Anyway, that day young Anastasiya sat at the dining room table, dressed in the same light blouse and dark skirt that she’d been wearing for days. With a book open before her, she sat there pretending, rather poorly, to read. Her eyes darted over at me, and she grinned ever so slightly in conspiracy. I understood, but didn’t smile back.
In silence I continued behind Demidova, who led the way into the doorless room of the grand duchesses. One of them was in there too, Maria Nikolaevna. “Mashka,” that was her nickname, though sometimes in English they called her “Little Bow-Wow,” because she had the blind devotion of a dog. She liked so to please everyone, to take care of everyone, to do exactly as everyone wished. She wanted nothing more in life but children, scores of them.
Maria Nikolaevna was sitting on one of the metal cots, a Bible perched on her lap, but I could tell she wasn’t reading either. She looked briefly at us and then stared into the dining room. It was then that everything was perfectly clear: the girls had been set up like a warning system. I doubt it was Nikolai who had thought of something like this. He just wasn’t cunning enough, not the former Tsar. But she, on the other hand, well, surely this was the doing of Aleksandra Fyodorovna. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I had little doubt that Olga and Tatyana were stationed elsewhere in the house, ready to drop a book or cough or somehow telegraph the approach of one of the guards. And when I followed Demidova into the next chamber we found the former Empress standing right by the door, awaiting not only our arrival, but any signals as well.
“Spacibo, Nyuta,” thank you, said Aleksandra Fyodorovna to her maid, “that will be all.”
“Da-s,” replied Demidova who bowed her head slightly and retreated.
The Empress ushered me in, resting a hand on my back and gently steering me toward her husband, who sat at a desk. I glanced to my immediate right, saw the boy, Aleskei Nikolaevich, staring at me from his bed. In front of him was the same table, covered with various distractions, including some needlework, which the Empress had taught him, for she firmly believed that idleness was illness’s sister. That was the English side of her, I’m sure. Something she got from the old Queen.
So upon my entry the Tsar rose from his small wooden desk, where I might add not a single item was out of place. During his reign he never had a personal secretary, which was a point of pride to him, but to me now seems absolutely foolish. After all, the Tsar’s duties concerned one-sixth of the earth’s surface, not filing, not addressing envelopes.
The Tsar stood and pulled me into his sphere with those remarkable eyes. He cleared his throat, stroked once the trademark of his face, his beard.
“Your idea turns out to be quite a good one, molodoi chelovek,” young man, said the Emperor. “Are you still willing to act as our courier?”
An odd noise came from the girls’ room and Alekesandra Fyodorovna hurried back to the doorway. A moment later, she turned to her husband and nodded the all-clear. For the rest of my audience, however, she remained thus positioned.
He repeated, “Are you willing to act as our courier?”
There really wasn’t any question in my mind simply because of what the Reds had done to my Uncle Vanya just a month earlier. My dear uncle, of course, had served the Imperial Family for years, and it was in fact he who had brought me to work for the Romanovs that previous year. He was deeply devoted to the Tsar, so that previous month when the soldiers’ committee decided that Aleksei didn’t need two pairs of shoes, just one, my uncle and Nagorny, the mansvervant who watched over the boy, loudly protested. And for this they were taken to the city prison. Right up until the end we thought the two of them had been dumped in a cell with Prince Lvov, the first minister president of the Provisional Government, who’d already been arrested for some other silly reason. It was only years later that I learned that my dear uncle and Nagorny hadn’t been sitting in jail all along, but had instead been shot just a few days after they were first taken. The prince, on the other hand, later escaped to France, where he wrote his memoirs.
As I look back through all these decades it now seems obvious that the Bolsheviki knew all along what they were doing. So intent were they on liquidating the entire House of Romanov that they had started whittling away at our little group, getting rid of those who might be trouble, specifically the strongest among us. They’d already separated away Mr. Gibbes, the English tutor of the children, Pierre Gilliard, their French tutor, Baroness Buksgevden, a lady-in-waiting, all of whom survived, very likely because of their foreign-sounding names. Many other attendants were not so lucky. Countess Gendrikova, another lady-in-waiting, and Yekaterina Shneider, the children’s lectrice – reader – were shot in the city of Perm that September.
So in response to the Tsar’s request, I bowed my head and said, “Da, soodar.” Yes, monsignor.
He said, “Now, Leonka, you understand the seriousness of this, do you not? You understand that I am entrusting to you the safety of my wife and children? Do you realize how dangerous this is not only for us, but for you and everyone else as well?”
“Da-s.”
“Xhorosho.” Good. “I know we can depend on you.”
And how I wish they could have. How I wish they could have depended upon me to… to… ensure their rescue.
The Tsar then asked, “When are you next scheduled to go to the Soviet for food?”
“I am to go within the hour, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, to fetch more food for this evening’s supper.”
“Excellent.” He turned to his desk and pulled two pieces of paper hidden beneath a book. “Here is the note which you brought us yesterday morning. On it we have written our reply. I am sending that along with this.”
He held up a sheet of lined paper on which was drawn a map. Or more precisely, a floor plan. Nikolai Aleksandrovich then folded it into three, took an envelope from the drawer of his wooden desk, and carefully placed the two pieces of paper in that very envelope.
“You must hide this on your body, Leonka,” he instructed.
Of course I had to. I hadn’t ever been searched leaving The House of Special Purpose, not ever, but I still had to be careful. So I started pulling up my shirt, then stopped. The Empress, who’d been watching me from her post in the doorway, quickly turned away. I glanced briefly at Aleksei Nikolaevich, who was playing with a toy boat with a little wire chain, and then I lowered my pants and stuck the envelope into my undergarments.
“Molodets,” good lad, Nikolai Aleksandrovich said, brushing at his mustaches and looking at me with those generous eyes of his.
No sooner had I buttoned my pants than Nikolai Aleksandrovich handed me a second sheet of paper, this one folded simply in two with no envelope. He said, “Now, Leonka, I want you to carry this letter in your hand, and I want you to show it to the guards should they ask. Open it up, go ahead, read it.”
“Now?” I asked.
“Da, konyechno.” Yes, of course.
Although I had received very little formal education, I was able to read, unlike most of the people in Russia at that time.
Dear Sisters,
Thank you for the chetvert of milk and the fresh eggs, which The Little One greatly enjoyed. We are in need of some thread and Nikolai Aleksandrovich would be grateful for some tobacco, if this would not be too difficult.
May God be with you, A.F.
Nikolai was a terrible smoker, he was. Always smoking. Frankly if the Bolsheviki hadn’t killed him he probably would have soon died of lung cancer. And Aleksandra Fyodorovna and her girls did in fact need thread. They had consumed great quantities of it, not merely because the Empress was now darning the Emperor’s socks and pants, not simply because she and the girls were mending all of their own clothes, but because right up to the end they were secretly stitching all of their “medicines,” as they called their secret cache of diamonds, into their undergarments. I still don’t understand how they’d kept nineteen pounds of gems secret up to that point – perhaps hidden in the corners of their suitcases? – but in t
he end they stashed over 42,000 carats of diamonds into the girls’ corsets. Other gems, such as rubies and emeralds, disappeared into their buttons and the men’s forage caps, while whole ropes of the most astounding pearls vanished into the waist and sleeves of Aleksandra Fyodorovna’s dress. Later, when the Bolsheviki were hacking apart the Empress, they found those pearls too. Entire ropes made of hundreds of pearls, just one of which was valuable enough to feed a family of peasants for a year.
Oh, what a mistake, how they suffered because of Aleksandra’s devious needle…
And the Tsar said to me, “On your way to the Soviet, I want you to stop by the Church of the Ascension. You might even tell the guards that you are taking this note there. Go right ahead and show it to them. Tell them that you are dropping this note off at the church so that one of the deacons will take it to the sisters at the monastery. When you reach the church, however, I want you to ask for Father Storozhev. You must speak to him and no one else but him, Leonka. And when you are alone with the Father you give him this note and also the envelope. He will make sure it is delivered to the correct people.”
For a while, then, I was no longer Leonka, the kitchen boy, but the Tsar’s spy. And what did the note say? And the map, what did it show? Those have been preserved as well. They too have been kept all these years in the arkhivy in Moscow. All the notes to the Romanovs were in French, as were all the replies from the royal captives. Nikolai himself always passed the letters to me, but they were not his handwriting. It is the florid hand of a girl, that of Olga, the oldest grand duchess, for she was the most capable in French.
And the first reply reads:
From the corner up to the balcony there are 5 windows on the street side, 2 on the square. All of the windows are glued shut and painted white. The Little One is still sick and in bed and cannot walk at all – every jolt causes him pain. A week ago, because of the anarchists we were supposed to leave for Moscow at night. No risk whatsoever must be taken without being absolutely certain of the result. We are almost always under close observation.
As for the map, it was a penciled floor plan of the dwelling, done by none other than Aleksandra Fyodorovna who, like all women of the nobility, had received not a formal education, but the proper instruction in drawing, watercolors, piano, literature, foreign tongues, and, of course, needlework.
Within the hour Komendant Avdeyev himself led me out the front door and through the two palisades surrounding the house. I crossed the muddy square, just as Nikolai Aleksandrovich asked, and I went directly to the Church of the Ascenscion, a big white brick structure. Only one small door was open, and I entered and was struck with the scent of the heavens, frankincense and beeswax candles. Searching the hazy church, I spied a nun on her knees in front of a golden icon of Saint Nicholas. Crossing herself over and over again, she dipped repeatedly, bowing her forehead against the cold, stone floor.
As I approached, the prostrated woman paused in her prayers and stared up at me with sunken eyes. “What is it, my son?”
“I come from The House of Special Purpose to see Papa Storozhev.”
The nun quickly crossed herself in the Orthodox manner – using three fingers to represent the Trinity, she dotted her forehead, stomach, right shoulder, left – pushed herself to her feet and hurried away. Disappearing into a forest of icon-covered pillars, she slipped into the dark corners of the church. Within seconds Father Storozhev himself came out, his head and hair covered with a tall, black hat, his flowing, black gown dragging behind him. His eyes as dark as ink pots, he stared down upon me as if I were a Red infidel.
I boldly said, “Aleksandra Fyodorovna herself asked me to deliver this note, with the request that you pass it on to the sisters at the monastery.”
I handed him the note requesting thread and tobacco, and Father Storozhev screwed up his eyes, studied the paper. I started to speak yet again, but then hesitated and checked to make sure we were not being observed. Only when I was certain we were alone did I unfasten my garments and withdraw the envelope containing the map and the response to the officer’s letter.
“Papa, this is from Batyushka. Please deliver it to the proper people.”
And then, of course, began our long wait in The House of Special Purpose.
5
There are so many things, Katya, that I have never told you nor even my very own son – your father – but I had been with the Romanovs since shortly before they were exiled to Siberia. My own father – your great-grandfather – was off to war, and the food situation at home in the Tula province was difficult, so when my Uncle Vanya wrote to my mother and suggested I come to work at the Aleksander Palace in July of 1917, I was sent right away. We were a poor family, and my mother was only too glad to have one less mouth to feed, particularly during such horrible times.
I arrived by the end of the month, a fortnight before the Romanovs were sent from their home in Tsarskoye Selo, a suburb of Sankt-Peterburg. The Tsar and his consort had many years earlier decided to make this their principal home, for there the air was clean and fresh, the gardens lush, and of course they were far away from the capital and decadent society. In essence, overwhelmed with the poor health of the Heir Tsarevich, they withdrew, which in the end actually precipitated their fall.
Of course, another reason they withdrew from Peterburg was fear for their safety. Since the uprisings of 1905, political assassinations had been all too common. Indeed, during those times the whole of the House of Romanov feared for its life, realizing that the anarchists were intent on exterminating the dynasty. In retrospect, I often wonder how Nikolai could not have foreseen so dark a storm as 1918 – almost everyone else did – but again I’m sure he was blinded by religion.
For as rich and all-powerful as they were, the Emperor and Empress decided not to make their home in the Great Palace of Tsarskoye, an enormous palace built by Catherine the Great herself. That one had hundreds upon hundreds of grandiose rooms all decorated with gold and marble and crystal chandeliers. Instead, Nikolai and Aleksandra wanted a family home, so they chose the nearby and substantially more modest Aleksander Palace, which Catherine had built for her favorite grandson, the future Aleksander I, the one who trounced Napoleon. Nikolai II himself was born there, and the last Tsar and Tsaritsa chose not the entire palace, but only one wing for their apartments. Sure, they still had many rooms, and spectacular they were, for they gutted the left wing and redecorated a number of rooms in the stijl moderne, otherwise known in the West as Art Nouveau. It was there too, in a vitrine in her mauve boudoir that Aleksandra kept her Fabergé eggs, which along with all her pearl necklaces and diamond tiaras and her bejeweled this and that totaled so many millions upon millions of dollars. In today’s dollars a billion, I think. Perhaps a bit more, perhaps a bit less. I should add that when they were exiled to Siberia, the Provisional Government, which ruled for eight months before being toppled by the Reds, allowed Nikolai and Aleksandra to take everything but the Fabergé objets with them. They took two suitcases full of gems, to be exact. And it all disappeared, all of the jewels except the nineteen pounds of diamonds and things found hidden on their bodies when they were killed. While the Romanovs were under arrest in Tobolsk – months before they were brought to Yekaterinburg – many nuns visited them, and these sisters of God smuggled everything else away. Stalin initiated a big search in the 1930s, and after torturing a few nuns and such the Reds found one of these suitcases buried beneath a hut. It contained one hundred and fifty gems, including a 100-carat diamond brooch and a 70-carat diamond crescent. Alas, the second suitcase has never been located. It’s supposed to contain one pood – about thirty-six pounds – of diamonds and rubies and emeralds. As far as anyone knows, it’s still buried somewhere in the taiga of Siberia.
It was during my short time at the Aleksander Palace that I came to understand several fundamental things about Tsaritsa Aleksandra Fyodorovna.
My work was in the kitchens, and I was never allowed close to the Imperial Family until the
night before we departed the Aleksander Palace, when so much was being packed up for the long train ride – to where, no one at that time knew. Because their English cousins proved to be nothing but ninnies by withdrawing their offer of asylum – which would have saved the Romanovs – we knew we weren’t being sent abroad. In truth, actually, that was a relief to the family, all of whom hoped and prayed that we were being exiled to their favorite palace, Livadia, in the Crimea. But that was not to happen, of course, because between Peterburg and the Black Sea stood the raging mobs of Moscow. As it was, we didn’t realize we were being sent to Siberia until the train was hours underway.
In any case, I was enlisted to help carry the luggage and trunks and crates, a parade of things that went on through the night. It was only then that I entered the Emperor and Empress’s private bedchamber. It was a large room with soaring ceilings, white wallpaper covered with pink garlands of the Empress’s favorite flower, hydrangea, the design of which was carried onto the curtains and the chintz fabric covering all the painted furniture. Very bright. Very elegantno. I didn’t know it then, for I was so young and unworldly – a mere lad from the provinces – but this was pure English style, the Empress’s favorite, a taste acquired, of course, at the court of her granny. Yet all of this beauty was not what impressed me so. What first astounded me was the number of photographs, pictures of aunts and uncles and cousins and children that covered the walls and virtually every tabletop. Such was the importance of family to her. But then I saw her obsession, her sickness – all the icons. The walls of their sleeping alcove were covered from floor to ceiling with hundreds of religious pictures. Pictures of the Virgin Mary. Saint George the Dragon Slayer. Saint Nicholas. Saint Michael. Big, silver-covered icons. Little jewel-encrusted portraits of every saint imaginable. On and on. There was not a square inch that was not covered with an icon through which God was supposed to work, a window for him to reach from the high heavens to the lowly earth. Aleksandra was continually arranging and rearranging them too, as if she only had to get the order correct for God to hear her fervent prayers. Nyet, nyet, not normalno. Not at all. Even I recognized this, young as I was. She was more than a fool for God. She was a fanatic. Why, after giving birth to four daughters she was desperate to bear a boy, an heir, and to achieve this she had the monk Serafim of Sarov canonized. And after that grand ceremony Nikolai and Aleksandra crept down to the spring where the monk was known to have worked miracles hundreds of years earlier. And there, in the dead of night, they bathed naked, just the two of them. The next day there were a number of known miracles – children healed of terrible maladies, a blind woman who regained her sight, an invalid who walked for the first time in ten years – and soon thereafter Aleksandra became pregnant with Aleksei. Some say it was an act of God Himself, but why would he do such a dark thing, give Russia such a troubled heir? Rather, I think it was this inescapable Russian fate.
The Kitchen Boy Page 5