Ekaterinburg, April 1918
CITIZEN ROMANOV, CITIZEN ROMANOVA. I AM COMMISSAR Avdeyev.” The man spoke in Russian and wore a Red Army uniform. He did not even remove his cap with its red badge as he addressed them.
Maria watched her mother bristle. Until March the previous year her title had been Tsarina Alexandra, Empress of All Russias, and she had not come to terms with the change in their circumstances.
“Who does he think he is?” Alexandra remarked in English to Maria’s father, the former Tsar Nicholas.
“From now on, you will speak only Russian, the language of our great nation,” the commissar reprimanded, and her mother tutted loudly and muttered something under her breath.
Their servants were still hauling trunks up the hill from the station. Maria wanted to stay outside in the bright spring sunshine rather than step into the squat-looking house surrounded by a tall palisade fence. From where they stood, only the curved dormer windows set in a green metal roof could be seen above the fence posts. Avdeyev was beckoning them up the steps, and her heart filled with a gloom that matched the shadowy interior as she followed her parents.
Inside, a flight of stone stairs led up from the foyer. Avdeyev explained that they would spend their days on the upper floor, except when they were permitted out into the yard to exercise. On the landing there was a stuffed black bear with two cubs, and Maria winced; she had never liked taxidermy and it seemed a bad omen to have these dead creatures in their midst.
Her mind wandered as Avdeyev gave them a guided tour, his tone curt. He led them into a drawing room with carved oak furniture and a piano, then through an arch to a further sitting room with a writing desk and bookshelves, and a dining room with a dark, heavy table and chairs. The furnishings were clearly expensive but lacked comfort, as if designed for show rather than use. The bedroom was brighter, with pale yellow wallpaper, but Maria must share it with her parents, while their servants would camp in the living and dining rooms. There was electricity, a bathroom and a lavatory with toilet, and she supposed they should be grateful, but she yearned for the spacious elegance of their rooms in the Alexander Palace.
She walked to the bedroom window and watched an electric streetcar glide up the hill. Men and women strolled past, scarcely glancing at the house. They weren’t prisoners. They could do as they pleased. Maria wished she had been born an ordinary citizen rather than a daughter of the Tsar. She was only eighteen years old and wanted to have fun, but since the uprising in February the previous year, her family had been under house arrest. Almost fourteen months a prisoner. How wonderful it would be to wake in the morning, open the curtains, and decide to hike in the countryside, or drive to the coast to see the ocean—preferably with a handsome beau. Maria had not yet had a beau and she longed for one. Girls her age usually had beaus; some were married at eighteen, so why not her?
Her mother lay on the daybed complaining of a headache and covered her eyes with a cloth, while her father paced up and down, sucking on a pipe, his cheeks hollowed and his brow creased in worry. Maria went through to the sitting room to help Demidova, her mother’s maid, search for some headache powders. Their luggage had been tossed around during the weeklong journey from Tobolsk and a perfume bottle had smashed, its scent cloying and no longer pleasant. She found the powders and took them to her mother with a glass of water, then wandered idly around their accommodation, looking out of windows at the yard and the city beyond: tree-lined boulevards, leafy parks, and, in the distance, factory chimneys belching smoke. Several doors were locked on their floor of the house, which was annoying as they could have used the extra space.
If only her sisters had come with them. Maria missed them terribly, especially Anastasia, two years her junior, who would no doubt be up to some mischief or other were she here. But her siblings had stayed behind at the Governor’s House in Tobolsk to look after her little brother, Alexei, who was poorly after a fall had caused bleeding in his groin. Maria had been chosen to accompany her parents to this, their next prison. Why must they be here? Ekaterinburg seemed a strange destination if they were to be shipped into exile, as they hoped, because it was in the landlocked dead center of the country.
There was a guard standing by the top of a second staircase near the bathroom, and Maria said good afternoon before recognizing his face and squealing with delight.
“I know you! You used to work at Livadia. How wonderful to see you here!” The Livadia Palace in Crimea had been the Romanovs’ spring retreat. Although it was still winter in St. Petersburg at the end of March, flowers and fruit trees were already in bloom in Crimea, and the sun was warm. They all loved Livadia. “Forgive me,” she added, “for I have forgotten your name.”
He bowed his head. “Ukraintsev, ma’am. Konstantin Ukraintsev.”
“You were the beater at Uncle Michael’s hunts, were you not? And I remember you playing croquet with us on the lawn. You always let me win.” Maria wanted to dance with joy at coming upon a friendly face.
“Indeed, ma’am.”
“Tell me, how is your family? Did they come here with you?”
“I married an Ekaterinburg woman and have been working in the city for some years past.”
“Do you have children?”
He told her of his wife, his two children—a boy and a girl—and she asked about their characters, their interests, drinking in the information. She would embroider a cushion for them, she decided. As an Easter gift.
“Whose house is this?” she asked. “I find myself looking at the furniture and wondering whose hand chose it.”
“A merchant called Ipatiev,” he replied. “I believe he was asked to vacate it only recently in order to accommodate your family.”
“I hope it did not inconvenience him.” She frowned, peering down the staircase. “It does not seem an especially large house. Are there many guards here?”
“A few dozen,” he told her. “Some sleep on the ground floor and others in a house across the street.” He paused. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I took the job because it was much better money than I earned in the factory.”
“I completely understand,” she cried. “Please don’t worry about that. I am just so happy to see you. You must come and say hello to Mama and Papa later.”
Another guard ascended the staircase toward them. He stopped and seemed uncertain when he saw Maria talking to his colleague.
“This is Peter Vasnetsov,” Ukraintsev told her.
When she smiled and held out her hand, he hesitated and did not seem to know whether to shake it, so she grasped his fingers and gave them a quick squeeze. He was a tall man, probably around twenty years old. His sandy-blond hair had an unruly tuft at the front, what they called a cowlick. “Charmed to meet you,” she said. “I’m Maria.”
He nodded without meeting her eye, looking instead at Ukraintsev. “I was sent to relieve you,” he told him.
Ukraintsev patted his shoulder, then told Maria, “I shall knock on the door after dinner to give my regards to your parents.”
“Please do.” She beamed. “They’ll be overjoyed.”
Ukraintsev turned to go downstairs and she regarded his replacement. “Are you a local man, Mr. Vasnetsov? Do you have family here?”
“My mother and sister,” he said. “My father died in the war.”
Sympathetic tears pricked Maria’s eyes. “Oh, no. I’m sorry. Which front was he on?”
He looked surprised, but answered, “He was killed in Augustow Forest, along with most of the Tenth Army.”
“That was February 1915, was it not?” He nodded, and Maria continued, “My father said every last man there was a hero. They held up the German armies for long enough to reorganize the other divisions and thus we were able to hold the line. But I imagine this is no comfort to you. Tell me, what kind of a man was your father?”
“The best. I’ve never met his like, before or since.” Peter spoke with conviction.
“Did he spend much time with you when you were younger? Some men have such busy jobs that they enjoy little family life.” She was thinking of her own father, who had frequently been detained on affairs of state when she was young. And now that they were confined together all hours of the day, he seemed sunk within himself and rarely spoke beyond formalities.
Peter smiled, and his gray eyes crinkled at the corners. “I was his shadow. He was the gamekeeper on a big estate and he took me out with him, rain or shine, and taught me all about animals, trees, plants, and weather. It was a happy childhood.”
“You didn’t go to school?”
“A bit. In our world, there’s not much call for book learning, every call for understanding the land.”
He was clearly not ashamed of his lack of education, and Maria liked that. “How does your mother manage now?”
He shrugged. “She is a capable woman, so she gets by, but she is somehow . . .” He searched for the right word. “Somehow less.”
With the edge of her finger Maria wiped away a tear that threatened to spill over. The poor woman. “Do you live with her?”
“I live here,” he said, “in a house across the road. Mother stays with my sister, who is married and has a baby on the way.”
Maria smiled. “You must let me know when it arrives and I will send a gift. I love babies.”
Peter coughed, seeming embarrassed again. “I don’t think that would be right somehow . . .”
“I don’t see why not. You mean because you are our guard? My sisters and I were very friendly with the guards at the Governor’s House in Tobolsk and I hope you and I can be friends here. Otherwise life gets so tedious. You are fortunate that when you finish your shift you can go outside and do whatever you wish. I am stuck with my parents and neither of them is in a particularly gregarious frame of mind.”
He frowned, and she sensed he did not understand the word “gregarious,” so she continued, “In fact, their company is rather dull. So would you mind if I slip out to chat to you sometimes? To help us both pass the hours?”
He thought about this for a moment. “I’m not sure what the commissar will say, but it’s fine with me.”
“Good. That’s agreed then.”
As he had promised, Konstantin Ukraintsev came to their drawing room later to give his regards to her parents. They invited him to sit and chat, which was most unusual for them. Before he left, he promised to send a cable to Maria’s sisters in Tobolsk to let them know where they were and that they had arrived safely. Her mother and father seemed much cheered by his visit and spoke for some time about how wonderful it was to see him, then about their memories of Livadia.
No bed had been supplied for Maria, so she lay on a pile of coats in the corner of her parents’ room, thinking about Konstantin and Peter as she waited for sleep. They were both nice men, although she supposed they must be Bolsheviks. She was glad she would have some company until her sisters arrived, but decided it would be wise to steer their conversations away from politics.