CHAPTER 6

JULY 1918, YEKATERINBURG, RUSSIA

Ruth Broadwood had never been as cold in her sixty years on God’s good earth as she had been during the winter of 1917/18. Even her first years back in England after the Boer War, when the change of climate from Africa to Northern Europe had frozen her to the core, were nothing compared to the seven months she had endured after fleeing from the house on Ulitsa Ostozhenka. But thank God it was now summer. Or at least what approximated to summer in the Russian Urals.

The pot of gruel on the campfire was coming to the boil. She used a stick to lift it off, and called out to her young charge: “Breakfast’s ready!” Little Anya and the dog, Fritzie, were playing a game of tag between the abandoned railway carriages – one of which had been their home for the last week. But, thought Nana Ruthie, if the information she had overheard yesterday was correct, tonight they might finally sleep in a proper bed in a proper house. She shivered in pleasure at the thought.

She called again to Anya. The scamp pretended to ignore her, although the dog cocked its ears and looked up. Not a day had passed since she and the young aristocratic Russian girl had become refugees that she did not thank God for sparing the little dachshund. He kept the child occupied during the day and warm at night, and his chocolate-coloured fur soaked up her tears as she sobbed for her mama and brothers.

Nana Ruthie bent low and patted her thighs. “Fritzie! Come here, boy! Fritzie!”

The dog yapped and ran to her; then Anya, realizing her playmate had abandoned her, reluctantly followed.

“What’s for breakfast, Nana?”

“Porridge.”

The girl wrinkled her nose but didn’t comment any further. In the seven months since she’d been wrenched out of her comfortable life in Moscow she had learned that complaining that she only liked porridge with cream and honey – and sometimes a sprinkle of almonds – did not advance her cause. In the first few weeks they had stayed with sympathetic middle-class friends of Nana Ruthie, and the food was close to what she was used to. But as word spread that a British nanny had murdered a White Russian family, stolen a royal Fabergé egg and kidnapped the heir to the fortune, it became increasingly dangerous to the friends – and the fugitives – for them to stay in Moscow.

So Nana decided it was best to head east, using the Trans-Siberian railway. Her intention was to get to the end of the line in Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan – which she heard was now held by the Allied navies – and then make her way to England. The western route through Europe was never an option, as the Great War still raged. From what Nana Ruthie had previously read in the papers, central Asia was largely untouched by the conflict and therefore the safer option. But it was months ago that she had read her last newspaper, and for all she knew the Mongols, Afghans and Chinese were now also blasting each other to pieces at the behest of their colonial lords.

She ladled a serving of watery oats into a tin cup and gave it to Anya, then poured some onto a tin plate and put it down for Fritzie. The little dog gave a yelp of delight, his stumpy tail wagging an accompaniment as he lapped at his food. Anya said a polite “thank you” – in French, as that was today’s lesson – and sipped at the gruel.

Nana sipped at hers and contemplated the day ahead. Today, as soon as their breakfast and lessons were finished, they would go into town to see if they could find the house she had heard about yesterday. Nana had been lining up in the bread queue at the grain depot on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg – a mining city on the Trans-Siberian railway and as far east as she and Anya had managed to travel – when she overheard two women gossiping about the goings-on at a house at the bottom of their street.

“But I thought they were in Tobolsk.”

“Apparently they were brought here in April. It’s been top secret.”

“Then how do you know?”

“My Yakov saw one of them when he was delivering coal. The youngest girl: Anastasia.”

“Is he sure it was her?”

The older woman crossed one finger over another: “He swears by St Katerina.”

The younger woman sketched a cross in the air. “Do you think they’re all there?”

“Yakov said he heard the grand duchess call out to some others and then they came around the corner. All of them. He couldn’t believe his eyes.”

The women were distracted for a moment by the sound of heavy artillery in the distance, and drew their shawls closer in defence.

The Czechoslovaks are coming, thought Nana Ruthie. She and Anya had met some of them at their last stop along the railway when their train was halted and searched. The Bolshevik guards on board were outnumbered and removed, then replaced by Czechs, who accompanied the train to within fifteen miles of Yekaterinburg. There they joined another of their battalions and some White Russians moving in on the Red Russian stronghold. The Czechs barely noticed the old woman, child and dog, just two of the hundreds of thousands of displaced people in the middle of the civil war, and allowed them to alight unmolested. Nana and Anya waited a few days to see if another train would be allowed through – none were, so they decided to walk to Yekaterinburg along the track. It took them two days. Then, footsore and hungry, they slipped through the Bolshevik lines as easily as they had through the Czechs’ and set up camp in the train yard to await the next locomotive east.

 

The bread line shuffled forward and Nana and Anya moved with it. The two women resumed their conversation:

“The Ipatiev House, you say?”

“Yes, the whole royal family, some servants and supporters – he thinks he saw Princess Selena too. You know, the famous actress?”

“Under guard?”

“Of course – just like the rest of them – but probably just for her protection. They’d never hurt them, would they?”

 

In the train yard Nana Ruthie slipped a hand under her shawl and into her bodice. She clutched a key hanging from a chain. If what those women had said was correct, and Princess Selena was with the royal family right here in Yekaterinburg, then she and Anya might have a way out of there. But she needed to see for herself.

“Hurry up and finish your porridge,” she instructed her young charge. “Today we are going on an adventure.”