The House of Special Purpose (53 page)

Such a stillness existed between us at that moment that I did not dare to breathe. I was gripping her forearms between my hands, pressing so tightly against her skin that at any other moment she might have cried out in protest at the pain of it, but she did nothing now. I watched her face, desperate for any sign of an answer, and then – such relief! – an almost imperceptible nod of her head, a slight turning westward as if to indicate that yes, we should make our way in that direction. It allowed me to hope that the true Anastasia was present within this strange countenance somewhere, although the effort of making the tiny signal was too much for her and she slumped against my chest once again. My mind was resolved.

‘We begin now,’ I told her. ‘Before the sun comes up. You must find the strength to walk with me.’

I have thought of that moment on many occasions throughout my life, and picture myself bending down to lift her from the ground and carry her not to safety, but in the direction of safety. This, perhaps, would have been the heroic gesture, the detail which would have made a fitting portrait or dramatic moment. But life is not poetry. Anastasia was a young girl of little weight, but how can I express the cruelty of the atmosphere, the
impertinent
froideur
of the air, which bit at any exposed parts of our bodies in a manner reminiscent of the Empress’s loathsome puppy. It was as if the blood had stopped moving beneath the skin and turned to ice. We had to walk, we had to keep moving, if only to ensure that our circulation was maintained.

I was wearing my greatcoat, and three layers of clothing beneath it, so removed this outer layer and wrapped it around Anastasia’s shoulders, buttoning it at the front as we began to walk. I focussed completely on maintaining a rhythm as I pulled the two of us along. We did not speak to each other and I became hypnotized by the sound of my footsteps, all the time maintaining a consistent pace so that we might not lose our momentum.

Throughout this, I remained alert for the sound of the Bolsheviks behind us. Something had taken place inside the house that night, something terrible. I knew not what, but my mind reeled with possibilities. The worst was unthinkable, a crime against God himself. But if that which I dared not put into words had indeed taken place, then surely Anastasia and I were not the only two people running away from Yekaterinburg; there would be soldiers following us – following
her
– desperate to bring her back. And if they found us … I dared not think of it and quickened our pace.

To my surprise, Anastasia did not appear to be finding this march in any way difficult. Indeed, not only did she match my consistent strides, at times she outpaced me, as if she was, despite her silence, even more eager than I to put as much distance between herself and her former prison as possible. Her stamina was beyond human that night; I believe I could have suggested that we walk all the way to St Petersburg and she would have agreed and never sought rest.

Eventually, however, after two, maybe three hours, I knew that we had to stop. My body was protesting with every step. We had a great distance to travel and needed to rally our energy. The sun would be coming up soon and I did not want us to remain where
we might be seen, although to my surprise there did not seem to be any sign at all that we were being followed. I spotted a small animal-hut about half a mile ahead, and determined that we would break our march there and sleep.

It smelled terrible inside, but it was empty, the walls were solid, and there was enough straw on the floor for us to rest in reasonable comfort.

‘We will sleep here, my love,’ I said. Anastasia nodded and lay down without protest, staring up at the roof, that same haunted, hollow look in her eyes. ‘You do not need to tell me anything,’ I added, ignoring the fact that she had spoken only one word, my name, since we had met that night and showed no sign of wanting to tell me what had taken place. ‘Not yet. Just sleep, that is all. You need to sleep.’

Again the small nod, but on this occasion I felt her fingers close around mine a little more tightly, as if she wanted to acknowledge what I was saying. I lay beside her, wrapping my body around hers for warmth, and knew that sleep would overtake me in seconds. I tried to stay awake to watch over her, but looking at her eyes as they stared up at the roof of our hut hypnotized my spirit and my exhaustion quickly got the better of me.

It was three days before Anastasia spoke again.

The morning after we awoke we were fortunate enough to secure transport on a wagon heading in the direction of Izhevsk; the journey took an entire day, but the farmer who granted us carriage sought no more than a few kopecks for his kindness and offered us bread and water along the way, which we accepted gratefully, for neither of us had eaten since the previous afternoon. We slept fitfully in the rear of the vehicle, stretched out flat on the wooden slats, but every bump in the road jolted us back to consciousness with a start and I prayed that this torture would end soon. Every time Anastasia awoke, I noticed how it took her a moment to recollect where she was and what had brought
her to this place. Her face would appear relaxed and untroubled for the briefest of seconds and then it would cloud over, a sudden eclipse of her brilliance, and her eyes would shut firmly once again, as if she was willing sleep – or worse – to take her. Our driver made no conversation and did not recognize the princess of the Imperial line who sat silently behind him, her back to his. I was grateful for his silence, as I did not think that I could bear to feign friendliness or sociability in the circumstances in which we found ourselves.

At Izhevsk, we stopped and ate at a small café before making our way to the train station, which was much busier than I had expected, a fact that pleased me, as it meant that we could blend into the crowd without difficulty. I was concerned that there would be soldiers waiting at the entry-ways, watching out for us, looking out for
her
, but nothing out of the usual appeared to be taking place. Anastasia kept her head bowed at all times, and covered her blonde hair with a dark hood, so that she looked like any other farmer’s daughter who passed us by. I still had most of the roubles I had found the previous afternoon and made a reckless decision to spend almost twice as much as necessary in order to secure us a private compartment on board the train. I purchased two tickets to Minsk, a journey of over a thousand miles. I could think of nowhere further for us to go. From Minsk, I knew not where we might travel next.

There are curious moments of joy in life, unexpected pleasures, and one such instant occurred as we pulled away from the station. The guard blew his piercing whistle, a series of cries to urge any final passengers on board was heard, and then the steam began to rise as the railway buffers cranked into gear. A few moments later, the train was accelerating to a decent speed, heading westwards, and I looked across at Anastasia, whose face was a sudden picture of relief. I leaned over and took her hand in mine. She appeared surprised by the unexpected intimacy, as if she had forgotten that I had even boarded the train alongside her, but then she looked
at me and smiled. I had not seen that smile in eighteen months, and I returned it gratefully. Her smile filled me with hope that she would soon return to her former self.

‘Are you cold, my darling?’ I asked, reaching up and taking a thin blanket from an overhead shelf. ‘Why not place this across your legs? It will keep the chill away.’

She accepted the blanket gratefully and turned her head to look through the window at the stark countryside passing us by. The land. The crops. The
moujik
s. The revolutionaries. A moment later, she turned to look at me again and I held my breath in anticipation. Her lips parted. She swallowed carefully. She opened her mouth to speak. I saw her throat rise gently in her pale neck as the signal passed from brain to tongue to talk, but just as she was about to summon words for the first time, the compartment door opened violently and I turned my head in fright, relieved to see the conductor standing there.

‘Your tickets, sir?’ he asked, and before reaching for them I glanced at Anastasia, who had turned away from us both. She was looking out of the window again, clutching the neck of my greatcoat around her chin, and trembling. I reached across, unsure where to touch her.

‘
Dusha
,’ I whispered, before being interrupted.

‘Your tickets, sir,’ repeated the conductor, more insistently this time. I turned and glared at him, my face expressing such sudden fury that he took a half-step backwards and looked at me nervously. He opened his mouth to say something more but thought better of it, remaining silent as I slowly removed the tickets from my pocket and handed them across.

‘You’re travelling to Minsk?’ he said a few moments later, as he examined them carefully.

‘That’s right.’

‘You must change at Moscow,’ he replied. ‘There will be a separate train for the final leg of the journey.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ I said, wanting him to leave us alone.
Perhaps I had not intimidated him quite as much as I thought, however, because rather than hand the tickets back to me and leave us in peace, he held on to them, hostages to his curiosity, and stared across at Anastasia.

‘Is she quite well?’ he asked me a moment later.

‘She’s fine.’

‘She seems troubled.’

‘She’s fine,’ I repeated without hesitation. ‘My tickets are in order?’

‘Madam?’ he said, ignoring my question. ‘Madam, you are travelling with this gentleman?’ Anastasia said nothing, but continued to stare out of the window, refusing even to acknowledge the conductor’s presence. ‘Madam,’ he continued in a harsher tone. ‘Madam, I asked you a question.’

What felt like a very long few moments followed and then, as if no greater insult had ever been sent her way, Anastasia turned her head and stared coldly at him.

‘Madam, can you confirm that you are travelling with this gentleman?’

‘But of course she’s travelling with me, you fool,’ I snapped. ‘Why else would we be seated together? Why else would I have both our tickets in my pocket?’

‘Sir, the young lady seems troubled,’ he replied. ‘I wish to satisfy myself that she has not been brought here under duress.’

‘Under duress?’ I said, laughing in his face. ‘Why, you must be mad! She is simply tired, that is all. We have been travelling for—’

Before I could finish my sentence, Anastasia had reached across to me and laid her hand against my arm. I looked at her in surprise and watched as she took it away again and, no longer trembling, stared at the conductor defiantly. I turned to look at him and could see that he was taken aback by two things: her sudden composure and her dignified beauty.

‘I have not been kidnapped, if that is what you are implying,’ she said, her voice croaking a little as she spoke in reaction to how long it had been out of use.

‘I apologize, madam,’ he replied, looking a little embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean to suggest that you had. You looked uncomfortable, that was all.’

‘It’s an uncomfortable train,’ she said. ‘I wonder that your People’s Government does not invest some of its money in improvements. It has enough of it, does it not?’

I held my breath, unsure of the politics of such a remark. We had no idea who the conductor was, after all, who he answered to, where his allegiances lay. Anastasia, who was accustomed to answering to no man save her father, had clearly rediscovered her own inner strength through his insolence. Silence filled the compartment for a few moments – I was unsure whether the conductor would challenge us further and felt concerned that if he did, we would come off the worse for it – but finally, he handed the tickets back to me and looked away.

‘There is a dining car at the end of the train if you are hungry,’ he said gruffly. ‘The next stop is Nizhniy Novgorod. Have a pleasant journey.’

I nodded in reply and he took a final look at the two of us – Anastasia was still staring at him, daring him to challenge her further – before turning away, closing the compartment door and leaving us alone together. I let an enormous sigh escape my body, feeling my chest collapse in tension before me, and then looked across at Anastasia, who was smiling weakly at me.

‘You have found your voice,’ I said.

She nodded a little. ‘Georgy,’ she whispered, her voice filled with sorrow.

I took her hand in mine.

‘You must tell me,’ I insisted, betraying no note of urgency in my tone, but rather kindness and sympathy. ‘You must tell me what happened.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I will tell you. And only you. But first, you must tell me something.’

‘Anything.’

‘Do you love me?’

‘But of course!’

‘You will never leave me?’

‘Only death could separate me from you, my darling.’

Her face fell at these words and I knew that I had chosen badly. I held her hands tightly in mine and urged her once again to tell me, to tell me all. To tell me everything that had happened at the Ipatiev house.

The guards did not treat us as if we were prisoners. In fact, they permitted us to wander the grounds at will, even to take long walks in the surrounding countryside on the understanding that we would return to the house afterwards. Of course, we obeyed them. There was nowhere for us to go, after all. We would not have been able to conceal ourselves in any town or village in Russia. They said that we were safe in Yekaterinburg, that they were protecting us, hiding our location from a country filled with people who hated us. They said that there were people who wanted us dead
.

They were friendly, too, which always surprised me. They spoke to us as if they did not control our lives. They acted as if we were free to stay or go and never questioned any of us when we went outside, but the guns on their backs told a different story. I wondered whether the day would come when I would walk to that door and they would raise a hand to stop me
.

Marie told me that you had come for me. I couldn’t believe it at first. It was like a miracle. She swore that it was true, that she had seen you and spoken with you, and I was almost out of my mind with happiness, but Mother wouldn’t let me leave the house, insisting that I stay and continue with my lessons. Of course, I couldn’t tell her why I wanted to go. She would never have permitted me to leave again if I had. The idea that you were so close made me happy, though, especially when Marie
said that you would come again that night. I could hardly wait, Georgy
.