Alexandra (52 page)

On the following day, July 15, Yurovsky had his instructions. He was to carry out the decision. He was to execute the entire Romanov family, and the others who were living with them.

Yurovsky made his preparations methodically, choosing trusted men, bringing them together and addressing them as a group, telling them what had to be done, then replacing two of them when they
indicated a reluctance to shoot the captives in cold blood.
⁹
Once he was assured that his soldiers were resolute, and would do as they were told,
he began to plan how and where the task would be carried out, and what would be done with the bodies afterwards.

He went on with his planning the next day, the sixteenth, aware that time was growing short. A dozen revolvers were cleaned and loaded and handed out to the men, together with specific
instructions as to which soldier would shoot which victim.
¹⁰
Then, apparently, he thought better of his original plan and decided that there
would be only eleven victims, not twelve. The fourteen-year-old kitchen boy Leonid Sednev was sent out of the house, with the excuse that
he was to see his uncle. He would
be spared. The others would die that evening.

Neither Yurovsky nor any of his men betrayed, by their demeanour, what they intended to do. As a result the Romanovs, on their final day, were in no greater state of stress than they usually
were, Nicky and the children walking in the garden for exercise, Alix reading from the Old Testament with Tatiana, the books of the prophets Amos and Obadiah (‘And it shall come to pass in
that day, saith the Lord God, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day: And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into
lamentation . . . and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.’). Later, Alix and Olga sewed their corsets, and Alix was relieved to find out that
Yurovsky had once again ordered the nuns from the convent to bring eggs for Alexei, along with milk.

So intense was the fighting on July 16 that an early curfew was ordered, and apart from the calling of the sentries and the rattle of rifle fire and the ever-present blasting of the heavy guns,
no sounds came from the street. Traffic had been halted.

After supper Alix and Nicky played bezique, as they customarily did, until ten-thirty when they went to bed, half-alert, as they always were, for the whistle that would tell them their friends
had come at last to save them.

But it was not a whistle that awakened them after midnight, it was Dr Botkin, who had been alerted to the state of danger in the town and instructed to wake the others.
¹¹
The entire town was in turmoil, he was told. The family and household members had to be moved to the lower floor for their safety.

Alix woke, put on her heavy corset with its weight of hidden jewels, and made certain her daughters put on theirs. What was happening was without precedent. Never before had they been roused
from sleep to go to a safer part of the house. Perhaps they were to be taken out of the city entirely. Or possibly rescue was at hand, and the guards knew it, and were attempting to thwart the
rescue effort.

It made sense: the early curfew, the incessant firing and shouting, the activity of the guards. It might be the liberators, come at last.

Yurovsky came to escort the group of captives as one by one they made their way to the lower floor of the house, first Nicky carrying Alexei, then Alix, then their four daughters, Tatiana
carrying her Pekinese dog, then Dr Botkin, Nicky’s valet Alexei Trupp, Alix’s maid Anna Demidov and the cook Ivan Kharitonov.
¹²

Alix followed her husband, wincing from the pain in her leg, taking note, when they went out into the courtyard, that the sky was bright with flares and rockets. They were led into a small empty
room on one corner of the house, with a single high barred window.

‘Aren’t there even any chairs?’ Alix asked. ‘Can we not sit down?’

Two chairs were brought. Nicky put Alexei down on one, and Alix sat on the other. Then Yurovsky did something puzzling. He asked the nine who were still standing to arrange themselves in line
behind the chairs. He needed a photograph, he said. To prove that they had not been kidnapped by the Whites.

Alix sat up in her chair, assuming the regal posture she invariably presented to the camera. But there was no camera. Instead, Yurovsky gave an order and a group of soldiers came in, staying by
the door, facing the captives. Yurovsky was saying something. That ‘in view of the fact that their relatives in Europe were continuing to attack Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee
had ordered them to be shot.’

The startling words hung in the air, there was an instant of bewilderment. Nicky turned to look at the children, then addressed Yurovsky. ‘What?’ he said. ‘What?’

Yurovsky repeated his sentence, then gave an order to the men, who took out their revolvers and took aim.

There was no time to react, only a confusion of sounds, cries of surprise, the gunning of an engine in the courtyard outside, a series of metallic clicks. Alix took a breath, murmured ‘Our
Father – ’ and raised her hand to cross herself. Then the sound of firing, a sharp tap on the forehead as the bullet struck. She fell to the floor, aware of nothing more.

T
he solemn chants and eloquent words of the Panikhida, the Orthodox Requiem for the dead, filled St Catherine’s Chapel in the Peter and Paul
Fortress on the afternoon Alexandra of Russia was laid to rest. The date was July 17, 1998, eighty years after her death, and a respectful congregation had gathered to commemorate her life and the
lives of those who died with her.

Her wooden coffin, draped with the yellow flag of the Romanovs, lay beside that of her husband. Three coffins, those of Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia, had been placed nearby. There were no coffins
for Marie or Alexei, for their bodies have not been recovered. And there were some at the funeral mass who doubted that the bones in the coffins belonged to the former imperial family, despite the
rigorous and conclusive scientific testing that had been carried out to identify them.

‘Give rest, O God, unto your servant, and appoint for her a place in paradise,’ the priest intoned, ‘where the choirs of the saints, O Lord, and the just will shine forth like
stars.’ As the world watched via satellite, the coffins were lowered into the crypt, the fortress guns firing a salute of honour.

Revered as she never was in life, Alexandra was revered now, with the others in her family, as a national symbol, an icon of suffering. Her relics – her rosary of cypress wood, her crystal
bottles of eau de cologne, her wheelchair, her flasks of English perfume, her gowns, became venerable objects, to be put on display for viewing by a reverent, or at least a regardful, world –
a world that has largely forgotten how Alexandra, as empress, was vilified.

In death Alexandra has at last found honour, yet her stark, romantic and cross-grained nature continues to elude description. Something of her strength of will, her
openness of heart, her sensitivity, always struggling towards refinement, lives on in the memoirs of those who loved her, but her deepest self remains concealed, buried with her in the dim
candlelit crypt, as the solemn chants rise heavenwards and the faces in the gilded icons gaze down in infinite tenderness upon her.

Note on Dates and the Transliteration of Russian Names:

Since Alexandra spent nearly half her life in Europe, where the Gregorian calendar was in general use, Gregorian dates have been used throughout the book. Russia did not adopt Gregorian usage
until February 1918, which meant that the Russian calendar date was, until 1900, twelve days behind that of Europe; from 1900 on it was thirteen days behind.

Russian first names are Anglicized (Alexander not Aleksandr, Eugene not Yevgeny), patronymics and family names are transliterated according to a modified version of the Library of Congress
system. The soft sign [’] is omitted.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3