The Kitchen Boy

Emperor. “Are you still willing to act as our courier?”

An odd noise came from the girls’ room and Alekesandra Fyodorovna hurried back to the doorway. A moment later, she turned to her husband and nodded the all-clear. For the rest of my audience, however, she remained thus positioned.

He repeated, “Are you willing to act as our courier?”

There really wasn’t any question in my mind simply because of what the Reds had done to my Uncle Vanya just a month earlier. My dear uncle, of course, had served the Imperial Family for years, and it was in fact he who had brought me to work for the Romanovs that previous year. He was deeply devoted to the Tsar, so that previous month when the soldiers’ committee decided that Aleksei didn’t need two pairs of shoes, just one, my uncle and Nagorny, the mansvervant who watched over the boy, loudly protested. And for this they were taken to the city prison. Right up until the end we thought the two of them had been dumped in a cell with Prince Lvov, the first minister president of the Provisional Government, who’d already been arrested for some other silly reason. It was only years later that I learned that my dear uncle and Nagorny hadn’t been sitting in jail all along, but had instead been shot just a few days after they were first taken. The prince, on the other hand, later escaped to France, where he wrote his memoirs.

As I look back through all these decades it now seems obvious that the Bolsheviki knew all along what they were doing. So intent were they on liquidating the entire House of Romanov that they had started whittling away at our little group, getting rid of those who might be trouble, specifically the strongest among us. They’d already separated away Mr. Gibbes, the English tutor of the children, Pierre Gilliard, their French tutor, Baroness Buksgevden, a lady-in-waiting, all of whom survived, very likely because of their foreign-sounding names. Many other attendants were not so lucky. Countess Gendrikova, another lady-in-waiting, and Yekaterina Shneider, the children’s lectrice – reader – were shot in the city of Perm that September.

So in response to the Tsar’s request, I bowed my head and said, “Da, soodar.” Yes, monsignor.

He said, “Now, Leonka, you understand the seriousness of this, do you not? You understand that I am entrusting to you the safety of my wife and children? Do you realize how dangerous this is not only for us, but for you and everyone else as well?”

“Da-s.”

“Xhorosho.” Good. “I know we can depend on you.”

And how I wish they could have. How I wish they could have depended upon me to… to… ensure their rescue.

The Tsar then asked, “When are you next scheduled to go to the Soviet for food?”

“I am to go within the hour, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, to fetch more food for this evening’s supper.”

“Excellent.” He turned to his desk and pulled two pieces of paper hidden beneath a book. “Here is the note which you brought us yesterday morning. On it we have written our reply. I am sending that along with this.”

He held up a sheet of lined paper on which was drawn a map. Or more precisely, a floor plan. Nikolai Aleksandrovich then folded it into three, took an envelope from the drawer of his wooden desk, and carefully placed the two pieces of paper in that very envelope.

“You must hide this on your body, Leonka,” he instructed.

Of course I had to. I hadn’t ever been searched leaving The House of Special Purpose, not ever, but I still had to be careful. So I started pulling up my shirt, then stopped. The Empress, who’d been watching me from her post in the doorway, quickly turned away. I glanced briefly at Aleksei Nikolaevich, who was playing with a toy boat with a little wire chain, and then I lowered my pants and stuck the envelope into my undergarments.

“Molodets,” good lad, Nikolai Aleksandrovich said, brushing at his mustaches and looking at me with those generous eyes of his.

No sooner had I buttoned my pants than Nikolai Aleksandrovich handed me a second sheet of paper, this one folded simply in two with no envelope. He said, “Now, Leonka, I want you to carry this letter in your hand, and I want you to show it to the guards should they ask. Open it up, go ahead, read it.”

“Now?” I asked.

“Da, konyechno.” Yes, of course.

Although I had received very little formal education, I was able to read, unlike most of the people in Russia at that time.

Dear Sisters,

Thank you for the chetvert of milk and the fresh eggs, which The Little One greatly enjoyed. We are in need of some thread and Nikolai Aleksandrovich would be grateful for some tobacco, if this would not be too difficult.

May God be with you, A.F.

Nikolai was a terrible smoker, he was. Always smoking. Frankly if the Bolsheviki hadn’t killed him he probably would have soon died of lung cancer. And Aleksandra Fyodorovna and her girls did in fact need thread. They had consumed great quantities of it, not merely because the Empress was now darning the Emperor’s socks and pants, not simply because she and the girls were mending all of their own clothes, but because right up to the end they were secretly stitching all of their “medicines,” as they called their secret cache of diamonds, into their undergarments. I still don’t understand how they’d kept nineteen pounds of gems secret up to that point – perhaps hidden in the corners of their suitcases? – but in the end they stashed over 42,000 carats of diamonds into the girls’ corsets. Other gems, such as rubies and emeralds, disappeared into their buttons and the men’s forage caps, while whole ropes of the most astounding pearls vanished into the waist and sleeves of Aleksandra Fyodorovna’s dress. Later, when the Bolsheviki were hacking apart the Empress, they found those pearls too. Entire ropes made of hundreds of pearls, just one of which was valuable enough to feed a family of peasants for a year.

Oh, what a mistake, how they suffered because of Aleksandra’s devious needle…

And the Tsar said to me, “On your way to the Soviet, I want you to stop by the Church of the Ascension. You might even tell the guards that you are taking this note there. Go right ahead and show it to them. Tell them that you are dropping this note off at the church so that one of the deacons will take it to the sisters at the monastery. When you reach the church, however, I want you to ask for Father Storozhev. You must speak to him and no one else but him, Leonka. And when you are alone with the Father you give him this note and also the envelope. He will make sure it is delivered to the correct people.”

For a while, then, I was no longer Leonka, the kitchen boy, but the Tsar’s spy. And what did the note say? And the map, what did it show? Those have been preserved as well. They too have been kept all these years in the arkhivy in Moscow. All the notes to the Romanovs were in French, as were all the replies from the royal captives. Nikolai himself always passed the letters to me, but they were not his handwriting. It is the florid hand of a girl, that of Olga, the oldest grand duchess, for she was the most capable in French.

And the first reply reads:

From the corner up to the balcony there are 5 windows on the street side, 2 on the square. All of the windows are glued shut and painted white. The Little One is still sick and in bed and cannot walk at all – every jolt causes him pain. A week ago, because of the anarchists we were supposed to leave for Moscow at night. No risk whatsoever must be taken without being absolutely certain of the result. We are almost always under close observation.

As for the map, it was a penciled floor plan of the dwelling, done by none other than Aleksandra Fyodorovna who, like all women of the nobility, had received not a formal education, but the proper instruction in drawing, watercolors, piano, literature, foreign tongues, and, of course, needlework.

Within the hour Komendant Avdeyev himself led me out the front door and through the two palisades surrounding the house. I crossed the muddy square, just as Nikolai Aleksandrovich asked, and I went directly to