The Lost Crown (33 page)

Every day is the same. Not one thing has happened that couldn’t have waited for Aleksei to be well. Nothing has happened at all! Papa fills hours with books and cigarettes and chin-ups while Mama frets all day long about Aleksei. Missing my sisters and brother takes up so much of me, I hardly know what to do for her. A puppy wagging its tail from morning to night would be as much use as I am. I read and sew with her, and try to arrange her hair the way Tatiana does, but I don’t have the knack. Mama’s heart isn’t in it anyway. Now and then she’ll smile or pat my arm, and I’m the one who’s supposed to be comforting her. The only time she seems happy is at night, after she’s torn another day off the calendar on our bedroom wall. In the dark sometimes, I hear her giggle like a girl at the tickle of Papa’s beard as they kiss good night.
Good night, Nastya,
I say inside my head every night.
Sleep tight.

But things aren’t all bad. We have Ukraintsev to chat with, and the chief of the guards, a man called Glarner, is friendly too. If no one is looking, they’ll take letters from us and tuck them into their cuffs to mail in private. Papa even invites Glarner into the drawing room sometimes to play bezique with us. One evening he can hardly keep his eyes open.

“What is it, man?” Papa finally asks when Glarner’s hand of cards droops and waves like a wilted little fan.

“My apologies, Your Maj—Citizen Romanov.” He yawns wide as a bear crawling out of its cave. “I was up most of the night.”

“Was there danger in the city?” Mama asks.

“No, Ma’am.” He grins. “I was dancing at a ball.”

“A ball!” I cry. “Oh, tell me all about it, please! What are the ladies wearing now? My sister Tatiana will be so eager to know. Did you take any pictures? Are there any new dances? My sisters and I haven’t had a dance lesson in simply ages.”

He stands up and brushes off his uniform. “With your permission,” he says to Papa.

Papa glances at Mama. She nods, and Papa says, “Certainly.”

Glarner offers me his hand. “May I have this dance?”

My fingers quiver and my feet are clumsy as a lame pony’s after so many months of plodding behind fences. We have no music, so Glarner hums, “
Rrrum
pa-pa-daa,
rrrum
pa-pa-daa,” as he sweeps me around the room. I make an awful mess of it, but in the end I can feel my own smile shining like someone’s brushed the dust off me.

Papa and Mama clap as Glarner bows to me, and they look brighter too. After all the time I’ve turned my head inside out trying to comfort Mama, this seems to have done us all more good than anything.

Finally, a few days after Easter, Ukraintsev himself hands us a telegram from Olga:
Thanks letter. All well. Little One already been in garden. We are writing.

Mama cries, she’s so relieved. Seeing her tears makes me feel like I can breathe again.

The next day Ukrainstev is gone, and a man called Moshkin is in his place. He’s nice-looking, with dark brows and lashes as lush as a lady’s, but awfully crude. He probably spent half his life tracking mud across his mama’s kitchen floor and then batting those gorgeous eyes to dodge a scolding.

After Commandant Avdeev goes home and Moshkin takes over the night shift, we hear a woman’s voice giggling behind the office walls. It sounds like champagne bubbles. I wouldn’t want to be alone with Moshkin, but that doesn’t stop me from blushing and chewing my lips to keep from giggling to myself while Mama scoffs and huffs over her hand of bezique.

Along with Moshkin comes a new set of guards. Papa and I watch them from the window. They’re scruffy-looking, but it doesn’t matter much. They only last a few days before a third set shows up—recruits from a nearby factory. Then Glarner disappears. “Relieved of his duties,” Moshkin says with a wink.

The day after that, we wake up to find an old man painting the windows over with whitewash from the outside. I follow him from room to room, watching the paint lap him up with every brushstroke. He never once looks through the windows, only at them, like they’re a wall between us even without the paint. By the time he’s done, it feels like we live in a giant glass of milk. Next, Avdeev seals all the windows from the inside.

“We can’t even see the thermometer,” Mama complains, shaming Avdeev into going outside to scratch away a narrow gap in the paint so we can read the temperature again. Once he’s done, the only window we can open is the little
fortochka
pane near the very top of our bedroom window. Mama and I can’t wear our own perfume indoors without sneezing. Dr. Botkin stops putting on his cologne, but a hot day makes it rise out of his clothes like steam.

“What’s this?” Papa asks as Avdeev sets down a parcel on the breakfast table after morning inspection.

Avdeev looks at the parcel, then at Papa. His eyebrows climb up his forehead the way Anastasia’s do when I’ve said something stupid. “A package,” he says, and walks out, shaking his head.

It’s barely been one day since the whitewash man came, and already we’re so shocked to see something from outside the fence, it’s like we’ve forgotten the world doesn’t end at our windowsills.

“It’s from your sister,” Papa tells Mama.

“Auntie Ella?” My own darling godmother! Oh, I could just hug it! “How did she know where to send it?”

Mama almost smiles. “Open it, Maria.”

“Coffee, chocolate, and hard-boiled eggs!” The scent makes my eyes go all teary, like I’m bent over a box of onions. “It smells like home,” I sniffle. But it’s more than that. It smells like running arm in arm through the corridors with Anastasia, waving at officers and sailors. It smells like the last day before everything fell apart.

At night Moshkin brings his friends from the factory to the house to show off. The first few days we only catch them peeking through the window by the second sentry post, but before long they take to gathering in Avdeev’s office. “Carousing,” Mama calls it. One evening they barge right into our rooms and push the piano into the duty office so they can sing revolutionary songs. When he drinks, Moshkin’s voice gets so loud and slippery it slides right under the door.

“Nikolashka himself pisses behind that door,” Moshkin brags. “Go on, boys—don’t be shy. You can tell all your friends you’ve used the same toilet as the ex-tsar!”

Papa’s beard twitches like someone’s torn a whisker from his chin, but he doesn’t say a word.

“At least Avdeev has the decency to do his drinking at home,” Mama huffs.

“Did you know almost half a dozen of the new men are younger than I am? Two are barely Anastasia’s age. One of them they call Kerensky, because his name is Alexander Feodorovich. He has the sweetest face. I think he’s the youngest of all. Ivan Cherepanov reminds me of the men in the Fourth Regiment. He’s older than almost all the other guards, and came here to help earn money for his great big family. And did you know there’s even one man named Romanov, just like us. Isn’t that funny?”

Mama snips a thread with her teeth. “You shouldn’t talk so much with these guards, darling. It isn’t proper.”

I’m always being scolded for saying too much to the guards. I don’t know why. Mama talked with Ukraintsev for hours, and most of the new guards aren’t even as old as Olga. They’re factory workers, not real soldiers at all. But I promised Tatiana I’d look after Mama, not annoy her, so I hush.

Since Mama never goes outside and Papa never tattles, she doesn’t know how often I chat with the sentries in the garden. That’s one good thing about locked doors and whitewashed windows.

“I’ve heard one of the men is Jewish,” I tell the one called Filipp Proskuryakov. “Is that true?”

“Yes. He’s a member of the Bolshevik Party too.”

“Oh. Well, I guess I won’t be talking to him, then. Too bad. I’ve never really known a Jew before.” I wish Anastasia was here. Proskuryakov is a bit of a hooligan. I bet the two of them would get along famously.

He glances at his watch. Our time is almost up, but I don’t want to go back into those same five rooms for the rest of the day. “I’ll tell you a secret about Ivan Kleshchev if you let us walk a little longer.” Proskuryakov raises an eyebrow. He’s fascinated by Papa, and trades with the others to take one of the posts in the garden when we exercise. Papa loves to walk, so what’s the harm in a little bribe to make all three of us happier? “He’s almost exactly my big sister Tatiana’s age,” I whisper, “but Ivan’s mama is the one who signed him up for guard duty. Can you imagine?” Filipp snorts, and Papa and I get to dash around the garden three more times before they shoo us indoors.

On 8 May, Avdeev unlocks three more rooms and hands over the keys to Papa. “The remainder of the imperial party is expected,” he tells us. It takes me a moment to realize he means Anastasia, Aleksei, and the Big Pair are coming at last. All day long I linger in the passage outside the duty office, hoping to hear or see something.

But for three days, nothing. No news, and no arrivals. Avdeev won’t even tell us what day they left Tobolsk. By the second morning I was so anxious, I ate up all my chocolate from Auntie Ella’s package, and a little bit of Mama’s share too. Not even the smell of the coffee could calm me.

Where can they be?

35.

OLGA NIKOLAEVNA

May 1918
Tobolsk

“Y
our Highness,” Colonel Kobylinsky says, his voice so low I almost have to crouch to hear it, “I must ask you to give me your pistol before you depart for Ekaterinburg.”

Shock blasts through me. I can feel the color wash from my face. I have no chance of denying it. “How long have you known?”

“Your father confided in me back at Tsarskoe Selo, after I returned the heir’s toy rifle. Thank God he did.” A glaze of sweat moistens his face, beading on his upper lip. The colonel’s eyes flicker over me, but he can’t hold my gaze. Instead he studies the polished desktop as if he’s trying to piece together all those tiny glances. “I don’t want to alarm you, but yesterday Rodionov had the nuns and priest who came for vespers searched in a most … indecent manner before they entered the house for services.”

Disgust crawls over me like flies on the rubbish pile.

“Forgive me, but if Rodionov …” He grimaces and begins again. “If they discover you are carrying that gun, nothing short of your lives will be in danger.”

Christ have mercy. I have no choice. The colonel looks aside as I raise my skirt and fish the pearl-handled gun from my boot. After nearly a year, I feel naked as a newborn without that pistol nestled up against my ankle. From this minute, the guards’ eyes will feel like hands on me. No matter what awaits us in Ekaterinburg, I cannot wait to get out from under Rodionov.

“I wish I knew what’s made the Bolsheviks angry enough with my family to take it out on the innocent people who come to comfort us.” Guilt burns my eyes and throat like a swallow of vodka. I’m the one who requested permission for vespers to be said. All I wanted was some assurance of God’s blessing for tomorrow’s departure. Now the thought of what it cost the clergy to bring me that solace blots everything else out.

“These are troubled times.” Colonel Kobylinsky lifts his cap and pushes back his hair with a sigh. The blaze of white along his temple looks broader than I remember. “Everywhere I look, I see men drunk on chaos.”

My country is going to pieces all around me and I’m hardly allowed to watch, much less help. “Would the Reds stop dragging us by the scruff of the neck if they knew we love Russia just as much as they do?”

He opens his hands, too defeated to shrug. “I wish I knew. But there is another man, Khokhryakov, managing your journey along with Rodionov. He seems to be a decent sort. If you have any trouble, go to him. And may God go with you all.”

“Thank you, Colonel.” I wait until he shuts the door, then put my head down on Papa’s desk and cry.

Eager as we are to leave, my sisters and I hesitate in the doorway until Nagorny goes first, carrying Aleksei. Two rows of armed Latvians line the steps down to the carriage in front of the house. In spite of Rodionov’s shameful treatment of the clergy, it’s the archbishop who’s loaned his own carriage for our brother to ride to the riverbank.

At the dock Aleksei points at the crates and asks Rodionov, “Why are you taking those things? They don’t belong to us—they belong to other people.” Everything from the house is scattered over the deck of the
Rus
, from our luggage and the crates from the storage sheds to the governor’s own furniture. It took Rodionov’s men six hours to load it all.

“The master is gone. It is all ours,” the commandant replies. His tone makes me wish I were packed up tight in a crate instead of standing on the dock with the wind ruffling my skirt. Even the archbishop’s horse and carriage are led on board. Khorkhryakov watches without protest.

“Darlings!” a voice cries, and suddenly Isa Buxhoeveden’s throwing her arms around us. For a moment I feel protected again. It’s such a relief to see a familiar face, I could weep.

While Tatiana goes to situate Aleksei into his cabin and Anastasia romps with the dogs on deck, Isa and I settle down on a bench along the rail. Before we’ve had a chance to do more than cross our ankles, a guard positions himself at the end of our bench.
“Russki,”
he growls at us when I switch to English.