The Lost Crown (25 page)

“Sire,” Dr. Botkin begins with a smile and a nervous pinch to his spectacles, “Colonel Kobylinsky is losing his authority. As you know, Kerensky appointed him, and Kerensky has fled the country since Lenin came to power.”

The doctor pauses, and Monsieur Gilliard takes his cue. “The colonel is an honorable man, but the guards know there’s no government behind Kobylinsky anymore.”

“Tobolsk itself remains loyal,” Dr. Botkin assures us, “but the larger political climate is such that if the soldiers of the guard take it into their heads to protest, there will be no stopping them, Your Majesty.”

Our tutor sneers, drawing up his goatee. “Perhaps on their own they would not protest, but with Commissar Nikolsky playing schoolmaster in the guardhouse with his Bolshevik tracts—”

“Protest what?” Papa asks.

Neither replies, but their eyes, like mine, trail to Papa’s shoulders.

“The epaulets?”

The hurt on Papa’s face wilts Monsieur Gilliard’s mustache. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

Papa reaches up to stroke his left shoulder, the way he usually smoothes his beard. “Then you agree with the soldiers’ demands?”

Both men shake their heads. “No.”

“Nyet,”
Dr. Botkin repeats. “But in the interest of your safety, it seems wiser not to burden so many weak men with undue temptation.”

The pressure in the room eases. I’ve always thought Dr. Botkin a deep well of profound ideas, and now he’s found a way to make Papa the better man by giving in.

Papa considers all of us children, then turns to Mama. The air around me thickens to clay, waiting. Mama sighs down at her mending, then nods at last.

Papa reaches for the straps on his epaulets. “
Tak i byt.
We will not wear them in view of the soldiers.”

I cross myself, knowing I cannot ask for more than this from my papa.

On Monday we begin building a snow mountain in the garden. Even some of the better guards help. Monsieur Gilliard and Nagorny carry thirty buckets of water from the kitchen to pour down the side of the mountain. It’s so cold, the slope steams like an upturned bowl of soup, and some of the buckets freeze halfway across the yard. By the time they’re done, the hill is tall enough that we can see over the fence when we climb to the top.

Immediately the Little Pair begin scheming to see Isa Buxhoeveden and Gleb and Tanya Botkin from the peak. When I climb to the top, I gaze at the houses with their chimneys ribboning smoke all across the town and wonder what sort of people live inside them all. How many are good loyal citizens, and how many have called my papa Bloody Nikolashka behind his back?

Anastasia drives her finger into the side of my coat. “Bzzzzzzz! Telegram for Citizen Olga Nikolaevna Romanova!” she says, and salutes. “Snow mountain complete. Stop. Tobogganing to commence immediately. Stop. Brooding on this hill will not be tolerated. Stop. Procure a sled or vacate the premises. Stop.” With a wicked grin, she lunges as though she’s about to push me down the hill. The look in her eyes sparks me into action.

“Toboggan? I’ll show you who knows a thing or two about tobogganing, my little
shvybzik
.” I grab her wrists, swing her into a piggyback, and poise myself over the edge like a skier with Anastasia draped over my shoulders.

“You wouldn’t dare!” she squeals as she flails.

“Wouldn’t I?” I flop onto my belly, and the two of us slip like a pair of eels down the icy slope. Tatiana’s gasps and Maria’s laughter trail behind us. At the bottom we roll apart and lie panting in the snow.

“I … may be … a
shvybzik
,” Anastasia puffs, “but you’re crazy.” She scrambles to her knees and tugs at me until I sit up. “Let’s do it again.”

“Not without a real sled, we won’t. I’m not that crazy.”

“Oh, fine. Come on, you two!” Anastasia shouts up at our sisters.

“I will not,” Tatiana says.

“Show her how it’s done, Mashka!” Anastasia yells. We watch Maria mince back and forth across the top of the hill with Tatiana chiding her like a jaybird. “I don’t know why she’s thinking about it so hard,” Anastasia says to me. “She’s going to fall anyway.”

On cue, Maria totters and sails down, landing at our feet with her arms and legs splayed like tent poles. Anastasia hauls Maria up by an elbow and brushes the snow from her coat. “Honestly, if you blush any harder you’ll melt the snow. Now you, Governess! If you don’t hurry up, the guards will come see what all the yelling is about!”

We screech and tease and clap until Tatiana gives in. She sits fussily in the snow, tucks her skirt around her boots, points her toes, and nudges herself down the slope. I hold out my hand and Tatiana rises as gracefully as though she’s stepping out of a carriage.

“Perfectly proper,” Anastasia says, rewarding her with a curtsy. “You should write a book in your spare time.
The
Grand Duchess’s Guide to Winter Amusements: How to Have Fun in the Snow Without Showing Your Petticoats
.”

“You are the most vulgar little thing,” Tatiana proclaims, and out of nowhere splatters Anastasia point-blank with a snowball.

Maria and I split into gales of laughter. For a moment, Anastasia can only blink and tremble. Her eyes are like two blue ice-holes in her face full of snow. “Where did you get that snowball?” she whispers.

“I carried it down the hill in my lap.”

“If you write that book,” she tells Tatiana, “I’ll be first in line to buy a copy.”

For days we sled and tumble until we’re stamped black and blue as postmarks. Joy skitters, barking, alongside us, while Jemmy and Ortipo yip from the mountain’s base. Once, Anastasia manages to coax a chicken onto the sled with her, and the pair of them squawk their way down as if the butcher’s waiting at the bottom of the hill. It’s wonderful, being able to trample the tedium under screams and jostles. Even when I fall it’s invigorating to be shaken by something real and solid instead of letting my worries jitter and jangle me from the inside out. I don’t think I’ve breathed—really breathed—like this in months. It’s as if I’ve thrown open a window inside my head and the crisp Siberian air is pouring in. The sky above me is so wide and blue it makes my eyes water. Maybe between this hill and Gleb’s poems, I can keep myself from eroding any further.

28.

ANASTASIA NIKOLAEVNA

February–March 1918
Tobolsk

J
ust when things begin to seem decent again, Lenin’s Bolshies muscle in and start bossing us around. First it’s by telegram. Before we know it, our whole family is on soldiers’ rations.

“No butter or coffee?” Maria asks.

“And only half a pound of sugar each,” Papa adds.

“Neither one of us needs more butter,” I tell Maria, crossing my arms over what’s supposed to be my waist, “and we don’t even drink coffee.”

“No, but it smells like home,” Maria says. “Don’t you remember how the servants’ cafeteria always had coffee brewing? I could smell it all through the corridors downstairs.”

It’s like Maria’s popped a little pinhole right in my side. I
had
forgotten.

“They’re also limiting our expenses to six hundred rubles a month, per person,” Papa says. “We’ll have to dismiss ten of our people.”

“Nicky!” Mama cries. “After they’ve followed us all this way? Some of them have brought their families here.”

“We simply can’t afford them, Sunny.”

While Mama laments and Papa consoles, Tatiana sits down and starts drawing up a list of all our people, and who they’ve brought with them. I keep out of it. She’ll probably have everything figured out by the time Mama stops huffing about the unfairness of it all, so what’s the use of sticking my nose in?

Next thing we know, the Fourth Regiment gets sent back home. All our best officers and guards, gone, just like that. Our whole family, even Mama, troops out to the snow mountain to wave good-bye as they march away. Inside, it’s gloomier than ever just knowing we’re stuck with the First and Second Regiments.

“I wish they didn’t have to go,” Maria sighs at the window pane. I plop down beside her and drop my chin onto my fists.

“It’s only fair,” Olga says. “They have homes and families of their own too.”

“Must be nice,” I mutter.

“What do you mean?” Tatiana asks. Without even turning around I know she’s bristling. “I thank God every day for keeping all of us safe and together. Aleksei is well and Mama has not needed her heart drops for weeks. What more would you ask for?”

I guess I’m too dreary to bother getting angry. But that doesn’t keep me from being jealous that Tatiana can always make do with any little scrap of good. “Be grateful all you want, but wouldn’t you rather be back at Tsarskoe, even if we were still under arrest? The Fourth Regiment gets to go back to their regular lives. We don’t
have
regular lives anymore.”

“I could live here forever if we could only go for a real walk,” Maria says.

“You could be happy anywhere, sweetheart Mashka,” Olga tells her, “and our pious Tatiana could always manage to at least be content. But Shvybs and I are different, aren’t we?” She comes to stand beside me and holds out her hand. I take it, and look a long time out the window. Maria hardly waves when her window-family walks by.

“We can’t go back home anymore, can we?” I ask.

“Where do you go when home isn’t home anymore? We’re refugees in our own country.”

Tatiana sniffles behind us, and that makes me sadder than anything else so far. I let go of Olga’s hand. She kisses me before she goes to Tatiana. When I look, Olga’s draped herself around Tatiana, their heads leaning against each other like two pearls on a string.

“Hey! All of you, come here and look at this!” I yell. Along the corridor, heads pop out of the doorways. Mama’s not the only one still in her dressing gown.

Olga gets there first. “What is it, Shvybs?”

Tatiana rushes down the hall, shushing me with every step. “Anastasia Nikolaevna, you know better than to shout like that! And what do you think you are doing in Papa’s study before he has exercised?”

“Shut up a minute and look,” I tell her, pointing down at the yard.

“Our snow mountain!” Maria wails.

Outside, soldiers with pickaxes hack at our tobogganing hill. Chunks of snow clutter the yard like cottage cheese. I could cry just watching them, and I’m not even ashamed of myself.

All Olga says is, “Oh,” and then she sinks into the chair behind Papa’s desk. She can’t even watch.

“Those spiteful beasts!” Tatiana hisses. “What do they have against us having a little fun? Papa will see about this!”

“I’m sorry, my dears,” Papa says when he comes in. “Your mama and I, we shouldn’t have climbed your snow mountain to wave good-bye to the Fourth Regiment yesterday morning. Colonel Kobylinsky says the soldiers’ committee protested.”

“All those soldiers ever do is protest,” I say, so angry I can’t even shout. “Why don’t they just tell us what they want instead of being so mean?”

I wish I wasn’t an imperial highness or an ex–grand duchess. I’m sick of people doing things to me because of what I am.
Girl-in-white-dress. Short-one-with-fringe. Daughter-ofthe-tsar. Child-of-the-ex-tyrant.
I want people to look and see
me
, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, not the caboose on a train of grand duchesses. Someday, I promise myself, no one will be able to hear my name or look at my picture and suppose they know all about me. Someday I will do something bigger than what I am.

“That’s what you meant, isn’t it?” I ask Olga later. “About that poem Monsieur Gilliard read to us about the revolutionaries’ wives. We don’t look at the Bolsheviks any more fairly than they look at us, do we?”

She nods. “How can we expect them to see beyond our titles if we won’t look beyond their politics? Underneath we’re all Russians, but we refuse to admit it.”

This kind of talk makes my head hurt, even if I’m the one who brought it up. “You think they’re good people?”

“Not all of them. But I think some of them have good intentions. For Russia, at least.”

Another one of Olga’s half answers. For all the times she lets her opinions run away with her, if there’s something she doesn’t want us to know, we’d need a whole regiment to pry it out of her. “Does it make you feel any better, seeing so many sides of everything?”

“No. Not when I’m the only one. I’d rather know nothing than too much.”

My stomach wrinkles. There she goes again.

Without the snow mountain our boredom grows thick as the frost, until one night Mr. Gibbes announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, I propose we introduce a bit of drama into our Sunday evenings.” He’s got whole booklets of little farces in English, Russian, and French, and once we’ve agreed to take turns acting, he doles out the parts every week like Mama used to pick out our dresses: This-one’s-for-you-and-no-buts.

From January all the way into March we rehearse through the frigid evenings until we’re ready to perform on Sunday. Mostly it’s us children, but Mr. Gibbes takes plenty of parts for himself, and acts as stage manager. Even Mama helps out, drawing up official programs with all our names and roles.

The plays are funny enough all by themselves, but the way Mr. Gibbes casts them makes us snort and quiver with laughter. First, Tatiana gets the part of a fussy young wife, pouting over the household account books. It’s too perfect. Next, Olga and Papa do one from Chekhov, with a dusty old widow and this boorish fellow who comes to collect on a debt. By the end they’ve fallen in love and have to fake the most revolting kiss.