Mikhail yawned and fidgeted, but remained asleep. Lena cuddled him closer. As he napped, Lena watched her son-in-law, Anatoly Karstadt, play the role of proud papa. Anatoly was a large man, not fat, but tall and substantial. Strutting around the room with a cigar clenched between his teeth, he reminded Lena of a Russian land baron lording over his serfs. He passed out cigars with little blue-and-gold bands and accepted each new stream of congratulations with manly pats on the shoulder, as though he, rather than poor exhausted Natalya, had endured hours of labor.
Lena regarded the cigars critically. She worried about the smoke damaging the baby’s lungs, and the cost of the extravagance.
Before Mikhail’s birth, Natalya had tearfully confided she and her husband were near financial ruin. He had invested heavily in a chain of failing restaurants and his temper grew shorter each day. Lena had nodded slowly while Natalya spoke, and tried not to say anything nasty about her son-in-law, knowing her daughter would only defend her husband. Instead, she patted Natalya’s hand and promised to help.
Still, as Lena watched from across the room, she saw a side of her son-in-law she liked. Anatoly moved easily between the groups of relatives and friends gathered in the crowded brownstone, chattering in Russian and English. For all his bluster and bad temper and money problems, he had charm. Whenever he stopped to talk to someone, he focused his attention completely on them.
Her darling Natalya worked the room as well, charming despite her exhaustion. No one would possibly guess their financial problems. Lena supposed that was the point. Her daughter’s laughter rang across the room in tinkling peals. With her dark golden skin, Natalya looked like her father, but her laugh was that of Lena’s brother, Anton. Lena remembered Anton sitting by the roaring fire, showing her English books he’d brought home from school, patiently sounding out the letters in the strange alphabet.
Her daughter moved to another guest, lips parting in one of her quirky smiles. Lena’s heart fluttered a little before it sank; her daughter’s smile was a feminine replica of Pavel’s smile. The years sometimes jumbled in Lena’s mind, but she realized over sixty-five years had passed since she’d agreed to accompany Pavel Rubalov to Virginia. It remained the best decision she’d ever made. And for all she hated the cigars her son-in-law passed to the guests, she liked their scent. It reminded her of Pavel’s clove cigarettes.
After they left Grand Duchess Charlotte in Copenhagen, they spent several months in Virginia, near Pavel’s brother and nephews. Opportunities for work were scarce and Lena saw the way people looked at them when they ventured out together. It made even Russian racism seem the picture of tolerance. Lena ended up spending most of her time in the house, safely out of sight and bored out of her mind.
Through one of his old connections, Pavel found a job in Brooklyn, working as an instructor at a boxing center for disadvantaged youths. Lena decided then she was meant to be a midwife, like her mother. Many European immigrants had amassed in New York City, all in need of her help. And then a flood of immigrants came from Russia after the Revolution.
“Looks like you’re fading out there, matushka. Stay with us.”
Her son-in-law hovered over her, a broad smile on his face. Since Pavel died the year before, Lena was prone to falling headfirst into memories and forgetting the world. But she was well into her eighties and had earned the right to fade from the world every now and again. She only needed to make sure she could still be summoned back.
Someone had turned on the television. Images of the moonwalk replayed on the news for the hundredth time. Lena had a difficult time believing the event had not been staged, no matter how many times Natalya assured her it really happened. Natalya didn’t understand the duplicity of the powerful.
“Handsome fellow, isn’t he?” Her son-in-law patted little Mikhail’s head, a tad too roughly for Lena’s comfort. Then he took a few satisfied puffs of his cigar.
“Very much so,” she replied. “Now put out the cigar.”
“Oh, you’re not turning into some hippie health nut, are you?”
The words were spoken lightly enough, but with just a hint of menace, of the bully she knew he could be when provoked. Did her son-in-law really think he would intimidate her? Lena hadn’t been scared in a long time. She couldn’t even summon the sensation. “Put it out.”
He smiled gamely, flattering her with the full force of his attentiveness. Then he stamped the cigar out on a nearby ashtray. “Five bucks down the drain.”
Lena bit her tongue to hold back a sharp comment. “Well worth it, I’m sure.”
“So you’ve been keeping up with the news?”
“I know.” She rocked Mikhail gently. “We landed on the moon. It’s really happened. Natalya explained.”
Anatoly laughed softly and scratched the back of his neck. “I’m glad you’re finally convinced. I heard on the news last night the commie bastards in the old country are seething. They can’t believe we made it there first.”
Lena gazed down at Mikhail. He’d stuffed his fingers in his mouth as he gurgled, content to look around the room. “I avoid thinking about the old country.”
“Why? You left before the Revolution. You weren’t forced out.” He winked at her and inclined his head. “How come you never told us more? Natalya says you and Pavel worked for the royal family, but you won’t say much else.”
Lena’s lips moved, but she couldn’t manage to form the words. If it weren’t for Marie and little Charlotte, she would have stayed. She would have remained close to Alexandra, followed the royal family into exile. Everyone knew the rest of that story. The servants were killed, alongside the family, in that dungeon in Siberia. The descriptions were so vivid: the horrific blast of gunfire, smoke rising in the still air, and then the tips of bayonets piercing tender skin as the grand duchesses collapsed.
She imagined feathers flying when it happened. Bullets must have riddled the down pillows the girls brought with them as they were marched downstairs. They’d wanted to make the chairs more comfortable for their parents and their sickly little brother. Lena pictured feathers floating to the floor over the family’s lifeless bodies. And, if she had been there, her own eyes staring vacantly at the blood-spattered wall.
Only Marie’s insistence that five girls meant one too many had saved her. An unwanted baby saved her life.
After news of the family’s murder broke, Lena ached to reveal her secret. The Bolsheviks murdered children. One had escaped their notice. But Lena worried. She may have been safe in America, but she assumed Grand Duchess Charlotte still lived in Europe, close to the Soviet Union. If the Bolsheviks knew, they would find her and kill her, just as they’d murdered her parents and siblings.
“Matushka?”
Lena looked at her son-in-law, his face creased with worry. Her hand started to shake once more and she held Mikhail even tighter. The way she’d held Charlotte when they ran through the halls of Peterhof with Marie.
She wouldn’t be around forever. That became more apparent every day, as her body throbbed with pain and her movements slowed. Marie was long gone. What if Charlotte needed her help?
“What’s the matter?” Anatoly took her arm. It felt even frailer in his large, muscular hand. “You look as though you saw a spirit.”
Lena cupped Mikhail’s head in her hands as she moved him farther up her arm, feeling the weight of her years keenly. She never found out what became of Anton. She trusted Marie to keep him safe, but what happened after the Revolution, when the Romanovs lost power? What had become of him? Of her parents? Of people like Masha? They’d all been spirits for a long time. Lena squeezed her eyes shut.
“I served as an attendant for Empress Alexandra,” she began. “I met the tsar. I played with the grand duchesses. Pavel was made a member of the Preobrazhensky Guard, the most loyal of the tsarist regiments. He took the name Rubalov. He didn’t want the name of slave owners.”
“I know. You’ve told us before.” Anatoly sounded disappointed. “But I
think you should write it down. Preserve your memories for this guy.” Lena opened her eyes as he mimed a playful chucking of Mikhail’s chin.
“We promised to keep their secrets.” Lena knew she could keep the secret of the grand duchess forever, as she’d promised Marie. But should she? “We promised to watch over them.”
She grabbed Anatoly’s wrist. He didn’t resist, but his expression registered shock. This felt right, the same way it had felt right to say yes when Pavel asked her if she wanted to come to America. She’d sworn to keep the secret, but she’d also sworn to keep the fifth grand duchess safe.
“I will tell you in the strictest confidence. I will tell Natalya as well, and when he’s old enough I want you to tell your son. But it stays in our family. I will make it worthwhile for you to keep this secret. I can help you with money.”
Anatoly grimaced, but nodded. Lena felt a sudden burst of strength. She recognized the sensation. It felt the same as when she realized she needed to return to Marie and rescue the baby grand duchess, all those years before.
“In 1901, Empress Alexandra was desperate for a son. She had four daughters, but the country had no heir.” Lena remembered the furrows on Alexandra’s forehead as she’d reached out and clutched Lena’s wrist.
It’s all right. Lena wished she could have whispered in the empress’s ear, right before they shot her dead in that basement in Siberia, right before her head slumped lifeless over her chest. Your children didn’t all die. We saved one of them.
“Alexandra asked for my advice on how to conceive a boy,” Lena continued. “This is what I told her…”
PARIS
JULY 1974
“You won’t marry this girl?” Charlotte sat across from her son at the table. Sunlight streamed into the freshly painted kitchen. “This is what you came to tell me?”
Usually, the morning light in the flat buoyed her mood. Charlotte lived alone, save for a stray tabby who showed up at her back door in the evening for bits of stewed chicken and a chin scratch. But she was safe and healthy and mobile, if slower these days. She lived in the city she loved and made her way to Kshesinskaya’s old ballet studio once or twice a week. She took care of the finances, leaving the teaching to younger women now. But she liked to come in and sit opposite the long wooden barre, tapping her silver cane in time to the music and shouting out instructions to erring students. Not a terrible life for a woman over seventy.
This morning, however, the light only accentuated the harshness of Laurent’s features as he sat with his hands clasped, pouting at her table. His expression set a spark off in her memory. Luc’s face when she first told him she was pregnant. Same shock and disappointment. He’d wanted out. He wanted away from her.
Charlotte’s hands curled into fists. All that rejection, all that trouble, and yet she still missed Luc every day. “You must make the honorable choice,” she insisted.
Laurent sighed and gazed out the window, still tall and dark blond and handsome as Apollo, his face tanned from all the time in the Madrid sun. But the telltale signs of aging had started to crease the edges of his eyes and mouth. “It’s not only me. She doesn’t want to get married. She’s an American. From California, no less. She doesn’t want to move to Spain. I can’t force her.”
Suddenly, Charlotte felt very tired. How could he just leave this girl, hardly out of childhood herself from the sound of it, to raise a child in another country? At least Luc had remained in the same city and spent time with Laurent.
Charlotte folded her hands in front of her on the table. She hated looking at them now, the age spots, the withering skin, and chipped nails. She wanted to cover her hands with gloves, but this would date her as well. She didn’t want to settle gracefully into old age, she wanted to fight it every step of the way.
Here was yet another issue with aging. Her once-focused mind now meandered when she needed it most. “This girl can’t understand how difficult it is to raise a child alone,” she said. “Have her come to see me. I’ll tell her all about it. She sounds so young.”
“She is young. That’s why she went home. She has family. They’ll help her.” The corners of Laurent’s lips curled, almost into a smile, and this reminded her of Luc as well. “Although her mother sounds like a real piece of work.”
“Are they wealthy?” Charlotte asked. “Do they need money?”
Laurent closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. He’d suffered from frequent nosebleeds as a child. More recently, migraines had started to plague him.
Charlotte hesitated. “You feel a headache coming?”
He nodded. “Stress.”
Watching Laurent in pain made her anger evaporate. Charlotte wished she could take him in her arms and rock him to sleep. If only parenting could stay so simple. Over the past thirty years, Charlotte had read everything she could find on the Romanov family, and so Laurent’s physical troubles now made sense. Empress Alexandra had suffered from migraines as well. The nosebleeds were a symptom of his hemophilia, which had thankfully taken a mild form. The doctors said it couldn’t be transmitted to children through fathers. This girl’s child might become a carrier, but she was not in immediate danger.
At least not from that. “Tell me about her family.” Charlotte tried a gentle tone, sure if she handled this correctly, she could make Laurent see sense. “Tell me where they live. We need to watch over them.”
Laurent gave a raspy laugh, but his face scrunched again in pain. “Oh come on, Mother. Not this again.”
Charlotte would never have spoken in that tone to her own mother, not even when she was an adult, not even when she’d confronted her mother and asked why she hadn’t told her who she really was. Charlotte had spoiled Laurent. It was coming back to haunt her now. “Don’t you remember anything I told you about the war?” she said. “Who we are? The unique problems of our family?”
“You expected me to stay celibate?” Laurent said.
“Of course not. But how will you protect a child who lives so far away?”
“You’re paranoid.” Laurent’s voice took on the condescending note he affected whenever she brought up this subject. He sounded like his father.
“Matilda Kshesinskaya told me about the Bolshevik spies in France between the wars,” Charlotte said. “They kidnapped Romanovs and took them back to the Soviet Union. They tortured them, killed them. And these were distant relatives. If the Soviets find me they will kill me. If they find you, they will kill you. If they find this girl and her baby, they will kill them as well.”
“We are in a détente,” Laurent said.
“So they’ll take more care to make it look like an accident.”
“Damn it, Mother, no one is looking for extra Romanovs. No one cares about any of that anymore.”
Charlotte slammed her fist on the table. Startled, Laurent dropped his hands to his sides. She’d tried to reason with him. That hadn’t worked. Charlotte felt strong now, despite her age. Her son still needed her, even if he didn’t realize it yet. She would force him to see sense. She would force him to treat this problem with the respect it warranted. “The Nazis wanted us too. Do you have any idea what we went through? They took us to an abandoned casino. I saw blood on the roulette wheels.”
“I know. You hid my face. You didn’t want me to look.”
Charlotte stopped abruptly. She’d thought Laurent too young to remember, that’s why she kept repeating the story.
“I know what you sacrificed for me.” His voice started to break. “And I know what Papa did.”
Charlotte went rigid. Over the years, the memory of Luc’s face faded, and then came back to her with such startling clarity it scared her, as though she would wake up and find him smiling next to her, still young but no longer angry. She remembered him that last night, sitting next to her on her childhood bed, eyes closed, holding his palm open on her cheek, trying to keep his lower lip from trembling. He hadn’t wanted to leave. Who would? Who wants to be brave? Who wouldn’t rather be safe instead? B
ut he couldn’t live with himself if he’d stayed and put them in even greater danger. He made the sacrifice and left separately, hoping the Nazis would follow him and not her.
After the war, she tried to find Luc. But he’d vanished, like so many others.
“I remember everything,” Laurent said, breaking her concentration. “But you can’t expect me to marry this girl. Neither one of us wants that.”
“What about me?” she asked desperately. “I can’t have a relationship with my own grandchild?”
“I’m sorry,” Laurent said softly. “I don’t know what else to do. She’s like Danae in the story, taking Perseus over the ocean to save him. It’s too late.”
Charlotte closed her eyes. She remembered taking Laurent in her arms during the last days of the war, to show him the constellations in the broad Spanish sky. He’d liked Perseus and Andromeda and the Kraken the best. He’d pointed to the stars that formed the throne of Andromeda’s vain mother, Cassiopeia, and recited the story from heart.
He’d disappointed her. Just as Luc had when she told him she was pregnant. But Luc had redeemed himself. Perhaps Laurent would as well.
In the meantime, she would take matters into her own hands. She straightened her back, rolled her shoulders. “I know someone who can help us. A woman who lives in America. She’ll be nearer to the girl than we will be.”
Laurent looked at her with his sleepy eyes. Luc’s eyes, the slight hooding of the lids. “She won’t accept help.”
“Not financial help. Protection. You don’t even need to tell her. It’s probably better if you don’t.” Charlotte touched the cross around her neck. “I know someone who will make sure the girl and her baby are safe. Matilda Kshesinskaya told me about her long ago.”
BRIGHTON BEACH, BROOKLYN
JULY 1981
A priest in a black robe held a heavy iron chain with a secure round ball at the end. He swung the device languidly over the casket, releasing incense in little puffs. The strong scent in the hot and heavy air almost overpowered Charlotte. Her legs ached, she had been standing for so long. The choir lifted their voice in song and she clutched her long candle tighter, wishing she could release it and fan herself with her hands. She felt as though she’d entered another world. She supposed that was the point.
The Secret Daughter of the Tsar Page 28