The Romanov Legacy
The Romanov Legacy
by
Jenni
Wiltz
Copyright 2012 by Jenni Wiltz
Cover images and art copyright 2012
by Jenni Wiltz
All Rights Reserved
July 1918
Ekaterinburg, Russia
The guards shot at anything that moved. Birds, stray
dogs, even street vendors who came too close to the whitewashed palisade that
shielded the house from public view—no one was safe and there were no warning
shots. Target practice, they called it.
The men “practiced” every day after lunch, calling out the
name of a different Romanov and shooting wildly at a tree trunk or a tin of
food set on a fence post. They called this place “The House of Special
Purpose,” and only the blind would have harbored illusions about what that
purpose might be.
Marie was not blind.
She watched one of the guards through a crack in the bedroom
door, which they were not allowed to close all the way. The rest of the
family had gone into the dining room for supper; she stayed behind to wake her
sister, Olga, who lay suffering with a headache. “Two minutes,” the guard
had said. “Then I will drag you into the dining room by your hair.”
It was not enough time. Still, they had to try.
She glanced at Olga, feigning sleep while stiff as a tree
trunk. “Olga darling,” Marie said loudly, “it’s time for supper.
You must get up.”
Squinting through the crack, Marie followed the guard’s gaze
to the pendulum clock in the hall. He was timing them. She took one
deep breath to calm herself then snapped her fingers.
At her sister’s signal, Olga sprang to life. She
reached beneath the mattress and removed a pen and sheet of paper, torn from
the frontispiece of Alexei’s diary. Scratching fiercely, she punctured
the paper in several places and spattered her white dress with ink.
“Slow down,” Marie hissed.
Olga ignored the warning. Her pen flew across the
paper, giving shape to the words she’d chosen while lying in bed last
night. No one must know what she and her sister were doing: not the
guards, not the Cheka, not the Bolshevik censors, and certainly not their
father. This letter had to slip past all of them, dismissed as the
lovelorn ramblings of a doomed princess. The lovelorn part was not
difficult; she would die with Pavel’s name on her lips and the memory of that
Crimean autumn in her breast.
Yes
, she thought.
I know
how to keep a secret.
My dear Pavel,
I miss you more than you can know. We are
surviving, so you must not worry too much. Baby’s knee is swollen again,
but he lives up to his nickname and we thank God for every moment he is
healthy. There is nothing to do here but read, and I have been through
every scrap of type six times already. I wish you could send me something
new. Just one word would be enough. What was the book we read
together in the Crimea? A silly story about a dancing girl who became an
empress. If she were a man, it would not have been so scandalous, don’t
you think? They would have given him the world. What power there is
in a name! Do you suppose anyone will remember mine when it is all
over? Like me, it is so very plain. Very fitting for a humble
sailor’s wife, which is all I ever wished to be.
Olga Nikolaevna
She stared at her signature and wondered why the letters
looked so childish. Then she raised her hand from the paper and realized
it was shaking. “Your turn,” she whispered.
Marie flung herself onto the bed and pulled a second sheet
of paper from beneath the mattress. But instead of writing, she grabbed
Olga’s dress sash and untied it. “What are you doing?” Olga hissed,
swatting at her sister’s hands.
“Leave it,” Marie said. “Just keep watch.” Then
she fell to scribbling, leaving her sister no choice. Olga clutched the
bedclothes and listened for the soldier’s footsteps in the hallway. He
made one more circuit from end to end and stopped in front of the door.
“Finish,” Olga whispered. “Now.”
The guard rapped on the door, pressing hard enough to swing
it open. “What’s taking so long?”
Olga swallowed the peppery lump of fear in her throat.
“May we have one more moment, please?”
The guard’s suspicious eyes flickered over Olga and then
Marie, hunched behind her sister. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” Olga lied.
“What are those?” he asked, pointing at the ink spots on
Olga’s dress. “What have you been doing?”
Olga’s lips struggled to form words. She could think
of no lie he would not see through.
It is over
, she thought,
bowing her head.
We are dead.
“It’s no use,” Marie said, reaching for the ends of Olga’s
sash and tying them in a large bow. Olga felt her sister’s nimble fingers
slip the folded sheets of paper between the sash and the dress, hiding them
from view. “Just tell him.”
The guard narrowed his eyes. “Tell me what?”
“She’s too embarrassed to tell you herself,” Marie
said. “But she laid down on a pen. Can you believe how clumsy she
is?”
Olga felt her sister’s warm hands push her up from the
bed. “You see?” Marie said, holding up the pen. “Her headache was
so bad she collapsed without noticing it.”
The guard held out his hand. “Come here,” he said to
her.
Olga looked down at his open palm, its threaded crevices
stained with something dark. Her throat swelled with fear.
I do
not want to die
, she thought. She knew she would only anger him
further by refusing his summons, but no force in the world could make her step
forward.
“Come here,” he said again.
Olga shook her head slowly.
The guard ripped his revolver from his belt and aimed it at
her forehead. “You are nothing! You are less than dirt!” Then
he gathered a mouthful of spit and flung it on her. “Don’t you know there
is no more tsar?”
Olga felt the spittle pelt her cheeks and bit her lip to
keep from screaming.
Yes, there is a tsar!
she thought.
He
is my father and he sits in this very house. You will be sorry when the
ghost of Great Peter rises up within him to defend all of Russia from the likes
of you!
But she knew it was a lie. Her father was weak; no
shade of Great Peter lived within him. Her eyes filled with tears and
blood trickled over her tongue, leaking from the puncture marks made by her
teeth.
Sensing her submission, the guard stepped closer. He
grasped a handful of her skirt and twisted it to pull her near. Up close,
she could see the mosaic of pores and stubble on his cheeks—they reminded her
of the patterned tiles on the floor of the Hermitage.
We will never
see Petersburg again
, she thought.
“Is it true?” he asked. “Did you lay on the
pen?”
“Yes.” She swallowed thickly, a mouthful of blood and
bile burning her throat.
The guard frisked his hand up her thigh and across her side,
dangerously close to the bow of her sash. “Most women notice what is in
their bed before they lie in it. Are you not so picky, princess?”
Olga twisted her body to keep the letters out of his
reach. “I had a headache. You needn’t suggest more than that.”
He slapped her hard enough to make her stumble. “You
will never again tell anyone what to do! Do you understand?”
Olga’s cheeks blossomed with the sting of a thousand Crimean
bees.
We will never leave this house
, she thought.
Their
hatred will strip the flesh from our bones.
“Hush, now,” Marie said, squeezing herself between them.
She smiled brightly at the guard, blue eyes wide and lashes fluttering in a
pattern Olga recognized. Marie had learned at an early age how to soften
a father’s punishment or warm a wounded soldier’s heart.
No
, Olga thought.
He is not worth your care.
She put a hand on her sister’s arm but Marie shrugged it off. “Olga, go
into the kitchen,” she said softly. “You know Kharitonov hates to be kept
waiting.”
Olga’s knees wobbled as she stumbled past the guard.
When she turned around, she saw her sister’s seraphic gaze locked on the
guard’s pockmarked face. “You may search our room, if you like,” Marie
said. “I promise we have done nothing wrong.”
The blood and bile in Olga’s throat nearly choked her as she
crept into the parlor and spotted the basket used by the Novo-Tikhvinsky nuns
to deliver bread and eggs. Behind her, Marie’s soft voice echoed in the
hallway. “Shall I show you our diaries? Our prayer books? Is
there anything else you might like to see?”
Olga imagined Marie’s fingers touching the man’s hand,
trailing up his arm, promising a favor that would banish all thought of their
possible transgressions: a kiss or perhaps an embrace. Her stomach
clenched and she fought a pang of revulsion for the sister who was capable of
such deception.
Olga pulled the letters from her sash and held them to her
lips.
This is the only way
, she thought.
The only way I
can tell him I still love him.
She had given up all hope that either
recipient would be able to mount a rescue. Neither she nor Marie knew if
their first letters had even made it through; if they hadn’t, the secret would
die in this house and these second letters would be just a benediction from the
dead. Still, it would be enough to know that Pavel touched the same piece
of paper she had kissed with her still-breathing lips.
