My mind was so filled with these thoughts and an urgent desire to return quickly to the solitude of my room that I barely glanced at the young woman standing wrapped in heavy shawls by the side of the Admiralty. She said something, a phrase I didn’t hear as the wind blew around me, and in my selfishness I snapped irritably at her that I had no money to give her, that she should go to one of the soup kitchens that had sprung up around St Petersburg for food and warmth.
To my surprise she ran after me and I spun around just as she grabbed my arm, wondering whether she really thought that she could rob me of what little money I had, and even then I failed to recognize her immediately until she said my name.
‘Georgy.’
‘Asya!’ I cried, astonished, delighted at first, staring at my sister as if she was an apparition and not a person at all. ‘But I can’t believe it. Is it really you?’
‘It is,’ she said, nodding, tears of joy forming as pools in her eyes. ‘I have found you at last.’
‘Here,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Here, in St Petersburg!’
‘Where I always wanted to be.’
I embraced her, pulled her close to me, and then a moment of great shame: the thought went through my mind, What is she doing here anyway? What does she want of me?
‘Come over here,’ I said, beckoning her towards the shelter of one of the colonnades. ‘Step out of the cold, you look frozen. How long have you been here, anyway?’
‘Not long,’ she said, sitting beside me on a low stone bench hidden away from the noisy winds, where we might hear each other better. ‘A few days, that’s all.’
‘A few days?’ I replied, surprised. ‘And you’re only coming to me now?’
‘I wasn’t sure how to approach you, Georgy,’ she explained. ‘Every time I saw you, you were with groups of other soldiers and I was afraid to interrupt. I knew I would find you on your own sooner or later.’
I nodded, recalling the feeling that I had been watched and had felt annoyed by it.
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Well, you have found me now.’
‘At last,’ she said, breaking into a smile. ‘And how well you look! You are eating, I can tell.’
‘But exercising too,’ I said quickly, offended. ‘My work here never ends.’
‘You look healthy, that’s all I meant. Life in the palace agrees with you.’
I shrugged my shoulders and looked out towards the square and the Alexander Column that had been one of my first sights of this new world, conscious that my sister looked extremely thin and pale.
‘I nearly fainted when I first saw it,’ she said, following my gaze.
‘The palace?’
‘It’s so beautiful, Georgy. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
I nodded, but tried to look unimpressed. I wanted her to feel that this was a place where I belonged, that my life had always led me here.
‘It is a home, like any other,’ I said.
‘But it’s not!’ she cried.
‘I mean that on the inside, when you are with the family, they think of it as their home. One quickly grows accustomed to such wealth,’ I lied.
‘And have you met them yet?’ she asked me.
‘Who?’
‘Their Majesties.’
I burst out laughing. ‘But Asya,’ I explained, ‘I see them every day. I am companion to the Tsarevich Alexei. You knew that was why I was being brought here.’
She nodded and seemed lost for words. ‘It was just… I didn’t believe it could be true.’
‘Well, it is,’ I said irritably. ‘Anyway, why are you here?’
‘Georgy?’
‘Sorry,’ I said, regretting my tone immediately. It astonished me how much I wanted her to go away. It was as if I believed that she had come to take me home. But she represented a part of my life that was over for me now, a time that I wanted not only to move past but to forget entirely. ‘I only meant, what good fortune has brought you to the city too?’
‘None. Yet,’ she replied. ‘I couldn’t stand it there without you, you see. In Kashin. I couldn’t bear to be left behind. So I made my way here. I thought… I thought that perhaps you could help me.’
‘Of course,’ I said nervously. ‘But how? What can I do for you?’
‘I thought perhaps… well, they must want servant girls in the palace. There might be a position for me. If you spoke to someone.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, frowning. ‘Yes, I’m sure there is. I could try to find out.’ I thought about it, wondering who I should consult. I pictured my sister in a maid’s uniform or the lesser clothing of a kitchen servant and for a moment it seemed like a happy thought. She would find as much ambition here as I had. I would have a friend; not one whose respect I craved, such as Sergei Stasyovich. Nor one whose affection I desired, such as Anastasia. ‘Where are you staying, anyway?’
‘I found a room,’ she said. ‘It’s not much and I can’t afford to stay there for too long. Do you think you could ask for me, Georgy? We could meet again then. Here, perhaps.’
I nodded and felt a sudden urge to be rid of her, to be back inside the unreal world of the palace and not out here having conversations with the past. I hated myself for my selfishness but could not seem to vanquish it.
‘A week then,’ I said, standing up. ‘A week from tonight, at this time. Come again and I will have an answer for you. I wish I could stay longer now, but my duties…’
‘Of course,’ she said, looking saddened. ‘But later tonight, perhaps? I could return and—’
‘It’s impossible,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘Next week. I promise. I will see you then.’
She nodded and embraced me once more. ‘Thank you, Georgy,’ she said. ‘I knew that you would not let me down. It is either this or I return home. There is nowhere else for me. You will do what you can, won’t you?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I snapped. ‘Now I must be gone. Until next week, sister.’
And with that I hurried back into the square and towards the palace, cursing her for coming here, bringing the past into a place where it did not belong. By the time I reached my room I had grown more tender again, however, and resolved that the following morning I would do what I could to help her. And by the time my door was closed, she had vanished from my mind entirely and my thoughts were once again with the only girl whose existence mattered to me at all.
Of the three main imperial dwellings – the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, the cliff-top citadel at Livadia and the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo – the last of these was my favourite of the Tsar’s many residences. It was an entire royal village situated some sixteen miles south of the capital, and the court regularly travelled there by train – slowly, of course, so as not to cause any sudden jolting which might instigate another episode of the Tsarevich’s haemophilia.
Unlike in St Petersburg, where I was quartered in a narrow cell along a corridor populated by other members of the Imperial guard, my place at Tsarskoe Selo was a tiny billet situated close to the Tsarevich’s own bedroom, which was in turn dominated by a large kiot upon which an extraordinary number of religious icons had been placed by his mother.
‘Good God,’ said Sergei Stasyovich, poking his head around the door one evening as he passed along the hallway. ‘So, Georgy Daniilovich, this is where they’ve put you, is it?’
‘For now,’ I said, embarrassed that he should find me lying on my bed, half asleep, when the rest of the household was engaged in work. Sergei himself was red-cheeked and bristling with energy and when I asked him where he had spent the evening he shook his head and turned away from me, examining the walls and ceilings as if they contained matters of great importance.