The Lost Crown (41 page)

“Tatya, Ivan’s the same one who let me bring hair ribbons from the shed,” I beg. “Some of the others have been smuggling our letters for weeks, and they let Papa hang the hammocks in the yard for us to play in. Even Commandant Avdeev bought us a samovar with his own money.”

“I would rather have freedom than hair ribbons. A few small kindnesses do not balance against their other sins.”

“They’re only trying to earn enough to feed their families!”

“By holding ours captive.”

My chin quivers, and Tatiana sighs. “The return for good in this world is often evil,
dushka
. Look at us. What have we done to deserve being locked up this way?”

I turn on my side, talking more to Anastasia’s dear little painting of Tikhon that’s pinned to my headboard than to my sisters. “I remember how when you were all sick with measles, and that awful mob was marching on Tsarskoe Selo, Mama and I had to go out in the snow to speak to the soldiers. She begged every one of them not to shed any blood on our account. Why is it different now?”

No one answers. After a little while, I hear half whispers and catch a glimpse of Olga’s hands moving above me. There’s footsteps, and I know by the way the door shuts that Tatiana’s gone out.

It’s quiet for so long, I start to think Olga left too, until she leans her cheek against the ticking of my cot and strokes my arm, soft as the painted butterflies that ringed my bedroom back home.

“Maria, what you said about the guards—it reminded me of something Papa told me when the soldiers’ committee in Tobolsk took away his epaulets. ‘The evil in the world now will be stronger still before this is all over,’ he said, ‘but it is not evil that conquers evil, but love.’ Of all of us, you’re the one who remembers that best, sweetheart Mashka.”

It’s so hot I can hardly feel myself blush, but suddenly I can breathe again. “What about what Tatiana said? That the return for good is evil?”

“That may be the way of the world these days, but I can’t make myself believe it’s how God wants us to be. Life has ways of testing us.” She smiles, almost dreamily, sweeping away my tears with her thumbs. “You may be the only one of us who will pass this test without even trying. Try not to worry. I’ll talk to Dr. Botkin. If anyone can make Papa and Mama see reason, it’s him. Happy birthday, angel Mashka.”

With a kiss, she’s gone.

I lie still, thinking about everything Olga’s said, and what she told me before, that I’m the one who won’t be changed by all this. Is that something good, if all of Russia has changed around us, but I’m still the same old Mashka?

43.

OLGA NIKOLAEVNA

15 June 1918
Ekaterinburg

“W
hat would the Bolsheviks do to us if they discovered these letters?”

Dr. Botkin lifts his glasses the width of a fingernail, resettling them across the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know, Olga Nikolaevna. But if they are looking for a reason to do something, evidence that we are plotting to escape would be a more than sufficient excuse.”

His words tarnish my hopes, but I’m glad someone’s said it. Every morning those same worries stir before I wake, stretching my nerves taut as the strings on Aleksei’s balalaika. All day long the slightest twinge sets me vibrating, until I’m exhausted with the effort of keeping still. Even hearing bad news feels better than imagining this place closing like a fist around us over and over.

“Then do you think we’re safe here?”

“The closer the Whites come, the harder that becomes to judge. You know how to play chess, I trust?”

“
Konechno.
Papa taught me, and I played with the soldiers at the lazaret sometimes.”

“
Otlichno.
You know then, the quickest way to cripple your opponent’s offensive?”

“Capture his queen. Or at least force him to defend it.”

“Precisely. And many players will sacrifice any number of lesser pieces to spare their queen from harm. That is what your family means to the Whites. As long as the Reds have control over you, they have power over the Monarchists. The emperor is as valuable as a queen on a chessboard, and that is a fine incentive for the Bolsheviks to keep you all safe and well.”

I nod as the tiny muscles at the corners of my lips and eyes relax.

“But,” Dr. Botkin holds up a finger, “remember that the most clever player of all will sometimes sacrifice his own queen, drawing his opponent into a trap to win the game. And as long as we are in their hands, that is what the Reds can do to the Whites. Deposed or not, you are still the imperial family.” The doctor turns his palms up, peering at me through his gold-rimmed eyeglasses. “The question is, which kind of players are the Bolsheviks?”

A shiver runs through me—as if I’m a book having its pages ruffled. “And my sisters and I, we’re pawns in all this, aren’t we?” I don’t ask him what it might mean to the Reds if they knew I have written the replies to the officer.

“I sincerely hope so, Olga Nikolaevna.”

Neither of us mentions Aleksei. Dr. Botkin probably knows better than I how the people shrieked with glee in the streets of Petrograd after Papa abdicated, toppling crowns, scepters, and double-headed imperial eagles from park monuments and chipping the emblems of autocracy from store-fronts. Each morning I look across the table at my parents and my brother and wonder, will the revolutionaries be content to destroy only portraits and statues? There may be no greater symbol of autocracy left but my papa and his son—my brother, the boy who should have been Tsar Aleksei II.

“Sometimes I think I’m the only one who frets over these things,” I admit. “Tatiana is too practical to concern herself with mights and maybes or ponder imaginary games of chess. I know what she would tell me: ‘We are in God’s hands,
dushka
.’” The doctor smiles fondly, nodding. “Papa’s the same. No matter what happens, it’s
‘Tak i byt.’
I wish I could say, ‘So be it’ and be content, but even my prayers don’t calm my mind anymore.” Mama would never understand that. If I confessed my worries, her tongue would fly at me faster than a Cossack’s whip. My fingers rub at a spot above my left elbow, as though I could smooth the unease from my skin. “God is still my greatest comfort, but God does not have to answer the officer’s letters.”

With an expression caught between a wince and a smile, Dr. Botkin shows me he understands. “Despite his reassurances, the officer’s plan is fraught with perils.”

“And not only for us.”

“I have tried to convince the emperor not to trouble himself about myself nor the other men.”

“Papa will never consent to leave you, Evgeni Sergeevich. You know that as well as I do. It’s the guards. Maria doesn’t think it’s fair to threaten their safety either.”

“Ah. Maria the tenderhearted,” he says, studying his clasped hands. I know he’s aware of what happened, but even in this cramped place, Dr. Botkin is too diplomatic to say so.

“Some of them have been good to us.” No answer. Have I stepped too far? “What do you think, Doctor?”

“I think, given the physical demands of the officer’s plan, Maria Nikolaevna’s concern for the guards is beside the point.”

“You believe it’s too risky for Mama and Aleksei?”

“Yes. That is my medical opinion. Unfortunately, neither Alexandra Feodorovna nor Aleksei Nikolaevich like to be told they cannot do a thing once they have set their minds to it. I don’t like to think about what would happen if the escape is attempted and fails.”

The father, the mother, and the son come down first; the girls and then the doctor follow them.

I picture Papa, his arms strong from his thousands of chin-ups and hours of splitting wood, descending the rope cleanly as a monkey. Then Mama. No matter how I try, I can’t imagine her putting one foot over the windowsill. Even if her body had the power, Mama’s heart would never let her leave before Aleksei. And then? Would the officer let Papa climb back to us instead of whisking him away? Or would the guards’ machine guns find him first? Fear thrashes like an eel down my throat at the thought.

We can’t be split up. Not again. Mama won’t survive another choice between Papa and Aleksei. If anything goes wrong, my brother will take up the blame like a cross all over again. Better to take our chances here than risk any of it.

“And if we continue receiving news from the officer— even without attempting an escape?”

Dr. Botkin shakes his head.

My spirits lift and fall all at once, as if a bird has flown from my shoulder. Before this moment, I never realized hope had weight, that letting go could bring a relief of its own.

In our hearts, I’m sure each one of us has known all along that the officer’s plan is impossible. It falls to me to make my family see. This final reply must satisfy every one of them, even the Bolsheviks and the officer.

“I will write the reply, Evgeni Sergeevich. Myself.”

We do not want to, nor can we, escape. We can only be carried off by force, just as it was force that was used to carry us from Tobolsk. Thus, do not count on any active help from us. The commandant has many aides; they change often and have become worried. They guard our imprisonment and our lives conscientiously and are kind to us. We do not want them to suffer because of us, nor you for us; in the name of God, avoid bloodshed above all. Coming down from the window without a ladder is completely impossible. Even once we are down, we are still in great danger because of the open window of the commandant’s bedroom and the machine gun downstairs, where one enters from the inner courtyard. Give up, then, on the idea of carrying us off.

One by one, my family reads my letter and passes it on.

Papa crosses himself.
“Sudba.”

Maria doesn’t dare smile, but the gratitude in her eyes when she looks at me glows like an icon of the Holy Mother.

Mama frowns, pointing at the last line. “The officer knows more than we do about conditions outside. If he sees a chance to save us from danger, why should we discourage him from carrying us off?”

I nod, crossing out one line and adding another:
If you watch us, you can always come save us in case of real and imminent danger.
I won’t pry my mama’s last hopes from her. As though it were her idea from the start, Mama points out a handful of words for me to underline—
escape, carried off, any active help, worried
—before nodding her consent at last.

Even as I hand the letter back to Papa, I know our fate is no more certain than it was before. But the opposite of certainty is not doubt. It is faith. Such a fragile thing in comparison, but so much lighter, and gentler, too. I touch my fingers to my St. Nicholas medal.

Tak i byt.

44.

ANASTASIA NIKOLAEVNA

16 June 1918
Ekaterinburg

“J
ust like that, we’re supposed to go from playing innocent to pretending as if nothing ever happened? What pig and filth!”

Olga watches me balance a treat on the end of Joy’s nose. “It never would have worked, Schvybs.”

Out of nowhere, I go off like a popgun. “I know it!”

Joy cowers and the tidbit falls. I sigh and lean into his neck, smearing the rim of sweat from my forehead against his curly ears. “At least with the officer, my
thoughts
could get outside the fence once in a while. Giving up on all that’s draining the flavor out of everything, and this place was already dull as potato peelings the second we got here.”

If either one of us says one more thing about it, I’ll cry, so I straighten up and start all over with Joy and the treat. I don’t know how Olga knows, but she does.

“Why don’t you teach Ortipo and Jemmy to do that too?”

“I tried. Their noses are too stubby.”

“Like my humble snub?”

I peer up at her. She can’t be smiling. Not Olga. And she isn’t, not quite, but she
is
teasing, for the first time since I don’t know when. Right this minute, it feels better than a hug. “Exactly. Besides, I can’t crouch down right with these dratted ‘medicines’ running from my armpits to my belly button.”

“Where is everyone?” Chairman Beloborodov stands right in the middle of our drawing room as if he owns the place. I didn’t even hear the door. Joy grumbles, like he wants to bark without moving his nose.