The Romanov Bride

CONCLUSION

Solovetsky Islands, White Sea, USSR October, 1936

Pavel picked up a stick and started poking at the yellow flames, moving reddish embers one way, a moist, sizzling log another. He stared into the fire, seeing not burning wood but her. Yes, he remembered her completely, that gentle smile, that beautiful face, those long robes. Rarely had a day gone by that he hadn’t pictured her. Or recalled her voice. Or gone back over the events of her life.

“So… that’s what we did in those last days, the last two or three of her life,” said Pavel, glancing first up into the dark night sky, then across the fire pit at Vladimir. “We told each other our stories. I was supposed to be guarding her, but really I was following her from the garden behind the schoolhouse, into the small classroom that served as her bedroom, and out to the kitchen just so we could talk. I told her everything-about my beautiful wife, Shura, and how she’d been gunned down, and how that had forced me into the revolutionary movement. And I told her about all my killings of the little men here and there, not to mention my part in blowing up her husband. And…”

Across the way, Vladimir tugged on his long white beard, and asked, “And…?”

“And I told her what I’d done after I heard she’d been arrested, how I went all over Moscow and used all of my connections to be transferred to Alapayevsk. My comrades said I should stay there in Moscow and stick with the real business of the Revolution rather than watching over a bunch of ‘formers.’ The Revolution needed me, they said, but I suppose you could say I needed her more.”

“Why?”

“Because… because I wanted her to understand… to understand all the things I had done.”

“You mean, you needed to confess to her?”

Pavel looked up, a mocking smile on his face. “Perhaps. But the odd thing was that, in a way, she did the same thing to me. She told me of her life of excesses as a princess and she told me of her life of repentance. That’s what I meant when I said we told each other our stories. As much as I wanted her to understand my life, it seemed she wanted me to understand hers as well.”

“So… did you come to understand her?”

“Vladimir, my friend, I came to much more than that-I came to love her.”

“As did everyone, apparently.” Vladimir glanced at a large brick wall some fifty paces away, then turned quickly back, saying, “You said something about how the most interesting thing she told you was also the strangest. What was that?”

For a while Pavel said nothing. He remembered how kindly she’d said it, even naively. How wrong she’d been.

“Well,” began Pavel, wiping a tear from his eye, “when we’d finished our stories-this was that last night, just hours before her… her end-she looked up at me and she said…”

“You know, Pavel, you and I really aren’t so very different.”

I looked at her sitting across from me, pulled my rifle over my shoulder, and laughed. “What in the devil do you mean by that?”

“Well, the two of us, you and I, have been working and traveling toward the same goal, albeit on very different paths.”

“Yes, but…”

With a twinkle in her eye, she said, “Trust me, for if we look into the life of every human being we discover that it is indeed full of miracles.”

Vladimir exclaimed, “Really? She said that?”

“Yes, but she was wrong. She was wrong about everything. While she was traveling a path of charity in the hope of redemption of all people, I was following a dark path of anger with one and only one goal: revenge.”

With a wide gesture, Vladimir said, “You know she was here, don’t you, that she visited this place?”

“What? The Grand Duchess Elisavyeta Fyodorovna came all the way up here to these lost islands in the White Sea? You’re kidding me. I had no idea.”

“Yes, she was here. One of the great pleasures she took in her religious life was visiting as many monasteries and holy sites as she could.” Motioning over his shoulder toward the crumbling onion domes of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Vladimir said, “Yes, before… before that cathedral was converted to our camp toilet, she prayed there inside. You should have seen this place then, back before the Revolution. When this was still a working monastery, it was a masterpiece of Orthodoxy-of its architecture, of its righteous isolation, and most certainly of its faith. In this harsh climate and on these stony islands people found true faith, I tell you. Thousands of pilgrims came here, including her, Matushka. In fact, she came all this way with Prince Feliks Yusupov to pray for a successful end to the war.”

“No wonder fate has brought me here.”

And that realization, rather than making Pavel bitter, warmed him in a very real way. Perhaps there was a plan, perhaps it was in fact not the revolutionary committee that had ordered him here but her spirit so that they might meet again in a better world. Pavel glanced over at the decrepit cathedral and of what was left of the old Church of Saint Onufry. Then he looked toward the monastery’s old cemetery, which had been all dug up, coffin after coffin dumped out, the holy relics of revered saints spread over the earth.

And then his eye was caught by the faintest of blue in the dark night sky. It would be morning before too long. He had not much time left, for his solemn change of lodging would come with the first light.

“My friend,” said Pavel, “I need to tell you the rest. I must… I must, for of course I was with Matushka right up until the very last minutes of her life.” His head fell. “But how do I tell you, how do I make you understand, when for me there is no understanding at all?”

“Go on, my son, and perhaps you’ll find what is needed.” He took a deep breath, gathered the strength he needed to push through, saying, “Well, as I told you, because of the killings I had done, because of how much I had done for the Revolution, I had some good connections. And that is why I was able to get the transfer I needed. They arrested her that spring and sent her to Siberia, eventually imprisoning her with five other Romanovs and a few of their retainers in the former Napolnaya School there in the town of Alapayevsk. It was a small brick building, built on a field on the edge of town, and because of my connection I was able to get myself sent there. I explained how I had helped kill one Romanov-her husband-and I was ready to kill more. They needed someone to carry out a difficult job, and they knew I could do it. I had proven myself. And I arrived there toward the end of June and was immediately assigned as one of the guards. Immediately we made things more difficult for them. We took almost everything from them-their money and gold, of course, but also their clothes and shoes, linens and pillows. We left them with, I think, just the clothes they were wearing and one pair of shoes. Also, all the retainers were sent away-only two were kept, Nun Varvara, who was Matushka’s cell attendant, and a servant named Fyodor Remez, who served one of the grand dukes, the older one. From that time forward, I was involved in the planning of the events of July 17.”

Vladimir said, “So tell me of that night.”

“Well, we had already told the prisoners that because of disturbances they were going to be transferred to the Upper Sinyachikhensky Works. We said this was for their own safety, since the Whites were approaching and there would be fighting. Usually they ate at seven in the evening, but we told the cook, Krivova, to speed things up. The grand dukes were fed some horseflesh stew, but the Grand Duchess had received special permission for other foods-she didn’t eat meat-so she got milk and some boiled turnips and she ate in her room, just like she always did. In those last weeks she spent much of her time alone in there, either drawing or praying. Mostly praying. It was the corner room and it was very plain, just two iron beds with hard mattresses and no pillows. She shared the room with Nun Varvara. And so later that evening…”

I looked at the clock, saw that it was almost eleven, which was the time for us to begin. With a nod to Yuri, one of the other guards, a big, strapping comrade with dark hair, we started down the corridor and went into her room. Both Matushka and her cell attendant, Nun Varvara, were there, kneeling and praying before an icon of The Mother of God.

“It’s time for us to move you to a safer place,” I said.

I kept my voice calm and low because I didn’t want to excite or scare them. We needed to quietly take them out of town so as not to attract attention, for our instructions direct from Moscow were to dispose of them secretly. No one was supposed to find out.

The two women quickly finished a prayer, and then rose to their feet, their gray robes flowing to the floor. I looked at them, this tall, pretty Romanov woman dressed from head to foot in her religious clothing, and her short, devoted friend, and I felt a kind of sorrow for them. They didn’t know what I did, what was to happen tonight, or at least they didn’t know exactly how it was to come to pass. In any case, they had no idea what had happened just the night before-that not too far away in the town of Yekaterinburg the ex-tsar, the ex-tsaritsa, all of their five children, and four attendants had been shot to death in a small basement room.

Matushka said, “We don’t have many things-shall we bring them with us?”

“No, we need to move quickly tonight. Your things will be brought to you tomorrow,” I lied.

Her eyes held mine, searching for the truth. And I was sure she found it. She and I had talked so much these last days, I had told her so much of my life, so she knew how to read me. Yes, in my eyes she saw the truth of what was to come.

“Please, follow me,” I said, heading out of the room.

Earlier I had told the other guards that I wanted to take the Romanov woman and her attendant first because they would be easiest and not rile the others. In truth, I wanted to take them at the start because I didn’t want Matushka to get upset, I didn’t want to have to shoot her or her friend there in the school. That was the least I owed her, to give her as much peace as possible.

“Of course,” replied Matushka.

Without any resistance or hesitation, she and the little sister followed me down the dark hall and out the back door of the school. We were very quiet. I don’t think the other five Romanov men and their one servant even heard us. They were in their two rooms at the other end of the small school and their doors were shut. Perhaps they were asleep. The plan was that they would be brought out after we left.

It was a very nice night. As soon as we stepped outside, the Grand Duchess looked up with a smile. The sky was beautiful, the stars so bright, and she stared up at the heavens for the longest while.

“What glory!” she gasped.

Yes, of course she knew.

“We have a cart out back for you,” I said, leading the way through the garden.

I led the way with Matushka, then Nun Varvara following me, and finally the guard Yuri behind us all. We passed through the rows of vegetables that Matushka and her compatriots had planted with their own hands. They had heard of the famine and cholera sweeping through Sankt Peterburg and Moscow, and so they had taken it upon themselves to plant carrots and cucumbers, even some potatoes. I was surprised by this-that they could think of the future when not even the next moment was certain-and I was surprised how much Matushka herself knew about such things. She oversaw the planting work and taught the Romanov men about working in the earth.

She now asked, “Pavel, do you think we’ll be back to eat from our garden?”

Of course I knew the answer. Of course it was no. But at first I didn’t know what to say, how to reply.

I managed only to mutter, “I… I don’t know.”

“Well, if not, make sure it goes to some needy family, will you?”

“Certainly.”

From the back of the garden we passed through a grove of apple trees, and there, just after that, we came to a small horse and cart. A comrade I’d never before seen stood there, holding the horse by its bridle. All was just as we had planned, and in the back of the cart I found two pieces of material and two pieces of rope.

“We’re taking you to a secret place so we need to cover your eyes,” I said kind of like it was nothing.

Neither of the women said anything. They were so docile. So accepting. Like lambs. They did nothing as Yuri and I took the cotton material and tied it around their eyes, blindfolding them. In fact, they even bowed their heads to make it easier for us. They did nothing, either, as we took the rope and tied their hands behind their backs.

“We are going to seat you in the back of this cart,” I said, explaining. “My comrade and I will sit up front.”

That was all I said, and calmly, easily, they let us help them up into the back of the small cart. I showed them the seat in the back, and Matushka and her Nun Varvara sat down. It was kind of awkward, and when Nun Varvara blindly stepped on the hem of her own robes, I helped her, I lifted up her garments to make it easier.

“Spasibo.” Thank you, she said in clear appreciation.

Yuri and I climbed up in the front of the cart, and the comrade who had been standing there released the horse and saluted us a farewell. Off we went into the darkness, following a narrow dirt lane that passed from the edge of town and into the fields. The old horse pulling us seemed to know the way. Once I looked back and saw Matushka raising her head.

“The air smells so delicious,” she said, delicately sniffing the air, “just like wild strawberries.”

And, yes, there was a sweetness wafting about us. I hadn’t noticed it.

“Wild mushrooms, too,” I added.

“Oh, yes… you’re quite right, Pavel. There’s such a soft, loamy smell,” said Matushka, carefully smelling the air. “We must be nearing a woods.”

“Just ahead.”

Within a few moments we reached a forest and there, in the trees, we waited for the others. It was decided that we would do this, leave town in small groups rather than one big one, and gather there in the woods. The hope was that this way we would be less noticeable. If all of us left together someone might notice and an alarm might be sounded.

“We will wait for the others here,” I said.

Sure enough, about ten minutes later the next cart arrived, carrying two of the Konstantini brothers-Prince Igor and Prince Konstantin. They too were blindfolded, and their hands were likewise tied behind their backs. Not too long after that came a third cart carrying two more, Prince Ioann and the young poet, Prince Vladimir. After them came the last of our prisoners, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich and his servant Fyodor Remez. All of them were blindfolded and their hands bound behind their backs, but I noticed that the Grand Duke’s arm had been bound up with something.

“He hid behind one of the cupboards and wouldn’t come out,” whispered one of my comrades to me, “so we had to shoot him in the arm.”

Apparently the Grand Duke Sergei had put up quite a struggle, screaming that he knew we were going to kill them. Now, however, all of them were quiet. There was no crying, no screaming. And so we set off toward Sinyachika. Somewhere along the way Matushka started singing “Magnificat,” and Nun Varvara and several of the young princes joined in. Later they sang Sviete Tixhi, and their voices were soft and pleasant in the dark night.

We saw no one else, we passed no other carts. Along the way we crossed through a large pine wood and when a wind came up you could hear the needles whistling.

The trip took almost two hours.

Of course we didn’t take them all the way to the Upper Sinyachikhensky Works. That was just a story. Instead, our destination was the Nizhni Seliminski mine shaft, where they used to dig for coal or ore or something, but which had long been abandoned. The mine itself was just a big hole in the ground, and it was very deep, which was why we had chosen it as the perfect place.

Quite some time later, all according to plan, we came to a small clearing just off the side of the road, and we pulled the carts in there, one after the other. The night air had cooled pleasantly, and now it was I who looked up into the sky, searching for something but unable to see it, to find it. There was nothing there. Did that mean it was just as Marx said, that there was no god and religion was just the opiate of the people?

“We’ve reached our destination and will walk the rest of the way,” I said, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

Yuri and I climbed down from the front of our cart, went around and helped Matushka and Nun Varvara from the back. Meanwhile, two other guards went quickly ahead-they were supposed to wait for us there, on the edge.

“We have to walk about two hundred paces,” I said, taking Matushka by the arm. “I’ll guide you.”

“Spasibo,” said Matushka as I took her by the arm.

We were first, Matushka and I, and after us came Yuri guiding the short nun. Their eyes were still blindfolded and their hands still tied behind their backs, of course. The path was narrow and kind of rough, but I did my best to steer Matushka, warning her of a rock, a turn, a hole.

Almost halfway there, Matushka said, “Tell me, Pavel, is the night still clear? Can you still see the moon and the stars?”

“Yes, it’s perfectly clear,” I replied, even though the clouds were moving in.

“Good, then I’m happy.”

I had the sense we could have uncovered her eyes and untied her hands and she would not have protested or screamed out or tried to get away. I guessed that she would even have knelt for us. And I wanted to do this for her, give her the chance to see her fate, but of course we had long ago decided otherwise. I led her along the path, but as we walked I couldn’t help wondering why we were doing this? What had driven us to this point? I thought maybe I should run away, at least with her, Matushka, but it would have been impossible. They would come after us both.

So why were we doing this? Oh, yes.

As one of my comrades had explained it to me, “You cannot go after a king without killing him.”

I supposed that included all of his family too. We had to be positive there was no going back. That was the least I owed my dead wife and my unborn child, wasn’t it, to make sure there was no going back?

The guards who had gone ahead of us had disappeared in the darkness, for they had hurried to the appointed spot. Meanwhile, Yuri and Nun Varvara were some twenty paces behind us, half walking, half stumbling through the dark. Looking farther back, I saw two other guards leading two more prisoners. Really, if all went according to plan this shouldn’t be too difficult, it shouldn’t take too long. They would go one after the other. So far, not one of the former royals was crying or calling out in protest, and that surprised me. How could the extermination of the mighty House of Romanov be so easy?

I hung on tightly to Matushka’s arm as we passed around a clump of birches, and then just up ahead I saw our two comrades standing there in front of the deep pit, right on the edge. We had chosen this place not just because the mine was abandoned and not just because it was so far out of town but because of that, its depth, maybe twenty or thirty arzhin. Last week I had come all the way out here to check it out, and in the broad daylight I couldn’t even see the bottom, for it was as deep as an old pine tree was tall. Equally important, the rocks along the shaft and at the bottom were jagged and hard and sharp.

In a weak voice, I said, “We’re almost there.”

I looked into her face then, that beautiful face that had enchanted so many, and saw them, her tears. One by one they were rolling out from beneath her blindfold, not a torrent but a steady flow. Her lips were trembling.

And when we reached the small platform where the other two guards were waiting, I said to Matushka, “Please… just one small step up…”

She knew the end was coming then, for her entire body started shaking, and yet she stepped up onto the platform without the least resistance. I, too, stepped right next to her and peered into the mine shaft and saw what she could not: dark infinity.

Though the words came not easily, they came with confidence as she said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

I nodded to one of the guards, who stood there with his rifle raised high, and he brought the butt of his weapon down against the side of her head in one hard blow. There was a crack of her skull, and she groaned deeply and powerfully and almost immediately started to collapse.

It was at that very moment that I pushed her, and she tumbled head over heels into the pit, her pale-gray robes billowing about her until the blackness swallowed her up. I heard her hit one side of the mine shaft, the other, and then with a loud but dull noise she fell onto the rocks at the bottom.

And then silence.

Pavel stared into the dying flames of the fire, his face blank, his eyes streaming with tears. Until that night he’d never been able to get the death of his wife out of his mind-over and over in his mind’s eye he’d seen her body blossoming with such red blood as she lay against the pure white snow. But ever since the night he’d pushed the Grand Duchess Elisavyeta he’d seen something else altogether: the image of her tumbling into the unforgiving darkness. Worse, he’d not been able to get her last words out of his mind, they haunted him nearly every minute of every day.

Across the fire, Vladimir wiped his own eyes, and asked, “And the others?”

“We clubbed them all, and one by one they went over the edge. All seven of them-next the little Nun Varvara, then the young princes and the one servant. We only had to shoot one-Grand Duke Sergei Mixhailovich, the one we’d already shot in the arm. He must have heard the grunts and groans of the others, and he put up a fight, so we put a gun to his head and blasted out his brains. As for the others, we just bashed in their heads and tossed them in, one after another.”

Pavel stared up into the sky, which was rapidly becoming lighter. All at once he began to sob as he never had, deep and furious, crying not because of what was about to happen to him that very morning but because of all that he’d done, the path of horror he’d left behind. How could he see it all so clearly now? Why had it been so hidden before? Falling off the log on which he’d sat, he collapsed on the ground, carried away by his deep, rolling tears.

His face buried in the dirty snow, he cried, “Father… how… how… could…”

Vladimir, his own face mopping wet, threw off the old, ratty blanket in which he’d been wrapped all night. Sitting there now in his black robes, he clutched with one hand the large brass cross that hung from his neck, and with the other made a sign of the cross over this poor suffering soul.

“Come to… to me, my son!” he called through his tears to Pavel.

“But… but Fa… Father Vladimir, I am unworthy! I am filthy with sin!”

“Come to me…! Rise and come to me, my son! There is still time… you must repent! Repent!”

“I am unworthy…!”

“There is no crime that cannot be forgiven if you repent with your entire being!”

“No…!”

And yet Pavel started crawling, one hand, one knee, one after the other. He sobbed as he had not since he was a child, his body racked with guilt, with despair, with regret. How could he have done that, killed so many and especially her? Toward what goal? The tears streamed down his face and dropped into the snow. He had thought he would receive satisfaction from his revenge, but all that was delivered unto him was torment. He had thought that he had killed to keep the Revolution rolling forward, so that the sins of their masters would never be repeated, but now he saw that the fury of upheaval was doomed only to repeat itself again and again. Dear Lord… how he wished that he and his wife had stayed in the countryside, how he wished they hadn’t gone to that demonstration on that bloody Sunday… how he wished he could hold his beautiful Shura in his arms and gaze softly upon their child who was never born.

“Come to me, Pavel!” called Father Vladimir.

His body heaving with sob after sob, Pavel moved on, lifting his head, seeing the cross that hung from Father Vladimir’s neck. He focused on that, this bright, shiny object that might, just might, lead somewhere, a kind of home, a kind of comfort. He saw them all-the bodies of Father Gapon, the bureaucrat in Novgorod, the blood-gasping sugar baron, the director general of the bank… and Matushka, Nun Varvara, the Princes, the Grand Duke, the servant-and he cried with every fiber of his being, wishing for his death, which was in fact only minutes away but which could not come soon enough.

With as much difficulty as if he were scaling up the mine shaft into which he’d thrown Matushka, he crawled across the ground. Finally reaching Father Vladimir, Pavel rose back on his knees and hurled himself into the priest’s lap, clutching like a drowning man at the brass cross and kissing it over and over.

He screamed, “Father, what have I done?”

Over him, Father Vladimir made the sign of the cross again and again, repeating and chanting, “Gospodi pomilui… Gospodi pomilui… Gospodi pomilui…!” The Lord have mercy… the Lord have mercy… the Lord have mercy!

They would have stayed that way for a good long while, but suddenly the two men, the sinner and the priest, were ripped apart. Before Pavel knew what was happening, two camp guards grabbed him and yanked him to his feet. A third took Father Vladimir by the arm and pulled him up.

“It is time,” said Father Vladimir to Pavel, his voice strained.

“Yes, it is time,” repeated Pavel, looking up and through his tears seeing the first of the daylight.

They were shoved along then, pushed and kicked by the guards toward a large hole some forty paces away. As he stumbled, Pavel was glad for this, glad that all would soon be over. Four years ago he had questioned one of his superiors, and in turn had been accused of anti-Soviet activity. For this he’d been sentenced to ten years at the Solovki Camp, which had been transformed from the ancient Solovetsky Monastery into a concentration camp, nearly the first of the USSR ’s many Gulags. In an attempt to get out of heavy work in a quarry, however, last month Pavel had become a “self-cutter,” amputating three of his own fingers.

For that his sentence had been changed: to be shot.

Similarly, Father Vladimir, having refused to stop preaching and consequently charged with spreading anti-Soviet propaganda, had received a similar sentence: to be shot.

As they now trudged along, Pavel looked up and on the thick brick wall of the monastery saw a red banner proudly proclaiming the popular slogan: Cherez trud domoi! Through work you will get home! But Pavel didn’t want to go home, for his home and his heart were long gone. He just wanted to escape to another world where he was sure to face eternal damnation.

A few paces later Pavel and Vladimir were led to a deep, wide hole they themselves had dug over the past week. They had finished just yesterday, and then the killing had begun.

“Gospodi!” For the sake of God, gasped Father Vladimir, staring with horror into the pit.

Pavel couldn’t believe it, either, the sight of so many bodies dumped in there. Forced to line up on the edge of the mass grave, the first ones were shot not ten minutes after Pavel and Father Vladimir had finished digging, the bodies falling this way and that into the pit. Even Pavel, now staring down at the bodies, was surprised at how many had been killed since just yesterday-sixty or seventy men and women, and over to one side a black mound of maybe twenty priests. The killings went on and on all the way until nightfall, at which time Pavel and Vladimir were told they would be shot with the first break of day.

Yes, they had been given one more night, and on that long night Pavel had told his story not only of her, the beautiful Grand Duchess, but of the Revolution for which he had killed and which would now kill him.

Knowing that they had but seconds left, Pavel reached over and took hold of Father Vladimir’s hand, and with a trembling voice said, “Thank you for listening to me, Father.”

The priest, turning slightly, raised his free hand and made a quick, awkward sign of the cross, saying, “Your confession has been heard.”

“But… but I do not wish… I do not deserve… to be forgiven.”

“That, my son, is not your decision, but His.”

Before Pavel could say anything else, he sensed it, the hard, cold barrel at the back of his head. The tears coming to his eyes, he looked up, saw the beauty of the blue morning, the sun streaking the sky, and he wondered if her thoughts had been like this in those last moments: of fear and hope and relief. And he wondered, too, if they, the Grand Duchess and he, would ever meet in the next life so that he might bow at her feet.

And then the shot came so quickly that he didn’t even feel it, let alone hear it, and his body tumbled forward, falling onto the many who had fallen before him.

It is easier for feeble straw to resist mighty fire than for the nature of sin to resist the power of love.

– New-Martyr Saint Elisabeth