My parents were still determined that Alexei’s future subjects not be allowed to believe that he was an invalid, but when we awoke the next morning, it was obvious that walking was impossible. Mama was in despair, and Alexei was sobbing.
“Never mind,” Papa told Alexei. “You will be present at the ceremony. Our biggest, strongest, handsomest Cossack guard will carry you, and you’ll see everything.”
At eleven o’clock we left the imperial apartment and climbed the fifty-eight steps of the Red Staircase to St. George Hall. “Lucky you,” I told Alexei, in the arms of the Cossack. “You get to be carried.”
Mama’s sister Ella joined us, dressed in her pale gray nun’s habit. “She looks so elegant in that robe, and she doesn’t even have to wear a corset with it,” I whispered to Marie. “Or bother deciding which jewels to wear. It’s almost enough to make me consider becoming a nun myself.”
Marie giggled, and Tatiana hissed, “Hush!”
Standing in the center of the great hall, Papa read out a proclamation in a strong voice: “From this place, the very heart of Russia, I send my soul’s greeting to my valiant troops and my noble allies. God is with us!” It was a solemn occasion, the most solemn in the world, but somehow I couldn’t stop grinning—proud to be not only Russian but the daughter of the tsar.
A bridge connected the palace to the cathedral on the opposite side of the Palace Square, filled with more cheering crowds—the people would surely be hoarse by the end of the day—and after lots of prayers and hymns, incense and candles, we could finally go back to the palace for luncheon. A good thing, because I was starving.
The next day Alexei and Gilliard went out for a drive in a motorcar to a scenic spot above the city. On the way back through narrow streets jammed with peasants, someone recognized Alexei and began to shout, “The heir! The heir!” Suddenly the crowds surrounded them, blocking their way, pressing closer, all determined to see the tsarevich. The eager peasants climbed up on the steps of the car, scrambling to reach my brother. Alexei had never had anything like this happen to him, and it frightened him.
“Neither the driver nor I knew what to do,” Gilliard reported, still trembling. “The moujiks meant no harm, but we were trapped. Then two huge policemen ran up, shouting and waving, and the crowd fell back and slowly drifted away.”
“They wanted to touch me, as though I was a religious icon, something holy!” Alexei said. “It was embarrassing. I didn’t like it.”
• • •
We went home to Tsarskoe Selo. Everyone seemed excited about going to war. It was all people talked about now. The trips to St. Petersburg and Moscow had been thrilling, but my sisters and I felt anxious. It was terribly confusing.
In our schoolroom, Pyotr Petrov tapped on the map of the world with his pointer. “The Germans and the Austrians are our enemies,” he said, though we needed no reminding, “and so are the Turks. The French and the English are our closest allies—the Serbians, too, of course—and so far the other countries such as Romania are neutral.” The neutral countries included Switzerland, where Gilliard was from. “Monsieur Gilliard had thought to go home,” Petrov said, “but it is nearly impossible to get there, for all communications have been cut, and if he did manage to get home, he would have no chance of getting back here before the end of the war.”
“But Pyotr Vasilyevich,” I reminded him, “everyone says the war will be over by Christmas! That would not be such a long time to be away.” I liked Gilliard very much, and would miss him if he left, but I would not miss a few months of French lessons.
Petrov hung his pointer on its hook. “I pray that those who are so optimistic are also correct,” he said quietly.
Papa appointed Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich—Papa’s distant cousin, but we called him Uncle Nikolasha—to be commander-in-chief of the army. But this was just temporary. “Until I can get to Stavka and take command,” Papa said. Stavka was the army headquarters, near Bialowieza, site of our hunting lodge in Poland.
Marie and I lay on our beds, whispering in the dark. “What do you think will happen now?” Marie asked, and I could tell that she was close to tears. She was always very emotional.
“I don’t know,” I said.
I did not want to tell her what I had read in Olga’s notebook. I still glanced at it now and then, though not as often as I had when she was madly in love with Voronov, because her entries after he married someone else weren’t as interesting. But this was upsetting:
I’m so worried about this war. Mother and Father received a letter from Fr. G, who is in his village in Siberia and recovering from the awful attack by that crazy woman. The letter made Father so angry he wanted to tear it up, but Mother wouldn’t let him. She showed it to Tanya and me, and I’m writing here what I can remember:
“A terrible storm cloud lies over Russia. Disaster, grief, murky darkness and no light. A whole ocean of tears, there is no counting them, and so much bloodshed. I can find no words to describe the horror. Russia is drowning in blood. Disaster is great, the misery infinite.”
What if Fr. G is right? I can’t bear to think of it.
Marie was still asking questions in a worried whisper. “Papa’s going to be leaving soon for Poland,” she said. “How long do you think he’ll be gone?”
“I don’t know, Mashka,” I said, rolling away so that my back was to her. I was thinking about what I’d read in the notebook. Russia is drowning in blood.
“Mama says we must say our prayers and trust in God,” Marie said with a little catch in her voice. She was close to tears again. “Do you think God will help us?”
“Of course He will,” I said. Disaster is great, the misery infinite. “Now, let’s go to sleep. Aunt Olga is coming tomorrow.”
Soon Marie’s breathing deepened, but I lay staring into the darkness, my thoughts churning. Maybe Father Grigory is wrong and it isn’t going to be a disaster. Russia will triumph. Father Grigory doesn’t know everything.
• • •
Our aunt’s Saturday visit wasn’t like any of her earlier visits. She was flushed with excitement. Papa had changed the name of St. Petersburg, which was a German name, to Petrograd. “Much more patriotic,” he’d said, and Aunt Olga agreed.
“Talk about patriotism!” she remarked. “I’ve witnessed the most extraordinary sights over the past week: the thrilling sight of men going to war. Every day from early morning until after sunset, hundreds and hundreds of men marching down Nevsky Prospect to the Warsaw Station to board a train for the front. People walk beside them, cheering them on. They’re fighting for Holy Russia and for the tsar, Nicky!”
Papa nodded. “Yes, it’s such a stirring sight. I would have done anything in my power to avoid this war, but I am deeply moved by the dedication of the men.”
While they talked, I was sitting on the floor with my brother, playing with his toy soldiers, shoving them back and forth as he issued commands. But I was also listening to what the adults were saying.
“My Hussars have been called up,” said Aunt Olga. “The regiment is being sent to the front in the southwest. Kolya is going with them, of course.” She said it very matter-of-factly, but my ears perked up when I heard her mention Kolya, and I turned slightly in order to hear better. Alexei noticed—he always noticed if you weren’t focusing completely on him—and started to protest, but I shushed him.
“Of course,” Papa said. “It’s his duty.”
Her voice rose slightly. “Before he left, Colonel Kulikovsky told me that the junior officers were asking if they shouldn’t pack their dress uniforms for the victory parades. He told them the proper uniforms would be sent along later.”
I thought of what Gleb Botkin had said—The Germans don’t know how to fight! They only know how to make sausages! Yesterday he’d told us that his two older brothers, Dmitri and Yuri, were on their way to the front. Gleb was very proud of them and deeply disappointed that he was too young to fight.
Dmitri Pavlovich arrived for tea,
proudly wearing the Cross of St. George, a military honor, pinned to his chest. I hadn’t seen him for a long while, and I’m afraid I did grin too much when he was around, because later Tatiana remarked in her stern governess voice, “You make it so obvious that you have a crush on Dmitri.”
He had been at Stavka with Nikolai Nikolaevich, the commander-in-chief. “What a giant of a man!” Dmitri said enthusiastically. “He’s nearly seven feet tall. And such a commanding presence!”
“Appropriate for a commander,” Mama said sourly. She didn’t much like Uncle Nikolasha, and made no secret of it. Father Grigory didn’t trust him, she said.
Dmitri and Papa talked for a long while after the tea things had been cleared away—I don’t know about what—and I think he would have stayed longer had we not been expecting a visit from Father Grigory, the first he’d come since the crazy woman attacked him. Dmitri was one of the people who didn’t like Father Grigory, and he didn’t even try to hide his dislike. Naturally that offended Mama, who couldn’t bear to hear the slightest criticism of a man she believed could work miracles.
Father Grigory was very late arriving, and Mama began to fret. Papa, too. I wanted to see him and wished I could stay to overhear the conversation, but our parents decided that we should go to our rooms since the visit was going to be so late.
“Nobody ever keeps the tsar waiting!” Shura said as she brushed my hair for the night. “It’s the height of ill manners.” Shura was one more who didn’t like the starets, but she was careful not to say anything that would anger Mama.
We didn’t see Father Grigory that night, and so we have no idea if he tried to convince Papa that Russia was going to drown in blood. Whatever was said did not change Papa’s mind, and in the days that followed, he went calmly about his preparations to leave for Stavka. On the morning he was driven off in his motorcar, we all cried because our dear papa was going away. Mama cried most of all.
Then Anya moved from her little yellow cottage into rooms in our palace, to keep Mama’s spirits up while Papa was away.
CHAPTER 12
Changed Lives
TSARSKOE SELO, AUTUMN 1914
Almost overnight our lives changed completely.
Mama announced that it was her duty to provide care for the wounded. She developed a plan for turning the Catherine Palace, which she had never liked anyway, into a hospital. The Winter Palace in what was now called Petrograd and a couple of imperial palaces in Moscow became medical units to care for the wounded, with space set aside for the soldiers’ wives and mothers to stay when they came to visit. Mama sent our Dr. Botkin to Yalta to open hospitals on the estates of wealthy families. She also created smaller medical facilities called lazarets. Feodorovsky Gorodok, the village that Papa had built in Tsarskoe Selo to remind him of “old Russia,” became one of the lazarets. Then she organized special trains to bring the wounded men to the hospitals from the front.
I was amazed at whatever had come over Mama. Our mother, who had always spent most of the day reclining in her mauve boudoir, announced that she and Olga and Tatiana were going to become nurses and actually work in those hospitals. They would undergo two months of training by the Red Cross, with classes in the morning and actual duties in the wards in the afternoon. They would then become qualified as “sisters of mercy.”
“And what about Mashka and me?” I asked. “Can’t we become nurses, too?” I could not bear to be left out of what seemed such a great adventure.
“You girlies are too young to be full-fledged sisters of mercy,” Mama said firmly. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t both serve proudly and usefully. You will be patronesses at the lazaret at Feodorovsky Gorodok. That will give you plenty to do, and I’m sure you will accomplish a great deal of good.”
Once they were qualified, Mama and our older sisters put on long gray uniforms and white aprons with a big red cross on the chest and white wimples that covered the head and neck. You could hardly recognize them when they were in uniform, as they now were every day.
“In uniform, everybody is the same,” Tatiana said. “We’re not there as the empress and the grand duchesses. We’re there as Russian nurses.”
Mama was up and dressed at seven o’clock and on her way to the hospital at the Catherine Palace every morning at nine. She and Olga and Tatiana came home exhausted at the end of the day. They did really hard, awful work—cleaning bedsores and changing bandages and helping with the surgeries. Sometimes Mama assisted at as many as three surgeries, one right after the other, each lasting a couple hours.
“Sometimes the doctors have to cut off an arm or a leg without enough anesthetic,” Olga said, her face etched with sadness at the sights she had witnessed. “The doctors are so tired they can hardly stay on their feet. And yet every hour more trains arrive from the field hospitals at the front, more filthy, moaning men are carried in, and we clean them up for the nurses to examine and the doctors to operate on. It’s unbearable! Mama is so brave—she holds the cone over their noses and drips ether onto it to put them to sleep, but sometimes there isn’t enough ether and they scream in agony. And then she helps to carry away the mangled flesh or the amputated hand or arm—” My sister shuddered. “And the smell! You can’t imagine the smell, all those infected wounds.”
“I think I’d throw up,” I whispered.
Olga forced a wan smile. “At first I did,” she admitted. “I threw up more than once. But you get used to it after a while.”
“Some of them are screaming and praying to die,” Tatiana said. She had kicked off her shoes and was rolling down her stockings. They were spattered with something dark. “Then we sit with them while they’re dying. It’s the most awful thing you can imagine.” She shook her head, as though ridding herself of the terrible sights and sounds. “Oh, I do hope it will be over soon. But I’m afraid it won’t.”
Marie and I went daily to the lazaret. We didn’t have uniforms, and that was a disappointment—we were almost the only people in the whole imperial compound wearing ordinary clothes. I was glad that we didn’t have to witness grisly wounds and horrible surgeries. The wounded men in the lazarets had already been treated, and while they might have been suffering and in pain, most were able to talk and were glad for the company. When Alexei was able, we took him with us. The wounded soldiers seemed happy to see us and overjoyed to see the tsarevich. We helped the men write letters to their families—often Marie wrote the letters for them, because many were simple peasants who had never been taught to read or write. I especially liked reading to the men—they said I read very well, that I was a good actress and it was almost like being at a play. That was nice to hear, and I began to think that maybe, when the war was over, I would consider becoming an actress as well as an artist.
But there was a bad side to my work: Every day I visited wounded soldiers who in the morning were murmuring their thanks for my reading them letters they had received, letters full of love and longing, and who in the afternoon were dead, a white sheet pulled over their faces, and I’d had no chance to say good-bye. It was enough to break one’s heart, over and over. Suffering and death were all around me, and I never did get used to it.
It was easy now to have a chance to read Olga’s notebook without the risk of getting caught. Sometimes she even forgot to put it away. But there were times when I wished I hadn’t read it.
One must pity Mother. She works so hard at the hospital, spares herself nothing, no duty is beneath her. Some of her patients can’t believe the empress herself is actually there, sleeves rolled up. Most adore her, call for her, kiss her hand if they can. But there are many who despise her and make no secret of it, because she was born a German. Mother is Russian to the very depths of her soul, but they don’t know that, or don’t want to know it. And I’m afraid it’s not just a few ignorant soldiers who feel this way. Mother is a quiet person, and she has not won the hearts of the Russian people the way our grandmother has. The people truly adore Father, but they are suspicious of Mother and e
ven dislike her. She has done nothing to deserve that.
Poor Mama! She never hurt anyone, never meant to do anything but good. Reading it made me feel sorry for every naughty thing I ever thought of saying to my poor darling mother, and I cried.
• • •
Papa came home often from Stavka, but he never stayed long, especially when Alexei seemed to be doing well. We missed him awfully and took turns writing to him every evening, trying to find amusing things to tell him that would cheer him up. Sad and discouraging as life was during this time, some surprising things did happen. Tatiana may have actually fallen in love! The object of her affections was an officer named Dmitri Malama. He was seriously wounded, and she met him when he came under her care in the hospital. They began by talking about dogs. Tatiana told the lieutenant that she thought French bulldogs were irresistibly adorable, and the next thing we knew, a French bulldog puppy arrived at Alexander Palace. Tatiana named him Ortino. Mama’s dog, Eira, took great exception to this new rival, growling and barking. Olga’s cat, Vaska, chased the newcomer around the palace, the two of them knocking things over and getting into all sorts of mischief.
Tatiana doted on that little dog, but he was not well trained and my sister kept a little shovel handy to clean up his messes. I enjoyed writing to Papa about Ortino, but I thought it was better not to say anything about Tatiana possibly being in love.
Everyone was so busy helping with the war effort that we almost neglected to celebrate Olga’s nineteenth birthday. Chef Kharitonov reminded us that he was preparing an excellent dinner for her with all her favorite dishes—he kept records for all of us—but there was no music, no dancing, no invited guests. Then she rushed off to a meeting. Besides their nursing duties, both Olga and Tatiana had organized committees to help the wounded soldiers, and they often had meetings to attend.
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