The Lost Crown (21 page)

I end up on the couch, tucked under a blanket with a nasty headache and a bag full of chipped ice to keep down the swelling. Tatiana sits at the other end, tatting a lace collar. Natalya’s little boys will be disappointed if I’m not there to wave at three o’clock, but I know better than to ask Tatiana if I can go to the window like this.

Every chance she gets, Anastasia peeks under the ice bag to see if my skin’s turning colors yet. “One of Mashka’s saucers will have a black-and-blue rim by tomorrow,” she sing-songs.

Tatiana starts to scold, but a knock and then boots on the floor interrupt. I squint out from under the frosty cloth. Commissar Pankratov stands over our couch. “I’m sorry to hear you are hurt, Maria Nikolaevna. Are you in much pain?”

My try at smiling turns into a wince. “Not too much. Dr. Botkin says I should rest my eye for a day or two.”

“One of the officers mentioned you might be interested in Siberia.” Pankratov hands me a book, smaller than the one he gave Aleksei, and thicker, too. The print inside swims, but I make out his own name in the larger letters on the cover.

“You wrote this yourself?”

He nods. His head looks like a bearded cloud. I shut my eyes before my stomach moves too. “My memories and travels in Siberia,” he says. “Perhaps one of your sisters could read it to you while you recover.”

This time when I smile, it doesn’t hurt a bit. “
Spasibo
, Mr. Commissar.” His face colors, and I don’t know why, but I blush a little too. The heat of it makes my sore eye pulse all over again. When I open them back up, he’s gone.

“Probably a lot of propaganda,” Tatiana says without looking up from her lace. “He was a criminal, after all.”

Anastasia claps her hands. “
Otlichno!
That only makes it better.”

“Anastasia Nikolaevna—”

“Oh stop, you two,” Olga says from the writing table. “It won’t hurt us to see what he thinks.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d swear I can hear Tatiana frowning. “Please read it to me, Tatya,” I beg. “It was awfully kind of him to visit me. We can stop if it’s terrible.”

“Oh, all right.” She spreads her tatting carefully across the arm of the couch. “But keep that ice over your face.” I grin and slosh the soggy bag back into place.

All afternoon my sisters’ voices paint pictures in my mind with the commissar’s words. When Tatiana’s throat gives out, Olga and Anastasia take turns reading so we don’t have to stop. It’s so romantic—it turns out our Commissar Pankratov was punished for killing a police officer in defense of a woman in Kiev years and years ago!

“Sentenced to solitary confinement in Schlusselburg Fortress for fourteen years,” Olga says, “and another twenty-seven in Siberian exile. Can you imagine? It’s a wonder he’s civil to us, much less thoughtful.”

I spread it all out in my head: The Fourth Regiment went to war and came back better men. The Second Regiment stayed home and turned into a pack of angry dogs, like Nikolsky. Pankratov spent almost my whole life in prison under Papa’s government, and he’s so kind to us.

“What will we be like when this is all over?” I ask my sisters. “Better, worse, or just the same?”

“Why should we change at all?” Tatiana asks. “Our faith may grow stronger with these trials, but we are still Romanovs, no matter what the revolution brings.” She snaps the book shut like a period on the end of her sentence. “There. I am going to see Mama about my tatting.” She kisses my cheek and tucks a damp string of hair behind my ear. “And I will send Nyuta with more ice, so stay put.”

“
Spasibo
, Tatya.”

“She sounds just like Mama,” Anastasia says after Tatiana’s gone. “Anyway, I’m tired of sitting. I’ll run downstairs and get your ice. Nyuta’s got enough to do keeping Mama happy.”

The room is quiet except for the rustle of Olga turning the pages in Commissar Pankratov’s book. “Olga? Do you still feel like the same person?”

“No,” Olga admits. Her voice is so soft. “Not for a long time, Mashka. Do you?”

I have to think a long time too, but I still don’t know what to say.

24.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

October 1917
Tobolsk

E
very day when Papa is done with the newspapers, I read them over myself. They are almost always late, especially the foreign papers, but even old news is better than none at all. Olga hardly bothers with them, sometimes even leaving the room as soon as Papa spreads them open. I scour the pages like a doctor working over a wound, fishing out dirty fragments of rumor and stitching the rest back into something more or less useful. Of course, Papa beats me to the most interesting stories and reads them aloud to us over tea in Mama’s drawing room.

“Tatiana, my dear,” Papa says, his beard twitching, “why haven’t you told us you’re engaged to be married?”

My toe drops from scratching under Ortipo’s chin so quickly she nearly topples over. “What?”

“It’s all here in the Petrograd
Evening Post
.” He holds the newspaper up like a poster and reads, “‘London telegraphs that there is a rumor circulating that the former tsar Nicholas Romanov’s second daughter escaped from Tobolsk and has now arrived in America. It appears that Tatiana Nikolaevna plans to give lectures on Russian events and to open a school in the United States. According to these same rumors, Tatiana Nikolaevna is said to have married Count Fredericks, son of the former minister of the court.’”

Papa lowers the paper and raises one eyebrow. My mouth gapes like a sturgeon’s. The Little Pair hoot and snort while Mama shakes her head at her tea.

“What rubbish!” I sputter. “The Frederickses do not even have a son. Besides, I would much rather open a hospital right here in Siberia than a school in America.”

“But you could teach manners, comportment, and etiquette, Your Imperial Highness,” Anastasia says in a high voice with her lips pursed. “Or, ‘How to maintain your poise during a revolution.’”

She finishes with a curtsy. Papa chuckles with Aleksei, Mama’s lips wriggle, and I blush to the earlobes, trying to decide if I should I be flattered or embarrassed. Anastasia’s remarks always seem to be a soup of insult and compliment. Only Olga remains subdued. She smiles, but her thumb worries back and forth over her fingernails.

“Why do you ignore the papers?” I ask Olga later. “You used to read them even more than I do. I would never be able to stand not knowing what happens outside.”

“‘For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow,’” she quotes.

“Ecclesiastes 1:18,” I reply automatically.

She nods. “There’s so little good news.” Her words burst out like steam from a samovar, then almost evaporate. “But I’m not happy not knowing, either! I imagine awful things— things probably worse than the truth.”

“Maybe it would help if you only read the headlines?” She sighs. “I don’t know what to do. So much of it is lies and rumors anyway, like today.”

“That was just nonsense. Why should such a silly rumor bother you?”

“Because it shows how much they don’t understand us, Tatya, and how little they care. How could you ever give lectures on Russian events, the way you’ve been cooped up since February? No one bothered to find out if the Frederickses even have a son for you to marry. And how could anyone who knows you think for even an instant that you’d leave us and run off to America? If they can print trash like that, how do we know what’s true and what isn’t about what’s happening outside?”

“Some truth must find its way into the papers,” I insist.

Olga nods, but something rumples her eyebrows. Even if I cannot guess her thoughts, I can tell she is thinking. “Tatya,” she says after a pause, “do you want to marry?”

My answer should come quickly. This is something a young woman ought to know about herself. “I know what you think. To leave Mama would be …” I trail off. What would it be? Thinking about it is almost too much.

“You’re her favorite, but—”

“No, Olga! Mama loves all of us.” Even as I protest I know Olga is right, and she knows it as well as I do.

“Listen, Tatiana. You are her favorite, except for Aleksei, and you’re so sweet with her that not one of us minds. But Mama has all of us, and Aleksei, and Papa to take care of her. There’s no shame in wanting something for yourself.”

I flatten my lips to keep my chin from quivering. “There is more to it than Mama,” I explain when I can speak again. “Who would we marry, now that Papa has abdicated? Which of our foreign cousins would accept a deposed bride?”

“You’re right. If the king of England wouldn’t offer asylum to his own cousins, or even send a ship to rescue us, he’d never stoop to let one of his sons marry an ex–grand duchess.”

“To think,
dushka
, if you had accepted the crown prince of Romania, you could have been a queen someday instead of a captive. Are you ever sorry?”

Her eyes flash like Mama’s, and her snub nose tilts toward the ceiling. “
Nyet
. I am a Russian and I intend to remain in Russia, no matter what the revolutionaries think of us. Tobolsk may be hundreds of miles from anything, but at least it is still in Russia.” The flare of passion subsides, easing her expression. “Tatya, never mind what we can or can’t have—what do you want?”

“Without being practical, you mean?”

She nods.

I feel a little like I should kneel beside her, the way we do for confession. Once I begin, the words follow one another like notes in a hymn. “I wish I could be like Princess Gedroiz at the lazaret. Think of being a doctor! Even if I could not do that, I would thank God every day if I could manage a children’s hospital, or a school for nurses.”

“Oh, my dear Governess,” Olga says, shaking her head. “You’re practical even when you aren’t, and I can’t help loving you for it! You talk about antibiotics and your cheeks glow like Mashka’s when she moons over an officer. Besides, you’d be so much more pleasant than Princess Gedroiz.”

“I have to admit, she could give a better scolding than even Mama.” We giggle and snort in the most undignified way until I ask, “Olga, what do you want?”

Her spirits drain like a cup of Communion wine. “I want to feel like Russia isn’t shaking underneath us every time we open a newspaper.”

“Oh, Olya.” I wrap my arms round her shoulders and cradle her head against my cheek. “Hold on to me,” I tell her, and we lean into each other until her ragged breathing smoothes like satin.

“Olga,
dushka
, we are going to church!”

“In a real church, outside the fence?”

“
Konechno.
And there will be Communion, too.” My own chest warms as her cheeks turn rosy as Mashka’s.

“Full
Obednya
!” She presses her clasped hands to her chin and beams.
“Slava Bogu.”

Outside the fence, two rows of soldiers line the street all the way to the church.

Inside, where nearly every word and gesture has remained unchanged for centuries, I know exactly what to expect, and how to respond. The moment the priest begins to intone the Divine Liturgy, I feel myself letting go of the world outside, allowing the holy ritual to carry me. Here, there is nothing to adjust for, or anticipate. I surrender Mama and Olga to the grace of God, and let the familiar words drape over me: “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now and forever, and to the ages of ages.”

When I swallow my portion of the wine-soaked
pros-phora
, it is as if that tiny bit of sacred bread reawakens the strength of Christ in my own body.

The feeling lasts nearly two weeks, until the day before Olga’s birthday, when news comes that makes every one of us cringe at the sound of rustling newsprint. Papa looks ill as he reads, “‘With the collapse of the Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky has fled Petrograd, and the Bolshevik Party, headed by V. I. Lenin, has seized power.’” Mama’s knitting needles freeze, then vibrate rigidly as Papa’s eyes skim the article. “The mob looted the wine cellars of the Winter Palace,” he tells us, slapping the paper aside. “Such gluttony. It’s nauseating to read about!”

“
Bozhe moi.
When did it happen, Nicky?” Mama asks with a sympathetic squeeze to Papa’s forearm.

Olga fingers the chain round her neck, the one that holds a St. Nicholas medal and a tiny portrait of
Otets
Grigori. We all wear a matching set, even Aleksei.

“Over a week ago, and we have to find out from an old newspaper. I would never have abdicated if I’d known it would come to this!” Papa shoves back his chair and shoots to his feet like a bullet from a rifle. Too agitated to smoke his cigarette, the ash grows longer and longer as he paces the floor. “I can’t understand it. Kerensky was a man of the people, a favorite of the soldiers. How could they have overthrown him?”

“It’s a disgrace,” Mama agrees. Her needles clack furiously again. “They’re behaving like a lot of spoiled children.”

From across the room, Olga’s thoughts fuse with mine. This is not only about Russia and the government, it is about our family. We both stood in the classroom back home when Kerensky guaranteed our safety. We both know he is the one who arranged our secure departure from Petrograd and appointed Colonel Kobylinsky and Commissars Nikolsky and Pankratov. With Lenin in charge, everything could change all over again. God help us.