The Lost Crown (6 page)

Tatiana clucks her tongue and turns back to her plate, but my thoughts are twining like the branches of our family tree. My heart and soul are Russian, but I can’t pretend the roots of our family don’t reach into Germany, England, and Denmark. If the Russian people believe Mama is German, maybe that makes me only half a Russian in their eyes. My heart beats fast. The next time the Germans win a battle, will people I’ve never met suddenly decide to hate me, too?

No, I promise myself. I will not give anyone one good reason to hate me.

7.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

January 1915
Tsarskoe Selo

W
hen the telephone call comes, Mama does not shake or cry, but the way she grips the receiver tells me something is wrong even before she whispers,
“Bozhe moi,”
and crosses herself. Her answers are short and to the point: “Yes. Where? Is she all right? Yes, we are coming—all of us. Immediately.
Spasibo
, Likhachev.”

Mama hangs up and takes a breath. “There has been an accident on the railway line,” she tells me, taking hold of my hand. “Anya is gravely hurt. One of Papa’s own Cossack guards pulled her from the wreck.”

“Christ give her strength.”

“Tatianochka,” she says in a voice I have not heard since I was a little girl, “not one of the doctors expects her to live. We must go to her.” Tears start, threatening to dissolve my composure, but Mama pulls me from my chair and kisses both my cheeks. “Don’t cry, Tatianochka, my brave girl. Gather your sisters. I will get word to Papa and call for a motorcar.” Her instructions carry me to the doorway. She sounds so sure and strong, both pride and fear seize my heart. “We must be sure Anya’s parents have been told, and that the best doctors are there. And
Otets
Grigori, of course. Come now, Tatiana,” she says, and I obey.

When we arrive at the station, stretchers pour out of the relief train until the injured lie so thick across the Tsarskoe Selo platform it is all but impossible to avoid stepping over them. Much as it alarms me to see the nurses and orderlies add to their patients’ misfortune, there is plainly no time to spare for stepping carefully backward over the victims to avert bad luck.

“Slava Bogu,”
I murmur at the sight of Dr. Gedroiz. She takes one look at us standing idle in our everyday blouses and coats and waves her hand toward one of the railcars before Mama can even ask after Anya. My cheeks burn over our selfishness, but Mama turns and marches from one stretcher to the next, making her way down the line.

As we move along, Olga wraps her hand round mine, nearly crushing my fingers as she rubs her thumb over her fingernails. “I can’t look, Tatya. Please don’t make me look at them all.”

Behind us, Maria and Anastasia huddle together, their eyes wide. With a jerk of my chin, I motion them to Olga’s other side. Over the cries and moans, I hear her murmuring, “… give rest also to every servant of Thine in the throes of death, wherever this prayer will be heard….” One by one, we all join in until our lips and feet are moving together down the line of stretchers.

Before we finish our prayer, Mama halts and kneels next to a stretcher. “Darling?” she whispers.

“Bozhe moi,”
Olga gasps, crossing herself. Maria whimpers and ducks into Olga’s arms. Beside them, Anastasia stands frozen, still gripping Maria’s hand. I swallow hard and join Mama at Anya’s side.

Anya’s wounds are terribly fresh, like nothing I have seen in the lazaret. Her face is as swollen as one of Aleksei’s bruises, but the bone below one eye socket caves in, making strange slopes across her cheek. Blood rims her lips. Through the thin blanket, Anya’s legs lay crushed and still. I never imagined such a large woman could seem so small. Mama tries to smooth Anya’s hair, but even the brush of Mama’s fingers along her scalp makes Anya shudder. Her hand clutches at Mama’s. “I’m dying,” Anya rasps.

“An ambulance,” Mama demands. Her voice seems to stop everything. Nurses and orderlies snap to attention. Two men abandon other patients and take up Anya’s stretcher. “Gently,” Mama chides as they elbow their way through the crowd. The patients they left stranded on the rail platform bleed openly before my eyes. Without help, they will soon be as near to death as our Anya.

Mama is busy with Anya, and Maria and Anastasia can manage Olga long enough for me to help—

“Tatiana,” Mama calls over her shoulder, “bring your sisters in the motorcar.”

For a moment, I hang suspended amid the chaos.

“Tatiana,” Mama calls again in that voice that makes heads turn toward her. “The motorcar. You will follow us to the hospital.”

At the lazaret, Anya barely sees us through her pain. Her wounds are draped, but still seeping. “God have mercy on you, darling,” Olga whispers, then kisses her own fingers and brushes them lightly over Anya’s forehead.

I move to Anya’s shoulder, positioning myself to block Olga’s view of the worst of the wounds. In her pocket, I hear her thumbing the pages of her little book of Lermontov over and over again. Propping my elbows on the bed and lowering my head to my folded hands, I pray for Christ to deliver Anya from her pain.

“Would you like to see the emperor?” Mama’s voice startles me. Papa stands at the end of the bed, his beard ruffled and his fingers fidgeting with an unlit cigarette.

Anya’s mouth opens, her head trembling with something like a nod.

Papa sits down beside me, slipping his hand under Anya’s. She tries to press his hand. The effort leaves her panting.

When Dr. Gedroiz passes by, she hovers a moment, frowning down at all of us. “She can’t possibly live until morning,” she remarks.

“Is it so hopeless?” Papa asks. “She still has some strength in her hand.” The princess sighs and shakes her head, but she does not dare contradict Papa. As Anya slips back into unconsciousness, I fear Dr. Gedroiz is right. Anya’s only hope seems to lie with God.

Late in the night, an answer to our prayers arrives:
Otets
Grigori. Anya’s mother frowns and turns aside but says nothing as he strides to the bed, pushing at the air though no one blocks his way. Papa goes to stand beside Olga, resting his hands on her shoulders.

Otets
Grigori makes the sign of the cross on Anya’s forehead and murmurs over her. I wait, wanting to feel something, some sense of his power. Nearly three years ago,
Otets
Grigori’s prayers for Aleksei’s health reached from Siberia to our hunting lodge in Poland. Now he prays right here beside me. For a moment, I nearly forget about our poor Anya. Maybe God is beside me, too. The thought stills my worries. I want to touch
Otets
Grigori’s sleeve, to see if I feel something passing from him to Anya, like water through a pipe.

“Annushka.” I jerk my hand back. “Annushka!” Her body shudders.
Otets
Grigori waits a moment, then says again, “Annushka, can you hear me?”

Her eyes quiver back and forth under the lids, then open for an instant. My heart lurches.

“Speak to me,” he demands.

“Father Grigori,” Anya whispers, and a tear seeps from the corner of her eye.
Otets
Grigori takes her hand, prays once more, then steps away from the bed.

“She will live, but she will always be a cripple.”

Anya’s parents hold each other and cry. Relief floods through me. “Thanks be to God,” I whisper.

8.

OLGA NIKOLAEVNA

Summer 1915
Tsarskoe Selo

F
rom the start, the war hasn’t gone well. We children don’t see many newspapers at home, but I read the headlines plainly enough on the soldiers’ bedside tables in the lazaret, and hear the men discussing the battles they’ve survived. Even on the streets just outside our palace gates in Tsarskoe Selo, the people no longer hide the disappointment and frustration on their faces as we motor past on our way to the lazaret, the train station, or Anya’s house. Sometimes it seems their expressions grow darker at the sight of us, especially since Warsaw fell to the Germans.

As I sit trying to write a cheerful-sounding letter to Papa, crashing and shouts from the playroom make me spatter ink across the page. I pick up my skirts and run, only to find Anastasia and Aleksei staging a skirmish. Decked out in his dress uniform of the Twelfth East Siberian Rifle Regiment, Aleksei careens about the room on his three-wheeled bicycle, slashing at battalions of lead soldiers with his miniature rifle. In the toy guardhouse, Joy lies like a lazy sentry with an officer’s hat slouched over his eyes. Anastasia mans the toy cannon.

“Aleksei Nikolaevich, you get out of that uniform this instant! Mama will have your hide if you tear it.” Anastasia snorts, and no wonder—it sounds as if Tatiana has commandeered my tongue.

“You can’t talk to a second lieutenant like that,” Aleksei scoffs, circling me and pulling faces with his chin in the air. “It’s my regiment, so you can’t make me take it off.”

I grab the muzzle of his toy rifle. “As honorary colonel of the Third Elizavetgradsky Hussars, I command you to remove that uniform.” That stops him in his tracks. “And if the commander of the Fifth Alexandriisky Hussars has to leave her visitors and climb those stairs to make you behave, you’ll be sorry. Now march, little soldier!”

“Mama always takes the lift anyway,” he grumbles, but he slides off the bicycle and yanks the rifle from my hands as he slinks off to his bedroom. I turn on Anastasia.

“What’s all this about? You know better than to let him romp all over like that. Where’s Aleksei’s
dyadka
? He should be watching.”

“Never mind Nagorny. Haven’t you heard? Papa’s taken over the high command. He’s going to run the army himself from now on.”

My jaw drops and my fists tighten. I sink into Mama’s cane-backed rocking chair. “What about Great-Uncle Nikolasha?”

“Fired.” Anastasia grins. “Well, not exactly. He’s been made viceroy of the Caucasus instead. Now Papa can give those Krauts what for!”

A smudge of dread wells up from my chest. “Papa is only a colonel….”

“So what?” Anastasia retorts, rolling her eyes. “Papa is the tsar, and tsar is better than any rank in the army. Besides, he could make himself a general anytime he wants to, so what’s the difference?”

“But he won’t make himself a general, and you know it.” A spark of pride momentarily singes my fears. Our papa was a colonel when he became tsar, and a colonel he stayed, too good a man to promote himself for show. I close my mouth and tug at a stubborn hangnail. Without looking up, I feel Anastasia’s eyes dragging over me like a comb.

“What’s wrong?” she demands.

“What?”

“You’re fussing at your fingernails,” she says, jabbing my hand. “Tatiana says you only do that when you’re worried.”

I smooth my skirt slowly across my lap, forcing my fingers apart. Leave it to Tatiana to unmask me even when she’s nowhere in sight. “If Papa is in charge, all the responsibility for the war will fall on his shoulders.”

Anastasia gawps at me. “Well of course it will! He’s the
tsar
, Olga, that’s the way it is. That’s the way it’s always been.”

How can I tell her it’s different now? Everything that goes wrong will be Papa’s fault, with no one in between to temper the blame. And what about the soldiers? The men love our great-uncle Nikolasha. He’s a giant of a man, not bearish like our
dedushka
, Alexander III, was, but tall and proud as an imperial eagle. Papa looks gentle as a thrush beside him.

I take a breath and begin again. “Do you remember when we visited Babushka last month and Papa talked about firing Uncle Nikolasha?”

Anastasia snorts. “
Konechno.
She turned white as a dish of sour cream. Tatiana thought she was having a stroke.”

“Babushka isn’t the only one who’s going to feel that way.” Even Papa must have known it—he’d blushed to his collar when our grandmother told him the people would think he was only doing
Otets
Grigori’s bidding.

“Oh, poo. What does Babushka know about people? She doesn’t even like Mama all that much. All she could talk about was
Otets
Grigori, and I don’t see what he has to do with the army anyway.”