Placing the wooden casket upon a table, Yurovsky opened it, and instructed, “You are to verify my list and verify the items in the box. When you have done this, I will seal the box.”
“And then what will you do with our things?” said Aleksandra, her irritation clear as she rose from the bed. “Take them away again? Allow your soldiers to steal from us as before?”
“Nyet. I will leave this box here in your room and here on this table. It must remain sealed, however, and this I will check each and every day. I assure you, there will be no incidents, not as long as you do not provoke them.”
“The only incidents have been due to the incompetence of your people. We, on the other hand, have been more than cooperative.”
I could see that Yurovsky would have loved to have slapped her, but instead he held himself in check. Perhaps he was laughing on the inside, chuckling because he knew that a bullet was coming her way. And yet he forestalled any provocation. He merely nodded as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his trump card. You see, he was conniving to win their trust, angling to make their murders as easy as possible, for he was well aware that lambs were easier to lead to the slaughter than wolves.
“I believe these are yours,” he said as he placed a handful of silver spoons upon the table.
Aleksandra looked at the silverware, her eyes wide with surprise. “Why… why, yes. Wherever did you find them?”
“They were stolen from the shed and buried in the garden.”
“Our gratitude,” said Nikolai, stepping forward. “So let us have a look at your list and the contents of this box. You have our word of honor that the seal will not be broken.”
Right then and there I watched as Nikolai and Aleksandra reached into the small casket and withdrew a packet. They poured out its contents – their most personal jewelry – exposing nothing fancy, not by any means. Nice pieces they were – rings, simple diamond earrings of maybe 15 carats each, lockets, gold bracelets, gold chains with crosses. The former Tsar and Tsaritsa sorted through it all, made sure each piece was listed. Several minutes later, they slid their belongings back into the packet, which Yurovsky took and placed inside the wooden casket.
“I will place the spoons in here as well.” The komendant did just that, then sealed the box with a piece of wire and some red wax. “As I said, this box is to remain on this table and is to remain sealed. I will check it everyday, and if I see that it has been tampered with I will remove it.”
Aleksandra Fyodorovna smoldered. You could see it in her face, which blossomed a blotchy, angry red. Nikolai Aleksandrovich, on the other hand, never wavered, never betrayed his inner thoughts, and was as usual amazingly self-controlled and circumspect.
“We understand,” he calmly replied, though I’m sure inside he too blazed with anger.
Yurovsky turned to leave, but rather than disappearing like a quick black cloud, he eyed the boy and descended upon him. I watched as the Emperor and Empress stiffened but said nothing.
“And how are you feeling today, Alyosha?” asked the komendant as he seated himself on the edge of the Heir’s bed.
Aleksei glanced at his parents before replying, “I am well, thank you.”
“Are you walking yet?”
“I have been able to stand, but not walk, not as of yet.”
Yurovsky, once a watchmaker, later a photographer, and still later a medic, loved to dole out advice, and said, “Well, you must get plenty of rest and eat lots of eggs and meat so as to get your strength up, agreed?”
Aleksei nodded with the grace of his father, though he said nothing further, for he was infused as well with his mother’s pride.
The Heir’s dog, Joy, came trotting in just then, and the komendant rose from the edge of Aleksei’s bed and gave the pup a pat on the head.
As he headed out of the room, Yurovsky said, “Well, I’m quite sure your four-legged friend here will watch over you.”
How did he do it? With blood on his mind, how did Yurovsky go about interacting with this husband and wife and these children? Da, da, da, once I made my grave error, it was this Komendant Yurovsky himself who went about so calmly orchestrating the execution. It was he as well who fired the first shot. And it was he who led the haphazard burial team off into the pine wood.
In any case, the minor incident with Yurovsky was soon overshadowed by hope, hope provoked by the final note that Sister Antonina and Novice Marina had just smuggled in. As with all the others, it too was in French, and it too survived those awful days:
The change in guards and in the komendant prevented us from writing to you. Do you know what the cause of this was? We answer your questions. We are a group of officers in the Russian army who have not lost consciousness of our duty before Tsar and Country.
We are not informing you in detail about ourselves for reasons you can understand, but your friends D. and T., who are already safe, know us.
The hour of deliberation is approaching, and the days of the usurpers are numbered. In any case, the Slavic armies are advancing toward Yekaterinburg. They are a few versts from the city. The moment is becoming critical, and now bloodshed must not be feared. Do not forget that the Bolsheviki will, in the end, be ready to commit any crime. The moment has come. We must act. Rest assured that the machine gun downstairs will not be dangerous. As for the komendant, we will know how to take him away. Wait for a whistle toward midnight. That will be the signal.
An Officer
And here I must ask, Is the wisdom of my years clear now? Have I not seen things that no human should?
13
“Wait for a whistle toward midnight…”
Such enticing words. To the ends of the earth Romeo could have thus enticed his Juliet, Heathcliff his Cathy, even Zhivago his Lara. Such promise lies in those words, such hope, such beauty. Aleksandra, herself, whispered how she hoped for three hundred loyal officers to come charging into town, whooping and hollering and whisking us all to safety. So excited, so agitated was she, that in those final days the Empress scarcely rested or slept, fidgeting and turning with every sound. The Tsar, meanwhile, never stopped pacing. In the dining room, in the drawing room, in the garden he paced his soldierly step, back and forth, back and forth, waiting, praying, hoping. And eventually despairing, for he understood that his fate, which had long been waiting on the horizon like a black storm, was finally and at last set to arrive.
True, just then and for a few days that followed, our candle of hope burned so bright, so strong. We found hope in everything, from the heavy evening rains that cooled the air, to our dinner table, which was spread with more plentiful food than we had seen for months.
The nights of July 5 and 6 we were again secretly advised to sleep fully clothed, which in fact we did. And again none of us slept well, listening as we did for that blasted whistle, which was never to come, not ever. I don’t know quite what happened, why this attempt to rescue the Romanovs never materialized. Perhaps the tsarist plot was discovered. Perhaps the officers lost their nerve. Perhaps their leaders were killed. Or perhaps they simply ran away with the pile of money sent by Anna Vyrubova. But something went terribly awry.
That night I lay on my bed, my ears stretching for midnight hope, yet only hearing the stomp of the guards outside and fighting cats and a woman screaming at her drunk husband.
“Borya, get inside at once!”
Once I was awakened by the report of a gunshot, a sharp blast that split the night. I sat up in my makeshift bed, a pile of blankets on the floor, and saw cook Kharitonov stir as well. Was this it, the beginning of the loyal officers’ siege upon our prisonly house? Were we about to be carried away by faithful Cossacks? But then there was nothing. Kharitonov just rolled over, tumbled back into sleep. And I just sat there, staring at the room’s lone window that was veiled in lime. The minutes crawled past, and I lay back down on the floor, overcome with a sense of hopelessness and eventually exhaustion.
Toward morning came the sound of war. And it increased eve
ry day from then on. Of course we could see none of this, not simply because of the double palisade surrounding The House of Special Purpose, but because of the limed windows. But like blind people we became particularly attuned to noises from beyond. Each time there came the sound of something momentous – the sound of hooves, the rumble of a motor lorry or two – a great pause passed through the house. The Emperor would cease his pacing, the Empress her secret stitching, Demidova her cleaning, and Kharitonov his chopping. What was that, a military or civilian wagon? Red soldier or White savior? Was it the time of our rescue or the time of…
We heard nothing more, not ever again, from these so-called Officers. The Empress became so nervous and the Emperor so frustrated, that he finally wrote a note begging for information. It was this note, entrusted to me by the Tsar and discovered by Yurovsky that provided the excuse the Bolsheviki had been searching so hungrily for.
But why was there no rescue? Why? Earlier, that past winter in Tobolsk town, the Romanovs could have easily escaped. The troops assigned to guard them had been nearly all won over by the Imperial Family’s charm, and Nikolai could have effected escape by simply and quickly leaving town, fleeing to the great north and into the depths of Siberia. But the Tsar nobly felt an obligation not to stir up trouble, not to leave Russia, and so… so by the time they’d been transferred to that Red hotbed, the city of Yekaterinburg, it was too late.
But… but why did no rescuers appear by the light of the summer moon? By that July there were only several hundred Red troops in all of Yekaterinburg. The Whites, only twenty miles away, had seized towns all around and were poised to attack from any number of directions. We all knew the city was destined to fall any day. So why was nothing attempted? In those few days that followed there came through our single open window only tidbits of normal life and no whistle. Locked in The House of Special Purpose we waited. And as the time went by our hope fell away. It was on Thursday, July 11, that we finally realized just how desperate, even hopeless, our situation truly was.
To break the tremendous boredom, the Heir and I were once again playing, not troika or English tank, our two most favorite games, but elevator. One of the doors off the dining room was a pocket door that, much to our amusement, slid sideways in and out of the wall rather like an elevator’s. And Aleksei, seated in the wheeling chaise, and I, by his side, pretended we were riding all the way to the top of one of those new American buildings that rose so high above the ground – twelve floors! – and, they claimed, scraped the sky. We weren’t even to the fifth floor when we suddenly saw the grand duchesses and Dr. Botkin hurrying through the dining room.
Aleksei said, “Hey, something’s going on.”
The Heir pointed with his right hand and I, the consummate companion and lackey, immediately obeyed. I pushed him off our make-believe lift, steered him quickly through the dining room, through his sisters’ room, and into his parents’. There we found the Emperor and Empress, all the girls, and the doctor staring at the one open window, a look of great grief upon all of their faces.
“What is it, Papa?” demanded Aleksei. “They’re not sealing the window again, are they?”
The Tsar silently came over, rested his hand on Aleksei’s shoulder, and softly, almost painfully, replied, “No, they’re putting some kind of covering over it.”
In a kind of shock we watched as two ladders were thrown up against the side of the house and three workers lifted a heavy metal grating. With no small effort, they attached the bars to the outside of the window frame. The limed-over windows were terrible enough, but this was worse, for within a matter of ten minutes we were securely behind bars. Wasn’t it through this window we were supposed to flee? Wasn’t our path to freedom now completely blocked? Was rescue now impossible?
“Oh, Nicky,” gasped Aleksandra as she clung to her husband’s arm.
Bit by bit, day by day, our world was shrinking. No longer did it seem as if we were merely under house arrest. Now, looking through those black iron bars, we all realized we were imprisoned, locked in a kind of grand cell from which there might well be no escape.
Nikolai, stroking his mustache, said, “And with no warning…”
“You don’t think our… our friends on the outside have been discovered, do you?”
“There’s no way of telling, though the guards certainly seem afraid of something. In any case I’m starting to like this Yurovsky less and less!”
Behind us came steps, and the komendant, entering the room, said in that nasally voice of his, “Do you have a comment, Citizen Romanov?”
The Tsar turned around, and asked, “Do you really have such fear of our climbing out or getting in touch with the sentry?”
“My orders are to guard the former Tsar.”
“As I’ve said, I would never leave my family.”
“I have my orders.” Yurovsky then held up a small leather box. “I found this in the service room, stolen I believe from your trunk.”
Nikolai took the box and opened it, revealing his gold watch. “Thank you for returning it.”
“I will allow you to keep it in your possession, but for security purposes I suggest you wear it at all times.”
Yurovsky turned and departed, and the Tsar took his watch and fastened it around his left wrist. A beautiful gold watch it was, naturally of the finest quality, and he wore it unto his death, when it was taken as a brilliant souvenir from his dead body.
“Oh, Nicky…” said Aleksandra.
The Tsaritsa felt the pains of the world in her head, her back, and in her legs. And Nikolai helped his beloved back to her bed, where she reclined and stayed for the rest of that day and, actually, almost for the short remainder of her life.
It was about then that our dear Dr. Botkin began his prophetic letter, the famous one found after the night of treachery. He began it at about this time and was still working on the wording all the way to the end. In fact, he was still writing it that night when they were all called down to the cellar.
In retrospect it was clear that the end was rapidly approaching. Dr. Botkin foresaw that. I, on the other hand, never stopped believing that we would be spirited away. Then again, I was but a lad of fourteen, as naive to the depravity of mankind as I am wise today.
And so it is with great sadness that I proceed to Sunday, July 14.
14
A Sunday it was, just two days until the end.
For days we had not been visited by Dr. Derevenko, the Heir’s physician. And for days now the Tsar had been requesting his presence.
“My son needs the attention of our Dr. Derevenko, who possesses a unique electric device. He uses this to massage my son’s legs, you understand, and the results are quite good.”
“And as I’ve told you before,” countered Yurovsky, “this is not permitted.”
Likewise the Tsar had been asking for a religious service, which had not been permitted for quite some time. Then all of a sudden that Sunday, the fourteenth, we were informed at morning inspection that we would be allowed a service to be performed by none other than Father Storozhev himself.
“He and the deacon will be here at ten this morning,” said Yurovsky. “No conversation will be permitted.”
“Understood,” curtly replied the Tsar.
Morning tea and bread were served immediately after the inspection, and the announcement of the religious service caused a great stir at the table, albeit a quiet one, for a guard stood at either end of the dining room. That left us not much to talk about except the weather, and a beautiful summer’s morning it was, the sky having cleared after another night of heavy rain and the temperature now a cool, pleasant twelve degrees. As soon as breakfast was concluded, however, everyone scattered. Kharitonov, Demidova, and I went about cleaning the table and doing the dishes, while Aleksandra and the two younger girls, Maria and Anastasiya, set up a small altar in the drawing room. They cleared the large desk and decorated it quite nicely, spreading one of the Empress’s shawls over it, then arrang
ing their favorite icons, including Saint Feodor’s Mother of God, perhaps the Empress’s most treasured possession. Adding a nice homey touch, Anastasiya placed a few birch branches here and there, for whether of high or low estate Russians are a mystical sort, bound like pagans to the wild nature of their motherland.
At this time the Tsar retired to his bedchamber, presumably to sit with the Heir, perhaps even to read to him. This, however, was not the case. A few minutes later Olga slipped into the room, and it was then that they wrote the final letter to the “Officer.” It had been ten entire days since we’d last heard anything from the outside, ten entire days of waiting for that bloody midnight whistle, and the Tsar wished to inform those on the outside that the conditions within The House of Special Purpose were deteriorating, rapidly so. Of course the Tsar, always cautious, controlled, and particular, was not a quick writer by any means, and it took him a good long while to draft the six or seven lines. Then, of course, Olga had to translate it into the French, so this entire process took all the way up until the service itself.
Shortly after ten the servant Trupp brought the brass censer with burning coals, handing it to me in the kitchen and requesting, “Please deliver this to father, who is in the guard’s room.”
I did as told, carrying the brass censer, suspended as it was by three chains. A rich plume of heavenly smoke billowed out as I walked through the house and to the guard room, where I found Yurovsky and a guard, plus the two from the church, Father Archpresbyter Storozhev and Father Deacon Buimirov. The two religious men were already vested, their gold and red brocade robes flowing to the ground, and Father Storozhev was in conversation with the komendant himself.
The Kitchen Boy Page 14
