They would have stayed that way for a good long while, but suddenly the two men, the sinner and the priest, were ripped apart. Before Pavel knew what was happening, two camp guards grabbed him and yanked him to his feet. A third took Father Vladimir by the arm and pulled him up.
“It is time,” said Father Vladimir to Pavel, his voice strained.
“Yes, it is time,” repeated Pavel, looking up and through his tears seeing the first of the daylight.
They were shoved along then, pushed and kicked by the guards toward a large hole some forty paces away. As he stumbled, Pavel was glad for this, glad that all would soon be over. Four years ago he had questioned one of his superiors, and in turn had been accused of anti-Soviet activity. For this he’d been sentenced to ten years at the Solovki Camp, which had been transformed from the ancient Solovetsky Monastery into a concentration camp, nearly the first of the USSR ’s many Gulags. In an attempt to get out of heavy work in a quarry, however, last month Pavel had become a “self-cutter,” amputating three of his own fingers.
For that his sentence had been changed: to be shot.
Similarly, Father Vladimir, having refused to stop preaching and consequently charged with spreading anti-Soviet propaganda, had received a similar sentence: to be shot.
As they now trudged along, Pavel looked up and on the thick brick wall of the monastery saw a red banner proudly proclaiming the popular slogan: Cherez trud domoi! Through work you will get home! But Pavel didn’t want to go home, for his home and his heart were long gone. He just wanted to escape to another world where he was sure to face eternal damnation.
A few paces later Pavel and Vladimir were led to a deep, wide hole they themselves had dug over the past week. They had finished just yesterday, and then the killing had begun.
“Gospodi!” For the sake of God, gasped Father Vladimir, staring with horror into the pit.
Pavel couldn’t believe it, either, the sight of so many bodies dumped in there. Forced to line up on the edge of the mass grave, the first ones were shot not ten minutes after Pavel and Father Vladimir had finished digging, the bodies falling this way and that into the pit. Even Pavel, now staring down at the bodies, was surprised at how many had been killed since just yesterday-sixty or seventy men and women, and over to one side a black mound of maybe twenty priests. The killings went on and on all the way until nightfall, at which time Pavel and Vladimir were told they would be shot with the first break of day.
Yes, they had been given one more night, and on that long night Pavel had told his story not only of her, the beautiful Grand Duchess, but of the Revolution for which he had killed and which would now kill him.
Knowing that they had but seconds left, Pavel reached over and took hold of Father Vladimir’s hand, and with a trembling voice said, “Thank you for listening to me, Father.”
The priest, turning slightly, raised his free hand and made a quick, awkward sign of the cross, saying, “Your confession has been heard.”
“But… but I do not wish… I do not deserve… to be forgiven.”
“That, my son, is not your decision, but His.”
Before Pavel could say anything else, he sensed it, the hard, cold barrel at the back of his head. The tears coming to his eyes, he looked up, saw the beauty of the blue morning, the sun streaking the sky, and he wondered if her thoughts had been like this in those last moments: of fear and hope and relief. And he wondered, too, if they, the Grand Duchess and he, would ever meet in the next life so that he might bow at her feet.
And then the shot came so quickly that he didn’t even feel it, let alone hear it, and his body tumbled forward, falling onto the many who had fallen before him.
It is easier for feeble straw to resist mighty fire than for the nature of sin to resist the power of love.
– New-Martyr Saint Elisabeth
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The city of Alapayevsk fell to the White Army in late September, 1918, and soon thereafter the bodies of Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Elisabeth Fyodorovna, Nun Barbara, and the five other Romanovs and one servant were recovered from the bottom of the mine shaft where they had been pushed to their deaths on July 18, 1918. While the gruesome details of what happened in those last moments are still not certain, many stories persist. The most frequently related of those comes from the only eyewitness interrogated by White investigators, Vasily Ryabov, who claimed that burning branches and grenades were thrown into the mine shaft after the bodies, and still Elisabeth and the other Romanovs lived (Ryabov claimed they could be heard singing hymns). However, months later when the bodies were pulled from the mine, the only physical damage found on their bodies was severe physical trauma from being clubbed and hurled down.
A few months after the Whites took Alapayevsk they lost it again to the Reds, and during the retreat the bodies of the Romanovs were hastily removed to Siberia and eventually, in 1920, to Beijing. Soon thereafter the relics of the Grand Duchess and Nun Barbara were transported to Jerusalem and laid to rest in the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene, where they remain to this day.
In 1981, Grand Duchess Elisabeth was canonized New-Martyr Saint Elisabeth and her faithful cell attendant canonized Nun-Martyr Saint Barbara by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia and, in 1992, by the entire Russian Orthodox Church. To commemorate Saint Elisabeth, who was one of only ten 20th-century martyrs to be so honored, a statue of her was installed above the Great West Door of Westminster Abbey in 1998; Saint Elisabeth’s great-nephew, Prince Philip, and his wife, Queen Elizabeth II, attended the ceremony.
In 1926 the Marfo-Marinski Obitel Miloserdiya (the Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy) was closed and all the remaining nuns were banished to Siberia and Central Asia; the Grand Duchess’s spiritual confessor, Father Mitrofan, was imprisoned in the Gulag and later died of pneumonia. As for the convent itself, its buildings, which during the Communist era were used as community halls and warehouses, fell into extreme disrepair. In 1993 the Marfo-Marinski Obitel Miloserdiya was reconsecrated at its original site on the Bolshaya Ordinka, vows for 33 nuns were renewed, and its orphanage reopened.
To this day, restoration of Grand Duchess Elisabeth’s beloved obitel continues, as does her pioneering social work.
The author gratefully acknowledges that for the purposes of authenticity many of Grand Duchess Elisabeth’s own words from her diaries and letters (including her farewell letter written on the train to Siberia) were used in the writing of this novel. Similarly, other non-copyrighted historical documents, such as the letters of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra as well as Rhetta Dorr’s actual interview of Grand Duchess Elisabeth regarding education in America, were also employed. For more information, a readers’ group guide, and to view historical photographs, please visit:
www.robertalexanderbooks.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to those who helped so very much: researcher Mary Ann Fogarty, Ellen Hart, Dr. Don Houge, Robin Seaman, Katherine Solomonson, and Meri Tarlova. My deep gratitude to everyone at Viking, particularly my editor David Cashion and publicist Ann Day. And of course, thank you, Marly!
Robert Alexander
