by Ariel Lawhon
There are no words. She has no words. So Anna gapes at him stupidly instead.
“That is where you come in,” he says.
“Me?”
“Of course. You are the rightful heir to the Russian crown. Your support of my regime is imperative.”
“I…see.”
Whatever the Führer has hidden behind the impenetrable wall of his eyes flashes through now, and Anna sees, for the first time, a glimpse of shrewdness when he adds, “Of course, should I find that your claims are false, should my intelligence be wrong, then imprisonment will be only the beginning of your troubles. In fact, death would be a fate too kind for such a fraud. Don’t you agree?”
SIX YEARS EARLIER
Kuranstalt Ilten Psychiatric Home, Hannover, Germany
January 1932
“Hello,” the man says, sticking out his hand, “I am Ernest Frederick, Duke of Saxe-Altenburg.”
“Duke?”
“Well, prince, really, but that sounds awfully pretentious, doesn’t it? Please, call me Frederick.”
He stands there, awkwardly, until Anna realizes she has not invited him to take a seat. These royals and their manners. It’s so easy to forget. “Forgive me,” Anna says. “Sit. I did not expect a visit today.”
Her little cottage is hidden at the back of the Ilten grounds, tucked into a small copse of silver fir trees. It is bright and open and surprisingly comfortable. Yet it is impossible to forget that it lies within the boundaries of a walled mental institution. If Prince Frederick is uncomfortable with this he doesn’t let on.
“Can I get you some tea?” Anna asks.
“No, thank you. I’m quite content.”
It is always awkward, this small talk, but Anna lets him plunge ahead. She doesn’t even know where to begin.
“Do you know why I’m here?” he asks, finally. He folds his hands in his lap and peers at her with a mixture of hope and wariness.
“I’m afraid I don’t read minds. You’ll have to inform me the old-fashioned way.”
“My sister, Charlotte, married your cousin Sigismund, Irene’s son. I am here on his behalf.”
“Ah, I see. My cousin sent you.” Of course he would be another Romanov detractor in disguise. Anna stifles her sigh and crosses her feet at the ankles. She sits up straighter. “How can I assist you?”
“You last met with my brother-in-law before the Great War, is that correct?”
Anna narrows her eyes. “It’s possible. Though the date escapes me.”
“The date doesn’t matter. Only the details.”
“Details?”
“Of that meeting. He has devised a list of eighteen questions, you see. And the answers to these questions are known only to Anastasia Romanov. He has sent me to ask them in the hopes that you can help put this matter to rest.” Frederick leans forward and rests his forearms on his knees. “It’s a test, I realize, and I apologize for that because I am certain you are sick to death of being tested. But if you pass, you will have Sigismund’s full support. And mine.”
“And what of his mother, Princess Irene?”
“Hers too, I believe.”
Anna has good reason to doubt this. The last time she sought help from the Empress Alexandra’s older sister she ended up at the bottom of the Landwehr Canal in Berlin.
“You realize this is ludicrous?” she says.
This takes Frederick aback. “I am sorry, Tsarevna, I did not mean to insult you. I simply do not know of any other way to deliver Sigismund the proof he needs.”
“Not the test, you ridiculous man. The circumstances.”
“I…I’m sorry…ridiculous? I’m afraid I don’t catch your meaning.”
“We are seated on the grounds of a psychiatric hospital. No matter what I say in response to those questions, Irene will pass it off as insanity.”
Frederick pulls a fountain pen from his coat pocket and taps the end of it against his nose. “Oh. I see your concern. And I can assure you that I am familiar with your situation.”
“My situation? Meaning that I am an inmate?”
“Meaning that this”—he waves his arm around to indicate the cottage—“is a rather unfortunate misunderstanding. I know that your former host, Miss Jennings, dispatched you rather abruptly. I know that the physician she employed in New York had you committed without any sort of psychiatric evaluation. And I know that you were declared perfectly sane upon your arrival back in Germany. By three different doctors in fact.”
Anna wants to clarify a few points but he continues.
“I also know that, given you had nowhere else to turn, Miss Jennings paid for a six-month stay at this facility, not in the ward itself but in this cottage, on the grounds, since they refused to admit you as a patient. It’s not exactly a holiday, but no one can accuse you of having been committed to this mental institution.”
This man is becoming far more interesting by the moment. “I see you have done your homework.”
“I am nothing if not thorough.” He smiles and in the process sheds a layer of formality. “Am I also right in believing that your six-month stay at Ilten expires next week?”
“Yes.”
“And do you have anywhere to go after that?”
“I always figure something out, Prince—”
“Frederick. Please, I asked you to call me Frederick.” He pulls a single piece of paper, folded lengthwise, from the pocket inside his finely woven navy suit coat. “I believe that if you will be so kind as to humor my brother-in-law with answers to his questions, that I can be of great assistance with your next move.”
“Is that so?”
“Indeed. I have good friends who have offered to place you in an apartment here in Hannover, near the Marstall Gate—it’s a lovely part of the city. A home of your own, for as long as you need it.”
“And all I have to do is answer a few questions?”
Prince Ernest Frederick of Saxe-Altenburg hands her the paper, along with his pen. “It is truly as simple as that.”
· 12 ·
Anastasia
THE GOVERNOR’S HOUSE
1917
Tobolsk, Russia
August 7
We arrive at our new home to find it uninhabitable. We decide, in the end, that Kerensky chose the old Governor’s House because it was the single dwelling in all of Tobolsk that could be accessed by a wooden walkway from the dock. A small mercy given the channels of mud that serve as streets and alleys in this godforsaken Siberian outpost. From the dock we march under military escort along a narrow boardwalk, passing astonished locals until we reach the two-story clapboard building.
“I don’t understand,” Mother says, staring, aghast, at the boarded windows and littered porch. “What is this place?”
Leshy pulls the red kerchief from his pocket and wipes the sweat from his brow. He nods toward the abandoned building. “The Governor’s House. Your new home.”
“Kerensky said we’d be in a mansion.”
“I suspect you hear what you want to hear, Alexandra. There are no mansions in Tobolsk.”
The Governor’s House is large, but it is not elegant. Nor is it clean, hygienic, or livable. Not after being used for several years as an army barracks. We stand there, gaping at the open front door and the dank rooms beyond. After several minutes a stray cat wanders out, takes one look at Jimmy—in crouched position with hackles raised—and bolts up the nearest tree with a furious screech. I lunge for Jimmy and grab him by the collar to stop him from chasing after it, stumbling forward several steps with his momentum.
The interior of the house looks no better than the exterior. Mud—an inescapable reality in Tobolsk—has been tracked over every inch of the floor. I am certain that my hem and shoes will never be the same. There is not a single curtain on the windows, but the panes are intact. They
are so filthy that I can scrape off a layer of grime with my fingernail.
“You cannot expect us to live here,” Mother says, holding a scented kerchief over her nose. “It is foul.”
Leshy stands just inside the door, arms behind his back. “It is your new home. Make of it what you will.”
We continue our tour through the squalid rooms, stunned and demoralized. The air is heavy and damp and smells of cat urine and bad plumbing. I turn the tap inside the first-floor bathroom and a weak stream of brown water spurts against the chipped enamel sink.
Behind us, the soldiers trudge in never-ending lines with our trunks and cases, dropping them to the floor without any sort of order.
“What do we do?” Mother groans, turning in a small circle as she takes in the crumbling plaster walls and endless cobwebs.
As a ladies’ maid, Dova has never once picked up a broom or a dusting cloth in all the years she was at Alexander Palace. But that does not stop her from taking one shaky breath and assuming control. “We clean it,” she says simply, then begins making order out of chaos. Dr. Botkin and Cook are dispatched to the city for cleaning supplies while Dova strong-arms the closest group of soldiers to help with the windows.
“Open them,” she orders, sticking a plump finger in each of their faces. “Get the air moving again.”
The boys are young—barely older than I am—pink cheeked and too intimidated to argue. The windows, swollen with humidity, are forced upward with brittle whines, and then the boards are pried from where they’ve been nailed to the outside of the house. Once the light gets in we can see exactly what needs to be done.
Dova, God bless her, doesn’t allow us to crumble beneath the weight of this realization. “One room,” she says, fists clenched and voice peppered with flint. “We get one room clean enough to sleep in tonight. This one will do, in fact.”
We look around us at what was likely a study and nod feebly. Dova grabs Tomas as he passes. He has just set down a trunk against the wall and is on his way out to pull another off one of the many carts lined up outside the house. “You,” she says. “What is your name?”
“Tomas.”
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
So young, so very young to pick up a rifle and be a soldier.
Dova is one of those people who decides instantly and irrevocably whether she likes someone. Something about the boy must appeal to her because she says, “It is now your job to help me find everything we need. Do you understand?”
Tomas shocks us all by smiling. In addition to those dimples, he’s also in possession of high cheekbones and pretty teeth. I can’t tell the color of his eyes beneath the brim of his cap, but I find myself suddenly curious about them.
“I’d be happy to,” he says.
“Then I suppose you’ll be happy to help us scrub the house as well?”
“I have seven brothers,” Tomas says. “I’ve scrubbed worse.”
* * *
—
We sleep on our camp beds that night. The windows are open and the mosquitoes are relentless, but at least the fresh air helps ease the scent of men and cats and things we are afraid to name. But we sleep. And when morning comes we’re better able to face the task of making the house, this prison, into a home.
We get to work immediately. Since my family is forbidden to leave the grounds, Dova and Botkin go in shifts, led by Tomas, to purchase everything from washstands to curtains to candles. The most appreciated acquisition, however, is a laundress. By the time we’ve scrubbed all the floors, walls, and windows on the first floor our hands are bleeding and chapped, our clothing filthy. The thought of plunging my hands into one more bucket of water—even to wash my underclothes—is enough to make me abandon all hope.
Despite the grimness of our situation, we discover that Tobolsk does have a certain beauty. The Irtysh River is wide and muddy, but at sunset it looks like a winding, golden ribbon trimmed with bright, marshy fringe. We sit on the second-floor balcony after dinner, listening to Father read aloud. The air is balmy and crickets serenade us from the grass. While Father regales us with the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, I stare at the white stone kremlin high on the hill and the cathedral in the middle of town. Such beautiful, elaborate buildings in such a distant, drab outpost.
Apart from these two impressive monuments, the only other point of interest in Tobolsk is a museum that, Tomas says, is used to display various torture devices.
“It’s grotesque,” he explained that afternoon while discreetly feeding a bit of crust to Jimmy in the yard. My traitorous dog has developed an alarming attachment to the boy, and it is all I can do to keep him from padding after Tomas constantly. “They’ve got branding irons and shackles, and this thing…I don’t know what it’s called…that pulls the bone in your nose right out of the skull.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“This is where I was born.”
He laughed at my stunned expression and says, “Everyone comes from somewhere, Anastasia.” Tomas pointed toward the museum. “My oldest brother dragged me there as punishment for telling our mother that I’d seen him kissing a girl on the boardwalk. The lesson, I believe, was that I learn to keep a secret.”
“And did it work?”
“I was so frightened I had nightmares for a month.”
“I mean did you learn to keep secrets?”
“I’d sooner have my own nose bone removed than reveal one ever again,” he told me with a grin and I saw, then, that his eyes are a bright and pretty blue.
SEVEN WEEKS LATER
Tobolsk, Russia
September 27
We are summoned to Father’s study the first night it snows in Tobolsk. The air was pleasant earlier in the day, but a sudden, brutal wind rushed in from the north after breakfast. It was raining by lunch, and a thin dusting of snow covered the ground by dinner.
We find our parents sitting beside the fireplace with Alexey, who is already asleep on a couch. The lamps are lit, the curtains drawn tight, and a large wooden chest lies in the middle of the floor.
“Come in,” Father says. “Let’s read.” He puts a bit of straw into the fire and uses it to light his pipe. After taking two quick puffs he motions for us to lock the door. Once Olga slides the bolt, Father licks the pad of his thumb, turns a page, and begins reading from “The Musgrave Ritual” a bit louder than necessary.
“ ‘An anomaly which often struck me in the character of my friend Sherlock Holmes was that, although in his methods of thought he was the neatest and most methodical of mankind, and although also he affected a certain quiet primness of dress, he was nonetheless in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow-lodger to distraction.’ ”
There is a difference between acting a story and reading a story, and though the difference is subtle, Father has mastered it beautifully. There is a richness of voice and command of language that a good reader employs. A cadence that is hard to teach. There is rhythm and flow and a certain clip to the hard consonants, matched by softness with the short vowels. It’s all in the vocal tone, and a bad reader will put you to sleep in moments while a good reader will keep you rapt and desperate for more even if you haven’t seen a warm bed in a fortnight. I am so immediately transfixed by the sound of his voice that I don’t realize they have called us in here for a different reason altogether.
Mother sets a finger to her lips and motions for us to sit on the rug. We obey and watch in confusion as she places a sewing kit in each of our laps.
“Watch me,” she whispers, “and do as I do.”
Beside her chair is the basket of corsets I noticed weeks ago at the palace, and she hands them out to us without explanation. Mother opens the trunk in the middle of the room, folds back a piece of blue velvet, and reveals a small portion of the jewels I saw on my birthday. Instinctivel
y my hands drift to my earlobes and feel for the studs I chose as my present.
Mother lifts a diamond bracelet from the trunk and returns to her seat. She lays the corset flat across her lap and places the bracelet into one of the seams she has so painstakingly ripped open. Mother looks at us in turn, silently, threads her needle, and places the point against the seam. With slow, deliberate movements she begins to sew the bracelet inside the corset with tiny, precise stitches.
“I am so glad,” she says, “that you have mastered your needlework, girls. We have so much mending to do.”
Her meaning is clear so we pick up our needles and get to work. Anyone listening at the door would simply hear Father reading and Mother commending our sewing. They would never guess the truth—that we sit before a warm fire sewing jewels into our corsets as the snow begins to come down in earnest beyond the walls of our little prison.
· 13 ·
Anna
THE COPENHAGEN STATEMENT
1931, 1930
Four Winds Sanatorium, Westchester County, New York
July 1931
Decades later, when Anna thinks about the year and a half she spent living in the Manhattan penthouse of Annie Burr Jennings, she will feel as if she’s looking at her own life from a great height, like an eagle circling above, peering with intensity at objects that are hundreds of feet away. Each of these objects—the loss of one parrot and the death of another, a night at the Metropolitan Opera, skinny-dipping on Siasconset Beach, a bottle of champagne tumbling then shattering on the sidewalk, lunch at the Ritz-Carlton, and Edward Fallows’s ridiculous idea for the Grandanor Corporation—are viewed as separate from the whole, moments clipped out and set against a larger swath of time, like silver foil against black velvet.
Those memories, however, are currently eclipsed by the way her stay is coming to an end. She sits in the admissions office of the Four Winds Sanatorium being discharged one long year after being admitted.