And now I am truly stuck with it, thought the new tsarina. God save us all.
L59, The Catastrophe
A few days later came the last lift of men and supplies from Bulgaria. They’d be on their own, now, with the airship returning to German service.
The men aboard would more than replace the numbers lost in the rescue. More importantly, though, the ammunition would be badly needed in the fight to restore the throne to Tatiana and the Romanov line. Still more importantly, Daniil Edvardovich Kostyshakov intended to use it to get Fourth Company and some reinforcements close enough to that city to rescue Tatiana’s Aunt Ella, even while the rest of the battalion, plus as many trained townsfolk could be trusted, engaged and destroyed the battalion alleged to be coming from Yekaterinburg.
Mueller stood by Kostyshakov’s side, with most of the staff and the commanders clustered about. He, however, had been the critical one in turning the deep cut into the southern face of the hill of the kremlin into a suitable temporary shelter and docking station for the airship.
Tatiana was there, too, though she was not wearing the helmet given her as a crown. The MP18, on the other hand, hung by her side.
“There it is!” shouted Nomonkov, the sniper, and the man with the best eyesight in the battalion. “Almost due east and isn’t she just grand?”
It was at least another ten minutes before anyone else could seriously claim to see the airship. It was another twenty before it began its graceful turn to port to line itself up on the cut.
“What the…” Nomonkov asked of nobody, in particular. He’d seen them first, two small jets of fire coming from the airship’s flank.
Wilhelm Mueller only barely refrained from screaming at the sight of the flames that rushed to envelop the ship. It was full, after all, of nearly every friend he had in the world.
So rapid and complete was the destruction that no one was seen to have jumped from the ship before it nosed down, smashing into and crumpling against the ground, just east of the eastern Irtysh riverbank. The flames expanded into a fireball as the gas cells and fuel tanks were ruptured, feeding their contents to stoke the flames.
“My God,” said Kostyshakov, in horror.
How the hell do we get to Yekaterinburg now? wondered Molchalin, still not much given to talk.
Tobolsk, The Court
“I want to save what—rather, who, they’re not merely dry goods—we can,” insisted Tatiana, to Daniil.
It wasn’t much of a court, but it was more than most thought the Bolsheviks deserved, especially as word of Yurovsky’s orders began to circulate. The stack of death warrants had begun almost a foot high.
“No,” insisted Tatiana, again, shaking her head forcefully, while seated at her father’s old desk in the Governor’s House. “I want separated out from these the irredeemables, whom I presume to include all Bolshevik commissars except Pankratov, if he’s still in town. I think I can work with him. Also, the leadership of the Omsk and Yekaterinburg mobs, to the extent we haven’t already… hmmm, what was that word Lenin or Sverdlov used in the order to execute my family? Ah, I remember, ‘liquidated.’ To the extent we haven’t already liquidated them.
“The world will not miss them and neither will I. Then I want to see our old guards assembled so my sisters and I can sort out those who made our family’s lives pure misery. After that, I’ll sign all of that crew’s death warrants, without further ado.
“But, no, no, NO! The rest I will not have shot. They can provide labor, here, of greater value than the cost of guarding and feeding them. Also I want to talk to them. I know there were good men among our guards, men who wanted only the best for Russia. I intend to give them the chance to see that, even if I’m young, I am still a better bet than the Red fanatics.”
“I’ll see to it, Your Majesty,” said Daniil.
“And another thing,” she said, shaking her finger at him, “that ‘Your Majesty’ stuff? Maybe it’s important in public. But when we’re alone, Daniil Edvardovich? Or in closed cabinet? Please make it simply ‘Tatiana’ or, if you’re trying to make me see reason on something, ‘Tatiana Nicholaevna.’”
“As you wish… Tatiana,” he answered. He said it in a soft voice, one suggesting that there was more meaning behind the simple phrase.
“Daniil Edvardovich?”
“Yes… Tatiana.”
“I have to have at least one friend in the world. Have to.”
“Yes, Tatiana.” As he said it, he dropped his eyes slightly. As he did, it made her feel as if a little of the light had left the world.
Daniil was gone, off to deal with how they were to rescue Aunt Ella, he’d said, leaving her alone.
I’m going to be alone, to some extent, for the rest of my life. I can’t even have a boyfriend, not even Daniil… or not yet, anyway, because my power as “The Virgin Tsarina” is greater than my power as the wife or anything else of so and so. Mama? Papa? Did you realize that, because you put your marriage before everything else, that your successor may never be allowed to marry in her life? I’m going to have…
There was a light knock on the door. It was her sister, Maria, serving as Tatiana’s secretary for the time being.
“There’s an ‘Anton Dostovalov’ here to see you, Tati. Was he Olga’s…”
“Yes”—Now there is someone who’s lost as much as I have—“please send him in.”
Dostovalov walked in and, as Maria closed the door behind him, immediately went to his knees and burst into tears, hands clasped in front of him in supplication. Between sobs and choking it was hard for him to say an intelligible word, but eventually she realized he was begging for forgiveness.
And he thinks, as the one nearest to Olga, that I am the only one who can give forgiveness in her place. He really did love her, didn’t he?
“Rise, Anton Ivanovich,” she commanded, in her best imitation of an imperious voice. “Do you believe in our faith?” she asked, once he’d risen to his feet.
“Yes, Your Highness,” he managed to get out, between sniffles.
“Then you know my sister is not dead. She is with God now and knows that you tried to save her.”
“I did… I really did… but I was too slow. Sergei wasn’t too slow.”
“Big men usually can’t move as quickly as smaller ones, and Sergei Arkadyevich was in a better position to see that madman before you could. You don’t believe me,” she said, seeing that he really didn’t.
“I… don’t know what… to believe,” he replied.
And he got those words out quickly enough, with less sobbing. Maybe…
“Would you like to take a little sabbatical?” she asked.
“Highness, I don’t even know what that word means.”
“It’s a kind of a vacation,” she explained. “it’s a period when someone goes somewhere where he or she won’t be harassed, and thinks, and studies.”
“Studies? Me?” The thought was almost enough to make him laugh. Almost.
“Maybe you’ve just never had the right teacher,” she said. “Let me make some inquiries.”
Dostovalov wiped his arm across his eyes to clear off the tears. “Olga always said you were the smart one. If you think…”