The House of Special Purpose

The Tsar’s Signature

THAT IT SHOULD end like it did, in a railway carriage in Pskov, still astonishes me.

We didn’t celebrate the arrival of 1917 with the same degree of festivity or merriment as we had previous years. The Tsar’s household was in such disarray that I even considered leaving St Petersburg and returning to Kashin, or perhaps heading westward in search of a new life entirely; only the fact that Anastasia would never have left her family – and that I never would have been permitted to take her with me anyway – prevented me from doing so. But tension surrounded all of us who were part of the Imperial entourage. The end was in sight, it was just a question of when.

The Tsar had spent much of 1916 with the army, and in his absence, the Tsaritsa had been left in charge of political matters. While he maintained his position at Stavka, she dominated the government with a strength and single-mindedness that was as impressive as it was misguided. For of course she spoke not with her own voice, but in the words of the starets. His influence had been everywhere. But he was dead now, the Tsar was away, and she was alone.

News of Father Gregory’s death had reached the Winter Palace within a day or two of that terrible December evening when his body, poisoned and bullet-ridden, had been thrown into the River Neva. The Empress had been distraught, of course, and relentless in her insistence that his murderers be held to account for their crimes, but recognizing the vulnerability of her own position, she quickly began to internalize her distress. I watched her sometimes as she sat in her private sitting-room, staring blankly out of the window while one of her waiting women chattered on about some unimportant piece of palace gossip, and I could see in her eyes the determination to go on, to rule, and I admired her for it. Perhaps she was not so much Rasputin’s pawn, after all.

When the Tsar returned for a brief Christmas visit, however, the Tsaritsa insisted that Felix Yusupov be brought to justice, but as he was a member of the extended Imperial Family the Tsar claimed that there was nothing he could do.

‘You are more in thrall to these hangers-on and bloodsucking leeches than you are to God,’ she cried within hours of his reappearance, an afternoon when we were all shocked by how unwell Nicholas looked. It was as if he had aged ten, perhaps fifteen years since we had last seen him in August. He looked as if one more drama to face would be enough for him and he would happily pass out and die.

‘Father Gregory was not God,’ insisted the Tsar, massaging his temples with his fingers and looking around the room in search of support. His four daughters were pretending the argument was not taking place; their attendants were retreating into the shadows of the room, as was I. Alexei was watching from a seat in the corner; he was almost as pale as his father, and I wondered whether he had not injured himself earlier in the day and told no one. It was sometimes possible to tell when the internal bleeding had started: the panicked, desperate look on the boy’s face, the desire to sit perfectly still to ward off approaching trauma, were familiar sights to those of us who knew him well.

‘He was God’s representative,’ shouted the Tsaritsa.

‘Is that so?’ asked the Tsar, looking across at her now angrily, fighting to maintain his composure. ‘And I thought that I was God’s representative in Russia. I thought that I was the anointed one, not some peasant from Pokrovskoye.’

‘Oh, Nicky!’ she cried in frustration, throwing herself into a chair and burying her face in her hands for a moment, before standing up and marching over to him again, addressing him as if she was his mother, the Dowager Empress Marie Fedorovna, and not his wife. ‘You cannot allow murderers to go free.’

‘I do not want to,’ he said quickly. ‘Do you think that is what I want from Russia? From my own family?’

‘They are hardly your family,’ she interrupted.

‘If I punish them, it is as if I am saying that we approved of Father Gregory’s influence.’

‘He saved our son!’ she cried. ‘How many times did he—’

‘He did no such thing, Sunny,’ he said. ‘Blessed heaven, how he had you in his grasp!’

‘And is that why you hated him so much?’ she asked. ‘Because I believed in him?’

‘Once, you believed in me,’ he replied quietly, looking away from her now, his face scored with so much misery that I almost forgot that he was the Tsar at all and believed that I was looking at a man no different to myself. How grateful I felt at that moment that no one knew of my own involvement in Rasputin’s death; had that been revealed, the weight of the Tsar’s anger would have undoubtedly been turned in my direction and I might have found myself walking to the gallows before nightfall as a sop to his wife’s distress.

‘But I do believe in you, Nicky,’ she said, softening her tone now and reaching out to him. But he misunderstood the move, I think, and backed away from her, leaving her standing in the centre of the floor with her arms outstretched to him. ‘All I ask is—’

‘Sunny, the people hated him, you know that,’ he insisted.

‘Of course I know it.’

‘And you know why.’

She nodded and said nothing, perhaps aware at last that her five children were observing the scene, even if they pretended that nothing untoward was taking place. I glanced towards Anastasia, who was seated on a sofa, crocheting, her fingers moving carefully in and out of the fabric as she watched her parents argue. I wanted to run to her, to take her away from that terrible place that seemed to be crumbling down around us. Thoughts of Versailles entered my mind again, but I pushed them aside; I knew only too well how that story had ended.

‘Father Gregory was my confessor, nothing more,’ said the Tsaritsa finally, in an injured voice. ‘And my confidant. But I can live without him, Nicky, you must believe that. I can be strong. I am strong. With you away while this hateful war continues—’

‘And then there’s that,’ snapped the Tsar, throwing up his arms. ‘It’s too much, can’t you see it? This power that you have. You must allow others to—’

‘It is traditional for the Tsaritsa to be in charge of policy while the Tsar is away,’ she replied haughtily, raising her head in a regal fashion. ‘There is precedent. Your mother did so, as did hers, and hers before her.’

‘But you go too far, Sunny. You know you do. Trepov tells me—’

‘Ha! Trepov,’ she cried, practically spitting out the name of the Prime Minister. ‘Trepov hates me. Everyone knows that.’

‘Yes,’ cried the Tsar, laughing bitterly. ‘Yes, he does. And why does he?’

‘He doesn’t understand how to run a country. He doesn’t understand where strength comes from.’

‘And where does it come from, Sunny, can you tell me that?’ he asked, lunging towards her now angrily. They had not seen each other in months, the depth of their passion and love was well known to all, it ran through the daily letters they sent to each other, but here they were, apparently hating each other, fighting as if the whole world had conspired to rip them apart. ‘It comes from the heart! And the head!’

‘What do you know of my heart?’ she screamed, and each of her daughters ceased their sewing as she shouted this and looked at their parents in fright. I glanced towards Alexei, who seemed ready to burst into tears. ‘You who have none!’ she continued. ‘You who can think only from his head! When did you last care for what I felt in my heart?’

The Tsar stared at her, saying nothing for a moment, and then shook his head. ‘Trepov insists,’ he said finally, with a defeated shrug. ‘You cannot be in charge any more when I am gone.’

‘Then you must not go!’

‘I have to go, Sunny. The army—’

‘Can survive without you. The Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich can be reinstated.’

‘The Tsar must be at the head of the army,’ he insisted.

‘Then I remain in charge.’

‘You cannot.’

‘You will allow a man like him to dictate to you?’ she asked, astonished. ‘You will allow anyone to dictate anything to you? You who claim to be God’s anointed one?’

‘Claim to be?’ he asked, his eyes opening wide in astonishment. ‘What is this claim? Are you now saying that it is not what you believe?’

‘I am asking whether this is where we are now, that is all. You say you would not be told what to do by a peasant from Pokrovskoye, but you drop like a cur before a bastard from Kiev. Explain the difference to me, Nicky. Explain it as if I was some ignorant, ill-educated moujik, and not the granddaughter of a Queen, the cousin of a Kaiser and the wife of a Tsar.’

The Tsar walked over behind his desk and sat down, hiding his eyes behind his hand for a few moments before looking up again, an expression of doom haunting his face. ‘The Duma,’ he said finally. ‘They demand that they are given proper parliamentary rights.’

‘But how can there be any parliament within an autocracy?’ she asked. ‘The terms are mutually exclusive.’

‘That, my dear Sunny,’ replied the Tsar with a bitter laugh, ‘is rather the crux of the thing, don’t you think? There can’t be. But I can’t fight two wars at once, either. I won’t do it. I don’t have the strength for it. And neither does the country. No, I shall return to Stavka in a few days, you will go to Tsarskoe Selo with the family, and Trepov will look after political matters in my absence.’

‘If you do this, Nicky,’ she said quietly, ‘then there will be no palace to return to. I can promise you that.’

‘Things will…’ he said, his entire body slumped in his chair. ‘Things will resolve themselves. It will just take time, that’s all.’

The Tsaritsa opened her mouth to say more, but, sensing that she had been defeated, merely shook her head and stared at her husband with pity in her eyes. Looking around the room, she focussed on each of her children in turn, her gaze darkening and softening from face to face, only brightening up when she locked eyes with her youngest child, Alexei.

‘Children,’ she said. ‘Come with me, won’t you?’

The five Romanovs stood immediately, but the Tsaritsa extended both her hands in the air, the palms stretched out flat, and shook her head; it was that rarest of occasions when she deigned to acknowledge the presence of lesser mortals in the room.

‘Just my children,’ she said in a forceful voice. ‘The rest of you, stay here. With the Tsar. He may have need of you.’

She led the way out towards her own private sitting room and I watched as the children followed her. Anastasia turned her head in my direction as she left, her eyes meeting mine, and she smiled nervously, a smile that I returned, hoping that she would find something there to offer her comfort. A few moments later, the women who acted as companions to each of the Imperial Grand Duchesses left the room and the bodyguards took up their positions outside the doors, until there was only the Tsar and me left together. There was a part of me, in my youthful foolishness, that wanted to stay and talk to him, to offer some consolation or solace, but it was not my place to do so. I hesitated for only a moment before turning to leave. He looked up as I walked away, however, and called me back.

‘Georgy Daniilovich,’ he said.

‘Your Majesty,’ I replied, turning around to face him and offering a deep bow. He stood up from his seat and stepped towards me slowly. It shocked me to see the difficulty with which he walked. He was not even fifty years old, but the events of recent years had turned him into an old man.

‘My son,’ he said, barely able to look me in the eye after the scene that I had witnessed. ‘He is well?’

‘I think so, sir,’ I replied. ‘He does not engage in any dangerous activity.’

‘He looks pale.’

‘The Tsaritsa has insisted on his staying indoors ever since the starets was murdered,’ I said. ‘He has seen no daylight at all, I think.’

‘Then he is a prisoner here?’

‘Of sorts,’ I agreed.

‘Well, we are all prisoners here, Georgy,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘Wouldn’t you say so?’

I said nothing in reply, and when he turned his back on me, I took this as my cue to leave and began to walk towards the door.

‘Don’t go, Georgy,’ he said, turning around again. ‘If you please. There’s something I need you to do for me.’

‘Anything, sir.’

He smiled. ‘You should never say that until you know what is required of you.’

‘I never would,’ I replied quickly. ‘But you are the Tsar. So I say again: anything, sir.’

He stared at me, bit his lip for a moment in a style reminiscent of his youngest daughter and smiled.

‘I need you to leave Alexei,’ he said. ‘I need you to stop being his protector. For a little while, at least. I need you to come with me.’

I wondered whether I had imagined the knock but then it came again, more urgently; I climbed out of bed and stepped towards the door, opening it carefully so the creak would not disturb others along the corridor. Without a word she pushed past me and before I knew it was standing in my room.

‘Anastasia,’ I said, looking outside for a moment to make sure that she hadn’t been followed. ‘What are you doing here? What time is it?’

‘It’s late,’ she said, her voice betraying her anxiety. ‘But I had to come. Close the door, Georgy. No one can know I’m here.’

I shut it immediately and reached across for the candle that I kept on the windowsill. As the wick took light I turned around and noticed that she was wearing her nightdress and gown, an outfit which may have covered her entire body but nevertheless offered a distinct erotic charge, suggesting as it did the proximity of bedtime and intimacy. She was staring at me too and only then did I realize that I was dressed even more improperly than she, in nothing but a pair of loose-fitting shorts. I blushed – invisible, I hoped, in the candlelight – and retrieved my trousers and shirt as she turned around to offer me some privacy.

‘I’m decent now,’ I said when I was dressed. She turned again but seemed to have lost her train of thought somewhat, as had I. There was nothing I wanted more than to take her in my arms, remove my clothing once again, and her nightgown, and wrap my body around hers in the warmth of the blankets.

‘Georgy…’ she began, but then shook her head and looked as if she might cry.

‘Anastasia,’ I said, ‘what is it? What’s the matter?’

‘You were there today,’ she said. ‘You saw it. What’s going to happen, do you know? There are so many terrible rumours going around.’

I took her hand and we sat side by side on the edge of my bed. After the Tsaritsa had taken Anastasia and her siblings from the parlour earlier in the day, I had sought her out in order to tell her of my conversation with her father, but she had spent the afternoon under the tutelage of Monsieur Gilliard and I had not been able to find a suitable excuse to go to her when her lessons were over.

‘Olga says that everything is coming to an end,’ she continued, her voice filled with desperation. ‘Tatiana is nearly hysterical with worry. Marie hasn’t been the same since Sergei Stasyovich left. And as for Mother…’ She offered a small, angry laugh. ‘They hate her, don’t they, Georgy? Everyone hates her. The people, the government, Trepov, the Duma. Even Father seems to—’

‘Don’t say that,’ I said quickly. ‘You must never say that. Your father adores the Tsaritsa.’

‘But all they ever do is fight. He was not home from Stavka a few hours and you saw what took place. And now he is going back tomorrow. Will this war ever end, Georgy? And why have the people turned on us so?’

I hesitated to answer. I loved her desperately, but could think of any number of reasons why the Imperial Family had found themselves in this position. Of course, the Tsar had made many mistakes in the way he had pursued his aggression against the Germans and the Turks, but that was as nothing compared to how the subjects he claimed to love were treated. We in the royal household travelled from palace to palace, we stepped on board lavish trains, we disembarked from sumptuous yachts; we ate the finest food, wore the most luxurious suits and gowns. We gambled and played music and gossiped about who would marry who, which prince was the most handsome, which debutante the most flirtatious. The ladies dripped with jewels that they wore once and discarded; the men decorated their impotent swords with diamonds and rubies and dined off caviar, getting drunk every night on the finest vodka and champagne. Meanwhile, the people outside the palaces were desperate for food, for bread, for work, for anything which might make them feel more human. They shivered in the frost of our Russian winter and counted the members of their families who would not survive until spring. They sent their sons to die on battlefields, while a woman they considered more German than Russian controlled the lives of the people. They watched as their Empress consorted like a whore with a peasant they despised. They tried to express their anger through demonstrations, riots and a free press, and were cut down at every turn. How often had the hospitals been filled with their wounded and dying, after the Tsar’s men had sought to ensure the pre-eminence of the autocracy? How many journeys to the graveyards had they made? These were the things I wanted to tell her, the explanations I wanted to give, but how could I, when she had never known any life other than the one of extraordinary privilege into which she had been born? She who was destined to marry a prince some day and spend her life as an object of veneration. And who was I to offer such explanations anyway, when I had spent two years among these people, enjoying their luxuries, revelling in this fantasy that I was one of them and not simply a retainer, a disposable lieutenant who could be despatched to any corner of Russia on the whim of an autocrat?

‘Things will resolve themselves,’ I whispered, echoing her father’s earlier words as I took her in my arms, while not believing them for even a moment. ‘There is a cycle of disillusionment and—’

‘Oh Georgy, you don’t understand,’ she cried, pulling away from me. ‘Father has ordered the entire family to Tsarskoe Selo. He says that he will be staying at Stavka for the remainder of the war, that he will fight on the front line if he has to.’

‘Your father is an honourable man,’ I said.

‘But the rumours, Georgy… you know what I am referring to?’

I hesitated. I knew exactly what she meant, but I did not want to be the first to say the words that were bouncing off every gold-encrusted wall in the palace and every filthy street in St Petersburg. The phrase that every minister, every member of the Duma and every moujik in Russia seemed to want to hear.

‘They say…’ she continued, swallowing a little as she struggled to get the words out, ‘they say that Father… what they want is for him to… Georgy, they say that he will have to renounce the throne.’

‘That will never happen,’ I said automatically and she narrowed her eyes, trembling before me.

‘But you don’t even seem surprised,’ she told me. ‘You’ve heard of this, then?’

‘I’ve heard it said,’ I admitted. ‘But I don’t think… I can’t imagine it will ever come to pass. My God, Anastasia, there has been a Romanov on the throne of Russia for three hundred years. No mortal man can remove him. It’s unthinkable.’

‘But what if you’re wrong?’ she asked. ‘What if he is no longer Tsar? What will happen to us then?’

‘Us?’ I asked, wondering who this ‘us’ was. She and I? Her brothers and sisters? The Romanov family?

‘Nothing can happen to you,’ I said, smiling to relieve the tension. ‘You are a Grand Duchess of the Imperial line. What on earth do you think—’

‘Exile,’ she whispered, the word like a curse on her tongue. ‘There is talk that we will be sent into exile, all of us. My whole family. Turned out of Russia like a group of unwanted immigrants. Sent to… who knows where.’

‘It won’t come to that,’ I said. ‘The Russian people would not allow it. There is anger, yes. But there is also love. And respect. Here in this room, too. Whatever happens, my darling, I will be there with you. I will protect you. No harm will ever come to you, not while I’m around.’

She smiled a little, but I could see that she remained anxious and she moved slightly away from me on the bed, as if considering whether she might not return to her own room now, before she was discovered. To my shame, I found myself entirely aroused by her presence in such an intimate setting, and had to struggle with every demon in my body not to take her in my arms and push her on to the mattress, smothering her body with my kisses. She would let me – I thought that, too. If I asked her, she would let me.

‘Anastasia,’ I whispered, standing up now and turning away from her so that she might not see the expression of desire on my face. ‘It’s fortunate you came here tonight. There’s something I need to tell you.’

‘There was nowhere else I wanted to be,’ she said, softening now. ‘At least when we are at Tsarskoe Selo there will be more opportunities for us to be together. That is one good thing.’

‘But I won’t be at Tsarskoe Selo,’ I said quickly, determined that the simplest thing to do was to say the words and be damned. ‘I can’t come with you. The Tsar has relieved me of my duties with regard to your brother. He wishes me to return to Stavka with him.’

The silence in the room seemed to last for an eternity. Finally I turned around and saw her expression. A thin streak of pale-blue moonlight was piercing my window, dividing her face in two.

‘No,’ she said finally, shaking her head. ‘No.’

‘There’s nothing I can do,’ I said, feeling the tears spring up behind my eyes. ‘He has ordered me and—’

‘No!’ she cried again, and I looked towards the door anxiously lest she be overheard and her presence here discovered. ‘You can’t mean it. You can’t leave me on my own.’

‘But you won’t be on your own,’ I explained. ‘Your mother will be there. Your sisters, your brother. Monsieur Gilliard. Dr Federov.’

‘Monsieur Gilliard?’ she cried, appalled. ‘Dr Federov? What use are they to me? It’s you that I need, Georgy, you. Only you.’

‘And I need you too,’ I cried, rushing towards her and covering her face with kisses. ‘You’re all that matters to me, you know that.’

‘But if it’s true, then why are you leaving me?’ she cried. ‘You have to say no to Father.’

‘To the Tsar? How can I?’ I asked. ‘He commands, I obey.’

‘No, no, no,’ she said, bursting into tears. ‘No, Georgy, please…’

‘Anastasia,’ I said, swallowing hard in order to make myself sound as rational as possible, ‘whatever happens over these weeks, I will return to you. Do you believe that?’

‘I don’t know what to believe any more,’ she said, the tears streaming down her face now. ‘Everything has gone wrong. Everything is disintegrating around us. Sometimes I think that the world has gone mad.’

A loud noise went up from outside the palace and we both jumped. Startled, I ran to the window and saw a crowd of five hundred, perhaps a thousand people, marching towards the Alexander Column with banners proclaiming the pre-eminence of the Duma, shouting at the Winter Palace with murderous intent in their eyes. It won’t be tonight, I thought then. But soon. It will happen soon.

‘Listen to me, Anastasia,’ I said, returning to her and taking her by both arms and staring into her eyes. ‘I want you to tell me that you believe me.’

‘I can’t,’ she cried. ‘I’m so frightened.’

‘Whatever happens, wherever you go, wherever they take you, I’ll find you. I’ll be there. No matter how long it takes. Do you believe that?’ She shook her head and wept, but this was not enough for me. ‘Do you believe me?’ I insisted.

‘Yes,’ she cried. ‘Yes, I believe you.’

‘And may God strike me dead if I let you down,’ I said quietly.

She stood away from me then, stared at me one final time, then turned and was gone from the room, leaving me alone, perspiring, scared, tormented.

It would be almost eighteen months before I saw her again.

The Imperial train, which had once been so full of life and excitement, seemed empty and desolate. The Imperial Family were not there, most of the Leib Guard were absent, there were no tutors, doctors, chefs or string quartets fighting for attention. The Tsar, seated behind the desk in his private carriage, was shrunken, leaning forward over a set of papers that were spread out before him, but not, I thought, reading any of them. It was March 1917, two months since we had left St Petersburg.

‘Sir,’ I asked, stepping forward and looking at him anxiously. ‘Sir, are you all right?’

He looked up slowly and stared at me, as if he did not know who I was for a moment. A thin smile appeared on his face, then vanished just as quickly.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘What time is it?’

‘Almost three o’clock,’ I replied, glancing at the ornate clock on the wall behind him.

‘I thought it was still morning,’ he said quietly.

I opened my mouth to reply, but could think of no suitable response. I wished that Dr Federov was there, for I had never seen the Tsar look so ill before. His face was grey and had aged considerably. The skin on his forehead had become dry and flaky, while his hair, usually so lustrous and shiny, had grown greasy and lank. The air in the study was stale and I felt so claustrophobic that I immediately walked to a window to open it.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, looking across at me.

‘Letting some air in,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’d feel better if—’

‘Keep it closed.’

‘But don’t you find it stuffy in here?’ I asked, placing my hands on the base of the window and preparing to raise it.

‘Keep it closed!’ he shouted, startling me, and I turned around immediately to look at him.

‘I’m sorry, Your Majesty,’ I said, swallowing nervously.

‘Have things changed so much here that I have to give an order twice?’ he snapped, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me with the look of a fox preparing to take a rabbit. ‘If I say keep it closed, then you will keep it closed. Is that understood?’

‘Of course,’ I replied, nodding my head. ‘I apologize, sir.’

‘I’m still the Tsar,’ he added.

‘You will always—’

‘I had a dream earlier, Georgy,’ he said, looking away from me now and addressing an invisible audience; his tone had changed in an instant from anger to nostalgia. ‘Well, it wasn’t so much a dream as a memory. The day that I became Tsar. My father wasn’t even fifty when he died, did you know that? I didn’t think my turn would come for…’ He shrugged his shoulders and considered it. ‘Well, for many years anyway. There were some who said I wasn’t ready. But they were wrong. I had been preparing for that moment all my life. It’s a curious thing, Georgy, to be able to fulfil one’s destiny only when one loses one’s father. And I was devastated after my father died. He was a monster, of course. But still, I took his death hard. You never knew your father, did you?’

‘I did, sir,’ I replied. ‘I told you about him once.’

‘Oh yes,’ he said, waving me away. ‘I forgot. Well, my father was a very difficult man, there’s no doubt about that. But he was nothing compared to my mother. God save you from a mother like mine.’

I frowned and looked over at the open door which led towards the train’s corridor. It was empty still and I wished that someone would appear and relieve me. I had never heard the Tsar speak in this way before, and I hated hearing his voice so filled with self-pity and disillusionment. It was as if he had turned into one of those morose drunks that one encounters on the street late at night, full of resentment towards those they think have destroyed their lives, desperate for someone to listen to their melancholic stories.

‘I married Sunny only a week after he died,’ he continued, tapping his fingers on the desk before him rhythmically. ‘It seems like a different time entirely. When we entered Moscow to be crowned, the crowds… they came from all over Russia to see us. They loved us then, you see. It doesn’t seem so very long ago, but it is, I suppose. More than twenty years. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?’

I smiled and nodded, although in truth it seemed like a very long time to me. I was only eighteen years old, after all, and had never known a Russia without Nicholas II at the head of it. Twenty years was more than a lifetime – more than my own, anyway.

‘You shouldn’t be here today,’ he said a moment later, standing up and staring at me. ‘I’m sorry I brought you.’

‘Would you like me to leave, sir?’ I asked.

‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ His voice suddenly rose and became plaintive. ‘Why do people continually misunderstand me? I only meant that it was unfair of me to bring you to this place. It’s only because I trust you. Can you understand that, Georgy?’

I nodded, unsure what he wanted of me. ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘And I’m grateful for it.’

‘I thought that if you had saved the life of one Romanov named Nicholas, then perhaps you would have it in you to save another. A superstitious fancy. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?’

‘Your Majesty, no assassin will come near you while I am here.’

He laughed at this and shook his head. ‘That wasn’t what I meant either,’ he said. ‘Not what I meant at all.’

‘But you said—’

‘You can’t save me, Georgy. No one can. I should have sent you to Tsarskoe Selo. It’s beautiful there, isn’t it?’

I swallowed and was about to suggest that he still could – after all, that was where Anastasia was – but I held my tongue. This was no time to desert him. I might have been a boy, but I was man enough to know that.

‘Sir, you seem distressed,’ I said, stepping towards him now. ‘Is there anything… perhaps if we were all to leave this place? The train has been standing here for two days now. We’re in the middle of nowhere, sir.’

He laughed at this and shook his head as he settled on to a settee. ‘The middle of nowhere,’ he repeated. ‘You’re right about that.’

‘I could send one of the soldiers to the nearest town for a doctor.’

‘Why would I want a doctor? I’m not ill.’

‘But sir…’

‘Georgy,’ he said, massaging the dark rings beneath his eyes with his fingers, ‘General Ruzsky will be coming back here in a few minutes. Do you know why he is visiting me?’

‘No, sir,’ I replied, shaking my head. The General had spent most of the afternoon with the Tsar. I had not been present for any of their conversations but had heard raised voices through the woodwork and then, finally, silence. When the General had left, he had rushed off with an expression that betrayed both anxiety and relief. I had left the Tsar alone with his thoughts for almost an hour since then, but had grown concerned for him and had stepped inside to see whether there was anything he needed.

‘He’s bringing some papers for me to sign,’ he said. ‘When I sign these papers, a great change will take place in Russia. Something that I never imagined could possibly happen. Not in my lifetime.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied, a standard response, for even when the Tsar spoke in such a way it was considered ill-mannered to question him. One was obliged to wait for him to offer more information.

‘You have heard about the Winter Palace, of course?’

‘No, Your Majesty,’ I said, shaking my head.

‘It has been taken,’ he said, smiling a little. ‘The government. Your government. My government. They have taken it from me. It’s under the rule of the Duma now, I am told. Who knows what will become of it? A few years from now and it will be a hotel, perhaps. Or a museum. Our state rooms will be souvenir shops. Our parlours will be used to sell tea-cakes and seed-buns.’

‘That could never happen,’ I said, shocked to imagine the palace under the control of anyone but him. ‘It is your home.’

‘But I have no home any more. There’s no place for me in St Petersburg, that’s for sure. If I was even to think about going back—’

A tap on the door interrupted his speech and I glanced towards it, then back at the Tsar; he sighed heavily before nodding and I stepped across to open it. General Ruzsky was standing on the other side with a heavy parchment in his hand. A thin man with grey hair and a bushy black moustache, he had been coming and going from the train ever since we had stopped here a couple of days earlier and had never once acknowledged me, despite the fact that I had been on hand throughout most of his dealings with the Tsar. Even now he brushed past me without a word and stepped quickly into the study, nodding quickly at Nicholas before placing the document before him. I turned to leave, but as I did so, the Tsar looked over and raised his hand.

‘Don’t go, Georgy,’ he said. ‘I think we will need a witness to this. Isn’t that so, General?’

‘Well… yes, sir,’ replied the General gruffly, looking me up and down as if he had never seen such a poor specimen of humanity before. ‘But I hardly think a bodyguard is the appropriate person, do you? I can fetch one of my lieutenants.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said the Tsar. ‘Georgy will do just as well. Sit down,’ he said to me and I took a seat in the corner of the carriage, doing my best to remain inconspicuous. ‘Now, General,’ he said finally, scanning the document carefully, ‘it says everything that we agreed upon?’

‘Yes, sir,’ replied Ruzsky, taking a seat now too. ‘All it requires is your signature.’

‘And my family? They will be kept safe?’

‘Currently they are being protected by the army of the provisional government at Tsarskoe Selo,’ he said carefully. ‘No harm shall come to them, I promise you that.’

‘And my wife,’ said the Tsar, his voice breaking a little. ‘You guarantee her safety?’

‘But of course. She is still the Tsaritsa.’

‘Yes, she is,’ replied the Tsar, smiling now. ‘For now. I note, General, that you say they are “being protected”. Is that a euphemism for being imprisoned?’

‘Their status has yet to be decided, sir,’ replied the General, and I found myself shocked by his response. Who was he to speak to the Tsar like this? It was outrageous. And I hated the idea of Anastasia being watched over by any members of the provisional government. She was an Imperial Grand Duchess, after all, the daughter, the granddaughter, the great-granddaughter of God’s anointed ones.

‘There is one other matter,’ said the Tsar after a long pause. ‘Since we last spoke, I have had a change of mind on one thing.’

‘Sir, we have discussed this,’ said the General in a tired voice. ‘There is no way that—’

‘No, no,’ said the Tsar, shaking his head. ‘It’s not what you think. It relates to the succession.’

‘The succession? But you have already decided on that. You will abdicate in favour of your son, the Tsarevich Alexei.’

I shot forward in my seat at these words and it was all that I could do not to let out a cry of horror. Could it really be so? Was the Tsar about to renounce his throne? Of course he was, I realized quickly. I had known it would come to this. We all had. I had just been unwilling to face up to it.

‘We… and by “we” I mean my immediate family – my wife, my children and I—’ said the Tsar, ‘we will be sent into exile after the instrument is invoked, will we not?’

The General hesitated for only a moment, but then nodded his head. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘Yes, it will be impossible to guarantee your safety in Russia. Your relatives in Europe, perhaps…’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Tsar dismissively. ‘Cousin Georgie and that lot. I know they’ll look after us. But if Alexei were to be Tsar, then he would be forced to remain behind in Russia? Without his family?’

‘Again, that is the most likely outcome.’

The Tsar nodded. ‘Then I wish to add a clause to the document. I wish to renounce not only my own claim to the throne, but also that of my son. The crown can pass to my brother Michael instead.’

The General sat back and stroked his moustache for a moment. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘do you think that is wise? Does the boy not deserve a chance to—’

‘The boy,’ snapped the Tsar, ‘as you very clearly state it, is just a boy. He is only twelve years old. And he is not well. I cannot allow him to be separated from Sunny and me. Make the change, General, and I will sign your document. Then perhaps I will have a little peace. I deserve at least that much after all these years, don’t you agree?’

General Ruzsky hesitated for only a moment before nodding his head and scratching away at the page while the Tsar stared out of the window. I focussed my eyes directly on him, hoping that he would perhaps feel my gaze and look towards me, so that I might offer some small semblance of support, but he did not turn back until the General muttered something to him. He quickly took the paper, looked it over and signed it.

We all remained very still after this, until the Tsar stood up.

‘You may leave now,’ he said quietly. ‘Both of you, please.’

The General and I made for the door and closed it behind us.

Inside, the last Tsar was left to his thoughts, his memories and his regrets.