The Romanovs: The Final Chapter (52 page)

Thereafter, as the bleeding stopped and the fluids in Alexis’s knee were reabsorbed, his pain subsided and his leg began to straighten. When the weather was good, he was carried outdoors to sit in the sun. “Sat with Baby, Olga, and Anastasia before the house,” Alexandra wrote. “Went out with Baby, Tatiana, and Marie … wheeled Baby into the garden and we all sat there for an hour. Very hot, nice lilac bushes and small honeysuckle.”

Most of the time, Alexandra, like Alexis, was immobilized. Unable to walk because of sciatica, she lay in her bed or sat in her wheelchair in
the pale yellow bedroom. Confronted by the white-painted windows, she embroidered, drew, or read her Bible, her prayer books, or the
Life of Saint Serafim of Sarov
. On May 28 she recorded that “I cut Nicholas’s hair for the first time,” and on June 20, “Cut N’s hair again.” Alexandra was cared for by her daughters: “Marie read to me after tea.… Marie washed my hair.… Tatiana read to me.… Anastasia read to me.… the others went out, Olga stayed with me.” The empress suffered from recurring migraines: “I remained in bed as feeling very giddy and eyes ache so.… Lay with eyes shut as head continued to ache.… Remained the whole day with shut eyes, head got worse towards evening.”

The strain on Nicholas was that of an outdoor animal caged. Unable to go out when he wished, he paced his room, back and forth, back and forth. One warm evening in June, he wrote in his diary, “It was unbearable to sit that way, locked up, and not be in a position to go out into the garden when you wanted and spend a fine evening outside.” He was tired, and the pouches deepened under his eyes. “The tedium,” he wrote, “is incredible.” Suffering from hemorrhoids, he went to bed for three days, “since it is more convenient to apply compresses.” Alexandra and Alexis sat by his bed for lunch, tea, and supper. After two days and nights, he sat up, and the next morning got up and went outside. “The green is very fine and lush,” he wrote.

Immersed in tedium, isolated from the world outside, unaware even of events like Nagorny’s death, the prisoners found variety mainly in the ups and downs of illnesses and the capriciousness of the weather. Birthdays were scarcely noticed, although four occurred while the family was in the Ipatiev House: On May 19, Nicholas was fifty; on June 6, Alexandra was forty-six; on June 18, Nicholas recorded, “dear Anastasia has turned seventeen”; on June 27, “Our dear Marie has turned nineteen.” Occasionally there were breaks in their routine. Early in May a package arrived. “Received chocolate and coffee from Ella [her sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth],” Alexandra noted. “She has been sent from Moscow and is at Perm.” The following morning the empress wrote: “Great treat, a cup of coffee.” Sometimes the electricky
failed. “Supper, 3 candles in glasses; cards by light of one candle,” she wrote. On June 4 she noted that the new ruler of Russia had exercised his power even over the clock: “Lenin gave the order that the clocks have to be put two hours ahead (economy of electricity) so at ten they told us it is twelve.”

As the days passed, the captives, from emperor to cook, merged into an extended family. Botkin, an old friend rather than a servant, frequently sat with Nicholas and his wife after supper to talk and play cards. During the day when Alexandra and Alexis could not leave the house, Botkin remained inside with them for card games. After Nagorny was removed, Botkin sometimes slept in the room with the tsarevich, and he shared with Nicholas, Trupp, and Kharitonov the task of carrying Alexis out of doors. On June 23 Botkin himself became violently ill with colic, requiring an injection of morphine. He remained sick for five days; when he was able to sit up in an armchair, Alexandra sat with him. Sednev, the cook, became ill, and Alexandra kept watch over his temperature and progress.

The four grand duchesses, now young women, did what they could. Tatiana and Marie read to and played bridge with their mother. Tatiana also played cards with Alexis and, during the peak of his illness, slept near him at night. Olga, closest to Nicholas, walked beside her father twice a day. All four helped Demidova darn stockings and linen. At the end of June, Kharitonov, the cook, proposed that the five children help him make bread. “The girls kneaded the dough for the bread,” recorded Alexandra. “The children continued rolling and making bread and now it is baking.… Lunched: excellent bread.… The children help every day in the kitchen.”

In June summer and heat were upon them. This was a season of storms with thunder and lightning, sheets of rain, and then, quickly, bright sunshine and more heat. On June 6 Alexandra noted, “Very hot, awfully stuffy in rooms.” Heat from the kitchen made things worse: “Kharitonov has to cook our food now,” she wrote on June 18. “Very
hot, stuffy as no windows open and smells strong of kitchen everywhere.” On June 21, she reported, “Out in the garden, fearfully hot, sat under the bushes. They have given us … half an hour more for being out. Heat, airlessness in the rooms intense.”

Closed windows made the heat stifling. In order to keep the prisoners from escaping or signaling to the outside, all of the white-painted, double windows in the family rooms were kept shut by order of the Ural Soviet. Nicholas set himself to overturn this decree. “Today at tea, six men walked in, probably from the Regional Soviet, to see which windows to open,” he wrote in his diary on June 22. “The resolution of this issue has gone on for nearly two weeks! Often various men have come and silently in our presence examined the windows.” On this issue the tsar triumphed. “Two of the soldiers came and took out one window in our room,” Alexandra wrote on June 23. “Such joy, delicious air at last and one window no longer whitewashed.” “The fragrance from all the town’s gardens is amazing,” wrote Nicholas.

In the sunlight, Alexis sat quietly while the tsar and his daughters walked under the eyes of the guards. In time impressions of the family began to change. “I have still an impression of them that will always remain in my soul,” said Anatoly Yakimov, a member of the guard who was captured by the Whites.

On July 4, a “lovely morning, nice air, not too hot,” a man whom Nicholas called “the dark gentleman” appeared and took control of the Ipatiev House. This man, who had black eyes, black hair, and a black beard, and who wore a black leather jacket, was the Chekist Commander, Yakov Yurovsky. Ironically, that same day Alexandra recorded that Alexis was getting better: “Baby eats well and is getting heavy for the others to carry. He moves his leg more easily. Cruel they won’t give us Nagorny back again.”

Yurovsky’s arrival heralded minor improvements in the prisoners’ situation. The new guards he brought were better disciplined; petty harassment of the young grand duchesses on their way to the toilet ceased. Alexandra’s diary entry for July 13 ended with an optimistic note about Alexis: “Beautiful morning. I spent the day as yesterday lying on the bed, as back ached when move about. Others went out twice. Anastasia remained with me in the afternoon. One says Nagorny … has been sent out of the … [region] instead of giving … [him] back to us. At 6:30, Baby had his first bath since Tobolsk. He managed to get in and out alone, climbs also in and out of bed, but can only stand on one foot as yet.”