“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.