“We did,” the Tsar — now simply referred to as Nicholas — said, as he entered from the adjoining study. He was wearing his customary military tunic — with its epaulettes ripped off by the Red Guards — and a pair of threadbare jodhpurs.

“I trust it did not interfere with your sleep.”

Anastasia knew, as did everyone, that his concern was a joke, but it was a joke that they all had to play along with. She could see a faint fire blaze up in her father’s eyes, but as usual he suppressed it and simply assured the commandant that they had all slept soundly.

“Further precautions may have to be taken to ensure your safety,” Yurovsky said, and seeing the Tsaritsa — called merely Alexandra now — inching into the room with one hand pressed to the small of her aching back, added, “A hot compress, with powdered sage, will do much to alleviate the pain of sciatica.” He said it with the same bland authority he always assumed. Anastasia had the impression that he wished to be taken for a physician, though Dr. Botkin had assured her privately that the man was a complete fraud.

“Thank you,” Alexandra replied, in the same even tone her husband adopted. “If you would be so kind as to provide some sage, I will try it.”

Anastasia knew Yurovsky would never send the sage, and even if he did, her mother would never use it. It was all a grand pantomime in which her whole family, and their ruthless captors, continued to engage. The Bolsheviks pretended to be protecting the imperial family from harm, the Romanovs pretended to believe it, and everyone walked on pins and needles, afraid of provoking the situation into an explosion of some kind.

“How is the boy?” Yurovsky asked. “Walking yet?”

Alexei, bored out of his wits at the confinement, had played a stupid trick, riding his sled down some stairs, and the injuries ever since had laid him up. Dr. Botkin, with limited means at his disposal, did everything he could, but the pain was excruciating, and the former heir to the Russian throne was stuck in his bed, his legs raised, and much of the time delirious from fever.

“No, not yet,” Nicholas said. “If he could once again receive the electrical stimulation treatments provided by the doctor in town, it might help.”

Yurovsky nodded thoughtfully, and said, “I shall look into that.”

Ana knew what that meant. Nothing.

“Will we be receiving some rations today?” Alexandra asked, and to this Yurovsky said, “As soon as the soldiers and my staff are taken care of, I’ll see what’s left.”

Oh, how he must have relished the opportunity to put the Tsaritsa in her place like that. Ana thought she even saw her father’s right hand clench into a fist for a second, before he slipped it behind his back. She wished that just once her father would let fly, hang the consequences.

After Yurovsky had completed a brief inspection of the premises — lifting Alexei’s blanket to be sure his leg still looked purple and swollen, studying her mother’s many icons just so he could sully them with his touch, licentiously fingering her sister’s nightgowns neatly folded at the foot of their cots — he strolled out, and everyone at last breathed a temporary sigh of relief.

It was then that Ana shared the news that Sergei had another message for them. Several times over the past few weeks, he had brought messages from an anonymous White officer who was planning a daring rescue mission, and perhaps this would be the one announcing that the attempt was imminent.

An hour or two later, when she heard the cook, Kharitonov, outside in the courtyard, she was able to peer through the window and see that Sergei was indeed carrying brown eggs and black bread, curd tarts and a bottle of fresh milk, in a wicker basket. The food was provided by the sisters in the nearby monastery of Novo-Tikhvin, and without it Ana wondered how her family would have survived at all. Yurovsky let the baskets pass because he first helped himself liberally to every one of them that arrived. (The tarts seldom made it past him.)

With her family’s silent encouragement, Ana scurried downstairs to the kitchen, with her dog, Jemmy, panting close behind. How she wished she could move as gracefully as her sisters, or that she wasn’t quite so chubby. (Her mother always insisted that she was just short-waisted.) But Sergei didn’t seem to mind, and even though Ana knew as well as everyone else that this was just a silly fancy, there was so little happiness in her family’s life right now — and so little help available to them from any quarter — that no one saw any reason to interfere. Fate, the Romanovs had learned, could be as bitter as it was unpredictable. Be grateful, her father told her one day when they saw a blue jay preening on a tree branch, for every beautiful thing, no matter how small, that the Lord provided.

When she came in, the cook was exclaiming over the provisions he was laying out on the kitchen table. “Look!” he said to Ana. “Flour! White flour. And raisins.” She could see he was already debating how best to use them; Kharitonov was a master at making something from nothing.

But Sergei sidled closer to Anastasia, and in a voice that even she could barely hear, he said, “Be ready.”

“For what?” she whispered. The cook was showing off his bounty to her mother’s maid, Anna Demidova, who had come in to see what all the commotion was about. Anastasia saw her surreptitiously pop a raisin into her mouth as Jemmy scoured the floor for anything that might have fallen.

“I don’t know, but telegrams have been coming and going from Yurovsky’s office all morning.”

“Are we going to be rescued?”

“And a truck has been hired in the village.”

Ana had no idea what to make of that, but she prayed it would have something to do with their liberation. Perhaps the commandant was planning to steal whatever he could from the Ipatiev house — there were still some nice sticks of furniture downstairs — and clear out before the Tsar’s loyal troops arrived.

“Thank you,” Ana said, “for being our friend,” and as she spoke she let the sleeve of her blouse brush up against his arm. Just as she expected, he blushed furiously, and she took a delight in that. She, and her sisters, had all led such a sheltered and protected life in many ways. Oh, at the beginning of this war, and before the Revolution of course, they had been allowed to assist wounded soldiers in the Army hospitals — indeed, their mother had made their duties there compulsory — but of romance Ana had known almost nothing. She had briefly nursed crushes on their music teacher or French tutor or riding instructor, but then, for want of any alternatives, so had her three sisters. Sergei, though just a common boy, was at least all her own.

“It is my honor,” he said, “to serve you,” but his voice was full of greater meaning than the words alone conveyed.

Before she could answer, another guard, a burly fellow with broken teeth, staggered in, and the maid Demidova made a quick exit. Taking one look at the food, he ripped the loaf of black bread in two and stuffed half of it into his mouth, almost all at once. When the crumbs fell and Jemmy went for them, he kicked the dog to one side with the toe of his muddy boot.

“How dare you!” Ana said, snatching up her dog.

“I’d do the same to you,” he said, bits of bread flying from his lips. Glancing at Sergei, he said, “Shouldn’t you be out on patrol, comrade?”

Sergei wavered, just as she had seen her father do with the commandant, before deciding that discretion was the better part of valor. Turning on his heel, he picked up the empty basket and went out the kitchen door to the courtyard.

Anastasia glared at the filthy guard, who chewed the bread with his mouth open, but when the cook Kharitonov threw her a warning look, she snuggled Jemmy closer in her arms and went back to the stairs.

“We should have a dance sometime,” the guard said, no doubt mocking her gait as she climbed the wooden steps.