But no, the hallway stood empty for only a minute before the Tsar and Tsaritsa appeared and began to make their way down the stairs too, walking slowly as they supported each other, apparently both lacking strength, followed by two soldiers who led them in the same direction as their children had gone.
Absolute silence followed. The remaining soldiers in the parlour stood up and left the room slowly, the final one turning off the light, and then they too turned the corner and disappeared out of sight.
At that moment, I felt utterly alone. The world seemed a perfectly silent and peaceful place, save for the light rustle of the leaves overhead, stirred by the summer breeze. There was a certain beauty to the place, a civilized expectation that all was well in our country and all would be well, now and ever after, as I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to drift away in the silence. The Ipatiev house was in darkness. The family had vanished. The soldiers had disappeared. Whoever had been walking along the gravel driveway was out of sight and earshot. I was all alone, scared, uncertain, in love. I felt an overwhelming rush of exhaustion that hit me suddenly with the force of a hurricane; I thought I should simply lie down on the grass, close my eyes, go to sleep and hope that eternity would come. It would be very easy to lie down now, to offer my soul into the hands of God, to allow the hunger and deprivation to catch up with me and take me to a place of peace, where I could stand before Kolek Boryavich and say I’m sorry.
Where I could kneel before my sisters and say I’m sorry.
Where I could wait for my love to come to me and say I’m sorry.
Anastasia.
For one final moment, the world was in perfect silence.
And then the shots rang out.
First one, suddenly, unexpected. I jumped. My eyes opened. I stood, frozen to the spot. Then, a few moments later, a second, and now I gasped. Then a series of shots, as if every gun that every Bolshevik owned was being discharged. The noise was tremendous. I couldn’t move. A bright light flashed on and off a thousand times to the left of the staircase as the guns sounded. My mind raced with possibilities that crashed together. It was so unexpected that I could do nothing but stay where I was, unable to move, wondering whether the entire world had just come to an end.
It took fifteen, twenty seconds perhaps before I was able to breathe again, and just as I did so my feet found purchase on the ground and I tried to stand up. I had to see, I had to go there, I had to help them. Whatever was happening. I lifted myself up, but before I could move a great commotion sounded in the trees before me and a body threw itself at me, flattening me, sending me falling to the ground, dazed for a moment, wondering what had happened. Had I been shot? Was this the moment of my death?
But that foolishness lasted only a moment and I scrambled backwards, straining in the darkness to see who was lying next to me. I stared and gasped.
‘Georgy,’ she cried.
1918
IT WAS A MOMENT I had never conceived of in my imagination. I, Georgy Daniilovich Jachmenev, the son of a serf, a nothing, a nobody, crouched in a thicket in the darkness of a freezing-cold Yekaterinburg night, holding in my arms the woman I loved, the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolaevna Romanova, the youngest daughter of His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Tsar Nicholas II and the Tsaritsa, Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova. How had I got here? What extraordinary fate had taken me from the log huts of Kashin into the embrace of one of God’s anointed? I swallowed nervously, my stomach performing revolutions of its own within my body as I tried to understand what had happened.
In the distance, the lights of the Ipatiev house were being turned on and off and I could hear the conflicting sounds of angry shouting and manic laughter emerging from within. Narrowing my eyes, I saw the Bolshevik leader standing in an upstairs window, opening it, leaning out and stretching his neck in an almost obscene manner to observe the panorama from left to right, before shivering in the cold, closing it once again, and disappearing from sight.
‘Anastasia,’ I whispered, forcefully pulling her a few inches away from my body so that I could observe her better; she had spent the last few minutes pressed painfully against my chest, as if she was trying to burrow her way through to my very heart and find a hiding place within. ‘Anastasia, my love, what has happened? I heard the gunfire. Who was shooting? Was it the Bolsheviks? The Tsar? Speak to me! Is anyone injured?’
She spoke not a word, but continued to stare at me as if I was not a man at all, but a figure from a nightmare that would dissolve into a thousand fragments at any moment. It was as if she did not recognize me, she who had spoken of love to me, promised a lifetime’s devotion. I reached for her hands, and as I took them in my own it was all that I could do not to release them again in fright. They could not have been colder had she been destined for the grave. At that very moment, her composure left her and she began to shake violently, allowing a deep guttural sound of tortured breathing to emerge from the back of her throat, the threat of a great scream to come. ‘Anastasia,’ I repeated, growing alarmed by her extraordinary behaviour. ‘It is me. It is your Georgy. Tell me what has happened. Who was shooting? Where is your father? And your family? What has happened to them?’ No response. ‘Anastasia!’
I began to experience the sensation of horror which succeeds the recognition of a slaughter. As a boy, I had been present while villagers in Kashin had suffered and died, their bodies wasted by starvation or disease. Since joining the Leib Guard, I had witnessed men being led to their deaths, some staunch, some terrified, but never had I observed as much contained shock as that which lay before me in the trembling body of my beloved. It was clear that she had witnessed something so terrible that her mind could not yet process the fact of it, but in my youth and innocence, I knew not how best to attend to her.
The sound of voices emerging from the house grew ever louder and I pulled us both deeper into the cover of the woodland. Although I was sure that we could not be seen where we lay, I grew concerned that Anastasia might suddenly return to her senses and expose us; I wished that I had a weapon of my own, should one be required.
Three Bolsheviks stepped out from the tall red doors at the front of the house, lighting cigarettes, speaking in low voices. I saw the glow of matches being struck over and over and wondered whether they were nervous too or whether the breeze was extinguishing the flames before they could take. I was too far away to hear their conversation, but after a few moments one of them, the tallest one, let out a cry of anguish and I heard these words break the tranquillity of the night:
But if it is discovered that she has—
Nothing more. Eight simple words that I have pondered many times over the course of my life.
I narrowed my eyes, attempting to decipher the expressions of these men, whether they were cheerful, excited, nervous, penitent, traumatized, murderous, but it was too difficult. I glanced down at Anastasia, who was clutching me painfully tight; she looked up at the same moment, caught my eye, and a look of such terror crossed her face that I feared that whatever had taken place inside that cursed house had made her lose her reason. She opened her mouth, drawing in a deep breath, and, fearful that she would begin to scream and betray us both to the soldiers, I placed my hand across her mouth, as I had with her older sister two nights earlier, and held it there, every fibre of my being revolting against such an offence, until finally I felt her body slump against my own and her eyes look away, as if she had the lost the will to fight any longer.