“Good morning, my son,” said the nun, coming in with her usual basket.
With my right hand I tamed my brown hair. “Good morning to you, Sister Antonina.”
“I believe you know my charge, Marina.”
Of course I did, and I bowed my head slightly to the girl. She blossomed the color of a soft rose petal, which in turn caused my cheeks to flush with warmth. She was about my age, the daughter of a local Russian woman and an Englishman who had worked for years at the English consulate there in Yekaterinburg. They said the girl was very well educated, that she spoke both perfect English and perfect Russian, even some French, though she hardly ever said anything to me.
Sister Antonina said, “We have brought more fresh goods for…”
She glanced out the door and down the hall, spying a guard, a young fellow with a blond beard, who had been recruited from the local Zlokazov Factory, where not long ago the workers, infected by the Reds, had revolted and killed their bosses. This young man carried his rifle over his right shoulder – not his left, of course, for that was the rule of the evil “formers” – and had a hand grenade hanging from his belt, and Sister Antonina, taking note of him, dared not finish the sentence. Nyet, nyet. As far as she was concerned, Nikolai Aleksandrovich was still her Tsar, but she dared not refer to him as Y’evo Velichestvo – His Greatness – for she’d be thrown in jail for that. Nor could she bring herself to call him something ridiculous like Tovarish or Grazhdanin – Comrade or Citizen – Romanov.
Setting the basket on a small table, Sister Antonina said, “The milk is still warm from the cow. The eggs are just as fresh too – Marina herself gathered them only an hour ago.”
“Spacibo bolshoye, sestra.” Thank you very much, sister, I replied.
“The butter is very good. You must try some butter on the bread. It’s so nice and sweet.”
“Da, da, da.”
It was then that I noticed that Sister Antonina was still leaning against the edge of the table, her eyes fixed on me, her body not moving a centimeter. I stared back. What, had I done something wrong?
Again I said, “Spacibo bolshoye, sestra. I’ll take care of everything.”
“The eggs are for The Little One,” she said, referring to Aleksei Nikolaevich, the Tsar’s son, who suffered so terribly from what we called the English disease, hemophilia.
“Certainly.”
Turning around, Sister Antonina nodded ever so slightly to Novice Marina. The girl edged slightly out into the hall, looked one way, the other, then offered a small nod in return. Sister Antonina, satisfied that the guard with the blond beard was no longer nearby, reached into her basket and lifted the glass bottle of milk.
“Take this, molodoi chelovek.” Young man.
Her eyes were fixed on mine, and I stepped over and took the bottle from her, which contained a chetvert of milk, something like two liters. And just like she said, it was still warm from the cow.
She whispered, “Open this bottle at once. God willing, we will be back in a few days.”
I was young and clumsy in many ways, but I understood. Since the ancient Time of Troubles, which preceded Tsar Mikhail, the very first of the many Romanovs, we Russians have used our eyes to say what our mouths cannot speak. And Sister Antonina did this, staring at me and then blinking both of her eyes. I dared not move. Rather, I just stood there, clutching the warm chetvert as the sister moved into the hallway, the antechamber that separated the kitchen from the dining room. There she said a few kindly words to one of the guards, who in turn gruffly escorted her to the front of the house and out. Later on, of course, the Reds killed her for that, for being part of the plan to save the Romanovs.
Well, so, once the sestra and novice were gone, I turned my back to the hallway and stared down at the bottle of milk. There was something special about it, of that I had no doubt, but just what I certainly couldn’t tell. I stood there in my worn, brown pants and white shirt of coarse cotton, then swirled the milk around in its container. Everything, however, looked, well, normalno. I decided to take a whiff of it, perhaps even taste it, so I tugged at the cork stopper, pulled it out, and smelled the rich, creamy milk. And that was when I saw it. Rather, I felt it first – the slip of paper. A tiny pocket had been cut into the side of the cork and a small piece of paper had been tucked in, which is what I felt – the sharp edge of the paper. Knowing the danger, I glanced over my shoulder and saw no one. There were some noises in the house as the Tsar and his family started to get up from bed, but I was alone there in the kitchen, just me and the samovar, which was starting to rattle as it warmed. I tugged at the paper, pulled it out, and unfolded it. Although I could read and write back then, I couldn’t make out a single word, for it wasn’t in Russian. Rather, I recognized the letters of the Latin alphabet, but just what language I couldn’t tell – French, German, English, they were all the same to me.
Only much, much later did I learn that it said: “Les amis ne dorment plus et espèrent que l’heure si longtemps attendue est arrivée.. .”
All the notes, even the replies from the Romanovs, were to be in the French. I didn’t memorize any of them back then. And of course I thought them lost forever, so I was greatly surprised when a few years ago I opened up a book and there they all were, every single one of the secret notes, completely reprinted. All this time, all these years, the original note that I had pulled from that cork – as well as the next three – had been carefully stored in the Gosudarstvenyi Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii in Moscow. Sure, as incredible as it may seem, these notes are still there in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, proving beyond a doubt that there’d been a plot to save the Imperial Family.
Da, da, Katya, vnoochka moya – granddaughter of mine – for a brief while there’d been a candle of hope in the note that read:
Friends are no longer sleeping and hope that the hour so long awaited has come. The revolt of the Czechoslovaks threatens the Bolsheviks ever more seriously. Samara, Cheliabinsk, and all of eastern and western Siberia are in the hands of the provisional national government. The army of Slavic friends is eighty kilometers from Yekaterinburg. The soldiers of the Red Army cannot effectively resist. Be attentive to any movement from the outside; wait and hope. But at the same time, I beg you, be careful, because the Bolsheviks, before being vanquished, represent real and serious danger for you. Be ready at every hour, day and night. Make a drawing of your three bedrooms showing the position of the furniture, the beds. Write the hour that you all go to bed. One of you must not sleep between 2:00 and 3:00 on all the following nights. Answer with a few words, but, please, give all the useful information for your friends from the outside. You must give your answer in writing to the same soldier who transmits this note to you, but do not say a single word.
From someone who is ready to die for you,
An Officer of the Russian Army
Ever fearful, I carefully folded up the small note and slipped it in my pocket. This was something important, something dangerous, something for the Tsar, but I just went about my business, unloading the basket. I took out the eight eggs – brown and not so terribly big – and the pale butter, which was in a little billycan covered with a torn piece of oil cloth. And as I waited for the large brass samovar to boil, my face beaded with sweat, my heart raced, and my mind struggled for a course of action. I couldn’t just barge into the Tsar’s bedroom while he and Aleksandra Fyodorovna were getting up.