After this, the Gospel was read and we drank from the common cup, promising to share everything in our lives from that moment on, our joys as well as our sorrows, our triumphs alongside our burdens. When we had completed our pledges, Father Rakhletsky led us around the table, upon which was placed the Gospel and the cross, to symbolize the word of God and our redemption. We walked together in a circle for the first time as a married couple and then stood before the priest once again while he recited the final blessing, imploring me to be magnified as Abraham, to be blessed as Isaac, to multiply as Jacob had, to walk in peace and work in righteousness, then beseeching Zoya to be magnified as Sarah, glad as Rebecca, to multiply as Rachel had, to rejoice in her new husband and to fulfil the conditions of the law, for so it is well pleasing unto God.
And with that, the ceremony ended and our married life began.
Sophie and Leo burst into spontaneous applause, and Father Rakhletsky appeared surprised by their informality but not disturbed by it. He congratulated us both, shaking my hand heartily and reaching forward to offer my bride a kiss just as she lifted her veil.
He stopped at that moment, pulled short and reeled back, a sudden and unexpected movement which made me think that he had suffered some sort of seizure or heart attack. He muttered a phrase under his breath – I did not hear it – and hesitated for so long that Sophie, Leo and I could only stare at him as if he had gone entirely mad. His eyes were locked with Zoya’s and, rather than looking away in confusion or embarrassment, she held his gaze, lifting her chin and offering him not her cheek to kiss, but her hand. A moment later, he returned to the present, took the hand hastily, kissed it, and backed away from us both without ever actually turning his back on us. His face betrayed his confusion, his astonishment and his utter disbelief.
Despite having promised to stay and dine with us after the ceremony, he gathered his belongings quickly and left, with only a few final words for Zoya, offered in the privacy of the hallway outside the flat.
‘What a curious man,’ said Sophie as we ate in some style an hour later, washing the food down with an extraordinarily good bottle of wine which our friends had provided.
‘I think it must have been a long time since he had seen anyone quite so beautiful as your Russian bride,’ said Leo, at his most charming and flirtatious, his neck-tie undone and hanging loosely around his open collar. ‘He looked at you, Zoya, as if he was sorry that he hadn’t married you himself.’
‘I thought he looked like he had seen a ghost,’ added Sophie.
I turned to my wife and she caught my eye for a moment before shaking her head slightly and returning to the conversation. I could not wait until we were alone, but not for the reason that you might imagine. I wanted to know what had been said between the priest and Zoya in the hallway before he left.
Leo and Sophie’s second gift to us was the use of their flat as a honeymoon residence, three nights of togetherness while they relocated to mine and Zoya’s former rooms for the duration of our stay. It was thoughtful of them, for we were to move into our own flat shortly, but it was not due to be ready until the middle of that week and of course we did not wish to be separated from each other so soon after our marriage.
‘He knew you,’ I said to Zoya after Leo and Sophie left us that evening.
‘He knew me,’ she replied, nodding her head.
‘Will he speak of it?’
‘To no one,’ she said. ‘I am sure of it. He is a loyalist, a true believer.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘I did.’
I nodded, having no choice but to rely on her judgement. It was a curious moment of panic and had not gone unnoticed by any of us, but it was over now, we were a married couple. I took Zoya by the hand and led her to the bedroom.
Afterwards, wrapping my body around hers as we attempted to sleep, unaccustomed to the warmth and slickness of two naked forms entwined in rough blankets, I closed my eyes and ran my fingers along her legs, her perfect spine, the length of her body, saying nothing, ignoring the way she wept in my arms, trying to control her own shaking as she considered the day and the wedding and the memories of those who had not been present to help us celebrate.
The Ipatiev House
UP CLOSE, the Ipatiev house did not seem particularly intimidating.
I stared at it from my hiding place, a few feet into the tightly packed woodland that bordered the merchant’s home, and tried to imagine what was taking place within its walls. A cluster of larch trees provided a convenient place for me to observe the house while remaining hidden from view; their overhanging branches and dense forestation offered some protection from the cold, although I regretted not being in possession of a heavier coat or the thick woollen gloves given to me by Count Charnetsky on my first days in St Petersburg. Before me was a small, grassy area where I could lie down and rest when my legs became too weary, and, further along again, several feet of thick hedgerow which led to a gravel driveway that ran parallel to the front of the house.
Somewhere over there, I told myself, the Imperial Family were gathered as prisoners of the Bolshevik government; somewhere over there was Anastasia.
A dozen soldiers came and went throughout the afternoon, leaning against the walls as they smoked and talked and laughed in friendly groups. A football, of all things, appeared for half an hour and they stripped to their shirtsleeves and tried to score goals against each other, the gate acting as one set of posts, the opposite wall as another. Almost all of them were young men in their mid-twenties, although the soldier in charge, who appeared from time to time to spoil their game, was a man in his fifties, of small, muscular stature, with narrow eyes and an aggressive demeanour. They were Bolsheviks, of course; their uniforms attested to that. But they went about their duties in a casual manner, as if the exalted status of their prisoners was a fact to which they were deliberately indifferent. Times had changed considerably since the abdication of the Tsar. Over the course of my eighteen-month odyssey from the railway carriage in Pskov to the house of special purpose in Yekaterinburg, I had grown to realize that people no longer treated the Imperial Family with the respect and deference that had always been their due. If anything, people competed with each other to offer the most obscene insult, publicly condemning the man they once considered to have been appointed to his throne by God. Of course, none of them had ever come face to face with the Tsar; if they had, they might have felt differently towards him.
What surprised me most, however, was the utter lack of security. Once or twice I stepped away from my hiding place and wandered along the road, passing by the open gates, taking care not to make eye-contact with anyone and receiving only the most disinterested of glances from the soldiers standing in the driveway. To them I was just a boy, an impoverished moujik, not worth wasting their time on. The gates remained open throughout the day; a car came and went on a number of occasions. The front door was never closed, and through the wide windows of a ground-floor parlour I could see the guards when they gathered together for meals; given such lax protection, I wondered why the family didn’t simply come downstairs and flee into the village beyond. Late in the afternoon of my first day’s vigil my eyes were cast towards one of the upstairs windows when a figure appeared suddenly to close the curtains and I knew immediately that the shadow belonged to none other than the Tsaritsa herself, the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna. And despite our often combative relationship, my heart leapt when I saw her because it was proof, if proof were needed, that my journey had been successful and I had found them at last.