‘Of course, that is not common knowledge, my friend,’ he said, not sounding like he cared particularly whether I told anyone or not. ‘Where they are being held, I mean. You must not say that to anyone.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, standing up and throwing a few roubles on the table to pay for both our dinners and drinks as I left; he had earned that much, at least. ‘I have no intention of talking to anyone about this.’
When I left St Petersburg I travelled east, passing through Vologda, Vyatka and Perm before arriving in the Siberian plains. It had now been more than a year since I had last laid eyes on Anastasia and almost as long since the Tsar had become Nicholas Romanov. I arrived lean and hungry, but driven forward by a desire to see her again, to protect her. My body was wasted from my long journey and had I been in possession of a looking glass, I swear that I would have appeared a decade older than my true age, which was not yet twenty.
The journey had been fraught with difficulty. I had succumbed to a fever just outside Vyatka but was fortunate enough to be taken into the home of a farmer and his wife, who nursed me back to health and listened to my delirious ramblings and didn’t hold them against me. On my last night in their home, I was sitting by the fire and the farmer’s wife, a strong woman named Polina Pavlovna, placed her hand on top of mine, surprising me for a moment with the intimacy of the gesture.
‘You must be careful, Pasha,’ she said to me, for on my first or second day there I had been asked what my name was and in my delirious state, unable to remember, I had offered that hated pet-name of my childhood. ‘There is danger in what you do next.’
‘What I do next?’ I asked, for during my restoration to health I had told them that I was travelling back to my own family, who lived in Surgut, in order to help with the farming. ‘But I see no dangers there.’
‘When Luka and I first met, we did not have the approval of my father,’ she whispered to me. ‘But we cared nothing for it, our love was strong enough. But his father was a poor man, a person no one thought much of one way or the other. It is different for you.’
I swallowed nervously, unsure how much I might have betrayed during my illness. ‘Polina—’ I began.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, smiling at me. ‘It’s only me that you told. And I haven’t told a soul. Not even Luka.’
I nodded and looked out of the window. ‘Do I have much further to travel?’ I asked.
‘It will be weeks,’ she said. ‘But they will be well. Of this, I am sure.’
‘How can you know that?’ I asked.
‘Because their story does not end in Tobolsk,’ she said quietly, looking away from me with a mournful expression on her face. ‘And the Grand Duchess, the one you love, her story has much left in it yet.’
I didn’t know what to say to this and so remained silent. I wasn’t the type to believe in superstition or the foresight of old women. I hadn’t believed it from the starets and I was not going to believe it from a farmer’s wife in Vyatka, although I hoped that what she was saying was the truth.
‘The Tsar travelled through here once, you know,’ she told me before I left. ‘When I was just a young girl.’
I frowned, for she was an elderly woman. I could scarcely believe it.
‘Not your Tsar,’ she said, laughing a little. ‘His grandfather. Alexander II. It was only a few weeks before he was killed. He came and went like a burst of lightning. The whole town came out to see him and he barely looked at any of us, simply charged past on his steed, and yet everyone felt as if they had been touched by the hand of God. It’s hard to imagine now, isn’t it?’
‘A little,’ I conceded.
I left the following day and was fortunate enough to remain healthy for the rest of my journey, arriving in Tobolsk in early July. The town was full of Bolsheviks, but no one gave me a second glance. They were not looking for me any more, I realized. Who was I, after all, except a retainer, a nobody. Any intention they might have had of tracking me down after the Tsar had been arrested had long since vanished.
Locating the Governor’s house was easy and I arrived there late in the afternoon, expecting to find it heavily surrounded by guards. I wasn’t entirely sure what I would do when I arrived. There was a part of me which had been considering simply asking to see the Tsar – or Nicholas Romanov, if they insisted – at which point I could offer to stay with the family as a servant and thereby see Anastasia every day until they were sent into exile.
However, the house was not exactly as I had imagined. There were no cars outside and only one soldier, who was leaning up against the fence, offering a deep yawn to the world. He watched me as I approached and narrowed his eyes irritably, but showed no sign of concern. Nor did he even bother to stand up straight.
‘Good evening,’ I said.
‘Comrade.’
‘I wondered… I believe this is the Governor’s residence?’
‘And what if it is?’ he asked me. ‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev,’ I said. ‘A farmer’s son from Kashin.’
He nodded and turned his head for a moment, spitting on the ground. ‘Never heard of you,’ he said.
‘No, I don’t expect you would have. But your prisoner has.’
‘My prisoner?’ he asked, smiling a little. ‘And what prisoner would that be?’
I sighed. I didn’t feel like playing games. ‘I’ve travelled a long way to be here,’ I said. ‘All the way from St Petersburg, in fact.’
‘From Petrograd, you mean?’
‘If you like.’
‘On foot?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Much of it, yes,’ I admitted.
‘Well, what do you want here?’
‘Until last year, I worked at the Imperial Palace,’ I explained. ‘I worked for the Tsar.’
He hesitated before answering. ‘There is no Tsar,’ he said sharply. ‘You might have worked for the former Tsar.’
‘The former Tsar, then. I thought… I wondered whether I could pay my respects.’
He frowned. ‘Of course you can’t,’ he said. ‘What are you, Jachmenev, stupid? You think we let anyone in to see the Romanovs?’
‘I am no threat to anyone,’ I said, extending my arms to show that I held no hidden weapons or secrets. ‘I simply want to offer myself in service to them.’
‘And why would you do that?’
‘Because they were good to me.’
‘They were tyrants,’ he said. ‘You’re crazy to want to be with them.’
‘Still, it’s what I want,’ I replied quietly. ‘Is it possible?’
‘Anything is possible,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But you’re too late, I’m afraid.’
My heart skipped a beat; it was all I could do to stop myself from grabbing him by the lapels and demanding to know what he meant by that remark.
‘Too late?’ I asked carefully. ‘In what way?’
‘I mean they’re not here any more,’ he said. ‘The Governor is in residence once again. I can ask for an audience with him, if you wish.’
‘No, no,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘No, that won’t be necessary.’ I felt like sitting on the ground and burying my head in my hands. Would this torment never end? Would we never be reunited? ‘I… I hoped to see them,’ I said.
‘They haven’t been taken far from here,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could go after them.’
I looked up at him hopefully. ‘They haven’t?’ I asked. ‘Where are they?’
He smiled and opened his hands, and I knew immediately that this information would not come cheap. I reached into my pockets and extracted every rouble I had. ‘I can’t negotiate,’ I said, handing it over. ‘You can search me if you want to. This is everything I have. Everything in the world. So please…’