The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar

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It was as warm as only Siberia could be in the summer – humid, buggy, stifling. You’d never expect such a warmth in Siberia, but the northern sun, which had only set for a few brief hours, was already rising high, and in a couple of hours it would be hot, so very hot, in the Ipatiev House. To make matters worse, all the windows on the main floor had been painted over with lime and we hadn’t been allowed to open a single one, which greatly irritated Tsar Nikolai. In the past few days it had been like an oven, really, all of us crammed in there without any fresh air blowing through. And it smelled so… so stuffy. That wasn’t just from the samovar or from our cooking, either. No, it was the guards who roamed our rooms at will, the guards who perhaps bathed only at Easter and on their birthdays. They were so stinky, I say kindly. Greasy and filthy. For two weeks the former Emperor had been asking – just a single window, just a little fresh air, that was all the former Tsar wanted for his family, but the Bolsheviki have always proved inept at making the simplest of decisions, except of course when it comes to purges and murder. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for him, for Nikolai Aleksandrovich. One day he commands one-sixth of the world, the next he isn’t even in charge of a single pane of glass. Plus the Tsar had been suffering from hemorrhoids – he’d been in bed one whole day earlier that week. I’ve been told it was hereditary.

Sure, my sweet Katya, we know many intimate things of those last weeks. In the dossier – the one I’ve made for you – I have part of his diary, in which Tsar Nikolai himself wrote:

Thursday, June sixth. My hemorrhoids gave me terrible pain all day, so I lay down on the bed because it is more comfortable to apply compresses that way. Alix and Aleksei spent half an hour in the fresh air, and after they returned we went out for an hour.

Aleksandra – his Alix – was more circumspect, less trusting, but not Nikolai. He wrote everything in his diary, including their plans to escape.

So that was the way it was when the first of the four notes came, all of us stuck there in that stuffy house that smelled of unwashed guards and soup that had been reheated too many times. And that was how I became involved. After all, the Tsar of all the Russias – even if there’d been a revolution – never opened his own milk bottle. Konechno, nyet. Of course not. That was my job, me, Leonka, the kitchen boy. Sure, and my morning duties also included getting the samovar going and greeting the nuns who brought us additional foodstuffs. For a long while no sisters had been permitted into The House of Special Purpose, which was how the Bolsheviki had rechristened the Ipatiev House, but then all of a sudden they were bringing us milk and eggs and bread a few times a week. Komendant Avdeyev, who was in charge before Yurovksy took over, changed his mind out of the blue. I think he was bribed. I think Rasputin’s daughter, who lived in a village not far away, gave him money.

The Ipatiev House was fairly new, but constructed in the style of old Muscovy with an elaborate facade and exaggerated cornices. It sat on the side of a small hill, with the main living quarters on the upper floor facing Ascension Square in the front, and the service rooms in the lower level opening onto the garden in the rear. Built of brick and big stone that was whitewashed, the house was topped with a low, green metal roof. It wasn’t like the governor’s house in Tobolsk town, where the Romanovs and all of us had first been kept in Siberia. That was more like a summer palace, while this, the Ipatiev House, was more like the home of a well-to-do merchant. Yet even though it was supposed to look like the home of a boyar – an old nobleman – it was in fact a modern house with indoor plumbing and even electricity, including electric glass chandeliers that came to life with the turn of a switch. This house stood, as a matter of fact, all the way until the 1960s, when a young Boris Yeltsin ordered it demolished because it was becoming a secret shrine for monarchists.

And so, early that morning of the twentieth I was going about my duties not in the main kitchen down below, but in the makeshift kitchen that had recently been set up for our use on the main level. I was as thin as a reed and fairly tall for a fourteen-year-old, and yet I was still not big enough for my large feet, which caused me no end of awkwardness. My cheeks were large and rosy with youth, and after I had stuffed the center chimney of the brass samovar with charcoal and pinecones and bits of straw I huffed and puffed on a glimmer of fire. I was just getting it lit, just attaching the vent to the outside, when in walked our Sister Antonina and her young novice, both of them dressed in a waterfall of black. A good share of the nun’s face was swathed – the black head cloth covered her forehead, went around her eyes, and the folds of her wimple came up just under her mouth, so that even her chin was covered. A pink, plump windshield of a face – that was all you could see of our sister, a dumpling of a nun who was not only a good deal shorter than me, but who seemed so terribly ancient. The novice, on the other hand, was not so severely dressed; she wore a black gown and black head cloth, but her face was not covered.

“Good morning, my son,” said the nun, coming in with her usual basket.

With my right hand I tamed my brown hair. “Good morning to you, Sister Antonina.”

“I believe you know my charge, Marina.”

Of course I did, and I bowed my head slightly to the girl. She blossomed the color of a soft rose petal, which in turn caused my cheeks to flush with warmth. She was about my age, the daughter of a local Russian woman and an Englishman who had worked for years at the English consulate there in Yekaterinburg. They said the girl was very well educated, that she spoke both perfect English and perfect Russian, even some French, though she hardly ever said anything to me.

Sister Antonina said, “We have brought more fresh goods for…”

She glanced out the door and down the hall, spying a guard, a young fellow with a blond beard, who had been recruited from the local Zlokazov Factory, where not long ago the workers, infected by the Reds, had revolted and killed their bosses. This young man carried his rifle over his right shoulder – not his left, of course, for that was the rule of the evil “formers” – and had a hand grenade hanging from his belt, and Sister Antonina, taking note of him, dared not finish the sentence. Nyet, nyet. As far as she was concerned, Nikolai Aleksandrovich was still her Tsar, but she dared not refer to him as Y’evo Velichestvo – His Greatness – for she’d be thrown in jail for that. Nor could she bring herself to call him something ridiculous like Tovarish or Grazhdanin – Comrade or Citizen – Romanov.

Setting the basket on a small table, Sister Antonina said, “The milk is still warm from the cow. The eggs are just as fresh too – Marina herself gathered them only an hour ago.”

“Spacibo bolshoye, sestra.” Thank you very much, sister, I replied.

“The butter is very good. You must try some butter on the bread. It’s so nice and sweet.”

“Da, da, da.”

It was then that I noticed that Sister Antonina was still leaning against the edge of the table, her eyes fixed on me, her body not moving a centimeter. I stared back. What, had I done something wrong?

Again I said, “Spacibo bolshoye, sestra. I’ll take care of everything.”

“The eggs are for The Little One,” she said, referring to Aleksei Nikolaevich, the Tsar’s son, who suffered so terribly from what we called the English disease, hemophilia.

“Certainly.”

Turning around, Sister Antonina nodded ever so slightly to Novice Marina. The girl edged slightly out into the hall, looked one way, the other, then offered a small nod in return. Sister Antonina, satisfied that the guard with the blond beard was no longer nearby, reached into her basket and lifted the glass bottle of milk.

“Take this, molodoi chelovek.” Young man.

Her eyes were fixed on mine, and I stepped over and took the bottle from her, which contained a chetvert of milk, something like two liters. And just like she said, it was still warm from the cow.

She whispered, “Open this bottle at once. God willing, we will be back in a few days.”

I was young and clumsy in many ways, but I understood. Since the ancient Time of Troubles, which preceded Tsar Mikhail, the very first of the many Romanovs, we Russians have used our eyes to say what our mouths cannot speak. And Sister Antonina did this, staring at me and then blinking both of her eyes. I dared not move. Rather, I just stood there, clutching the warm chetvert as the sister moved into the hallway, the antechamber that separated the kitchen from the dining room. There she said a few kindly words to one of the guards, who in turn gruffly escorted her to the front of the house and out. Later on, of course, the Reds killed her for that, for being part of the plan to save the Romanovs.

Well, so, once the sestra and novice were gone, I turned my back to the hallway and stared down at the bottle of milk. There was something special about it, of that I had no doubt, but just what I certainly couldn’t tell. I stood there in my worn, brown pants and white shirt of coarse cotton, then swirled the milk around in its container. Everything, however, looked, well, normalno. I decided to take a whiff of it, perhaps even taste it, so I tugged at the cork stopper, pulled it out, and smelled the rich, creamy milk. And that was when I saw it. Rather, I felt it first – the slip of paper. A tiny pocket had been cut into the side of the cork and a small piece of paper had been tucked in, which is what I felt – the sharp edge of the paper. Knowing the danger, I glanced over my shoulder and saw no one. There were some noises in the house as the Tsar and his family started to get up from bed, but I was alone there in the kitchen, just me and the samovar, which was starting to rattle as it warmed. I tugged at the paper, pulled it out, and unfolded it. Although I could read and write back then, I couldn’t make out a single word, for it wasn’t in Russian. Rather, I recognized the letters of the Latin alphabet, but just what language I couldn’t tell – French, German, English, they were all the same to me.

Only much, much later did I learn that it said: “Les amis ne dorment plus et espèrent que l’heure si longtemps attendue est arrivée.. .”

All the notes, even the replies from the Romanovs, were to be in the French. I didn’t memorize any of them back then. And of course I thought them lost forever, so I was greatly surprised when a few years ago I opened up a book and there they all were, every single one of the secret notes, completely reprinted. All this time, all these years, the original note that I had pulled from that cork – as well as the next three – had been carefully stored in the Gosudarstvenyi Arkhiv Rossiskoi Federatsii in Moscow. Sure, as incredible as it may seem, these notes are still there in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, proving beyond a doubt that there’d been a plot to save the Imperial Family.

Da, da, Katya, vnoochka moya – granddaughter of mine – for a brief while there’d been a candle of hope in the note that read:

Friends are no longer sleeping and hope that the hour so long awaited has come. The revolt of the Czechoslovaks threatens the Bolsheviks ever more seriously. Samara, Cheliabinsk, and all of eastern and western Siberia are in the hands of the provisional national government. The army of Slavic friends is eighty kilometers from Yekaterinburg. The soldiers of the Red Army cannot effectively resist. Be attentive to any movement from the outside; wait and hope. But at the same time, I beg you, be careful, because the Bolsheviks, before being vanquished, represent real and serious danger for you. Be ready at every hour, day and night. Make a drawing of your three bedrooms showing the position of the furniture, the beds. Write the hour that you all go to bed. One of you must not sleep between 2:00 and 3:00 on all the following nights. Answer with a few words, but, please, give all the useful information for your friends from the outside. You must give your answer in writing to the same soldier who transmits this note to you, but do not say a single word.

From someone who is ready to die for you,

An Officer of the Russian Army

Ever fearful, I carefully folded up the small note and slipped it in my pocket. This was something important, something dangerous, something for the Tsar, but I just went about my business, unloading the basket. I took out the eight eggs – brown and not so terribly big – and the pale butter, which was in a little billycan covered with a torn piece of oil cloth. And as I waited for the large brass samovar to boil, my face beaded with sweat, my heart raced, and my mind struggled for a course of action. I couldn’t just barge into the Tsar’s bedroom while he and Aleksandra Fyodorovna were getting up.

Suddenly a voice behind me boomed, “Well, Leonka, so the fire’s lit and the water is heating? Ochen xoroshow.” Very good.

It was cook Kharitonov, all groggy and yawning, his shirt a mess, his oily hair sticking up. He hadn’t shaved in almost a week, but then I hadn’t had a bath in almost a month. Komendant Avdeyev didn’t allow us to make that much hot water, although Nikolai Aleksandrovich had been granted a bath of nine liters just the day before.

I thought I should tell him, but I remained quiet, for even then I understood the importance of the note.

And so I lied, “Yevgeny Sergeevich has asked for a glass of water.”

I was referring to Dr. Botkin of course. Dr. Yevgeny Sergeevich Botkin, the Tsar’s personal physician, who had voluntarily followed the family into exile and imprisonment.

Kharitonov puffed out his lower lip. “So do as the good doctor requests, lad, and take him his glass of water.”

The drinking water was in a large crock covered with a cloth, and I took a dipper and ladled water into a thin glass with a chipped rim. Saying nothing more, I headed out, clutching the glass in both hands because I was shaking so. As I skirted the dining room, I saw one of the Bolsheviki leading the Tsar’s second daughter, Tatyana Nikolaevna, to the water closet on the far side of the house, because that was the way it was, none of the Romanovs could use the facilities without being escorted by an armed guard. Tatyana Nikolaevna, so thin, so pretty, her light brown hair put up, glanced briefly at me, smiled slightly, and hurried on as a guard with a rifle and hand grenade followed immediately after her. She had turned twenty-one just the previous month.

Walking so very carefully lest I spill a drop, I passed from the dining room into the drawing room, where the manservant, Trupp, was putting away his bed things. I proceeded quickly past him to the alcove at the far end, where Dr. Botkin slept on a cot next to a wooden desk. When I walked in, the doctor was standing next to a large potted palm and fastening his suspenders.

I was almost too afraid to speak, but in case there were any guards nearby, I forced myself to loudly say, “I brought the water you requested, Yevgeny Sergeevich.”

He was a tall man, a big fellow with a goatee, small gold specs, and little eyes, whose granddaughter, by the way, still lives in Virginia. Well, this Dr. Botkin just stared at me, surprised at my impudence. Without hesitation, I went up to the wooden desk and set down the glass of water, managing of course to spill a bit in the process. As I frantically mopped aside the water with my hand, I glanced about the drawing room. There were no soldiers, so I jabbed my hand in my pocket, pulled out the small folded piece of paper, and dropped it on the desk next to the glass.

“This was hidden in the milk stopper,” I whispered, my voice trembling.

Studying me, he screwed up his eyes and then quickly snatched the note from the desktop. I know he wanted to ask me what in the devil’s name I was talking about, but only his eyes dared question. I turned and scurried out, just like that, and returned to the kitchen where cook Kharitonov was preparing the tiny pot of concentrated tea and slicing black bread, yesterday’s of course, which was no longer so moist but still nice and sour.

Despite my worries, I was exactly right in what I did, in how I handled the note. Going that early into Nikolai Aleksandrovich’s bedchamber might have attracted attention. However, directly approaching Yevgeny Sergeevich did not. And I trusted the doctor would know exactly how to handle the situation, for he was not only the Tsar’s personal physician, not only his close adviser, but at this point in their captivity also his dear friend.

I didn’t know then if Dr. Botkin could read the letter since it was written in a foreigner’s tongue, but he immediately passed it on to the Tsar and his wife. Aleksandra Fyodorovna, a woman of tightly strung nerves, never slept well, and hence was always loath to rise in the morning, particularly by eight-fifteen for the morning inspections. Such were the rules, however, and in the twenty or thirty minutes that passed between the time I gave Dr. Botkin the note and when the komendant viewed the household, Dr. Botkin must have entered the Tsar’s personal room. The Emperor and Empress shared the corner room with their ailing son, the Heir. And Dr. Botkin must have gone there under the pretext of checking Aleksei or perhaps the Empress herself – she had a bad heart, not to mention bad legs – and then slipped them the piece of paper.

By the time we were gathered for inspection it was obvious the Romanovs had read the note. Ever since the Heir’s lackey, Nagorny, had been hauled off to prison, we had been using the Empress’s rolling chaise, a large wicker device on wheels, to carry the Heir, for Aleksei was still recovering from a recent bleeding episode. And as I pushed Aleksei into the dining room and around the end of the table, I burned red with embarrassment akin to fear as the Tsar and Tsaritsa stared upon me, Leonka, the kitchen boy. Had I done wrong? Was I in trouble?

Even though Aleksei Nikolaevich was ill, even though he had lost so much weight, everyone kept saying he was growing as fast as a mushroom after a spring rain, and it was true. Tsar Nikolai, who took after his diminutive mother, was the exception in the family, for he was no taller than five feet six or seven inches. On the other hand, the Heir Aleksei, had he not been murdered, would have been a real Romanov, tall as a tree and big as a bear. And that summer the two of us were nearly the same height. He had dark hair, bright, sharp eyes that seemed to drink in everything, and as usual he wore a white bed shirt and his legs were covered with a blanket. That day, though, he told me he’d slept poorly – truly, this handsome lad was as pale as the moon, his skin almost translucent – because hours ago he had been woken by Red troops marching past the house.

“The Whites are on the way!” he whispered with excitement as I positioned him next to his mother.

So there we all were, gathered in the dining room, the seven Romanovs, Botkin, maid Demidova, cook Kharitonov, valet Trupp, and me. Lining up behind the heavy oak table, we automatically assumed our positions, first the Tsar, the Tsaritsa, the Heir Tsarevich, the four daughters from oldest to youngest, and then the five of us, from Dr. Botkin down to me, the last. That was the way it always had been at court before the revolution and still was in this house, everyone perfectly aware of their rank and automatically assuming their preordained position. And what a handsome family they were. As always Nikolai wore a khaki field shirt with the epaulets ripped off – cut away by order of the Bolsheviki – khaki pants of coarse cotton, worn brown leather boots, and of course that cross of Saint George on his chest. Sure, he was short, sure his nose was a bit stubby and his neck not too long, but he was trim, his arms surprisingly strong, his beard so beautiful, his eyes so sweet, his voice deep and rich. And Aleksandra? She was quite tall, quite imposing and regal, and that morning she wore little jeweled ornamentation and the same loose, dark blue cotton dress she had been wearing for many days. Though she was by then painfully thin, in her youth she had been a true beauty, her hair light, her complexion pure and white. It was no wonder their girls were so beautiful, their son such a treasure.

Waiting for the Bolshevik leader, all of us stood silent except Anastasiya Nikolaevna, the youngest daughter. In her arms she held her little black and tan dog, Jimmy, the tiniest of King Charles spaniels, and the young Grand Duchess kept saying little bits of nothing into the creature’s ears as she rocked him back and forth.

Finally Komendant Avdeyev came in – a fat man with a greasy beard and dirty shirt – who always went beltless. He suffered from the Russian disease, which perturbed the Tsar, because he couldn’t abide that, such inveterate drinking. Or disorder for that matter. Nikolai Aleksandrovich was a tidy man by nature, and he hated Avdeyev, particularly since Avdeyev had been allowing the other guards to slowly loot the shed where the Romanovs had their trunks stored. The komendant said they needed to examine everything, but in reality they were pilfering linens and table services and selling these fine goods in the town market. When this was later discovered, Avdeyev was rightly sent to the front.

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.