Anastasia and Her Sisters

by Carolyn Meyer

  All the proof I needed was recorded in one brief sentence in her secret diary:

  P. kissed me. Not once, but three times. Oh, what joy!

  I had witnessed only a single kiss. When and where, I wondered, were the other two?

  • • •

  Later that summer when we had finished cruising and left the Standart, Papa and Mama traveled to Moscow for the hundredth anniversary celebration of a great battle against Napoleon, and we were left at home in Tsarskoe Selo to annoy our tutors. Olga moped, because her happy days of kissing Pavel were over for the season, probably until Livadia in autumn.

  Counting the days when I’ll see P. again. Sometimes I feel so miserable, surrounded by people, never really alone, but lonely! I think Mother has some notion of my feelings for P., though she has not said anything. It’s possible that A. saw us together, but I don’t think she’ll tattle. I dread Bialowieza and Spala in the fall—such gloomy places, and the weather is sure to be rotten! But Papa loves them, and so we’ll go.

  I can’t get rid of the feeling that something terrible is going to happen. What is it?

  “A.” of course referred to me, and Olga was right—I wouldn’t tell Mama what I saw. Why would I? But I didn’t understand why Olga felt so lonely. Or why she believed something terrible was going to happen. Alexei had a disease we were not allowed to talk about and something awful could happen to him at any time, but other than that, it seemed to me our life was almost perfect.

  When Papa and Mama came back from Moscow, we went by train to the royal hunting lodge deep in the Polish forest of Bialowieza. With its turrets and steep roofs, the lodge looked like something that belonged in a fairy tale. Mama scratched the date of our family’s arrival with a diamond on a balcony window: 1 September 1912. The last date she’d marked was in 1903, the summer before Alexei was born, when I was only two.

  My sisters and I were half frightened of the huge, shaggy stuffed beasts that loomed in the entry hall and the stuffed heads with murderous tusks we had to pass every time we climbed the stairs to our bedrooms. Those terrifying beasts were aurochs, long-horned wild oxen that had become almost extinct. Papa said there used to be countless bears and wolves and even lions prowling the forest, until our grandfather, Tsar Alexander, had them killed off in order to protect the aurochs. The idea was to bring the aurochs back from the brink of extinction so that he and his friends could hunt them—and, I guess, stuff them and put them in the entryway to scare his grandchildren. Now there were lots of them roaming the forest, and they were known to be extremely dangerous. I hoped I would never see a live one.

  It rained almost every day in Bialowieza, but that didn’t stop my sisters and me from venturing into the forest with Papa on horseback and hunting—not for animals, but for mushrooms. Armed guards rode with us, just in case. Alexei couldn’t go on these excursions, because the doctors would not allow him to risk injuring himself. His sailor-attendant Derevenko tried to find safe ways to keep him entertained, but the precautions didn’t always work. One day while we were away with Papa, Alexei somehow hit himself on something, and when we got back with our mushrooms, the bleeding inside his body had begun. It hurt badly, and Alexei was suffering. Mama and Papa pretended nothing serious was wrong, as they always did, but anyone could see how worried they were.

  Dr. Botkin made Alexei stay in bed and rest—the only treatment he knew. Alexei hated that, especially when the rest of us were out enjoying ourselves, and so one of us always took a turn staying with him. After a week, Dr. Botkin decided he was well enough to be moved, and we left the royal lodge in Bialowieza for another royal lodge in Spala, where the Polish kings used to hunt before Poland was made part of Russia two centuries ago.

  The Spala lodge was dark and gloomy, and it always felt damp and smelled moldy. The hallways were narrow, and the rooms were small and cramped. The electric lights were kept burning all the time. This was my least favorite of all the imperial palaces, but Papa loved to hunt there for stags. He and his guests, Polish noblemen whose names I could not pronounce, went out hunting every day. We could hear the stags bellowing from early morning on, and in the evening the corpses of the deer the men had shot were laid out on the lawn with greenery woven in their antlers. Between zakuski and dinner, the noblemen, dressed in their belted greatcoats and tall fur hats, and the ladies, wrapped in cloaks and furs—all except Mama—went out to admire the poor dead beasts by torchlight. I felt sorry for the stags, and I didn’t understand what pleasure the men got from killing them.

  “It’s an old custom,” Olga said. “And you know how Papa loves old customs.”

  At Spala, Alexei seemed to be getting better—so much better that Mama, thinking he needed to get out of the dismal lodge and into the fresh air, took him for a carriage ride with Anya. The bumping of the carriage over the rutted roads made the bleeding begin again, and Alexei had to be put back to bed. Dr. Botkin did what he could, but nothing eased the pain. Papa sent to St. Petersburg for another doctor who might be able to help—Dr. Vladimir Derevenko. While we waited for him to come, Papa reminded us, “We must continue to act as normally as possible. There is nothing we can do until the doctors arrive, and Alexei’s condition must not become public.”

  To distract our parents and entertain their friends, Marie and I decided to put on a play. With Monsieur Gilliard’s coaching, we rehearsed two scenes from Le bourgeois gentilhomme, “The Middle-Class Gentleman,” by the French playwright Molière. In one scene, Marie played the part of the daughter of the man who wants to be recognized as a gentleman, and I took the role of Cléonte, the man she loves. Her father refuses to let her marry him because he’s only a commoner. In the other scene, Marie played the father. When Cléonte appears in disguise, passing himself off as the son of the sultan of Turkey, the father approves the marriage. I loved being the Turkish prince in a turban, and I enjoyed seeing Olga’s face turn pink at the idea of a girl in love with a man beneath her station.

  We had a lively audience that evening for our little theatrics, and no one would have guessed from looking at Mama as she chatted with her guests that she was worried sick about Alexei. His pain was terrible, his fever soared, and he was delirious. You could hear his pitiful cries and heartrending moans even through closed doors. For days Mama never left Alexei’s side, sometimes sleeping a little on the sofa next to his bed. Papa stayed with him, too, but once I saw him rush out of Alexei’s room, weeping. It was hard for all of us to bear.

  My sisters and I had no idea what to do. It seemed so odd—Mama and Papa were afraid Alexei might die, they were nearly mad with worry and grief, and yet the hunting lodge bustled with guests who laughed and talked and helped themselves to caviar while liveried servants kept their champagne glasses filled.

  Finally, the new doctor, along with Dr. Botkin, convinced Papa and Mama to inform the Russian people that their beloved tsarevich was gravely ill. My parents reluctantly accepted this advice and sent out a notice to the newspapers. Papa ordered a large tent to be set up in the garden at Spala to serve as a chapel. Polish peasants from nearby villages as well as Cossacks and soldiers and our household servants crowded the tent night and day, all praying for Alexei’s recovery. Soon all of Russia was praying for the tsarevich. OTMA, too, cried and prayed and cried some more. The priest gave Alexei the last sacrament.

  I was sure my brother would not survive. Alexei was going to die.

  But I was wrong. Mama had sent a telegram to Father Grigory, who was at his home in Siberia, and begged him to pray for Alexei. Then came a reply.

  We were with Mama when she received Father Grigory’s telegram, and I saw a change come over her as she read it. She no longer looked stricken. She was calm now, and she sounded hopeful when she read his message aloud to us: “ ‘God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. The illness is not dangerous. The Little One will not die. Do not let the doctors bother him too much.’ ”

  “You see?” she said. “Baby will not die! Father Grigory says so.
We must have faith!”

  The next morning she was smiling as she told us, “The doctors don’t see that Baby is better, but they’re wrong. He is certainly no worse, and I believe he may have turned the corner.”

  Slowly, very slowly, Alexei began to improve. The doctors couldn’t explain it, but Mama could: it was all because of Father Grigory and his prayers. Nobody could possibly disagree with her. From far away Siberia, Father Grigory had performed a miracle. He had saved my brother’s life. Alexei wasn’t in mortal danger now, but he was very weak and tired, and so was Mama.

  We stayed another month at Spala while Alexei recovered. Kharitonov outdid himself preparing tempting dishes to coax him to eat, and little by little he regained some of the weight he had lost. Bit by bit Mama got her strength back. The rest of us followed our usual routines—French lessons with Monsieur Gilliard, English lessons with Mr. Gibbes, Russian lessons with Pyotr Petrov, held in one of the few rooms at Spala where a little daylight leaked in for an hour or two each day. Papa hunted with his Polish friends and played tennis with the army officers. Olga pined for her lieutenant.

  I was ready to die of boredom, when we learned of a family scandal. Papa got a telegram from his brother Mikhail—our uncle Misha—announcing that he had married Natalia Brassova. We hardly knew our uncle, and we had never met Natalia Brassova. We did know that Uncle Misha had been the cause of much scandal in the family, falling in love with “unsuitable” women. Papa had refused to grant him permission to marry those women and then sent him far away to keep him out of the public eye and, it was hoped, to put an end to the affairs. But now Uncle Misha had defied Papa and married Natalia without permission—after making a solemn promise to Papa not to marry her.

  Anya Vyrubova happily told us all about it. “A completely unsuitable woman!” Anya announced gleefully. “Twice divorced! Everybody says Brassova is beautiful and dresses very stylishly, but, my dears, she’s had two husbands! She was still married to the second one when she took up with Grand Duke Mikhail. He asked your papa for permission to marry her, but of course the tsar couldn’t allow that—it would have been scandalous!” Anya lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper. “They even have a child together, I hear. A little boy.” She paused to let us consider that shocking bit. “Then, when your darling brother was so terribly ill, they ran off to Vienna and were secretly married. Only after the deed was done did they inform your poor papa. What could he do? Why, he banished them, of course! The grand duke is forbidden ever to return to Russia!”

  We sisters looked at each other. Tatiana agreed that it was shameful. “Papa had no choice but to forbid them to marry. And I think it was very selfish of Uncle Misha to go against Papa’s wishes and break his promise.”

  “But they’re in love!” Olga protested. “It would be too cruel not to allow people who love each other to marry, just because she’s not appropriate—whatever that means.”

  “It means she’s a commoner. A twice-divorced commoner,” Tatiana said sharply. “And Uncle Misha is second in line to become tsar.”

  “One must always obey the tsar’s wishes,” Anya said piously. “And I hate to think what the Dowager Empress Marie has to say about it.”

  I thought I knew exactly what my grandmother would say. “ ‘I shan’t be able to show my face in public,’ ” I said, mimicking Grandmère Marie’s haughtiest tone. “ ‘It should have remained a secret!’ ”

  My sisters stared at me, and then burst out laughing. Anya, though, pursed her lips. “I do not find that at all amusing, Anastasia Nikolaevna,” she said.

  Anya had another bit of gossip to pass on. Admiral Chagin, the commander who had assigned Derevenko and Nagorny to be Alexei’s sailor-attendants, had come all the way from St. Petersburg. “He was terribly upset! He was in charge of your brother’s safety, and he’d chosen two of his most reliable sailors to look after Baby. He takes it very personally and blames himself for the tsarevich’s injury. But the tsar, with his usual kindness, assured the admiral he was not at fault, and sent him home.”

  “Poor Admiral Chagin!” Marie sighed. “Such a good man.”

  “Yes,” Anya agreed, “a good man, but rather foolish at times.”

  We looked at her, waiting to hear more. “What do you mean, Anya?” Olga asked.

  “Oh, you know—that business with the girl at the tsaritsa’s bazaar in Livadia last year. He did make a fool of himself, flirting with her.”

  “You mean Kyra Belyaevna, with the lace-trimmed handkerchiefs?” Tatiana asked. “Half the men there were flirting with her, and all the women loathed her for it.”

  “Scandalous behavior,” Anya sniffed.

  • • •

  Normally in late autumn we would have been in Livadia, but because of Alexei’s condition, those plans were canceled. We would stay at Spala until the crisis was over, return home to Tsarskoe Selo for the winter, and then go to Livadia for Easter as usual.

  Olga had been looking forward to celebrating her seventeenth birthday at our palace by the sea—and with a certain lieutenant coming nearly every day for tennis and no doubt more stolen kisses. Instead, Mama decided, we would have a small dinner for her at Spala with the family and a few friends—Anya, Dr. Botkin, our tutors, and others who were close to us. Olga tried not to look disappointed. We all were, but no one protested. We would make the best of it.

  We had dressed and gone down to the small anteroom for zakuski when Marie paused, head cocked, and asked, “Nastya, do you hear music? Coming from somewhere outside?”

  We slipped away from the anteroom and went to peer out through the narrow windows in the entrance. It had been snowing off and on all day, wet, heavy flakes. A small crowd, some carrying torches, had gathered on the lawn, and, surrounded by our Cossack guards, they were singing. I stayed to listen while Marie went to find Papa.

  A footman had gotten to Papa first, and he and Marie came to peer out the window at the singers. “It seems that some of our neighbors have heard that it’s the birthday of the grand duchess, and they’ve come to offer greetings to Olya,” Papa said. “These are the same people who came here to pray for the tsarevich’s recovery. I’ve invited them to join us.”

  The front door opened, and the neighbors—peasants from nearby farms and villages—crowded into the entrance hall, stomping the snow from their boots. Some were carrying balalaikas and other stringed instruments, and there was even an accordion.

  The entrance hall couldn’t hold them all, and Papa suggested that everyone move into the dining room, which was now set for dinner. A small raised platform at one end could be used as a stage, and after a hurried discussion among themselves, a dozen musicians climbed onto the platform and began to play. Several others performed a lively dance while the “audience” clapped in rhythm. The hearty singing resumed. Mama, who was frowning at first, actually seemed to be enjoying the unplanned entertainment.

  The sailor Derevenko stood nearby holding Alexei, pale and very thin and still not able to stand on his own. The musicians saluted him and presented him with a handsome balalaika they’d made especially for him. One of the singers, an elderly woman with a gap-toothed grin, stepped forward and gave Olga a white linen shawl embroidered all over with pale yellow flowers. One of their party who spoke Russian explained that it was to be worn at her wedding. That made her blush.

  Our Polish guests produced bottles of plum brandy, a gift for Papa, who proposed the first toast, “Na zdrowie!” (“To your health!” in Polish), and then everyone began drinking toasts, tossing back glasses of the strong spirits and shouting, “Na zdrowie!” Meanwhile, Mama had sent a message to the kitchen, and soon servants were passing platters of pierogi—little pastries filled with wild mushrooms or farmer’s cheese.

  Nothing like this ever happened at Tsarskoe Selo. It was great fun, much more fun than it would have been at the usual stuffy dinner, with the ladies making curtsies so low you’d think they’d fall over, and the gentlemen bowing almost double. Alexei, who only a
short time earlier had been on the verge of dying, was laughing and making everyone cheer—even Mama—when he picked out a tune on his new balalaika.

  Things did get a little out of hand after all the plum brandy. Our unexpected guests began dancing, first with each other, and then—strictly against all the rules—they asked my sisters and me to join them, not knowing—or not caring—that only under certain special circumstances were men permitted to invite grand duchesses to dance.

  I saw Mama frowning and shaking her head and looking to Papa to put a stop to this improper nonsense, but Olga, usually so reserved, was skipping merrily around the dining room in the arms of a tall, bearded peasant as though she’d been practicing for just this moment. It didn’t take long for Marie and me to have partners as well, young boys with pink cheeks. Only Tatiana held back, shaking her head, until an older man with a gray-streaked beard stepped forward and swept her away, too.

  I loved swirling past the members of the imperial suite, the noble ladies and gentlemen who traveled with us, and seeing how aghast they looked, as though they smelled something slightly off. Papa, standing to one side with an amused smile, signaled the leader of the group when he must have felt it had gone on long enough, and the music and clapping stopped. Papa thanked everyone, and our visitors bowed again, quietly gathered their cloaks, and filed out into the snowy night.

  I thought it was the best party we’d ever had. Mama complained that these guests were not particularly clean and their manners were rough. I did not mention that they were a lot like Father Grigory.

  Now it was time to go home. Papa wanted to be at Tsarskoe Selo for Christmas. Mama ordered the road from the hunting lodge to the train station to be made smooth as glass, so that nothing would jolt Alexei. Our train, which always traveled slowly, now crept along even more slowly. The new doctor, Vladimir Derevenko, stayed with him for every mile of the journey.