The House of Special Purpose (45 page)

Later that night, having made up after our fight – so strange to remember, we both shed tears, so unaccustomed to argument
were we – we lay in bed together and I urged Zoya to prepare herself for what was to come, that this matter might not end as we would wish it.

She said nothing in reply, simply turned over to sleep, but I knew that she was not so naive as to fail to recognize the truth in my warning.

We sat in the same seats the next day and on this occasion the courtroom was at full capacity to hear Leo’s testimony. He began nervously, but soon his familiar strength returned to him and he gave a performance of remarkable oratorical prowess that made me wonder for a moment whether in fact he might yet save himself. He portrayed himself as a hero of the people, a young man who could not stand by and watch an elderly woman – an elderly
French
woman, he pointed out – insulted and mistreated by a guest of his country. He spoke of how much he admired the work of the gendarmes, and said that he had seen the young man lose his footing and had in fact reached out a hand to save him, not push him, but it was too late. He had fallen. The courthouse sat in absolute silence as he spoke, and when he descended the stand he glanced towards Sophie, who smiled at him anxiously; he smiled back, before resuming his seat between the officers sent to guard him.

The last witness, however, was the young policeman’s mother, who told the court of his movements that morning and portrayed her son – quite properly, perhaps – as a saint in waiting. She spoke proudly and with dignity, giving in to tears only once, and by the end of her testimony I knew that there was little hope.

An hour later, the jury returned, announced a verdict of guilty to murder, and as the court broke into spontaneous applause, Sophie jumped to her feet and immediately fainted, leaving Zoya and me to carry her out into the hallway.

‘It can’t be, it can’t be,’ she said in a daze as she came back to consciousness on one of the cold stone benches that lined
the exterior walls. ‘He is innocent. They can’t take him from me.’

Zoya was in tears now too and the two women hugged each other, trembling violently. I could feel a spring rising behind my own eyes too. It was too much for me. I stood up, unwilling to allow them to see me break down.

‘I’ll go back inside,’ I said quickly, turning my back on them. ‘I’ll find out what happens next.’

Stepping back into the courtroom, I had to fight my way through to a position where I could see for myself what was taking place. Leo was on his feet, a gendarme on either side of him, white-faced, looking for all the world as if he could not believe what had happened, certain that he would be released at any moment with the apologies of the court. But that was not to be.

The judge banged his gavel on the bench for silence and proceeded with the sentencing.

When I emerged from the courtroom a few moments later, I was sure for a moment that I was going to be sick. I ran quickly outside to gather as much air into my lungs as possible, and as I did so, the full horror of what I had just heard came home to me and I had to place my hand against the wall to steady myself, lest I collapse entirely and disgrace myself.

Zoya and Sophie, a few feet away from me, turned and stopped crying for a moment, staring at me.

‘What is it?’ asked Sophie, running towards me. ‘Georgy, tell me! What has happened?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t,’ I said.

‘Tell me!’ she repeated, shouting now. ‘Tell me, Georgy!’ She slapped my face, once, twice, three times, hard. She clenched her hands into fists and pummelled my shoulders, and I felt nothing, just stood there as Zoya pulled her away. ‘Tell me,’ she was continuing to scream, but the words were lost in such misery and sobbing that they were all but unintelligible.

‘Georgy?’ asked Zoya, looking towards me and swallowing
nervously. ‘Georgy, what is it? We have to know. You have to tell her.’

I nodded and looked at her, unsure how to put such a thing, such an unspeakable thing, into words.

The execution took place early the following morning. Neither Zoya nor I was there to witness it, but Sophie was permitted to spend thirty minutes with her lover before he was brought to the courtyard and guillotined. I was shocked – beyond shocked – to learn that this was to be his punishment, that an instrument of death that I associated with the French Revolution was still in use, more than a century later, for those sentenced to death. It seemed barbaric. None of the three of us was able to believe that such a punishment could be meted out to our young, handsome, funny, vibrant, impossible friend. But there was no escaping it. The sentence was handed down and carried out within twenty-four hours.

Paris held no more beauty for us after that. I offered my resignation in writing to Monsieur Ferré, who tore up my letter without reading it and told me that it did not matter what it said, I was dismissed anyway.

It didn’t matter.

Sophie came to see us only once before she left the country, thanking us for what we had done to help her, promising to write when she arrived at wherever it was that she was going.

And Zoya and I decided to leave Paris for good. It was her decision, but I was happy to acquiesce.

On our last night in the city, we sat in our empty flat, staring out of the window towards the spires of the many churches that littered the streets.

‘It was my fault,’ she said.

The Journey to Yekaterinburg

W
HEN I WENT
to bed that night in one of the small cots that lined the walls of the guards’ carriage, I was sure that I would find it impossible to sleep. The day had grown chaotic as the Tsar had sunk into a silent depression, and those of us who formed his entourage were embarrassed and disconsolate. I am not too proud to admit that I wept as I placed my head on the pillow, for my emotions were in a heightened state, and although I did eventually close my eyes, my dreams were tormented and I woke several times in the night, disoriented and upset. As the hours passed, however, I settled into a deeper slumber, and when I opened my eyes again, not only had the night vanished, but most of the morning too. I blinked and waited for the events of the previous day to dissolve as dreams do, but rather than fade away in confusion, they clarified and reasserted themselves and I realized that it was all true and that the unimaginable had actually happened.

Sunlight seeped through the windows. I glanced around to see who else was sharing the carriage with me and was surprised to discover that I was entirely alone. This part of the train was almost always filled with other members of the Leib Guard, sleeping, trying to sleep, dressing, talking, arguing. For it to be so serene was disconcerting. An eerie quiet surrounded me as I climbed out of bed slowly, pulled on my shirt and trousers and looked warily out at the cold, endless forest that stretched for hundreds of miles on either side of the train.

Marching quickly through the dining car, the games saloon and the carriages which were the private domains of the Grand
Duchesses, I made my way to the Tsar’s private study, where the previous afternoon he had signed away his own birthright and that of his son, and knocked on the closed door. There was no response from within and I leaned closer to it, my ear to the wood, straining to hear any conversation inside.

‘Your Majesty,’ I called, determined still to address him by this title as I knocked again. ‘Your Majesty, can I assist you with anything?’

There was no answer, so I opened the door and stepped inside to discover the room as empty as my sleeping quarters had been. I frowned and tried to imagine where the Tsar might be; he spent every morning locked away in his private study working on his papers. I couldn’t imagine that would have changed, even in the new circumstances in which we found ourselves. There were still letters to be written, after all, papers to be signed, decisions to be made. Now more than ever it was important that he looked to his business. Looking back along the corridor to ensure that no one was coming, I stepped over to his desk and rifled quickly through the papers that remained there. They were complicated, political documents that meant nothing to me and I turned away from them in frustration, before noticing that the portrait of the Tsar’s family which always stood on the desk had been removed from its frame, leaving nothing but the silver casing behind. I stared at the empty frame for a moment and picked it up, as if it might offer me some clues as to the Tsar’s whereabouts, but replaced it a moment later and decided that I should disembark immediately.

The train had not moved since the night before, and as I jumped off, my boots crunched loudly on the stones beside the sleepers. Further along I could make out the figure of Peter Ilyavich Maksy, another member of the Leib Guard, who had been part of the Tsar’s retinue since before I had first come to St Petersburg; we had never got along well and for the most part I avoided him. Another former member of the Corps of Pages, he
resented my presence on the Imperial staff; he had been particularly incensed when I had been relieved of what he considered my ‘babysitting’ duties in respect of the Tsarevich and been brought here as part of the Tsar’s retinue. Still, he appeared to be the only person left, so I had little choice but to talk to him.

‘Peter Ilyavich,’ I said, striding up to where he stood, trying not to be unsettled by the disgruntled manner in which he stared at me as I walked along, as if I was nothing more than a minor irritation in his morning. He held his cigarette in his mouth for a long time before allowing himself one final drag and tossing it to the ground, where he stamped it underfoot.

‘My friend,’ he said, nodding at me, his voice laden with sarcasm. ‘Good morning.’

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Where is everyone? The train is deserted.’

‘They’re all up front,’ he said, glancing along the tracks towards the foremost carriage. ‘Well, those who are left, anyway.’

‘Left?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘What do you mean, left?’

‘Didn’t you hear?’ he asked me. ‘Don’t you know what happened last night?’

I began to feel a great sense of dread build within me, but didn’t want to anticipate what he meant. ‘Just tell me, Peter,’ I pleaded. ‘Where is the Tsar?’

‘There is no Tsar any more,’ he said with a shrug, as if this was the most natural thing in the world. ‘He’s gone. We’re free of him at last.’

‘Gone?’ I asked. ‘But gone where? You don’t mean—’

‘He has renounced the throne.’

‘I know that much,’ I snapped. ‘But where—’

‘They sent a train for him in the middle of the night.’

‘Who did?’

‘Our new government. Don’t tell me you slept through it! You missed a wonderful show.’

I felt an immediate rush of relief – he was alive, then, which meant it was unlikely that any harm had come to his family either – but this was quickly replaced by a desire to know where he had been taken.

‘Why do you care, anyway?’ Peter asked me, narrowing his eyes and reaching forward to brush some dust off my collar, an aggressive action from which I reeled back.

‘I don’t care,’ I lied, sensing how the world had changed overnight, where the new dangers lay. ‘I’m just interested.’

‘Interested in what’s happened to Romanov?’

‘I want to know, that’s all,’ I insisted. ‘I went to bed and … I don’t know, I must have been exhausted. I slept through it. I didn’t hear any train.’

‘We are all exhausted, Georgy,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘But it’s over now. Things will be better from now on.’

‘What train was it?’ I asked, ignoring the obvious pleasure he was taking in the Tsar’s abdication. ‘When did it come?’

‘It must have been two, three o’clock in the morning perhaps,’ he said, lighting another cigarette. ‘Most of us were asleep, I suppose. I wasn’t. I wanted to watch as they took him away. The train came from St Petersburg, it stopped a mile or so along this rail. There were a group of soldiers on board with a warrant for the arrest of Nicholas Romanov.’

‘They arrested him?’ I asked, perplexed, but refusing to rise to the bait of his mocking name for the Tsar. ‘But why? He had done what they asked of him.’

‘They said it was for his own protection. That it would not be safe for him to return to the capital. There are riots everywhere there, it’s a mess. The palace is infested with people. The shops are being broken into in search of bread and flour. There’s anarchy throughout the city. His fault, of course.’

‘Spare me your editorial,’ I hissed, furious now and grabbing him by the collar. ‘Just tell me where they took him.’

‘Hey, Georgy, let me go!’ he cried, staring at me in surprise as
he wrenched himself free from my grasp. ‘What’s the matter with you, anyway?’

‘The matter with me?’ I asked. ‘The man we have served has been taken into custody and you stand here smoking cigarettes like it’s any other morning.’

‘But it’s a glorious morning,’ he said, clearly astonished that I did not share his sentiments. ‘Haven’t you longed for this day?’

‘Why didn’t they take this train?’ I asked, ignoring his question and looking around at the Imperial transport, all fifteen carriages of it, which was stranded on the line now. ‘Why send a different one?’

‘Romanov is not to be allowed his luxuries any more,’ he told me. ‘He’s a prisoner, you understand? He owns nothing. He has no money. This train does not belong to him. It belongs to Russia.’

‘Until yesterday, he
was
Russia.’

‘But this is today.’

I had half a mind to challenge him there and then, to wrestle him away from where he stood and punch him four square in the nose, daring him to retaliate, in order that I could take out my anger on him, but it was pointless.

‘Georgy Daniilovich,’ he said, laughing as he shook his head. ‘I don’t believe it. You really are the Tsar’s bitch, aren’t you?’

I curled my lip in distaste at the remark. I knew that there were those among the Imperial entourage who despised the Tsar and all that he stood for, but I felt a loyalty to the man that could not be assuaged. He had treated me well, there was no question of that, and I would not deny him now. Regardless of the consequences.