The Lost Crown (14 page)

On top of their cruelty, the First and Second Regiments are undisciplined and unshaven, with shaggy hair and a loose grip on their rifles. One look at them and I know they have no respect for themselves, much less the dead, the tsar, or the army.

“Look.” Isa points to a sentry dragging one of our gilt chairs into the courtyard. He sprawls across it with his rifle slung over his knees, too lazy to stand at his post. It is so ridiculous, I can hardly help laughing at the idle brute. They always want to see Aleksei, but Monsieur Gilliard tells them, “The heir is sick and cannot be seen.” What do they think they will see? Our brother is a boy like any other, yet already twice the soldier any of them will ever be.

Worst of all, they shoot the tame deer in our park for sport.

Just when we are starting to become resigned to our situation, Colonel Kobylinsky requests that everyone who is well enough gather in the classroom to meet the revolutionary from the head of the Provisional Government, a man called Alexander Kerensky.

He is clean shaven, with hair like the bristle brushes we use to scrub our hands and nails at the lazaret, and walks with one fist tucked into his blue peasant blouse as if he fancies himself the next Napoleon. He cannot stop moving, and touches everything in sight with his free hand. When he stops pacing for an instant, Papa steps forward to greet him. The edges of Papa’s mustache lift and fall the tiniest bit, and I know he wears an uncertain smile.

A strange pause muffles the room. Beside me, Mama stiffens. Papa moves as if to shake hands, then reaches up and touches his beard instead. All five of us know the proper way to greet everyone from the Emir of Bokhara to a turnip farmer, but no one seems to know what to do in a room that holds an ex-tsar and a revolutionary.

Kerensky’s eyes dart from Papa to us, and I am sure he senses the same uncertainty.

“Kerensky,” he says with a smile, stepping briskly forward with his hand out. Papa shakes it. An uncommon flush blotches Mama’s face. Not fear this time, but anger, for her breathing is deadly calm.

“My family,” Papa says, leading Kerensky to us. “My son, Aleksei Nikolaevich. My daughters, Olga and Tatiana Nikolaevna.” The man bobs at each of us and shakes our hands. Olga and Aleksei are too bewildered to reply, and I know better than to stand next to Mama and answer a revolutionary’s greeting with a cordial
Ochen priyatno
. No matter how polite Kerensky seems, I am not pleased to meet him.

“My wife,” Papa says when they come to the end of the line. “Alexandra Feodorovna.”

Kerensky nods more deeply to Mama, but I know this man of the people will not call her “Your Imperial Majesty.” She wears her stoniest expression, the one Anastasia calls her Empress Face. There is no missing it, even meeting her for the first time. Kerensky offers his hand, and Mama slowly raises hers as if someone else is moving it for her.

“The Queen of England has asked for news of the ex-tsaritsa,” Kerensky says.

Mama’s face flares red as the ribbons on the guards’ uniforms. Her hand jerks back. “I am fairly well, though my heart troubles me.”

Indeed. Mama’s heart troubles her in more ways than this man can imagine.

Kerensky turns to Papa. “How is your health?”

“We are well. My youngest daughters are recovering,
slava Bogu
.” I thank God and cross myself as well. It finally seems that our Mashka will be all right.

“
Otlichno.
I am glad to hear it. Let me also assure you of your safety. You have nothing to fear from the Provisional Government.”

I do not like this man, not one bit, but I believe him.

“Thank you,” Papa says.

Kerensky glances at us again. “Perhaps there is somewhere we may speak without disturbing your family?”

“Of course.” Papa gestures toward the door. Kerensky nods at us and goes out, showing his back to all of us. Aleksei’s sharp breath at the sight shoots through me as well. For three hundred years, the tsar has always been first to leave a room. In the space of a heartbeat this man has tromped that courtesy under his black boots without a backward glance.

“Horrid man,” Mama says as the door shuts behind them. “No manners whatever.”

Later, as I sit reading to the Little Pair, an awful commotion down the corridor sends me hurrying to see what is the matter. I have to push my way into Anya’s room. Inside, Anya hobbles on her two crutches, howling to the heavens as she gathers up her things. Lili hovers beside Mama. Olga stands alone, stricken and pale. Although he must be in charge of this, Colonel Kobylinsky does not look much better.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Anya and Lili are under arrest,” Mama says.

“But so are we!”

“Not house arrest,” Olga says.

“The Provisional Government is taking them both away.”

My whole body wavers as if my joints have filled with syrup. Our arrest and even the soldiers jeering at Papa are bearable, so long as we are all safe together. Now they would separate us from our dearest friends? What harm is our sweet simple Anya? It is like taking one of our dogs to prison, for all her loyalty and affection. She will be terrified, with no one to pet and soothe her.

“Anya is ill,” I insist.

“Dr. Botkin has said Anya may be moved,” Mama fumes. “I don’t see how he could do such a thing, a man with children of his own!”

My heart falls, leaving a space as though a bullet has torn a path through my chest.
“Bozhe moi,”
I gasp, tasting the scent of the doctor’s cologne in the air.

“The children! I must say good-bye to Maria and Anastasia,” Lili cries, and runs from the room. Anya howls louder.

We have all of us been so brave, and Christ forgive me, I cannot do it anymore. I throw my arms round Anya and sob on her soft shoulder. “Anya, my poor
dorogaya
! These beasts have no right to take you away. Trust in God, no matter what happens. I will pray for you. We will all be praying for you.”

Mama nods dumbly and takes her turn to say good-bye. As the soldiers try to hurry Anya past me, I catch hold of her arm.

“Anya,
dushka
,” I sniffle, “may I have something to remember you by?”

“Of course, darling,” she says, patting my hand as if she has changed from an overgrown child into a mother in the space of seconds. She looks round the room. A soldier has already taken her bag. There is nothing. With a glance down at our clasped hands, she shakes free and begins to yank at the gold band cinching her plump finger.

“I cannot take your wedding ring!”

“Yes, you can.” She tries to smile as she twists the ring one last time. It pops loose over her fat knuckle, and she pushes it into my palm. “It’s no more use to me than the husband who went with it.”

My fingers are so much thinner than hers, I have to slip it on over my thumb. I kiss her one more time before the men drag her away.

We manage to be more subdued when they force Lili out, but it does us no good. While Lili weeps in Mama’s arms, I finger Anya’s ring and cry, still praying God will have mercy on Anya for her selflessness.

And now Lili. She has done so much for us, standing by us even when it meant she could not see her own dear Titi. For her reward she will be separated from everyone she loves. The thought of her going empty-handed stirs me like smelling salts. I hurry to my bedroom for the little leather frame with Mama and Papa’s portraits I have kept beside my bed since I was small. “Lili,” I pant, “if Kerensky is going to take you away from us, you shall at least have Mama and Papa to console you.” She nods as Mama puts a sacred medal round her neck and blesses her.

When she is gone, Mama, Olga, and I crowd against the nursery windows and peer out onto the drive below. Together, we watch the soldiers put Lili and Anya into the same car; they are two pale faces gazing up at us as they’re driven away.

18.

MARIA NIKOLAEVNA

April-May 1917
Tsarskoe Selo

B
y the time I’m well enough to sit up in bed, our lives are an awful jumble. Papa’s home at last, but I’ve been so ill I don’t even remember him visiting me. My lungs still feel like two bags of wet sand, and under my nightgown a film of sweat pastes my baptismal cross to my skin if I do much more than reach for a glass of water. When I ask for Papa, Tatiana tells me what happened.

“Kerensky came and said Mama and Papa must be separated in the palace until the Provisional Government questions them. The idiots think Mama is a German spy. Papa spends all day in his rooms on one side of the corridor and Mama in the other. They are allowed to speak to each other only at meals, and only in Russian so the guards can understand them. They cannot even sleep together.”

“But I want to see Papa,” I whimper. I sound like a baby, but I can’t help it. After all those miserable hours Mama and I worried and prayed for him to come home, now there’s only a stairway between us? It’s too unreal to think about. “But Mama isn’t up here now. Why can’t he come?” My wail bends into a gasp, and a thick cough scrapes the bottom of my chest.

“Hush,
dushka
.” Tatiana holds a towel for me to spit the gooey clumps that break loose from my lungs. “You are still too weak to come eat at the table with all of us, and Papa is not allowed upstairs. The only reason they let Mama stay in this wing at all is because you were so ill. You almost died,
dorogaya
.” Her voice wavers, and she wipes at her eyes.

My own eyes well up, and I work to ease the breaths past the hot lump in my throat. I haven’t seen Tatiana cry since
Otets
Grigori’s funeral. She looks like she wants to climb right into the bed beside me and hug me like a doll. “I’m sorry I scared you,” I whisper, but it doesn’t seem to reach her ears.

“It is disgusting,” she spits, “the way those brutes could even think about separating a mother from her sick children!” She blows her nose so hard the poor handkerchief flutters. “Never mind. We children are allowed to go anywhere we like. I will tell Papa how much you miss him. We talk together almost every afternoon in his study.”

“Did Papa tell you why he did it?”

“To save Russia, Mashka,” she says, stroking my hair the way I pet Jemmy’s ears. “To keep the disorder from spreading into the army. Putting someone else in charge was like giving the city a good dose of medicine. Now the disease will stop. With God’s help, Russia will heal.”

“Tatya,” I ask, trying not to let the dread creeping through my belly swallow me whole, “what’s going to happen to us now?”

“No one knows,” Tatiana admits. “Mama heard a British cruiser was waiting in Murmansk to take us all to England, but there has been no further word. There is one good thing about you being so ill—Dr. Botkin is sending a letter to Kerensky, requesting that we be transferred to the Crimea on account of your health.”

The room stills all around me, the air suddenly too solid to breathe. “We—we have to leave?”

“There is nothing to worry about,
dushka
,” Tatiana promises. “We are all together in God’s hands.”

When Papa’s finally allowed to come upstairs again, it’s like the sun itself has climbed into my chest. His hug lifts me out of my bed, and all I can say is, “Oh, Papa!” So long as Papa is beside me, I breathe deeper than I have in weeks. Even the tangy smell of Turkish cigarettes on his clothes and in his beard calms me instead of tickling my cough.

As my strength comes inching back, I begin to realize how dreadfully sick I’ve been. Even in my kimono, my family clusters around to pose for snapshots with me, as if I’m a ripe piece of fruit they all want to savor. The way Mama pets and fusses over me you’d think I was delicate as Aleksei. I lap it up like a kitten at a bowl of cream.

By the time the congestion in my chest has broken up as much as the ice in the canals, we’re allowed to go outside together. Each afternoon we gather in the semicircular hall at the back of the palace and wait for an officer of the guard to come with a key.

Whatever starch kept Mama so strong while Papa was gone and we were all sick must have crumpled when she hung up her Red Cross uniform. Now we have our same brittle Mama back. She sits in a wheelchair with her lap full of embroidery, pulling her threads tighter and tighter as the minutes tick by.

“Zdorovo, okhrannik,”
Papa says to the loitering soldiers outside the door as he wheels Mama into the park. Mama and Tatiana look past the gaping guards like they’re hedgerows, but Papa makes sure to greet them politely every day as we seven file past the curious faces. Some of them snigger at Papa’s manners, and that makes Olga sigh and close up like a locket, so Anastasia bugs her eyes out and twists her neck to mimic them. I never know what to do, so I don’t do anything except smile and blush the way I always do when young men in uniforms look at me. Only Aleksei, dressed in his field shirt and cap to match their own, seems to reach beyond their stares.

Outside, we spread a carpet on the ground for Mama’s wheelchair. Since I’m still recuperating, I’m almost always the one who stays behind to read aloud or chat with her while Papa and the others exercise in the park. Papa can never be still outdoors. He works at clearing the ice from the canals and the snow from the paths. Sometimes people stand at the gates to watch him shovel.