The Tsar glanced toward the door, saw no guard, then reached for a book on his table. He flipped through the pages, coming to the very note the sister had brought earlier, and withdrew it.
“Hide this well on your body, young man. Our response is written on the same note,” he said, his voice low. “Do it now, place it in your undergarments.”
I did as ordered, opening my clothes and hiding the note on my body. As I buttoned up my pants, I looked up.
“You know what to do?” he asked.
Speaking words that the Yekaterinburg Soviet had strictly forbidden, I replied in a hushed voice, “
The Tsar and I then played out the charade of moving the writing table, a fine piece of polished wooden furniture with a green leather top. And then I retreated. Toward two-thirty they all went out into the garden, including Yevgeny Sergeevich, who was greatly improved. They all went out except the Empress and one of her daughters, the second, Tatyana Nikolaevna. They remained indoors, where they conducted their spiritual readings, Daniel 16 to the end, as well as Hosea 1-5. This I know because the Empress herself told me, whispering that she would be praying for me.
And so it was that after I helped the Tsar’s footman, Trupp, carry the wheeling chaise down into the garden, and after the Tsar himself carried down his fourteen-year old son, I returned to the kitchen. Shortly thereafter, I was escorted out of the locked rooms, past the guards, through the double palisades, and out the gates into the square of the Church of the Ascension. It never occurred to me to run, to flee, not then, nor any other time. I don’t know why, but somewhere in my heart I felt my place was in there, with them, in that house that was so full of evil intent.
Well, that afternoon I again fulfilled my task. I encountered no problems. As instructed, I stopped by the church and delivered the handkerchief embroidered by the Empress herself. And I handed over the note dictated by the Emperor and handwritten by his daughter, Olga Nikolaevna. I gave it to Father Storozhev, and it reads:
The second window from the corner facing the square has been opened for 2 days – day and night. The seventh and eighth windows facing the square next to the main entrance are always open. The room is occupied by the komendant and his aides, who are also the inside guards – up to 13 at least – armed with rifles, revolvers, and bombs. None of the doors have keys (except ours). The komendant or his aides come into our room whenever they want. The one who is on duty does the outside rounds twice every hour of the night, and we hear him chatting with the sentry beneath our windows. There is a machine gun on the balcony and another downstairs in case of alarm. If there are others, we do not know about them. Do not forget that we have the doctor, a maid, two men, and a little boy who is a cook with us. It would be ignoble of us (although they do not want to inconvenience us) to leave them alone after they have followed us voluntarily into exile. The doctor has been in bed for three days with kidney trouble, but he is getting better. We are constantly awaiting the return of our men, Ivan Sednyov and Klementy Nagorny, young and robust, who have been shut up in the city for a month – we do not know where or why. In their absence, the little one is carried by his father in order to move about the rooms or go into the garden. Our surgeon, Derevenko, who comes almost daily at 5:00 to see the little one, lives in the city; do not forget. We never see him alone. The guards are in a little house across from our five windows on the other side of the street, 50 men. The only things that we still have are in crates in the shed in the interior courtyard. We are especially worried about A.F no.9, a small black crate, and a large black crate no. 13 N.A. with his old letters and
And here I must pause in my story…
8
Misha pushed the
Oh, how he wished May were here. She would know. His wife who always had a word on her tongue would tell him whether or not he was saying too much, too little, or if he was getting it just right.
He pushed back his chair, grabbed ahold of the edge of his desk, hesitated, and pushed himself to his feet. Then he just stood there. Everything used to be so automatic, now he had to think about every little step. He started to move his left leg, but then a bolt of pain stabbed his bad knee. Wincing, he leaned on the desk with one hand, hesitated, tried again. It was always like this, at first walking seemed impossible, but after the first few steps he seemed to be able to walk out of it. And so he proceeded.
He’d always been amazed that the slaughtered bodies of the Romanovs had remained hidden for so many, many years, and in fact he had often wondered if they’d ever be found, particularly within his own lifetime. And it wasn’t until July 11, 1991, the day after Boris Yeltsin’s inauguration, that a squadron of detectives, colonels, epidemiologists, and forensic experts headed out of Yekaterinburg toward the village Koptyaki. It was there, behind a fence, underneath a tent, and in the glare of all these lights, that the herd of Russian officials pulled more than a thousand smashed and crushed bones out of the mud. Even then they weren’t sure what they found. Seeking the truth but lacking DNA technology, the Russian scientists developed a sophisticated technique of computerized superimposition, whereby their mathematicians matched photos of the Romanovs to the skulls they found. And that was how, Misha had read, they determined that skull number four – the very one that contained a desiccated brain shriveled to the size of a pear – was none other than Tsar Nikolai. Skull number seven, meanwhile, proved the easiest to identify because of its extensive and beautiful dental work. It was that of the Empress Aleksandra.
Ach, thought Misha, crossing the broad living room, as the saying goes, There exists no secret that will not be revealed. And those broken and bizarrely crushed bones found in that shallow grave quickly told the story that the deaths had not only been violent, but grossly brutal, which was absolutely correct because of course Misha had seen it all with his own eyes. The most shocking thing the Russian specialists discovered, however, was what they didn’t find: the bodies of both the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei and Grand Duchess Maria. And so that was his job, Misha’s. Now it was up to him to tell why the bodies of two Romanovs were still missing. His story, his truth, was what he would leave behind and it would be, he was certain, the definitive truth that would stand for decades if not centuries.
So sad, thought Misha as he hobbled along, so terribly sad. Not just the murder of the Imperial Family, but that the hatred of the Russian Revolution proved so barbaric and violent.
With a heaviness that had hung from his heart since that night so long ago, Misha went about his business. He visited the downstairs powder room just off the central hall, and then briefly headed into the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of water. Carrying the glass, he returned via the butler’s pantry, a narrow room filled with stacks of fine china and rows of crystal glasses. As he pushed open the swinging door into the dining room and gazed upon the massive mahogany table, he was reminded of all the fancy dinner parties they’d hosted. Here had
