I ran out of my chamber and to a small hallway window. Peering out, however, all I saw was a great flock of black crows wheeling around the golden church domes. Looking into the square below, I saw nothing, no one, only stillness… and then suddenly a great number of people running toward the Nikolsky Gate. At that moment, I knew. I knew by the direction in which the people ran that the worst was true, that my darkest fears had come to pass, for Sergei would have been heading toward those very gates. Gathering up the folds of my dress, I made as fast as I could down the corridor and toward the great staircase. Practically flying down the marble steps, I prayed, muttered, “Oh, dear God, please, no!” Had Russia ’s great dark demon-those bloodthirsty revolutionaries-swept down upon us again? Had those shameful barbarians, so determined to bring Mother Russia to her knees, attacked again, this time taking my dear Sergei?
Panic seized me, exploded within me like another bomb. As I ran across the vast entry a servant flew at me, rushing forward and throwing a sable pelisse over my shoulders, while behind I heard another set of quick steps. Glancing back, I saw the children ’s governess racing after me.
“Your Highness!” called Mademoiselle Elena as she desperately tried to catch up to me, her mistress.
As pale as the moon, I stared at her with terror, clasping a hand over my mouth, but, alas, I could say nothing. I had to get there, I had to be there. Sergei needed me, of that I was sure!
Yet another servant rushed forward with a man’s fur coat, which Mademoiselle Elena pulled awkwardly over her shoulders, and the two of us rushed out into the cold, barely covered and absolutely hatless. Directly in front of the Palace stood my awaiting sleigh, which had pulled up only moments earlier, and I clambered into it, followed immediately by the governess. With one bold snap of the whip and a sudden jolt, my driver set off, flying toward the gates. As we raced the brief distance, I felt my own heart beating with a fright and terror such as I had never before experienced. But no tears came to my eyes, nor did I mumble anything or even reach out and clasp Mademoiselle Elena’s hand for comfort. No, I had to be strong… strong… strong.
Of course I had seen many badly wounded soldiers, either on my own ambulance trains or in one of the hospitals I sponsored, men who had lost eyes and arms and legs in the fight against the Japanese, men who had been horrifically burned or riddled by bullets or who were slowly dying of gangrene. But by the time I saw these soldiers they had long been attended to, cleaned up, operated on, and bandaged. Never had I seen these men in action and under attack, bleeding in the field or pulled screaming from the waters, their bodies blown wide and their insides spilling forth. Never until this moment had I seen any such reality.
Within seconds the sleigh reached a massive crowd gathering just before the gate and the driver was forced to slow. When he could go no farther through the dense mass of people, I alighted from the still moving sleigh and charged ahead. I had gone but a few paces, however, when two peasant women, kerchiefs tied tightly around their puckered faces, charged right at me, waving their hands frantically.
“Nyet, nyet, Your Highness!” cried one babushka, falling at my feet and clutching and kissing the hem of my dress. “You must turn back, you mustn’t see!”
“Turn away, Your Highness!” sobbed the other. “Turn away!”
But I would not be deterred. I couldn’t say why, and I certainly didn’t know what took over, but something hardened right then and there within me, and my face turned cold and blank and practical. I pressed forward. Suddenly, recognizing me as the wife of this dreaded Romanov, the throng of people bowed and parted. And what opened up before me was a battlefield of carnage and destruction such as I had never dared imagine.
Not only was my husband dead, but of the man himself and his fine carriage there was little that remained.
I gasped, nearly fell to my knees, and yet not a single tear came as my eyes swept the scene and tried to comprehend what had taken place. I saw a bent wheel, searched for a recognizable bit of my husband, but… but…
The remains of Sergei’s once substantial carriage barely rose above my knee. Of my once mighty and indomitable husband, the severely proud Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, all that I could see was, here, a chunk of his torso from which hung, somehow, his right arm, and, there, a leg with a foot torn away, and, glancing downward, a severed hand lying in the reddened snow. As if the bomb had landed directly upon my husband’s lap and he had stared down upon it in horror, nothing remained of his head, face, or neck. The rest of my beloved Sergei was scattered everywhere, bloody pieces of muscle and organ and bone blown wide across the snow.
The shock seized me cold and hard. Ever tearless, I started trembling as I tried to comprehend what had happened, what this meant, where my husband had got, what I must do.
Up ahead I saw some men grabbing the terrified horses, which were dragging behind them a single wheel and some shattered planks, that was all. Off to the side I noticed someone struggling, heard someone shouting. There was a man there whom the police were seizing upon and holding. This man, rather young, was actually doing nothing to resist, and I saw that his clothes were torn and singed and that his face, seared by the heat of the explosion and pierced by hundreds of slivers of wood, was streaming with rivulets of blood.
It was the revolutionary, the very one, I understood, who had thrown the bomb, and who now shouted, “Down with the Tsar! Long live freedom! Long live the Social Revolutionary Party!”
Above the mayhem someone else was calling that a cab be fetched at the moment. Within seconds one pulled up, and two policemen stuffed the man into the sleigh and sped off.
Off to my left I noticed more commotion, and I saw a handful of people struggling to support someone else, a man not fully conscious and dreadfully hurt, his body shot full of nails and splinters. Dear Lord, it was our dear Rudinkin, the coachman who had so dutifully served the Grand Duke for so many years.
Finding a strength and resolve that I had never before possessed, I commanded, “Get him to the hospital at once!”
A stretcher, already fetched from the Kremlin hospital, was put down with great haste, and my husband’s man carefully laid upon it. Wasting not a precious moment, two soldiers quickly carried off the mortally wounded servant.
Stepping forward, I saw a precious glint of something golden in the snow and I reached down. It was the chain of medals Sergei had always worn about his neck, and I grabbed it up, clutching it tightly in my hand. Quite nearby I saw something brilliantly red, and I snatched it up, too. A finger. And there, I realized, dropping to my knees and picking up something else as well: his boot with the foot still in it. Next a mound of flesh and then a bone of some sort. And, yes, some clothing, part of his jacket, the blue one he had put on just before lunch.
Kneeling there, I pawed through the snow for more and more remnants of my husband, all of which I desperately gathered up into the folds of my dress. Only then did I look up and only then did I take notice of the crowd of people, larger than ever, pressing forward not simply to get a look at the carnage but to stare upon me, Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Elisavyeta Fyodorovna, wife of their feared Governor-General of Moscow. Carefully holding the bits of my husband in the folds of my bloodied dress, I rose to my feet, shocked by the incredible affront: everyone staring upon me still wore their hats, which no one had ever dared in the presence of a Romanov, let alone in a situation such as this.
“You, all of you!” I shouted as forcefully as a tsaritsa of olden Moscow. “You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be standing around staring like this! At least you can take off your hats! At least you can do that-show some respect for the dead! Go on, off with them!”
Behind me, I heard a weak and quavering voice, that of Mademoiselle Elena, whose own face was streaked with a massive quantity of tears, and who now struggled to say, “Do… do as Her Highness commands… take off your hats! Do it!”
While no one was shamed into leaving, virtually all of them reached for their hats and pulled them off. Crossing themselves, some over and over, all continued to gawk at me, more so than ever, actually, for I was smeared with the blood of my murdered husband.
And assuming control of a situation in a way I never had, I called, “Get me a stretcher and bring it here- now!”
Within moments a pair of soldiers broke through the crowd and set a stretcher in the snow alongside the demolished carriage. I went directly to the litter, knelt down, and gently placed the remains of my husband there in a pile. I then turned to gather more, and the soldiers did likewise, picking up the hunk of the torso, the other boot, part of his hat, and everything else that they could find, scrap by bloody scrap, placing it in the small heap. Hysterically and silently determined, I continued searching under shattered carriage seats and pawing through snow, finding still more and more splintered bones and pieces of flesh and shreds of clothing. Yet still not a single tear fell to my icy cheeks, this despite the blood dripping from my own clothing and caught up, as well, under my
