“Nicky knows about it. He’s ordered troops from the garrison here in Tsarskoe Selo to settle things. We have nothing to worry about.”
Mama sounded completely confident. Maybe Uncle Sandro was wrong. Papa would solve the problem. I told myself to stop worrying.
But as the day went on, the news kept getting worse: The soldiers garrisoned at Tsarskoe Selo had defected. Many other units were going over to the revolutionaries, and the railway workers would not let any new troops arrive.
So maybe Uncle Sandro was right! I started worrying again.
Lili’s son, Titi, was at home in Petrograd with his governess. “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” she said. Lili was like Mama, trying to put the best light on the situation, but I could see the anxiety in her eyes.
She decided not to try to get back to Petrograd that day but to stay the night with us. To keep us both occupied, we worked on a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces spread out around us on the carpet. Mama went out to talk privately to the grand marshal. “Count Benckendorff will know exactly what to do.”
Most of the puzzle seemed to be either sky or ocean, some shade of blue or gray. I tried a piece here, a piece there. Progress was slow. Mama came back, dropped into a chair nearby, and watched us. She looked exhausted. She was caring not only for three sick children, but also for Anya, and Anya seemed to require more of her attention than the others did.
“How are you feeling, Nastya?” she asked. I assured her that I felt fine. “No headache or sore throat or fever?”
“I’m fine, Mama, truly.”
“I want you to get plenty of rest,” she said. “Be a good girlie and go to bed now, please.”
I started to protest. I wanted to stay and listen to the conversation, but Lili shook her head, raising one reproving eyebrow, and I dragged myself away. Mama was probably going to tell Lili something—something important—that she didn’t want me to hear.
I went looking for Shura. My governess spent a lot of time with Monsieur Gilliard—I suspected they were in love—and our tutor would no doubt have learned something. He always did. When I found her warming my nightgown by the stove, her eyes were puffy from crying. She helped me undress and put on the cozy nightgown. I sat down at my dressing table, and she began to brush my hair. “Please, Shura,” I begged, “tell me what you know.”
More long, slow strokes of the brush. “Well, I can tell you this much: Your papa ordered a train to take all of you away, but your mama wouldn’t even consider leaving, because so many of you are sick.” Shura paused, brush in midair. “She says she will wait for your papa to come home. She’s sure he’ll be here soon.”
“It’s serious, isn’t it?” I asked her reflection in the mirror.
“Yes, dear child, it’s serious.”
I spun around and faced her. “Shura, why do so many people hate us?”
She stepped behind me and continued brushing to avoid meeting my eyes. “It’s true, many people are angry. But many others are devoted to the emperor and the empress, and they—we—will remain loyal, no matter what.” Suddenly the brush fell from her hand. “I beg your pardon, Anastasia Nikolaevna,” she sobbed, and rushed out of the room.
I picked up the brush and considered what to do. Marie’s bed, opposite mine, was still empty. Where was she?
I wished I could talk to Olga—she seemed to understand so much more than I did—but Mama had given instructions that I must not go into her room. I’d had no chance to look at the notebook since she’d fallen ill. Probably, I thought, she’d been feeling too bad to write in it. It was possible that she didn’t even know what was going on—about the angry crowds in Petrograd, about Papa wanting us to leave on a train and Mama refusing. But maybe I was wrong and she’d managed to scribble a few lines.
Disobeying Mama’s orders, I pulled a robe over my nightgown and crept from my room to Olga and Tatiana’s room and quietly opened the door. A small lamp with a scarf thrown over the shade glowed in the corner. I stepped closer to Olga’s bed.
“Olya?” I whispered. “Olya, are you awake?”
No answer, and no sound from Tatiana either, except for their ragged breathing.
When my eyes had adjusted to the dim light, I could make out the row of books on the shelf next to Olga’s bed. I counted four from the left, its usual position on the shelf, and slid out the notebook with the leather cover that she had once again disguised as a book of devotions. Concealing it beneath my robe, I hurried back to my own bedroom. In the minute or two I’d been gone, Marie had come into our room. She was sitting at her desk, writing a letter—probably to her Kolya, who was now at the front.
“Where have you been, Nastya?”
“Oh, just walking around.” It sounded so stupid, even to me, she would have been foolish to believe it, but she nodded and went back to her letter.
I shoved the notebook under my pillow. I was pretty sure Marie hadn’t noticed, but now I’d have to wait to read it until she’d fallen asleep or gone to the lavatory.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long. Unfortunately, though, I had taken the wrong book—it actually was a book of devotions! If I’d been sensible, I would have spent the rest of the evening reading the prayers. Instead, I lay in bed, maddeningly frustrated and trying to imagine what Olga had done with her secret notebook. Had she hidden it in a different place because she suspected I’d been reading it?
• • •
Papa’s telegram had arrived late the previous evening, after I’d been sent to bed. He was on his way home. But now—it was the next morning—Mama had been trying to reach him and could not. The telegrams she’d sent, one after another, were all returned, undeliverable.
“There’s no way for him to communicate with us from the train,” Mama said fretfully. “If only I had some way to find out where he is!”
The hours ticked by. Count Benckendorff reported that the railway lines around Petrograd had been seized by revolutionaries. Nervous servants reluctantly passed along rumors that a horde of drunken soldiers was coming to seize “the German woman” and “the heir.” In every new rumor the size of the mob grew bigger. Was it just a few dozen drunken soldiers or a mob of hundreds or even thousands? No one knew for sure.
I was really frightened, but Mama seemed unruffled. “We must not be afraid,” she told everyone, trying to calm them. “We are in God’s hands, and when the emperor arrives, he will know exactly what to do and all will be well.”
Count Benckendorff called for fifteen hundred men from the Marine Guard to defend Alexander Palace. Hour after hour we waited anxiously for the revolutionary mob to attack, but when the sun set at around four o’clock that afternoon, nothing had happened. Papa had still not arrived and there had been no word from him. The bitter cold deepened. The guards built fires to warm themselves, and a kitchen was set up outdoors to feed them hot food. This homely scene was reassuring—these were men who had been our guards on the Standart.
Marie and I watched from the window, breathing clearings on the frosted panes. She looked at me carefully. “Are you getting sick?” she asked.
“Of course not,” I lied. In fact, I did have a little a headache, a scratchy-feeling throat, maybe a slight fever. “I’m perfectly fine. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m fine, too,” Marie said. Maybe she was also lying.
Then Mama asked Marie to go out with her to speak with the guards. “To encourage them,” Mama explained. “To thank them for their loyalty.”
Marie went for her coat and warm boots. “I’ll stay here,” I said.
My head started to throb. I wanted to curl up in my bed under a warm blanket, but I made myself stay at the window as Mama and Marie, swathed in thick furs, woolen scarves, and gloves, stepped out into the palace courtyard. Count Benckendorff, a stiff old soldier, went with them. Some of the guards were kneeling in the snow with their rifles raised, and more guards stood behind them, also ready to fire. Mama and Marie walked up and down between the rows of soldiers, stopping often
to talk to them.
When my mother and my sister came back inside, stamping their feet and blowing on their numb fingers, Mama looked almost happy. “They’re our friends!” she exulted. “I’ve told the officers to allow the men into the palace to warm themselves with hot tea.”
That night I slept fitfully. I kept hearing gunshots, and when I crawled out of bed the next morning, I discovered that a huge gun had been set up in the courtyard. What a surprise that would be for Papa! Mama kept assuring us that he would certainly arrive that morning. Everything would be better once he was here.
But still he didn’t come, and everything was getting steadily worse. The soldiers who had been protecting us began to desert, going over to the other side. The electricity and water had been cut off. Without electricity, the elevator didn’t operate, and Mama, whose rooms were on the first floor, had to be half-carried up the stairs to our bedrooms on the second floor, where Olga and Tatiana and Alexei lay ill. We lit candles in our rooms, but the halls were dark as a moonless night. Servants broke the ice on the pond and melted it for cooking and drinking.
I willed myself not to get sick, but I knew that I was. Marie, too, looked feverish.
Some of our servants who had gone into Petrograd before the trains were stopped managed to make their way back to Tsarskoe Selo. A few borrowed horses; others walked, arriving cold and exhausted with blisters on their feet. They came to Mama’s room to show her the printed leaflets they said were being handed out all over Petrograd.
“I do not believe it!” Mama cried, and shredded a leaflet into pieces. “I will not believe it! It’s nothing but a vicious rumor.”
Marie picked up a leaflet and read it. Weeping, she handed it to me.
Angry red headlines announced that Tsar Nikolai Alexandrovich had abdicated, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich had renounced his claim to the throne, and a Provisional Government had been established.
My mind was fuzzy. Perhaps it was the fever. I couldn’t think properly. Abdicated? What did it mean, exactly? What had Uncle Misha to do with it? What was a Provisional Government? Papa was the government, wasn’t he? Papa was the tsar!
Except that now, if what was in the leaflets was true, he wasn’t the tsar anymore. How could that be?
In a voice thick with tears, Lili tried to explain. “If it’s true, it means that your father has given up his throne, relinquished his power. He is no longer the emperor, the tsar.”
“But what about Lyosha? Isn’t he the tsarevich? Isn’t he supposed to be the next tsar, after Papa?”
“Yes, we all hoped and prayed that he would be. I don’t know exactly what happened, but perhaps your papa understood that Lyosha is too young to be tsar, and he is often ill, and perhaps your papa then decided that it would be better to pass the crown to his younger brother, who is next in line after Lyosha. Then, for whatever reason—perhaps he was forced to do so—Mikhail Alexandrovich also gave up his claim. And now some sort of government is taking over.”
“But maybe it isn’t even true!” I insisted. “You’ve only read a leaflet, a meaningless piece of paper! That doesn’t make it true, does it?”
Lili shook her head, dabbing at her eyes. “I wish I could agree with you,” she said.
Oh, if only Papa would come and make it right!
That evening Uncle Pavel, father of my cousin Dmitri, who had helped murder Father Grigory, came to see Mama. Lili and I were in the next room, keeping our hands busy with knitting. We’d abandoned the jigsaw puzzle, but by then I was feeling too poorly to keep my mind on my needles, and I kept dropping stitches. In the next room voices rose and fell. After a while, silence—Uncle Pavel must have gone.
The silence continued, and Lili murmured that perhaps she should go check on Mama, make sure she was all right.
Then the door opened, and Mama just stood there. I cannot describe the look of agony on her face. Lili jumped up and ran to catch her before she could collapse.
“Abdicated!” Mama cried. “It’s true! He has abdicated!”
Abdicated. I understood now what it meant. Papa was no longer the Tsar of All the Russias.
I guessed what Mama was thinking. If I die or you desert me, you will lose your son and your crown within six months, Father Grigory had often told her. She believed that. Now at least part of his prediction seemed to be coming true.
“Nicky telephoned,” Mama said brokenly. “Just now. We spoke a little.”
Lili helped Mama to a chair and knelt beside her. Mama was making a great effort to pull herself together. “It’s God’s will,” she said in a faint and trembling voice. “God brings this to us in order to save Russia, and that’s all that matters.” She swallowed hard. “And my poor darling Nicky! He’s back at Mogilev. The train was stopped at Pskov, and that’s where he . . . where he signed the papers. And I’m not there with him, to help him, to console him.”
She waved us away. Her hand was shaking. “I need to be alone for a little,” she said. How pale she looked! Then she added, “And Lili . . . Nastya . . . say nothing to the other children just now, will you? They’re so sick, they shouldn’t be disturbed.”
Lili nodded, I did, too, and we quietly left the room. Before the door closed, I heard my mother’s wrenching sobs.
My head was pounding, and I felt weak with fever. I could scarcely think, but it was slowly beginning to sink in—if Papa was no longer tsar, then Mama was not the tsaritsa, and Alexei was not the tsarevich. I supposed that now my sisters and I were not grand duchesses, but simply girls like any others. Overnight we had become an ordinary family. An extraordinary ordinary family.
“What’s going to happen now, Lili?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I simply don’t know.”
And then we, too, clutching each other’s hands, began to cry, and I cried until someone—maybe it was Shura—carried me off to bed.
CHAPTER 17
A “Normal Routine”
TSARSKOE SELO, SPRING 1917
A man in uniform with rows of medals parading across his chest arrived at the palace and introduced himself: General Kornilov, commander of the military in Petrograd. The general spoke politely to Mama. He was there to inform her that she was under house arrest. Papa had already been arrested at Mogilev.
“The former tsar will arrive tomorrow,” Kornilov said. “He, of course, will also be under house arrest. I shall see to it that everything is done to keep you as safe and comfortable as possible.” A British cruiser was already on its way to Murmansk, he said, to pick up our entire family and take us to England, as soon as we children had recovered from the measles and were well enough to travel.
There was more from the general: Mama’s ladies-in-waiting and Papa’s gentlemen were permitted to stay—and also be under house arrest—or they could leave, but if they chose to go, they could not return. Most of the members of Papa’s and Mama’s suite quickly left. Many of the servants fled, too.
Anya stayed, of course, as well as Baroness Buxhoeveden, Count Benckendorff and his wife, and Monsieur Gilliard. Dr. Botkin sent Gleb and Tatiana to live with the grandmother of close friends and promised to remain with us. So did Lili Dehn.
“But what about Titi?” Mama asked.
“He’s with Anna, my maid,” Lili said. “She’ll do anything for him. And I have asked my father to come from Crimea to look after them until I return.”
It was very late when the general and his aides had gone. All the doors to Alexander Palace were locked, except for the main entrance and another entrance near the kitchen. Guards stood at both doors. We were prisoners, but we didn’t feel it yet, because now all of us were sick. I, too, had come down with measles. Marie had developed pneumonia in addition to measles. Tatiana and I both had painful ear infections, and Tatiana seemed quite deaf.
When a motorcar arrived from the train station early the next morning, no church bells rang to greet the tsar who was no longer tsar. Mama met Papa alone—we were too sick to go down—and a lit
tle while later he came to our rooms to see us. When he leaned down and kissed me, his mustache bristling against my check, I threw my arms around his neck and hugged him with all my strength. My dearest papa was home at last.
• • •
The soldiers who’d been assigned to guard us were scandalous. They weren’t like the soldiers Marie was so fond of—not at all like her Kolya, who had not been heard from in months. These men didn’t bother to shave or comb their hair, their boots were filthy, they went about with their jackets unbuttoned. Worse, they roamed through the palace, peering into our rooms and handling our things without permission or any sense of decency. When Dr. Botkin came to check on his patients, to listen to our hearts and look into our throats and our ears, the soldiers walked right into our bedrooms to watch. Dr. Botkin shooed them out, but they stood in the doorway, gawking at us and making rude comments.
The soldiers were not the only ones to behave disgracefully. Since Alexei had been a tiny boy, he had depended on two loyal sailor-attendants, Nagorny and Derevenko, assigned to keep him as safe as possible. For years those sailors, who were once part of the crew of the Standart, had done everything for my brother, patiently distracting him, amusing him—anything to prevent him from getting hurt. Now one of the sailors, Derevenko, turned viciously against him. Anya saw Derevenko slouching in a chair and shouting orders at Alexei: “Bring me this!” “Do that, and be quick about it!” “Who do you think you are?”
Alexei must have thought it was some sort of stupid game, and he hustled around, trying to do what he’d been told. Anya told Papa what she’d witnessed, and when Papa confronted Derevenko, the disgruntled sailor stormed out. None of us could understand it. Had Derevenko been seething with resentment all this time, and no one knew it? How many others were there like him? Nagorny was furious at Derevenko’s boorish behavior and gave his word that he would stay.
Papa was amazed by the behavior of the soldiers. “I’m shocked. I know of General Kornilov—he was a prisoner of the Austrians until he escaped last summer and returned to duty. He’s been twice awarded the Order of St. George and several other medals. Not the sort of man I would have expected to allow his men to exhibit such complete lack of discipline. I shall certainly speak to him the next time he comes here.”
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