We all kiss and bless you. May God sustain and keep you. My heart is full, but words are feeble things.

Yours, A.

P.S. I should like to send you a little food, some macaroni for instance.

Pathetic, is it not? A dethroned empress, herself a prisoner, wanting to send macaroni from Siberia. My eyes burst with pity even now. Odd this woman was, our Empress Aleksandra. So complex. As I’ve said, her greatest crimes were both her pride and her insecurity – which caused her to hold herself aloof from everyone but her husband and children – while her greatest gift was her compassion. I find it strange that such wildly different aspects could live within one soul, but then again a dog can be both black and white. I find it ironic as well that the Russian people of all classes merely wanted a tsaritsa of intense love and emotion, which was exactly their Tsaritsa Aleksandra Fyodorovna… and yet the more they disdained her, the more frightened and cold and distant she became.

Oi, such dark times were those, but over the months of captivity I shared with them, these were the Romanovs I came to know, and yes, the Romanovs I came to love. It was a captivity that grew more and more intense, from Tsarskoye Selo to Tobolsk and finally Yekaterinburg. And it was really only toward the end that I developed the clearest of pictures of the Imperial Family. I do remember in Tobolsk when one of the Tsar’s aides-de-camp, a certain General Tatischev, commented on the very same thing, how he was surprised to find the family so intimate and sweet on each other. And to this the Tsar replied with that gentle, ironic smile of his:

As my aide-de-camp over the years, you have had many such chances to observe us. Yet if you only now recognize us as we really are, how could we ever blame the newspapers for what they write of us?

11

A summer night in Siberia only comes with great hesitation. And that late June day was no different, for the evening passed ever so slowly. There was a brief but heavy evening shower that rode across town, a gust of cool wind, and a clear dusk that never wanted to give up the day.

That far north and that close to the summer solstice, it didn’t fall dark until shortly after eleven, yet the Imperial Family retired well before that, which was odd. Shortly after nine the Heir Tsarevich was the first to bed, followed somewhat later by the girls. Often Nikolai would sit up reading in the drawing room, or Botkin and he would play draughts, the checkered black and red board opened upon the tea table, while Aleksandra would sit at the nearby large desk, laying patience. But not that night. By ten they were making their way to bed. I was thus quietly instructed as well.

All evening long there had been much discussion, to which I was not privy, but which I could imagine. Simply: was it possible that the rescue attempt would come as early as tonight? Yes, and on the sly we were all advised to be ready to flee, for the Romanovs were determined not to abandon us, the last of their faithful. It was, of course, most gentlemanly, most old worldly, of Nikolai to decide on this course, but it certainly wasn’t practical. Seven posed a cumbersome enough problem, let alone twelve. Nevertheless, the decision came down the ranks, from Nikolai to Botkin to Trupp to Kharitonov to me.

“Sleep fully dressed,” cook whispered to me. “Be ready at any moment.”

“You mean, I should wear everything to bed?” I replied as I made my bed in the small hall between the kitchen and the dining room.

“Everything.”

“Even my shoes?”

This threw him, and he thought for a long moment. Cook Kharitonov was a master at making a meal out of nothing – wild mushrooms folded into a blanket of blini, leftover rice and cabbage tucked into the warm, doughy heart of pierogi – but a strategist of deceit he was not. For a long somber moment he pondered my question before answering.

“Nyet, that would surely attract the guards’ attention.”

“Then I’ll just have them nearby.”

“Good. But if anything starts, we’re supposed to run to their room and help barricade the door.”

“Sure.”

The electric light was extinguished, and I settled into one of the most uncomfortable, anxious nights of my life. Sure, it had cooled somewhat, but I was completely clothed down to my socks. Within moments I was broiling. I started tossing and turning, and grew all the hotter. I dared not cast aside my blanket, however, lest one of the guards make a sudden check. My mind began to spin, and so did Kharitonov’s, I could tell, for on the other side of the tiny room the large man tossed and rolled as much as I.

So how would it happen? Would a band of loyal Cossacks ride into town, hooping and hollering, screaming and shooting into the sky? Would monarchist officers appear out of the woodwork and slit the throats of the Red Guards, one by one? I tried to imagine the scenario, if our secret rescuers would first take out the machine gun positioned on the roof, next storm the house, or if they would first attack the Popov House across the alley way, killing all the reinforcements. Then again, maybe an airplane would appear out of nowhere and the pilot would lean out, take careful aim, and let drop a bomb on the Popov House, blowing all the Bolsheviki to bits. A surprise from the air like that might be best, particularly since The House of Special Purpose had been rigged with an electric warning bell to summon all the guards.

Whichever way it happened, I was sure there would be much blood, and I pictured myself the hero, leading the grand duchesses out the window and down a rope of bed linens. On the other hand, the window might be too dangerous, for it overlooked the side yard and the Popov House. So… so I might have to lead the girls down those twenty-three steps and to some waiting horses or a motor vehicle of escape. I might even get a gun, I might even have to kill one of the Reds. And I imagined the Romanovs and me escaping with our lives – perhaps I’d be wounded, but not terribly so – and then the Tsar would make me a count or a prince or something. Sure. All night I stirred with the possibilities. All night I imagined killing someone. And all night I heard the handful of guards posted in the cellar directly below, heard their shouts, their laughter, their drunken bouts. Each time I thought it was the beginning of the end and my heart was fully roused, making it impossible to get any rest.

None of us slept. Or slept little. Once I heard a distant dog howl to the moon. Or was it a wolf who’d ventured as close as the city dam? Eventually Kharitonov began to snore and the guards below fell into complete silence, while outside the night slowly returned to the dead. I had no idea what time it was – only the landed gentry and the aristocracy carried watches – but it must have been close to two or three before my eyes fell shut.

While I later learned from a book that the Romanovs had all slept fully clothed and fully bejeweled that night, I have often wondered what they were thinking when darkness finally came. The girls, the boy, their parents – did they lie in their beds and pray for salvation? Did they smile at the thought of what might soon come their way? Did they weep with anxiety? I’m sure that Aleksandra, always plush with anxiety, spent the whole of the night worrying about her babies, her husband. If an escape attempt was made, would the guards pounce first and foremost on their hated Nikolashka, killing him dead? If the family fled in a mad rush, would The Little One bump a knee or an arm, thereby plunging himself into nightmarish pain and even death? Playing through every scenario from successful escape to hellish failure, the Empress recorded in her diary how sleep was not of interest.