The King's Commisar

'Tell me.'

'I pointed out the village to the ex-Tsarina. She wept and fell to her knees on the deck and prayed.'

'You knew him?' I asked.

'He travelled on the Rus. I spoke to him.' Meluik gave a little shudder. 'A man to fear. Such eyes!'

So I was regaled with stories of Rasputin, the ship and the region, as Rus drove steadily north, and came at last, on the next day, to the great bend of the Irtysh River where stands Tobolsk. From the bridge of the steamer the Governor's House was clearly visible, and through my binoculars I could discern that there were figures sitting outdoors on a kind of balcony which caught the afternoon sun. I regarded them with a profoundly guilty feeling.

For it is here that I must make a most dreadful confession. The peace of mind of which I spoke lasted only the first half of the Rus's journey. It happened that I lay that night, so Meluik told me, in the bed occupied the previous year by Nicholas. Somehow that knowledge made me, for a time at least, quite unable to sleep, so that my mind ran hither and yon over the events of the immediate past and possibilities for the future. It was then, listening to the water and the bumps of ice, that I pictured my own King, whose first mysterious summons had set me upon this road, and who was so desperately anxious to save the Imperial Family. And I realized that I must endeavour by all available means to carry out my Sovereign's dearest wish, whatever the risks. But I had almost no money. You may have guessed already the nature of the temptation to which I succumbed. The truth is that at dead of night I entered the hold of the Rus where all the Romanov possessions were stored, and searched among them for small and valuable things, portable and easy to exchange. I came up with a good handful of items, loose jewels, brooches, earrings and the like. Their value cannot possibly be guessed at, but must have been substantial. It was an unforgivable crime: I see that now. But at the time, as I searched among the belongings for suitable items, the thought dominant in my mind was that if the necessity should arise to bribe an official, or purchase services for the Tsar's sake, it would be unthinkable for me to fail to have the wherewithal when the wherewithal was available. And so, a thief in the night, I stole. Next afternoon, when the Rus had been tied up at the West Siberian Steamship Co.'s quay at Tobolsk and I strode off to greet the royal children, my pockets contained their things.

At the gate of the Governor's House I put on a bold manner and called for Colonel Kobylinsky. He came quickly, but with the air of a man looking over his shoulder, and led me, without speaking, inside to his quarters. Once there and with the stout door closed, he asked me at once, 'What of the Tsar?'

'You haven't heard?'

'We hear nothing.'

So I told Kobylinsky briefly of the incarceration of Nicholas and Alexandra and their daughter.

'Can anything be done?'

'I'm trying. The situation is very difficult.'

'Are you taking the others?' Kobylinsky then asked me worriedly. 'They very much want to go to their parents, of course. But I don't like the prospect of Ekaterinburg ... I don't like that at all.'

'No. There's no question of taking them, but I'll talk to the youngsters.'

He nodded. 'Try not to worry them.'

So I made my face as cheerful as possible and adopted a matching tone, but it was a melancholy experience to face the three Grand Duchesses and young Alexei and to tell them the news. That they blamed me was clear in their eyes, but they were all of them too well-mannered to say an accusing word; they simply sat in a little semi-circle round me, listening with great concentration and absorbing every movement of my eyes and lips and facial muscles.

When I had finished, the questions came, and they were heartbreakingly polite and formaclass="underline" How is Papa? How is Mama? Is Marie well? I told them what I could, but such explanation as I could make satisfied them as little as it satisfied me.

The leader among them, though not the eldest, was clearly Tatiana, a thin-faced girl of twenty. She sat silent for a while, listening as I spoke, and then broke in: 'Commissar Yakovlev, we are of one mind. If our parents and our sister are imprisoned, we wish to be with them. Please take us to Ekaterinburg.'

I had hoped to avoid telling them of my own arrest and expulsion from the city, because to do so must increase their burden of worry, but it became impossible to conceal.

'I cannot take you,' I told her, and explained why.

'Then who is responsible?' she demanded. 'We all understood you to represent the highest Bolshevik authority. We understood also that safety, at the very least, was guaranteed.'

'I have informed Moscow by telegraph,' I told them. 'And I feel sure that authority will soon be re-established over the Ekaterinburg Regional Soviet.' I tried to sound convincing, and perhaps the younger ones believed me, but plainly Tatiana did not.

'Did you really come on orders from Lenin and Sverdlov?' she asked me. 'Is it true?'

'Perfectly true.'

'But they are masters of all Russia now! How can this happen, this defiance?'

I told her what I had once thought myself: that the answer lay in a failure of communication, and perhaps in rivalry.

T, she said, 'think it is all a trick! Commissar, if our request cannot properly be made to you, to whom can it be made?'

'I will pass it on to Moscow. That is all I can do. And now I must speak alone to your brother.'

'Why?'

'I have a gift for him, and a message.'

Tatiana blinked distrustfully at me, but of course she was powerless to prevent it. She led the girls from the room and I was alone with Alexei.

He smiled at me, quite cheerfully. 'Tatiana always looks on the black side,' he said. 'I'm sure we'll all be together soon.' And then the smile broadened. 'You said you had a gift and a message. Who from Papa?'

I took out the sapphire-studded crucifix and held it up by its chain so that it swung.

'A crucifix,' Alexei said confidently, 'must be from Mama. Am I right?'

'Not entirely," I said. 'The gift and the message go together, and really they're from your father. He told me that he had left something with you, a document -'

I saw the boy's quick frown and made myself smile. 'It is just that he changed his mind, you see. He told you to keep the document safely and to give it to him only when the four of you are taken to join him. I know that's what he said. He told me so. You were to keep it secret and give it to nobody. But now he wants you to give the paper to me.'

'No.' Alexei's lips were clamped together. 'He said I must give it to nobody.'

I know he did. You heard me say so. Alexei, he sent the crucifix so you would know the message was from him, because you would recognize the crucifix. I'm sure you do.'

He was distressed now, and I hated myself for lying to him. The fact remained that the paper might well be the only means of saving all their lives. He said, on the edge of tears, 'But he told me, and made me promise!'

I said gently, 'Alexei, did you tell me about the paper?'

He shook his head. 'Of course not.'

'Did anybody else know - your sisters, for instance?'

'No.'

'It was between the two of you, between you and your father - a secret between men?'

'Yes.'

'Then how do I know?'

He stared at me, blinking.

I said, 'Only he or you could have told me, Alexei, and you didn't, did you? So it must have been your papa, mustn't it? And the crucifix is to show you that's the truth.'

A moment passed, and his brow cleared a little. Then he stretched out a hand for the crucifix. I gave it to him and he examined it.