The Secret Wife

by Gill Paul

Dmitri hung his head in misery. He disgusted himself too.

  Dmitri went back to the consulate that afternoon and Sir Thomas let him sit by the window to keep an eye on the Ipatiev House. At least he felt as though he was doing something, however futile. The family came out to exercise at three but Yelena wasn’t with them, which sent Dmitri into fresh spiral of panic. Where was she? Had her identity been revealed? He noticed cars coming and going but wasn’t sure if there were more than normal, and could not make out any of the occupants. His blood was pounding and he paced up and down, unable to keep still.

  ‘Go home before the curfew,’ Sir Thomas told him at seven. ‘Your being here serves no purpose. We will have more information in the morning.’

  Reluctantly, Dmitri rode back to the cottage, once again hoping that through some miracle Tatiana might have found her way back there. But she hadn’t. He cried as he touched the space on the sofa where she had sat and listened to the silence all around. After two nights of very little sleep, he managed to doze for a few hours but woke with fear gripping his heart. What had he done? Had he ruined everything with his thoughtlessness? If so, he could never live with himself.

  He rode to the consulate as soon as the curfew was lifted in the morning, and was met by Sir Thomas, who looked grey and worried.

  ‘Sit down, Malama,’ he instructed. ‘I have some news which I think is credible.’

  Dmitri felt his legs give way; he collapsed into a chair. ‘Bad news?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. It’s being said that Tsar Nicholas was shot and killed by the Red Guards last night.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Ekaterinburg, Russia, 17th July 1918

  Dmitri couldn’t breathe. His Tsar, his Commander-in-Chief, had been executed. His first thought was that it must be his fault for smuggling Tatiana out of the house. How would he ever live with himself? Tatiana was sure to hold him responsible.

  ‘What of the others?’ he croaked.

  ‘Word is that the rest of the family have been moved elsewhere for safekeeping.’ Sir Thomas looked grave.

  ‘Moved where?’

  ‘I was told by one source that they have gone to Verkhoturye, but there’s no confirmation. I stress I don’t know any of this for sure, but local people heard a disturbance around three in the morning and there are reports of a number of vehicles leaving the house.’

  Dmitri leapt up. ‘I will ride to Verkhoturye today. I must do something.’

  ‘It’s almost two hundred miles north.’

  ‘I will telephone when I arrive.’

  ‘Ah, yes. And your friend Malevich sent a telegram this morning. He has met Kolchak, the White Army commander, but says none of their men know anything of Tatiana’s whereabouts.’

  This was a blow. It meant Tatiana was almost certainly being held by the Red Guards. He must get to Verkhoturye as soon as humanly possible.

  Dmitri knew Tatiana would take it very hard to lose her father. If only he could hold her in his arms and comfort her. He’d barely had time to mourn his own father but if he could just find her, he would try to help her recover from this shocking loss.

  Dmitri rode day and night without rest, arriving in Verkhoturye at noon on the 18th of July. It was a tiny town on the Tura River, with historic buildings and a pretty cathedral. There were no more than a hundred private dwellings set along one main road and half a dozen cross streets. He should be able to find the family quite easily in such a place. But after riding up and down each street, he could see no house with guards posted outside. Wherever they were, there were bound to be guards. He knocked on the door of a female monastery and asked the elderly nun who answered if there had been any new arrivals in town over the past day, but she replied, ‘Only yourself, sir.’

  He spent the afternoon touring the countryside around the town, wondering if they might be in a remote building somewhere, his thoughts in turmoil. Could it really be true that Nicholas was murdered without a trial, with no chance to defend himself? What kind of people were these new rulers?

  As evening fell he took a room in the area’s only hotel and asked if he might use their telephone but when he spoke to Sir Thomas, the only further news was that the family appeared to have been transported from the Ipatiev House in trucks rather than carriages – yet another sign of the lack of respect now shown towards them. Sir Thomas’s informant was a local woman, who had seen the trucks pull out between three and four in the morning. Perhaps they were slow-moving and the party had not yet arrived in Verkhoturye. Dmitri couldn’t remember seeing any trucks on the road, but maybe he had overtaken them when they stopped for the night.

  ‘I will continue my search tomorrow,’ Dmitri said. It was the only thing he could think of. He had to keep himself occupied or he would go completely insane.

  A week later, an inconsolable Dmitri returned to Ekaterinburg, having scoured every part of the countryside between there and Verkhoturye without finding a trace of the Romanovs. He discovered there had been dramatic changes in town since he left: the White Army had arrived, chasing out the Bolsheviks, and celebration was in the air. Flags hung from buildings, and flowers lay trampled on the streets where townspeople had tossed them at the liberating army.

  ‘It is like emerging from a huge cave into the daylight,’ Sir Thomas told Dmitri. ‘We need no longer kowtow to those insufferable Red Guards.’

  ‘But is there further news of the Imperial Family?’

  ‘Nothing as yet. International pressure is mounting on the Bolsheviks to hand them over. King Alfonso of Spain and King Christian of Denmark are making diplomatic representations. I imagine we will learn their whereabouts very soon.’

  Dmitri turned away. Every moment was sheer torture as he speculated what might have become of Tatiana. He prayed she had not been punished for attempting to escape. Surely they wouldn’t do that? She was so young, so luminous …

  ‘The Ipatiev House is abandoned,’ Sir Thomas told him. ‘No one guards the gates and curious townspeople have been wandering in.’

  Dmitri glanced out the window. ‘Perhaps there will be a clue to where they have gone. I’ll go and take a look.’

  He hurried across the road and joined a group going through the main gate. He knew the layout from the map Yelena had drawn, and headed up to the first floor then along to the bedroom the four girls had shared. Muted sunlight shone through the whitewashed windows and the air was stale and sour. Their four camp beds remained, the covers rumpled. On the floor lay odd items: a toothbrush, a prayer book, a needle and thread. He picked up the prayer book and saw Maria’s name written inside. She must have forgotten it. A middle-aged peasant woman pulled a picture of the Holy Mother from the wall and clutched it like a prize. Dmitri searched through the other items lying around but did not find anything to indicate where the family might have gone. All that was clear was that they had left in a hurry. It felt strange and wrong to be in the girls’ bedroom.

  Next door was the Tsar and Tsarina’s bedroom, with Alexei’s bed at the foot of theirs, and the same scattering of personal items: bibles, images of saints, some porcelain dominoes. On the floor was the book Tales of Shakespeare, which Tatiana had mentioned she was reading to Alexei. He walked through the rooms occupied by Alexei’s doctor and Alexandra’s maid, the dining room in which the family ate their meals round a small carved oak table, the bathroom and water closet that all were forced to share. It was so cramped and uncomfortable he couldn’t bear to think of Tatiana living there. The guard posts were connected by wires with bells on them, bells that Tatiana had told him the family had been forced to ring when they wanted to visit the water closet. It was intolerable that a royal family’s bodily functions had been so closely observed.

  The house had a horrible atmosphere that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He hurried down the stairs to look around the ground floor where the guards had spent their time. No papers or telegrams gave any indication of the family’s fate; drawers were empty, the walls cleared of notices.
He walked out into the courtyard and round to look for the door to the basement but it was bolted shut. He rattled it but it wouldn’t budge.

  It was good to be in the fresh air again. Dmitri felt as though he were choking. Where were the Romanovs? Where was Tatiana? This ‘house of special purpose’ was offering no clues.

  A few days later, Malevich arrived at the cottage and greeted Dmitri with a bear hug. ‘You look terrible, my friend. Have you not been sleeping? Phew …’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘I can tell you have not been bathing.’

  True enough, Dmitri couldn’t remember when he last washed.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with myself,’ he shook his head. ‘I’ve searched everywhere. How can they have vanished into thin air?’

  ‘We will find them,’ Malevich promised. ‘I heard they might be on the other side of the Urals, perhaps in Perm. There is talk of a sealed train that left Ekaterinburg in the early hours of the seventeeth and I’m willing to bet they were on it. The White Army is headed in that direction. Why not join us?’

  Dmitri blinked hard. ‘But what if Tatiana comes looking for me here? I can’t risk missing her.’

  ‘We will leave word of our plans with Sir Thomas. He will let you know if Tatiana returns to Ekaterinburg.’ Malevich squeezed his shoulders. ‘You are a great soldier, a brave man. The best thing you can do for the Romanovs is to free their country from the Bolshevik scourge and turn it back into the motherland we know and love.’ He paused then added: ‘You know it’s what Tatiana would urge you to do.’

  ‘What if the family are found while I am stuck fighting somewhere?’

  ‘When they are found, I expect you will grab the nearest horse and ride off in a cloud of dust, not stopping until you have reached them.’

  Dmitri nodded, his throat so tight it was impossible to speak. He would go with Malevich; it was better than doing nothing. Only by keeping busy could he hold at bay the terrible sense of doom that threatened to engulf him completely.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Lake Akanabee, New York State, late September 2016

  It was a blazing hot day but Kitty shivered as she lay on the shore by her cabin reading about the murder of the Romanovs on the night of the 16th–17th of July, 1918. The account was based on a statement given by Yurovsky, the chief executioner, so was as close to the truth as would ever emerge.

  It was around one-thirty when Eugene Botkin, the family doctor, was wakened by Yurovsky. He said that the situation was unstable as the Czech Army drew closer and that the Romanovs should be wakened and told to come down to the basement for their own safety until they could be moved elsewhere.

  The family took forty minutes to pull on their clothes: Nicholas and Alexei in soldiers’ tunics and Alexandra and the girls in white blouses and skirts. They were carrying small bags and seemed calm. Nicholas turned to the servants and remarked ‘Well, it seems at last we are getting out of this place.’ When Alexandra asked about their possessions, Yurovsky assured her everything would be packed up and sent on.

  Kitty knew there had been a false alarm when they had thought they were being moved a couple of days earlier so perhaps they weren’t sure if this was another one.

  At 2.15 a.m., Yurovsky led the party of ten down the darkened staircase to the ground floor then out into the courtyard. Nicholas carried Alexei in his arms. Another door led down twenty-three steps to a basement and they were ushered into a bare room with an unshaded light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

  Alexandra immediately asked for chairs: she could not stand for long because of her sciatica, and Alexei was too weak to stand at all. Two chairs were brought, and Yurovsky asked the girls and the servants to stand behind the Tsar and Tsarina, almost as if he were posing them for a photograph. He said a truck was coming to take them to safety, then left them alone while he went to check on the arrangements.

  They must have been sleepy, Kitty thought, after being roused from their beds. None of them seemed unduly alarmed. Did they whisper amongst themselves? Perhaps they speculated on where their next destination might be.

  Next door the guards sat drinking vodka and nervously checking their weapons. The Fiat truck Yurovsky had ordered pulled into the courtyard and, after checking it, at 2.45 a.m. he led his eight co-conspirators into the room where the Romanovs waited. They were alarmed to see faces they did not recognise, but hearing the truck outside, must have imagined their departure was imminent. Nicholas asked, ‘What are you going to do now?’

  Yurovsky produced a sheet of paper and began to read: ‘In view of the fact that your relatives in Europe continue their assault on Soviet Russia, the presidium of the Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, has decreed that the former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, guilty of countless bloody crimes against the people, should be shot …

  Kitty tried to imagine the terror and confusion in the room. No one could have expected that, even after all the months of captivity. What kind of nation would execute their monarch without a trial?

  Nicholas turned to look at his family. According to one report he cried, ‘What? What?’ before Yurovsky drew a pistol and shot him at point-blank range in the chest.He fell straight away, killed outright. The women crossed themselves as the guards began shooting, each at their designated target. A shot to Alexandra’s head blew off part of her skull. Alexei remained rigid with shock in his chair, soaked in his father’s blood, unable to try and save himself. His sisters fell to the floor, where they lay stunned and moaning in pain. The jewels they had sewn into their gowns deflected the bullets so they were badly injured but not killed. Some tried to crawl away but there was nowhere to hide in that bare room.

  The air filled with smoke, making it difficult to see, and the guards panicked. They began stabbing viciously with bayonets to finish off their victims, turning the scene into a bloodbath. Some of the girls were murmuring prayers, others screaming. Bullet after bullet was pumped into little Alexei. Tatiana was shot in the back of the head as she and Olga huddled in a corner, her brain tissue spattering Olga’s face. Anastasia survived longer than the others and pleaded for her life but was finished off by frenzied bayonet thrusts.

  It was an unrelentingly horrific way to die. Kitty thought of the last entry in Tatiana’s diary: although it was pessimistic, she could never have predicted such barbarity, the terror they must have experienced, the agony of the slash wounds.

  Kitty’s hand shook and she put down the book. She felt sticky and could almost smell the choking fog of blood and gunpowder. Suddenly she rose and ran into the lake, wading out deep and diving beneath the surface. The water was refreshing and she felt it easing a knot of headache in her temple. She turned to float on her back under the white pulsating sun.

  Could Dmitri possibly have been there when the Romanovs were killed? If so, was there nothing he could do to stop them? She thought back through his novels, searching for clues to the nature of her great-grandfather. He was obviously articulate, very romantic, and prone to melancholy. She realised there was a theme running through the novels of a terrible wrong committed in the past which overshadows his characters’ lives. Could Dmitri have been haunted by a sin he committed? She desperately wanted her great-grandfather to have been a hero, but what if he was complicit in murder? It would be horrible to learn that her ancestor had been involved in this evil assassination of innocents.

  When she emerged from the water, Kitty twisted her hair into a ponytail and squeezed the water from it then sat down and read about Yurovsky’s bungled attempts to dispose of the bodies:

  Out in the remote countryside, when the guards stripped the family of their clothes, they found myriad priceless jewels stitched into their seams and linings. The Tsarina had rows of fine pearls in a belt around her waist … The corpses lay, blood-soaked, limbs askew, on the boggy ground. Yurovsky ordered his men to throw them down an old mineshaft where he hoped they would be concealed, but it was soon apparent that it was too shallow. His men doused the bodies with vats of sulph
uric acid, and the air filled with the smell of burning flesh, but Yurovsky had failed to realise that acid would not dissolve teeth and bones. In desperation he threw a couple of hand grenades into the mine, hoping the shaft would collapse and cover the bodies, but they did not detonate properly in such an enclosed space. At last he realised he would have to remove the family and bury them elsewhere before suspicious local people came across the hideous scene …

  Kitty read that when the graves were eventually discovered in 1979, there was a jumble of bones and teeth all mixed up together and it took researchers a long time to identify them. By then there had been more than six decades of controversy about whether all the Romanovs had perished, a debate fuelled by the fact that the evidence was contaminated by scientists who handled it over the years, and that Anastasia and Alexei were in separate graves some distance away. It was only in 2008 that DNA testing proved conclusively all five Romanov children, both their parents, and three household retainers had been massacred. Scientists took a DNA sample from Britain’s Prince Philip, husband of the Queen, who was a close living relative of the Romanov family, for comparison.

  Kitty closed the book and stood up. She needed to drive into town before the stores closed as she’d run out of wine. The quantity she was drinking had sneaked up during her stay until she was polishing off a bottle of a rather pleasant Californian Chardonnay every evening. Chilled in the water beneath the jetty, it slipped down like lemonade after a long day in the sun. She never had a hangover so reckoned her body could cope with that amount. Everyone knew those government guidelines were ridiculously cautious.

  In the supermarket, she decided to buy a case of wine – twelve bottles in all – to save her having to come back so often.

  ‘You having a party tonight?’ the checkout girl asked, and Kitty smiled and said, ‘Yes, something like that.’

  In the early hours of the morning Kitty woke abruptly from a nightmare. All she could remember of it was the presence of something dark and evil in a house where she was trapped, possibly as a prisoner, although she never saw her gaolers.