The Passion of Marie Romanov

by Laura Rose

  I looked past the gate, and saw an odd glow—a queer pink aura almost as pearlescent as the celestial radiance of our rainbow-tinted undulant Northern Lights. We could not know the source—distant fires? Was Petrograd burning? Or was this glow some astronomic oddity, a coincidence of a lunar eclipse? I had witnessed such an eclipse once with my father in the woods. The moon, stained red, had appeared covered with gauze, exactly as a wound, and then disappeared by degrees. That had been a winter moon as well. As if in a dream, I saw that long-ago midnight moon, so luminous. I soon discovered this mental tic of mine—to balance current horror with past bliss. In our terrorized present, I could not suppress the images of our idyllic past. Perhaps as the gauze lay across the moon, these beatific images dressed a wound.

  That other snowy night? Papa had been hunting and we had hidden behind a great snowdrift. As was our habit for a winter hunt, we had worn white to camouflage ourselves. I wore white ermine and Papa wore white woolen hunting clothes and a sheepskin vest and hat; his huntsmen wore the same. Some men wore white knit balaclavas that covered their faces. We had disappeared into the snow and then, as the snow lightened, we saw an iridescent flowing series of lights on the horizon, a fluctuating multicolored dawn, long before the true sunrise.

  Now, I know the queer light that night also evoked artificial dawn of the new era. We did not realize at the time of that opalescent midnight meeting with our Palace Garde Equipage that we were seeing the end of our empire.

  Mama suggested that the guards rotate, and that some companies retire to the souterrains, fortify themselves with hot tea, and then return to their posts. This suggestion was met with great gratitude. We led the first group of some twenty soldiers down to the underside of the palace through a side entry that descended ten steps underground.

  The cavern-like maze of the souterrains astonished me—it was impossible not to feel I was sleepwalking. We walked through a warren of stone rooms, each lit by candles or flaming torches, until at last we reached a vault-like chamber, crowded with men. There, more guards waited, gathered round large silver samovars. Mama instructed that the soldiers from outside be allowed to warm themselves and be fortified by the strong tea. Braziers flamed below the samovars. We visited soldiers in four chambers. Then finally Mama showed her fatigue, and suggested that we return to our apartments.

  We bid the men adieu and followed their advice to return to the Imperial quarters. This time, we accepted a military escort. Four guards flanked us, and walked up the steps directly to the private entrance of the left wing of the palace. Now, I realize I was giddy with relief when I took the arm of a handsome officer and felt as secure as I had when this same elite corps served to protect our family on the Imperial yacht. Many of these officers were the very men who manned the Standardt for the summer voyages to the islands of the Baltic Sea.

  How innocent I was—to imagine, for an instant, that they could save us.

  THE PALACE SICKROOM

  We entered the palace, moving fast through the darkened halls toward the relative warmth and light of the Red Room. Our faces were numbed and our feet had stiffened in our shoes. In the entry to our family apartments, Nyuta was waiting, and at the sight of Mama, fell to her knees to remove her ruined shoes and rub her frozen feet. Mama collapsed at once onto the settee beside the hearth. The dogs were upon us, leaping and licking. They basted our faces with their sweet drool; it seemed, under the circumstances, an elixir. The dogs appeared a bit berserk—Joy’s mahogany and white fur tangled over his eyes, and Ortino’s crushed black face contorted into a grimace of bulldog greeting, lower teeth jutting forward, pink tongue extending to bestow mad licks. Jemmy went into a sniffing frenzy, detecting new scent on our clothing. The tiny dog looked up, mouth open, eyes wide in chagrin. Did the little dog smell the danger? A low growl sounded in his throat.

  Lili Dehn, pale in the darkness, burst into tears at the sight of us. She confessed that she was too afraid to speak or even allow herself to think what might have happened to us outside. She had counted her heartbeats, her footsteps, anything to mark the time that we were gone. The clocks chimed, confirming we had been outside for two hours.

  “The guards are our friends,” Mama said. “They shall not desert us. They are our friends, they are our friends; they love the tsar,” she repeated, almost as a litany. “There are many men at the gate post and the Cossack Convoi occupies the souterrains. I wish I could have gone deeper into the souterrains to the other companies, but I was told it was not necessary. We are surrounded by the guards who will best protect us.”

  Lili went to our samovar, filled with boiling water. She poured from the tiny teapot perched on the samovar top. Mama and I drank one cup after another of the steaming, scented tea. Lili had prepared our favorite, the tea imported from Paris, rich with spice, vanilla, and bergamot.

  “The children?” Mama asked.

  “Sleeping,” Lili told her.

  “And Anya?”

  “Whimpering, as always.”

  Mama expressed her worry that with the siege underway, it must be unbearable for Lili to be separated from her son, who remained in her home in Petrograd. Only the day before, Lili had taken the train out to Tsarskoe Selo for a day’s visit, and now it appeared she might never be able to leave. But Lili reassured us and repeated her own wish. “Please, permit me to remain with you.”

  Mama embraced her and I did also—Lili Dehn was my favorite of the ladies-in-waiting, not because she was the youngest and prettiest (luminous black eyes, a white oval face, rose lips, a classic hour-glass figure but unusually slim at the waist, the proverbial handspan). Lili told us inventive stories of the palace past and her own old estate in the south, which had two thousand cherry trees. But I loved her for many deeper reasons—Lili was the only woman I knew who had as much stature as Mama. Like Mama, she stood taller than most men; both stood taller than their husbands. But unlike Mama, Lili was always available to share confidences. While Mama could be adamant and seal her lips, Lili was always open. It’s not that she smiled so often; in fact, she looked perpetually concerned—her pretty lips pursed; her eyes always inquired, is something wrong? as she looked into mine. She did not see past me as Mama sometimes does. Her jaw was not set; her eyes did not narrow. She did not appraise me the way my mother seems to.

  Oftentimes I regarded Lili as almost another mother, a mother to whom I could confide, and who confided in me, also—who told me what my actual mother would never have confessed, the secrets of the court. I know Lili told me these confidential histories to help me, and they did. If I have any understanding of the intrigues and the ultimate betrayal of my family, it is because Lili Dehn would sit at my bedside and whisper the truth. Her loyalty was unquestioned. That cannot be said of many of the other ladies-in-waiting.

  Lili placed our family ahead of her own, although she loved her husband and son dearly. Two years ago, she had left her husband, even before he was transferred overseas, in order that she might attend to us, and now she had left their son, to share whatever would be our fate. Mama had arranged for a military guard to surround Lili’s house in Petrograd but the reports could not be more disturbing—fires surrounded that part of the city—and we had already heard the end of Lili’s telephone conversation in which she tried to reassure her little son. “Mama will see you soon. Do not be afraid,” she said, while tears shone in her eyes.

  “Surely this is too much to expect and I would never ask you to make such a choice or sacrifice,” Mama said. I always admired this trait in Mama—no matter how desperate her own need, she respected the situation of others. “You must not stay.”

  “I am honored to do so,” was Lili Dehn’s only reply, no matter how often the question of her remaining was raised. “I am honored. Permit me.”

  Permit me, Permit me. Those words echoed in the chambers of my own heart for the next days, weeks, months. Permit me, I thought. Permit me to prove myself a woman, a woman worthy of my parents and my dynasty, the Holy Mother and God
. Let me not fail or show my weaknesses.

  Mama set a small shrine for Lili beside the settee— a prayer book, a fine icon, her son Titi’s photograph. Titi resembled a renaissance cherub — plump and creased at the neck and wrist, with wise cerulean eyes. He appeared to watch us from within his silver picture frame as we busied ourselves, preparing the salon as our bedroom. The baby boy’s white face, with his round pale eyes, looked at us with that solemn infant regard which seems to contain far more wisdom than older countenances.

  I chose Lili Dehn’s bedding—the finest large, lace-trimmed pillows and a duvet of deepest down. But Lili seemed reluctant to settle on the settee; she paced, as I did, before the fire. I wondered if her blood “ran” as mine did? I could not eat or even hold still. Our evening tea service waited untouched on the fireside table—the triangles of bread lay drying out under their caviar-bejeweled toppings. The cucumber sandwiches appeared wilted, the lettuces and cucumber slices rust-ringed and stale. Our usually delicious tea had turned unappetizing in the short time since our lives had so drastically altered.

  What was happening in Petrograd? I wanted to know.

  Lili confided that when she left the city, there had already been unrest. She had been unable to find a fiacre or any carriage to carry her to the train station. A strike had been declared. When Lili, by fortunate chance, encountered an acquaintance who offered to drive her, her friend told her to be careful of the crowds of drunken men moving through the city. The people were angry, he told her, because there was a shortage of bread.

  How strange, I remember thinking, as I stared at our own black bread slices, hardening into crisps on their platter in the salon. Why wouldn’t there be bread?

  Throughout the night, we took turns running up and down the steps to check on the children, who slept the sweated, fitful sleep of the sick. The close, smoky air had that sweetish sickroom smell, the sharp cinnamon stink of full bedpans. We had only Nyuta to change them. She moved, in her heavy-footed, good willed, wide-hipped, and fat-armed way, holding what needed to be carried, and emptying the chamber pots.

  Mama burned incense sticks in the children’s bedrooms, and lit scented candles downstairs in the alcove where Anya Vyrubova lay even more visibly covered with the red rash. The children were silent, but Anya whined, as ever— “Oh, will I die? Don’t leave me!”

  I confess that whenever I stopped at Anya Vyrubova ‘s candlelit bedside, I did want to leave her. A Sister of Mercy, in white headdress and habit, sat beside Anya’s bed and the nun’s eyes met mine in the perfect understanding which sometimes passes between strangers. This good nun gave me silent permission to go on with my rounds. Anya would have detained me from assisting with my sisters and brother. I hurried upstairs to the Green Room, where the drapes were drawn shut and only a few tapers burned. Darkness, the Sister of Mercy said, was beneficial—any light would stab the pupils of the invalids’ sore eyes.

  By candlelight, I went first to sit at the bed of Shvybz... How altered my baby sister was by sickness. I could hardly see her features beneath the crusted rash. there was no sign of her quick smile, her diamond sparkle. The single comfort at her bedside was her small, brown Spaniel, Jemmy, who pressed himself against her legs, above her bedcovers. His ears perked when I entered, and he stared up at me with one of those liquid soulful stares which only dogs can offer…his animal sanity, his foreknowledge. I was alarmed that the little dog looked mournful—did he sense death?

  Shvybz’s breathing was ragged, with a rasp that occasionally rose to a shuddering sigh from deep within her chest. I had heard of the infamous “death rattle” and feared this sound. I kissed her cheek, although it was hideous with red bumps and pustules.

  “Don’t die, Shvybz,” I whispered. “Please.” My wish was so intense it became prayer. “Please try.”

  I sent my prayer heavenward with the incense—anything, any sacrifice; I would give anything that Anastasia should survive this. Her gaze gave no indication that she heard me. I would choose to die in her place if I could do so.

  Seeing my dearest Shvybz thus, my fear escalated until it coursed through my blood so fast I thought I might faint. I feared for her, for myself, for all of us. Why were we being tested so? I knelt and prayed, vowing to become a holy nun should any of my sisters or my brother die. It seemed to me that Shvybz opened her eyes and looked at me, glassy with fever, as if from some very far place.

  Then her pale grey eyes closed again.

  I kept moving through the sickrooms that night, pausing at each bedside. Olga and Tatiana lay crowded together in Tatiana’s bed—for comfort, I supposed. The bulldog, Ortino, lay nearly squashed, attempting to squeeze into a crevasse between them that did not truly exist. Olga and Tatiana, the Big Pair, are as inseparable as Shvybz and I, the Little Pair. All together, we make up a quartet, a double twinning; we are presented to the world, in our identical dresses, as OTMA, initials of our birth order, the order in which we walk and refer to ourselves. We share our signature as we inscribe OTMA on most correspondence, our thoughts, our clothes, our lives—it is impossible that one sister would die and the others live. I understood, looking at my older sisters, why they clung together, even in illness and unconsciousness. I prayed for my sisters to recover; we must survive as the single entity we are.

  Lili, beside me with a second candelabra, could not suppress her cry. “They look like corpses!” That night Olga, the fairest of us, with her true blonde hair and alabaster complexion, had an ashen, almost celadon finish to her skin. Her face was covered by the rash, but it was her stillness which alarmed me. Her spotted skin burned to the touch. Her face, even in this frightening repose, bore its usual intelligent mien—her high forehead and fair brow, the fine thin line of her lips. Olga is the best student, the most like Papa, and shares his occasional sad moods. What frightened me was not only her rigid pose but her expression of resignation. Tatiana lay cupped at Olga’s back, her arms around our eldest sister.

  Tatiana, however, looked far worse. Tatiana—the most beautiful of us we all acknowledge—displayed the most severe measles rash. Her fine porcelain face was mottled, the red dots running together and rising into purple welts. Always so slender, she was now gaunt as a skeleton; her collarbones showed at her throat. She burned to the touch and shook visibly, shivering to the torrid/frigid rhythms of the disease. I placed more duvets on top of Tatiana and adjusted the hot salt stocking which Shura, our governess, had placed across her neck.

  Seeing my older sisters together, it hurt to be apart from my other half; how wrong it was for me to be well and strong while Shvybz was sick. I would have rejoiced to have taken her infection. Then I fell to my knees beside the bed and offered my prayers for all my sisters.

  “I kiss you thrice, “I whispered. “I kiss you thrice.”

  Even under such dire conditions, Tatiana’s French bulldog, Ortino, our family clown, was good at distracting us. Still asleep, Ortino adjusted himself on top of the duvet without ever waking and turned upside down, feet up in the air, mouth open, showing his pink tongue and protruding white teeth. He emitted great shuddering snores through his distended mouth. I could hear Tatiana’s oft repeated remark regarding Ortino— “He is so ugly he is beautiful!” His loyalty was ferocious, even in sleep; Ortino would growl if someone approached Tatiana and Olga. I stood back, knowing his uncontrollable urge to defend them. Nonetheless, his small dark eyes opened and he gave me a profound look. The loyal dog must have sensed my love and concern, for he made a low sound in his throat of approval rather than threat. I kissed each sister three times and continued on my rounds.

  ALEXEI

  I went to my brother Alexei’s room and found Mama already sitting at Baby’s bedside. In an odd way, the scene in Alexei’s room was the least alarming because his bedroom had always been a sickroom. In the darkness, gilded icons glowed, dozens of martyred saints looking out or downward, their collective enameled gaze forever fixed in pious grief. Every inch of wall surface was occupied by these saint
s; Alexei inhabited a chapel-niche of continual prayer, watched over by long-dead martyrs and his living attendants.

  The tableau was almost the same as on a usual day—tapers lit, incense burning, Mama in the bedside chair. Alexei’s attendants, the sailors Nagorny and Derevenko, stood as animate pillars flanking his bed. Alexei was always watched over by these two heavily muscled sailors who took turns carrying him in their powerful arms, especially when Papa was away. The two moustached men stood sentinel, their arms folded across their chests. In this sepulchral setting, my little brother and his dog, Joy, rested as the centerpiece.

  Mama had applied a poultice to Alexei’s leg, which was propped upon a pillow; his toy soldiers and little metal gun rested on the coverlet. “Baby,” as Alexei was always called, slept. His appearance was grave but his symptoms less alarming than those of my sisters; his downy cheeks showed only a few red dots of the dreaded measles rash and he seemed to be at rest. But below his red spots remained the ghostly pallor, sign of the blood disease which afflicted him since birth. All his life, my brother, Alexei, suffered this malady; we lived with the knowledge that the least bruise could hemorrhage, that no injury was minor. A bump on the knee at our desk in the schoolroom could be fatal. The blood disease caused him horrific pains and often immobilized him for weeks at a time.

  Mama feared Alexei would die, as her baby brother, her uncle and so many other male relatives had died. This disease ran through her own veins, unseen, inherited through her grandmother, Queen Victoria of England. Mama’s cross has been that she passed this disease to her son; no daughters ever suffer the sickness although it is apparent that it is the female who passes the affliction to her male children. I have understood this since five weeks after Alexei’s joyous birth.