In December they said that Lenin smiled.
Among things that actually did happen was the conclusion of an armistice between the Russian army of the Caucasus and Turkey. The Turks were only too pleased, their own Ottoman Empire was falling apart. The prisoners they held were one more drain on their vanishing resources. So they began to open the gates.
‘That way,’ they said to the Russian prisoners, pointing north, and the released Russians began their long walk home. It was a last walk for some. The sky hung each day like a frozen grey blanket, the earth was soundless and without life. Only warmth could make the soil breathe again and warmth seemed as if it had gone for ever. Some of the men reached Russian lines by Christmas. Kirby was one of them.
In early January he was back in Kars. The place was bleak and brooding, icy and bitter. Men moved indifferent to each other. The Russian forces were breaking up under the demoralization brought about by a terrible war and a Bolshevist revolution. All these wasted years when each savage battle had only paved the way for another, and the death of one day led to the suicide of the next.
Kings and queens, emperors and empresses were at the top of the long slide down.
Kirby walked slowly, his garments a hotchpotch, his fur coat a shapeless, seedy replica of the original. He had taken it from an officer who had dropped and, it seemed, gratefully died. Headquarters in Kars had not been very interested, all kinds of prisoners were turning up. There were still dinners, dances, women. There was still wine. There were still elegant, well-dressed officers. If they knew they were dancing while the flames came closer they did not seem to be bothered. He was to come and see them when he felt better. It was good to know he had survived, of course. His name had not been included in any prisoner-of-war lists.
He asked them about the Tsar and the Tsar’s family.
They shrugged as if to indicate Nicholas had brought it all on himself. And there was no real news except that the whole family was now reported to be in Tobolsk in Western Siberia. They would not be there long, of course. The place was full of loyalists who would rescue them any moment.
Kirby thought of the family as he trudged through the icy streets. There had been scarcely a day since news of the abdication reached his prisoner-of-war camp when he had not thought of them. He thought of Alexis the boy, Anastasia the gifted, Marie the romantic, Tatiana the intelligent. And he thought night and day of Olga the sensitive, now in the hands of people who, embittered by oppression, would take pleasure in humiliating the whole family.
He reached the house. It stood in hard grey-brown defiance of the biting cold. He had no key but the door to the first-floor apartment was not locked. Headquarters had said Karita was still here. The apartment was empty, but it was warm and lived-in. The fire was laid but not lighted. Timber was in the grate. A small oil heater burned and spread comfort. A samovar stood on it as if someone had known he was coming. He poured tea from it, drank the golden liquid slowly and gratefully. He put a match to the fire. The flame sprang. His fur coat, his ear-muffed fur hat and his worn brown boots were stiff with ice. He couldn’t remember where he had got those boots.
Removing cap and coat he sank into a chair. He sat stiffly. He wondered about Karita. Headquarters had said she had anchored herself to the place as stubbornly as a sailor’s mule. Yet she hated Kars. He began to pull tiredly at his boots. His face was dark with the stubble of beard, he was thin of face and looked like a cold, unshaven tramp. There was someone at the outer door. He heard footsteps and seconds later Karita came into the room, pinkly glowing in the sable he had bought her in old St Petersburg, when the capital had been gay and alive, when he had been alive too. She was carrying a paper bag.
She stopped, she stared. A gasp came from her. He managed a smile as he looked up at her from the awkwardness of loosening boots he hadn’t had off for weeks. Karita gave a wild sob, threw the bag down and ran to tumble to her knees in front of him. She hid her face as she pulled at his left boot. She was crying noisily. He put out a hand, pushed back her hat and teased her golden hair.
‘You should have gone home to your parents, little one, but thank you,’ he said.
‘Ivan Ivanovich … oh, you’re disgraceful, disgraceful … all this time and not a word from you.’ She put her hands to her face and sobbed into them.
‘Now look here,’ he said mildly because of physical lassitude, ‘I haven’t been lying around enjoying balmy Arcadia—’
‘Arcadia? Who is she?’ Karita’s voice, wet with sobs, managed to sound outraged.
‘It’s a kind of rustic heaven. Well, I haven’t been there. Didn’t you get any of the cards they let us write?’
‘I’ve heard nothing, nothing. Oh, it’s easy for you to sound as if everything has been quite ordinary, you knew you weren’t dead, but I didn’t.’ Her voice burst through her tears. ‘It’s the most disgraceful thing I’ve ever heard of. A whole year and I haven’t once known what was to become of me. But you would go off, you wouldn’t listen to me and see what happened.’
‘What did happen?’ He felt he was home again. Karita, like Olga, was always herself.
‘I don’t know,’ she cried indignantly, ‘nobody knew. Oh, those stupid people at headquarters. It’s no wonder Russia is in such a state when there are so many people like that about.’
‘Didn’t you guess I was in a prisoner-of-war camp?’
Karita, still on her knees, lifted her head. She was so happy that the tears ran sparkling with joy. Her long loneliness was over.
‘There, that’s it,’ she said, ‘you would go. But you were supposed to do away with Turks, not let them put you in some awful camp. Oh, look at you,’ she gasped, ‘you’re so thin, so cold. What have they been doing to you? What have you let them do?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘this is just wear and tear. Still, I suppose it does show I’m pretty inadequate without you.’ His eyes, dark in their hollows, were more alive than the rest of him. They were warm with affection because she was here, because she had waited. Karita was hot with gladness.
‘Why didn’t you say you were coming?’ She began to pull at his boots again. ‘Oh, they’re so stiff, are they frozen to you?’
‘I hope not, otherwise you’ll have both my legs off. I’m not putting you out because I didn’t let you know, am I?’
‘Ivan Ivanovich, doing silly things is bad enough,’ she said, ‘but saying silly things is even worse. There.’ She had loosened the boots. She sat back on her heels for a moment, surveying him with quite possessive pleasure. She pulled the boots off, sat back again and then gasped. She stared in horror. In the flame of the fire, a brightness in the darkening room, the condition of his grey woollen socks was unspeakable. His heels and toes emerged from mere woollen rags. The dirty rags were indescribable, but for Colonel Kirby to have such disgustingly filthy feet, well! There were simply no Russian words she could think of.
‘They’re stinkingk,’ she said in English.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Just be grateful that you haven’t had to live with them for as long as I have.’ She surveyed him again. How drawn he was, how tired. But at least his eyes were bright. Karita felt the strangest emotions. Her heart hammered. Her blood rushed. Moistness took renewed possession of her eyes. She got up, her face flaming.
‘Stay there,’ she said breathlessly, ‘I’m going to bring some hot water and then some hot soup. Later you can have a bath. Oh, it’s disgraceful, everything is.’ She rushed out. In the kitchen she stamped a foot at herself because of the stupid tears. She took him a bowl of hot water, put the bowl on the floor at his feet, picked up the woollen rags and threw them disgustedly into the fire. Kirby slid his feet into the bowl.
‘Oh, so this is the unbearable bliss, is it?’ he murmured. ‘Karita, you precious lovely girl.’
Karita stifled a sob and rushed out again. She began to prepare soup. She went back when the pot was on. He was still there, very relaxed, his feet immersed. The water was muddy.
‘Karita.’
She stood beside him. He looked up at her. There was something in his eyes, a reflection of thoughts painful and intense.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘Is it true? They’ve taken the Imperial family to a place called Tobolsk?’
‘Yes,’ she said. There was a burning in her brown eyes he had seen before. ‘Yes, that’s what we’ve heard. Ivan Ivanovich, if they harm them I shall still love Russia but I shall despise its people.’
‘Not all of them.’
‘All of them, because there’ll be those who will have done it and the rest will be those who have let them. The Tsar is a good man, a kind man. They’re blaming him for everything, for the stupidity of politicians and the wickedness of others. I know nothing about how to govern Russia, but I know people and I know our Father Tsar. I know his family. If they are harmed, oh, I tell you, Ivan Ivanovich, I’ll do some harming myself. And I’ve something better to use than my tongue.’
She pulled open the door of a tall corner cupboard in which was displayed china and ornaments. From it she took a polished, shining rifle. It was a British Lee–Enfield.
She showed it to him and the burning in her eyes was reflected in his.
‘As soon as we can, Karita, we’ll go to Tobolsk,’ he said.
Karita put the rifle away. ‘The soup won’t be long,’ she said, ‘but I wish I’d known you were coming, then I’d have had something much better than soup to give you. I wouldn’t have wasted so much time walking with Captain Kalinin.’
‘Walking? In this weather?’ His voice was drowsy. ‘And who is he?’
‘Oh, someone very nice,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working at the hospital. Captain Kalinin is one of the medical officers, he’s from Georgia. I’m to meet his people when I go there.’
‘Well, at last,’ murmured Kirby.
‘At last? What is that supposed to mean?’
‘Everything, I imagine, if his people approve. I can’t imagine them disapproving of a perfect treasure. When are you going?’ Had he not felt so tired, the wrench of disappointment at the obvious prospect of losing her would have been stronger.
Karita slipped off her coat, she sank to the floor beside his chair. The fire tossed its flames, reached out its light and heat.
‘It hasn’t been very nice without you,’ she said, ‘it’s very nice now. I’m so glad you’re here again. I’m not going to Georgia. Goodness, do you think I’m to marry Captain Kalinin? You’ll be going back to England when the war is all over and what would Aunt Charlotte say if I let you go by yourself? She would ask where I was and make it uncomfortable for you.’
‘There are other things to do first, Karita.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She put her arm on his knee and rested her face there. ‘Captain Kalinin is just very nice and sometimes he gets food for me. Sometimes it isn’t very easy to come by, especially meat or flour. Oh, I forgot, do you know what I have?’
‘Something I like very much, Karita,’ he said. ‘You’re the loveliest kind of person to come home to.’
‘You’re saying that because I’m making hot soup for you. I have some beef.’
‘Beef?’ He stirred out of his drowsiness and sat up. ‘Beef?’
‘Yes.’ Karita sounded as if she were in happy possession of a fatted calf. ‘Boris – Captain Kalinin – gave it to me. He wouldn’t take any money. He never does. Was it proper to let him kiss me instead?’
‘It happens all the time, I suppose. It sounds a fair exchange. Yes, it’s proper enough. But beef?’
‘Yes.’ She jumped to her feet, flitted through shadows and found the paper bag. She extracted a square tin and showed it to him. By the light of the fire he recognized it as a tin of British army bully beef. ‘There, it’s in a tin to keep it fresh,’ she said, ‘and I think you make a hole in the tin, then put it in the stove and bake it.’
‘Ah, mmm, yes, but I shouldn’t do that,’ he said, ‘it’ll probably blow up. I’ll show you what to do with it later. Would you have potatoes and an onion?’
‘Potatoes, yes. But an onion. Oh, I’ll get one, you’ll see. Our neighbours are all very nice. I’ll go and look at the soup.’
She went into the kitchen again. She was singing. He stretched in the chair, his body rapturous in its tiredness and its absorption of warmth. He thought of Olga. The memories came bright and clear. The pain was there, and the longing. But fear too now. Fear of what the Bolsheviks might do. If Karita had received none of the prisoner-of-war cards he’d sent, then Alexandra had probably not received the two he’d sent her. He closed heavy eyes. Despite the thoughts, the fear, he fell asleep in the chair.
Karita came back, carrying a bowl of steaming soup. She looked down at him. His head was on one side, his hair thick and untidily long. It needed trimming. He was fast asleep. His drawn face was in quiet peace. She tiptoed away to keep the soup simmering. She returned with a blanket and put it over him.
She stooped and kissed his forehead.
Ivan Ivanovich, she thought, it’s about time you took a wife and went home. A fire is not enough to come back to, it’s ridiculous that you have no one but me. Why didn’t you marry the Princess Karinshka? That, I think, was something to do with Prolofski and Oravio. When I next see our Aunt Charlotte I’ll ask her if it’s not too improper for you to marry me. You must have someone.
She sank down in front of the fire. She watched the flames. It was lovely not to feel lonely any more.
It was cold, so cold in Tobolsk.
The fuel allowance for the Imperial family permitted only one fire to burn, that in the drawing room.
Sometimes the soldiers were friendly and sometimes, because of political happenings, not so friendly. The Bolsheviks had not swept Russia, after all, they were having to fight for their lives to keep what part of it they did have. Opposition was against all logic. It made them tremble with fear and frustration, it turned them vicious. One felt it. The soldiers felt it.
On a morning when those guarding the Imperial family were not so friendly, one of them, a hard and cynical veteran of the campaigns in Galicia, placed himself in the path of Grand Duchess Olga as she crossed the hoar-frosted yard to retrieve a small spade belonging to Alexis. The girls had been using it to pile snow and shape it. The frost glittered on the man’s heavy eyebrows, on his fur cap. His gloved hands held his rifle across his body, blocking her.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Olga gently, ‘is it because I’m not permitted to be out here today?’
It was like that sometimes. Such meagre privileges as they had would be suddenly withdrawn and without apparent reason.
‘No,’ the man said gruffly. ‘Is there anyone behind me?’
‘Nobody,’ said Olga. She was heavily wrapped and muffed, her fur coat a welcome warmth about her cold body. She was thinner. Her skin had lost its kiss from the sun and she was pale, as they all were.
‘Then take what you see in my right hand and swear your ignorance of it coming from me,’ he said. He spoke growlingly. It was for the benefit of any suspicious comrades. His right hand covered his rifle butt. She saw a tiny triangle of white showing. She reached, pulled it free and slipped it into her muff. It was a crumpled envelope.
She knew she must not thank him or smile at him. Everyone watched everybody else here. But she could not refrain from showing him eyes warm with gratitude. It was a letter she clutched inside her muff and how welcome it would be to Mama and Papa. The soldier brusquely turned his back, stamped to strike the cold from his booted feet and Olga went back into the house as if rebuffed. Her heart was beating, thumping. Letters sometimes came for them, but always they were censored first unless they were smuggled in. This one had come furtively. Was it for Papa?
For some reason she did not go into the drawing room but hurried up the stairs as quietly as she could. She wanted to see to whom the letter was addressed before producing it in front of the others. The bedroom was icy. She pulled the envelope out. It was addressed to herself at Tobolsk, Western Siberia. She knew the writing. It was the same as that on the flyleaf of her Shakespeare, the same as that in letters sent to Alexis. She herself kept those letters for her brother. Her eyes swam. She heard Anastasia’s clear voice from below.
‘Where’s Olga? Someone is to tell her we’re all to go outside for exercise. Marie, don’t stand on my foot, you elephant.’
But no one came up the stairs to look for her. Olga sat down on the edge of her bed. She opened the letter. It was difficult to read at first because the ridiculous agitation of her heart seemed to affect her eyes.
Dearest Olga. I don’t know if this letter will ever reach you but I’m told by a certain person that it will. And I pray that it will so you’ll know how much I and others are thinking of all of you. I wrote two cards to the Empress from a prisoner-of-war camp in Turkey, but fear she may not have received them. I’m back in Russia now and on my way with Karita and others to Tobolsk, and to do all we can when we get there.
I know that as I write you are in Tobolsk. I know that Russia has gone mad. I can’t think of your present circumstances without anguish. What can I or any man say to comfort you? I could say that a family which deserved love and understanding received none at all, but what comfort is that? I pray that things are not too unbearable for you, although I know it isn’t necessary to tell you or any of your family to have courage.
Men who found fault in the Emperor but none in themselves have become his judges. I can only remember him as the kindest of men, I can only remember the Empress as the kindest of women. Who can judge them without setting aside their own imperfections? Dearest Olga, if there are such men there are also others, others who still love their Tsar and will have nothing to do with deposing him, or judging him. I’m with many such people now.
If you’re surrounded by bitterness and hostility that you can’t understand, remember it can’t last, it must come to an end when they begin to know you all. I know you’ll be happy again, I know I’ll see you again. I have a promise to keep. The Emperor has not betrayed Russia, only trusted inadequate men too much and been too generous to his allies.
Karita begs you to accept her love and loyalty. We think of you, of all of you. Remember me to Alexis, to the Grand Duchesses and to your well-loved parents. I cannot forget them, I cannot forget you. You are always in my thoughts, always in Karita’s prayers. You are very dear and very lovely, and I must say so.
I love you. Sweetest and most beautiful Grand Duchess, I love you. God be with you. John Kirby.
Olga sat there on the bed. The room was freezing. The world outside was brittle with hard, glittering frost, the voices of Anastasia and Marie high and clear with the resilience of the young.
He had not forgotten them, after all. He had not forgotten her. Nor was he lying in an icy grave in bleak, wintry Armenia. He was on his way to her.
Olga Nicolaievna smiled, her eyes huge pools of blue in her pale face. The letter in its preciousness she hugged to her body as she went down the stairs and out into the frosty yard. Tatiana looked up from the snow they were all helping to build into a huge pile to keep themselves warm.
What did it matter if the guards were so moody and unfriendly today when her dearest sister looked so happy?
They were in Western Siberia with the White Army, the formidable Czech Legion spearheading the counter-revolutionary war against the Reds.
Karita was as hard as delicately tempered steel, Kirby as lean and bitter as a starved wolf. They had left Kars in late January and, with a motley collection of Bolshevik-hating ex-Imperial Army men, joined forces with the Czech Legion. They themselves were in an improvised cavalry unit of four hundred, and the horses they rode they had had to buy. Mostly the unit was comprised of Kuban Cossacks, who foresaw anonymity clothing their nation under Bolshevism, but Karita was not the only woman who rode with them. There were other Amazons only too willing to fight the Reds. And Karita not only had her rifle, she had a nose for Reds. She could smell them a mile away.
She always had one question for strangers she did not like the smell of.
‘What would you do, my friend, if you had the Tsar in your hands?’
They either replied stupidly or with hatred.
She turned her back on the stupid ones. She blew off the heads of the others. She had Tartar blood in her veins and appointed herself the executioner of all those who dealt in violence and hatred. They were destroying the Russia she loved, repaying injustice with worse injustice. She knew the kind of Russia they wanted. Well, some of them would not live to enjoy it, she sent them to discuss it with their ancestors.
She wore a Cossack uniform, including baggy trousers and boots, much to the roaring delight of her Kuban comrades. She had acquired a sabre to go with her British Lee–Enfield. She kept the sabre sharp, the rifle clean. She made good use of both weapons. If she and the other women were not allowed to attack Bolsheviks head-on, they were always there when the men had the Reds running. But sometimes it was harder to survive the admiration of the Cossacks than the dangers of anything else. Sometimes it was even necessary to shout for Colonel Kirby. They had a respect for Colonel Kirby, not because he was for their Tsar but because Karita had told them he was related to the King of England. That was something to Kuban Cossacks. They were admirers of Imperial power.
Ivan Ivanovich worried her a little. He had become so hard and so obsessed by the need to reach the Imperial family before it was too late. He had lost his good humour, his tolerance, his smile. She was horrified at the risks he sometimes took when they were smashing Bolshevik infiltrators out of villages or towns. She harangued him passionately on occasions.
‘Will you let the scum of Russia take your life? Don’t you ever think of what’s to become of me?’
‘You’ll survive.’ His brusqueness was typical of his moods now.
‘Oh, yes, I’ll survive and you’ll fight your way through a whole Red army, I suppose. And I’ll have to follow on to bury each little piece of you until only your stupid head is left.’
‘Stop wagging your tongue,’ he said, ‘use your bottom instead. Put it on your horse. We’re moving.’
‘There’s no need to be improper,’ said Karita icily.
He stared at her. She had survived vicious Reds and amorous Cossacks, she lived each day within earshot of blaspheming men and she had seen sights he did not care to think about. Yet here she was acting the prim puss of the drawing room.
‘For God’s sake,’ he said impatiently. He was consumed night and day by urgency and fear. Any advance was always too slow, and every Bolshevik who stood in his way he wished to hell. He had neither time nor inclination for the kind of conversation he and Karita had had in the past.
‘Aunt Charlotte would blush to hear you speak like this,’ she said.
‘She’d blush for you. You look like a thieving Cossack.’
‘Oh, yes, a nice clean skirt would be better, wouldn’t it?’ She was furious with him. ‘Aunt Charlotte would like that, of course, with every man leering at my legs and petticoats.’
He smiled then. Karita, tanned by sun and wind and ice, her golden hair plaited and bound, smiled too.
‘Come on,’ he said.
If she sometimes worried about him, he sometimes wondered about her. Whenever prisoners were taken Karita, unforgiving in her contempt for those who were turning Russians against Russians, sons against fathers, disclosed a streak of cruelty. She could watch without pity as the Cossacks put many captives to slow death. It was an anguished dance the Bolsheviks performed in the middle of a village before the Kubans finally dismembered them or broke their limbs and knotted them around their necks. Karita could smile at such things, her eyes burning.
Kirby, hating the cold, fanatical face of Bolshevism, the creed of men dedicated to the political liquidation of millions, did not care much whether men like these were executed or not. But he did not like torture for its own sake. He did several captives a good turn by shooting them as soon as they began their tormented writhing. This displeased his Cossack friends, but he was an Englishman with an Englishman’s eccentricities which they humoured, though sometimes with a scowl.
Advancing towards Western Siberia, the White Russian units were incorporated into the Czech command, and from then on had the umbrella of organized Czech efficiency to protect them from their own waywardness. But although the combined Czech and White Russian force began to hammer opposition into the ground with increasing speed, nothing satisfied the hurry Kirby was in. He had been blown up by the Germans in Poland and had been fortunate to survive the campaign in Armenia and his year as a prisoner of the Turks. Now he had more luck than a cat with nine lives. Stiffened by the Czechs, the White Russians were more formidable, the Cossacks more savage, and Kirby rode with them as they hurled themselves at Reds like the intoxicated Assassins of Hasan-i-Sabah. His disregard of risks and his apparent indifference to them appealed to men to whom life was not something to cling on to at the expense of so much else.
The Czech Legion, made up of fifty thousand men who had deserted from the Austro-Hungarian forces, had been promised safe conduct across Russia by the Bolsheviks. They had intended to join the Allies in the continuing war against the Germans. But at station after station the Czechs received anything but help from local Soviets. The Soviets had already taken on the trappings of riddling intolerance and bureaucracy that they had disliked so much under Tsarism.
Finally, the Czechs, sensing treachery, took matters into their own hands. They struck first. Disciplined, well organized and well led, they were the real power behind the campaign to shove Bolshevism back into the obscene obscurity from which it had sprung. By the spring of 1918 they had helped to turn over the eastern half of Russia to White control.
They drove on into Western Siberia, towards Tobolsk, Kirby feverish now. He almost loved the Czechs for their inspired tactics, for their masterly and imaginative flanking movements which enabled them to isolate objectives and then easily reduce them. Russians would have gone for a massed frontal attack every time. The Czechs would take Tobolsk their own way, minimizing the Reds’ chances of removing the Imperial family in time.
They had fought through ice and snow, then through rain and howling wind. They had seen Russia at its most fearsome, but there was a day at last that was warm and sunny. It was a day when Karita and Kirby came close to quarrelling. It was late April. The Russians were saddling horses, men spitting and coughing, clearing their throats. Kirby was bristly and dark; the bitterness of civil war, of fighting that had no end, combined with anxieties that never left him, had hardened him body and soul. He was tightening the saddle girth when Karita, the skirt of her coat frayed and worn, her Cossack-style hat swinging in her hand, came up to speak to him.
Not for the first time she asked him how his head was. It was no wonder, she said, that he’d been captured by the Turks when he always went into action with his head empty. He, for the first time, told her to shut up.
She flushed with anger.
‘That,’ she said, ‘is the voice of a very empty head. I know what will happen to you, you’ll reach the Imperial family without any head at all. But what will it matter? You don’t use it, anyway.’
His eyes glittered. He wore an old coat over a patchwork of garments that had comprised a reasonable uniform when he left Kars. His trousers were tucked into black boots. He looked intense, impatient.
‘What are you complaining about?’ he said. ‘I don’t complain about you. If I lose my head, that’s my worry. If you turn into a savage, that’s yours.’
‘Savage? Who is a savage?’ she cried.
‘You are. You gloat over the agonies of men.’
Kubans leading horses down the village street grinned to see Karita Katerinova in fury at her Englishman.
‘Men! They aren’t men!’ She was loudly scathing. ‘They’re animals. Do you know what they’re doing to our people? Hanging them, shooting them, burying them alive! You wish me to laugh about this? You wish me to be kind to them? You want them to die so that they don’t feel anything? They are animals who demand that we betray our own mothers, who have brought hatred to the whole of Russia and say it’s for the good of Russia. What is good about that?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘but shut up.’
‘I’m to say nothing when you call me a savage?’ Karita could have wept with fury, with unhappiness. ‘What a fine thing that is, coming from someone who is supposed to be related to the King of England!’
‘And who is supposed to be that?’
‘Well, do you think I could tell the Kubans you were nobody?’ she said, angrily scornful. ‘They would probably have murdered you long ago if you had been. It would have made me look a nobody too, they’d have cooked me for supper. I’m disgusted with you. Never would I have let you take me away from my parents if I’d known you would call me names – oh, a fine father and mother you are to me!’
His irritation vanished. He gave a shout of laughter. Watching Kubans grinned happily to see him kiss her on the nose and slap her bottom. But it did not mollify Karita. She was bitterly disappointed in him. She knew he was suffering because of the Imperial family, but so was she. And what with so many other things her nerves were constantly at breaking point. He was always trying to get himself killed. That would be fine for him, he would be peacefully dead, but what about her? She would have to go back to her parents and either be a servant to some village headman now that all the aristocrats had been murdered, or marry some Crimean wine-treader who never wore clean clothes except on Sundays. The thought made her shudder. It had only been by the merest accident and her own intuition that she hadn’t married that infamous Oravio.
And now Ivan Ivanovich thought her a savage. She looked at him with hot and angry brown eyes, turned on her heels with a swirl of her skirted coat and went to saddle her own horse.
‘Kill yourself, then!’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Get your head blown off!’
‘Karita! Come back!’
She heard the insistence of the command. She would have gone on with angry strides but suddenly thought of her mother. Her mother would be horrified. She was bound in service to Ivan Ivanovich. Under no circumstances would her mother have permitted her to defy him. She stopped. She heard his footsteps behind her. The unit of cavalry was beginning to mill up and down the dirt surface of the village street. Villagers were coming out, some offering the men what food they could spare. The Cossacks grinned and asked for wine.
‘Karita.’ His voice was kind. His hands on her shoulders turned her round. His face was burned by the wind, his eyes tender. ‘Forgive me, Karita. Everything I said was unkind. Everything is my own fault. I think too much of other things and not enough of you. It would be a sorry day if you and I came to blows. There’s too much of it going on all over Russia now without my bad temper inciting more of it. There, I’m sorry. Am I forgiven?’
Karita was mortified. She had been ungenerous. She looked at the fur hat she held. It had been glossy once. In an excess of unusual embarrassment she spent the next few moments tugging it on over her head. Then she said, ‘Ivan Ivanovich, it’s only that I don’t want you to get yourself killed. Oh, as if we would fight each other, you and I. But it’ll be better when all this is over and we can go to England again. You don’t shout at me there.’
The quaint absurdity of this nearly had him laughing again. But Karita was in such obvious seriousness that he knew she would not take kindly to any lack of it in himself at this moment.
‘England is a long way off in more ways than one, Karita.’
‘But when we take Tobolsk,’ said Karita, ‘that will bring it a great deal nearer.’
‘Yes, it will,’ he said, ‘for us and for them, I hope.’
He put his arm around her, squeezed her.
Tobolsk fell to the Czechs and the Whites two days later. They made wide, sweeping thrusts that pincered the town. Pounded and pulverized, the defending Reds broke and fled in panic, knowing only too well how the Whites dealt with prisoners they suspected of being active Bolsheviks. The cavalry burst upon the fleeing Reds. Karita lost Kirby in the smoke and confusion. She found him later. The Czechs were pouring into the town and the Cossacks were playing murderous tag with Bolsheviks around the streets and houses. Amid all the wild movement Kirby, dismounted, stood with two other officers in the centre of the town. They were talking to a frightened civilian.
Kirby’s face was grey. The Imperial family were no longer in Tobolsk. They had been removed some time ago to Ekaterinburg in the Urals.
The advance westward continued. The Czechs and the Whites did not intend to stop until they had taken Moscow and Petrograd. The Bolsheviks had transferred the seat of government to Moscow.
They entered the Urals and approached Ekaterinburg. It looked like a fortress in its position on the hills that rose before them. It was a grey, industrial place. It could take time to capture. The Czechs began sizing up the most economical means, the Whites were for a direct, impatient assault. Kirby himself was not interested in anything but getting to the Tsar and his family before the Reds cheated him again.
At dawn one morning he left the White lines, Karita with him. She was sure he was making a noose for his own neck and she would prevent that if she could. Kirby was driven by a hammering urgency. He could not remember the last time when he had slept well. Even when his mind and body were exhausted he awoke night after night as nightmarish visions jerked him into sweating consciousness. He knew enough about Bolsheviks now to suspect they would never let the Romanovs go.
It was July. It was hot. The dawn itself was a brooding stillness, awaiting the advent of the fiery sun. Kirby and Karita rode until they reached the foothills, and then Kirby indicated they should ride openly into Ekaterinburg by the road.
‘Are you mad?’ asked Karita. Her rifle was slung, her skin damp. She was bareheaded and wore blouse and trousers. Kirby wore shirt, trousers, cartridge belt and pistol.
‘We’ll just ride in,’ he said, ‘it will be less suspicious than creeping in. If we’re stopped we’re deserters carrying information on the Whites.’
That was not too unreasonable. People were constantly changing sides all over the areas of combat. It was the only way for some people to keep their lives.
Surprisingly, as the sun rose to tip the hills and the wooded slopes with morning gold, there was an atmosphere of utter quietness. There were no manned defences, no outposts, no guns, no bullets, no Reds. There was nothing to be seen on the road, nothing to be seen on either side of them except the silent slopes. They entered the town, riding their horses leisurely. Ekaterinburg itself was quiet too. Or so it seemed. Karita stiffened as a woman’s voice suddenly pierced the early morning air. Kirby smiled humourlessly. It was a woman shouting at a lazy husband.
‘I think we’re very noticeable,’ said Karita.
‘Crowds feel safe, individuals feel isolated. There’ll be people soon, Karita.’
‘How will we find the family?’ she said.
‘We shall probably have to ask.’
‘Madness,’ she gasped.
They turned a corner and found themselves riding towards an oncoming platoon of Red soldiers. The platoon was marching quickly, the men still had sleep in their eyes. Karita and Kirby drew aside, the soldiers marched by, taking no notice of them. The town began to wake up. Then they heard the sound of horsemen behind them. They looked round. A band of Reds came up, their purpose as clear now as the risen sun. One silent house had had eyes.
Kirby put his hands up, Karita followed suit but with a look of disgust.
‘Who are you?’ asked one of the horsemen.
‘Friends,’ said Kirby, ‘we’ve come over from the Whites. We have information.’
‘Very original.’ The man smiled cynically. ‘We’ve had that kind of pleasure a thousand times and they were nearly all liars. We’ll see whether the District Commissar thinks the same about you. That way.’ He jerked his head.
They were taken to a deserted kindergarten school. Their weapons were confiscated, with their ammunition, and they were searched for other arms. Karita minded very much about the loss of her Lee–Enfield and she minded just as much about the way she was searched.
‘Pigs,’ she said, but she spoke in English.
They were taken down a flight of stone steps from the ground floor and flung into a cellar. It had the smell of other human beings about it, wretched human beings. The door was locked on them. There was no furniture, nothing. They sat on the floor. They had been in worse places. Karita made what cheerful conversation she could and Kirby maintained an attitude of hope. It was only a question of convincing some locally elected commissar that they loved Lenin. And it was from him that they might find out where the Imperial family were.
An hour passed before anyone came. Then the door was unlocked. Two men stood there. They wore civilian clothes but carried rifles. Members of the local soviet, thought Kirby. Bolsheviks on the whole were easily recognizable. Like Cromwell’s Roundheads they looked like men who found joy in self-denial.
‘You. You. This way.’
They were taken up to the ground floor. The school seemed lonely, empty. There were hollow echoes. A door was pushed open and they were prodded into a large room whose only furniture consisted of two desks and several chairs. A man sat at one desk, his capped head bent over a sheet of paper. He was writing. He did not look up as Kirby and Karita were brought before him. He continued writing. The two men retired to the door and stayed there. There was a slight nervousness about them and they seemed to be listening for something they would rather not hear.
The moving hand stopped. The commissar lifted his head. He had a round, white face and in the darkness of any night it would have looked like a pale, glimmering moon. There was mutual recognition. Inwardly Kirby heaved a deep sigh. The cold expressionless eyes of Peter Prolofski flickered and a smile like a white cheese splitting parted his mouth.
‘Ah,’ he said very softly to Kirby, ‘there’s always some light on a dark day. I’m surprised to see you, my friend, but very happy.’ He said to Karita, ‘Who are you?’
‘She’s with me,’ said Kirby, ‘we left the White Army together.’
‘She has her own tongue, I suppose?’ said Prolofski. ‘Let her use it. Who are you, woman?’
‘A deserter, like he is,’ said Karita.
‘Oh?’ Prolofski leaned back, his fingertips drummed the desk lightly. ‘I could not be sure if I remembered your face but I know your voice. So, you’re both here. Extraordinary. It was very uncomfortable for me for a long time. But you have your friends, I imagine. I have mine. It was dark in that hole. But it was only a question of waiting. One year, two years, ten.’ He shrugged. ‘It made no difference as long as we stayed alive.’
‘That was necessary at the time,’ said Kirby, ‘things are different now.’
‘Very different.’ The moon face looked unhealthy but complacent. ‘And so you’ve deserted and come to me. It could not have been better arranged by Satan himself. He at least has proved his existence. It’s amusing, don’t you think?’
‘Not to us,’ said Kirby. ‘And you could be wasting time. Do your people want information on the Whites, where they are, what—’
‘We know where they are.’ Prolofski interrupted flatly. ‘They’re knocking on the door. They want Ekaterinburg. They shall have it. We’ll take it back later. Your information is useless. It would have been useless, in any case. I know you, my friend. I’ll give you some real facts. Our comrades of the Red Army have already pulled out. I have a few more things to see to and then I shall be gone too. I shall leave you and your hellcat last on my list. I shall think about you, both of you. You shall think about me. I hope—’
The door behind him opened. Two people came in, a man and a woman. The man was Oravio, the woman Princess Aleka Petrovna. Oravio was gaunt, his earnestness a hungry glitter. Aleka was thinner, her pale skin a stretched tautness over her cheekbones. She wore the blouse, skirt and boots of a female commissar. She stared at Kirby, at Karita, her body stiffening, her black eyes ringed by shadows. Oravio stared too, then looked as if the fates had brought him his most satisfying day.
‘I think,’ said Prolofski, ‘that you all know each other.’
‘What are they doing here?’ asked Aleka. Her husky voice, once a purring pleasure to the ear, was emotionless.
‘Comrade Commissar,’ said Prolofski, ‘their investigation is mine. I shall deal with them.’
‘Well, you have the appetite,’ said Aleka. She shrugged. ‘It’s his revolution,’ she said to Kirby, ‘and you were very unwise to have finished up here in view of other things. But you always had a stupid streak.’
‘One either wins or loses, Princess,’ said Kirby. He felt desperately sorry for Karita, he was drained of everything else now. It was the filthiest bad luck to be hit by this one-in-a-million chance. Prolofski would take more than his pound of flesh.
‘Princess?’ Oravio sneered. ‘She could get her throat cut for that.’
Karita’s heart was like ice but she said very lightly, ‘There’s an awful smell about this place.’
Oravio took that badly. He cracked her across the face with the back of his hand. Kirby, hardened by every kind of experience and indifferent now to any other, almost broke Oravio’s jaw with a fist that felt like a hammer to Oravio and sounded like one to Aleka. For a moment her tired eyes flashed into glowing life. Oravio crashed to the floor. The two men at the door ran forward, beating Kirby with rifle butts. Karita spat at them. Aleka’s eyes relapsed into indifference.
‘Yes, yes, all right,’ said Prolofski, gesturing the men back. ‘But he’s mine, comrades, and I don’t want him spoiled. They’re both mine. Take them away.’
They were locked in the cellar again. They sat on the floor, their backs against the wall. There was a bruise on Karita’s face.
‘Prolofski,’ she said, ‘was very bad luck, Ivan Ivanovich.’
‘Very bad luck, Karita. I’m sorry.’
‘You aren’t to worry about that,’ she said. ‘But Prolofski, he’s quite a worry. Someone let him out.’
‘Yes. The sort of thing that happens in times like these.’ He spoke calmly enough. He did not like the thought of what Prolofski was going to do to him, he liked even less the thought of what the moonfaced ghoul might do to Karita. They would both finish up very dead, that was certain. But it was not going to be swift and clean, that was also certain.
‘They’re going to kill us, you know,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ He smiled. Karita was able to smile too, then. ‘I don’t know what Aunt Charlotte’s going to say,’ he said.
‘She’ll be very upset.’ Karita sighed a little. ‘Ivan, you’re not blaming yourself too much, are you? I should be happier if you did not do that. I do not regret anything, I’m glad to have been with you and I’m not sorry to be with you now. It’s better together, isn’t it?’
‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, ‘it’s damned silly. You shouldn’t be here, you’re the last person who should suffer from my stupidity.’
‘I’m not looking forward to it,’ said Karita frankly, ‘but, you see, Ivan, it’s been very nice being with you for so long. It wouldn’t be at all nice without you.’
He looked at her. She was smiling. He felt wholly, completely undeserving of her. He put out a hand and lightly teased her hair, something he had often done.
‘Well, together, then, little one,’ he said.
His eyes seemed so dark.
‘You’re still thinking of them, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘Of them and of you. I’m praying the Czechs and the Whites move quickly enough.’
They were both thinking the same thing. If the Reds had pulled out they would probably have taken the Imperial family with them, moved them again. If so, he and she had thrown their lives away for nothing. She became very quiet.
There was the tiniest sound of the key being carefully and slowly turned in the lock. The door opened and Aleka came in. She closed it with extreme care. She put a finger to her lips. She listened, then she came forward and dropped to her knees close to Kirby to whisper to him.
‘We must talk very softly. Oh, you are such fools to have let Prolofski of all people get you. But that’s how it is, life is for you one day, against you the next. It’s against me now. Dear God, the things they have done, the things I have seen. Some had to go to begin with, I even excused them for Andrei. But they go on and on, they’ll drown Russia in the people’s blood in the end. You must listen. If I help you, you must help me. Prolofski means to kill you this afternoon, it will be the last thing he’ll do before we leave this place. There are only a few of us here now. They’re letting the Whites have Ekaterinburg—’
‘Aleka,’ said Kirby, ‘where are the Imperial family?’
Her eyes went blank.
‘They’ve gone,’ she said.
‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know. There’s no time to talk about them.’ She was urgent, desperate. ‘I’ll help you deal with Prolofski as long as you take me with you. I want to go with you, I must. The Russia I wanted lived only a few days, then they murdered it. It’s dead now, but still they do these things, they’re murdering a corpse. Russia will be dead for a long time. I’ve been sick a thousand times. It won’t be long before they murder me too.’ Her whispered words poured out. ‘I wasn’t wrong, Ivan, what I wanted was possible, now they’ve made it impossible. This is not my country, this isn’t what was to be done. The revolution has been betrayed by animals. Listen, Prolofski and Oravio mean to execute you in this cellar. I shall try to be here too. Take this.’ She reached into her calf-length boot and drew out a small pistol. ‘You must kill Oravio first. Prolofski never carries arms, he always uses others to kill for him. Ivan, you’ll use this and you’ll take me with you, speak for me to the Whites when they come?’
‘I owe you that much,’ said Kirby, ‘and you and I, Aleka, can always be the best of friends.’
‘More than that,’ she whispered passionately, ‘much more.’ She leaned, she pressed her mouth to his. Karita froze and as Aleka rose and slipped noiselessly out she looked after her with the burning back in her eyes.
It was a long wait from then on. They spoke very little. The afternoon had come before Karita suddenly said, ‘Aleka Petrovna is a bitch.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said. He checked the small pistol. There were six shining bullets.
It was five o’clock when Prolofski and Oravio entered the cellar. It was unbearable to Karita to see that Oravio had her rifle, her beautiful Lee–Enfield. She knew the potential of that blue barrel. She was not too proud to feel humble in the face of it, and silently she began to say her prayers.
‘My friend,’ said Prolofski, ‘why did you come by yourselves to Ekaterinburg?’
‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’ said Kirby. He and Karita were still on the floor, their backs against the wall. His hands were in his lap.
‘No, it doesn’t matter now,’ said Prolofski. ‘For crimes against the state the Romanovs were executed two days ago. They’re all very safely dead now. You’re going to follow them, only you will take longer.’
Aleka came in. Kirby seemed transfixed, Karita was white. Aleka smiled.
‘Still talking, Comrade Commissar?’ she said. ‘You will have your preludes and overtures, won’t you?’
The diversion, casual and inconsequential on the face of it, was enough. Kirby, madness in his eyes, uncovered the pistol and shot Oravio from where he sat. He fired repeatedly and one after another four bullets thudded into Oravio’s chest and stomach. He fell, his screams choking in blood. The rifle clattered. Prolofski moved like a striking snake. But Kirby thrust out a long leg, Karita sprang and the rifle was in her loving hands. Prolofski shouted. There was the sound of two men quickly descending the steps. They were the men who had been listening nervously all day for the sound of the first shells from the Czech guns. Karita let them both rush in before she pulled the trigger. The noise was a blasting roar in the low-ceilinged cellar. The first man’s face seemed to disappear behind a glistening red mask. Kirby, two small bullets left, shot the second man. The cellar reeked, the noise of the firing ran around the walls for long seconds before dying away.
Prolofski stood in the silence of the grave.
They listened. The moon face was wet with sweat. Cold blank eyes protruded. There was only silence.
Then Aleka said, ‘That’s all of them, Ivan. There are no others. Everyone else has gone. I wonder how many bodies there are in Russia?’
‘What has happened to the Tsar?’ asked Kirby.
‘I don’t know. Deal with him.’ Aleka nodded at Prolofski, covered by Karita’s rifle. Karita held it with burning gratitude. God had been good, giving to her a man egoistically symbolic of the hatred that had destroyed a good and beautiful family. Karita believed what Kirby did not want to.
‘What has happened to them?’ His hand shot out, he took hold of the neck of Aleka’s linen blouse and pulled her forward. Aleka found herself looking up into eyes that were murderous.
‘Ivan, what has happened to you?’ Because of his wrenching grip Aleka choked on her words. ‘Have you let them turn you into a savage too?’
‘Tell me what you know,’ he said, and his hand shook her so that her head jerked.
‘They’re dead, shot,’ she gasped. ‘Oh God, they murdered them too.’
‘All?’ His voice was a harsh whisper. ‘All? Olga too? Olga?’
‘All of them,’ she breathed.
He let her go. He covered his face with his hands.
‘Sweet Jesus Christ,’ he whispered.
‘Don’t you see, that was when it all ended for me?’ she said feverishly. ‘I didn’t want that, I never wanted that. I put my trust in people worse than assassins. There hasn’t been a day since Lenin seized power that I haven’t seen someone butchered or hanged or shot. Ivan, they killed them all, the whole family, all the children. Oh, dear God, all of them.’
Kirby uncovered his grey face. He shuddered. Karita was weeping. Prolofski was stiff, only his eyes moving, glancing at the open door beyond the sprawled bodies. Kirby turned, took the rifle from Karita and jammed the point of the barrel hard into Prolofski’s stomach. It brought an involuntary escape of hissing breath from Prolofski.
‘No!’ It was a cry of anguish from Karita as she saw Kirby’s finger tighten on the trigger. ‘No! You’ve never done such a thing, only you have stayed sane while everyone else has gone mad. Ivan, no! Oh, I will do it, but not you, not you. Wait, there’s another way, a better way. Give him to the Cossacks.’
Kirby smiled into the white, sweating moon face. It was a smile that made Prolofski sweat more and it turned Aleka’s blood cold.
‘Yes,’ said Kirby softly, ‘we’ll give him to the Cossacks, little one.’
‘And it’s over now,’ said Karita, ‘we can go to England. Aleka Petrovna is right. Russia is dead. We will go home, Ivan.’
‘Yes,’ said Kirby.
‘Ivan, you’ll take me with you?’ Aleka seized his arm, held on to him. ‘I still have money, jewels, I’ll give you all you need to get us to England. Ivan, anything, anything.’
Prolofski was a disgusting embarrassment to Karita in her grief, Aleka Petrovna an irritating encumbrance. She took the rifle back from Kirby and used the butt to smite the embarrassment unconscious. Prolofski fell heavily. That left only the encumbrance, the irritation. Coldly Karita pointed the rifle at Aleka.
‘Get away from him,’ she said, ‘he is not yours. We are family, he and I and Aunt Charlotte. What are you to do with us? You’re frightened now, frightened that we’ll leave you and that the Cossacks will get you as well as Prolofski. But tomorrow, if we take you with us, you’ll be laughing again.’
‘Oh, Karita, no, I swear,’ pleaded Aleka. ‘Karita, I shall never laugh again. Ivan, I did help you, now you’ll help me, won’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Kirby. He was not looking at her, he was not looking at anybody. He felt only freezing pain. Russians in their madness had murdered a whole family. For the sins of the worst of the Romanovs they had murdered the best of them.
The children. Oh, great God, where was your compassion?
They stayed in the school until the Czechs and the Whites swarmed into the evacuated town. Then they gave Prolofski to the Cossacks and he danced macabrely and in agony. Karita did not look on. Neither did Kirby. But Aleka did. It was the one act of butchery she wanted to see.
Ekaterinburg had been worse than Tobolsk. The Imperial family were not merely locked up, they were practically boarded up.
Alexis, unable to walk, had been ill for months. The four girls, wistful for happy days gone, bore their final imprisonment bravely, their humiliations quietly. The coarseness of their Ekaterinburg guards shocked them. Brought up in an atmosphere of protective love and devout Orthodoxy, they regarded love and compassion as the finest of human emotions. But however much they were shocked by their guards, however often their minds were distressed and their hearts saddened, they did not fail their parents.
They never ceased to give each other affection and comfort, to do what they could for the suffering Alexis.
The attitude of Nicholas and Alexandra during those weeks at Ekaterinburg, the most despairing of their lives, was an example to shame an ignorant, indifferent world.
Of all statesmen, only Winston Churchill cared.
Nicholas and Alexandra thought first always of others in that place. They were harassed, bullied and threatened, but they showed concern only when the hatred was directed against their children or the few loyal servants who still remained with them. It is difficult to grasp the extent of their courage in conditions of horrifying adversity and even more difficult to weigh it against their frailties when they were Emperor and Empress.
Lenin and Trotsky were in command, but great and glorious as their revolution was they went in fear of opposition, in fear of the deposed Tsar and his children. Trotsky wanted the Imperial family disposed of. He wanted a public trial in Moscow, where justice could be seen to be done. The fact that the verdict would have been arrived at in advance did not have to deprive the people of the chance to witness Trotsky’s presentation of an unanswerable case. The Ekaterinburg soviet told him in effect, however, to immortalize himself in some other way. They did not intend to let the Imperial family be taken to Moscow.
If there was unlimited fortitude in that house, there was not quite so much laughter. But Anastasia still had her moments and Marie still described her dream prince (who had altered with each year she had grown). And Tatiana still had precious hours with Olga, when they talked of days that were golden and beautiful.
‘Olga, are you ever afraid?’ asked Tatiana one day. It was the afternoon of 16th July 1918, and it was hot. They were in their bedroom. It was one place where they could escape the eyes and tongues of the guards, although even here they could never be certain.
‘I sometimes pray harder,’ said Olga with a slight smile.
‘They dislike us so, worse than any of the others we’ve had,’ said Tatiana.
‘Perhaps they’ve suffered more,’ said Olga.
‘I shouldn’t think they’d ever know whether they were suffering or ecstatic,’ said Tatiana sarcastically. She went on a little vehemently, ‘I can’t bear the dreadful way they treat Mama and Papa.’
‘Oh, Tasha, Mama and Papa deserve so much better than this,’ said Olga, ‘but oh, I’m so proud of them, so proud they are our parents. They’ve given us so much love and happiness. And when you think of poor Alexis, you and I can’t complain, can we?’
‘We might later on,’ observed Tatiana, ‘because I’m sure Anastasia is going to become dreadfully bossy.’
‘Darling, you will hold your own,’ smiled Olga. Then very softly, ‘Tatiana?’
‘Yes?’ said Tatiana.
‘We have all been very happy, have we not?’
‘Oh, dearest Olga, we’ve been immensely, beautifully happy,’ said Tatiana, ‘we’ve all had so many wonderful times, and if you’ve had a little more it’s because you’re the dearest of all of us.’
‘No, I’ve been the luckiest,’ said Olga, her smile tender, ‘but for all of us there’s so much, so very much, that they can never take away from us.’
‘Especially from you, darling, especially from you.’
It was in the cellar of that Ekaterinburg house on the night of that same day when a man called Yurovsky valiantly identified himself with the Cause. He was valiant in that there were few other men willing to do what he did. He did not do it with his bare hands or even by himself. He had his guards to help him, as well as an array of brave arms and his own courageous revolver. Nevertheless, the credit is his, for he took the bold initiative and he fired the first shot.
With it he killed the Tsar, with it began the execution of the whole family and their servants.
Nicholas died immediately.
Alexandra died making the sign of the cross.
Alexis, crippled, died in his father’s arms.
Marie died in incredulous astonishment, Tatiana proudly and in contempt of the executioners. Anastasia died twice. She came to as the first echoes of death faded and hearing her moans they bayoneted her into lasting silence.
Olga died quietly, as she had lived, her dreams vanishing. There was just one last moment, a moment of stark, tragic reality.
Now he would never know just how passionately she loved him, adored him, never know—
She fell forward.
They finished off a screaming maid with bayonets.
‘Well, that’s the lot,’ said Yurovsky, Russia’s man of the moment, as he stirred a crumpled dress with his booted foot. ‘Well done, comrades.’
Such was the stuff of which the heroes of the revolution were made.
The lesson to be learned, but which we refuse to learn, is that they are all the same, heroes of revolutions. The fact that we refuse to learn, that there are always some of us who will give help, comfort and bread to the violent ones, means that the children of Nicholas died in vain.
The grey British warship steamed its way through the turgid November waters of the Black Sea, heading south from Sevastopol. Its decks were crowded with refugees, most of them Russian. From the decks silent men, women and children were taking their last look at their native land.
Kirby stood in the lee of the solid mounting of a huge naval gun. Karita was close to him. Princess Aleka Petrovna lay emotionally prostrate in quarters assigned to the most exalted of the refugees.
Kirby’s eyes were on the receding domes and cupolas of Sevastopol, their brightness dulled under the grey canopy of the wet, wintry sky. The pain was unbearable. He was leaving her. She would remain in Russia for ever. She would never grow old now, never become a stately, grey-headed Grand Duchess. Nor would she ever be a Crown Princess.
The hills of the Crimea were rain-shrouded, rising in the distance to merge mistily with hanging clouds. It did rain often in the Crimea. It was rain that gave it its rich greens. But in the spring, in the summer and autumn there was so much sunshine. It was there, in her beloved Crimea, that she would always be. Not in the bleak, unfriendly Urals, not in Ekaterinburg, but there, in the peace and beauty of Livadia where she, where all of them, had spent their happiest days. It was there that she would find again the tranquillity she so loved, there that she would forever rest. But every dawn, every rising sun, would bring her spirit from its sleep and she would dance again over the green lawns and come lightly to the pools. She would be laughing, happy, and always hand in hand with Tatiana.
In her gentleness and innocence she had gone from life unkissed. She had gone with those she loved. They were all at peace now, dearly together in spirit as they had been so much in life.
My sweet, my beloved, my precious Olga.
Karita’s eyes were swimming. The tears misted the damp shores for her and blurred Sevastopol. Beyond that fading coastline Russia lay like an endless waste, and the cold bitter ashes of useless war and savage revolution, blown by the winds of stupidity and hatred, covered her earth.
It was not Karita’s Russia. Others had it. They had even taken her God-fearing parents and shot them because neither would denounce the Tsar.
‘Ivan?’ she whispered.
He did not answer. He could not take his eyes from those clouded hills, his mind from all he had known. He thought of his marriage with Russia, the period of deceit, the years of discovery, the years of loving, the years of endurance. Finished.
The decks swayed to the roll of the warship as it veered sou’-sou’-west. The British sailors did not for the moment harry the mass of refugees, they let them see all that they could before Russia was lost to them in the rain mists. The faces of men, women and children were still, their tongues were still, and they paid their last, despairing farewells in silence. They had become exiles the moment the ship weighed anchor.
Karita desperately wanted to be comforted, desperately wanted to be loved. But Kirby was quieter than the silence itself and more remote. It was as if he stood not on the steel deck of a warship but in a place of his own, inaccessible to all others. But when at last the land was obscured and they could see no more of Russia she spoke to him.
‘Ivan, I’m so cold, so unhappy.’
‘Yes, I know.’ He turned to her at last, he put his arm around her shoulders. Their garments were little better than those they had worn for the last year and they drew together for warmth as the cold, wet sea wind bit into their bodies and stung their faces. ‘We’re leaving them all, Karita,’ he said. He remembered words Olga had spoken. ‘There were so many heroes, and all of them dead. Will they forgive us for going, do you think?’
‘I think, if they could, they’d come with us,’ said Karita. ‘They did not die for this kind of Russia, not those we knew. But, Ivan, we can’t mourn them for ever. We shall always remember them.’
Do not forget me, Olga had said. The pain wrenched him.
‘And the children, we shall always remember the children,’ said Karita. ‘How could we forget them and all those brave men and women we fought with? They were the best and most beautiful of Russians. But you and I have to live, and we have to speak for them. Ivan, we can’t go home to Aunt Charlotte looking as if we are dead too. Life is for today and tomorrow, not for yesterday.’
‘Yes, we have tomorrow,’ he said, ‘we at least have survived.’
‘God has been very good to you and me,’ said Karita.
He was not sure of God’s benefaction, not now.
His arm tightened around her shoulders. She pressed closer. They stayed there, oblivious of other people slowly drifting away to find warmer places or places where they might weep unseen. They stayed there with the sea wind tugging at their worn, belted coats, watching the wake of the steel ship as it took them from Russia and carried them home.
Everyone was on deck again to see new shores and to get in the way of the crew. The December afternoon was misty bright, the winter sun drawing up the vapours of melting frost. They saw the land, the greens as deep as those of the Crimea, they saw a multitude of anchored ships of war. In an hour they would step ashore.
‘I’m so glad to be here,’ said Karita.
‘Because it’s here that I don’t shout at you?’ said Kirby.
‘Oh, no,’ she said.
They heard the laughter of men above the buzz of excited refugees. Princess Aleka Petrovna was delighting some of the ship’s officers. She was fur-clad, she was brilliant and beautiful. She had bought the fur from a woman who had little else. She had received half a dozen proposals. She had laughed at all of them. She had loved only two men and one of them was dead. The other she had lost, she knew she had lost and restlessly she looked for other stimulants. Officers would do for the time being. But at a pause in the laughter she excused herself and made her way over to Karita and Kirby.
‘Ivan,’ she said, ‘we’re to see each other in London? You’ll not desert me altogether?’
‘We’ll always be the best of friends, Aleka.’
‘I wish you’d stop saying that,’ she said. She smiled, her dark eyes sly. ‘I’ve arranged to buy a house in London. You must visit me often. Whenever you need love and not friendship I’ll be happy to make you happy, darling.’
Karita clenched her teeth.
‘You must think of yourself, Aleka, not of me, said Kirby. He owed Aleka something she did not realize. She had led him to Olga Nicolaievna. He would not desert her altogether.
‘I am thinking of myself, you fool,’ said Aleka. ‘But I shan’t sit around waiting on your magnificence, I shall join the British Socialist Party.’
‘Good God,’ said Kirby. He was a little sly himself as he added, ‘You must get to meet Sidney and Beatrice.’
She laughed. It was too spontaneous, he thought. Too brittle. The dark smoky eyes recaptured for him the moment when he had first met her at Nikolayev. But they were not the same eyes. And he knew she was haunted too. But not by the same things, the same people, as he was. She was haunted by disillusionment, by having lost all and gained nothing. Her revolution had lacked manners. That she could neither forget nor forgive.
She turned to Karita. Impulsively she put her arms around her, embraced her and whispered, ‘Oh, don’t be angry with me for ever, Karita, you don’t know how lonely I am, how I envy you.’ She pressed her mouth to Karita’s cheek and then went back to the stimulation of the officers. She was merry in moments.
‘Aleka Petrovna is laughing again,’ said Karita.
‘No,’ said Kirby, ‘she isn’t. We all lost something, Karita.’
‘But the war is over now, now we have tomorrow, don’t we?’
It was over, except in Russia, where they still fought each other and murdered each other. Here in England and Europe the politicians were already preparing to write their memoirs, which would be full of reasons why it was all someone else’s fault. Pageantry and glitter had gone, empires had disintegrated. Republicanism in a plain suit was claiming its turn. There would be less privilege, more equality.
There would be less poverty, less oppression and less blindness.
The beauty and the graciousness had been too expensive.
The world would be painfully reborn.
The land was closer, they could see the harbour, the rooftops, everything soft and hazy in the winter sunshine.
‘Ivan,’ said Karita, her eyes on the flowing sea, ‘did Grand Duchess Olga Nicolaievna love you?’
The pain was there, the longing, the sadness.
‘She wasn’t an ordinary girl, Karita, she wasn’t allowed to love like other people.’
‘That’s not an answer,’ said Karita, ‘but I didn’t really need to ask. You’re luckier than so many men, aren’t you? Olga Nicolaievna did love you. There were so many things that I saw but didn’t think about at the time. And Aunt Charlotte loves you. I love you. And Aleka Petrovna wants you.’
‘Karita, my sweet,’ he said in affectionate concern.
‘Oh, I would so like to be loved myself,’ she said.
Heedless of the crowded deck he turned her, he lifted her face up to his. He felt shock. Karita Katerinova, with whom he had shared so much, endured so much, and to whom he owed so much, was crying.
‘Karita, can you think I don’t care for you? We have been together so long, you and I, shared joys and sorrows, tragedies and love. When I look at you I see everything I’ve had from life, everything I’ve had from Russia. In you I see Russia, I see Livadia and yes, even Olga. You are everything I love about your country, you’re my life, my happiness, my tomorrow. In you I see the sun and the snow, I hear the children of the Tsar, I hear their songs and your songs, I see Russia as I loved it, as I still love it. I dearly wish you’d marry me, Karita. If not, then I’ll have nothing, no beauty, no peace, no tomorrow. What Olga meant to me was a cherishing of innocence, what you mean to me is yourself. Karita, my little one, I love you very very much.’
Karita was sobbing as if all the tears of Russia were drowning her. People were looking, gaping.
‘Karita, will you marry me?’
The grey warship was gliding through calm, sunlit waters. Karita’s golden head lifted and she smiled through her tears.
‘Oh, I would like to so very much,’ she said, ‘we should be such a proper family then.’
He kissed her on the lips.
Aleka Petrovna saw. She winced.
Kirby took Karita’s hand as they stood side by side and watched England come to meet them. He did love her. She was very dear to him. He would never tell her how close Olga would always be to him, however, never tell her how Olga would always be first in his heart. He would live with that and in such a way that he would not cheat Karita of love.
Her hand was warm, her fingers long and slim, loving and possessive.
He looked into the sun, and it was Olga’s hand, soft and clinging, that he felt around his.
She came out of the sun, her blue eyes dancing, her lustrous hair tipped with gold.
‘Colonel Kirby, you have been a very long time again …’