It was that day too that Kharitonov made a compote for lunch, a stew of dried fruits – apples and raisins – which greatly pleased the Tsar.
“Just delicious. There’s nothing better than honest Russian food – so wholesome. Honestly, I tell you, people always used to serve me fancy French food with rich creams and sauces, and I don’t miss any of it at all. Give me good, solid Russian food any day!”
I heard nothing more about the note the rest of that afternoon, nor the rest of the evening, as Nikolai deliberated what to do. On the one hand, a response to the letter meant taking a large risk – what if they were caught? Would that give the Bolsheviki perhaps what they were looking for, an excuse either to throw them all in a real prison or the unthinkable, grounds to shoot the Tsar himself? On the other hand, if the Romanovs didn’t reply did that mean they would lose their only chance at being rescued?
As it turned out, no action was taken until the afternoon of the following day, the twenty-first. As usual I assisted cook Kharitonov in cleaning up after lunch, and no sooner was I was done than the woman servant, Anna Stepanovna Demidova – Nyuta, we called her – came to me in the kitchen.
“Leonka,” she said, staring at me as if she were peering into my very soul, “would you be so kind as to help me? I need some assistance.”
“He’s finished here!” bellowed Kharitonov.
That’s the way it was. Any time anyone needed to take care of a lowly task, they called me. “Leonka, help us wheel Aleksei Nikolaevich into the other room, please.” “Leonka, be so kind as to bring some water.” “Leonka, fetch some wood.” “Get this… get that…” “Start the samovar.”
So none of the others thought anything of it, not cook, nor even the guard who was lingering in the room just beyond. And yet I knew something was up, for again it was the look, the way Demidova spoke to me more with her eyes than her voice, and I quickly followed her through the service hall where I slept every night across two chairs. Entering the dining room, we found the youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasiya, known simply to her family as Nasten’ka, sometimes Shvybz. At seventeen she was such a cute girl, always a twinkle in her eye. It’s no wonder, either, that it was she who spawned that cottage industry of silly speculation – did she really escape?! – for if any of the Romanovs had wanted to hoodwink the Bolsheviki it would have been her. Oh, how she would have loved to outfox them and escape to Europe! Of her, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna – the Tsar’s sister who fled as far as she could from the Reds, finally dying in 1960 in an apartment over a Toronto barbershop – said, “What a bundle of mischief.” Yes, the girl was a royal rascal, rather like you, Katya, when you were so young and given to playing in the woods and on the beach. That’s right, she was a real tomboy, infecting her family with her joie de vivre, again so like you, my granddaughter, who have been such a star of happiness to us. And this energetic Anastasiya often wrote to her father, always beginning with “My darling sweet dear Papa!!!” and always ending with “A big squeeze to your hand and face. Thinking of you. Love you always, everywhere!” And in those letters she told her father, Tsar of All the Russias, about the worms she was trying to breed or the problems she was having with her big sister, very unroyal problems like, “I am sitting picking my nose with my left hand. Olga wanted to biff me one, but I escaped her swinish hand.”
Anyway, that day young Anastasiya sat at the dining room table, dressed in the same light blouse and dark skirt that she’d been wearing for days. With a book open before her, she sat there pretending, rather poorly, to read. Her eyes darted over at me, and she grinned ever so slightly in conspiracy. I understood, but didn’t smile back.
In silence I continued behind Demidova, who led the way into the doorless room of the grand duchesses. One of them was in there too, Maria Nikolaevna. “Mashka,” that was her nickname, though sometimes in English they called her “Little Bow-Wow,” because she had the blind devotion of a dog. She liked so to please everyone, to take care of everyone, to do exactly as everyone wished. She wanted nothing more in life but children, scores of them.
Maria Nikolaevna was sitting on one of the metal cots, a Bible perched on her lap, but I could tell she wasn’t reading either. She looked briefly at us and then stared into the dining room. It was then that everything was perfectly clear: the girls had been set up like a warning system. I doubt it was Nikolai who had thought of something like this. He just wasn’t cunning enough, not the former Tsar. But she, on the other hand, well, surely this was the doing of Aleksandra Fyodorovna. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I had little doubt that Olga and Tatyana were stationed elsewhere in the house, ready to drop a book or cough or somehow telegraph the approach of one of the guards. And when I followed Demidova into the next chamber we found the former Empress standing right by the door, awaiting not only our arrival, but any signals as well.
“Spacibo, Nyuta,” thank you, said Aleksandra Fyodorovna to her maid, “that will be all.”
“Da-s,” replied Demidova who bowed her head slightly and retreated.
The Empress ushered me in, resting a hand on my back and gently steering me toward her husband, who sat at a desk. I glanced to my immediate right, saw the boy, Aleskei Nikolaevich, staring at me from his bed. In front of him was the same table, covered with various distractions, including some needlework, which the Empress had taught him, for she firmly believed that idleness was illness’s sister. That was the English side of her, I’m sure. Something she got from the old Queen.
So upon my entry the Tsar rose from his small wooden desk, where I might add not a single item was out of place. During his reign he never had a personal secretary, which was a point of pride to him, but to me now seems absolutely foolish. After all, the Tsar’s duties concerned one-sixth of the earth’s surface, not filing, not addressing envelopes.
The Tsar stood and pulled me into his sphere with those remarkable eyes. He cleared his throat, stroked once the trademark of his face, his beard.
“Your idea turns out to be quite a good one, molodoi chelovek,” young man, said the Emperor. “Are you still willing to act as our courier?”
An odd noise came from the girls’ room and Alekesandra Fyodorovna hurried back to the doorway. A moment later, she turned to her husband and nodded the all-clear. For the rest of my audience, however, she remained thus positioned.
He repeated, “Are you willing to act as our courier?”
There really wasn’t any question in my mind simply because of what the Reds had done to my Uncle Vanya just a month earlier. My dear uncle, of course, had served the Imperial Family for years, and it was in fact he who had brought me to work for the Romanovs that previous year. He was deeply devoted to the Tsar, so that previous month when the soldiers’ committee decided that Aleksei didn’t need two pairs of shoes, just one, my uncle and Nagorny, the mansvervant who watched over the boy, loudly protested. And for this they were taken to the city prison. Right up until the end we thought the two of them had been dumped in a cell with Prince Lvov, the first minister president of the Provisional Government, who’d already been arrested for some other silly reason. It was only years later that I learned that my dear uncle and Nagorny hadn’t been sitting in jail all along, but had instead been shot just a few days after they were first taken. The prince, on the other hand, later escaped to France, where he wrote his memoirs.