Anastasia and Her Sisters

by Carolyn Meyer

  Later, we changed into the dresses Mama had sent for us from Tsarskoe Selo with our maids and went down to the palace ballroom, where the other guests were gathered. Uncle Petya stopped by briefly, greeted us, and disappeared. When tea was served, a buxom, florid-faced girl named Katya sat down beside me. Katya was a year or so older than I and very talkative.

  “Well,” said Katya, starting at the outside of her heaping plate and working her way around it, “I see that Duke Peter Ivanovich has put in his appearance for the afternoon and gone on his way.”

  “Yes,” I said, and took a tiny bite of a pirozhok.

  “Olga Alexandrovna is such a lovely woman. It’s too bad she’s stuck with him.”

  “Um-hmm,” I said.

  Katya paused for a sip of tea. “They’ve been married for more than ten years and he still refuses to give her a divorce. Such a pity that she can’t marry the colonel.”

  So Aunt Olga is right! It’s a secret that everyone knows! I looked away, studying the design on the honey cake. But Katya was waiting for me to say something, and so I murmured, “How do you know that?”

  “Oh, my dear Anastasia Nikolaevna!” she said, staring at me as though I were a simpleton. “Why, everyone knows! It’s been the court gossip for the longest time. I’m amazed you haven’t heard of it, since she’s your aunt.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “They say he’s . . . you know!”

  I was actually relieved when my cousin Nikita, who had once falsely accused me of biting him, challenged me to a game of dominoes. I was even happy when Mama’s friend Baroness Buxhoeveden arrived to escort us back to Tsarskoe Selo. We kissed our aunt and made her promise that she would come with us to Livadia.

  “Without fail!” we cried, and she replied, “Yes, yes, of course, my darlings!”

  CHAPTER 9

  Visitors and Visits

  LIVADIA, SPRING 1914

  I loved being back at Livadia, where every day was different and so much more amusing. We rode horses up into the pine forests, and my mare behaved docilely. Papa plunged into the chilly water every day, but OTMA unanimously declared that it wasn’t yet warm enough for swimming. I had more tennis lessons.

  “You must keep your eye on the ball, Anastasia Nikolaevna!” the tutor shouted from across the net, and I shouted back that I was keeping my eye on the ball, but that my arm was too short or my racket too long, and that was why I so often failed to hit it.

  Visitors came down from St. Petersburg. Uncle Sandro and Aunt Xenia arrived with their six sons and a lot of noise and nuisance. My swinish cousin, Nikita—actually, they were all swine, in my opinion, but Nikita was the worst—lurked around, gleefully bragging that he enjoyed spying on me.

  Papa’s cousin Grand Duke Georgii Mikhailovich and his wife, Princess Maria, came from their estate nearby with their two daughters, Nina and Xenia. Uncle Georgii was a kind and gentle man, but Mama described his wife as a “difficult woman.” Princess Maria was from Greece and never missed a chance to tell us how much she disliked living in Russia.

  Normally, I would have enjoyed having girls my age around, but not those two. We weren’t often together, which was fortunate, because I detested them both. Nina was two days younger than I, but she was already much taller and slenderer, and she thought that made her superior. Xenia accused me of cheating at a card game, and I called her a liar.

  Nina said, “Nobody likes you, Nastya, or your mother! My mother says the empress is a hypochondriac, always complaining about being ill, and there’s nothing wrong with her except a bad temper. My mother says your mother is pretentious and condescending and she’s under the power of that awful Rasputin and she’ll ruin the country.”

  I had no idea what a hypochondriac was, but I understood the rest of it, and that’s when I slapped her and pulled her hair.

  The girls ran to their mother. Nina claimed that I’d also scratched her, but that was another lie, though I wished I had. Princess Maria immediately carried the story to Mama, who asked me what had happened. I cried and said I couldn’t tell her. “If you won’t tell me, then I shall have to punish you, Nastya.”

  Still I refused, and I was punished by not being allowed to come to any more meals while they were our guests. The punishment suited me just fine.

  “I’m taking my girls to England in June for their health,” Princess Maria told us before they finally left. Good, I thought. Maybe you should just stay there.

  But what Nina said about Mama gnawed at me. I hated my cousin for it, but I couldn’t help wondering: Was any of it true? That nobody liked my mother? That she was pretentious and condescending? And what was that other word she used—hypo-something? Was it like a mistress? That obviously couldn’t be possible, but it certainly wasn’t good.

  Aunt Olga had come to Livadia, as she’d promised, and I decided to ask her the question. “What’s a hypo-something, can you please tell me?”

  My aunt looked puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean. Where did you hear it?”

  “I can’t say.” I tried to remember the word, but I could not go beyond the first two syllables.

  Aunt Olga shrugged. “I need more clues,” she said. “If you tell me who spoke the word, I may be able to figure it out.”

  Why not just tell her? “Nina,” I said. When I thought of Nina, another syllable came to me. “Hypochon—” I began.

  Aunt Olga’s eyebrows lifted. “Hypochondriac? Is that the word?”

  I nodded.

  Aunt Olga hesitated, frowning. “Did it have something to do with your mama?”

  I nodded again.

  “All right,” Aunt Olga said. “I’ll tell you what it means. A hypochondriac is someone who imagines she has a serious illness when in fact she doesn’t, and she spends all her time worrying about her symptoms and perhaps staying in bed.”

  That did sound a lot like Mama. Could my mother be imagining that she was ill? But why would she do that? Maybe Nina was right, but I did not regret slapping her or pulling her hair. “Do you think Mama is one?” I asked.

  “No, I don’t,” Aunt Olga said firmly. “But I do think she is a very nervous person who dislikes being out in society and worries a great deal about your brother, and this often makes her feel ill and weak. I also think Nina is a badly spoiled child and should be banished forever, along with her sister and her mother, whom I have never cared for. You needn’t mention this to anyone, though. Understood, my darling Nastya? I’ve heard that you behaved badly to Nina and consequently you are under some sort of punishment. Is that true?”

  I admitted that I had and it was.

  “Well, I hope you smacked her good and hard, because she surely deserved it. Now come with me, and we’ll take a walk together, shall we?”

  • • •

  There was more unpleasantness that spring. Mama, who always seemed so much happier when we were at Livadia, now seemed not to be happy at all, and it had something to do with Anya. Anya was with us—when was Anya not with us?—but she and Mama were not getting along. Marie and I tried to guess the reason, but we could not. Tatiana probably knew, because she spent more time with Mama than any of the rest of us did, but Tatiana wasn’t talking.

  That left Olga’s notebook.

  Who would ever believe this: Mother has become mortally jealous and suspicious of Father and Vyrubova! Anya goes for long walks with him, sits and talks with him, even plays tennis with him, and although she plays badly, he seems to find that amusing. Anya told someone, who told someone else, and Tanya heard it, that Mother is so often ill, and does so much praying and weeping, that Father is in need of feminine companionship and Anya is happy to provide it. Mother is lonely and deeply depressed. She and Father have always treated Anya like a member of the family, and now Mother feels very bitter toward her for betraying her friendship. Imagine, being jealous of a fat, frumpy woman like Anya!

  I was shocked by what I read and full of questions and annoyed because I couldn’t say anything to anybody without revealing how I knew.


  That was not all I read that day in Olga’s notebook. I had promised myself—several times, in fact—that I wouldn’t read it anymore, that I would give it up forever. But when I realized how much went on that I would never have known about otherwise, things kept from me because I was “too young,” or subjects that it didn’t seem proper to discuss with a girl who did not yet have a bosom, then I knew that I could not give it up. Not yet.

  I did, though, continually worry about getting caught. I had had a couple of narrow escapes, usually when Tatiana appeared unexpectedly and looked at me suspiciously when I obviously had no good reason to be in their room. Someday I surely would be caught, and I would be in disgrace. But that wasn’t the worst. The worst was that I would no longer know what was going on.

  A few pages on, I read this:

  I had no idea when Foreign Minister Sazonov arrived in frock coat and striped trousers three days ago from St. Petersburg that I was the main subject of his visit. He has convinced my parents that Crown Prince Carol of Romania is a good choice of husband for me and a desirable match politically: “The marriage will make Romania a closer friend to Russia.” I know it is my duty to help my country, but marriage seems a ridiculous way to do it. Isn’t there a more sensible way?

  Father was very kind when he asked me to consider it seriously, but of course I wept. I know that I must stop thinking about Pasha. If only I had been allowed to marry the man I loved (still love) so deeply! Nevertheless, I have agreed to visit Romania in June, to spend time with Carol and his parents. His mother is another of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren, so that makes it rather cozy for Mother. They were at my sixteenth birthday ball, and I danced twice with Carol but I hardly remember him—I was much too enchanted with Pavel to pay any attention. I do remember thinking that Carol seemed foolish and immature (he’s two years older) and not worth my attention.

  The trip to Romania next month is “just a diplomatic visit,” Father says, but I suspect arrangements are already in progress for an engagement. How I dread it.

  From then on, all anyone could talk about was the coming trip to the port city of Constanta and the “diplomatic visit” to Crown Prince Carol and his family. We would travel on the Standart, and that made Olga all the more unhappy because it would remind her of Lieutenant Voronov. Olga was so gloomy, it was almost impossible to talk to her. I tried to show her on the schoolroom map that Romania was right next to the Ukraine and that Constanta was on the Black Sea. “You could sail across to visit us in Livadia whenever you choose!”

  I thought my suggestion sounded very reasonable, but it just upset Olga even more. “I wouldn’t be living in Constanta!” she said. “I’d be in Bucharest, the capital, and that’s a long, long way from the coast. Nastya, don’t you understand? When I’d come home, I’d be a foreigner in my own country! I’m a Russian, and I mean to remain a Russian! And Father promised not to make me marry anyone I don’t want to marry.”

  “What does Mama say?” I asked.

  “Oh, you can just imagine! Mother’s upset with me again. She says she wants me to be happy, but she also reminds me that we all have certain duties and obligations as grand duchesses. She says that she was just fortunate that she didn’t have to marry some oaf and could marry the best and kindest man in the world. I doubt that I’ll be so lucky!”

  Olga and the rest of us know well the story of how Mama became the wife of “the best and kindest man in the world.” She and Papa met for the first time when she was twelve years old and had come to Russia for the wedding of her sister Ella to Papa’s uncle, Grand Duke Sergei. Papa was sixteen. They met again five years later when she came to visit Ella and stayed for several weeks. “Your mother was so beautiful,” Papa has told us. “I fell in love with her immediately.” It took time, though, for everything to work out. Other handsome young men were courting Mama, and then I suppose Kschessinskaya, the dancer, came into the picture. But there was a much bigger problem: Mama was a devout Lutheran, and she felt she couldn’t change her faith to Orthodoxy—even for love. Fortunately for all of us, Papa was persistent, and Mama changed her mind. They became engaged in April 1894 and planned to marry the following January, but our grandfather, Tsar Alexander, died suddenly in November. Papa and Mama felt they had to marry immediately. The wedding was exactly one week after Grandfather’s funeral.

  I just hoped things would go well for Olga and end happily for everyone, as they did for our parents.

  We sailed from Yalta on the Standart one evening in the middle of June, and the next morning we arrived at Constanta. A band was playing on the quay, flags were flying, boats shot plumes of water into the air, and the artillery on the hill above the city boomed a salute.

  Old King Carol and Queen Elisabeth and the whole Romanian royal family were there to meet us. After the official greetings—they’re all pretty much alike everywhere—and a service at the cathedral came the private luncheon in a pavilion by the sea with just the two families. In the afternoon Mama and Papa invited the king and queen, Prince Ferdinand and Princess Marie, and Crown Prince Carol and a slew of brothers and sisters to board the Standart.

  The white-haired queen, who was even older than our grandmother, made it a point to speak to me. She was a poetess who wrote under the name “Carmen Sylva,” and when I said that I liked to read poetry, she promised to give me one of her books. I was watching Olga, who was chatting away with Carol. Olga was always good at being charming in such situations, no matter how she really felt.

  “What do you think?” I whispered to Marie.

  “She doesn’t like him,” Marie replied. “You can see that she’s just putting on an act.”

  “I mean, what do you think of him?”

  “Well, he’s not bad looking, I’ll say that much.”

  “But his hair, Mashka! It looks like a mop. I don’t think he combs it.”

  The day wore on. We had to witness a military review. Our photograph was taken with us wearing our big hats. We attended a formal tea. By then Mama was exhausted, and Olga was sick of being gawked at by ministers and aristocrats and ordinary Romanians who were probably wondering if the Russian grand duchess might be their future queen.

  At eight o’clock in the evening, we changed clothes again (that made it the third time) and went ashore for the gala banquet. Papa sat at the center of a very long table, with Queen Elisabeth on one side and Princess Marie on the other. Mama sat between King Carol and Prince Ferdinand. Olga, of course, had to sit beside Carol. I was far down the table, stuck between a couple of his sisters. I’d sat through countless state dinners before, and this one was just as dull as all the rest. Toasts were made—both Papa and the king spoke French, and so did everybody else. Olga struggled bravely to keep up a conversation with Carol. When the dinner was finally over and everybody had greeted everybody else, we returned to the yacht. The Standart was leaving that same night to sail to Odessa.

  “Farewell, Romania!” Olga cried as a brilliant display of fireworks lit up the night sky and as we got ready to sail. “And I’m never coming back!”

  Marie and I looked at each other and laughed. “Guess we know what Olya decided. Poor Carol will be left with a broken heart!”

  The next morning we were in Odessa for Papa to review the troops, the day after in Kishinev in Bessarabia for the unveiling of a monument, and three days later we were back in Tsarskoe Selo after a very long, very hot train ride.

  What an impossible person! Every time we were together, Crown Prince Carol tried to impress me with jokes that were not in the least funny. He told them in French, but his accent is so awful that I may not have understood them. He would tell his joke and then laugh uproariously while I sat there with a fixed smile. This happened several times. Meanwhile, I searched frantically for something to talk about—a book he’d read, a trip he’d taken, a subject that interested him. Nothing!

  I can’t imagine spending another evening with him, let alone my whole life, and I’ve told Mother and Father NO NO N
O to Crown Prince Carol. I also told them this: I will never leave my country, even if it means that I do not marry.

  She didn’t write in the notebook what Mama and Papa had to say, but it was easy to see that she was in a vile mood.

  CHAPTER 10

  Things Go Badly

  PETERHOF AND THE STANDART, SUMMER 1914

  Tatiana turned seventeen, Marie had her fifteenth birthday, and I was thirteen at last! This, I decided, was the beginning of my real life, although I wasn’t sure what that would be, or even what I wanted it to be—just as long as it was more exciting than the life I had when I was twelve.

  Every summer we spent a week by the edge of the sea in Peterhof, at our dacha. We never stayed in the Great Palace, which Mama said was just too big, but in the Lower Palace, which reminded her of places she used to stay in England. I was born in the Lower Palace.

  I loved spending my birthday at Peterhof. Aunt Olga came with us, and Anya, too. Whatever had upset Mama had been patched over. Dr. Botkin brought his children, Gleb and Tatiana. I was happy to see Gleb, who was good-humored and sweet as always and, I believed, truly had forgiven me for joking about his becoming a smelly starets.

  Before luncheon we all went for a walk on the beach, looking for pretty shells and interesting stones. Gleb found a piece of sea glass, polished smooth by sand and water, and presented it to me with a low bow. “A birthday gift for Your Imperial Highness,” he said earnestly, and kissed my hand. I was surprised that he would be so formal and serious, and, without thinking, I kicked sand at him. Poor Gleb—I was always saying or doing the wrong thing and then having to apologize. The sea glass was a deep emerald green, almost the same color as his eyes, and I thanked him and put it away with my other little treasures.

  At my birthday luncheon I received a thirteenth diamond for my necklace as well as other gifts, including one I disliked immensely: another porcelain doll, this one with real hair and a French wardrobe, sent by Cousin Willy! I wished somebody would please tell the man that I was now thirteen and practically a woman and had no need for dolls, even beautifully dressed ones. I held two fingers over my upper lip like a mustache and imitated the stiff-legged march of Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops. Papa laughed, but Mama pursed her lips and said I should not be disrespectful.