Anastasia's Secret (10 page)

Despite their disagreement, we all had dinner together that night. From Grandmama’s expression and lively conversation no one would ever have known the real reason for her visit. Only Papa gave any hint that there had been the slightest unpleasantness. He seemed remote from us, and even if I hadn’t heard their conversation, it was easy enough to guess from long experience that he had received a stinging lecture from her.

Grandmama wasn’t the only one who tried to talk Papa into granting some of the Duma’s requests. The British ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, visited Papa one day. He had always been a good friend to Mama and Papa, and they liked him well enough to invite him to family occasions once in a while. We all liked him too. He was funny and enjoyed playing tricks on us. He also always let us win when we played draughts or cards—a sure way to recommend himself to us.

But that day when he arrived and was shown to Papa’s study, he didn’t stay very long. That was quite unusual. Normally he would have been asked to tea at least. What’s more, he left without even greeting Mama. I couldn’t imagine what had happened.

After supper, it all became clear.

“I had a visit from Sir George today,” Papa said, putting his napkin on the table and pushing his chair back a little—a sign to the waiters to clear the dishes. “I regret to say that, to my complete surprise, he is no longer loyal. He admitted to me quite brazenly that he treats with our enemies!”

“Surely he has not been conspiring with the Germans!” Mama said, her hand clutching the diamond pendant at her throat.

“Not our enemies abroad,” Papa said, “our enemies at home. He admitted as much to me. He has had discussions with the most radical factions of the Duma. How can I trust him anymore?”

A gossiping, ambitious society hostess might well exaggerate and be untrustworthy. But Sir George? I exchanged a look with Mashka. We liked Sir George. I could not believe that he would deliberately mislead Papa or work against our family.

After that, he never came to visit us again. I was sorry. It felt like a door closing.

I think of that winter with such a mixture of feelings. All around us confusing and terrible things were happening. But within me, in my body, I was finally outgrowing my childishness. I began to develop a womanly shape, although the clothes I still wore hid it. It was almost as if Grigory’s hands themselves had been prophetic, reaching not for what had been there at the time, but for what he somehow knew was soon to blossom.

Papa was away at the front, and in one of the letters he wrote to Mama, he gave permission for us to bathe in his special bathing tub. This was an enormous treat, because his tub was more like an indoor pool, set in a room like a Turkish bath. Olga and Tatiana each had a turn, then Mashka and I took ours together—there was more than enough room.

We didn’t often share baths, so we hadn’t seen each other naked for a long time. I had become accustomed to my own new body, but somehow had preserved a memory of Mashka as a little girl with smooth skin and tiny pink nipples on her flat chest. When we removed our robes to get into the water, we each stopped for a moment and stared. I could see by her eyes that she was just as startled at me as I was at her. She had developed round hips that reminded me of some of the paintings in our palaces by Rubens and other masters. She was still a little plump, but in a completely different way than she had been as a child.

“Look at you, Nastya!” Mashka said. “When did you become such a woman?”

“You just didn’t notice because I’m still wearing children’s clothing.” I couldn’t help smiling. I knew my breasts were nicely rounded and I was just developing actual hips. I didn’t quite have Mashka’s curves, but that didn’t matter.

Of course, once we dipped ourselves in the warm, scented water of Papa’s pool, we were just like fish, diving beneath the surface and turning somersaults underwater, seeing each other and holding our breath until we had to push off the tiled bottom and break through to the air again. How we laughed! We all wrote to Papa to thank him for allowing us such a treat. For me, it was worth everything to have at least one member of my family recognize that I had changed. I was no longer a little girl.

Mashka must have said something to Mama, because the very next morning Mme Zanotti came to our bedroom followed by a maid, and began emptying my wardrobe of all my clothes. “You’re to have these old ones of Olga’s for now,” she said, laying out a few skirts, blouses, and sweaters. “A new dress and a new skirt are to be made for you.”

She took my measurements as I stood barefoot on the cold floor of the room, and as quickly as she had come in, she was gone again. I smiled at Mashka. A maid helped me wind my hair into a knot and put it up, instead of letting it hang down below my waist. When we met the others for breakfast in our dining room, they all pretended this new way of dressing was entirely normal. I couldn’t help casting my eye around us all sitting there, looking like young women together.

But that was one brief pause in the looming crisis. And as I had always expected in my heart—I’m not entirely certain why—it came by means of Rasputin. I said I never saw him again after that time he visited. And I didn’t. But we certainly heard of him in the most distressing way.

We had all been protected from knowing the true depth of feeling against Rasputin among not only the public, but also among the members of the government and the nobility. This tide of bad feeling had reached a fever pitch—and although I was wary of Rasputin, I had no idea to what lengths people might go to end his supposed influence over Mama and Papa.

I found out the details much later from Sasha.

Soon after Christmas, Prince Yusupov, one of the highest-ranking nobles, and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, one of my father’s own cousins, were joined by a man called Purishkevich, who was a member of the Duma. Together they lured Rasputin to the prince’s house, saying there would be a party. Grigory believed them and as was apparently his usual practice, drank a great deal. He did not know that they had poisoned his wine. Unfortunately, the poison they used had an antidote: alcohol. Rasputin still lived. When they realized their first plan did not work, they shot him several times, and then threw him in a hole in the Neva, which was frozen over. His body surfaced several days later. Apparently even the many shots fired at him failed to kill him, as he was frozen in an attitude as if trying to make the sign of the cross.

Anya was the one who brought us the news initially, on a day when Mama was receiving ladies and hearing their requests for help with their charities. I don’t know how Mama continued on, but she did not allow herself to grieve until we were behind closed doors, just the family and Anya.

“It is all hopeless now! My poor boy! Only our friend could cure him!” Mama wailed and wept on Anya’s shoulder. We all tried to comfort her, but she would not be consoled. “You know, he told me that when he went, that would be the end of us as well. And I believe him! All is lost. No one else can intervene with God for our safety.”

Tatiana brought Mama a cup of tea. Mama all at once pushed herself away from Anya and grasped her shoulders. “My dear Anninka! You are not safe. If they have murdered Rasputin and they think you were his agent, they will try to murder you!”

“Hush, Alex,” Anya said. “What would they want with a poor crippled woman like me?”

“Humor me, Anya,” Mama said. “You must move into the palace, for your safety. There have been threats, you know, against all of us.”

I could not help myself and gasped. I had not heard before of any such threats. Mashka covered up my gasp with a cough.

“The murderers must be punished! They must be put to death!” I had never heard Mama sound so fierce. But she believed completely that only Grigory could keep Alexei healthy. And now he was gone.

I felt curiously revolted by the whole idea of his death, and yet also free, as if some vague shadow over our life had been removed. Although I had never experienced Grigory’s faith in the way my mother had, I had to admit that there was something of the sorcerer about him, that he could do nothing and somehow Alyosha would get better. This was enough to cloud any feeling I had that his death was good. What, indeed, would we do now when Alexei hurt himself or had an attack?

In the end, the murderers were only banished, not executed. Mama was very angry, but Papa refused to sentence such high-ranking nobles to death. With Papa’s blessing, Mama had Rasputin’s body brought to be buried near the chapel at the Alexander Palace. She and Anya went often to his grave to pray.

That may have been one of Papa’s last true decisions as tsar. Perhaps there were numerous smaller matters he had to attend to, and for a while he was still the commander-in-chief of the armies. But no other gesture remains so fixed in my mind. Mama was right. It was the turning point.

January changed the year to 1917. The year of my coming-of-age. In other times, it would have been joyful. But 1917 became a year I thought would never end. It began with terrible shortages of food in the cities. The railway lines and all available transport had been concentrated on the war effort, and Prime Minister Protopopov had mismanaged the food distribution terribly, or so Papa said. But Russia was enormous, and to the people nearly starving in the streets of Petrograd and Moscow, a far-off war with Germany seemed a much less pressing concern than filling their bellies. We too limited our own rations, and gave what relief we could—which wasn’t a great deal. The Americans had entered the war, yet in the end we didn’t get very much news of them. We had troubles at home that eclipsed all other matters. Troubles very near to home indeed.

C
HAPTER
13

I have to see you. It’s important—for your safety and that of your family. Meet me by the oak tree at noon
.

He didn’t sign the note that came to my hands from a scullery maid’s, who had been given it by an undergardener, who had probably received it from someone else. He didn’t sign it, but I knew it was from Sasha. My heart leaped at first. I hadn’t seen him for nearly a year. And that year had been one in which I had changed so much. I knew some of the guards had come back, the reserves, to help with the unrest in the streets. Perhaps he had come back to stay for good.

After I got over my initial joy that I would see him, I thought about what the note actually said. What could he know that would have to do with our safety? And why was our safety suddenly such a concern?

In the tense, preoccupied atmosphere of the Alexander Palace, where nothing was quite the same since Rasputin’s murder, it was not difficult for me to get away at the appointed time. As always, because I was the youngest grand duchess no one paid much attention to me. The secret police kept their unceasing vigil primarily on Mama, even following her to the chapel for prayers. I knew because we children had made a game of figuring out which of the servants or visitors were from the Okhrana. It had been Alyosha’s idea, that game, when he was convalescing after one of his attacks and couldn’t get up and play. We would all report to him what and who we saw and construct our little counterespionage. I got rather good at spotting the Okhrana, which made me think they weren’t very good at their job.

This childish game also helped me avoid being seen by the secret police, and I think was partly responsible for my ability to keep my secret about Sasha. To give myself a reason to walk in the garden on a cold, dreary day, I pretended that I was looking for a place to build a snowman that Alyosha would be able to see from his playroom windows—which happened to be on the opposite side of the palace from Mama and Papa’s suite of rooms.

As I left the palace and walked out of the courtyard itself, I told myself not to run like a schoolgirl. If I wanted Sasha to view me differently, he would have to see that I could walk in a dignified and purposeful manner.

I saw him before he saw me. I paused, just to look at him for a moment. He appeared taller, and his face was set in a serious expression that made him look as though he had seen many terrible things in his life—which I knew he had. But somehow being with him erased all that for me. I wanted to cry looking at him then. Only the merest hint of the boy with the balalaika remained inside his crisp, clean uniform and erect stance. I lifted my chin and walked forward, putting a smile on my face. “Sasha,” I said, “So good to see you.”

He turned toward me, at first with a look of complete blankness and then his eye widened in surprise, and a smile spread over his features. There was the Sasha I knew! “Nastya! Or should I say Anastasia Nicholaevna?” He bowed gallantly. I couldn’t help laughing.

“Still Nastya, I assure you!”

I stopped about an arm’s length in front of him. He removed his cap, and I put out my hand to shake his. He took it, but instead of shaking it, he turned it over and kissed the patch of skin just above my glove. “I’m sorry, but I can’t get over …”

Sasha was at a loss for words! I was so pleased. I knew I had changed, but of course it was a gradual change to me.

“Did anyone see you coming? Did you tell anyone?” Sasha asked, shaking himself out of his momentary stupor.

“No, of course not,” I said. He still held my hand. “I’m delighted to see you, and glad that you are safe,” I said, “which I would never have known for all that you bothered to write to me!” I jerked my hand away in pretended pique, but really, the contact with him began to make me feel a little nervous, uncertain of myself.

He immediately reached out and took both my hands in his, gripping them so hard that the ring I wore on the middle finger of my right hand dug into me. I ignored the pain.

“Nastya, there is no time to play games. I have made some new friends, friends who are not of one mind with the tsar.” I noticed then that his face was leaner, sharper. And I realized that in seeing him again, I hardly noticed the patch over his eye. It had simply become one of his features, as much a part of him as his nose or his hair.

I was so caught up in taking in all the ways that Sasha had changed that I realized I hadn’t comprehended what he had said. “Are you saying that you are a traitor?” I asked, wondering who these people he’d been talking to were.

“No! No. Everyone who disagrees with the way your father is running this country is not a traitor. I’m no Bolshevik. But I am close enough to others like them to see what is coming.”

The fear in his eyes made me more attentive. He had something important to say.

“Your father will be asked to abdicate in favor of the tsarevich.”

“Abdicate?” The word simply didn’t exist in our vocabulary. Could Papa ever give up his empire? It was unthinkable! “He will never agree! He will never let Russia go.”

“It is the only way to avoid civil war. And that would be a disaster for the war against Germany. All would truly be lost.” Sasha lowered his voice to an intense whisper and pulled me closer to him so that I could hear.

I forced myself to think about what Sasha said, not the nearness of him, or the smell of his freshly laundered uniform. If Papa were really faced with such a choice, what would he decide? I felt that he would say no. But what then? Perhaps Sasha had got it wrong.

“If he agrees, the tsarevich will be a constitutional monarch, with a regent who is sympathetic to the reformists’ cause. If he doesn’t agree, the Bolsheviks will strike. There will be anarchy. The only choice is the Duma if we are to preserve Russia as we know and love her.”

This was a great deal for me to take in, but it made a certain sense out of the mass of conflicting information we had gotten in bits and pieces over the last months. Perhaps Sir George had talked to my papa about this, and that was why he had been so angry. All those notes and threats against my mother—were they also related to the difficulties that had such a dire solution? “What can I do?” I asked. “Papa pays no attention to me. He wouldn’t expect me to know anything.”

“Of course you can do nothing. You must simply promise me to be prepared. If your papa does not do exactly as they ask him, matters could take a turn greatly for the worse. And then you must allow me to try to save you.”

I couldn’t help smiling. What would Sasha need to save me from? “I assure you, there are guards enough to protect us here!”

“Guards that are loyal?”

“Of course!” I responded, angry that he should even question them. Many of the guards had known us since our infancy. We sometimes played with their children. We gave them presents at Christmas and Easter, and acknowledged their name days.

“Well, nonetheless, whatever happens I shall do my best to be nearby, whatever games I must play to do it.”

“What could happen? Papa will do what’s best, I’m sure.”

Sasha looked at me with such sadness. “You’re almost a woman now.” He looked me up and down. “And yet, still such a little girl.”

I blushed and looked at the ground. He let go of both my hands and took one only, in a companionable, brotherly way. “Do you still have my balalaika?” he asked.

“Of course I do! Did you think I would give it away?”

He smiled. “No. I hope you still play it.” He began to lead me toward the main path in the garden that would take me back to the palace, and him to his barracks. I felt inexpressibly sad, as if something important had gone unsaid, and we would never again have a chance to say it.

I tried to dispel that sadness and take the familiar, teasing tone I always used with him. “I do. I’ve become quite good, in fact,” I said, smiling. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m better than you now.”

But instead of pinching me or responding with a challenge, as he might have done once, he became serious again and stopped me, just before we would step on the broad avenue where everyone would be able to see us. “I’ll tell you what. If you are in real danger and you need me, send a note through one of the servants to the barracks, saying only that you want to return the instrument you borrowed, and I’ll know.”

“Would I have to give it back then?” I asked, looking up at him impishly.

“Promise me,” he answered, taking both my hands in his again, looking as if he wished to say something more. But instead, he just said, “Adieu,” and turned away. I watched him until he turned a corner, then went back in to do some more knitting.

Papa returned to Tsarskoe Selo after the New Year. He looked thin, tired, and ill. It was too much for him to try to command the armies and deal with the troubles in Petrograd and Moscow. We tried to divert him as much as we could. At least his presence cheered Mama up and took many burdens off her shoulders. Ministers constantly streamed into his study, leaving him alone hardly at all. But in the evening Papa still came to take tea with us.

Anya—who had obeyed my mother’s request and moved into the Alexander Palace—did her best to lighten everyone’s hearts, and I began to alter my opinion of her a little. She included me in all her diversions, making me think that her previous neglect had possibly not been purposeful, just absent-minded. After all, it was Anya who gave me Jimmy, my King Charles spaniel—even if he did make a mess everywhere, and I had to clean it up. Anya was sensitive, just not very intelligent.

Nonetheless, without Anya there, we would have been much duller. She had musical evenings in her apartments to which we were all invited, along with Lili Dehn, Nastinka, and some officers from the
Standart
, Papa’s yacht. We all tried to act as though everything was as it had always been. She invited a Rumanian band that entertained us with its multiple balalaikas, but every song they performed was so sad, reminding us of a Russia that seemed very far away just then. I couldn’t help thinking of our holidays in the Crimea, how carefree they seemed, how happy the Tartars were and what amusements we had. Something told me those days were gone forever. I’m not much one for crying, but even I felt an unaccustomed tug at my throat while the musicians played. As for Mama and Papa, they grew sadder and sadder by the moment.

After that, Anya invited livelier musicians to play, or organized evenings of bezique or faro. At the times when Papa was there, we felt like a family again.

But even with all our effort, we could not ignore the constant rumblings of disquiet outside the palace. Olga asked Papa about his command of the armies one evening, and we all expected him to say that he would soon be returning to Mogilev with Alyosha. But instead he said, “I have been advised … I believe … that it is more important for me to stay here at Tsarskoe Selo than return to the front. Much is happening with the government, and we have better men in command now. It’s vital that we have the unflagging support of all Russians in order to vanquish our foreign foes.”

We took him at his word, and expected that he would be with us for a long time. Mama was visibly relieved, and even regained some of her strength to go and visit the hospitals. But one afternoon after dinner Papa came into Mama’s boudoir, where I sat reading while Isa was taking instructions from Mama about the
sklady
on the southern front.

Papa looked annoyed and a little confused. “They insist I depart immediately for Mogilev!” he exclaimed, waving a telegram. He paced back and forth, talking all the while. “I cannot understand what is suddenly so urgent that I must leave matters here in a dangerous—”

“Hush, Nicky!” my mother said, glancing in my direction. I had looked up, but I immediately pretended to pay the most rapt attention to the book whose pages I had only been skimming before.

“Nonetheless, it is a bad time. But I suppose I must go.”

Mama sighed and reached out her hand to him. “Aren’t you the tsar, darling? Can’t you give the orders?”

He frowned. “I’m not obeying orders. I’m responding to the situation, which is clear.”

Mama stood and approached Papa. “Don’t stay away a moment longer than you have to,” she said, drawing him to her. He kissed the top of her head.

I often thought of that moment in the coming weeks.