The Lost Crown (39 page)

Something inside me bubbles up even faster than yeast. “I promise.”

For the first time in ages, we all go outside for our walk, even Mama. There’s hardly enough room in the garden for the six of us plus Aleksei’s wheelchair, so we troop in circles like a line of elephants while Mama and Aleksei crowd under the lilac. All I want to do is go inside and watch the bread dough rise. Imagine!

“Let me knead it,” I beg my sisters when the dough’s puffed up like a big pale mushroom. “It’s my birthday— I want to make it for you all by myself. We’ll have bread instead of birthday cake.” My short hair clings to my neck and forehead as I smash and flip the dough. I have to keep stopping to mop my face against my elbow. I’ll be lucky if the whole thing doesn’t taste like sliced sweat when I’m done.

All afternoon the whole house smells of baking bread, and for once Mama doesn’t turn green behind her handkerchief.

“Not bad,” Papa says at dinner.

“Excellent bread,” Mama proclaims, and I’m prouder of that loaf than any trick I’ve played, or joke I’ve told.

40.

OLGA NIKOLAEVNA

7 June 1918
Ekaterinburg

“M
ama is not going outside today.” Tatiana fans Ortipo with a page torn from the wall calendar in Papa and Mama’s room. “One of us must stay in with her.”

Anastasia groans. “What a surprise. Whose turn is it?” Tatiana points the limp square of paper at her. “Yours.”

“Not again! I’ll suffocate in here, or burst into flames— I broke a sweat the minute I stepped out of the bath.”

“It’s just as hot outside as in,” Maria says. “Even the lilacs are too wilted to hold their heads up, poor things.”

The heat in my sisters’ voices makes the motionless air thicken like syrup around me. “I’ll sit with Mama.”

Maria’s face falls. “You’re always with Mama or Aleksei. We never see you anymore.”

“Sweetheart Mashka, you can’t be lonely for me in a house this small. We practically bump into each other all day long.”

“Maria could bump into someone at midnight in Red Square,” Anastasia snaps.

“Stop your ugliness and leave Maria be,” Tatiana chides, then turns to me. “You should get more fresh air and some sunshine,
dushka
. Only Aleksei is paler than you now. I would rather stay indoors myself than see you cooped up again.”

Even though Maria and Tatiana are right, I can’t tell them why. Maybe I’m threading things together that have nothing to do with one other, but I’ve read about the French Revolution, how King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lost their heads at the hands of their own people. Even the ten-year-old dauphin died alone in prison.

Only the daughter escaped.

“Hold my place, darling.” Mama hands me her copy of
Spiritual Readings
. “I’m going to the water closet.” She comes back breathless with a flush scattered over her cheeks. My shoulders clench, bracing for a tirade about some new limerick about Papa on the wall, or a remark from one of Moshkin’s sentries.

“A letter,” she whispers instead, patting her bodice. Paper crinkles softly beneath the graying lace. “One of the guards passed it to me in the passage outside the duty office.”

“Who is it from?” Thoughts of Isa, Monsieur Gilliard, or our relatives in the Crimea carousel through my mind.

“I don’t know. It was folded and rolled up tight as a medicine vial. I had to loosen the creases just to smooth it inside my dress. What I glimpsed was written in French.”

Before I have time to wonder, Chef Kharitonov comes in with two glasses of tea on a tray. We puzzle at him, bringing tea at this hour, and in this heat. Trupp is always the one to serve, but as Kharitonov leans down to offer Mama a glass he whispers, “One of them found it hidden in the cork of a bottle of milk from the convent, Your Majesty.”

We seven cluster in the farthest corner of Aleksei’s room while Leonka Sednev toys with the dogs outside the commandant’s office, coaxing them to yip. Trupp and Kharitonov stand guard in the drawing room and dining room.

“In the cork of a milk bottle, Kharitonov said?” Papa asks, marveling at the size. Creases cover the paper like a tiny checkerboard.

“Imagine a nun folding that all up and jamming it into a milk bottle,” Anastasia says. “It’s like something out of Sherlock Holmes.”

“It must be against the law to sneak something like this in to us,” Maria whispers. “A nun wouldn’t break the law, would she, Papa?”

“God’s law and the Bolsheviks’ are not the same,” Tatiana replies.

“‘Your friends sleep no longer,’” Mama reads in French, “‘and hope that the hour so long awaited has come.’”

Anastasia squeals. “It even
sounds
like a detective story!”

My eyebrows crimp. “The French doesn’t seem right.” It’s correct, but something is off.

“It should be
Votre Majesté
, not
vous
,” Tatiana says, but no one’s interested.

Mama glows. “Didn’t I tell you there were good Russian men waiting to save us?”

The rest of the note reads in red ink:

The army of Slavic friends is less than 80 kilometers from Ekaterinburg. The soldiers of the Red Army cannot effectively resist. Be attentive to any movement from the outside; wait and hope. But at the same time, I beg you, be careful, because the Bolsheviks, before being
vanquished, represent real and serious danger for you
. Be ready at every hour, day and night. Make a drawing of your two bedrooms, the position of the furniture, the beds. Write the hour that you all go to bed. One of you must not sleep between 2:00 and 3:00 on all the following nights. You must give your answer in writing to the same soldier who transmits this note to you,
but do not say a single word
.

From someone who is ready to die for you, Officer of the Russian Army

Escape! The very idea makes my blood buzz in my ears. Could we truly? “Are we going to answer?”

“
Konechno
, it would be rude not to reply,” Tatiana says. As if this message is no more dangerous than an invitation to a party.

“May I suggest that Your Majesties allow someone else to write the reply?” Dr. Botkin asks before I can think how to say it myself. “If the Bolsheviks were to discover a smuggled correspondence, in your handwriting …”

Tatiana pats her pockets for a pencil. “Evgeni Sergeevich is right. Let me.”

I swoop the paper from Papa’s hand. “Tatya, darling, it has to be legible.” Her cheeks color, but she hands over the pencil. If it weren’t a fact as much as an excuse, I might feel guilty for embarrassing my sister—the real truth is, I want to be the one to write the reply.

Having the pencil in my hand, knowing I will be the one charting our path across the page—the thought alone makes me feel solid again, as if I’m finally connected to what’s happening to me.

12 June 1918

The very day after we send our first reply, Avdeev orders two guards in to unseal a window in the corner bedroom.

All at once, the street sounds have sharp edges again. Just breathing is like biting into a peach straight from the tree in Livadia instead of one that’s been sliced and laid on a plate in Petrograd. And the coincidence of it—as if God himself has been reading the officer’s concerns over our shoulder:

One of your windows must be unglued so that you can open it at the right time. Indicate which window, please. The fact that the little tsarevich cannot walk
complicates matters, but we have taken that into account, and I don’t think it will be too great an inconvenience. Write if you need two people to carry him in their arms or one of you can take care of that. If you know the exact time in advance, is it possible to make sure the little one will be asleep for one or two hours before?

The doctor must give his opinion, but in case of need we can provide something for that.

“What do they mean?” Aleksei asks. “Why should I be asleep?”

“Nicky, do they mean to drug Baby?” Mama wonders.

“I’m not a baby!” Aleksei yelps. “Why should I have to sleep through it all? I won’t make any noise.”

Tatiana’s voice hisses through the air like an arrow. “Then start practicing this minute! The commandant will hear you before we even have the plan.”

While Dr. Botkin reasons with Aleksei, I write about the guards inside the house, that they’re armed with rifles, revolvers, and bombs, how Avdeev and his three aides can come into our rooms whenever they please. There are three machine-gun posts—that we know of—and fifty more guards lodged across the street. I beg them not to forget about Dr. Botkin, Nyuta, Trupp, Kharitonov, and young Leonka, who have followed us back and forth across Russia for almost a year. I tell them about Nagorny and Sednev, still held somewhere in the city, and Dr. Derevenko. There are the bells at each sentry post to consider, and our things in the storage shed. Papa’s diaries are still in there, a whole crate of them, and Mama’s letters, too.

“Please, Your Majesties, do not worry about me, nor the other men,” Dr. Botkin implores. “It will be much easier to get the seven of you with the maid and kitchen boy.”

“I will not hear of it, Evgeni Sergeevich,” Papa says. “We will not leave our people behind. Not after all your loyalty.”

“I have been bedridden for three days with these kidneys,” he pleads. “I am in no better condition for travel than the tsarevich—worse, perhaps. Please, do not miss your chance to escape on my account.”

I’d like to shake the both of them, though I know neither will budge. “I will tell them what you said, Evgeni Sergeevich. And I will tell them what Papa said as well, about leaving our people behind. It’s out of our hands, but they will know how both of you feel.”

As I write, my skin prickles as if the air is charged, like the moments before a thunderstorm. Less than eighty kilometers, the officer said, and that was days ago. No matter whether this officer’s plot is successful, something is going to happen. Soon.

41.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

12 June 1918
Ekaterinburg

E
verything must appear just as usual. It does not seem possible with all of us practically crackling at the effort of appearing ordinary, but so far the guards have not given off a whiff of suspicion. Even Dr. Botkin, stricken with kidney pains for days at a time, refuses to moan for fear of calling attention to our rooms.

Yet when Papa complains to Avdeev, it sounds tired as an old play. “Your men are stealing from us.”

“If you have complaints, you are free to petition the Central Executive Committee.”

“Moshkin’s girlfriends are probably parading round the city under our own parasols!” I add for good measure. Mama looks at me as though I have been cheeky as Anastasia. My body buzzes with the reprimand, even though she has not said a word.

If I could see anything but fence boards outside our window, maybe it would keep the tension in this house from twisting tight as a tourniquet. Walking outside is not enough, not when we can only turn circles in the yard like tigers in a cage. Even requesting our usual favors from Avdeev seems absurd, but I am the one who asks for things, and I must keep up the charade. The guards probably think I am as big a flirt as Maria, the way I linger in the doorway each day. For me, it is only another sort of idleness. With Mama on her feet again and the details of our escape out of my reach, I hardly know what else to do with myself.

“What does it say about me, if I am only content when others are suffering?” I ask Olga.

“That isn’t true, Tatya.”

“It is. That first day we arrived, I thanked God we were all together again, but the moment I thought of what I would do with myself in this place, I could have begged Him to send us back to Tobolsk. There was no household to manage, Aleksei was on the mend, and Maria had taken care of Mama. It was almost a relief when Aleksei bumped his knee that night.”

“Tatya, sweetheart, don’t. You’ll wear yourself out.”

The tremor in Olga’s voice doubles the guilt already simmering inside me. Why do I have such wicked thoughts? I could be in a hospital nursing soldiers, doing good, useful work. Instead I sit in this house all day, wishing my family ill so I will have something to occupy myself. I would rather be sick in my own bed than think such terrible things.