The shock seized me cold and hard. Ever tearless, I started trembling as I tried to comprehend what had happened, what this meant, where my husband had got, what I must do.
Up ahead I saw some men grabbing the terrified horses, which were dragging behind them a single wheel and some shattered planks, that was all. Off to the side I noticed someone struggling, heard someone shouting. There was a man there whom the police were seizing upon and holding. This man, rather young, was actually doing nothing to resist, and I saw that his clothes were torn and singed and that his face, seared by the heat of the explosion and pierced by hundreds of slivers of wood, was streaming with rivulets of blood.
It was the revolutionary, the very one, I understood, who had thrown the bomb, and who now shouted, “Down with the Tsar! Long live freedom! Long live the Social Revolutionary Party!”
Above the mayhem someone else was calling that a cab be fetched at the moment. Within seconds one pulled up, and two policemen stuffed the man into the sleigh and sped off.
Off to my left I noticed more commotion, and I saw a handful of people struggling to support someone else, a man not fully conscious and dreadfully hurt, his body shot full of nails and splinters. Dear Lord, it was our dear Rudinkin, the coachman who had so dutifully served the Grand Duke for so many years.
Finding a strength and resolve that I had never before possessed, I commanded, “Get him to the hospital at once!”
A stretcher, already fetched from the Kremlin hospital, was put down with great haste, and my husband’s man carefully laid upon it. Wasting not a precious moment, two soldiers quickly carried off the mortally wounded servant.
Stepping forward, I saw a precious glint of something golden in the snow and I reached down. It was the chain of medals Sergei had always worn about his neck, and I grabbed it up, clutching it tightly in my hand. Quite nearby I saw something brilliantly red, and I snatched it up, too. A finger. And there, I realized, dropping to my knees and picking up something else as welclass="underline" his boot with the foot still in it. Next a mound of flesh and then a bone of some sort. And, yes, some clothing, part of his jacket, the blue one he had put on just before lunch.
Kneeling there, I pawed through the snow for more and more remnants of my husband, all of which I desperately gathered up into the folds of my dress. Only then did I look up and only then did I take notice of the crowd of people, larger than ever, pressing forward not simply to get a look at the carnage but to stare upon me, Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Elisavyeta Fyodorovna, wife of their feared Governor-General of Moscow. Carefully holding the bits of my husband in the folds of my bloodied dress, I rose to my feet, shocked by the incredible affront: everyone staring upon me still wore their hats, which no one had ever dared in the presence of a Romanov, let alone in a situation such as this.
“You, all of you!” I shouted as forcefully as a tsaritsa of olden Moscow. “You shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be standing around staring like this! At least you can take off your hats! At least you can do that-show some respect for the dead! Go on, off with them!”
Behind me, I heard a weak and quavering voice, that of Mademoiselle Elena, whose own face was streaked with a massive quantity of tears, and who now struggled to say, “Do… do as Her Highness commands… take off your hats! Do it!”
While no one was shamed into leaving, virtually all of them reached for their hats and pulled them off. Crossing themselves, some over and over, all continued to gawk at me, more so than ever, actually, for I was smeared with the blood of my murdered husband.
And assuming control of a situation in a way I never had, I called, “Get me a stretcher and bring it here-now!”
Within moments a pair of soldiers broke through the crowd and set a stretcher in the snow alongside the demolished carriage. I went directly to the litter, knelt down, and gently placed the remains of my husband there in a pile. I then turned to gather more, and the soldiers did likewise, picking up the hunk of the torso, the other boot, part of his hat, and everything else that they could find, scrap by bloody scrap, placing it in the small heap. Hysterically and silently determined, I continued searching under shattered carriage seats and pawing through snow, finding still more and more splintered bones and pieces of flesh and shreds of clothing. Yet still not a single tear fell to my icy cheeks, this despite the blood dripping from my own clothing and caught up, as well, under my finely manicured fingernails.
Clutching my husband’s gold medals more tightly than ever, I searched on and on, desperate to find every last scrap of him, and all the while thinking, “Hurry, hurry-Sergei so hates mess and blood!”
Chapter 18 PAVEL
We killed the Grand Duke-hurrah! Word raced across town, the Grand Duke was dead, his body blown to smithereens-hurrah! All Moscow was rushing to the Kremlin to see the blood-hurrah!
Oh, we had such a celebration, and we rejoiced at every single story, that someone saw the Grand Duke’s heart on the roof of a neighboring building, that a finger with a gold ring was found on the other side of the square, that the snow on the cobbles was sure to remain red until the first thaw melted it through the cracks and into the soil. We took delight in it all! The Grand Duke was dead!
Our magnificent bombmaker, Dora Brilliant, nearly fainted with joy, muttering, “I did it, I killed the Grand Duke!”
Everyone else seemed to take credit, too. Our Savinkov, who’d been so active in the planning. Kalyayev, our little poet, who had actually tossed the bomb. And others, like Azev, that notorious inciting double agent, who was always in the background of every revolutionary act. And even me to a degree. There were dozens who’d had a hand in the murder, and we felt so very proud. I guessed, too, that there were those who hadn’t played a part at all but who perhaps felt guilty, maybe an aide-de -camp or a colonel, those close to that wretched man whose minds might have echoed with all the things they could have done, should have done, would have done, to avoid calamity.
But, no, none of that was correct, for none of us was actually due the glory or, for that matter, the blame. Only one person was responsible for the murder of the Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, and that was the Grand Duke himself. He was so arrogant, so pompous, so reactionary, and so convinced of the holiness of himself and the Tsar. Just think how different things would have been if he’d even been able to tolerate talk of a constitution, let alone admit that we, his downtrodden subjects, were not animals, after all, but human beings.
And over and over we shouted, “Da zdravstvuet revolutsiya! ” Long live the Revolution! The Grand Duke is dead!
Chapter 19 ELLA
Within minutes after the bombing some priest had got himself back to the Kremlin’s Chudov Monastery, where he started ringing a lone bell against the steely winter sky. In turn that single bell, a beautiful but, oh, so sad sound, sparked many others, and within a few short minutes all of Moscow ’s forty-on-forty-yes, all 1600 of her churches-had a bell ringing. This was how my poor Sergei was carried to the heavens, to the toll of bells and on the wings of my very own prayers.