The Lost Crown (43 page)

1 July 1918
Ekaterinburg

F
or
Obednitsa
, Yurovsky stands in the far corner just like Avdeev did, watching while Tatiana settles Aleksei’s wheelchair beside Mama and the rest of us line up in our usual spots. I wonder if the Ox Commandant ever goes to church himself, or if he thinks just looking at a service is enough.

The way
Otets
Storozhev and his deacon try not to stare at us, I can tell how dreadfully worn out we must still look from sitting up all those nights, especially Aleksei and Olga. Even my clothes feel tired.
Obednitsa
always perks us up, at least.

As soon as the service starts, everything seems almost normal. Then out of nowhere the deacon begins to
sing
the words to the prayer, Who Resteth with the Saints. Bewildered,
Otets
Storozhev joins the chant, and the sound of their voices makes the hair on my arms prickle with electricity. As if someone’s whispered in all our ears at once, every last one of us but Aleksei in his wheelchair and Yurovsky in his corner go down on our knees. It isn’t the right time to kneel or to sing, but it
feels
right, like there’s something bigger in the room than just the music.

At the end of the service, each of us kisses the cross like always. On the way out, Olga whispers,
“Spasibo,”
as the priest passes in front of us.

Only after the priest and deacon are gone do I realize that for the first time since I can remember, not one of
us
sang through the whole service.

2 July 1918

“Mashka, Olga, Tatiana! There are four women in the house!”

“What?”

“Visitors?”

“They’ve come to wash the floors.”

When the washerwomen get to our room, they stand in the doorway with their buckets and rags like they’re waiting to be invited in. Tatiana does the honors.

“My name is Tatiana Nikolaevna, and my sisters are Olga, Maria, and Anastasia.”

The four of them curtsy so low, their buckets almost clang on the floor.

“You don’t have to do that for us,” Olga says. “Please, tell us your names.”

They’re Varvara, Evdokiya, Mariya, and Nadezhda. “From the Union of Professional Housemaids,” the fat one called Evdokiya explains.

I elbow my sisters. “We should have a union! They’re all the rage nowadays. We can be the Union of Professional Ex–Grand Duchesses. UPEGD. It sounds so much more official than OTMA.” I turn back to the solemn line of women. “Promise you’ll call us if you need experts to walk circles around your garden twice a day, won’t you? Or we’re perfectly divine at sitting around looking bored.”

For a moment, all seven of them stare at me like I’m a trout in a samovar.

“Stop teasing.” Tatiana swats at my backside. “Let us help you move the cots,” she tells the women. “We have the knack. They might fold up on you otherwise.”

They blink at our four cots like they’re covered in velvet polka dots instead of plain old blue ticking. “These are your beds?”

“Since we were little girls,” Olga explains. “They’ve come with us all the way from Petrograd.”

“Do you have children?” Mashka interrupts.

“Don’t let them near our Maria if you do,” I tell them. “It’s been so long since she’s seen a baby, she’d squeeze it until it pops like a bonbon.”

“My boys are away, fighting,” says Nadezhda.

“I have a sweetheart in the army,” the other Mariya admits, and she and Mashka link up like magnets.

I roll up my sleeves. “This’ll go heaps quicker if you let us help scrub.”

Varvara looks properly horrified at first, but all four of us get right down on our hands and knees beside our visitors and dip into their buckets with cloths and brushes, even the Governess. “We have always helped our maids with the chores,” Tatiana assures Varvara.

Once the union women figure out scrub water won’t melt my sisters and me like the Witch of the West, the eight of us chatter and splatter like a flock of ducks in the golden fountains at Peterhof. Before we’ve gotten halfway across the floor, Yurovsky points his weaselly beard through the doorway, snuffing out our talk with one glare. He swipes his eyes like a rag over the whole room, then goes back across the dining room toward the duty office. Disgusted, I drop my brush into Evdokiya’s bucket and tromp to the doorway, exactly in rhythm with the commandant’s steps.

Tatiana hisses, “Anastasia!” but I wave my hand at her to shut up. When I’m sure Yurovsky’s not going to turn around, I cram my fingers into my eyes, nose, and mouth, stretch my face into the awfullest grimace I can manage, and waggle my tongue at his back.

Maria snorts. “You look just like a Pekingese.”

“We call him the Ox Commandant,” I whisper to Evdokiya. “He’s such a bore.”

“You should have seen the floors in the Popov house across the street where those men of his are lodging,” Evdokiya says, shaking her head. “Thousands of sunflower seeds all over the place. We had to scrape and scrub the leavings from their dirty boots. Not much better in the basement of this house either. I think there are women staying down there with the guards.”

We keep our voices quiet so the commandant won’t snoop, but the talk feels brighter. Maybe this is what it would have been like if we’d ever been able to make friends with regular people. Sharing jokes and secrets with more than just my sisters.

“Hey, you there, peasant urchin,” Olga calls to Tatiana when it’s time to scoot the cots back into place. “Move that bed faster!”

“
Otlichno
,” Evdokiya says when we’re done, “and in half the time. I proclaim you all honorary members of the Union of Professional Housemaids.” My chest puffs up like a rooster’s. If they made badges for this, I’d wear one as proudly as Aleksei’s St. George medal.

“Your nails are all chipped and dirty,” Varvara says, pointing.

“Oh, who cares?” I spread my fingers out like a duck’s webbed feet and grin at the grime. “Nobody but Mama, and we’ve got nothing else to do all day but file and buff them.”

For the first time, Varvara laughs, then looks at the painted-over windows and bites her lip. “You know, you’re nothing like we expected.”

“Spasibo,”
I tell her, and her smile comes back. “I’ll make a mess so big you’ll all be ordered back tomorrow.”

“I hope it’s not too hard for you here,” Evdokiya whispers. My throat closes up, but I square my shoulders and shake my head.

After they’ve gone, I look at the way the floor shines and think of how those women gaped at me when I said we’d help clean, and Yurovsky when he saw us down on our hands and knees, chatting with his workers. There isn’t much more delicious than taking people by surprise. Maybe when I was little, it was just to shock the stiff-faced courtiers. But now it really means something to be able to show these Bolsheviks we’re not what they think. I may be a grand duchess, but I can be useful as a cook pot if I want to. I know how to bake bread and do the washing. I can knit, and paint and draw. And now I can scrub floors as well as any housemaid.

When I get out of here, I want to be able to stand on my own two feet. Whatever I do with myself, I don’t want people to look at my work and say, “Not bad … for a grand duchess.”

Because no matter what the Bolsheviks say or do, I
am
a grand duchess. My papa was the tsar of all the Russias, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. That’s how I was born and that’s how I’ll die, no matter who’s in charge of this country when I’m old and gray. But I’m more than just that. This hateful revolution means I can be anything I want, instead of a frill on some grand duke’s sleeve. Auntie Ella is a nun. Auntie Olga is an artist. My big sisters are nurses, and my Mashka is a darling. Aunt Miechen is a sour old goat.

I am Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna, Chieftain of all Firemen, and I will not let history overlook me.

47.

TATIANA NIKOLAEVNA

3 July 1918
Ekaterinburg

O
utside, soldiers choke the city’s streets, rattling the panes of our whitewashed windows day and night with the crackle of gunfire. Inside, none of it pierces our routine.

“Mama, I could read to you in the shade while the others walk.”

“Not today. It’s too much in this heat.”

“Then shall I read from one of
Gospodin
Ipatiev’s books for a change?”

“No, darling. We’ll go on with the prophets.”

A sigh withers my chest.

Together, Mama and I read from the book of Obadiah while the others have their walk: “Though thou shalt exalt thyself as the eagle and though thou shalt set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.”

The words make me shiver, but in a different way from our last
Obednitsa
. All my life, I lived under flags emblazoned with the double-headed imperial eagle. Our dinner napkins were woven through with the design, our books and photo albums stamped with it.

And now look at us, strained with confinement and grateful for the tiniest favors. Yet twinges of unease accompany even the comforts of
Obednitsa
and the open window; the more requests Yurovsky honors, the more I find myself remembering the lazaret, and how we used to indulge the patients whose wounds were beyond us.

All evening the dogs whine and pace as one boom after another sends tremors through the plaster and floorboards. Surely there are wounded men at the other end of those sounds. Useless as it is with the Bolshies in command, I pray to God that I might be allowed out of this house to nurse them.

“I would not even look at their uniforms,” I confess to Olga. “Red or White makes no difference to me. What would Mama think of that?” I glance through the doorways to where Mama and Papa sit over another hand of bezique.

“Does it matter, Tatya?”

I have to think a long time about that. There are so many ways I want to be like my Mama: pious, loyal, industrious, courageous. And yet I want to live on more than just the edges and extremes of life. “It has always mattered what Mama and Papa thought. Since I was a little girl I have tried to do right in their eyes. But if they had done everything right, would we be here now?” It is so wicked of me to doubt them; my papa the tsar is God’s own anointed. “Yet we are all Russians, even the Reds, and Christ said we should love our enemies as ourselves.”

“Do you think Papa and Mama have truly forgiven their enemies, Tatya? With their hearts, I mean, not just their voices.”

I know what she means. Our parents have been so meek and humble, but if I still worry what Mama would think of my wishing to nurse the Reds, there is no ignoring my doubts.

I shake my head. “Papa, perhaps. I wonder sometimes if he has forgiven, or only given up. But I know Mama thinks she is right and the Bolsheviks are wrong.”

“You can forgive someone and still think they’re wrong, Tatya.”

“But am I any better, if I am only willing to nurse the Reds to soothe myself?”

“I don’t think Christ meant for us to be perfect on the first try. For now it’s enough that you’re willing. Wanting and caring can come only after that.”

My sister’s words crumble some of the brittleness in my chest like the dried paste in our old photo albums. I take a good, round breath, smiling at the sudden stretch of my lungs. “How did you get to be so wise,
dushka
?”

Before Olga can answer, Yurovsky barges into the drawing room. “You,” he says, pointing at Leonka, “gather your things and come with me. Your uncle wants to take you home.”

My body jolts as if an icicle has been rammed down my spine. I do not believe him for an instant. Sednev and Nagorny have been gone for weeks filled with nothing but promises, and now this? One by one, they have stripped away our position, our freedom, and even our friends. But to whisk away the playmate of a sick little boy!

I charge after Yurovsky into the duty office, vibrating with outrage. He makes no concessions, yet each time he refuses, something deeper than indignation surges inside me at the opportunity to shout and complain. My heart gallops like a cavalry regiment, the force of it thrilling me to the ends of my fingers. All at once I hardly care anymore what Yurovsky says about Leonka. With that realization, selfishness stuns me to silence.

Far down inside me, a sob breaks loose and forces its way up the back of my throat like a fist.

“Thank you, Mr. Commandant,” I choke, and flee to my bedroom, where I clutch at Ortipo, too ashamed to answer Olga’s concern.

Only Anastasia’s voice reaches through my tears. “What’s going on now?”

“Tatiana is upset,” Olga says.

“Anybody can see that much. Honestly.” She plops down beside me. “What is it, Tatya?”

“Everything is so wrong here, and there is nothing I can do to mend it,” I wail. “And now with Leonka gone, Aleksei is sure to be miserable! How do I fix that? Everyone is aching somehow, but there is not one wound I can put a bandage on.”

“Well, of course not. Who expects you to?”

“But I have always been the one to fix things,” I whimper. “I am the Governess.”

Anastasia laughs and shakes her head at me. “Look around you, silly. Nothing is the same anymore. The former tsar of all the Russias is in the drawing room reading
War and Peace
with his feet up, and the doctor is moaning in his bed. Besides, we got here by doing the same old thing for the last three hundred years, didn’t we, Olga?”