Anastasia's Secret

by Susanne Dunlap

  Spring in Siberia is breathtaking. Even the small view we have from our cabin windows can’t entirely shut it out. Delicate flowers blanket the meadows, and the wind smells sweet coming down from the Urals. I wish I could change us all into the wind, so that we could blow away where no one could harm us, and mingle together, not separate but one, forever.

  It is night now, and tomorrow we reach Tyumen, where we will board a train. One day on the train, and then we will be with the rest of the family again. We will be whole, we will be OTMA.

  My sisters are asleep. One of the guards is playing a balalaika. I wonder for a moment if it is Sasha, if he reclaimed his simple instrument and brought it onto this boat to serenade me, to sing us to the end of our journey. I know from all I have heard that life in Yekaterinburg will not be easy. But I am ready. Right now, as the waters of the river rock me in my bunk, I cannot believe that I do not belong to Russia, like the soil itself. There will be a solution, one that will keep us all together and keep us in Russia. I hear the tune and I recall a nursemaid singing me to sleep.

  May God protect us. May God protect Sasha. I will dream of him every night for as long as I live.

  EPILOGUE

  The imperial family remained together under terrible conditions in Yekaterinburg for nearly two months, from May 23 until July 16, 1918, when Yekaterinburg was on the point of being retaken by the Whites—the resistance loyal to the tsar—aided by Czech troops. The official report stated that the family, their suite, and their attendants were awakened and told to dress, that they were going to be moved again but first to go to a basement room for a photograph. Once they were all assembled, the guards opened fire on them and assassinated the tsar, the tsaritsa, Olga, Tatiana, Marie, Anastasia, and Alexei, along with Dr. Botkin, Chemodurov, Anna Demidova, and possibly one other servant. All the children had sewn jewels in their clothing, and the bullets apparently glanced off them, making it necessary for the guards to fire repeatedly and use their bayonets before they perished.

  For many years it was not known for certain where or how the remains of the family were disposed of. In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, an amateur archeologist told the authorities about a mass grave he had discovered in the 1970s and kept secret—perhaps because he suspected whose remains were there and didn’t want anyone to disturb them. DNA tests confirmed that the nine people in the grave included five of the Romanovs and four retainers, but that still left two family members unaccounted for.

  A second grave was discovered nearby in 2007. It had the remains of two more Romanov family members, which were analyzed and determined to belong to the tsarevich and either Marie or Anastasia.

  Despite this seemingly conclusive evidence, some people doubt the validity of the tests. They assert that the finding of the second grave was a little too convenient, and with such fragmented and scattered remains, some have argued that it’s impossible to say for certain that every member of the tsar’s family was in those two graves—especially since distinguishing among the sisters using DNA evidence is very difficult.

  Nonetheless, the Russian Orthodox Church declared the entire Romanov family saints in 2008.

  As for the other members of the family and the suite, Prince Dolgorukov and Countess Hendrikova had been imprisoned and shot long before, as had Nagorny, Trina, and a young servant who attended the grand duchesses. The valet Volkov managed to escape. Baroness Buxhoeveden—Isa—perhaps because she was not of Russian descent, was also given her freedom, and Lili Dehn survived as well. Pierre Gilliard and Mr. Gibbes escaped execution, returning to their native countries. However, the Bolsheviks did not spare the other members of the imperial family that they could find, including the tsaritsa’s sister Elisabeth, widow of one of the tsar’s uncles, and a devout and selfless nun in a convent. She, along with several others, was thrown into a well while still alive. The Bolsheviks threw hand grenades after them to finish the job.

  The only living being known to have survived that night in Yekaterinburg was Joy, Alexei’s spaniel. Sidney Gibbes found her wandering lost and forlorn around the yard by the house, crying for her master. She was taken to England to live out her days and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

  Despite the massacre, a few members of the imperial family and the nobility managed to escape to foreign countries. Anya Vyrubova lived a long life in Finland. Grand Duke Cyril, a first cousin of Nicholas, had a court in exile in Paris. Vyrubova, Volkov, Gilliard, Buxhoeveden, Lili Dehn, and Count Benckendorff all wrote memoirs of their time with the Romanovs.

  An aura of mystery persists, however, concerning the execution of the imperial family. For years, a woman named Anna Anderson tried to pass herself off as Anastasia, but she was discovered to be a fraud. In all, two hundred people have claimed to have descended from the murdered Romanovs since that night in 1918. None of their stories have held up to scruitiny.

  Did Anastasia survive beyond that fateful night? Was there a Sasha to protect her and help her get away? That is a question that may never be answered. Whatever and however it happened for Anastasia, I like to think she had a full life and experienced love in her seventeen years of documented existence.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I was pretty scared to write in the first person from the point of view of a real historical character, especially one who has ignited the imaginations of so many people since that tragic day in 1918. But something about Anastasia called to me. Maybe it was that she has always been referred to as “one of the children” when in fact, although she was the youngest daughter, she was seenteen years old when she died. Her oldest sister was twenty-three—no longer a child by any standard. The thought of what it might have been like to have the real emotions of an adolescent at such a turbulent time took hold of me and would not let go.

  While putting myself into the mind of a privileged, sheltered, lively, and intelligent adolescent proved to be a rewarding challenge, I felt a deep obligation to adhere as closely as possible to the events as they occurred at the time. The almost overwhelming amount of first-hand documentation of the lives of the imperial family was a boon to my research. Having said that, I found ample areas of doubt and shadows, especially in regard to Anastasia and her sisters. These accounts tended not to focus on Anastasia very much, as if all there was to know about her was that she was part of that ill-fated family.

  In the process of constructing a novel (which is, after all, fiction), it is important to consider the pace and structure of the story. I have tried to follow the actual historic events but have taken the novelist’s prerogative of creating scenes that might have happened when they serve to illustrate an important point: the sullen mob at the train stop near the beginning, Anastasia and Mashka’s visit to the village near Mogilev. The girls did visit villages when they went to see their father, but I have not been able to discover which ones or what they did there.

  The months of Anastasia’s captivity were dreary and difficult, the bonds gradually tightening around her family as events in Russia led inexorably to their conclusion. For the sake of my plot, I have gently rearranged one or two things that occurred during their time at Tobolsk so that they make more sense to the story. Most of what I detail did actually happen according to the remaining accounts, just not in the exact order. Where different versions of the facts contradict each other, I simply chose what worked best in my story.

  Sasha and one or two servants are the only characters who came entirely from my imagination. Everyone else—including the pets—had documented roles in the family’s life.

  For anyone wishing to dig more deeply into this fascinating time period, I can do no better than to recommend The Alexander Palace Time Machine, a wonderful Web site that includes the full text of several of the existing memoirs, a wealth of pictures, detailed descriptions of the Alexander Palace—even an accounting of all the possessions confiscated by the authorities when they finally took over the palace. It’s an incredible labor of love and a testament to an enduring fascination with
the doomed imperial family. Visit www.alexanderpalace.org and prepare to spend hours looking at what Bob Atchison has made available to anyone with an interest in what happened or might have happened to the Romanovs.

  Finally, do I think Anastasia survived the massacre at Yekaterinburg? Very unlikely, given the circumstances. And even if by some miracle Anastasia had survived the massacre, she would be 108 years old by now. Nonetheless, I will always allow myself to hope that something happened to preserve her from the terrible fate the rest of her family suffered. I can’t bear to think of her suffering, and I hope she’s up there enjoying the romance I gave her in the pages of this book.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to my personal family and my writing family, who always support and nurture me through this process—especially Charles and Sue, but also Cassie and Chloé.

  Of course, without my agent, Adam Chromy, and my editor, Melanie Cecka, this book would never have come about. I’m very fortunate to have two incredible cheerleaders in this difficult business.

  I’d like to say a special thank-you to Raina Putter, my copyeditor, whose keen eye and expert knowledge of Russian history helped me polish the manuscript.

  And finally, to all the others whose personal accounts and research helped me discover the world of the Romanovs in captivity, including Bob Atchison and Robert K. Massie, I say thank you.

  ALSO BY SUSANNE DUNLAP

  The Musician’s Daughter

  Copyright © 2010 by Susanne Dunlap

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  First published in the United States of America in March 2010

  by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers

  E-book edition published in March 2011

  www.bloomsburykids.com

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Dunlap, Susanne Emily.

  Anastasia’s secret / by Susanne Dunlap.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: As world war and the looming Russian Revolution threaten all they hold dear, Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, and her family are being held in captivity, where she falls in love with one of their captors.

  ISBN 978-1-59990-420-7 (hardcover)

  1. Anastasia Nikolaevna, Grand Duchess, daughter of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia,

  1901–1918—Juvenile fiction. [1. Anastasia, Grand Duchess, daughter of Nicholas II,

  Emperor of Russia, 1901—1918—Fiction. 2. Princesses—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal

  relations—Fiction. 4. Russia—History—Nicholas II, 1894—1917—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D92123An 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009018257

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-5999-0675-1