Anastasia's Secret (3 page)

C
HAPTER
3

Once we were back in Tsarskoe Selo, at the Alexander Palace—the one of our many palaces we really thought of as home—I sent word to Sasha that I wanted to meet him. I was eager to ask him about the incident at the station, to find out if he knew anything about it and what it all meant. Sasha and I couldn’t simply send letters; everything that came and went from the palace was read by the secret police. It was for our protection, they said, to prevent attacks upon us. But I sometimes wonder if the Bolsheviks had members among these same police and were storing up information about us for later.

So instead of letters, to keep our friendship secret we devised a way of communicating through the girl who brought in the eggs, and who was happy to earn a few extra kopecks. These Sasha supplied, because I never had any actual money. Everything we wanted was purchased from our personal accounts, which were managed by the palace staff. It is funny now to think that I had no idea what things really cost, only that there was always enough money for everything that we wanted.

Sasha and I sat at the foot of the oak tree in that protected glade of the garden where we had first met. High shrubs nearby kept out prying eyes, and the thick foliage of the oak protected us from the summer sun.

“Why were those people at the train station so angry? So hostile?” I asked.

“You really don’t know, do you?” Sasha had his amazed, superior look.

If someone else had acted that way, I would have been angry. But in my meetings with Sasha, I dropped all formality and decided that it was worth his friendship to tolerate whatever he said or did. Something about the way he looked at me made me forgive him for anything. And it was unsettling to think how little I really knew about what went on in Russia. “Did you hear of it?” I asked him, steering the conversation back around to the pursuit of information.

“No,” he answered. “I expect no one will. The Okhrana hushes up everything that casts a bad light on the tsar, if they can. What’s the life of one peasant, after all?”

Now he had gone too far. How could he imagine that we thought any person’s life was not sacred? But I didn’t want to show my anger and risk sending him away. Instead, I pulled up a clump of grass and threw it at him.

“Be careful, Your Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia!” he said.

“Oh!” When he wanted to provoke me he called me by my title. I had to resist the temptation to fall upon him and pummel him with my fists. It would have done my white dress no good at all, and I would have had to offer some reasonable explanation later. I satisfied myself with sticking my tongue out at him.

He laughed silently until the tears streamed down his cheeks. “You can’t be serious. You’re just like a little girl, yet you’re a grand duchess.”

“I am just a normal person, like you or any of Papa’s subjects.” I refused to think of myself even then as a little girl, and it infuriated me when Sasha said it.

Sasha grew serious. “It’s true, they have not spoiled you and given you high and mighty airs. But do you really know what it’s like to be what you call a ‘normal person’?”

“I know the servants, who are not wealthy, and the sailors on Papa’s yachts.”

“They all receive costly gifts from your parents at Christmas or Easter, or at the end of a cruise. They have long since feathered their nests with the proceeds from imperial presents that they sell in the marketplace.”

I didn’t want to tell Sasha that I hadn’t any idea which gifts were costly and which were not. I had seen peasants working in the fields, seen shopkeepers and tradespeople in the streets of Petrograd and Moscow, seen the Tartars in the Crimea, with their red and gold costumes and their horses. But I couldn’t really claim to know any of these people, or to have any idea what kind of lives they led. “Nonetheless, the people have a good life here. If they do not, it is because they are lazy and refuse to work.”

Sasha’s face darkened and I realized I must have gone too far in repeating something I had heard Mlle Tutcheff, a governess we had for only a short time, say when I was younger.

“That way of thinking is what will ruin your family and all of the Russian nobility as you know it,” he said.

It was hard sometimes to stay calm when Sasha told me things. I was getting tired of not knowing anything, always having to accept what he said as the truth. “If you think I am so uninformed, why don’t you show me what the real people are like? For all I know, they’re like you, sleeping in comfortable barracks with three meals of meat a day!”

I knew I had stung him. He was silent a moment. I was sorry, but I couldn’t take back my words. After a pause, he replied, “All right. If you think you can manage it. I’ll show you. Be here tomorrow before dawn, and I’ll have you back in time for breakfast.”

I hesitated, but not for long. What harm could it do? Even if the secret police knew where I was going and with whom, I could make sure that Sasha was not blamed for anything. And I didn’t think the Okhrana had infiltrated as far as our bedroom, in any case, to spy on when we went to bed and when we got up in the morning. They were more interested in Mama and Papa. “What should I bring?” I asked.

Sasha shrugged. “Some food, if anything. And dress as plainly as you can.” He said this with a critical look up and down at my starched white dress with its bright red sash. Almost all my dresses were white, but I had coats that were not. I wasn’t worried that I could look plain.

We said our good-byes, and I returned to the palace with my head full of how I would manage to sneak away before dawn without letting anyone know, even Mashka. I decided that if she woke up, I would say that I was going to the toilet, that my stomach was bothering me a little. She would believe me. I often had such complaints.

First, though, I had to secrete away some food, for the purpose, I presumed, of distributing to some worthy, hardworking family. What would be appropriate? And how would I get it? I knew there were vast stores of provisions in the kitchens, and I knew my way around the bakery from when I was younger and would sneak down there looking for pastries. But what excuse would I have now that I was thirteen and no longer a child in search of treats?

The good thing about being the youngest daughter is that no one expects you to act very grown up. Even though by that time I had already started bleeding every month, I could run and play and be as rough and tumble as I was at ten and everyone would simply smile. That’s what gave me the inspiration for going down to the kitchens. “Let’s play hide-and-seek,” I said to Mashka, who, as usual, was reading a book of romances.

“Nastya, you really mustn’t be such a child now,” she said, although I could tell she wanted to say yes.

“Aren’t you bored with having everything the same every day? It’s been so tiresome since we came back from Livadia early. My legs need to run.”

She cocked her head to one side and closed her book with an exaggerated sigh. “Well, I suppose if you must. But I’ll hide, and you look for me!”

Mashka jumped up in a flash, and I laughed aloud to see her. “Count to one hundred!” she called over her shoulder as she skittered off in the direction of the public apartments. Our favorite place to hide was in the hidden access ways and cubbies where servants could duck away as the imperial suite or noble guests approached. Perfect, I thought. She would be waiting a long time for me to find her.

When I went down to the kitchens, I discovered that it wasn’t hard to coax dainty pastries and biscuits from the French pastry chefs. But the things that would be really useful—bread and meat—were shut away in locked pantries. Pastries, I thought, would be better than nothing, and so I took a basket and filled it with confections: marzipan and chocolate, millefeuille and crème, little gateaux in the shape of flowers and animals.

I had been so caught up in amassing my treats that I nearly forgot to look for Mashka. In the end I found her in a window seat in the small library, where she had pulled out a pile of books and was making her way through them.

“I wouldn’t exactly call this hiding!” I said.

She glared at me. “I wouldn’t exactly call what you were doing ‘seeking.’”

At first I worried that she had seen through my deception. “It’s a big house,” I said, although the Alexander Palace was actually the smallest place we stayed.

“You used to be able to find me in minutes. What were you doing?”

“I simply forgot all the secret ways. It’s been a while.”

“We played last year.” She snapped her book shut. “It’s time for tea.”

Mashka marched off like an angry nursemaid. I was a little sorry that I had used her for my own purposes, but I somehow felt I was justified.

It wasn’t hard to wake up early the next morning. I was so full of anticipation I barely slept. Which was a good thing, because although the dawn came all too soon at that time of year, the day turned out to be rainy and the sunrise was barely noticeable.

I wore the coat I hadn’t wanted and that I was hoping would be given to the orphanage the next year, the one that had been handed down all the way from Olga and was beginning to show signs of wear. Armed with my basket of treats, I crept through the secret passages and turnings that I hadn’t, in fact, forgotten, and made my way to the garden to meet Sasha.

He was there, waiting for me. His outline was indistinct in the mist, as if he had moved when his photograph was taken. Even though it was the middle of the summer, the rain and damp made me shiver. “You’re not afraid, are you?” whispered Sasha when I reached him.

“No, I’m fine. Just a little cold.”

“This way.”

He took my arm and steered me firmly toward a towering yew hedge, and for a moment I panicked that perhaps instead of being my friend he actually wished me harm. And I had ensured that there would be no secret police or their spies around to rescue me if that were the case. But soon enough I discovered that the hedge hid a low gate in the iron palings that I had never noticed before. We crept through it and pulled it shut behind us. The gate led to an alleyway behind some small houses. I knew where these were; we passed them often enough on our way to visit the local hospital.

Soon, however, we were beyond the part of the town that I knew, and the houses became poorer and shabbier. Some looked as though they might fall down. Their wooden sides had been propped up with rough poles leaning against them. I thought at first that they must only be sheds for animals—they had no windows, and gaps that surely let the wind whistle through in the bitter winter.

“A family of ten lives in that one,” Sasha whispered. He was so close to my ear that he startled me, and I frowned at him.

“Don’t exaggerate!” I snapped. He shrugged and gestured for me to follow him again.

I was sure we would soon leave the town altogether, as the houses became more sparse, and here and there a goat or some chickens scratched about in the mud for a bit of food. We climbed a hill, beyond which I thought would be nothing but open fields. Yet when we reached the crest, I gasped.

Spread out from the sides of the hill, sloping away for about a mile and a half was a filthy campground dotted with fires. People in rags slept on the open ground, curled up against the rain that fell steadily. A few had constructed lean-tos out of discarded blankets and old broom handles. I covered my mouth and retched. Even from this distance, the stench was abominable. Clearly there was no place for human waste other than among the people themselves. When I recovered myself enough to talk, I asked Sasha, “How many of them are there?”

“It depends on the time of year. Two or three thousand just now I think. In the winter, more people try to come into town for shelter.”

“I cannot believe that my papa and mama have any idea that this”—I swept my arm in an arc—”could possibly exist.”

“I don’t blame them specifically,” Sasha said, “but I blame their ignorance of what’s really going on in this country. People are starving in the countryside and being worked to death in the factories.”

I looked down at my pathetic little offering of cakes and pastries. “I don’t suppose these will do much good.” But I was at a complete loss as to what else I could do. Papa would be able to order the engineers to construct a field of stout, dry tents and dig latrines. But I was only the youngest grand duchess, hardly ever spoken to except to be congratulated on making everyone laugh, or for performing a piece well on the piano or the balalaika. My father would never believe I had seen such a thing; perhaps he would attribute it to my active imagination. And he had other more important things to think about, including a possible war. “Tell me. What would fix this?” I asked.

“I don’t know. The Bolsheviks say giving people the power to decide things for themselves would be a start.”

At that time, I couldn’t really imagine what that would be like. Papa decided everything for the whole country. It would be Papa who would soon say that Russia would go to war. It would be Papa who would send thousands of young men away from their families to be killed. At that moment, I was very glad I wasn’t Papa. And yet, he also had the power to make things better for thousands, even millions of Russian people. Why would he not do that if he could? And if the people had all the power, would they use it for good or not? I had read enough history to know of many examples where the people took revenge when they tumbled a monarchy—the French, for instance. The Reign of Terror was bloodier by far than all that preceded it, and the French people ended up with another emperor in Napoleon.