The Tsarina's Daughter (Reading Group Gold)

by Carolly Erickson

  I knew at once whose grave she meant.

  “The guards have dug up the body of my cousin Gregory Novy. I saw them when I came to deliver the milk. They put the body in a truck. It stank. They said they were going to burn it, and everything else in the grave. I asked for the icon. They gave it to me.”

  “You did this—for my mother?”

  “No. For myself. That icon would bring a hundred rubles in the marketplace. I was going to sell it. But I knew my cousin. He would want your mother to have it.”

  She turned to leave, stumping off on her thick legs before I had a chance to thank her.

  “Avdokia!” I called out after her. “Why do you still come here? Most of the servants have left us.”

  She shrugged. “Everybody needs milk,” she said, and left.

  Mama hung the icon on the wall of her mauve salon—a wall already covered with icons—and prayed before it every night.

  “It is a miraculous icon,” she confided to me. “The virgin weeps. She is weeping for Russia, and she cannot be consoled.”

  Forty-two

  Michael! At last, after so many long weary months, he came back to me, riding through the gates of Tsarskoe Selo beside papa, both of them surrounded by an escort of stern-faced soldiers.

  How we hugged and kissed each other and cried, shamelessly, in front of my family and the rough guards who sniggered at the sight of us and Niuta and Nikandr who smiled and reached for each other’s hands and Daria, who nodded in satisfaction. Our joy was only a part of the greater joy the entire family felt at papa’s return—a bittersweet joy, to be sure, because the man we were welcoming home was a man stripped of his proud uniform, his sword and his many medals, stripped of his rank and titles and called plain Nicholas Romanov, a man, in short, robbed of his dignity.

  And not only robbed of his dignity, but subjected to abuse and humiliation.

  It gave our captors pleasure to harass him, to push him from behind as he walked along, to bark orders at him that he knew he dared not disobey. In the days following his return we saw him being mistreated again and again, and subjected to petty acts of meanness. We all felt an angry urge to intervene, but papa wouldn’t let us. He just held up one hand and said quietly, “It’s of no consequence. Let it pass.”

  On the first warm, overcast day after he came back to the palace, as the long harsh winter began to give way to early spring, we were allowed to take a picnic lunch out into the palace grounds. It was a new privilege for us; we wondered whether it might mean that there was a thaw in the attitude of our jailers to parallel the thawing of the snow and ice on the palace roof.

  The entire family was herded through the gardens—much overgrown and neglected since papa’s abdication—to the very edge of the lawn, and there the guards ordered us to spread our thin picnic cloth on the brittle grass beside the tall iron railings that ringed the park. To our surprise, there were people standing on the other side of the railings, shouting to us, calling us rude names. One or two spat on papa and called mama “German bitch.”

  “Look at the little German bitches!” they yelled at me and my sisters while our guards laughed. “All little whores, like their whore mother!”

  “And there’s the sick one!” they shouted at Alexei. “The one with the English disease! He looks like he’s about to drop dead!”

  Papa raised his hand and gave us all such a look that we did not respond to the taunts, though I felt myself growing hotter and hotter and it was all I could do to stop myself from shouting back at the cruel voices.

  “Go ahead, eat your picnic, Romanov!” the head guard ordered papa. “Eat, I say!”

  “I think it is going to rain,” papa answered gravely and quietly. “May we take our picnic inside?”

  “Later! Eat now!”

  At a signal from papa we sat on the picnic cloth, hastily unwrapped the food in our hamper and tried to eat it as quickly as we could. But it was hard to force ourselves even to take a single bite, with the constant yelling and jeering. To chew was torment, to swallow all but impossible, though I managed to force down a few small bites. The food was tasteless and stuck in my throat, making me cough.

  Anastasia spat out her food. Marie managed to spill her plate, though whether she did this intentionally or not I couldn’t have said. Mama sat on the cloth, unmoving, stony-faced. Papa ate, slowly and methodically, until the first raindrops began to fall.

  We all looked up at the sky gratefully, hoping that we would be allowed to go back to the palace now that the weather had changed.

  But we were wrong. We were forced to stay where we were, while the tormenting, taunting crowd grew, heedless of the rain, and the guards, enjoying our humiliation, stood by and watched the scene, making rude remarks to us and to each other and elbowing one another in the ribs and laughing.

  The rainwater ran down our faces and into our mouths, mingling with the tasteless food, until in the end the plates were washed clean, the food having run off into the grass, and we were completely bedraggled.

  “All right, Romanov,” the head guard spat out. “Back to your jail now. The picnic’s over.”

  My stomach hurt. I was nauseous. But I was afraid that if I threw up in front of our jailers there would be more punishment for us all. As we walked back to the palace I did my best to fight my nausea, holding on to Olga—who, I could tell, was feeling ill too—and concentrating on taking one step at a time.

  With great effort I managed to hold back until I reached my room. Once inside, however, I rushed to my washbowl and threw up every bit of food I had eaten, heaving and heaving until nothing more would come up and feeling as if I never wanted to eat anything, ever again.

  None of the servants had been allowed to come with us on our mortifying picnic, but had Michael been there I am certain he would have lashed out in anger—and been punished for it. When we were alone together on the following day in the room he was given in the palace servants’ quarters he showed me the fresh scars he bore on his chest and arms from fighting with papa’s captors during the initial days after his abdication.

  “I seem to collect these souvenirs,” he said, smiling his wry smile as he looked down at the red welts and gashes. Neither of us spoke of the older scar he bore, his scar from the battlefield that was now well on its way to being completely healed. We lay in each other’s arms, the balm of our lovemaking soothing the daily chafing of our tormentors. When I was with Michael I was aware of nothing but him: his breath, his smell, his hard strength pressed against me, the safety I felt when near him. He was all to me, and when we lay together in his narrow bed, his face above me soft in the warm candlelight, I could not help thinking, there is no greater joy in life than this.

  I felt guilty, wrapped in the protective cocoon of my love for Michael and his for me, while my family was suffering. I was suffering along with them, to be sure, but deep down, where love lay curled at the center of my being, no suffering could touch me.

  Forty-three

  They wouldn’t let us eat fruit. They wouldn’t let us wash ourselves more often than once a week. They forced us to do our own laundry. (I thought of Grandma Minnie, who had always sent her clothes and linens to Paris to be laundered.) They wouldn’t let us make tea before ten o’clock in the morning, or after four o’clock in the afternoon.

  They wouldn’t let us have flowers in our rooms. They wouldn’t let us make telephone calls, except from the telephone in the guardroom, where they could overhear everything we said. They took away Anastasia’s worms and buried them in the garden, where immediately they all died. They read mama’s diary, and took down all the icons on the walls in her mauve salon, smudging them with their dirty fingers, before reluctantly letting her have them back.

  They tore everything apart, looking for any evidence that might be used against us as enemies of the revolution. Antique chairs and sofas were ripped open, antique trunks overturned, paintings slashed and wardrobes gutted. Every ironing board in the vast ironing room was destroyed, ne
arly every book in papa’s fine library shredded, the leather bindings torn and the gold leaf lettering on the spines carved away and tossed into a basket.

  And over the shambles of a palace that remained, they mounted a red flag, and renamed the building the People’s House.

  What more would they do? We dreaded what was to come, and speculated endlessly about it. We heard from Constantin—who continued to come to the palace, observe us, and report back to his colleagues in the government on our condition and on the security under which we lived—that the political situation in Petrograd was fluid and unstable. The members of the Provisional Government seemed to change every few weeks, he said, with little continuity of membership or purpose from one change to the next. People were saying that a coup d’état was coming, that everything the revolutionaries had done would be swept away and a new authority would come to power—some said it would be Grandma Minnie, ruling from Kiev, others that it would be papa’s cousin Nikolasha, the former commander of the army.

  Still others predicted that the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies would before long become the ruling power, and that papa and the rest of us would all be treated mercilessly, probably even executed. It was this chilling thought that made me realize that we would be foolish to stay a moment longer in the new People’s House. We had to find a way to leave—and soon.

  Lying on my bed, pretending to read, I drew up a list of those I felt we could turn to for help. First was papa’s cousin King George of England, who was of course mama’s cousin too. Beyond the close family ties, England was Russia’s ally. Surely the king was obligated to rescue his relatives. Maybe, I thought, King George was already preparing, at that very moment, to rescue us. Maybe we would not have to wait long.

  Then I wrote down Adalbert’s name. I had not heard from him very often since the first year of the war when his ship, the SMS Derfflinger, was crippled off Dogger Bank in a battle with the British navy. He wrote to me after the battle to tell me that he had survived and that he was being reassigned. But since then I had had only two very brief letters, assuring me of his affection and concern and telling me that he hoped all was well with our family. I wondered whether he might have written more letters that I never received, letters that our guards had intercepted and destroyed.

  Who else was there? Mama’s sisters Victoria and Irene, both of whom had husbands who were high-ranking naval officers and who might be able to send a rescue party by sea. Mama’s brother Ernie? Aunt Olga?

  I pondered each one, but apart from King George and possibly Adalbert, with his yacht Mercury, it didn’t seem very likely that anyone would be able to come to our aid. Unless help arrived soon, we would have to look to ourselves to escape.

  Michael and I went to talk to papa about it.

  We found him walking on the Children’s Island, with two guards, lolling against a tree and smoking, watching him. Our own guards, who had escorted us from the palace, joined papa’s—which meant that we were some twenty feet from the little cluster of soldiers who occasionally glowered at us but were mostly preoccupied with smoking and talking among themselves.

  Papa embraced us both. He was becoming increasingly fond of Michael, and always beamed at the sight of him.

  “Do you see, Michael,” he said, pointing to his own left shoulder, “they have refused to let me wear my epaulets. They have taken them away somewhere, I suppose. What do you imagine they’ve done with them? I don’t mind telling you, I don’t feel dressed without my epaulets.”

  “I miss my uniform sometimes too, sir. The Fifth Circassian, you know.”

  “A fine outfit, the Fifth Circassian.” Papa nodded, a dreamy look coming into his eyes.

  “I was proud to be a part of it.”

  Papa looked startled. “You are still a part of it.”

  “No—that is, in the army’s view, there is no more Fifth Circassian.”

  “What? I was told nothing about this.”

  “Papa,” I interjected, “remember, you have given up your throne—and you are not commander of the army any more. You are not informed of—of anything that is going on.”

  He bristled at my words, but said nothing.

  “When the men of the Fifth Circassian learned that you had been forced to abdicate, they refused to accept any other command than yours. They denounced the Provisional Government as a fraud. Some were imprisoned for what they did, the rest remain rebels. I have heard from my friend Archile that a large group of them have gone south, back to the Caucasus, and only about two dozen are still in Petrograd. For what it is worth, they are still loyal to you, sir, and will obey any orders you give.”

  I could tell that papa was moved to hear of this small pocket of loyal men. But when he spoke again it was of other things entirely.

  “Tania, did you know that Michael and I went hunting in the woods by Mogilev?” he asked as we resumed our slow walk around the island, our guards trailing behind.

  “Yes, papa. Michael wrote to me about your hunts.”

  “Did you know that we shot two elks in one day? Did you write her about that, Michael?”

  “Yes sir, I did.”

  “And we trapped a bear too, didn’t we?” Papa was suddenly full of energy as he talked. “He was young, he became tame. We called him Dobrinya. Kind Bear. He made a good pet, didn’t he?”

  “He did.”

  Papa gazed at us both, and in his gaze, I felt his love.

  “We had some good times together at Mogilev, didn’t we?”

  “We did our best, sir. If only the war had not been so terrible, and so much in our thoughts all the time—”

  But I could tell, even as Michael spoke, that for papa, the war—the real war, the war of bullets and corpses and helpless suffering—had been only a sort of distant sorrow. A regret, but not an acute pain. He knew, but his mind refused to know, the truth of his life, which was that all he had been, all he had ever tried to be, now lay in ruins around him, and that unless he took drastic action soon to prevent it, even the ruins would be swept away.

  Forty-four

  He won’t accept us. He won’t take us in. Can you imagine?”

  Angrily mama snapped the pen she was writing with in two and snatched up a new one.

  “I’m just writing to him now, to tell him what I think of him!”

  “Hush, mama! The guard!” Olga warned.

  “The guards can go to hell. I’ve had my fill of them!”

  Olga and I looked at each other, each of us knowing what the other was thinking. We were wondering whether mama’s anger would grow until she began to yell, and we would be forced to try to calm her before the guards became impatient and locked her in her room and deprived her of food for a day.

  They had done this twice before, despite papa’s severe protests.

  But she went on talking, in a loud and aggravated tone, about her mother, whose spirit she believed she saw and conversed with, and about the unnamed man who wouldn’t accept us.

  “Mama warned me he might say no. She says he’s a coward. Grandma Victoria never thought much of him.”

  “Hush! You know your mother is dead,” Olga chided. “She has been dead for many years, ever since you were a little girl! You can’t see her or hear her. And just who is it who won’t accept us?”

  “Why, cousin George of course.”

  Cousin George was, as we well knew, King George, the rather stiff, ill-at-ease young man I had met when mama and I went to Cowes years earlier. He had been Prince George then. I remembered how he had kissed my hand when we left England for home and said that he would miss me.

  “How do you know?”

  Mama reached into her desk and pulled out a much folded piece of paper.

  “From your Uncle Ernie,” she whispered. “Written in a baby-language only he and I know. We haven’t used it since we were children.” She raised her voice for the benefit of the guards. “My laundry list,” she said. “Niuta will have to get busy on it. I am told that no more laundry c
an be taken in in London. All the laundresses are on strike!”

  “You will wash your own clothes, Alexandra Romanov!” one of the guards spoke up.

  “Why are they on strike?” I asked, my eyes fixed on mama.

  “Because they fear that bringing in outside laundry will contaminate their own with foreign germs.” Mama’s metaphor was strained but adequately clear. Evidently King George feared to import revolutionary ideas along with our family, if he offered us shelter in England. Even though we were about as far from being revolutionaries as it was possible to be.

  “Perhaps your mama can tell you where else to send your laundry,” I suggested, prompting Olga to frown at me. “Where are the laundresses not on strike?”

  “I will ask her.”

  If Uncle Ernie’s letter to mama was to be trusted (and how, I wondered, did Uncle Ernie, who was in Germany, know what Cousin George was saying?) then England would not be offering us a refuge. I wrote to Adalbert and sent my letter via Monsieur Gilliard’s friend in the Swiss embassy in Petrograd. But I had no idea whether the letter would actually reach Adalbert or not. Or whether, if it did reach him, he would be able to offer any real help.

  Meanwhile Michael had been pondering our situation just as I had, and he told me there would be a surprise at the People’s House in the near future.

  “Your father’s mention of the tame bear at Mogilev gave me a thought,” he told me. “I have an idea how we might all find a way out of this People’s House before long.”

  “How?”

  “You will see.” Michael smiled—and told me nothing further. “It will be better if you do not know in advance, Tania. Just trust me. You will see.”

  It was the season of the White Nights, that time of the summer when dusk meets dawn and even at midnight the sky is as bright as day. Petrograd is so far north that the seasons meet their extremes there; in the depth of winter one hardly sees the sun, and in the summer, during the end of June, there is no night.