stretch outside as far as she could, but to actually climb up on the windowsill. A character, she was. Full of energy and mischief. One of her royal cousins had long ago taught her to climb trees, a habit that she could never be broken of, no matter her rank or gender.
“Careful, Nasten’ka!” chided number three sister, Maria Nikolaevna.
Her father, the Tsar, turned from his wife, saw his daughter perched on the ledge two floors above ground, and shouted, “
“But, Papa-”
“Now!
“Oh, all right. I-”
But just as she turned her back to the endless world beyond, just as she readied herself to jump back into the hole of our existence, a blast rang out. More specifically, a shot. The next instant the wall of the house, not but a few centimeters from Anastasiya’s head, was struck by a bullet, and bits of stucco and brick exploded into the air. As much by fear as anything else, the poor child was thrown into the room, where she landed upon two of her sisters. They all screamed and came crashing down onto the floor, collapsing in a terrible heap of arms and legs. Before I knew it, before I could even think what to do, the Tsar grabbed the wheeling chaise from me, jerking his son from the environs of the window and pulling him back against the far wall.
Terrified, Aleksandra Fyodorovna cried out and threw herself forward, grabbing for her youngest daughter, screaming, “Anya!”
All of a sudden a huge wail rose above everything else, a terrified cry as the girl replied, “Mama!”
I stumbled back, plastering myself against the wall. Before my eyes Aleksandra made a frantic examination of her youngest daughter – limbs, head, torso – but, no, Anastasiya was not wounded, she was unscathed, merely terrified. As the girl broke into a flow of tears, Aleksandra clutched her daughter to her chest, cradling her and sobbing as well. A moment later the three other grand duchesses fell upon them, and this heap of womanhood shook like a volcano until finally, for the first time, they erupted. All this time, all these months, not one of them had broken down, not one of them had let go, and now… now they bellowed forth.
“My babies!” cried Alix, poring over her three other daughters – Olya’s hand, Tanechka’s head, Mashka’s cheek. “My precious babies!”
The Tsar turned the wheeling chaise around, pushed his son to this mass of family, and they all melded into a heap, mother and daughters on the floor, son slightly higher on his chaise, and father standing firmly above them. They all clutched and grabbed for one another, Alix hanging onto her Nicky’s leg. For the first time, the only time, I saw amazing pain boil in the Tsar’s body. He closed his eyes, bit his bottom lip. Strong, he had to be strong for family, for Russia, for God. But he couldn’t. No more. He had reached his limit, and for fear of totally falling apart, he dared not move; he simply let his terrified family drape from him like a defeated flag. With every bit of courage he had left, he pinched his lips lest he cry out, clenched his eyes shut lest he spill his fear, and his face passed from white to crimson. And yet there was only so much he could control. A tear emerged in his right eye. Two tears. They were huge and round, and slowly, quite slowly, they began to travel down his cheek and into his beard.
Everyone came flooding into the room, Demidova, Trupp, Kharitonov, the guards, and, of course, finally the
“What have you idiots done!” Avdeyev yelled at the family. “You, Citizen Romanov, were you trying to escape? We open a window, and what do you do a minute later, try to run away? Is that it, hey, Nikolashka, you coward, trying to get away from us?”
I thought the Tsar was going to rip off the man’s head. I saw his body quiver, his fists curl into knots of rock. But Nikolai Aleksandrovich didn’t move. No, ever-fatalistic, he silently bore the insult as he had always carried everything, crown and all.
“I… I…” he said, barely able to speak, let alone control himself, “would never… never leave my family.”
“Well, that’s not what the guard down below said. He said he looked up and saw one of you ready to jump out!”
“That fool nearly killed my daughter!”
“They have strict orders to shoot upon-”
The Emperor flung his arm out, pointing at the doorway as he screamed, “Leave us!”
“Get out!”
“But-”
The Tsar’s eyes flared, his entire face flashed red with fury, and, fired with the spirits of his ancestors, he shouted, “
Such a moment I will never forget. For the first and only time did Nikolai Aleksandrovich seem like a true Russian tsar, an ironfisted one. He was Ivan and Peter and Catherine all in one, and Avdeyev crumbled in a second. The
7
Such a kind man was Nikolai II. So sweet. So tender. And gentle. He loved nothing more than his family and his country. He hated disagreements, either within his vast, squabbling house or among his ministers, both great and small, or anywhere else, for that matter, within his enormous realm. That was the Tsar I knew then, and the Tsar I’ve since grown to know in my books. Bloodshed was not at all what he wanted… and yet any fool would admit that that was his legacy. When
You know, Tsar Nikolai and Comrade Lenin were like two great trains running toward each other at a colossal speed. The closer they came, the faster they went. They were traveling, however, on two entirely different sets of tracks, and so they should have passed by each other. They should have missed completely and zoomed on, racing