Olga walked out into the courtyard, breathing in the fresh, cool scent of the summer air. Life indoors was taking its toll on her: in her newfound inability to withstand bright light; in her exhaustion after climbing a single set of stairs.
In the sloped garden at Ipatiev House, tangles of weeds choked the wrought-iron staircase that led down from the second floor, wrapping around the balcony they’d been forbidden from using. Olga picked through the overgrown brush, careful not to lose her balance. Given his affinity for gardening, why hadn’t Papa asked the guards for a machete so he could start taming the lawn? But then, perhaps he already had.
She walked toward the swinging bench—left over from the previous owner, the guards hadn’t seen fit to remove it, though they had carved rude words into its wooden seat. The profanity didn’t bother Olga; it didn’t seem to bother Papa, either, who had merely covered the seat with his jacket. As Olga walked down the sloping lawn, Papa pushed the swing lazily back and forth with one foot, shielding his lighter from the breeze as he lit a cigarette.
She sat down, wrapping her hand around the swing’s chain. “So, it wasn’t the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk after all.” She looked up, squinting in the sunlight as she took in their limited view: guards had taken refuge from the summer glare beneath the balcony, giving her and her father a rare moment for private conversation. On the roof of the house next door, the little boy had reappeared, and was testing the quality of the wind before setting his kite adrift. “I keep wondering why they moved us from Tobolsk. I thought it might have been an attempt to make you ratify Lenin’s treaty with the Germans, but they would have taken you to Moscow if that had been the case. So what was the point?”
Papa sighed. “I’m just relieved it was a fight your mother and I didn’t have to endure,” he replied. “I would have never put my name to such a thing—not if they’d threatened to cut off my hand. But I suppose it makes sense. Why should they ask me to ratify a treaty if they no longer recognize my authority?” He followed Olga’s gaze; together, they watched the kite catch on an updraft. The little boy tugged on the string, making the flash of scarlet dance in the breeze. “Though I must confess, I’m disappointed that Cousin Wilhelm was willing to work with Lenin. I always knew him to be odious, but it seems beyond the pale, even for him.”
“Well, we never liked Cousin Willy anyways,” she said, trying to coax a smile from Papa. Olga knew what he meant: the German emperor had never been a favorite relation. His grasping insistence on his own importance made him difficult to respect—but Olga would have expected him to defend the divine right of kings, rather than break bread with socialists. But the conversation raised a new worry in Olga’s mind. If the Germans were willing to recognize the legitimacy of Lenin’s treaty, they were willing to acknowledge the legitimacy of his government. How many other countries—allies and enemies alike—had accepted the revolution as a fait accompli?
Beneath the balcony stairs, the soldiers began to stir; they shifted upright as Matveev rounded the corner.
Olga tightened her grip on the swing: whatever Matveev wanted, it wasn’t good. He stormed down the yard, trampling the tall grass beneath his shining boots; behind him, no fewer than five guards jogged in his wake, their rifles held at the ready.
“Romanov!” he barked. “Up to the house, now!”
Papa picked up his jacket and stubbed his cigarette out on the swing’s seat, neatly marring the carved expletive with his ash. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled his jacket back on—as he turned, Olga was struck by the look of fear marring his usually sanguine expression.
“Whatever happens, know that it was all for you,” he muttered. “Everything—for you children. All of it—”
“Now, Romanov.” Matveev stopped halfway down the garden and unholstered his pistol, holding it loose at his side.
“Is this not a matter you can discuss with Dr. Botkin?” Papa asked. Alongside his duties tending to Mamma and Alexei, Dr. Botkin had become something of the go-between for Papa and the Bolshevik guards. He’d taken up an apartment in the city, and paid calls to Olga’s family on a near-daily basis. “I’ve only been outside for ten minutes or so; I believe I’m to be afforded at least another twenty minutes of fresh air.”
“Absolutely not.” Matveev’s pistol twitched. “We will discuss it inside.”
“Only if Dr. Botkin is present,” Papa replied. “I’m afraid I must insist on a witness to our conversation.”
“Botkin is not on the premises at the moment, as you well know,” Matveev shot back. His small eyes darted from Papa to Olga; she could almost hear the gears whirring in his head. “Very well, your daughter may join us. But I’m in no mood for your obtuseness, Romanov, nor your temper, Grand Duchess.”
Matveev’s guards flanked Olga and Papa as they followed him back into the damp heat of the house: the windows had been sealed shut for weeks, ever since the guards accused Anastasia of signaling out the window at night, and the home had developed a humid, greenhouse heat that slowed Olga’s steps as she climbed the stairs. She could all but feel the rifle pointed at her back, but she resisted the urge to turn around: what signal would it send, to let the guards know that such a thing unnerved her?
At the top of the stairs, Matveev led them into a small room off the landing, stowing his pistol back beneath his greatcoat. Used as an office for the on-duty guards, the room was flooded with light from crystal-clear windowpanes, and Olga looked out, her heart lurching at the sight of the harbor stretching long beyond the double fence, the water sparkling impossibly blue. Was such a view so precious that the Bolsheviks couldn’t stand the thought of sharing it?
Clearly, however, it was too banal a sight for the man seated at the desk, facing the door. He didn’t look up as Matveev ushered Papa and Olga inside; rather, he continued poring over his documents, allowing Olga to take stock of the room: the taxidermied head of a stag; the pictures beneath it, too small on the expanse of patterned wallpaper. She guessed that the room had been a study for Ipatiev House’s previous owner, but the guards had filled the space with their little luxuries: bottles of vodka and whiskey, slotted into the bookcase alongside dirty glasses; bars of chocolate, no doubt pulled from packages meant for Olga and her siblings.
The man looked up from his papers, unsmiling. Unlike Matveev, who was still seething at the door, this guard was neither overawed at the sight of Papa nor apologetic; neither welcoming nor hostile. He stood, his gray jacket banded with red around his upper arm. His shoulders were rounder than Olga had expected, as though he spent his life bent over books rather than the barrel of a gun. To Olga, this man, with his thick goatee and arched eyebrows, exuded calm: a professional, unlikely to flinch under pressure, rather than a brute-strength soldier.
He circled the table. “Nicholas Alexandrovich, we’ve not had the opportunity to speak to each other before now. Your doctor has done an admirable job conveying your needs to me thus far, but in light of recent discoveries, I thought it best to meet directly. My name is Yakov Yurovsky. I am Commandant here at the House of Special Purpose. Please,” he said, motioning to the chairs.
Papa eyed the chair, but made no move to sit down. He didn’t seem surprised by Yurovsky’s words, but Olga looked from man to man, unease twisting her stomach into knots. The House of Special Purpose?
Wordlessly, Yurovsky pushed a yellowed sheet of paper he’d been reading across the table. Ripped from the flysheet of a book, it had been folded on itself so many times that, now open, it refused to lie flat: Olga pictured what it would look like creased, smaller than a sugar cube.
Yurovsky tented his fingers atop it, the paper protesting as he pinned it to the table. It contained a hand-drawn map of Ipatiev House: bedrooms, clearly marked; staircases. Corners where the guards tended to stand, noted with small black crosses.
Papa, she thought, her heart sinking. What did you do?
“Do you recognize this?”
Papa hinged at the waist, looking down at the map with only the mildest expression of surprise, as if he was speaking to a minister whose portfolio was only glancingly familiar. “Should I?”
Yurovsky pushed it farther along the table with a blunt finger. “It’s your handwriting.”
Papa looked up. “What of it?” he asked, shrugging. “It’s a drawing of the house. Meager as they may be, I didn’t think our artistic offerings were under surveillance, too.”
Yurovsky’s glacial expression became almost pitying. “Please don’t insult my intelligence.” He pulled a similarly crumpled sheet of paper from his breast pocket, unfolding it square by square before reading it aloud.
“The orderly officer makes his round of the house twice an hour at night...one machine gun stands on the balcony and one above it, for an emergency. Opposite our windows is the outside guard house, which consists of fifty men... Inform us when there is a chance and let us know whether we can take our servants,” he read, holding the paper at arm’s length. He looked up; Papa was staring back, a deep flush rising in his cheeks. “Surely you must have known we would uncover such a ham-fisted attempt at escape. You don’t think we inspect every item brought into this house? You don’t think we comb over each piece of rubbish and dinner plate once you’re finished with them?”
Olga listened, too terrified to move. Behind her, she could hear Matveev breathing heavily.
“After all we’ve done,” Matveev said bitterly. “We ought to haul you to Moscow.”
Olga willed Papa to be sensible. She’d goaded him into this; it had been her cutting words in Tobolsk that had led him to this futile show of bravery. The guards at Ekaterinburg were more ruthless, more dangerous, than their counterparts in Tobolsk—even Matveev seemed to have stiffened his resolve in these new surroundings.
You could have saved us all, if only you’d been brave enough to do so.
Now that it had come to it, Olga could see how reckless Papa’s actions had been; she could see how naïve she’d been in her own expectations, her own hope of escape.
Yurovsky spoke again. “We could have you shot for this, you know,” he said, and Olga could see that Matveev, with his cowboy petulance and his pistol, wasn’t the danger in the room—it was Yurovsky himself. His calm demeanor was a mask for his bloodless efficiency; his measured reason, ruthlessness.
The commandant looked at Papa a moment longer, letting the terrible silence speak its volumes.
“You must recognize the peril you’ve put your family in,” he said. “As you so accurately point out in your letter, I’ve fifty armed guards outside this house at all times, and thirteen within. We have the tactical advantage in terms of location, terrain, logistics. If I’ve not made the point sufficiently clear before, I will do so now: should the need arise, we will not hesitate to eliminate the threat you pose to our government.”
He tucked the paper back in his breast pocket. “So, the question remains: what to do with you? I could have you sent to prison,” he said, and Papa looked up in alarm. “Remove you from your family, for your safety and theirs. I would be well within my rights to do so.”
Papa bowed his head. “Please,” he said, and it broke Olga’s heart to hear him plead. “Please, don’t. I will endure any punishment you see fit...but please don’t separate me from my children.”
“Do I have your word as a gentleman that you will desist from any further attempts at escape?”
Papa nodded, once, the muscles in his jaw working with the strain of maintaining his composure. “You have my word.”
Yurovsky glanced at Matveev. “Then we’ll take this matter no further.” He returned his attention to his desk, folding the map along its well-worn creases. “You may return to your family.”
Olga offered Papa her hand as they turned to leave; Papa squeezed it, and though his eyes were dry Olga could feel his word weighing on him, as heavily as the accusation she’d leveled against him months before. Papa’s word was his bond: he would hold to the promise he’d made to Yurovsky, though it might tear him apart to do so.
As they reached the lintel, Papa turned to face Yurovsky once more. “Tell me one thing, Commandant,” he asked as Yurovsky, silhouetted by afternoon sunlight, lit a cigarette. “The letters I received...the rescue attempt. Was it genuine?”
Yurovksy snapped his lighter shut, a thin ribbon of smoke rising from the end of his papirosy. Despite his outward froideur, Olga could see the gleam of triumph in his eyes as he lowered the cigarette, knocked ash into a teacup on the desk.
“Of course not,” he replied, and turned to face the spectacular view.