Anastasia's Secret (4 page)

I put my basket down on a flat rock, hoping that someone would find it before ants or stray dogs did, but too embarrassed to go any farther and give it to one of those unfortunate souls down below. “Take me back,” I said. Sasha pressed his lips together in a hint of a satisfied smirk. I was annoyed at him for being right about me.

C
HAPTER
4

A few days after that, Papa was late coming in for supper. It wasn’t like him to be late. Mama, who was beautiful, tall, and graceful with soft eyes and a straight nose, looked more tense and anxious than usual, even though Alexei—her Baby, her Sunshine, our Alyosha—was reasonably well; well enough in fact, to be sitting next to her in his military uniform, looking very self-important.

“Tatiana, go and fetch your father,” Mama said. She always asked Tatiana to do things like that. We all knew that Tatiana was her favorite daughter, despite her attempt to pretend she had no favorites.

Tatiana had just risen and taken two brisk steps toward the door when Papa entered. We froze when we saw his face, knowing that something had happened.

“It’s war,” he said, standing next to his chair. “There’s nothing to be done. The Germans have violated Belgium’s neutrality, and we must honor our commitments—even if they hadn’t already declared war on us.”

“Don’t worry, Papa,” Alexei said, standing and walking to his side. “I can help you with this war.” He looked so thin and frail in his uniform, which had been specially made to fit him. But he stood as tall and straight as he could, despite the lingering pain in his ankle. Alyosha could be a little brat when he wasn’t sick, but I supposed that was because he knew how important he was.

Tears welled up in Mama’s eyes and rolled down her cheeks, and soon Mashka, Olga, and Tatiana were weeping too. Only I did not. Perhaps, because of Sasha, I knew more than the others, I don’t know. But far from a surprise, it seemed the logical next thing to me.

From that day forward we barely saw Papa. He was too busy meeting with the generals and the ministers. When I passed by his chambers, hoping to hear details that were lacking in what Anya and the other maids of honor and the servants told us, I heard voices raised in anger and fear.

“Your Majesty, you cannot lead the troops yourself! Leave it to your generals and remain in safety where you can govern.” I recognized the voice of Sukhomlinov, the minister of war.

“How can I expect my loyal Russians to risk their lives if I do not share their suffering?”

“But there are concerns here too. If you leave, who will take charge of everything?” That was Count Witte, an old friend and adviser of Papa’s.

“The tsaritsa is my companion and shares my power. I trust her completely.”

Silence. What did it mean?

“But, Your Majesty. The tsaritsa… the people …”

“What?” Papa’s voice was sharp. “What are you trying to say?”

“You know what the rumors are. You have seen the cartoons.” The voice was Count Witte’s, soft and placating.

“Nonsense. All of it! No one believes it. No one who has the slightest knowledge of Sunny would believe it for a second.” Although his words were strong, I thought Papa’s voice held an edge of uncertainty.

“But that is just the point. No one knows her. The people think she is aloof and uncaring.” The old general was pleading. “You kept the tsarevich’s illness a secret for so long, and the grand duchesses are sheltered away. They could do much if you would only permit it.”

“I will not parade my little girls in public until they are of age! Olga and Tatiana do their share. And as for Alexei, he may come with me to the front. He has been quite well for some time thanks to … our friend.”

I gasped. The idea of Alyosha going anywhere near a battle horrified me, despite his uniform, and I knew my mother would be distraught.

“Please, I beg you, Nicky.” That was the voice of my uncle and Papa’s only living brother, the Grand Duke Michael.

Silence again. Then Papa sighed aloud. “Very well. I will bow to your wishes for now. I shall let my uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich, command the armies. But I make no promises for the future.”

“You must go to Moscow. It is important, to ask God’s blessing for the war.”

Moscow! I loved Moscow. It was so different from Petrograd. The onion domes and colorful buildings, the ancient history from the days before the tsars. If Papa went, then we all would. We always traveled together.

I heard footsteps approach the door, so I quickly ran down the corridor and around a corner. Grand duchesses were not supposed to eavesdrop. But my head was buzzing with everything I had heard. I didn’t dare share it with my sisters because they would go straight to Mama. I needed Sasha. But I had not been able to see him since the declaration of war. I wondered if he would be sent to the front.

Sasha at the front, being shot at by Germans. The idea sent a knife into my stomach. At the time I thought it was because he was my only friend outside of the family, and the only person who could make the idea of war real to me. I didn’t realize it was the beginning of something else, that there might be more to my caring about him than friendship.

Besides, when it came to things such as this, things that were far outside our life in the palace, I suspected that Sasha was the only one I could count on to be honest with me. I wanted to know what people were saying about my mother. What cartoons had been drawn? What did they have to do with her? And who had allowed them to be published?

I ran down to the kitchens and left a note for the egg girl, Varenka. I hoped Sasha would get it.

Varenka managed to find Sasha, although he had moved from the guards’ barracks. His note began: “We cannot meet in the gardens. You’ll have to find a way to get to camp.”

Leaving my family for more than an hour—it sounded impossible. But something told me it was important to try. Maybe I took it as a challenge, a dare. Or maybe it was a chance to become closer to Sasha, who was still a mystery to me. He had come into my world, but I knew nothing about his. So I made a big decision, and took my first step alone out of the closed circle that had kept me safe and secure for my entire life.

C
HAPTER
5

So it was on a hot, sultry morning at the beginning of August, 1914, that I found myself wearing Varenka’s rough scarf and brightly colored skirt, carrying her empty egg basket through the streets of Tsarskoe. I was certain someone would recognize me. Varenka and I looked nothing alike. But I was surprised to find that the passersby hardly noticed me. Although I felt very much like a normal person, I assumed after my conversations with Sasha that I would stick out like a mountain peak wherever I went. Of course, my parents had been very careful to keep us out of the public eye. The only photographs taken of us were for family albums, except the occasional official portrait. And for those, we were so dressed up and posed that none of us looked like ourselves.

Of course, in those days when status and rank mattered so much, no one looked very far beyond clothes. Dressed as I was in Varenka’s simple skirt and blouse, a mere glance was all it took to label me insignificant. And since my basket was empty, I didn’t have to worry that anyone would approach me to buy eggs.

I did attract a few whistles as I walked by the military barracks, however. I was well aware that, clothes or not, women and girls could be the object of unwanted attention. The whistling told me right away that these were not the elite guards to which Sasha had been attached in peacetime. His note had said: “I’m with Thirteen Corps now. You won’t believe what’s happening. I can’t get away. If you want to see me you must come to me.”

I realized from his tone that more than his location had changed, but I was unprepared for what I found. It was almost like the makeshift campground for the poor, only here were all men, mostly peasants, some younger than Sasha, some who looked too old to fight. The only things that made them look like soldiers were their coats and boots, and the fact that they all cradled rifles in their arms or leaned on them like pitchforks. It was still early. Most of them were scooping porridge into their mouths, and a man with a wooden leg passed among them, distributing rations consisting mainly of hardtack.

“Excuse me, I’m looking for Junior Officer Alexander Mikhailovich Galliapin,” I said to the man with the rations.

“Over there.” He jerked his head in the direction of a tent. Its flap was closed, but I walked over until I could hear what was going on inside.

“You’ve had your training. All you have to do is receive orders and follow them.” It was the voice of an older man, and it sounded stern, reproachful.

“But I never intended to be an officer!” It was Sasha. His voice was tearful and if I did not know him I would have thought he was little more than a boy.

“There are not enough trained officers to manage our army. Everyone with experience is being called upon to head a platoon. Count yourself fortunate to have only one. The officers with real training get several.”

Sasha was to command a platoon? He had been a mere private soldier, the lowest of the low, in the Semyonovsky. I glanced back at the motley crowd behind me. They looked as if they had been called up in the midst of plowing their fields or building something. What kind of army were we sending into battle?

The tent flap flew open then and startled me out of my thoughts. A man wearing the uniform of a sergeant swept out. He looked right through me, and I might have thought he hadn’t seen me except that he swerved neatly to avoid crashing into me.

“Sasha!” I whispered hoarsely as soon as the sergeant had vanished behind a supply wagon.

“You might as well come in. I’m not ready to come out just yet.”

I didn’t like the bitterness I heard. Still less appealing was the sight I beheld when I stepped beneath the flap of the tent. Items of clothing were littered around. A kit bag had fallen open and its contents—including a safety razor—tipped out onto the dirt. Sasha himself sat upon a camp bed. He looked like a soldier from the waist down with his smart trousers and polished boots, but like a frightened animal from the waist up. He wore only his undershirt, exposing his thin, pale arms, and his long neck looked vulnerable without the stiff, military collar he normally wore. Above that, contrasting with the boyishness, his unshaven cheeks were dark with a few days’ growth.

“Sasha!” I cried. “What does this mean?”

“They have promoted me,” he answered, sounding more as if he had been telling me that he had been sentenced to prison.

“Isn’t that what you wanted? To be a real soldier, not just polishing boots and cleaning guns?”

He stood, putting on his uniform jacket and buckling his belt as if I were nothing more than a fellow soldier or a valet, accustomed to seeing him in a state of undress. “But that’s just the point. I’m not a real soldier. I haven’t had the proper training. They’ve shown me how to read the telegraph tape, the forms I should expect for getting orders, and who reports to whom—me to the company commander, the company commander to the battalion chief, the battalion chief to the regiment colonel, the regiment colonel to the army general. And the higher up you get, the farther from the ground—and the fighting. Yet they are the ones who have experience.”

I didn’t quite know what to say. “Did you think I wouldn’t come?” I asked, gesturing toward the untidy mess.

For the first time, Sasha looked directly at me. His eyes were full of sadness and bewilderment. “I suppose I didn’t. It was all well and good when we could meet in your garden. How did you get away?”

“As you can see, Varenka helped me.” I gave him a little curtsy and swung my egg basket. He smiled, looking for an instant like the impish Sasha I had come to know. “But I have to be back before Mashka wakes, or I’ll get in trouble.”

Sasha finished putting on his uniform and adjusted his cap smartly on his head. “Do I look like I command a platoon?” he asked.

“I don’t know. How many soldiers are in a platoon?”

“Only fifty. And have you seen them?” He jerked his head toward the tent flap.

“Those are your soldiers?” I began to see why Sasha was so upset. “Most of them look too young or too old, and I’d say the majority I passed had just yesterday been in the fields.”

“I knew I could count on you to be astute.” His words were like acid on metal.

“I don’t deserve your anger. I had nothing to do with this!”

“No, but your imperial father had everything to do with it. How are we to fight the Germans? They have all modern equipment, big guns, and aircraft, and a standing army that’s trained. Our ‘army,’ such as it is, consists of officer dandies and peasants, thanks to our ancient law that calls up the poor and serfs—so many thousand for each landowner, like heads of cattle. Most of the fellows out there have never worn a pair of stout boots before, and God knows if they can fire a gun with any accuracy. To make matters worse, I have only the vaguest idea what the plan is. All I know is that we’re heading west. We don’t go by train except at the very beginning. We march. All the way to Prussia, apparently.

“Do you know, I have heard that we don’t even use code to communicate because no one can remember what it is. It’s laughable!”

Was this true? What of the spirit of the Russian people, who were invincible—even by the great Napoleon? “Surely the generals … I mean, it all must be part of a plan. You just don’t see the entire thing, so it seems absurd.” Yet even as I said it, I felt it was untrue.

“Do you know anything?” Sasha asked.

I opened my mouth to speak, actually considering lying to Sasha just to make him feel better. But the words would not come out. Finally, I squeaked out a pathetic little “No.”

Sasha sighed, then drew his shoulders back and put his chin up. “I suppose I should try to be happy that I have been promoted so unexpectedly. And I would be if I did not suspect that platoons like mine will be used as cannon fodder. Isn’t that what a soldier does? Fight, and probably die?”

“You don’t seem to be fighting very much!” I said, becoming irritated with his self-pity. “I would go to the front and lead a whole battalion, or even a corps, if I had to!”

“Have you ever seen a man killed by gunfire?”

“No. But it’s a war. People get killed.”

Something closed in Sasha’s face when I said that. I wished I could have swallowed back the words. “You had better be going before you get in trouble,” he said. I blushed to have my own cowardice thrown back in my face. And Sasha looked so vulnerable there, his uniform a little too big for him. What a photograph that would make. Yet if I had my camera with me, would I take it? I did not want to be reminded of Sasha in that weak state. How could he take charge of even ten men? I wondered. I wanted to run up to him and fling my arms around his neck, tell him that he should come with me, that my papa would make things all right and he wouldn’t have to go to war. But even as I took a step toward him, he flinched.

“Take care, Alexander Mikhailovich,” I said, feeling the tears close my throat. I turned around, not wanting to prolong our good-bye. Not wanting to ask him to write to me, especially since any letters he sent would be read by several pairs of eyes before they ever reached me.

“Wait!” he said. I stopped just before opening the tent flap. “Would you keep this safe for me?” He darted to the corner of the tent and picked up something wrapped in cloth. I could see by its shape that it was his balalaika. He held it out toward me.

“Won’t you want it? To play to people and soothe them?”

“The less I have to carry the better. And besides, if something happens to me, I want you…” He didn’t finish. I reached my hand out and grasped the instrument firmly by the neck. He moved his grip so that his hand covered mine, and it sent a charge through me. Our eyes met briefly, and I could tell that he felt it too.

I was too confused to continue looking at him, so I forced a smile and lowered my eyes. “Of course, Sasha.” I pulled the instrument toward me. He let go of it and my hand. I still felt the warmth of his skin.

“Good,” he said. “Good.” Then he gave me a half-hearted salute. I left, looking even more like a peasant than when I arrived, with my wrapped-up balalaika slung over my shoulder.

I got back to the palace gardens just as the sun was rising. Varenka anxiously paced back and forth by the kitchen entrance. “I’d have never forgiven myself if something had happened to you, Princess!” she said.

We went inside and exchanged clothes hurriedly. I realized how selfish I had been in getting her to help me with my little excursion. She would have been severely punished—and not just by her mother with her switch and harsh tongue—if there had been some mishap.

Mashka was already taking her cold shower when I got to our room. I quickly hid the balalaika behind my dresses in the wardrobe, then sat at the dressing table and brushed my hair, trying to decide how to explain my early morning absence to my sister.

She came out wrapped in a large white towel. “Where have you been?”

“Up,” I said, deciding the less I told her the better. “I couldn’t sleep.”

To my surprise, rather than quizzing me further, she said, “Neither could I. I lay awake for the longest time last night. I think of all the officers we know, the ones Olga and Tatiana have danced with and had tea with. And … you know who. Some will die.”

I nodded. Mashka had had a flirtation with a soldier, but it was not serious. She had stitched him a shirt, though, to wear on dress parade. Somehow her romance was tamer than my friendship. I supposed that was because mine was secret.

“I’ve been thinking,” she continued. “It may be impossible to make enough shirts to be useful, but we can help the soldiers by knitting socks and making bandages for the wounded.”

“Yes, it would be good to actually do something, even so small.” I couldn’t help thinking that no amount of socks would improve the training of our army. And as for the wounded—I couldn’t bear to think about them, not yet.

We had breakfast together in our dining room. It was the four of us with Zhilik and Trina. Mama and Alexei had breakfast in her room, and Papa never joined us anymore, spending all morning with his military maps and his generals. I had to find a way to talk to him at some point, to let him know that his great army might not be as strong as he thought. Yet even then I knew I would never dare speak to him about it. He would ask too many questions about how I knew. I, the youngest girl, the one no one took very seriously because I was always clowning around.

In any case, the opportunity never arose. Matters were already too far gone for anything he might have done to have made a difference. And as for me—how could I have thought any action of mine would have mattered?