by Ariel Lawhon
Father leads us into the courtyard carrying Alexey. My brother looks like a toddler, arms wrapped around Father’s neck, face buried in his chest. Legs hanging limp. Utterly exhausted. Absolutely trusting. I can feel a fracture beginning deep within my chest. A growing ache that threatens to consume me.
Mother is a step behind Father, then my sisters and me, followed by the servants. No one speaks. No one questions Yakov’s instructions. We wait quietly on the cobblestones, standing close to one another.
Father bends his mouth to Mother’s ear and whispers, “We’re finally going to get out of this place.”
The fissure in my chest widens.
I want to tell them what is about to happen. I have to. But when I open my mouth to speak I hear the agonized braying of a dog. It comes from the clearing directly behind the house. I have never heard Jimmy make such a noise in all the years I’ve owned him. It is an unfamiliar, brokenhearted sound yet unmistakably his. I listen as he whines and cries and moves farther away into the woods that lead toward the river. The sound grows fainter and then the night is silent once more. I wait, certain Yakov will send someone after Tomas and Jimmy, terrified they will be caught.
“This way,” Yakov says, concerned only with those of us who are in the courtyard. He leads us across the cobblestone, away from the waiting truck, and through another door. On the other side is a narrow hallway and then a steep staircase. I count each rickety wooden step on the way down. Twenty-three. At the bottom is another long hallway and then a set of double doors at the end. Yakov marches us toward those doors, passing two smaller, closed rooms on the way. Inside those rooms the thump and whisper of men.
“You will wait in there,” he says, pointing to the double doors at the end of the hall. “Until the other vehicles arrive. We must all leave together.”
Maybe the lie is so egregious to me because I know. Perhaps I would believe him too if I hadn’t been warned. I can do the same for them. I can warn them of Yakov’s intent. But we have no weapons. No means of escape. There are ten soldiers on the grounds for every one of us. So I walk into the room with my family knowing that the only mercy I can extend is the gift of ignorance. And I know it’s not enough.
The cellar is built into the hillside beneath Ipatiev House. Rectangular and damp, lit by a single bulb in the middle of the low ceiling, it is completely empty. I wonder briefly if this is the room where Yakov discovered Maria and Ivan. She’s not crying, so I decide it must be one of the other rooms down the hall.
We were told that Ivan survived his punishment and is serving a prison sentence for treason two hundred kilometers away. But this information came directly from Yakov, and I doubt that even a word of it is true. I doubt that Ivan survived the day. Yakov Yurovsky is not a man who likes leaving witnesses to his cruelty.
“Why are there no chairs in here? Are we no longer allowed to sit?” Mother’s voice drips with anger and arrogance, and of all the things she could say in that moment, it is the least helpful.
Yakov’s dark eyes are filled with disdain and I see his true opinion of us then. Spoiled, entitled, separated from all reality. He despises everything we are and everything we represent. He believes that he is doing the world a great service in eliminating us. He hates us entirely. These thoughts are plainly written on his face when he gives Mother an exaggerated bow and says, “I will bring two. One for you and one for the boy.”
When the chairs come Mother drops into the first with the air of a martyr. She presses the back of her hand to her forehead and closes her eyes. It is warm and damp in the cellar and she fans herself. Father settles Alexey into the second, crouching beside him to make sure he is comfortable. My poor brother. So small and ill and feeble. After a moment he pulls his knees up and lays his head against them, eyes drooping in exhaustion.
“I will go check on the vehicles,” Yakov says. He closes the doors behind him, and I hear the lock slide into place. There is no other way out of the room.
Mother sighs. “I hope this doesn’t take long. I hate waiting around.”
There is a unique sort of misery that comes with standing around in the middle of the night after you have been woken from a dead sleep. My mind ticks along two speeds too fast while my body lags behind, swaying and struggling to stay upright. My sisters lean against the wall while my parents huddle near Alexey. I see Cook reach for Dova’s hand and she weaves her fingers through his. No one speaks. And the only person who even appears nervous is Botkin. He keeps looking at the door with squinted eyes as though deliberating and finally moves to stand in front of my brother. I can almost hear the physician’s mind making a diagnosis and then desperately trying to think of a solution. He knows.
We wait only ten minutes before the sound of revving engines fills the courtyard outside. I hear the rattle of the lock, then the doors are pushed open and Yakov steps inside followed by eleven soldiers.
Each of them holds a weapon. Rifles with bayonets attached. Pistols. Several have knives in sheathes at their waists. All of them, except Yakov, are drunk. Semyon is a man who will violate a woman on a train in the middle of the night but cannot kill her unless he has spent the evening with a bottle of vodka. His eyes, fixed on Olga, are hazed by liquor and drooping at the corners, but still they are filled with regret.
“All of you stand,” Yakov says.
My parents and Alexey rise from their chairs, confused.
Yakov lifts a piece of paper and reads aloud, “The Praesidium of the Ural Regional Soviet has declared you all to be sentenced to death.”
· 33 ·
Anna
THE BOARDINGHOUSE
1920, 1919
Schreiber Boardinghouse, Berlin
February 17, 1920
Anna wakes to the fading light of early evening. She has slept through the day again. Dammit, dammit, dammit, she thinks as she throws back the covers and crosses the narrow room to look out the window. The sun hovers above the Rhine, turning the serpentine river gold. It will be dark in an hour.
She meant to rise and dress this morning. She had every intention of going about her day as usual. But the nightmares are back, and once again they left her trembling and nauseous for much of the night. Anna remembers laying her head on the pillow as dawn pushed against the sky. She remembers how relieved she was to close her eyes and not see the gory images that have flooded her nightmares for the last two years. She remembers how good it felt to drift away into the oblivion of dreamless sleep.
But there are consequences to losing another day, and Anna is only now beginning to realize them. Her job, for starters, is certainly forfeited. As is this week’s paycheck. She’s had the position less than a month, and it was a good fit too. Needlework at the Mueller Shirtwaist Factory. Anna got the job fifteen minutes into her interview when she showed the supervisor her finish work. She and her sisters learned to sew at the insistence of their mother, and it is one of the only marketable skills she has. Anna never meant to keep the job for long; it was simply a means to secure lodgings and buy some time before figuring out what to do next.
“Scheiße,” Anna hisses, stumbling through the pile of clothes on the floor, looking for her skirt and blouse. Without that job she has no money.
There is a loud, aggressive pounding on her bedroom door and then, “Fräulein! Are you well?” The high, clipped voice of her landlady.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“You did not leave your room today.”
She scrambles for an excuse. “I’m feeling poorly.”
An impatient sigh. “Do not forget that rent is due in the morning.”
And then the woman is gone without another sound. Anna marvels at how quiet the woman is, how she seems to hover above the floor when she walks, with nary a footfall or squeaking floorboard. It’s disconcerting.
Anna does not have rent money. Or money for anything else. Dinner has long since bee
n served and put away—her landlady is something of a fanatic about mealtimes—but that is little comfort to the rumbling of her stomach. She bought three Brötchen last night when she ventured out, but there is only one roll left now, stale and wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. It will have to do.
Anna chews and swallows the dry bread, chasing it down with tepid water from the jug on her nightstand. She’s about to wad the paper up and throw it away when a headline on the front page catches her attention: Princess Irene Uses Considerable Resources to Find Imperial Family.
She drops to the edge of her disheveled bed and smooths the paper over her legs. Anna reads how the sister of Empress Alexandra has appealed to the courts for help investigating the disappearance of the imperial family. She refuses to believe the rumors that they are dead. She will not believe it, the article says, until she has solid evidence. She will not believe it until she is able to bury her sister. Anna reads the article again. Her eyes drift back to the headline and a paragraph detailing how Irene is offering a reward for information that leads to the tsar’s family. Irene has resources. She is motivated. Anna wonders if she would believe the impossible if it came knocking on her door.
* * *
—
An hour later, Anna gathers her clothes and stands before the chipped mirror. She pulls the tattered nightgown over her head and drops it to the floor. She studies her body, the reality of what she is about to present to Princess Irene of Hesse and by Rhine. Hideous scars, many of them still red and puckered. She is fairly certain those will elicit pity. It’s the other marks she’s worried about: ten striated lines running vertically beneath her belly button. It’s only been a year. The stretch marks have not yet faded to silver. Their meaning is clear.
Anna decides that telling her story to Irene is a chance worth taking. Her only other option is being turned into the street first thing in the morning. She dresses quickly, then counts the coins in her skirt pocket. She has enough for the ferry and a bus ticket that will take her through the city. It’s only five miles; she could walk but that would take hours. The streets of Berlin are not kind to women who walk alone at night. Decision made, Anna puts the newspaper article in her pocket and leaves the boardinghouse to find Princess Irene.
ELEVEN MONTHS EARLIER
Antonescu Refugee Camp, Bucharest, Romania
January 1919
Anna is not a screamer. She knows that thrashing and shrieking won’t stop the pain, nor will it stop the baby from coming. It will only anger the midwife and upset her neighbors in this sprawling, rank tent city. So she sits cross-legged on her thin mattress and rocks back and forth, letting each contraction roll across her body. They’re only minutes apart now and they begin in her lower back, as though someone is shoving a branding iron into the base of her spine. They wrap around her abdomen, tightening, squeezing until she is conscious of nothing but pain, until her eyes water and her breath comes in heaving little gasps.
And then nothing. The vise releases and for a few brief, wonderful seconds there is no pain, only exhaustion and a lingering terror that she cannot push aside. But this has been going on since late yesterday, and Anna knows the respite is short. The contractions have slowly increased, coming closer together, giving her less rest in between. She has been riding this wave for fifteen hours.
“You need to lie down,” the Midwife says when the pool of moisture beneath Anna spreads across the mattress. “Your water has broken. It will be soon now.”
Not soon enough, though. Because what she had taken for pain earlier is nothing compared to what is wringing her body now. And she is lost. Scared. Her face sweats, but her hands and feet are cold. She is shaking and overwhelmed. She is hungry and thirsty and nauseous all at once. Anna is angry with the women who huddle in the doorway of her tent, drawn by the communal instinct of childbirth. They whisper and shake their heads. She feels their condemnation from five feet away. But they know nothing about her and have no right to judge. She wants to scream and order them to leave but she doesn’t have the breath.
Anna leans back on her elbows, knees apart, as the Midwife scoots her dress up around her swollen belly. She had no idea a part of her could grow so large. It is obscene. It is fascinating. She hates it and she is protective of it at once.
Anna bears down and it feels as though her entire body is being turned inside out.
“Don’t hold your breath,” the Midwife says. “Try to relax.”
Anna releases a guttural, furious growl and a string of profanities that makes the midwife laugh. “Much better.”
There is no break between contractions now. They come, one after another, wave upon wave, each more intense and painful than the last. She drops her head to the mattress. Two of the women move forward to hold her legs. They mutter calming, maternal things as she weeps and tries to catch her breath. Above her the tent is translucent, letting a watery brown light in through the dirty canvas. She counts the stitches in the seams.
The Midwife goes quiet, working quickly now to mop up the growing mess between Anna’s legs.
“What’s wrong?” one of the attendants asks.
“Too much blood,” the Midwife mutters. “She’s very small. She needs to get this baby out quickly.”
They urge her to push harder. And she does. Anna pushes until the edges of her vision blur and her lips grow numb.
“Better,” the Midwife says. “Now do it again.”
She does this a dozen times. After a while she can no longer keep her eyes open. She cannot lift her arms. Again and again and again Anna pushes until her entire body convulses with one last spasm, and then she feels a whoosh and release. Her legs are set gently on the mattress, and the women who have tended her now move to help the midwife. Their voices blend together in a jumble of words that she disregards entirely when she hears a tiny helpless squall. It is so timid and weak, and her entire being is pulled toward the sound.
She feels tugging and wiping and pushing as this little stranger who has taken her body hostage is separated from her completely.
“It is a boy,” the midwife says, but not to Anna. “Wrap him. Take him to the nurse. The social worker will be here soon.”
Anna tries to protest but can only get out a single word. “No.” They have not discussed this. She has not given consent. Anna has not even seen the child and he is already gone, the tent flaps falling back into place, a cold breath of wind on her bare skin.
She is dizzy. Exhausted. But still Anna tries to struggle into a sitting position. The Midwife sets a firm hand against her breastbone and pushes her back to the mattress. “Stay still. I have to sew you up. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
Another word, all that she can manage. “Baby.”
There is genuine pity in the Midwife’s voice when she answers. “You didn’t really think you could keep him, did you? An unmarried woman? Abandoned. Penniless. It is better this way. He will be given to a family that will care for him. Don’t worry. He will never remember where he came from.”
But I will remember, Anna thinks as her eyes grow heavy and her limbs become weak. I will always remember.
· 34 ·
Anastasia
THE FIRING SQUAD
1918
Ipatiev House, Ekaterinburg, Russia
July 17, 2:45 a.m.
Knowing doesn’t stop the hysteria. I feel the panic hit my bloodstream in a hard, cold rush, first freezing my body, then turning it to liquid. My knees buckle and I reach for the wall.
The cellar fills with a chorus of “No!” as everyone shakes their heads and wails. Father steps forward and demands, “What do you mean?”
“This,” Yakov says without further explanation. He simply draws the pistol from the holster at his side, aims it at Father’s chest, and fires.
The gunshot in the small room is like the sound of a cannon being fired within my skull. And then t
he world erupts in violence.
It is a direct hit to the heart, and Father drops to his knees. I am glad that I stand off to the side and cannot see his face. I don’t want to know what passes across it in his final moment. Yakov’s shot wakes the soldiers from their stupor and they too turn their guns on Father, firing madly. Botkin, Trupp, and Cook are caught in the volley of bullets, and I see each of them fall, torn open by gunfire.
They fire and they fire. The room fills with smoke and the acrid scent of gunpowder. Chunks of plaster and splinters of wood explode from the wall behind us and I crouch, screaming in my corner, with Olga and Tatiana beside me. We are unable to move. Unable to look away.
There is no end to the bloodshed. Yakov turns and fires, point-blank, at Mother. Her head snaps back and she drops into her chair, then folds sideways onto the floor in a heap. The back of her head is gone entirely, and the jeweled hair clip she always wears rests on the floor beside her, covered in bits of things I don’t want to name.
When Yakov and Semyon turn their pistols on Alexey, the fissure in my chest rips apart completely. I want to close my eyes, to press my hands over my ears, but my body will not respond. I cannot turn away, nor can I hear the sound of my own screaming above the gunfire. I watch my brother fall, and I die one hundred deaths in the time it takes him to hit the floor.
Maria is gone. A single dark hole in her forehead. Her round blue eyes are open, staring blankly at Mother as though pleading for forgiveness. Eyelashes still wet with tears.
Two of the soldiers stand there gaping at the carnage and then fall to their knees, vomiting.
Tatiana and Olga tremble violently as Yakov leads Semyon toward us. We scramble backward until we reach the wall, and then we watch them draw closer through the smoke. There is moaning and crying on the other side of the room. A man, Botkin, maybe. His misery is dispatched with a single gunshot.
