. They are under house arrest, much as you are here.”

Like a puff of wind, some small part of the fear I have been carrying these last two weeks rises off my skin.

“Slava Bogu,”
Tatiana murmurs as we all cross ourselves, seeping with relief. “Are they expected to remain in Ekaterinburg?” she asks.

“It seems that way. The owner of the house, a well-to-do merchant by the name of Ipatiev, has been relocated, and there was a stockade and sentry box outside the house. It did not look like a temporary arrangement. None of the stops along the way had such provisions for security.”

“They made Papa leave while Aleksei was sick just so they could fence him into another house? Why even bother if they didn’t take him to Moscow?” Anastasia wants to know.

At least I’m not the only one thinking it. Yakovlev can’t have split us apart for nothing, but if the Bolsheviks didn’t transfer Papa for political reasons, it makes no sense to move him from one house to another, not across so many hundreds of miles.

“God bless you for coming all the way back to explain the situation,” Tatiana says.

“When I thought of how my own mother and sisters wait for news of me, there was no question,” Matveev answers.

They go on a moment more, but I barely hear them. My mind grinds like a pair of mismatched gears, trying to force Matveev’s news into a shape that makes some kind of sense.

“
Dushka
, you hardly thanked him,” Tatiana chides.

“I’m sorry, Tatya. I didn’t know how to ask Matveev, but I was thinking, if they didn’t move Papa to anything, I’d like to know what they moved him from.”

Tatiana’s eyes dart to Anastasia. I’ve left her no delicate way to answer. “You think we are in danger here?”

Anastasia scoffs. “Just because the Bolsheviks are nervous doesn’t mean we should be. We’re not even on the same side.”

Click, click, click
—my thoughts line up like jumps across a checkerboard. “You’re right, Shvybs. Maybe Mama was right all along. Perhaps the Whites truly are in range of Tobolsk.”

“We’ll never know for sure unless they get here,” Anastasia says.

“If there is a chance it is true, we have no time to waste with the medicines,” Tatiana decides. “I will check Aleksei’s temperature and ask Monsieur Gilliard to read with him, then meet you two in Mama’s drawing room.”

For all the jewels we’ve already hidden, there are hundreds more, pounds of them, locked up in Papa and Mama’s bedroom. We don’t have enough buttons in our entire wardrobe to conceal them all. The three of us sew until our backs are bowed, and all the while Tatiana bustles in and out to look in on our brother. “Aleksei must eat more,” she insists, focusing her frustration on a row of diamonds. “I cannot understand it. His temperature is down, the swelling has stopped, but he is so weak and listless. I tell him he must get strong so we can all be together again, but nothing helps.”

That’s how it is with Tatiana. Sometimes she sees things simmering inside us before the bubbles even break our surfaces, but it’s almost impossible for her to guess what’s lit the fire beneath it all. Somehow, it’s a dear trait in someone who’s always so capable. Her face is so forlorn, I’d like to kiss her.

“I’ll sit with him,” I tell her. “You and Anastasia can manage the medicines for an hour or so.”

“The Governess was right,” I tell Aleksei. “You’re looking much better.”

He slouches down and glares at his pocket watch. “You don’t have to pretend. I know it’s all my fault.”

I nod to Monsieur Gilliard, who quietly closes his copy of
Ivanhoe
and slips out of the room. “What’s your fault, Alyosha?”

“If I was well, we’d all be together,” he says into the striped ticking of his cot.

Oh, my poor little brother. I thought it would be something like this. “Baby, don’t—” But he snatches his shoulder away before my hand even touches him and throws his watch into the blankets.

“You can’t tell me that isn’t true, Olga!” he shouts. “Everyone looks at me like I’m a clock, waiting to see how long before we can leave. What am I supposed to do? I can’t make myself get better any quicker.”

Down the corridor a door opens, and Tatiana’s unmistakable footsteps batter the floor. “You’re right,” I tell my brother. “But listen to me,” I demand, hastily straightening his blankets and wiping his tears, “even if it’s true, it isn’t your fault, do you hear me?” He nods, his passion suddenly snuffed. “
Khorosho.
Now you rest. I’m about to have my hands full with Tatiana, but I’ll manage her. I promise. Take your watch, and don’t say a word.” My wink pulls a smile from Aleksei as the door bursts open, and I’m there to meet Tatiana at the threshold.

“What is going on?” “Nothing.” Linking my arm through hers, I give our faithful Governess just enough time to glimpse Aleksei in bed with his watch as usual, then spin her back into the corridor, pulling the door shut behind me. She reaches for the handle, but I step in front of it.

“Olga! What is it?”

“It’s all right.”

“I heard Aleksei shouting.”

“He’s fine, Tatya. Let him be.” With a little nudging, the two of us end up sitting side by side on one of the trunks lining the corridor. “Tatya, sweetheart, you can’t coax Aleksei with seeing Papa and Mama anymore,” I tell her. “He knows better than any of us that we’re all waiting for him, and feeling guilty and worried won’t help.”

She jolts as if my voice is made of electricity. “I never said—”

“It’s nothing you’ve said, Tatya,” I soothe. “It’s how he feels. Do you remember what
Otets
Grigori telegraphed when Aleksei was so ill in Spala? ‘Do not let the doctors bother him too much.’ He was right. It only reminds Aleksei of how ill he is when we all hover over him. Let me look after him. Before you know it, you’ll be flooded with arrangements to make for our trip to Ekaterinburg.” Inside my chest, where there has been nothing but worry, a little smudge of energy kindles as I speak. “Please, Tatya, let me help. I can do this much.”

Tatiana cocks her head at me. Her face relaxes, as if I’ve taken two weights from her shoulders.
“Konechno, dushka.”
After that, I sit with Aleksei for hours every day, working jigsaw puzzles, playing cards, and telling stories. He’s thin and brittle as a candle, but his eyes spark with brightness when I begin a new tale. Usually by the time I’m done, his plate is empty. Sometimes Tatiana lingers in the doorway, listening to the old Russian stories.

“One night as they feasted, Prince Vladimir’s knight Sukhman made a boast that he could capture a wild swan and bring it back alive, without one trace of blood on its feathers,” I recite. “But no matter how he hunted, Sukhman couldn’t find a single duck or goose on the waters, much less a swan. ‘I cannot go back without keeping my promise, or my prince will have me executed,’ Sukhman said. ‘I’ll try my luck on the river Dneiper.’”

“Would he really execute Sukhman, just because he couldn’t find a swan?” Aleksei asks.

“That’s the way the story goes. When he reached its shore, the river Dneiper was muddy and listless. ‘Mother Dneiper, what’s happened to you?’ Sukhman asked. ‘A horde of heathen Tartars covers my far bank,’ the river answered. ‘Every night they build bridges to cross me, and every night I break them down. My strength has flowed away on my waters.’ So Sukhman uprooted a young oak tree and demolished the Tartars, but not before their archers struck him three times. Undaunted, Sukhman pulled out the arrows and plastered the wounds with herbs and poppy flowers for the pain. ‘And where is my white swan, Sukhman,’ asked haughty Prince Vladimir when Sukhman returned to Kiev, ‘without a drop of blood upon it?’ Sukhman replied, ‘My prince, my shining sun, I found no swan. Instead I destroyed an army of Tartars before they could cross Mother Dneiper and invade Kiev.’ But Prince Vladimir would have no excuses, and tossed Sukhman into a dungeon while he sent a scout to the Dneiper. When the prince found out Sukhman had told the truth, he commanded his servants to free Sukhman and grant him gifts of land and gold. But Sukhman, offended by Prince Vladimir’s lack of trust, left everything behind, riding away onto the open steppes. There, brave Sukhman removed the leaves from his wounds and his blood poured out to become a river, the river Sukhman.”

“He’s like me,” Aleksei muses.

“How, Baby?”

“My blood could flow into a river too,” he says, so matter of fact, it hurts.

About the only thing we have to look forward to is the mail. The letters we get from Maria make it sound as if they are safe and comfortable, but there are occasional lines that lodge like slivers in my thoughts.

We have a nasty surprise almost every day.

Such a shock after so many months of good treatment.

Each letter is numbered, so we can plainly see many aren’t getting through to us at all. Either the post is falling apart along with everything else, or someone is deliberately keeping things from us. My mind squirms around such thoughts, but even when I forbid myself to consider the possibilities, my nerves refuse to let me forget. It isn’t as if we don’t have our own share of shocks right here in Tobolsk.

Tatiana motions from the doorway of Aleksei’s room. Without a word, I turn my hand of
nain jaune
over to Nagorny and follow her to Papa’s study. She shuts the door behind us, then slumps against the knob and cries softly into her handkerchief. The air in the room swirls. “Tatya, what is it?” My thoughts fly to our parents and Maria when she doesn’t answer. I scan the room for a telegram or newspaper, but there’s nothing, only Colonel Kobylinsky standing beside Papa’s desk.

Tatiana clears her throat. “Colonel Kobylinsky has been informed that he is no longer in charge of the guards,” she falters.

Everything inside me stops. “Who is?”

“A man called Rodionov, Your Highness,” Kobylinsky says. The name makes him sneer. “A small fellow, round-shouldered like a beetle. The guards themselves are to be replaced as well. Latvians, I’ve heard.”

“Rodionov was here with Yakovlev to inspect the house weeks ago,” Tatiana explains.

A smother of panic blocks out my sister’s voice. “Are we still going to Ekaterinburg?” I blurt.

“Rodionov and his men are in charge of your transfer as well, and I will not leave Tobolsk until you do,” the colonel promises. “There is no reason Rodionov should not honor Yakovlev’s word and send you to your parents in Ekaterinburg. So far I have not been forbidden to enter the house. I will visit as often as I can.”

So many words, and not one of them
Yes.
While I swallow a ripple of nausea, Tatiana says, “Thank you, Colonel,” and he’s gone before I can press for more.

“Until this, I thought I could bear it,” I tell her. But to lose Kobylinsky when we’re all alone?

“The colonel promised not to abandon us.”

“But he has no power, Tatya. He’s been depending on the guards’ decency for weeks now, and these men will all be new.”

“Olga, please!” she cries. “I cannot worry about any of this until it happens. Even then I may not be able to fix it, but I know for certain there is nothing to be done for it now. God will give me the strength when the time comes. Until then I do not dare ask for any more.”