Saint Petersburg, Russia
Summer 2001
As she sat in the Winter Garden of the Astoria Hotel, Kate Semyonov barely noticed the extravagant lunch of caviar and blini, smoked sturgeon and champagne laid before her. Likewise, she barely paid attention to the conversation of the three other people at the table even though they spoke exclusively in English.
Suddenly she realized they were all looking at her, waiting for a reply of some sort. Kate blotted her mouth with her napkin, tried to think of something to say, and then simply confessed.
“I’m sorry, I think I’m a little jet-lagged,” she said with her trademark broad smile, which happened to be her best defense. “What did you say?”
Dr. Kostrovsky, the director general of the Hermitage Museum, replied, “We just wanted to go over your schedule for the next few days.”
“Oh. Sure, of course.”
Her mind was anywhere but here in this spacious, elegant dining room with its glass ceiling, marble floor, and arcing palms. Rather, all she was thinking was how she could possibly escape. She looked from Dr. Kostrovsky, a heavy man with gray hair and a goatee, to his deputy director, an elegant blond woman by the name of Dr. Vera Tarlova, to Mark Betts, the head curator from the Art Institute of Chicago. No, thought Kate, I can’t do this right now. There’s something much more important that can wait no longer. I’ve come all this way, and I’ve got to take care of it now.
Mark, a tall, trim, balding man who’d accompanied Kate from Chicago, said, “Doctor Kostrovsky was just saying that tomorrow morning we’ll have a private tour of the exhibition, followed by a luncheon with the city mayor, and then-”
“You know what, Mark? I have a splitting headache right now,” lied Kate. “I don’t know if it’s because of the long trip over or because all this is just a little bit overwhelming – you know, being here in Russia – but I think I need to go lie down for a while.”
“If that’s what you want, of course.”
Kate turned to the two Russians. “I’m sorry Doctor Kostrovsky and Doctor Tarlova, but would you excuse me?”
“Absolutely. But are you in need of a physician?”
“Just a little rest, that’s all. I’ll leave all the planning to Mark. Anything that’s okay with him is perfect for me.”
“Then we’ll see you tonight for the performance at the Mariinsky?”
Oh, shit, thought Kate, how she wished she could get out of that one. There was no way, however, she could opt out, for not only had they reserved the tsar’s box for her, not only had they called in their best performers to dance Swan Lake, but the entire performance was in her honor. Yes, she was being feted as a hero for precisely following her grandparents’ last will and testament. Changed in the 1980s upon the death of their only son, Kate’s father, Mikhail and May Semyonov did not simply name Kate as their sole heir, but also instructed her to return the fortune of Romanov gems to the Russian people, designating Saint Petersburg over Moscow for the site of their permanent exhibition.
In light of the recent death of our cherished son, we hereby bequeath to our beloved granddaughter, Katherine Semyonov, our home in Lake Forest and all its contents except those items manufactured in Russia by the jeweler Carl Fabergé. All of the Fabergé pieces and sundry gems in our home vault, we bequeath to the Russian people; these items are to be held for safekeeping at the Hermitage Museum, the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, Russia. This transfer shall take place only when and if both of the following two criteria are met: 1) the Communist government of Russia is no more, 2) the family of Tsar Nikolai and Tsaritsa Aleksandra have been given a proper Orthodox burial. These items are to be considered as an inviolate gift from the last royal family to its people and are for display and collection purposes only; they are not to be sold at any time. Until these requirements are fully met these items will be on temporary loan to the Art Institute of Chicago.
As for our financial resources, including all stocks, savings accounts, bonds of any sort, etc…”
“I can’t wait,” said Kate, her smile as broad as ever.
A few more pleasantries passed amongst them, and then Kate escaped, passing from the elegant dining room into the gilded marble lobby of the hotel itself. The past three years had been nothing but a whirlwind, beginning with the death of her grandparents and the revelation of the Romanov fortune stashed in Misha’s office. There’d been so much publicity – Dateline, Larry King Live, and others – followed by the exhibit The Secret Jewels of Nicholas & Alexandra at the Art Institute of Chicago. And now this, the opening of the permanent exhibit of the gems in a hall specially renovated in the Winter Palace.
As she neared the front entrance, she was tempted to bolt right then and there. It was, however, the sight outside of the limousine and bodyguard assigned to her that stopped her dead cold. If she went out there, they’d not only insist on driving and accompanying her, but they’d also make a full report to her host, Dr. Kostrovsky. And she couldn’t risk that. She’d have to sneak out a side door. But first she had to change, get out of her navy linen dress and fine leather heels.
Entering the small elevator near the front desk, she rode the lift to the fifth floor, the top. Her room was the best in the hotel, arranged by Dr. Kostrovsky himself, and consisted of a suite with an entry hall, living room, spacious bedroom, and an enormous bathroom, all of it filled with antiques, all of it overlooking Cathedral Square. Before the revolution this chamber had been used by various princes and counts; later Hitler himself had planned to stay in this very corner suite after his victory over Russia, which had never materialized.
Kate was a beautiful woman of thirty-five, five foot eight inches tall, and noticeably thin. She wasted no time changing from her fine clothes into her typical garb of well-worn jeans, brown leather clogs, and a beige cotton twinset. She had rich, thick brown hair, brown eyes, and a nose that she could and did scrunch up at a moment’s notice. Her upper lip was straight, even flat, just like her grandfather’s, and she grabbed a tissue and blotted off most of her lipstick. Wearing only a simple pair of sterling hoop earrings, her gold wedding band, and the gold bracelet always worn by her grandmother, she headed out, convinced that she looked less like an heiress and philanthropist – she’d inherited well over $100 million – and more like a student. Well, she granted as she slung her black purse over her shoulder, maybe a graduate student.
Rather than return to the main lobby and risk running into Mark and the others, not to mention the bodyguard, Kate wove through a series of corridors. She passed into the adjoining Hotel d’Angleterre, and a few minutes later emerged onto a side street that jutted off from the enormous St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Flagging down one of the small, pale-green taxis took but moments.
“Vam kooda?” Where to? said the burly, baby-faced driver.
“Vot zdes addres.” Here’s the address, replied Kate, handing him a slip of paper.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Vyi otkooda?” Where are you from?
“Ya Amerikanka.” I’m American.
For the next ten minutes Kate carried on a reasonable conversation in Russian, which she’d learned not only from her grandparents but in a series of college courses. And while she spoke little more than excellent kitchen Russian, her accent was nearly perfect, or so said the driver two or three times.
Bouncing around in the small taxi, Kate was driven down Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main avenue. The sky was clear and blue, the sun bright through its rays soft in the northern sky, and Kate kept her eyes on the apple green Winter Palace and ensuing Hermitage as they drove around the front of the extensive, regal complex. Passing neighboring palace after palace – once the glittering homes of the richest of the grand dukes but now housing such centers as The House of Scientists – the driver turned left across the Troitsky Bridge. As they reached the other side of the Neva River, Kate’s eyes focused on the Peter and Paul Fortress, where Nicholas and Alexandra had been reburied nearly three years earlier. Dear God, she thought. I have to go there. I have to visit and pray and light a candle. Or was there already an official ceremony planned? Yes, if she remembered correctly the patriarch of the Orthodox Church was coming from Moscow to lead a service to commemorate the wondrous deeds of Kate’s grandparents.
The driver swerved over some tram tracks, around a park, past the city’s only mosque and its pair of towering minarets, then crossed Kamennoostrovsky Boulevard and turned into the dumpy courtyard of a building. Puddles and broken bricks littered the space, two children played on a pile of dirt.
“Priyekhali?” We’ve arrived? asked Kate.
“Da,” replied the driver, pointing to the door.
Kate paid in dollars, which the driver was only too glad to accept, and climbed out. This was the real reason she’d come to Russia, not the opening of the exhibit, not all the grand celebrations, but this, perhaps her very last chance to peel away the final layer of the many truths and mistruths fed to her.
The half-rotted door to the crumbling apartment building flapped open, though it was obviously meant to be bolted. Kate pushed it back, proceeding into a dingy lobby of sorts that was lit by a single, naked bulb. A row of heavy wooden mailboxes hung on one side, and she checked. Yes, the name was there. Dear God, thought Kate, she’d been so scared, so frightened that she might be too late.
Kate swatted a mosquito from her neck – she’d read somewhere that they bred year-round in the water-logged basements of these two-hundred-year-old buildings – and headed up the worn stone steps, which were low and easy. The cast-iron railing was half-broken away, the window at the top punched with a hole, and she mounted the second flight and came to the first door. Once again Kate looked at the address, and then pressed a buzzer, which rang so loudly she could hear it inside. As if in reply Kate heard a television inside being turned down. When there was no further sound, Kate pressed the buzzer again, and a moment later heard shuffling feet. A few moments passed before the inner door was opened with obvious difficulty. The outer door, however, remain solidly locked.
Finally a frail woman’s voice inside, said, “Kto tam?” Who’s there?
Kate was about to reply in Russian, but stopped herself. If it were really her, she would understand English.
“A friend from America.”
For the longest time there was nothing, no reply, virtually no sound of movement from within. Kate, finally sure that this was all a folly, was about to call out in Russian, when finally she heard a heavy bolt unlatched. The thick, padded door swung open, revealing a hunched-over woman, her gray hair skewing this way and that. Her eyes, foggy with age, studied Kate for a long, suspicious moment. Finally the old woman’s eyes bloomed with tears and she reached out and grasped Kate’s hand with every bit of her pitiful strength.
Oh, dear God, thought Kate, her eyes likewise filling with tears, it’s her, it’s really her. “Perhaps you don’t realize who I am, but-”
In hesitant but excellent English, the old woman said, “I know who you are, dear Katya. Of course I do, and not just from what they write of you in these newspaper stories, either. Da, nyet.” Of course not. “No, you should not have come… but I prayed with all my heart that we would somehow meet, which of course, was so very selfish of me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Yes, it’s really you, and yet… yet how did you even think to come looking for me.”
With a trembling hand, Kate reached into her purse and pulled out a cassette tape. “My grandfather left this for me.”
“I see… Now come in, my child. Come in quickly. We have much to discuss and you can’t be seen standing out here.”
The old woman, frightened by the ghosts of Stalin and the like, all but yanked Kate inside. As the woman bolted shut the door, Kate stepped into a tiny, windowless living room, no more than six feet by eight. One door led to a minute kitchen with a table and stools on one side, a bathtub on the other, while another door led to a slender bedroom with a single bed and the apartment’s only window.
Suddenly the old woman was before Kate, taking Kate’s hand, then touching Kate on the shoulder, the cheek, the forehead, all the time muttering in Russian.
“Gospodi, eto’vo ne mozhet byit…” Dear Lord, it can’t be…
And then she was crossing herself, bowing her head, and kissing not only Kate’s hand, but the cuff and next the sleeve of her sweater. When the diminutive woman started to drop to her knees, Kate took her by her thin shoulders and pulled her back to her feet.
“No,” begged Kate. “Please don’t.”
“It’s a miracle!”
Kate glanced to the side, saw an old black-and-white TV, the volume turned down but the picture still flashing. On the old couch Kate saw two magazines, which not only featured pictures of the soon-to-open exhibit of Romanov gems, but Kate’s own photograph as well.
“So it’s really you?” asked Kate.
“Yes.” And touching Kate’s wrist and finding the gold bracelet with the jade pendant, the old woman gasped. “Your grandmother gave this to you?”
“I received it upon her death three years ago.”
“Peace at last.” She crossed herself. “How did you find me?”
Kate shrugged. “After my grandfather died, I cleaned his office. I went through everything, and I was just about to empty his trash can when I found an article speculating what really happened the night the Romanovs were killed. There were several different theories, but one thing in particular struck me – it talked about some survivors from a nearby monastery.”
“Ah, I see…”
“I saved the article, and then when my grandfather’s story started to fall apart, I looked it up again. I called Esquire, the magazine that had originally published the article, and tried to track down the woman who had written it. But I couldn’t find her – she’d left the magazine years earlier – and so I started doing some research on the Internet.”
“The what?”
“I used my computer.”
“Wh… what…?” She gazed at Kate with confusion. “You have to forgive me, I so seldomly speak English.”
“I started doing some research using my computer, but I couldn’t find mention of any monks who might have survived until even as recently as the sixties. In fact, the only thing I could find about a monastery in Yekaterinburg was this.”
From her purse Kate pulled a short article, the headline of which read, “Ancient Yekaterinburg Resident Attends Romanov Funeral.”
The old woman took it and shook her head. “My eyes are no good anymore. What’s it say?”
“When the Tsar and his family were reburied here in Saint Petersburg, a British man wrote about it for a London paper. He also did a short side piece about a milkmaid who claimed to have worked at a Yekaterinburg monastery when the Romanovs were under house arrest. He wrote how she attended the Orthodox burial of the Imperial Family here in town.”
“I should never have gone. I… I… was just going to watch the procession from afar. It was right across the park, just here at the fortress. And when I saw it all, I fell to my knees and started to crying. They were ordering me away, but in my weakness I begged. One of the fathers took pity on me and allowed me to attend.”
“So it’s true, then?”
The old woman nodded. “This man, this British writer – he was there, writing about the funeral, and then he followed me back here to my apartment.”
“I know. I looked him up. He’s the one who gave me your address.”
“I knew I shouldn’t have talked to him!”
“You didn’t tell him that your father was British, did you?” pressed Kate.
“No, of course not. I only told him part of the truth.” She hesitated before confessing, “I… I told him I worked as a simple milkmaid at the monastir.”
Finally understanding how it all fit together, Kate said, “At first I didn’t quite get it. The story on the Internet said your name was Marina, and I knew right away that it was just too much of a coincidence. I kept reading and rereading the article, and then I realized I didn’t understand because he didn’t understand, this man who wrote the article. He thought you worked for some monks at a monastery, but you didn’t, did you?”
“No, of course not. I worked for the sisters at the other monastery.”
“Or as we would call it in English, the convent. And you didn’t simply work there, but you studied there, correct?”
“Da, da, da. I was a lay sister.”
“So you’re not the milkmaid Marina from the men’s monastery, but the Novice Marina from the Novotikhvinsky convent, or as you would say in Russian, the Novotikhvinsky woman’s monastery.”
“Yes, my child.” The old woman took Kate by the hand, leading her into the tiny kitchen. “Here, come sit.”
By the simplicity of Marina’s words, Kate knew she was telling the truth. And as she sat down on a small stool, Kate sensed there were but only one or two more truths in this nesting doll of deception. She was, at last, that close. Yes, thought Kate, this old woman now putting on a kettle of water for tea, now shuffling for two chipped teacups, was most certainly the daughter of an Englishman and Russian woman.
In her bones, in her soul, Kate knew the truth, but her mind, so weary of deception, threw out a test. “Who did your father work for?”
“Papa? He was a diplomat. He was posted out there in Yekaterinburg at the consulate.”
“Under whose tutelage were you at the monastery?”
“Sister Antonina.”
“What did you do first thing in the morning? What were your primary responsibilities?”
“My responsibilities?” She pulled a small sugar bowl from the shelf. “Oh, I see. You test me, do you not?”
Kate said nothing, just sat there.
“Well, sometimes they had me assist in gathering the eggs, but yes, this is truth – I always, always milked the cows because, of course, my hands were then young and nimble.”
So it was all just as Kate thought. And now that she had the truth, or the most of it, she started to cry not out of grief, but fear. Meanwhile Marina went about making tea, as any good Russian did upon the arrival of a guest. She even put out a plate of three meager biscuits.
Finally sitting down opposite Kate, Marina asked, “Who else knows? Have you told anyone?”
“No, not even my husband.”
“Excellent. And you mustn’t, my child. For your own safety you mustn’t ever. Have you any children?”
Kate nodded. “Twins, a boy and a girl. They just turned two.”
“How wonderful,” beamed Marina. “But you must protect them, do you understand? Your grandparents put snakes between you and the truth to protect you, and now you must do exactly the same for your young ones. Am I clear?”
“Absolutely.”
“I read in the magazines about you. I read that your father died in a car accident, and I wondered if you knew. How much did your grandfather tell you?”
“Not everything, of course. As I said, he told me some stories – or rather he recorded on tape what he said was the truth. And at the time I believed it all. Then something happened, which in turn caused me to doubt him, and not much later I began to look for you.” Kate looked up, looked right into Marina’s foggy eyes, and said, “You see, my son is a bleeder.”
“Gospodi.” Dear Lord, gasped Marina, yet again crossing herself.
Overwhelmed with the responsibility of taking care of her aged grandparents, explained Kate, she’d put off starting a family of her own.
“I’ve only been married five years.”
It was odd, she continued, how she shied away from kids until the deaths of her grandparents. After that, she wanted a family right away, and a mere year later she’d given birth to her Andrew and Melissa. The twins at first appeared beautiful and healthy, but then Andrew bumped his head, which resulted in a horrendous bruise.
“When he was diagnosed, I grew suspicious of everything that my grandfather had told me.”
“But what about him, the boy child?”
“He’s okay. It’s still a serious condition, of course, but there are treatments now for hemophilia. There’s even talk of a cure using genetic engineerng. So there’s no immediate critical problem, not really.”
But the discovery of her boy’s affliction led Kate to do her own research. It was just too much of a coincidence. And her initial studies led her away from her mother.
“I was told that Dad died on his way back from the club when his car swerved off the road and hit a tree. I always assumed he was drunk. At least there were those hints. And he probably was. But when I found his death certificate it stated that he died of a brain hemorrhage due to a lack of clotting, so it’s obvious now that he was a mild bleeder, that he swerved off the road, struck a tree, hit his head on the steering wheel, and died before help arrived.”
Marina, her eyes wide, sat crossing herself.
“That’s when I really knew,” continued Kate. “Hemophilia is caused by a defect on a single X chromosome, which is why women are almost always only carriers and not sufferers, since we have two X chromosomes and therefore a double copy of the clotting factors. The healthy one can make up for the other. So my son inherited a defect on his X chromosome from me, because as the daughter of a hemophiliac I’m an obligate carrier. And my father inherited it from his…” Kate stopped. “I can’t even say it out loud. It’s too frightening.”
“And you mustn’t ever, my child. This is a brilliant truth that must be buried away like a terrible evil.”
“When I first started researching all this, you know, I thought it meant that my grandfather was him, their son. But that’s impossible, because genetically hemophilia couldn’t follow that path, right?”
She stared in surprise at Kate. “Your grandfather was most definitely no Romanov, I can assure you that.”
“But if you’re the real Novice Marina, not my grandmother, and my grandfather was Leonka, then-”
“Ach… the newspapers claim your grandfather said such things. Did he really?”
“Of course he did. On the tape he told me all about how Sister Antonina and you carried the rescue notes, hidden in the cork of a milk bottle, into the house, and that he, the kitchen boy, delivered them to-” Terrified by the look on Marina’s face, Kate suddenly stopped. “Wait a minute, don’t tell me that’s a lie too? You and the nun did sneak the notes into The House of Special Purpose, didn’t you?”
“Why… why, no.”
“But… but then who did? There really were rescue notes, and they still exist, I’ve seen copies of them. So if you didn’t smuggle them in, who did?”
Marina hesitated before saying in the quietest of voices, “Why, your grandfather of course.”
“What? But that’s not what Misha said. He told me someone else snuck the notes into the house and that he found them in the corks of the… the milk bottles. He said that was his job. As the kitchen boy, it was his duty to… to…” A horrible thought struck Kate. “Oh, my God, my grandfather was their kitchen boy, wasn’t he?”
“Heavens no, not at all,” mumbled Marina, shaking her head. “There was a young kitchen boy, this Leonka, but I have no idea what happened to him. He was removed from the house just hours before the execution, but after that he vanished into the oblivion of the revolution.”
Suddenly Kate felt ill. She had thought she finally held the truth, the complete truth, of her family. But, no, her grandfather’s deception was as deep as it was insidious. And yet if Misha wasn’t Leonka, the Tsar’s kitchen boy, then who the hell was he?
“Wait a minute…” began Kate, desperate to piece it all together. “My Grandfather Misha was there, I know he was. I mean, he had to have been. How else would he have known all those things, all those details?”
“Oh, yes, my child, he was most definitely there…” said Marina with a sad sigh.
“Tell me.”
“Ach, there are some stones better left unturned, certain wolves better left unprovoked.”
“You don’t understand – I have to know.” Kate, seeing a chink of weakness in the old woman’s eyes, pressed on. “For me to keep my silence, I have to know the all of it. I have to know the truth of both my grandmother and my grandfather, otherwise I’ll keep searching. If you don’t tell me, then I’ll keep asking around. I’ll ask all sorts of people and reveal things I shouldn’t, but I’ll keep hunting until I have it, the absolute truth.”
“Oh, my child…” she muttered, now gazing at the floor, staring at nothing. “Please, I beg you, please… if your grandfather didn’t tell you, then don’t ask me.”
“I mean it, I won’t give up.”
“I worry that the truth will be poison to your soul.”
“Tell me!”
“So be it…” quietly said Marina, reaching out with a gnarled, bony hand and touching Kate on the arm. “However, please do not harshly judge your grandfather, for he repented. Agreed?”
Kate blurted an expedient, “Agreed.”
“Well, then…” The old woman hesitated one last time, finally spitting it out like bitter medicine. “Your grandfather was one of them, one of the guards. He was barely a man back then, and his name was Volodya.” She nodded. “I can still picture him, still see him quite clearly – young, cute Volodya with the blond hair.”
Dear God, thought Kate, her stomach clenching horribly. Her grandfather was that devilishly clever to have so twisted the story? To make her see him as he was not? And yet… yet in an instant she understood it could be no other way. Yes, Kate was surprisingly sure of it. Her dear grandfather had been one of them, one of the Reds. The next moment everything came flooding in, finally making such perfect sense, and Kate saw it all in her mind’s eye, not just the truth, but an image of her grandfather back then, back there…
Afraid of what she was asking but unable to stop herself, she said, “A beard… did he have a beard?”
“Why, yes.”
“A blond beard?”
“Exactly,” reluctantly confirmed Marina. “He had blond hair and a thin blond beard and was the youngest of them all, a lad of barely twenty, if that. Maybe only eighteen or nineteen, I don’t know. Everyone lied about everything back then – particularly boys whose fathers had died in war – but this Volodya was one of the original interior guards. And the Tsar and Tsaritsa so trusted his innocent face – why, from time to time your grandfather even entertained the Heir, even played chess with him – which was why the Bolsheviki used him.”
“What do you mean, used him?”
“The rescue letters – they were all fakes. In an attempt to trick the Romanovs into an escape attempt, the Bolsheviki wrote the notes themselves. They then used your grandfather to smuggle the notes in and out of The House of Special Purpose.”
“Oh, God.” Remembering what her grandfather had revealed in his tape recording, Kate said, “And that night… the night the Romanovs were murdered… he…”
“Exactly,” continued Marina. “One of the executioners, a Hungarian, backed out, saying he couldn’t shoot women and children. This was just an hour or two before the Romanovs were led to the cellar, and Volodya, drunk on ideology and desperate to prove himself not only a true man but a real revolutionary, volunteered. At first they said no, he was too young, but soon Yurovsky relented, for there was no one else at so late an hour. They just needed someone to pull a trigger.” The old woman shook her head. “Before this, Volodya had never killed… and I know in my heart of hearts that he repented every day since.”
No, he suffered, thought Kate. Every day of every week since then, he suffered. And as if some horrible bandage had been yanked away, there it was, now exposed, the festering wound in her grandfather’s soul, the very one he had never permitted to heal. With all her being, Kate didn’t want to believe this – her grandfather capable of murder? – yet at the same time she couldn’t help but know in her heart of hearts that it was in fact the truth. It just made too much unbelievable sense. Kate’s mind whooshed through it all, but unlike Tsaritsa Aleksandra, who had always found hope in the face of such undeniably dark logic, Kate saw it plainly before her. Here at last was the source, at last she had found it: the Artesian well of her grandfather’s self-hatred.
“Who was he assigned to kill?” asked Kate, her voice trembling.
“Why, Grand Duchess Maria, of course. His orders were to aim for the heart so as to make the kill quick and clean. When it all began, however, he panicked. He panicked but he did as ordered: he aimed and fired through the foul smoke at the young princess. But there was so much chaos. Truth be told, only God knows whose bullet struck whom in that mayhem. In any case, when your young grandfather wiped the smoke from his eyes, he saw Maria lying on the floor, completely still, completely dead.”
“Dear God…”
So he was there. So he’d killed. And so, thought Kate, recalling her grandfather’s thick gold watch, he’d looted.
“What happened?” pressed Kate, still unable to make sense of it all. “How did…”
“Just listen…” continued Marina. “About an hour later the truck loaded with the bodies set off with three men seated up front – a driver, a guard, and Yurovsky himself. Since there was no more room in the cab, Volodya – that is, your Dyedushka Misha – was ordered to the back, where he stood guard over the dead ones as the vehicle slowly made its way out of town on the road to the village of Koptyaki and the Four Brothers Mine. Later he told me that if he’d had a bullet he would have killed himself right then and there. Regardless, it was only when the truck passed the racetrack on the edge of town that they encountered the first of many problems. All month there had been heavy rain, and when one of the wheels sank into a muddy hole, the truck became stuck for the first time that night, and Volodya jumped off the back, he jumped onto the ground.”
And looking at the wheel he immediately saw the problem, and shouted to his tovarishi in the cab up front, “It’s not so bad, comrades. Let me give a push!”
The driver, Lyukhanov, put the lorry in reverse, rolled it back a bit, then jabbed it into first gear. Volodya leaned into the rear bumper and pushed with all his strength. In one great heave the vehicle rolled up and out and raced ahead. A few short moments later, however, the left rear tire struck a rock and the entire lorry bounced up. The force of the jolt in turn caused something to be thrown off the back and onto the dirt road. He couldn’t believe his eyes – one of the bodies! Terrified, he froze. Finally Volodya rushed to it, discovering the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich. He was dead, half his head blown away. Volodya looked up and was about to call out to his comrades when suddenly another body fell to the ground. Hurrying to that one, he discovered that it was the body of Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna, the very one he’d been assigned to kill! Then as if she were a ghost come back to haunt him, she suddenly moved, rolling her head to the side and looking up at him.
“Help…” she gasped. “Please help me!”
From the truck Lyukhanov leaned his head half out the window, and called, “You okay back there, Volodya? You still with us?”
He stared at the young woman bleeding so horribly on the ground. He’d held the fate of her life in his aim once before… and here he held it once again.
“The Lord Almighty had seen to a miracle,” gushed Marina. “He was giving Volodya a second chance. A mere hour or so earlier he’d been this young woman’s murderer… and suddenly he had the chance to redeem himself – he could be her savior!”
Kate looked up. “You mean-”
“In the split of a second, actually…”
… actually without even thinking, he looked after the lorry, which was slowly motoring away, and called, “I’m still with you… just keep going!”
He made his decision just like that, just that quickly.
“I’ve got to hide you away!” he whispered to Maria.
She nodded but couldn’t get up, for she was so badly wounded and had lost far too much blood. And so he dragged her off into the wood, leaning her against a pine. He brought her brother too, lying him nearby.
“If I don’t go with them,” Volodya said, “they’ll come back for us both. Just wait here and stay calm – I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
And knowing that he had no other choice, he left her.
“Yes,” said Marina, “that’s exactly how it happened. So as to keep the truck from turning around and discovering what had happened, your grandfather ran through the night and rejoined his comrades – his tovarischi. He jumped on the back of the truck and stayed with them all the way to the Four Brothers Mine too. When Yurovsky finally discovered that two of the bodies were missing, it was this Volodya who quickly volunteered to take a horse and ride back to town to see what had happened. Instead the guard Volodya Subottin disappeared for all of time.”
“He rode directly to the Grand Duchess Maria and her brother?” Kate half-begged.
“Absolutely. He went straight to them. And once he had moved them to a better place of safety – in a hole beneath the roots of a fallen tree – he secretly made his way back into town, where he fetched Sister Antonina and me.”
The story that Misha had told her, realized Kate, had been so very close to the truth. In many ways it had been the truth, just deviously shaded and twisted here and there so as to deceive in the most subtle but ultimately profound ways.
“So the two of you went back and treated Maria, right?” asked Kate. “You cleaned and bandaged her wounds. But did Sister Antonina later return to town?”
“Yes,” confirmed May. “She went back for more medicine, for more bandages so that we could keep the girl’s wounds clean.”
“And there she ran into horrible trouble?”
“Horrible, horrible trouble. Unfortunately the Reds caught her, questioned and tortured her, and-”
“Drowned her?”
“Exactly.” Marina took a deep breath. “Furthermore, the Grand Duchess soon came down with a horrid fever. Her wounds had become infected and there was nothing we could do. Volodya and I were with her the entire time. Actually, Volodya rarely left her side except to fetch fresh water or scurry off in search of food. There was not much we could do for her, not really, just make sure that she was comfortable. We needed to get her to a hospital, we needed to feed her medicaments, but all we could do was pray for a miracle, and the two of us knelt by her side.”
“You can’t leave us,” begged Volodya with tears in his eyes. “You can’t!”
Hour by hour Maria’s breathing had been getting more and more difficult. Hour by hour her temperature had been rising. For nearly thirty hours she’d taken nothing but water and a little bit of broth Volodya had managed to get from the closest peasant hut. By the fourth day she was lingering on the very edge of life itself.
“Volodichka,” Maria said, using the softest diminutive of his name, “thank you for helping me… for watching over me.”
“I’m evil!” he confessed. “I’m horribly evil!”
And with that he fell down upon his knees, bowing his head before the last of the Imperial Family. Did she not know, did she not see what role this Volodya had played not only in her end, but in that of her entire family? Had the shock of that night wiped her memory clean?
“You don’t understand, Maria Nikolaevna!” cried Volodya.
“I understand everything…”
“No… no, you don’t… Those notes I smuggled to your family were forgeries, nothing more than an attempt to bait your father!”
“In the end this too he understood.”
“With my help they were planning all along to kill him.”
“Father forgave you at the time… and I forgive you now.”
Convinced that she remembered nothing of what had happened down in that murderous cellar, he steeled himself. She had to know everything. She had to know it was he who deserved to die a thousand miserable deaths.
He blurted, “But I was down there as well – I was down in that room of death!”
“Yes, I saw you.”
“I was the one assigned to kill you!”
“Perhaps, but instead the Lord God sent you to save me… and this you have tried with all your heart.”
“No, Maria Nikolaevna! No, your Highness!” he pleaded before her, bowing his head over and over to her. “You do not understand!”
“I understand that your sin has been followed by immense suffering, and I can see with my eyes that you have repented for your sins, that you have repented with all your soul. Likewise can I foresee that your being will be all the purer for this, which in turn will deliver you yet closer unto God.”
“No, that’s impossible! Impossible!”
“I’m sure my grandfather wanted her to hate him,” said Kate. “I’m sure Misha wanted her to curse him to hell. And I wonder if this was why he did it, why he killed himself – to condemn his soul for all eternity.”
“Bozhe moi.” My God, gasped Marina, quickly crossing herself. “He took his own life? This I did not know.”
She nodded, reluctantly added, “He killed himself a few weeks after my grandmother died. I think he was determined not to be forgiven.”
“But he was. She forgave him way back then. I was there. I was right next to him praying the entire time. Yes, and he knelt by her side as she faded away. He clutched at her hand. He tried to tether her to this world. But she did not want to be kept here. Maria forgave your grandfather with all of her heart, and then she-”
“But…”
“Just wait, my child,” said Marina. “You see, their eyes met, Maria’s and Volodya’s, and held. He understood she was dying, and he fell upon her sobbing and begging, giving every bit of his energy to her. He inhaled her last breath… and then gave it back to her. You see, it was only through his strength and the power of our prayers to the Almighty Father that Volodya kept Maria tethered to this world.”
“You mean, of course, that…”
“Yes, certainly. He saved her. Maria passed through a horrible fever, which by some miracle did not kill her. And together your grandfather and I nursed Grand Duchess Maria back to a reasonable health, at least so that we could move her. I think they hid in the woods maybe another month, even after the Whites had overtaken Yekaterinburg, and it was during this time that your grandfather, full of remorse and sentiment, snuck back into the house one night, where he retrieved a few things he’d once caught Aleksei hiding away. Before they fled the motherland, we of course turned over the suitcase of gems, and the last I saw of them was their youthful figures dashing through the woods, this young couple, Grand Duchess Maria and-”
“My grandfather, the man who was both my grandmother’s executioner and her savior.”
“Exactly.”
So there it was: the final truth that a young princess entrusted her life to a young man who had tried to take it, and that very same young man pledged his life to the beautiful princess who had steered him from the path of evil. No wonder they had been so dedicated to one another.
“More tea, my child?”
Kate looked up at the old, shrunken face, and saw a smile that was as sweet as a spoon of honey yet as wrinkled as a dried apple. Yes, Kate herself had inherited the defective gene from her father, who’d gotten it from his own mother, May, who had in turn been passed it from her own mother, none other than…
No, thought Kate, you can’t ever go there. Just don’t. The time and place for that family is no more. You have a husband and children at home who need you, who need your protection.
“Sure, I’ll have a bit,” said Kate, clutching the gold bracelet on her wrist, the bracelet given to her grandmother at a time when she was young and her life so in danger.