Romanov

by Nadine Brandes

  My heart felt for him. Even the soldiers took turns visiting his office or picking up some of his dropped duties.

  Zash watched me cross the garden, right up until I stopped in front of him. “I heard your sister had an excellent birthday.”

  I smiled brightly, though the sun stung my dry eyes. “Better than any of us could have hoped for.”

  “I am glad to hear it.” He broke eye contact. We both watched Ivan and Maria take a turn around the garden. Under the sunlight with her new head ribbon she looked radiant. Instinctively, my hand drifted up to my own head. It was prickly with tiny growth and I recalled Zash’s and my last conversation.

  “It becomes you,” Zash said.

  A laugh burst out of me. “Becomes me? Baldness?”

  “It captures your strength, Nastya. That is what I meant.”

  “Oh.” Every time he used my name, a different part of me melted.

  Zash breathed out a long sigh. “What do you need? What can I—we—do for you to make you like”—he gestured toward Maria, a walking sunbeam of delight beside Ivan—“like that?”

  My knee-jerk temptation was to respond in jest. But if we were leaving the Ipatiev House tonight, I wanted to be fearless in my conversation with Zash. “Why do you want me like that?” I lifted my eyes, nervous to see his reaction.

  His gaze was open. Real. Not the stiff soldier persona, and it made every word skip my head and land on my heart. “You find joy in so many little things. For once . . . I want to see joy find you. Surprise you. You deserve it.” His fingers brushed mine, ever so lightly. My breath caught and I found myself fighting the urge to move closer. To twine my fingers in his.

  Instead, I stepped back. Because to lock my fingers with his would make it impossible to use them to descend a rope toward rescue. I had to be able to leave him behind. The very thought burned my throat and stole whatever magic had bloomed between us.

  He saw the change and asked quietly, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  My voice came out thick. “I can’t . . .” I shook my head. “Ask me tomorrow, Zash.” I turned away, chills sweeping down my arms despite the day’s heat.

  There would be no tomorrow for the two of us.

  15

  “We can’t do this.” Papa paced in our bedroom as the tied sheets hung limp across Maria’s and my laps. We were about to untie all the knots. Again.

  Another sleepless night of pacing, wondering, sitting with muscles tense, ready to spring into action and pile furniture against the door. No signal. No rescue.

  The more and more we thought about this plan, the more foolhardy it seemed. Even if we did all safely descend the rope with our belongings and kept the dogs quiet, how could we get out the thick palisade gate? How would the White Army officer get in?

  “People will die,” Papa concluded. “Likely some of the soldiers here.”

  Maria released a shaky gasp. My own heart shrank. Zash. Ivan. Even Avdeev. I didn’t want them injured or killed. We’d spent months befriending these soldiers, even though they were dutifully keeping us in exile.

  “Their lives are more important than escape,” Papa said. And that was the conclusion. We all knew it was true. I felt it in my heart—I would rather remain in exile than be the cause of these soldiers’ deaths.

  So that morning Mamma scribbled out a reply to the officer with a crayon since we were out of ink. She gave it to me to insert into the cream bottle to send with the sisters. Her words were brusque and no-nonsense.

  We do not want to, nor can we, escape. We can only be carried off by force, just as it was force that was used to carry us from Tobolsk. We have no wish for the commandant or the guards—who have been so kind to us—to suffer in any way as a result of our escape. We are too closely watched. If you still plan to perform a rescue, then, in the name of Iisus, avoid bloodshed above all.

  We all signed it.

  Our trek into the garden was a somber one. No one maintained enough energy to paste on a smile or summon joviality. Ivan hurried to meet Maria and they retreated to the small tree grove at the back corner. I knew by his intense muttered questions that he was inquiring about the rescue.

  Maria burst into tears and he embraced her. As I passed them I caught him cupping her face in his hands and saying in low intensity, “I will not let you die here, Maria. I will get you out.”

  She sniffled and nodded.

  I hurried on, my eyes searching for Zash. The urge to run to him as Maria had run to Ivan quickened my feet until I finally saw him. He strode toward me and, as though planned, we retreated to the shadows against the house wall for privacy. His stiff Bolshevik persona had been done away with days ago.

  This was us. Zash and Nastya, learning what friendship looked like. I breathed his scent of earth and smoke—a mixture of his patrols outside and in.

  “It’s tomorrow,” he said softly. “I can see that something is wrong.”

  I closed my eyes, closed out the sky. “Surely you know I can’t tell you.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “Don’t you already know?” He spent so much time with Ivan, no doubt he learned the information about our attempted rescue.

  “I have my suspicions, but I’d rather hear truth from you.”

  I opened my eyes and cranked my head to face him. He sat with one knee up and his arm rested across it. Staring at me. Inviting me.

  I gave in. “We’ve realized that we’re going to die here.” Once I said it, I knew that was why my heart hung so burdened. “We care about you. I care about you . . . and the other soldiers,” I hurried on. “And that is more important to us than . . . well, than survival, I suppose.”

  “That’s absurd.” His soft tone turned sharp. “How can you possibly care for captors more than your own family?”

  “That’s not what I said.” I pushed myself up, angry. “It’s not about more or less. We care about every soldier. I am a Romanov, and I will value life—every person’s life—above all else. There is nothing to gain from hatred of our fellow man.”

  Zash opened and closed his mouth several times until he finally shook his head with a small, stunned smile. “Don’t you realize these soldiers would likely let you escape if you really gave forth an effort? They love you.”

  They. Not we.

  He reached up and gently tugged the scarf from my head. He seemed closer. I wanted him closer. “They love you,” he said again.

  Somewhere, in the thin space between us, our hands found each other through the grass. A small touch—but enough to communicate that we both wanted more than captor and captive. Craved it.

  His statement rested between us until the creak of the palisade gate caught our attention. An automobile trundled through the opening and pulled up in front of the house. I’d seen it before.

  Zash jumped to his feet and resumed his post by the wall. My, how quickly he could adopt that stiff, obedient Bolshevik stance.

  But now I could see through it. Now I knew the dark-haired man beneath. And my heart felt safe with him.

  The automobile sprayed gravel as it stopped. The young, round-faced man who got out glanced our direction and then strode toward us, purposeful. Beloborodov—the chair of the Ural Regional Soviet.

  A surprise inspection.

  I pushed myself from the wall of the house and joined Papa to meet the entourage. Papa held out his hand, but Beloborodov did not shake it, nor did he address Papa at all. Instead, he marched past until he stood before Zash. “Where is your commandant, soldier?”

  Zash bowed sharply. “Inside, sir.”

  Beloborodov surveyed the garden with narrowed eyes. “Where are the other prisoners?”

  I spun to look, just as Zash did. Papa, Tatiana, Alexei, and I stood in a small clump on the edge of the garden.

  “My wife is in bed, ill,” Papa said. “And my eldest daughter is tending to her.”

  Beloborodov did not acknowledge that he had spoken. Instead, his scan stopped on the copse of trees holding th
e swing and his eyes turned to slits. Between the trees, in the back corner of the palisade, I caught movement.

  My heart plummeted.

  Maria.

  Beloborodov stalked across the garden. It took a moment for me to recover the use of my legs, but once I did I stumbled after him, my mind sprinting far beyond the reach of my strides. I wanted to scream at Maria to come out of the trees. To hide herself. To separate herself from Ivan. That was the only reason she would still be in those trees.

  But I couldn’t squeeze out a word.

  I rounded the tree mere seconds after Beloborodov to see Maria in a tight embrace with Ivan. Sharing a kiss. In a different life, a different situation, it would be sweet. There was nothing unseemly about it. Just a gentle sweetness.

  “Maria!” I gasped—a warning, not a reprimand.

  She and Ivan jumped apart and their eyes went straight to Beloborodov. Ivan paled and Maria’s eyes widened. Papa arrived beside me, Zash at his side. I took Papa’s hand. He squeezed mine tight.

  Zash’s mouth was a thin, grim line. He met my eyes and the resignation in his sent my stomach twisting. A crunch of footsteps announced Commandant Avdeev’s arrival.

  Beloborodov let the silence stretch out. No one dared break it. Then in a deadly voice, he said, “Girl, return to your father.” His eyes remained on Ivan.

  Maria, trembling, slunk to Papa. He did not embrace her. Instead, he took one of her arms and steered her back toward the house. I wasn’t sure what to do. Follow? Stay?

  Beloborodov jerked his head toward me. “See them back to their rooms.”

  Zash was the soldier to obey. As he escorted me after Papa, Beloborodov asked Commandant Avdeev, “Who is this traitor?”

  “Ivan Skorokhodov, sir,” Ivan responded. “I am no traitor. These prisoners are no danger to our country—”

  Metal on leather preceded the cock of a pistol. I spun, but Zash dragged me on, his fingers pinching into my muscles. Maria, too, peered over her shoulder and seemed to see something in Ivan’s grim gaze that I couldn’t.

  “Ivan,” she gasped. “Ivan!” She fought Papa and Zash rushed forward to hold her. She thrashed, fighting the tangle of arms. “Ivan! Ivan!” A wild, terrorized thing. I’d never seen her like this. So desperate.

  It was as though Ivan was the last of her hope being torn from her.

  One of the Bolsheviks who had arrived with Beloborodov stepped away from his post by the automobile and slapped Maria. Papa pressed the soldier away with a single hand. The soldier lifted his gun, but Zash stepped between them. With a mighty force he grabbed Papa’s arm in one hand, Maria’s arm in the other, and dragged them both inside.

  I ran after them, feeling as though there was not enough air in the world to calm my lungs. Through all of Maria’s screaming and clawing and desperation, Ivan never said a word.

  Moments before I rounded the corner to enter the house, I glanced back. Ivan still stared after us. Our eyes met. In that moment, I saw what Maria had seen: a crinkle-eyed, freckle-skinned farewell.

  “Nastya.” Zash returned to the base of the stairs. He held his hand out. “Please.” He sounded broken.

  I took his hand and he tugged me inside.

  The gunshot followed.

  16

  The gunshot ricocheted in my skull like a never-ending echo.

  Dead. They had shot Ivan.

  Zash barely made it up the stairs to the landing before he fell against the wall and lifted a trembling hand to cover his anguished face. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t process.

  Maria’s screaming smashed through the walls until it entered every ear in Russia. But Zash’s fall to his knees was the final blow that splintered my composure.

  I dropped to my knees in front of him, weeping through my own confusion and shock. I pulled him into a tight embrace and he clung to me with one arm. I sent what comfort I could.

  It lasted a mere second. A short, shuddering gasp, and then he shoved himself back up. “I . . . I can’t,” he croaked, taking gulping breaths. “He’ll come.” With a grimace he pulled me to my feet. “You . . .”

  I nodded and forced my muscles to support me. “I understand.” I squeezed his hand, so tight it likely pained him. But sometimes comfort needed to sting more than the sorrow for it to break into the grief.

  We separated and I entered our prison. Zash needed to be a Bolshevik today. Otherwise he’d be the next one with a bullet in his head. I’d given what solace I could.

  Inside the main room Maria writhed on the floor, wailing and clawing at the carpet. I knelt over her, shaking and hollow. What had just happened? “Papa . . . Papa, what do I do?”

  But it wasn’t Papa who came to me. It was Alexei. He was in Mamma’s wheelchair and he pressed a hand to my shoulder. “Get her to bed.” His young face hardened into a grim resilience. He’d seen death before when visiting the army with Papa before the revolution. Ivan’s death cut his core, but he knew how to remain calm and be a leader.

  I had no idea how to respond. How to process.

  “There’s no comfort any of us can bring,” Alexei finished.

  Papa carried Maria to her bed. I turned around to face the open door. Zash still rested against the wall on the landing, his face covered. The strength that often came when one of my siblings was crumbling hummed inside me. It felt so feeble. So distant.

  I stumbled across the room to close the door to the landing, to free Zash from Maria’s keening, but then angry footsteps entered the stairwell. I leapt back. Zash took a deep breath, drew a sleeve against his eyes, and stood at attention. He didn’t quite manage the stoic Bolshevik demeanor, but I could see the energy it took for him to pull himself together.

  I closed the door when I heard Beloborodov’s voice, too frightened to face him. I prayed that he would not enter our space. That instead he was coming up to speak with Avdeev in the commandant’s office.

  The stomps reached the landing and Beloborodov barked out an order. “You, go bury that body.”

  “Of course, sir.” Zash’s cold reply could be taken as compliance . . . or hatred. I had an idea which one fueled it. He retreated down the steps, his footfalls heavier than I usually heard.

  Beloborodov and Avdeev retreated to the office. I breathed out a relieved sigh and went to our opened window. I didn’t want to see Ivan’s body, but neither, I assumed, did Zash. It was as though lending him my gaze and my presence would help give him strength.

  Though the whitewash still muted the glass, I could watch through the opening.

  Zash stumbled across the lawn with a shovel. The only other Bolsheviks in the vicinity stood at their posts by the gate or by Beloborodov’s car. Zash had to deal with the death of his friend alone.

  He barely reached Ivan’s corpse when Beloborodov stomped back out onto the grounds, entered his automobile, and sped away from the Ipatiev House. The moment the gates closed behind him, Zash fell to his knees and scooped Ivan’s bloodied body into his arms.

  As he rocked his friend into the afterlife, his weeping was silent but his anguish went deeper than sound. My heart could sense it . . . and it wept with him.

  * * *

  Maria no longer spoke. She did not play games. She ate the food as obediently as the three dogs did but with no enthusiasm. Almost as though sleeping. No attempts at conversation were met with a response. She was in a different world.

  It was as though I’d already lost her to the Red Army.

  When she wasn’t eating, she lay in her bed like Mamma. None of us blamed her. But neither could any of us comfort her. I sat and stroked the fuzz on her head. I rubbed her feet. I snuggled beside her and held her in a hug while sleeping. Because, though I knew not what to do, I had to do something. I was her sister. And whether or not she felt my tears or my love or my soft kisses on her cheek, it was what sisters did.

  Two days later, Avdeev entered our quarters. His eyes and jowls sagged, his skin sickly and pale. “I am being replaced. The new commandant arrives thi
s afternoon.”

  “Will you remain here to help him?” I asked, oddly hopeful.

  “Likely not.”

  Papa shook his hand firmly. “Go with our blessings and love.”

  Avdeev’s chin quivered. He nodded and then retreated into his office, defeated.

  We did our best to straighten our living quarters, though there was little out of place since cleaning was one of the few ways with which we could pass the time. We mended our clothes for the rest of the day, and I made sure to look my best.

  I didn’t know why we did this—maybe because, even though Avdeev had been drunk and greedy and unforgiving in many ways, he still took care of us. He still bent for some requests. We had entered a rhythmic understanding of our roles, and he seemed to appreciate it as much as we did.

  The new commandant wouldn’t know us. We’d be starting our exile all over again. The fact that one of Avdeev’s charges—a former grand duchess of Russia—had entertained a relationship with one of his own soldiers was an immense oversight. It meant that Avdeev had been too lenient. He had compromised the Red Army.

  Ivan had been shot because of it. Because of a kiss.

  I checked the Matryoshka doll in my corset, certain the spell would be ready by now. But the seam was still nothing more than a line of light—nothing I could open with my hands. Part of me hated the spell for taking so long. But the other part of me trusted Papa and the time it took for strong magic to age appropriately. Especially if this spell would be as powerful as Papa thought.

  We finished our lunch and remained in the main dining room until the new commandant showed up. We heard the gate open. Heard the gate close. The crunch of tires preceded a crunch of boots.

  A head came into view from the stairs. I straightened in my seat as he ascended. A brow. Two steely eyes met mine. Eyes I’d seen before. Eyes I’d winked at when I was on a train with his prize, thinking I was leaving him forever.

  Yakov Yurovsky.

  Yurovsky stopped in the entryway of our quarters. “Greetings, Citizens.” He seemed to speak only to me. His eyes burned through me to the Matryoshka doll tucked into my bodice. He knew. He knew because my face betrayed me. In this moment I lost my ability to shield my emotions. My guard was down. My family broken. My will crumpled by the appearance of this man.