The Lost Crown (26 page)

But Mashka and I have the best play of all, about a husband and wife packing up for a trip. My very first line is “Damn!” and I get to wear Mr. Gibbes’s dressing gown and bellow through the whole thing while Mashka does what she does best, playing a cheerful little wifey who finally gets fed up and bawls me out: “You’re an idiot! Do you hear? A blithering, blustering idiot! You came home tipsy last night and have bullied me all day, and I’m going to kick.” She’s got to practice for ages until she can do it without giggling.

I’ve
got the finale, though. After I’ve strutted around for ten solid minutes complaining about how my silly wife takes much too long to pack and dress, and the porter (Aleksei) has carried our trunk away to the cab, Maria says, “Come on, dear, quick—are you ready?”

“Yes dear, quite ready,” I tell her, putting a silk hat on.

“You can’t go like that—take off your dressing gown.”

I grab my lapels and stop dead. “Mary, dear, we can’t go.”

“Yes, we can—come on, hurry up!”

“We
cannot
go!”

“Cannot go? Why?”

“Because—because—”

“Because what?”

I turn my back, open my dressing gown as if I’m about to strip, and announce in my best husband-voice, “Because I’ve packed up my trousers!”

Silence, then laughter blasts from behind me. For a second I stand there, blinking at the wall, then I spin around and the draft hits me. It seems like something only Mashka could manage, but somehow I’ve pulled Mr. Gibbes’s dressing gown all the way up to my waist in back. Everybody—Papa, Mama, Dr. Botkin, and the tutors and all our people—is howling at the sight of my legs and backside, jammed into Papa’s suit of woolen Jaeger underwear. Even Mama has to fan herself with her hands to batten down her chortles. I don’t think I’ve seen her laugh like that in my whole life.

Of course, they’re merciless after that. For days afterward, my sisters chant, “Encore!” and “Brava!” when I dress in the morning and undress at night. My backside is all anyone can talk about, until news of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk hits.

Leave it to nasty old Cousin Willi, the German kaiser, to make peace with the Bolsheviks! After that, the grownups go on about treason and insult and disgrace for hours at a time. All my sisters and I can do is mope around our icehouse of a bedroom if we don’t want to hear it.

“I’ve never seen Papa look so low,” I say, “even after the abdication. I thought his beard might drop right into his soup at lunch.”

Olga paces the floor with her fists clamped under her arms. “He abdicated to keep the army from splintering and falling to the Germans. A separate peace is like spitting in Papa’s face after all these years of war.”

“Papa is right,” Tatiana adds. “This is suicide for Russia. How can the kaiser even speak to those Bolshie traitors?”

“Do you really think the treaty says the Bolsheviks have to transfer us safely to Germany?” Maria asks. “Imagine seeing Auntie Irene and Uncle Ernie and all the cousins again!”

“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Mashka,” Olga answers.

“What difference does it make?” I ask. “Didn’t you hear what Mama said? After what they’ve done to Papa, she’d rather die in Russia than be saved by the Germans.” I flip over in my cot and look across the room at Olga and Tatiana. “Which would you rather do?”

“Die in Russia,” the Big Pair says together, without even looking up. Mashka’s saucers go wide. Olga and Tatiana really mean it. They didn’t have to
think
about it. I’d rather not die anywhere at all, thank you very much.

“Girlies, come look!”

Mama shouting? That brings us all running. My sisters crowd the windows in her drawing room. Outside, troika bells jingle and horses’ hooves slop in the snow. “It’s a detachment of Red Guards,” Olga says as I drag Mama’s footstool over to stand on. “Probably a hundred men.”

“Bolshies?” I practically climb over my sisters’ shoulders. “Let me see.” No epaulets, of course, but except for that I can’t even tell they’re Reds. “Poo. I thought they’d at least have beards, or dress in red uniforms or something. They look like plain old soldiers.”

“That’s because they’re good Russian men,” Mama says. “Papa and I have heard there are sympathetic officers from Omsk enlisted in this detachment. Wait and see. God is looking out for us.”

If this is God’s idea, He must know something we don’t about the Reds, because soon more jostle into town through Tyumen, then another heap turns up from Ekaterinburg. These actually look how I think Bolshies should look— scruffy ruffians who loiter in the street outside our fence and badger our guards and the men from Omsk. Guns stick out like porcupine quills all over them.

After our lessons, Maria and I pile on sweaters and shawls and perch in the frosty sills of the corner ballroom windows to watch. All we hear about are committees and demands and orders from Moscow.

“I don’t know how you two can look at that all day long,” Olga says from the altar when she comes in to pray. “Dr. Botkin says the entire town is nervous.”

I’m not going to tell her that Mashka’s lady in the blue coat has only been by twice this week. She turned those little boys right around the second she saw the Bolshies, and the next time she came alone.

Maria surprises me. “We’re probably the safest people in Tobolsk, way up here,” she says. “There’s a fence and two whole regiments of guards between us and them.”

Ha! Smart Mashka.
“Konechno,”
I put in. “The First and Second Regiments aren’t the politest, but they’ve never let anyone
else
bother us. Besides, it’s better than sitting in the corridor all day wondering what’s happening.”

It’s fun while it lasts, but before we know it, Mama’s Omsk detachment runs the other bandits out of town, fifteen troikas full, jangling all the way while the Omsk men whoop behind them! It’s like watching one of Aleksei’s adventure films right outside our windows. Even Papa comes to look.

It doesn’t matter, though. Just when we’ve had time to get bored again, more Reds pour in from Omsk, right behind the spring thaw, then another two hundred back from Ekaterinburg, and the whole thing starts all over again. Olga won’t even come out on the balcony with us if there are soldiers in the street. She’ll only hover by the door to take the air, looking like a rubber band about to snap.

“Is it good or bad for us if the Reds are arguing with each other?” I ask her.

“More fighting can’t be good, especially if it’s Bolsheviks.”

I wrinkle my nose. After all her talk about the Bolshies maybe being halfway decent?

The Ekaterinburg Reds have demanded to be allowed to inspect the house, but Colonel Kobylinsky and our soldiers refuse to let their commissary in.

“If the situation is not resolved, we may have to transfer you to the archbishop’s house on the hill,” Kobylinsky informs us. “And I must request that you not sit on the balcony for at least the next three days.” I deserve an I-told-you-so from Olga, but she’s too busy crossing herself to be smug.

That night the Omsk guards join up with our men to make a double set of sentries and patrols to keep watch over the house. I don’t expect to sleep any more than they do, but I must have dozed off, because a sound by our bedroom door pops my eyes wide open in the dark. At first I think I dreamed it up, then there’s the soft flop of a boot falling over, and Olga swears under her breath. I peek over the edge of my cot in time to see her scoop something small and glinty from the floor and slip it under her pillow. For a long time, the edges of her breaths are sharp like mine, like we both have to remind ourselves to let each lungful go. If I were one of the dogs, I’d crawl in under the covers right beside her.

“It’s safe to go to sleep now, Shvybs,” she whispers. “Don’t worry.”

Since it’s Olga’s voice, I know this isn’t jabber meant to humor me. It’s like a vow. And just like that, I do exactly as she says.

“Girlies,” Mama says the next day, “I’m going to need your help with some sewing.” She won’t say another word until we’re inside her drawing room with the doors shut tight. Then she tells us, “Colonel Kobylinsky has let the Red commissary from Omsk inside. Papa saw him inspecting the guards’ quarters this morning.” A spurt of alarm zings from my gut right up the back of my neck. Red sentries on the street are one thing, but inside the fence? “It’s time to hide our jewelry, darlings,” Mama goes on. “I won’t have those Bolsheviks getting their hands on our fortune.”

My thoughts snap like popping corn inside my head. First they were “good Russian men,” and now they’re “
those
Bolsheviks”?

“We must keep some jewelry on, or the soldiers will be suspicious.” Mama pulls out a little satchel and pours a stream of diamonds onto the table. They sparkle like the broken chunks of our snow mountain. “The guards don’t know about our loose gems. I want all of them hidden in our clothes, to keep them out of sight and make sure we are all protected.”

I don’t see how walking around with diamonds in our hems will protect us, but at least it’s another way to keep busy. All day long, we sew jewels into all sorts of clothes and pillows. We pull apart cloth buttons, throw away the hard little knobs inside, and replace them with pearls and precious stones wrapped in cotton wadding. Sashes and hatbands get stuffed like roast chickens. Every time I think we’re done, Mama comes up with a new stash. Some of the pearls are big as cherries, which makes them a hateful bother to hide inside anything without making us look like walking sacks of marbles.

“We must be ready to flee if the White Army occupies Tobolsk,” Mama says if I even sigh at my sewing.

“Reds and Whites,” Maria half sings. “It’s just like Alice in
Through the Looking Glass
. Ouch!” She sucks at her finger and pouts at the bent needle in her lap. I shake my head. Maria can’t manage anything sharper than a spoon. That’s the third needle she’s ruined, jabbing it into a diamond. Without a word, Tatiana takes over Maria’s hemming and gives her a pile of buttons to pull apart instead.

“It isn’t a game of chess, or a storybook,” Olga says. “It’s a civil war.” Mama frowns, but since when does that stop Olga? “And they’re not all imperial knights on white horses. I’ve never heard of such a mix—monarchists, Constitutional Democrats, republicans—they wouldn’t have a thing to say to one another under ordinary circumstances. Half of them probably wouldn’t even speak to us. The only thing the Whites have in common is hating the Bolsheviks.”

“That’s good enough for me,” I pipe up, and Olga buttons her lip. I’m glad. Listening to her is like drinking a glass of vinegar sometimes.

“The Whites are on their way,” Mama insists, “and the people of Tobolsk are sympathetic. Look at all the food and gifts they’ve brought us. We must be ready when they come to our rescue.”

As if to prove Mama right, a merchant from town brings Aleksei a wooden sledge and boat. He’s awfully pleased with them. “Fat lot of good they’ll do you, without our snow mountain or a canal to play in,” I tell him.

“You just watch and see,” he says.

So while I’m stuck wrapping up jewels like cotton-covered bonbons, he and Kolya Derevenko spend the whole day careening down the stairs on their makeshift sleds, shrieking and shouting like hoodlums.

Aleksei shouts so much, he coughs all night. Serves him right. For the next two days after that, he plays outside with Kolya, swinging and practicing at archery and breaking up pools of ice for the ducks in the yard. I don’t know why the soldiers don’t have fits about his arrows and ax. Meanwhile, I stitch and sew and whisper in Mama’s drawing room. We’ve got more diamonds than guards, and
that’s
saying something around here lately.

And then,
blam!
Like a smack in the face, Aleksei is sick again.

29.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

April 1918
Tobolsk

“T
his is his worst attack since Spala,” I whisper to Olga in our doorway as Dr. Derevenko examines Aleksei. “Cramps every half hour, and the poor darling was sick four times in the night. The pain is so bad, neither of them slept more than twenty minutes. Mama will make herself ill if she keeps on this way, God help her.” Even Joy will not leave our brother’s side, forcing Nagorny to carry him down to “do the governor” in the garden twice a day.

“Why does everything happen all at once?” Olga presses at her temples. “I don’t know how you can stand it. Aleksei crying up here, the workmen installing partitions downstairs, and those Bolsheviks swarming all over the streets. It won’t be long before the Reds have their way and search the house. If the extraordinary commissar everyone’s talking about shows up from Moscow, I don’t see how Colonel Kobylinsky will be able to refuse. I hope Mama has the rest of the jewels hidden well enough.”

“‘Medicines,’” I correct her with my eyebrows raised. “You heard what Mama said. As long as Aleksei is ill, we can talk about ‘arranging medicines’ and no one will be suspicious.”

“That’s the only good thing to come out of all this. We’re lucky the doctors are still allowed in and out. It’s going to be crowded as a bird’s nest downstairs with all our people and their maids moving in.”