The Lost Crown (28 page)

With my hands on Anastasia’s trembling shoulders, I beg God to help keep her from falling to pieces.

“What about all of you?” Maria asks.

“I’ll nurse Aleksei,” Olga says. “Tatiana will run the whole household, top to bottom, and Anastasia will cheer everyone up. When Aleksei is well, we’ll be together again. Yakovlev gave his word.”

“We will be fine,” I tell her. I give Anastasia a nudge, and she nods along with me like a marionette. I wonder if they are all thinking what I am thinking: Yakovlev made no promises about our safety here in Tobolsk.

30.

MARIA NIKOLAEVNA

April 1918
Tobolsk

A
ll that dreadful night long, we seven sit up together in Aleksei’s room. Anastasia barely makes a sound. She clings to me like a forlorn little puppy. I could hardly pack without bumping into her. Now we grip each other’s hands until I don’t know whose fingers are whose anymore.

Everything is so awfully quiet. We don’t talk, and we don’t cry. None of us can cry anymore, not really. The sadness only burns at the back of our throats. I can’t even feel the time passing. All around me hands crisscross and cheeks press against shoulders. We are all of us memorizing one another, already trying to mend the holes our leaving has begun to tear. When I’ve gone, I want to be able to close my eyes and pull this feeling tight around me.

At three thirty a pair of ugly black tarantasses pull up in front of the governor’s house. Out in the hall come grunts, scrapes, and the sounds of feet scuffling as the servants see to our trunks and baggage. I’d cover my ears if it didn’t mean letting go of Anastasia’s hands. Somewhere near me, I hear a tiny sob, like a bird caught in Mama’s throat, then nothing.

When the windowpanes start to turn from black to gray, my sisters cradle themselves around me, rocking me like the sea until I can taste the salt of our tears.

I wish I was brave, like Tatiana. I could never tell my sisters, especially Anastasia, but when I think about them being left behind, part of me is glad I’m going with Papa and Mama. Staying here without our parents, even with my sisters and so many of our best people to help look after us, would frighten me to death.

But leaving will make me different, and I don’t want to be. I wish I were a person who’d never felt like this. We’re still together, and the cracks are already so deep.

By the time Monsieur Gilliard taps at the door, we’re all crying, but without any fuss at all. The tears just drain out of us, like breathing. Papa’s boots creak as he stands, and we all rise after him—all but Mama, who stays hunched over Aleksei’s bedside.

I could kiss Aleksei’s dear face and hands a thousand times and still not be ready to leave, but I force myself to say good-bye after only a dozen so Mama can have a few more seconds with her Sunbeam. I back away from his cot and face my sisters, all of us clutching handkerchiefs limp as lettuce leaves. First Tatiana kisses both my cheeks and whispers, “God go with you,
dushka
,” then passes me to Olga. My big sister holds me close as a newborn, pressing my cheek to her chest and resting her own cheek against my hair. We don’t say one word. I just breathe in her tea rose perfume. I don’t believe how thin she’s gotten. Her spine feels like a string of pearls under her blouse.

Olga lets me go, and there’s only Anastasia left. How can I say good-bye to my Nastya? Instead we nestle our faces against each other’s shoulders and hold tight together until my arms ache. I never knew I could hurt like this, not when Aleksei was ill, not when Papa abdicated, not even when we left home. All of those things wore us both thin as tissue, but this could shatter us. I don’t know how I’ll hold myself together, much less Mama.

Beside us, Papa blesses the Big Pair and Aleksei. Anastasia and I hardly even breathe until it’s her turn to say good-bye to him. It’s too soon to let go, but I won’t make our Papa peel us away from each other.

There’s so much I want to say, but all I can quaver into her collar is, “Christ be with you, precious Nastya.”

“You too, my Mashka.”

“Here.” I let go enough to hand her the little sachet scented with my Lilas perfume we made together for Mama’s Christmas present. The other three are packed into Mama’s valise. For now, Anastasia needs mine more than Mama does.

She sniffs it, but her nose sounds too runny to smell anything. With a gulp, she locks her hands behind my neck once more, and then we’re apart, the cool air of the room rushing to replace my sister’s arms around me. Thank God, Mama has already separated herself from Aleksei, and Nagorny has rooted himself to her place next to Aleksei’s bed. It’s hard enough watching Papa bless my darling Nastya, and see her step away from me into a space between the Big Pair. The thread between our hearts is stretched so thin already, but the way Olga and Tatiana have made room for her there makes me brave enough to move to Mama’s side. Tatiana’s lips press tight together and she nods, proud of me through her tears. There’s a tiny snap in my chest, and even though we seven still stand in the same room, I know we are truly apart now.

Someone, Nyuta maybe, helps me into my coat. Papa takes Mama’s arm, just the way he did when we left Tsarskoe Selo, and walks us through the door. Yakovlev is there to meet us, his scarf wrapped up over his ears.

In the corridor, Papa shakes hands with all our people. At the stairs, two guards of the First Regiment step in front of my sisters. “That’s far enough.”

Papa and Mama and I pause for a moment, stricken. The look on my sisters’ faces make me close my eyes. Then Papa makes the sign of the cross over Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia. “Watch over them,” he says to our footman, Trupp.

The tarantasses harnessed to the horses waiting in the courtyard are hardly more than big wicker baskets strung on poles between the wheels. Only one of them is covered, and there aren’t any seats, just a little bit of straw on the floor. Monsieur Gilliard pushes a mattress from the shed into one of them. The men lift Mama in, and she motions for Papa to join her.

“You must ride with me,” Yakovev tells Papa. I scramble up next to Mama before they can order me aside too. This is my job. I must comfort Mama and make my sisters proud of me. Ahead of us, Papa and Yakovlev get into the other basket. Yakovlev’s men ride on their horses all around us, and some of our own rifle guards come too.

We bounce and jostle all over the road. I’m exhausted after staying up all night long, and there isn’t a chance for sleeping now. Mama groans and gasps so quietly I can barely hear her, but I’m sure she’s only trying to be brave for me. I don’t feel at all cheerful or sturdy, or useful. If Tatiana were here, she’d know just what to do for Mama, but all I can think to do is brace myself through the ruts and puddles and try not to whimper. I can hardly think at all, or even feel sad.

All day long it’s perfectly awful. Linchpins break, and wheels smash on the ice. Sometimes where the rivers have begun to thaw the snow and water comes up to the horses’ stomachs! It stinks of animals and straw, and the cold musty mattress underneath us. We rattle against that tarantass like two marbles in a wooden box. If we try to open Mama’s heart medicine, the glass dropper will shatter against the bottle, so she has to do without.

When we finally stop to sleep in a house that used to be a shop, our luggage is late. By the time we crawl into our beds, I don’t care the least little bit that I’m sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Both Mama and Dr. Botkin are miserable. The poor doctor’s kidneys hurt him so badly he can’t even tend to Mama. I’m so achy and shaky, the dropper clinks against Mama’s teeth as I squeeze the medicine under her tongue.

Yakovlev scurries around telegraphing in the morning, but won’t say a word to us about what he’s up to. “Fidgety,” Mama says as we bundle up, padding ourselves against the jostling cart as much as the cold. When I pull my mittens from my coat pocket, something crinkles. Out comes a strip of paper with two lines from one of Nekrasov’s poems in Olga’s handwriting:

Our path may be stony but we shall not fall,
Our passage is sure and protected.

Clutching the little scrap tight, I wrap my muffler across my face before Mama can see me cry.

On the second day, we arrive in Pokrovskoe around noon and stop right beside
Otets
Grigori’s house to change horses. His wife and children peek out the window at us. “Oh, Mama,” I whisper, and point. “It’s Marochka in the window!” I wave shyly, and they make the sign of the cross over us. It makes me shiver, the way they look at us.

At midnight on Palm Sunday, we finish with the awful tarantasses and move to a train. Near Tyumen, a squadron on horseback makes a chain around us, all the way to the station. For three more days, we travel by rail. The plain dingy cars feel posh as the Winter Palace after those horse carts. Nyuta and I get one car, and Papa and Mama have another. In between are Yakovlev and Avdeev. Without his chin-up bar and daily walks, Papa does sit-ups on the floor three times a day to keep from pacing. There’s nothing else to do except watch the names of the stations and guess where we’re headed.

“Toward Omsk, so far,” Papa says. “And then where, do you suppose?”

“West to Moscow,” Mama says.

“Or east to Vladivostok?” I ask. Imagine seeing the Pacific Ocean! But in the morning the sun’s on the wrong side of the train. We’ve been turned around again. “Now where?”

“Maria, go to the next car and ask Yakovlev himself,” Mama says.

Would Tatiana choke on her own breath the way I do?

I make my way along the swaying corridor, trying to remember the lines of Nekrasov Olga slipped into my coat pocket the night we left.
Our passage is sure and protected.
I’m not sure I’ve gotten them right, but the thought of her voice in my ear helps me knock at Yakovlev’s door.

“Yes?”

“Please, Mr. Commissar, my mother would like to know where you’re taking us?” I sound like a little girl. Tatiana would have said “the empress,” not “my mother,” and it wouldn’t have come out at all like a question.

For a moment, I wonder if he knows the answer himself. He swallows, tweaks an earlobe, then says, “I’m sorry, Citizen Romanova, that is classified information.”

Mama doesn’t answer when I tell her what Yakovlev said. Papa shrugs and lights a cigarette. “I would go anywhere at all, except the Urals.”

That’s exactly where we end up. A mining town in the Ural Mountains. Before we’ve even stopped, I understand why Papa didn’t want to come here.

“Lock the windows and pull the curtains,” Yakovlev orders as the train pulls into the station at Ekaterinburg. It doesn’t do a bit of good. The most horrible shouts blare through the panes. It sounds like my measles dreams all over again, but this time it’s real.

“Finally they’re in our hands!”

“Let me spit in his dirty face!”

“We ought to throttle them!”

For ages, we sit in the train while Yakovlev speaks to the soviet deputies. Even though we can’t see the mob, their voices crowd closer and closer. Papa smokes and strokes his beard, but Mama’s fingers shake under my sweaty hands. At three o’clock we’re ordered out. Yakovlev hands us over to the chairman of the Ural Regional Soviet, a young man called Beloborodov. They pile us into an open motorcar, and a truck loaded with armed soldiers follows. I’m sure I can hear their rifles clanking as we drive through the streets. Mama sits tall and stiff as anything, but my stomach bumps worse than the road from Tobolsk.

“Where are they taking us?” I whisper to Papa, even though he can’t have any more idea than I do.

I know as soon as I see it. On the corner across from a square, the ugliest fence of gray pilings juts onto the sidewalk, reaching from a canopied doorway all the way across the front of the building and around the block. The house behind it is yellowed plaster, but all we can see is the gate to the courtyard and the trim along the roofline that makes it look like a big stale wedding cake.

Before we can even go inside, a new officer and guard inspect our hand baggage. One of them yanks Mama’s valise right out of her hand.

“I see no reason for such rough treatment,” Papa says, so calmly I wonder if they know how angry he is.

Another Red soldier stands at the door. The whiskers of his black mustache almost prick his lower lip. He gestures inside like he’s welcoming us, but he smiles in a way that doesn’t make me feel welcome at all. “Citizen Romanov, you may enter the House of Special Purpose.”

31.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA