Anastasia's Secret (14 page)

Despite my wish to get my task over with as quickly as possible, my early morning and disturbed night’s sleep made me so tired that I could hardly keep my eyes open. I lay awake as long as I could, mentally going over the plan of the gardens: the ponds, still frozen but not safe enough to walk on; the route past the great Catherine palace, which I assumed was still partly a hospital caring for wounded soldiers; the ways out of the park and into the town, all with locked gates no doubt guarded by a soldier with a rifle. We had gone in the direction of Alexandrovsky Village. I remembered that at least. But it had been summer, and now it was barely spring. Would I recognize the place, and at night too?

C
HAPTER
17

The next few nights proved equally impossible. Mama hardly slept, although she was always tired, and sometimes our games of bezique would go on until past midnight. I did take care to look out of the windows, though, and try to see how the guard was set. I noticed that it was changed at around eleven at night, and during the day at seven in the morning and three in the afternoon. That meant that the guard probably changed at around three in the morning too, because I noticed that the same guards I saw at night were not on duty when I looked out before seven. So I would have to do my exploring between eleven at night and three in the morning.

Planning for my nocturnal expedition took my mind off the annoying reality of life. Each day, some new privation or restriction was imposed upon us. First our running water was cut off, then our electricity. We did everything by candlelight in the evening, and had to have water brought in from the ponds and heated in the kitchens to wash. We dared not complain. The investigation into Mama’s supposed criminal activities was still going on in Petrograd, and we were all afraid that if we did not cooperate and keep ourselves quietly out of the way, she or one of the others would be hauled off to prison, perhaps to the same horrid place Anya had been taken to.

Where our evenings after supper used to be spent only with the family, the lack of comfort and the uncertain circumstances made Mama open the gathering to everyone who remained: all the remaining maids of honor, Prince, Dolgorukov, Count Benckendorff, General Tatischev, Colonel Grooten, Zhilik, and Trina. We sat in the flickering candlelight, some trying to read, others sewing, and always a game of bezique.

One night, I was simply too restless to sit at the table and play cards. It may have been the dancing shadows cast by the candles that made the room seem to shift and breathe around us. Whatever it was, I went instead to the piano and read through some waltzes quietly, letting Tatiana take a turn at the card game. She didn’t like it very much because she always lost, but I knew Mama wanted her to play. She seemed to crave the company of my older sister. They were very alike in both looks and temperament. Tatiana always knew what Mama wanted, as if they were connected in some way no one else could see.

I paused to look for another volume of music—something light and cheerful, like Mendelssohn or Schubert—when Papa spoke.

“So, Marie will be able to leave the sickroom tomorrow, now that her skin is healing.”

“I’m so glad!” I said. But at the same time I was also troubled. I would have my beloved sister back with me, yet I had not succeeded at all in locating the gate. If I did not do it tonight, I might never be able to.

Fortunately, our evening broke up early for a change. Mama won the game decidedly—which she was always determined to do—and Papa declared that they would retire at eleven o’clock, after drinking a cup of tea.

I waited in my room until all the little sounds of floors creaking and doors closing had died down. With no running water flowing to the sinks in the bathrooms, we all brushed our teeth and sponged ourselves down in our rooms using a basin and pitcher, and so the process of getting to bed was considerably shorter than it had once been. It was not long before I was confident that, troubled dreams or not, everyone else in the palace was asleep.

I had taken care to undress just in case Trina came in to say good night, and so when I rose I first had to put on my darkest clothing and quietest shoes. The weather had turned warm, melting most of the snow, but also transforming the grounds into a sea of mud that I knew from experience could suck my shoes off. I tied them tightly to avoid accidentally losing them if I stepped in a puddle.

I didn’t dare take a candle, but a full moon cast enough pale light through the windows so that I could find my way through the house. I knew my way well, until I got to the cellar. I realized that I had been so absorbed in speaking with Sasha, in reacquainting myself with his expressions, and in feeling relieved that he was near, that I hadn’t paid attention to where he had led me. I thought it would be easy; all four floors of the palace had the same general layout. But the cellar rooms had been carved up differently and had only tiny windows high up to let in any light. They were smaller and oddly shaped, with hallways that took unexpected twists and turns. I had a general sense that I needed to turn left, but I was soon faced with a choice that I didn’t know how to make. The corridor split, one side going toward what I thought would be the back of the building, the other going toward the front.

I stood very still and listened closely. I thought when I turned my head toward the back route that I could discern distant voices. The other way, I heard nothing. Whether it was the right way or not, I would have to risk the route that took me away from the voices. Turning back unsuccessfully would be better than encountering off-duty guards who might have been at the vodka.

Once I’d made my decision, I moved quickly. I didn’t have very much time. After a few twists and turns, I just made out the door I was looking for in front of me. Someone wanted me to succeed, I thought, and made the sign of the cross and promised that I would pray when this night’s adventure was safely over.

Now the moon was both my ally and my enemy. It showed me the way clearly, but it would also expose me to anyone who happened to be looking in the direction I was walking. It would be quite difficult, I thought, to stick to the shadows enough to avoid detection. I hoped the guards who were at their posts had relaxed their vigilance enough to be dozing. There hadn’t been any recent attempts by angry mobs or unruly soldiers to breach the iron palings and invade the palace grounds, and none of us had ever risked punishment by breaking the rules of our imprisonment.

Of course, that was my greatest fear: that my actions—if discovered—could cause the situation to become harder for Mama and Papa, Alexei, Olga, Tatiana, and Mashka. But I could not simply sit and wait, not when Sasha had given me a glimmer of hope. Every day things seemed to be getting worse, not better. And Sasha was right: no one paid much attention to me. I was the only one in the household who had a chance of making something like this work.

I stayed close to the walls of the palace, making sure I didn’t put a foot out of the dark swath created by their shadow. I knew I would soon enough have to cut across open ground to get to the forest, which would lead me to where I thought I remembered the door. After that, I would either have to pass close to the arsenal or go via the stable for invalid horses. I thought of cutting directly through the woods and staying off the paths, but the snow melt had created puddles and muddy patches that would be impossible to see. In any case, the trees had not all leafed out, and the trunks would provide little camouflage. I could as easily keep to the side of a path and not be seen.

Checking first to make sure no sentries were making their rounds, I ran quickly over the footbridge between the two nearest ponds and then skirted around the white tower, heading down the path that led toward the elephant house and avoiding the arsenal, which no doubt would be heavily guarded at whatever time of day or night. I saw no evidence of soldiers once I was in the midst of the woods, and thought for a moment that they had become careless and no longer bothered to patrol the grounds at night.

My destination was several hundred yards to the left of the Alexander Gate, which led into the village itself, and so I turned down another path toward the thick yew hedges that hid some of the iron railings of the park.

I had so far seen no one and was beginning to have a false sense of security, imagining that the guards were either convinced no one would try to escape and didn’t bother to keep watch overnight, or had simply melted into the darkness. But soon enough I discovered that they hadn’t been quite so obliging. I heard the unmistakable tramp of approaching feet. I scampered off the path, stepping right into a muddy patch, and hid behind a box hedge. It was one of the few times in my life when I was grateful that I was not very tall.

I held my breath as the soldiers drew closer to where I hid, and I could hear the sounds of effort and muttered curses. “Easy, comrades,” said one of them, “We don’t want to wake up Colonel and Mrs. Romanov and family!”

I couldn’t get used to hearing Mama and Papa referred to that way. It wasn’t just the disrespect; it was the angry tone of their voices. I peeked out to see what the soldiers were doing together out in the park in the middle of the night, instead of stationed at their sentry posts.

There were eight of them: six shouldering some kind of long, wooden box, one at the front, and one at the rear. The two who were not carrying looked nervously around them as they walked. At first I couldn’t imagine what load they were bearing through the woods with such suppressed excitement and urgency. Surely it was not some weapon to use against us. They had little need of more than rifles and bayonets to keep us in check.

When they finally drew level with me, I shivered. It became clear in the light of the full moon that they carried a plain wooden coffin, with a gilded and jeweled cross on its lid that glimmered intermittently with the rhythm of their steps.

“Let’s take that bauble off before we do the deed,” whispered one of them.

“No pilfering! We need it as proof,” responded the one who appeared to be the leader.

Whose coffin could they be carrying, and of what did they need proof? I had to see for myself, and so, once I was certain they were beyond where they could see me crouched close to the ground, I darted toward them, moving from bush to bush, occasionally hiding behind the stump of a fallen tree.

After they had gone about another half mile or so, they left the path and turned into the forest. From my hiding place I could see them quite clearly. Just as clear to me from that vantage point was exactly whose coffin they had stolen. I didn’t want to believe it, though. It was Rasputin’s. However wrong-headed and strange he was, no one—not even someone accused of the most heinous crimes—deserved to be disturbed after death.

The soldiers were so intent upon their deed that I think I could have stood up quite brazenly and approached them and no one would have noticed. But I did not want to be foolish, and so remained cautiously hidden from their sight.

“They say he still rules the family from the grave, that the grand duchesses were all his mistresses in the flesh and that before their captivity, they would come out and dance naked around his grave.”

“Ho-ho! That must have been a sight!”

A lascivious chuckle broke out through the ranks.

“Enough!” said the leader. “This seems a pointless exercise. The man is dead. There is no afterlife, no spirit.”

I crossed myself quickly and saw two or three of the soldiers do the same. In the eerie light I half expected Grigory’s bones to rise up and smite the desecrators of his grave. But no such thing happened. Instead, they placed the coffin on top of a pile of firewood. The leader took a screwdriver and unfastened the gilt cross from the lid. Then another man struck a match, and before long the wood beneath the coffin blazed high, casting so bright a light that I had to slink back further to avoid detection.

A wave of nausea overcame me, although I was not quite certain why. Rasputin’s soul had long flown that rotting body, and a greater power than I knew where it went. But there was something so thoroughly evil about the gesture, here, in the grounds of the palace where the people who believed in him most still lived. No, I would not tell Mama and Papa. If they found out from someone else, so be it. The longer they remained in ignorance of such a vile crime, the better.

The flames illuminated a large area of the park through which I had planned to walk to reach the hidden gate. It would lead out not far from the imperial railway depot, I realized. Not that I thought for a moment we would be able to board one of our trains and steam away to Finland. All our automobiles had been confiscated for the use of the Provisional Government, as had the drivers. Probably the trains were similarly employed.

But if we could leave the park undetected, Russia was a vast land. There were hundreds of thousands of hectares where someone might not recognize the former tsar and tsaritsa, the heir, and four grand duchesses.

I sighed. There was the biggest obstacle. We would not be parted from one another. But singly or in small groups we might stand a chance for escape, if it ever came to that.

I shook myself free of these morbid thoughts, and concentrated on accomplishing the task Sasha had set me. I eventually reached the yew hedge, remembering how frightened I had been that early morning when I’d gone to meet Sasha, and how little danger I had actually been in.

I plunged through the hedge, scratching myself a little in the process. At first, I found only the high, close iron palings that terminated in sharp points. I was grieved to see that the points had been made even more forbidding by the addition of a thick coil of barbed wire. No one could scale such a barrier. I remember that it had once seemed a secure, protective enclosure, there to keep our private world safe and inviolate. But now, I saw that we had unwittingly created our own prison. Or if not we, the tsars from centuries past.