While all of this cleaning up was going on, I stared at the dead arm swinging back and forth, the gold watch on that arm ticking this way and that against the side of the Fiat lorry. As if mesmerized by Rasputin himself, I was drawn out of the darkness, and I inched forward. They say that a Russian cannot believe with his eyes what he cannot touch with his hand, and against my own will I was drawn forward. Without even thinking, I reached out. I reached out and clutched the arm of Batyushka, the Dear Father. I held onto his muscular arm for but a moment. And then I pulled at his watch. When my hands came away, not only did I clutch something as brilliant as the sun, but my fingers were sticky red with his death.

Minutes later, after great confusion, the motor lorry finally made its departure. Once again I trotted after it, hiding in the vehicle’s night shadow as it passed through the gates. Of course I should have fled, but that never occurred to me. Not once. I should have taken off across the square, but somewhere I understood that the end of the tale had not yet come. And so like a pathetic dog I trotted after my dead master as the lorry moved through the dark, muddy streets of Yekaterinburg.

Da, da, da, like a faithful dog I chased after that motor truck that was overflowing with all those troopy, those bodies. With a driver, a single guard, and Yurovsky seated up front, the vehicle proceeded so very slowly that I had no trouble keeping up, and when it drove all the way around the far side of the race track, I took the shortcut and actually had to wait for it to pass. When it headed northward on the dirt lane to the village Koptyaki, I trotted after it. Usually it was only carts and wagons that moved along here, peasants bringing their fish or game to sell in town. But not tonight… not tonight…

I had no idea of its destination, but I ran after the motor lorry, and the vehicle barely creaked along, certainly not faster than a cart itself. A few versts from town one of the wheels sank into a deep hole, then rose quickly out of it, hit a stone, and the whole back of the lorry bounced violently. That very instant a black heap of something was thrown from the rear of the truck, landing with a near silent thud on the dirt road. At first I couldn’t imagine, but then it bolted through me, seized my heart. Gospodi, Dear Lord, one of the bodies had been hurled from the lorry onto the ground.

I froze in horror, then bolted forward, hurried to this sack of death lying so still in the rutted road to Koptyaki. Da, da, it was a body. That much was clear. And not Dr. Botkin. And not one of the ladies. No, it was the Heir Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich. A rag doll of a body… that was all that was left. He was the mirror of me, this boy was. We were about the same height, the same age, and there he lay, twisted and crumpled, his military tunic torn, his face so… so…

Gospodi, Dear Lord, when I knelt to him I saw the side of his head all black and shattered. His right ear was gone, blasted away by the two bullets that Yurovsky had fired point blank into the side of his head. Da, da, the bullets had pierced the skull, not blowing it apart, really, but surely exploding through his brains and out the other side. But his face…itwas…

My stomach turned, slithered like a snake up the back of my throat. I turned away, then immediately looked back. Yes, it was him, there was no doubt, even though it was almost impossible to tell, for they had slashed his face with bayonets, beaten it with rifle butts. Mother of God, this boy, who had so yearned to play shahmaty, well, there was nothing left to gaze at but slaughtered meat and bone hanging, dripping, into the earth of Siberia, so… so mutilated was he.

I couldn’t move. I stared down at this grossly killed boy, the Heir to the throne of Russia, and the blackest of terrors filled my every pore. I wanted to die. I wanted someone to blow my own brains out, to blast this sight from my mind, but then… then the truck started picking up speed, started moving quicker. And all of a sudden another one fell out. I looked up the road and saw another body tumble from the back of the truck. It just… just fell like a sack of wheat onto the road.

I didn’t know what to do. Once again I looked down to the Heir, saw his perforated body, knew that the future of Russia was dead beyond a doubt, and then I gazed up the road at the next dark pile that was yet another Romanov. I started moving, started running to the second body. The truck, oblivious, rumbled on into the madness of the night. Unbelievably, the second body moved and quivered and… and I wanted to scream out, to beg to God. It was the third child, Grand Duchess Maria who by some miracle was not only still alive, but trying to get up. She hadn’t fallen from the truck but thrown herself, and when I reached her she was trying to push herself to her knees. Her long, dark skirt was torn, grossly soiled, her light blouse ripped and stained, but she wasn’t crying. No, she had quite literally risen from the dead and she was as stunned as a newborn, shocked, even horrified, to find herself here on this earth.

Hearing my quick steps, Maria shook with fear. This most beautiful of girls, this protected princess, opened her mouth to scream. I saw that she was going to howl to the sky and moon and back, and I charged forward. As quickly as I could, I threw my hand over her mouth, gagged her fear, kept it bottled up inside the poor thing.

“Eto ya!” It’s me, I hissed into her ear. “Eto ya!”

I gently lowered her back to the road, and Grand Duchess Maria fell weak and silent beneath my youthful power. She attempted to struggle but then, gazing up at me with those rich eyes, fell still.

“Leonka…” she gasped, clutching my arm.

Like the sternest of schoolmasters, I ordered, “Keep quiet or they’ll come after us both!”

She understood, of course. At the same time I saw her eyes strain after the lorry that was carting away her family.

“Papa… Mama…” she moaned, her body now falling flaccid in my arms.

Only as I held her did I realize how badly she was bleeding. I didn’t know if it was a bayonet wound or if a bullet had grazed her temple, but she was bleeding most profusely from the side of her head, from just above her ear. I touched her temple, sensed a long, deep wound, and then tore a swath of material from her skirt, which I wrapped around her head. Fearful that the truck would turn around and come back, I tried to help her get up.

“We’ve got to get off the road and into the woods,” I said.

But when she moved, she clutched her side and cried out, “I can’t!”

The bullets meant to kill her had instead struck her diamond-studded corset, the force of which had broken a number of her ribs. She started gasping for air, and as I held her, I saw she was bleeding terribly from her left leg as well. Raising her skirt, I saw two wounds in her left thigh, one on the front, the other the back. A bullet had apparently gone through her leg, perhaps shattering the bone. As she leaned upon me, I tore more of her skirt, then tied that strip around the top of her leg, tightening the tourniquet to stem the blood. I glanced way down the road, saw the vague, dark shape of the lorry slowing. Or had it stopped? Panic seized my throat. Had they discovered that not one but two of the Romanovs had fallen from the back of the vehicle? Were the Reds about to return and hunt us out? I had to get Maria Nikolaevna off the road and hide her in the woods. Somehow I found this strength. She was a big girl, and I turned around, pulled her up on my back. It was then, as I half-dragged her off the road, that she saw the other body.

“Aleksei…”

There was no way to soften the truth, not on that night, and I said, “Ew-bili.” They killed him.

I kept moving, carrying the Grand Duchess into the woods, which were not really that thick. Behind a clump of bushes I found a pine, and there I placed Maria, lowering her to the sandy ground and then propping her up against the tree.