The Secret Wife

by Gill Paul

  At the end, the family walked in front of him once more and Tatiana let her hand brush his arm as she passed.

  Dmitri had rented lodgings in town and that evening he sat and wrote to Malevich, telling him of the situation in which he had found the Romanovs (‘the cargo’). He described the layout of the town and the position of the guards around the house, but really he knew rescue from this place was impossible. Already, in early September, the temperature was dropping rapidly and in just a few weeks they would be unable to leave Tobolsk for the eight months of winter. Perhaps the following spring, the revolutionary government would relent and allow the youngest family members to go free. No one could possibly think them guilty of any crime, no matter what the sins of their parents.

  Dmitri felt furious with both of them for their blinkered, outdated approach to monarchy. The Romanovs had made their vast fortune from the resources of the nation, yet Nicholas had not seen fit to open the coffers when his people were starving. Alexandra had been remarkably short-sighted in using Rasputin as an advisor when she was seen by ordinary Russians as allied to the enemy. Between them they had turned the once-revered imperial family into a hated institution. But the children were so young – Alexei only thirteen, Tatiana only twenty – surely they could not be blamed?

  Yet again he thought of poor Marie Antoinette, the French queen, whose only ‘crime’ was to have been born Austrian in an era when Austria was France’s bitter enemy. Her eldest daughter, Marie-Thérèse, had been held prisoner for six years before being released into exile. Would Alexandra’s German roots and Nicholas’s imperious style yet count against them all? Could an accident of birth mean years under house arrest for the younger Romanovs?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Tobolsk, Siberia, winter 1917

  On the 28th of October Dmitri bought his usual newspaper from a street seller and recoiled as he read the headlines: there had been yet another coup in St Petersburg. Three days earlier Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin and his comrade Leon Trotsky had led a successful coup against the provisional government in St Petersburg. It had begun at 9.45 p.m. with the battleship Aurora firing shots at the Winter Palace and ended at 2 a.m. with the taking of the Palace by rebels. The provisional government had been imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

  Dmitri was stunned. Both Lenin and Trotsky were lunatic extremists, who had been forced into exile after the 1905 Revolution. When Lenin arrived back in Russia in April 1917, everyone expected him to join the provisional government but instead he published his own radical agenda in Pravda. He believed peasants should seize land from rich landlords, that factory workers should take over the factories, and that manual workers should receive higher wages than office workers. Everyone Dmitri knew dismissed Lenin as mad. No one thought he could possibly succeed – yet somehow he had. The change had come over the summer, when Lenin announced his intention of withdrawing Russia from the war with Germany without delay. While the provisional government tarried, pressing for better terms, Lenin promised battle-weary soldiers that they could come home immediately, and finally they had switched allegiance. It was a short-term measure that would cost the country dear, almost certainly losing them control of the Baltic states.

  Dmitri wondered what would become of his parents, back home in the comfortable estate that had been in his father’s family for centuries? What would happen to the Romanovs in the new ‘workers’ paradise’? Dmitri realised straight away that these events would split Russia down the middle and change the country he loved forever.

  Shortly after the coup, a letter came from his mother telling him his father had been arrested. It seemed the Bolsheviks were taking a hard line with what they called the ‘bourgeoisie’. Dmitri worried that his proud father would not submit easily to captivity and prayed he would not be foolish enough to resist his captors. He wrote to his mother and instructed her to engage a good lawyer. In other circumstances he would have ridden home to protect his mother and sisters and to agitate for his father’s release from prison, but for the time being his first loyalty must be with his wife.

  He wondered if news of the Bolshevik coup had reached Tsar Nicholas, and asked Tatiana in his daily letter, but it seemed from her reply that she did not appreciate the implications of the change of government:

  I am glad the war is over if it means no more Russians will be killed, but Papa is worried that the Baltic lands currently occupied by the Germans may be lost in the peace negotiations. He has requested that he might be included in the discussions …

  After that she changed the subject:

  Did I tell you we are now keeping five pigs in an old stable in the yard? They are very sweet and come when called, like dogs. Ortipo barks at them but is too much of a coward to venture close. I must not let myself become over fond of them, as I suspect they are intended for our table this winter … We also have chickens, turkeys and ducks, and Father has dug a duck pond for them. I have begun to reread the works of Tolstoy, since it seems we are stuck here for the next few months. I’d forgotten what a great storyteller he is! Do you like Anna Karenina? We are also rehearsing a production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters to entertain our parents. I am the director and play the role of Masha. I only wish you could come to watch …

  Dmitri was astonished by Tatiana’s everyday tone. Did she realise that the nation was rift in two? He supposed that in captivity her horizons had narrowed; either that or she was putting a remarkably brave face on events. He thought he had grown to know her rather well but found it impossible to guess what she was thinking deep down. Was she simply being cheerful for his sake?

  Dmitri wrote to several aristocrat friends asking what they planned to do about this so-called workers’ revolution. Surely they wouldn’t give up their property without a struggle? It was agony to be stuck in Tobolsk, powerless to help resist the coup, but he couldn’t leave Tatiana when every day he felt the danger increasing, like a dark shadow sweeping across the land, set to envelop them completely.

  20th December 1917

  Malama sweetheart,

  The temperature today is minus nineteen and the windows are draughty, so I am huddled in my warmest coat and shawl, and have tempted Ortipo to sit on my lap, where she acts like a hot water bottle. Still my freezing fingers make it hard to hold the pen so forgive me if my writing is shaky. We are occupied with making Christmas presents since we cannot buy them. I am painting bookmarks to give to all our guards here, and embroidering or knitting gifts for the family. What can I make for you, my dearest? Would you like a scarf or some socks? Be sure you are in church for the Christmas Day service so we can see each other. I do love Christmas. As I write, my nostrils are full of the citrusy scent of a balsamic fir Christmas tree that stands just outside my bedroom door.

  Dmitri was in his usual place in Blagoveschensky Church for the Christmas Day service. These brief occasions when he could be in close proximity to his beloved were like a balm to his anxious soul. The Romanov family arrived, huddled in their coats and mufflers, and Tatiana had a smile in her eyes as she passed him and pushed a tightly wrapped parcel into his hands. No one noticed in the bustle of worshippers and he quickly secreted it inside his coat. He had earlier given Trina his Christmas gift for Tatiana – an amethyst brooch he had purchased from his landlord’s wife – and as she unfastened her coat he could see that she wore it on her collar. She turned and caught his eye.

  The Christmas service was interminable. It was conducted by a new priest and when he called out the names of those taking communion, he used the old, forbidden title ‘Tsar Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of all Russias’. A gasp went around the church and the guards standing by the doors glanced at each other. This priest obviously did not know that monarchy had been abolished and the former tsar was now referred to as Citizen Romanov. Again, when it came to the Tsarina, he called her ‘Empress Consort of all Russias’. There was a stirring movement in the crowd and more soldiers filed in. Dmitri fingered the knife he always kept tucked
in his belt. If the soldiers became violent, he planned to grab Tatiana and bustle her from the church and out of harm’s way.

  All through the service, Dmitri kept an eye on the guards, but it appeared they had no orders to intervene. At the end, they surrounded the Romanov family and herded them up the street to the Governor’s House as fast as they could. Dmitri caught sight of the Tsarina’s face and she seemed bewildered.

  The following morning Trina brought a letter from Tatiana, and this time there was no pretence of cheerfulness.

  The Bolshevik authorities are so incensed by the use of Papa and Mama’s titles in church that we have been banned from attending any more services. I am desolate because it was the only chance we got to step beyond the confines of the yard and my only opportunity to see you, my precious one, up close. Without that, I don’t know how I will remain optimistic.

  He fingered the knitted waistcoat that had been in the parcel she slipped to him. The wool was of a rich auburn hue similar to the shade of her hair. It fitted snugly and kept him warm, almost like having her arms around him. It was lovely but at the same time it reminded him that he had no idea when – or if – he would ever feel her embrace again.

  The temperature dropped still further in January, to a bitter minus twenty-nine degrees, and the skies were clear blue in the brief hours of daylight. The Romanovs built a snow mountain in the yard and enjoyed tobogganing down it when they were allowed outside. Dmitri offered to walk the smelly mongrel kept by a neighbour of his landlady’s, as it gave him an excuse to loiter outside the Governor’s House listening to their shrieks. When Tatiana stood on top of the mountain she could see over the fence and wave to him, sometimes even calling a word or two. Olga called greetings as well, and the younger children waved. There were moments when the situation almost felt normal, until the reality struck when a guard yelled at him to move along.

  As he made friends in the town of Tobolsk, Dmitri realised there were many monarchists there. Hushed conversations in the town’s teahouses frequently concerned plots to rescue the Romanovs and spirit them overseas. He listened hard, then walked out to inspect waterways or cattle roads that had been mentioned as possible escape routes. Some of them seemed as though they might be useful once the thaw came. The guards around the house were careless and there were windows of opportunity when the family could have been rescued with minimal manpower.

  That all changed on the 14th of February when the guards at the Governor’s House were replaced and a new, stricter regime put in place. Tatiana wrote that the old guards were accused of being too friendly with the family and the new ones were much sterner. They wasted no time in destroying the snow mountain and reducing the income the Romanovs were allowed.

  ‘Only 600 roubles a month,’ Tatiana complained in a letter. ‘How can anyone live on that? We shall have to let ten servants go and cut back severely on our food consumption.’

  Dmitri wondered if she knew that unskilled workers in Russia earned an average of 200 roubles a year on which to feed their families? Probably not. She had likely spent as much on Ortipo’s Fabergé dog tag without a second thought. It wasn’t her fault: it was the way she had been raised. He had also grown up with servants but being in the army had made him self-sufficient, so he was able to do his own laundry and prepare an edible meal. Tatiana would not know where to start. She was a skilled nurse, though. Her talents were currently directed to looking after little Alexei, who was bedridden after a fall on the snow mountain.

  I have to massage his limbs several times a day to stop him getting cramp, but unless I am very gentle it can aggravate his swollen joints and he cries out with a sound that is unbearable. He is a stoic boy but has known more pain in his short life than most know in a lifetime.

  The cold seemed to linger even as the days grew longer. Dmitri filled his time by trying to plan the rescue, reading borrowed books, walking the dog, meeting friends and writing his daily letter to Tatiana.

  Under the new regime she was no longer allowed to step onto the balcony or wave from the windows, so they had no way of seeing each other in the flesh but fortunately Trina was still able to transport their letters, secreting them carefully at the bottom of her basket.

  Dmitri’s world shrank, just as the Romanovs’ had shrunk, just as the world of all the people of Tobolsk shrank during the winter months. And then came a communication from the outside world: a telegram from his sister Valerina. He ripped it open and felt the floor dissolve under his feet as he read: FATHER DIED OF HEART ATTACK IN PRISON STOP MOTHER AND I STAYING IN GAMEKEEPER’S COTTAGE AS HOUSE TAKEN OVER BY BOLSHEVIKS STOP.

  He felt as though he had been punched in the gut. He sank to his heels and buried his face in his hands. It seemed impossible that his indomitable father could be dead, no longer breathing, eyes closed, his flesh stiff and cold. While their relationship had always been more formal than loving, Dmitri was proud of his father. He had hoped that his wedding to a grand duchess would augur a new closeness between them, when his father would learn to respect him in return – but it wasn’t to be.

  Suddenly a suspicion entered his head: the general was a tough man, and very fit at just sixty years of age. Had he really suffered a heart attack or was this regime executing its high-ranking opponents? There was no way of knowing but the idea his father could have been murdered made him sick with rage.

  That night in bed, the tears came and he wept with frustration that he could not travel from Tobolsk to attend the funeral and comfort his mother and sisters, that he could not pay his final respects. Through his tears he remembered his father chastising him for being too emotional. ‘Emotion is a weakness,’ he’d often said. Perhaps that was true. But Dmitri felt unbearably sad that he and his father hadn’t ever got to know each other – and now they never would.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tobolsk, Siberia, spring 1918

  In April, the ice covering the Tobol and Irtysh rivers began to thaw, great chunks breaking off with a cracking that sounded like gunfire and floating downstream before melting to slush. The first boats arrived, bringing fruits, vegetables, fuel, newspapers, and among the passengers was a new commissar tasked with the care of the Romanov family – a man of around thirty-five years of age named Vasily Yakovlev. Dmitri was slightly acquainted with him from the winter of 1916–17 when they were both at the front in Moldavia, and he knew him to be a cultured, well-connected man, despite his newfound Bolshevik credentials. He gave it a couple of days then went to the local soviet building, where the workers’ councils met, to greet him.

  Yakovlev rose from behind his desk to shake Dmitri’s hand but was suspicious in his greeting. ‘What on earth brings you to this part of the world, Malama?’

  Dmitri sat down. He had a story prepared. ‘I am planning to make excursions into the surrounding countryside and test for minerals. And you?’

  Yakovlev smiled, clearly not believing him for a second, and answered: ‘I am in command of the Tobolsk Red Guard.’

  ‘How odd. Why do they need someone of your seniority in such a small town?’ Dmitri asked, all innocence. ‘Is it because the Romanovs are imprisoned here?’

  ‘I expect that’s the case,’ Yakovlev replied, and they exchanged a look.

  There was a moment’s silence before Dmitri asked, ‘What do you think will become of them?’

  Yakovlev narrowed his eyes. ‘I have heard Citizen Romanov will stand trial on charges of treason, and his wife will join him if her correspondence with Rasputin proves incriminating. Investigators are combing through letters found in his lodgings and collecting evidence that they colluded with the Germans.’

  Dmitri nodded, as if in approval. ‘And the children?’

  ‘I don’t think it has been decided …’ He gave Dmitri a sharp look. ‘I suppose you must know them from your time in the imperial guard.’

  ‘Hardly at all.’ Dmitri shook his head quickly. ‘They wouldn’t talk to the likes of me.’

  Yakovlev nodded, slowly. �
�And yet you are here.’

  ‘By coincidence. Still, I am glad that a man of your sensibilities is in charge and that their fate is not left to the mob.’

  ‘Indeed.’ They looked at each other and Dmitri thought the beginnings of an understanding flashed between them.

  He rose. ‘I must let you do your work, Yakovlev, but I hope we can talk again soon. If there is anything I can do to help you in your work, you need only ask.’

  He left the building feeling slightly reassured. A man who read books, who enjoyed theatre – surely such a man had a compassionate soul? And even if the Tsar and Tsarina were tried for treason, even if they were found guilty, there could be no such charges against their children, against Tatiana. She and Olga were the White Sisters of the War; Tatiana’s had been the most popular picture postcard. The public wouldn’t stand for any harm coming to them.

  Two days later, Yakovlev sought Dmitri at his lodgings and asked if he would like to take a stroll along the Tobol River. Dmitri grabbed his coat and hat and came straight away. The ground was marshy underfoot, the trees black and leafless, the river high and fast-flowing with snow melt from the mountains. The roar of the water forced them to raise their voices as at first they talked of their families. Dmitri felt choked when Yakovlev expressed his sympathies on the death of his father.

  Once they had passed the edge of town and there was no one in sight they began to talk of the Revolution, and Yakovlev told him that aristocrats across the country had lost their lands and possessions. There had been fierce resistance in Moscow, and both Ukraine and Estonia had declared themselves independent republics, but elsewhere local soviets were exerting their influence and crushing opposition.