As ever, the komendant was a mess, an awful sight. More than likely he’d polished off an entire bottle of vodka the night before, and that morning he must have just gotten up because his hair went every which way, his eyes were all swollen, and even his shirt was unbuttoned. I glanced at the Empress, who was glaring at him with disdain. Anastasiya started to giggle, but then her mother gave her the eye.

Avdeyev, who could barely focus, rubbed his eyes, and grumbled, “So, Nikolashka, are all of you here?”

All of us flinched – using that form of Nikolai’s name was incredibly rude, especially for the country’s number one person – but the Tsar, good soldier that he was, not to mention former commander in chief of the world’s largest army, calmly replied, “Da-s, all of us are present.”

I thought that would be it, that we would be dismissed, but then this slob of a man leaned on the table with both hands, cocked one of his fat eyes, and turned to me and said, “Tell me, Leonka, no one plans to secretly escape, now do they?”

Suddenly I had to pee just terribly. It flashed through my mind that they’d caught Sister Antonina and tortured her. Was this a trap? Did they know about the note?

“Speak up, Leonka,” commanded Avdeyev. “You’re young, but I’m sure you have big eyes. You haven’t seen anything suspicious going on, have you? Hey?”

“Well, I…”

Everyone in the room, from the Tsar on down, turned and stared at me, the little kitchen boy with the big feet. I thought the Empress was going to faint right there. The first serious attempt to save them, and she thought I was going to blow it.

“Nyet-s,” I replied, which was short for “nyet-soodar” – no, monsignor – for that was how proper people of that day spoke.

He eyed me, studied me for the longest moment. I swear he was going to ask me more questions when all of a sudden Aleksei’s dog, Joy, a black and white English spaniel, came bolting into the room with a squealing animal in its mouth.

Demidova, the Empress’s maid, tall and chubby, screamed, “Oi, the dog has a rat!”

“Bozhe moi,” my God, “it’s alive!” exclaimed Botkin.

Well, you should have heard the girls scream. Those grand duchesses had lived an extraordinarily sheltered life. Sure, the entire family had been imprisoned ever since their father’s abdication eighteen months earlier, but they’d all been more or less imprisoned in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye their entire lives. Rarely had they been exposed to the world beyond the golden walls of their nursery, which is to say I’m sure that no daughter of Evo Imperatorskoye Velichestvo Nikolai V’toroi – His Imperial Greatness Nikolai the Second – Tsar of All the Russias, Poland, Finland, and so on and so forth had ever seen a big fat dirty rat before that moment. And all hell broke loose. No Bolshevik guard could control those white princesses, and they went running and screaming out of there so very fast. That in turn scared the dog, who had simply brought to his masters a wonderful trophy, this big fat rat with a long, skinny, pink tail. And when the girls screamed, Joy dropped the rat, and Aleksei… Aleksei…

Well, the Naslednik, the Heir, seeing the rat scamper in terror around the dining room of The House of Special Purpose, suddenly came to life, and he led the charge, sounding like his mightiest ancestor, the terrible Ivan, as he shouted, “After it, Leonka!”

He was a rascal, that boy. A real imp. He’d been deathly ill, but he’d also been deathly bored, just lying around in a hot, stuffy house in Siberia, the windows painted over with lime so that he couldn’t even look out. What could be worse for a child? And this rat was surely the most exciting thing Aleksei had come across in months.

Following my orders, I shoved the wheeled chaise along, charging around the heavy oak dining room table. Everyone was yelling, the dog was barking, the girls screaming, and this rat… well, I drove the chaise as if it were the wildest of troikas, dashing this way and that, following each and every order of my young master – turn to the left, the right, there over by the sideboard, Leonka! Wait, no, next to the fireplace, go! Charge! The Empress didn’t budge – she wasn’t terrified of the rat, she just stood there, hands clasped to her cheeks, terrified lest anything happen to her beloved son, that I might crash him and an entirely new bleeding episode would begin.

After a few short moments we had this fat, juicy rat cornered, Aleksei and I did. The dog was ready to bolt forward, but Aleksei leaned from his vehicle and grabbed Joy by the scruff of its neck, and we all stood staring at the big rat, and it curled back its teeny lips, exposed its little teeth, and snarled back at us.

And then Aleksei, Naslednik to the House of Romanov and the throne of imperial Russia, released his dog, screaming, “Get him, Joy!”

And what did the rat do? Well, it took off not toward the Tsar and Tsaritsa, but toward Komendant Avdeyev, who stood on the other side of the room. Avdeyev – big, old, fat, sleepy, hungover Avdeyev – yelped like a pig and turned and bolted into the hall, the rat chasing after him, the dog chasing after them both, all the way down those twenty-three steps and into the courtyard out back.

Aleksei burst into hysterics – can you imagine, a rat chasing away the Bolshevik pig? It was too perfect. In fact, I had never seen the Heir laugh so long, so carelessly, and that in turn started a chain reaction. The Empress was only somewhat amused by the scene, but she was overjoyed at seeing her sickly son so… so vivant. And then the Tsar started laughing, as did Botkin and the others. We all started and then we just couldn’t stop.

“Bravo, Aleksei Nikolaevich!” called Botkin in a hushed voice so that the guards in the hall wouldn’t hear.

It was the one and only time that I ever saw the Empress just let loose and laugh and laugh. And when she did she was so beautiful – that pure skin, those radiant blue-gray eyes. Before the war, all the best society and almost everyone at court had grown to disdain Aleksandra, calling her haughty and aloof. But that just wasn’t so, that wasn’t the Empress I knew. Instead, from what I saw back then and from my readings since, I’ve come to understand not only how nervous Aleksandra became in public, but how shy and reticent she was with anyone except her immediate family. In truth, I think, she was horribly depressed and insecure, for her soul was damaged, having lost her parents at a young age, and she was ever fearful of losing her son from a bleeding attack or her husband from an assassin’s gun. But right then she clasped one hand over her mouth, one around her waist, and she rocked back and forth with such mirth. It’s my guess that that was the last true laugh of her life.

“Nicky, can you believe it?” she managed to say in Russian, because of course those were the komendant’s orders, that they speak in the language understood by the guards.

Almost always the Tsar called her “Alix” but right then he said, “ Solnyshko,” Sunny, he said, using his pet name for his wife, “I… I…”

But lacking words, he came over and bussed her. He wrapped his strong arms around her and kissed her ever so passionately.

And even though there were others present, she spoke her heart, saying, “I love you. Those three words have my life in them.”

Yes, this I know without a doubt: never have a king and queen loved each other more than Nikolai and Aleksandra.